The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy

by B. T. Gottfred

  “Stop it!”

  “I’m feeling better. The pain meds must be earning their keep. So funny! My lungs don’t feel like they are a million pounds. Oh-my-god, what if I wasted all that good drama and I live for another ten years?”

  The doctor and nurse walk in, ask how she’s feeling. They tell her about opening her chest. Draining the fluid. Tell her they thought the operation went well and her vitals are remarkably strong. My mom. She’s invincible. She probably will live another ten years.

  After the doctor leaves, the nurse says she’ll be back with some breakfast. I go to the bathroom to pee and wash my face. I can’t stop obsessing about my dad. Not obsessing. Pondering. Whatever. My dad … dad … so fucking weird …

  I never missed having a dad before because I never thought about having a dad before. This is stupid. In a couple weeks, when we’re back at the house and life is normal again, I’ll grill Mom about everything, but until then it’s pointless to think about him.

  “Mom…” I say as I exit the bathroom. I don’t even know what I was going to say. But I see her face, her gaze off to that other place. Her body still in a whole new way.

  I see the machine, and that flat line, and then I hear footsteps.

  I don’t cry. No benefit to crying now. I just grab her hand as the nurses and then the doctor do their thing. They try to make me step away. They think they could save her. But my mom is my best friend and I know her better than anyone knows anyone. And I know she is gone.

  art

  Zee, the queen of my heart and the mythical creature of my soul, doesn’t come back for the last six weeks of school.

  * * *

  I send her a text every week, on Tuesday or Wednesday. (I switch it up so it doesn’t seem like I’m waiting exactly one week between texts even though that’s exactly what I’m doing.) I don’t try to be funny or dramatic. Just super nice. I text things like If you need anything, I’m here. She responds with Thanks (four times) or Thanks Art (two times). The two times she responds with my name, I decide that’s a signal that she wants me to text back right away. So I do. Except she doesn’t respond to either of those texts. And I start to think I’ll never see her again. That she’ll move away to some aunt’s house in France and forget about me and I’ll spend the rest of my life searching for her except I’ll never find her and, oh my gosh, I’m so self-centered for thinking about how her mom’s death ruined my life. I know. Yuck. Double yuck.

  * * *

  In other news, my dad’s great. He found a new job, he and Mom are more in love than ever, and he tells me thank you every day for joining the waiter ranks at TGI Fridays to help buy groceries.

  Ha, I’m so lying.

  Well, I did get a part-time job. But my dad’s basically a corpse. He sits on the couch all day (drinking beer by the case), sleeps there most nights because he can’t get up to do anything except to use the bathroom. That’s even debatable considering how the den has officially created a new horrible smell that could be used to kill insects and small animals.

  And … so … not so surprisingly … my mom moved out. She told us the Sunday before finals. Abigail literally melted down. I don’t mean the word “literally” literally. Abigail did rotate between two volcanic states: enflamed rage or explosive tears. So either stomping floors and screaming “fuck!” in front of my dad (he didn’t care) or wall-shaking sobs with an occasional wall-breaking “fuck!” for my dad’s benefit. He still didn’t care. My mom ended the conversation by saying, “If you need something, you can call me. But you two really need to stay here with your dad and take care of him.” Thanks, Mom!

  Abigail got an extension to take her second-semester finals later this summer. She told me I could do that too, but that just sounded like having homework in July. Not that I can predict the future, but after three days of my dad’s post-job couch-planted existence, I could see the love literally die in my mom’s eyes. (And I do mean “literally” literally this time! Love physically manifests in our eyes! It does! I know because I see my love for Zee every day in the mirror.) So, anyway, Mom moving out didn’t shock me like it did Abigail and thus I got the stupid, boring finals out of the way and probably did my usual boring average because no test ever invented can capture my rare genius.

