The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  “Why do you look like that?” Skint chucks Dinah’s arm. “It wasn’t like the dogs at all, right?”

  “No,” says Dinah.

  “Quit looking dismal! It was a Fantastic, not an Excruciating, right? Clap!” Skint orders her. “Didn’t you think it was beautiful? Didn’t you think it was even better than the flamenco dancers’ kids?”

  “No.” Donkey so alone, blinking, forlorn and still. It was not beautiful, even though it was. “I hated it.”

  “Dinah! He’ll hear you! He’ll see you not clapping!”

  “I don’t care. Why did he make it go all separate like that?”

  The applause dies down.

  “We have introduced ourselves,” the gray man says. “The night is cold. Please, get some tea and rejoin us.”

  Bernadine seethes but there is nothing she can do. People shift and get up, laughing and chatting as they head upstairs.

  “Jerks,” says Dinah. “All they care about is snacks!”

  Skint sighs. He’s looking over her head toward the back.

  Dinah folds her program into eighths and stuffs it under her seat.

  “He should have kept it all like the first part of the dance,” she says.

  “No,” says Skint. He pulls her to her feet. “It was perfect. Come on.”

  Upstairs the folding tables are open for business with snack mix and coffee and tea. The whole of the donkey audience is clustered round it, with Bernadine shouting people into order. Behind its door the choir is still singing, and over them the burr of Dinah’s dad’s voice can be heard. Mrs. Wattle’s voice blares above it all in her terrible key.

  The gray man is there with a cup of tea in one hand and a cup of snack mix in the other. Dinah worries that he won’t have time to eat his snack before they have to go back. Never mind that he has to hold both items at once so he doesn’t have a hand free to scoop up the snack mix—he can’t even chew because he has to talk to the people who are politing up to him.

  Skint also has two cups in his hands, one of cocoa and one of the mix. “I’m bummed you didn’t like it,” he says.

  “What are you talking about?” Dinah takes the cocoa cup from Skint.

  “The show. The dance.” Dinah stares at him. “I loved it.”

  Now Skint is staring at her. She takes a sip of cocoa. It is very delicious.

  “You loved it?” he says.

  “How could you think I didn’t? It was wonderful. Walter is the best donkey in the world. The man is so kind—”

  “Maybe because of the part where you said you hated it.” Skint flicks her forehead with his finger, then digs through the snack cup for sesame sticks. He crunches. “You know, when you said it loud enough for everybody to hear, including the donkey—”

  “Stop! Skint!” Dinah feels awful. She didn’t mean hate like hate. Oh, she’d better go tell the man—

  “Wait,” Skint says, grabbing her non-cocoa arm. He’s looking over her head toward the gray man. “You can tell him later. He’s busy. Plus you look crazed, and he might be scared you’re going to tell him off.”

  Dinah tries to look less wild-eyed.

  “What an asshole he is,” Skint mutters, still looking.

  “What?”

  Skint sighs. “Not the man,” he says. “Him.”

  Dinah swivels round. The Vole is doing a rude version of the donkey dance over by the gray man. The gray man looks patient.

  “Jerk,” she says. Skint holds the snack cup toward her. She takes it and passes back the hot chocolate. “If he laughs during the rest—” The idea of Walter or the man having to dance to laughing—

  “We’ll jump him,” says Skint.

  Bernadine bears down on Dinah.

  “There’ll be a lot of cleaning to do,” she says grimly. “These people. Clogging the toilets and throwing dirt all over.” Nobody is throwing dirt all over but Bernadine is right about the toilets. Something about choir rehearsal loosens those people up.

  “I’m ready,” says Dinah.

  “You’ll need your muscles,” says Bernadine. “There will be garbage cans to lift.”

  “You might want to get a man in for that,” says Skint, doubly provocative, but Bernadine is already raving at someone else. Hot cups have been used for juice.

  Mr. Beach flings open the door to the room where he is trapped with his choir. “This is a lament!” he shouts back into the room. “It is not a hectic song! It is not rageful in any way!”

  “Hello, Dad,” says Dinah.

  He wheels partway round, distracted and breathing rather hard.

  “Hello,” he says, eyes still on his choir. “Take a break!” he shouts at them. “But no more than five minutes!”

  The choir, subdued, trickles into the foyer. Mr. Beach rakes despairing hands through his hair and realizes at last it is Dinah standing here. “Oh, Dinah, darling, hello. Skint, how are you? How is the show?”

  “It’s great, Mr. Beach.”

  “The music was like Great-Granny’s,” says Dinah, and is filled again with the spare sadness of the man’s humming.

  “Shape note singing?” says Mr. Beach.

  “Yes,” says Dinah. “Except with only one voice.”

  “Lovely,” Mr. Beach says. “You’ll have to tell me about it later, Dinah. I have miles to go here. Speaking of which”—he turns to Skint—“I know I’m meant to bring the two of you home, but I have to keep these people as long as I can tonight. Do you suppose that your mother could come and pick you and Dinah up, Skint?”

  Skint starts.

  “Can’t we just wait for you?” Dinah cries, glaring at her father. What is the matter with him? She and Skint never ask Ellen to drive them to or from anywhere. Transportation is always left to one or the other of Dinah’s parents, or, just as often, to Skint’s and Dinah’s own feet. And when they hang out, it’s at Dinah’s. Skint never, but never, has Dinah over to his house. And Dinah does not mind this one bit. Ellen is something of a trial.

  “Dinah, it’ll be hours! I’ll be here until at least eleven.”

  “So we can just walk home!”

  “It’s nine degrees out, Dinah!”

  That is true. And Skint has no coat. “Let’s just call Mom, then. Why should Ellen have to pay for your lack of planning?”

  “Don’t you get mouthy, Dinah Beach. You’re already on thin ice around here, after that detention yesterday.”

  “Ugh!”

  “And if your mother were to pick you up,” Mr. Beach continues, “she’d have to rouse Beagie and bring him, too. Besides, I’m sure Ellen won’t mind just this once! Will she, Skint?”

  Skint shrugs and swills the rest of the cup of cocoa. “Whatever,” he says into the cup. “It’s fine. I’ll call her.”

  “Nonsense,” says Mr. Beach. “I am the one reneging on my responsibilities. I will place the call.” He pats his pockets and sighs. “Dinah, I need your cellular telephone. I’ve lost mine again.”

  You deserve to lose it for being a beastly non-reader-of-people’s-faces, Dinah thinks. But, trapped between her father’s determination and Skint’s forced acquiescence, she starts to tug her phone out of her skirt pocket.

  But Skint shakes his head. “Don’t bother,” he says. “I’ll call her.”

  “Please give her my apologies, Skint. And my thanks!” cries Mr. Beach as Skint heads outside. The cell reception is awful in here.

  “What do you mean, can I come get you?” says Ellen.

  “What I mean is, would it be possible, in any way, for you to insert yourself behind the wheel of the family car and—”

  “And do what with your father, exactly?”

  “Perhaps Dad, too, could be inserted into the vehicle and—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Skint is silent. There’s a hangnail on the side of his thumb and he picks at it.

  “Does that really make sense to you?” asks Ellen. “Bringing your father for a spin with your flaky girlfriend—”

  “
She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “—so she can babble at him and stare at him and go gossiping all around town?”

  “Mom, I am the only person Dinah gossips to.”

  “She has that mother, Skint.”

  “It’s a four-minute car ride, Mom. No one is going to talk or say anything.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Skint pulls the hangnail the rest of the way off. It bleeds, so he curls his thumb under his other fingers and rubs the blood against his palm.

  “You’ll have to find some other way,” says Ellen.

  “Mom—”

  “No,” says Ellen. “No. I’m a wreck. I’m a wreck. That bank appointment is on Monday, Skint. Two days. What if you father can’t even sign that stupid form? What if the bank says he’s incompetent? We lose all access to those funds if that happens, Skint. They’ll refuse to fork over that money!”

  “Mom.”

  “Is that what you want, Skint? Have you thought through what that would mean?”

  Shut up.