  Our three older siblings—Alex, Amy, and Alice—did an impressive disappearing act. Bravo, sisters and brother! Alex lives in Ohio and he and my dad have hated each other since Alex went to work for Progressive insurance instead of Allstate but mostly they hate each other because they’re the exact same person and you always hate yourself if you’re not an evolved species like me. So there’s no way we were going to see him no matter what. Amy will be a senior next fall at Drake University and decided to spend the summer there in Iowa once she heard about all the family drama. Alice came home from Northern Illinois University for approximately seventy-two hours until Abigail complained to Dad about the pot smell in the room they have to share. Dad decided he cared about that more than Abigail cursing at the top of her lungs, but really he just needed a good excuse to yell at someone and Mom wasn’t around anymore. So Dad yelled and yelled and yelled until Alice ran off to crash at some unknown boyfriend’s in Wrigleyville. I seriously doubt we will see her again until Christmas. Clearly I will have to be the one Adams child to reunite my parents and rescue this family.

  What this all means is sophomore year’s over, summer vacation has begun, and I should be doing cartwheels while holding firecrackers of joy. But because my family is a bigger disaster than I thought we could ever be (and I already thought we were a pretty huge disaster!) and because the love of my life may be nothing more than a beautiful yet fleeting dream, I have spent the first weeks of my school-free life sitting in my room, sipping Diet Coke through a straw, charting dozens more Art Charts, and blogging about how I—writing under the pseudonym Zert—and only I can heal all the broken hearts and broken souls in the world.

  I also check my phone every four point two minutes to see if Zee texted me.

  In fact, I’ll check right now.

  And no. Nothing. WHY CAN’T SHE JUST TEXT ME?! PLEASE, ZEE, MY LOVE, PLEASE!

  I’m fine. I’m being dramatic me. I’m totally fine.

  But oh-my-god if she doesn’t text me soon, I’m going to die.

  ZEE

  I couldn’t sleep those first few nights.

  I obsessed about that last day. Could I have done something different? Said something to my mom? To the doctors? I replayed every minute. Over and over and fucking over.

  Then I did nothing but sleep for weeks. Whenever I’d wake up—middle of the night, morning, middle of the day, didn’t matter—I’d have maybe five seconds where I forgot she was gone.

  My brain and body had those five seconds to feel normal. Then

  f-u-c-k-i-n-g

  p-o-w

  it would hit me hard like I was experiencing it fresh. My shoulders would snap-fold toward each other, my head would twist down, this black hole of a knot would engulf my core, and then my eyes would just pour. I didn’t make noise. Never was a loud crier, even as a kid. But, fuck, my face just drenched itself.

  Michael kept telling me I should get up, go to school, go to church, go somewhere. I’d tell him to fuck off in my mind and then pretend he didn’t exist.

  The little time I was awake, I’d flash back to random moments with my mom. Eating sushi on Thanksgiving. Both of us trying not to laugh after old Miss Anderson farted during a Sunday sermon. Watching Law & Order marathons on Netflix until three a.m. on a school night. So random, right? And tiny things, like looks on her face when she was worried about me or was excited to tell me something. And of course her stupid fucking jokes about dying. Damn, thinking about those hurt the most. Maybe helped the most too because I’d realize I was smiling way after I started smiling even though I thought I’d never smile again.

  * * *

  I found the letter.

  It was where she said it would be. Under dresses I haven’t worn si
nce junior high and I’d never wear again.

  I still haven’t read it.

  That’s fucking weird, right?

  My mom’s dead (shit, it sucks to say the word “dead”) and there’s this one thing she left behind and I can’t bring myself to read it. I can’t even explain why. Maybe I … no, I don’t know … truly, man, I don’t even know why. I should just read it.

  I should.

  * * *

  I crawl off the bed onto the floor because I can’t be bothered to stand. Hand-and-knee it over to the dresser. Get it again from under those stupid dresses for the fiftieth time and the envelope isn’t even sealed, just tucked in there, and …

  No. Can’t. Tears flow just thinking about opening it. Can you imagine me actually reading it? I’d probably fucking drown.

  Put the letter away. Crawl back …

  A text.

  Art. This kid. Texts me every week but like he doesn’t want me to know he’s texting me every week.

  Better than Cam. I really thought Cam would be there for me. He came to the funeral, sure, but so did a hundred other kids from The Bend I barely talk to. My CrossFit coach, Dish, and some of the crew came, and they’ve actually been the coolest. They sent flowers, and they check in even though I haven’t gone back to class once.

  But Cam? I got the hint pretty quick that he couldn’t handle me. I didn’t even cry in front of him. (Saved almost every tear for my bedroom.) So I don’t know what he saw that scared him off so bad. He hasn’t even called or texted to say Thinking of ya or some other shit thing that’s shit but it’s better shit than nothing at all. (I should note he’s texted me three times about the Cubs pitching staff but I haven’t responded to those and he sure as hell hasn’t gotten the hint that I need more from him than baseball reports.)

  Back in bed, I close my eyes but sleep isn’t going to happen. Even thinking about reading the letter shot adrenaline through me. It’s Wednesday? I think so. Yeah. It is. School ended a couple weeks ago. Principal Ruter e-mailed me personally saying that protocol stated the finals would have to be made up at some point, but my teachers agreed to assign me the same grade I had the first semester. I suppose that was cool of them. I suppose it’s cool that I’m officially a senior now. But, truly, I don’t care all that much about anything.

  * * *

  I go downstairs because my bedroom walls were closing in on me, but as soon as Michael sees me, he unleashes, “Have you given thought to what you’re going to do with your summer?”

  I. Can’t.

  “Zee, it’s rude to ignore me the way you do.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. Guess I mean it.

  “Until you leave for college in fifteen months, I’m your legal guardian and deserve some level of respect accorded to that position.” Michael talks like he thinks he’s a lawyer on TV.

  And he is not my legal guardian. Mom asked me when I was fourteen if I wanted to be emancipated in case she died. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I said I could take care of myself and she made sure I’d be able to do that no matter when she left.

  “ZEE!” Michael yells. Probably because I’m just standing there, not saying anything.

  “I’m going out.”

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Out.” I go back toward the stairs, but Michael follows.

  “Hey, sorry about yelling.” Michael’s voice goes soft as he does his weird flip from bad cop to good cop. Like, who are you really, Michael? But I stop and let him talk because I’m not a total asshole. He goes on, “I’m still finalizing all of your mother’s affairs. Just checking again if you remembered anything she talked about the morning she died—”

  Hate. That. Fucking. Word. “Like what?” This is the third time he asked about that day. First two times, I told him I couldn’t remember. Truth is, I don’t want to remember.

  “Anything that you might think I should know.”

  I pretend I’m thinking. Well, I am thinking. I’m thinking he’s probably wondering if I know about my dad, right? But why’s that his business? How can he possibly be threatened by some man who abandoned my mom and me seventeen years ago? And, anyway, unless Mom put my dad’s contact information in the letter I can’t bear to read, I have no way of contacting him. So I say, “I just don’t know, Michael. I got to go.”

  * * *

  I go upstairs, put on clean cargo pants—I spent at least three days in bed in the pair I had been wearing—clean T-shirt, clean hoodie, and my white Jordans. Okay. I spend too much on shoes. Or my mom used to. Jesus. What happens to my life now? How am I supposed to go from doing everything with her—EVERYTHING—and now I can do nothing with her.

  And, yeah, tears. I don’t even make it halfway to my truck. I should go back inside. Get back in bed. But I get into the truck just because. Look at my phone. And there’s the kid’s text. If I had even another minute to gather the pathetic mess that was my thoughts, I wouldn’t have done it. But I don’t take that minute. And find myself texting him:

  ME

  what ya doing?

  art

  At the sight of Zee’s text, I attempt to quell the beams of rainbow light bursting from my entire being. But I quickly determine containing that amount of power might be fatal. Thus I text:

  ME

  Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re doing it

  This is too much. I know it before I even send it but I send it anyway. And then I have to wait. And then I know even if she responded in fifteen seconds, it will be too long.

  Thus, I call. No one uses phones for actual phone calls. I’m sure if I haven’t scared her with my text, seeing her phone ringing with my name on it surely would.

  ZEE

  He is calling me.