  “Haven’t you been listening to me? Do you want people in our business again? Do you want your dad to be put into—” Ellen’s voice catches. Skint presses his nail into the cut on his thumb. “I can’t handle the risk, having that girl in the car with him,” says Ellen. “I can’t.”

  Be steady. Be calm.

  “I can’t leave him to work and I can’t stay home without that money,” says Ellen. “So, no, Skint. No.”

  “I don’t know what else to do, Mom,” says Skint, as evenly as he can. “Mr. Beach can’t drive us and he will freak out if Dinah has to walk home late with it so cold out.”

  Silence.

  “Mom. Please. It’ll look weirder if you don’t.” He folds his fingers around his thumb again. “They’ll wonder why you won’t come.”

  “Let them wonder.”

  More silence.

  Then: “Fine,” Ellen says at last. “But you better—”

  “I will,” says Skint. “I will.”

  His mother’s voice is ragged. “I just want the whole bank thing to be done.”

  “It will be,” says Skint. “Soon.” Then: “We’ll be done here at nine,” he says, and hangs up.

  Fuck the fucking bank. The bank is not half of what Skint is worried about.

  No. Stop. Don’t think about it. Go.

  Dinah hurries over to meet Skint as he comes back in.

  “I’m sorry!” she cries. “I should have told my dad to give the choir a break and run us home in between. The choir would probably thank us—they could seize the moment to make good their escape.”

  “No big deal.” Skint shoves his hands in his pockets as they move toward Mr. Beach, who raises his eyebrows hopefully as they approach.

  “She’ll be here,” Skint tells him.

  “Marvelously kind of her,” says Mr. Beach. “Be sure to say thank you, Dinah.”

  “I’m not five,” Dinah says irritably.

  Mrs. Chatham carefully flickers the lights to signal the end of the break.

  “Let’s go,” says Skint. Dinah follows him down the steps, turning back to give her father one last glare.

  She will just have to make the car ride entertaining, is all. She had better start thinking of funny things to say.

  Something of her earlier sadness licks at her as they take their seats. Despite his denseness, Dinah is glad for her father that he missed the donkey dance. It would have depressed him, too.

  Though actually. Actually. He’d have probably been fine. He’d have admired their commitment to the music, or the dance, or to expressing a difficult theme. He’d have somehow made it all to do with God, probably. He does that all the time. Look at the way he is about that choir.

  The rest of the show is hurdy-gurdy music, wheezing and zesty and as bizarre as they had hoped for, not at all like the dance in tone. Dinah claps very hard at the end. Skint whistles out the sides of his mouth and adults turn disdainfully toward him.

  “He means it,” Dinah tells them but Skint nudges her quiet.

  “I have to congratulate them,” Dinah says, determined to make amends for being rude by mistake before. She would also like to hug Walter. But she is too late for any of it; the man and Walter scuttle out while everyone is clapping.

  Rats! What can she do? She can’t bear the thought of them leaving thinking she hated them and their work.

  She will write them a letter. No, more. She will make them a parcel of treats, a box of things nice for a donkey. “Sugar cubes,” she mutters. “Maybe a carrot.”

  Skint knows what she is thinking.

  “Act your age, please, infant. We haven’t left anyone a parcel of treats in years.”

  “Nobody’s too old to leave a parcel of treats.” Dinah punches Skint briefly. “I’d like to see you say no if I left you a Skint-based one.” (Bike stuff. Snack chips. Loud, tectonic music.)

  “If it were cash-based, then sure.” He returns the punch on her shoulder. “Otherwise I’d think you were a crazy person.”

  Grr to Skint in his no-fun aspect.

  It’s a few minutes before nine. They head outside to wait for Ellen.

  “What do you want to do tomorrow?” Dinah asks. “Saturday! First day of vacation!”

  Skint shrugs irritably, glancing down the road. “Bank heist?” he says. “Steal chickens? Tether up your brother and teach him that dance?”

  “Better to tether you.”

  “Sounds kind of dirty.”

  “Shut up. After the cleaning we can decide.”

  The choir is still at it in the church, the music wailing on.