  Calling. Me.

  Jesus.

  Who the hell calls someone? And, fuck, I answer it but only because I should tell him I can’t hang out. Or do anything. Probably ever.

  “Hey,” I say, but before I can get another word in, Art says, “I know how weird it is to call. But I didn’t want to give you too much time to think about why you shouldn’t hang out with me or why you shouldn’t have texted me instead of honoring your first instinct, which was to call me and to hang out with me.”

  This kid is … I don’t even. He’s just a lot. Overflowing with whatever he is. And, yeah, screw it. “I wasn’t thinking that.…” I was. “Yeah, maybe I was … but yeah, okay. Wanna see a movie?”

  “Yes. A thousand yeses.”

  A thousand yeses?

  “Or just one yes if a thousand is too much. What time? Now is best. The Gladys Park Regal Twelve? I can be there in thirty minutes if I catch the five-twenty-five bus.”

  “No…” Everyone in Riverbend sees movies at the Regal Twelve. I don’t want to see anyone. Or for anyone to see me. And sure as hell not see me with Art. I suck for thinking that, but I don’t care that I suck for thinking that. So I say, “Abigail home?”

  “She’s out with Cam. Why?” Because I don’t want Abigail seeing me and then telling Cam I went to a movie with the kid.

  So I say, “I’ll pick you up. I’m already in my truck. Can you be ready soon?”

  “For you, my queen, of course.”

  I can’t even respond.

  “If you prefer I speak like a more typical teenage boy, I’ll rephrase. Ask me the question again.”

  This kid! Jesus!

  “I’ll ask for you.” Art, with a voice that’s nothing like mine but maybe a little less like his, says, “Can you be ready soon?” And then he answers with this gruff, distant, disinterested tone, “Yeah, dude, whatever.” To be honest, it sounds a bit like Cam. Then he goes back to his normal voice and says, “What do you prefer?” I don’t even think he took a breath.

  “Just text me your address, kid.” I guess I’m smiling. Can’t really be helped.

  “Yes, my queen.”

  art

  I’ve known what I would wear on my first date with Zee f
or seven weeks. If I admitted this to anyone—Bryan for instance—he would have said, That’s because you’re gay, Art. No, Bryan, it’s because Zee is special, and I want her to feel special when she sees me, and I want to feel special when I see her. Bryan would probably then respond, Anyone who says “I want to feel special” is definitely gay. But who cares what Bryan thinks or anyone in the world thinks. I’m glad I picked out my outfit seven weeks ago because I have about seven minutes to be ready:

  Black boxer briefs, gray no-wrinkle pants (affordable yet you’d never know it), a white button-down, no socks, and blue Bullboxer shoes (casual but beautiful and newly acquired from the second TGI Fridays paycheck). I debate, briefly, leaving my shirt untucked because Cam never tucks his shirt in and Zee probably thinks she’s still in love with him. But the only way she’s going to realize she’s in love with me is if I’m me and not anyone else. I’ve studied every GQ magazine since I was eight, and the untucked look only works with shorts, some linen pants (and only if you’re near water), and worn jeans (and only if the shirt isn’t too long). These are just the facts.

  I wasn’t going to tell my dad I was going out, mostly because I knew he wouldn’t care. But then I decide I want him to know I still care enough to tell him even if he doesn’t care enough to care I care.

  “I’m going out on a date,” I say, loudly because some baseball game is on. As I say this, I realize I want him to hear I am going out on a date. His head moves just enough to acknowledge me. I add, “She’s very beautiful, Dad. I’m sure you’ll meet her soon.” I guess I want him to know I am going out with a girl too. I know how ridiculous it is to have to point out that my date is a female, but I’ve just always had this feeling—even though he’s never said a single thing about it—that my dad thinks I’m gay. If I was gay, I’d want him to know I was gay. Doesn’t that make it okay that I want the only father I’ll ever have in this lifetime to know that I’m straight? Yuck. I hate being all needy and it feels homophobic to point out you’re straight. I leave without waiting for him to respond because he isn’t going to respond anyway.