  It is shivery cold, colder than before, even, and still snowing lightly as well, but Skint didn’t want to wait inside and Dinah is less worried about Mr. No Coat now since they will be in a car in a minute. Though who knows, with Ellen. Maybe they’ll wind up having to call Dinah’s mother anyway, if Ellen bails on the job. Dinah is half hoping she does. Not just for Skint but because her own mother was all too glad to be rid of them this evening, with Beagie asleep and Dinah watching donkeys, Mr. Beach out dealing with his singers. Tchah to Mrs. Beach’s Alone Night!

  Though Dinah doesn’t really want to call her mother. Mrs. Beach is already not overfond of Ellen Gilbert. Plus, poor sleeping Beagie. Still, Dinah’s stomach is tight the way it always is when she anticipates Ellen, who is herself not overfond of Dinah.

  Thump clatter crash—the Vole punches down the steps behind them. “Rotmouth, Flake,” he greets them. He smacks Skint in the chest as he flies by and jumps the remaining four steps to the ground.

  “I’ve told you I won’t a thousand times, dude,” says Skint as the Vole runs toward a waiting car. “Quit trying to get with me.”

  “Fucking freaks!” echoes back toward the church before the car door opens and the Vole folds himself into its backseat.

  “Self-naming,” says Skint as the car drives away. He glances at Dinah. “Strangely honest, and certainly apt.”

  “How could he call Walter and the man that?” Dinah scowls.

  Skint stares at her. Then he eases back and smiles.

  “You are the weirdest person on Earth.” He rubs his forehead against her temple, like a baby deer.

  “Jerkie,” says Dinah, and pats him on the head.

  The door opens behind them. K. T., the Vole’s little brother, steps carefully onto the stoop.

  “Hi, K. T.,” says Skint. “Are you looking for your brother?”

  “How do you know my name?” There is a ring of chapped skin around K. T.’s mouth and his lips are very red.

  “You are famous,” Skint says and smiles at him. K. T. smiles shyly back.

  “I’m not looking for my brother. He’s going to his friend’s house. My dad’s inside.”

  “Is he in the choir?” asks Dinah.

  “Yes,” says K. T.

  Poor K. T. It will be a long wait.

  “Do you have anything to play with?” Dinah asks.

  “Yes.�
� K. T. nods. “I brought some little guys.” He opens his hands and shows them two tiny plastic figures.

  “Oh, good.”

  “You should wait inside where it’s warm,” says Skint. “You aren’t wearing your coat.”

  K. T. looks down at his stomach. “My coat is inside,” he says. “You don’t have your coat on either, though.”

  “But I am old and wizened, K. T., and impervious to the elements.”

  “Do you want us to go inside with you?” Dinah asks. “We could fix you a cup of cocoa.”

  “No, thank you,” says K. T. “I can go in by myself. I just wanted to look out here. I never saw church outside at nighttime before.”

  He steps backward back into the foyer and closes the door.

  “How does the same family produce both a Vole and a sweet kid like him?” Skint wonders.

  “I know,” says Dinah.

  “Likely the niceness of the one is due to the assholery of the other. K. T. squashed to the point of docility under the cruel knuckle of the Vole.”

  “Stop,” says Dinah. “I think K. T. just got all of the nice genes.”

  Skint rolls a sardonic eye at her and snorts, then falls silent.

  They wait. Skint says nothing and rocks back and forth on his heels.

  There’s the car. Ellen has shown up after all. Dinah dreads getting in. Skint exhales through his teeth beside her.

  Mr. Gilbert is there too, in the front seat next to his wife. Dinah is surprised. She assumed Ellen would be alone. She saw Skint’s dad more often when he used to come to the St. Francis Adult Day Services Center, which Dinah’s mother runs. But he stopped coming ages ago. He was bored there, Ellen told Mrs. Beach. He felt cooped up, wanted to do his own thing. And since Skint obviously doesn’t want them to hang out at his house, it’s rare that Dinah even sees his dad.

  Dinah glances up at Skint. His face doesn’t look like anything.

  “If this were a science fiction film,” she offers, “those would be analogs, not your parents, and we would be flying to the mothership for an intergalactic adventure.” Dinah is ready with a uniform design and technological superpowers for them both, but Skint is already heading down the steps.

  “Let’s go.”