The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

“You should dye your hair when the time comes,” she tells him.

  Her father untwists his limbs.

  “I’ll keep it in mind, old thing.” He glances up at her warily. “Am I safe?”

  Dinah steps to one side. Mr. Beach unfolds himself and creaks back up into his chair.

  “I thought you said he hummed like shape note,” says Mr. Beach. “Though, indeed, perhaps that’s what you were trying—”

  Dinah makes as if to punch him in the shoulder.

  “That was Elvis, what I was singing.”

  She punches him a very tiny punch. The gray man did sing shape note, but Mr. Beach doesn’t need to hear that right now. Neither does she.

  Dinah is in the woods and the gray man is there, too. Walter is beside him, feet lined up neatly in the snow. Tether held, he and the gray man face front. Do they see her? Dinah thinks so, but then she thinks not. Silver coat and whiskers, they are still-faced, quiet; snow falling down.

  Are the three of them on the road or in the woods? Too much snow falling and she can’t look down. Only at Walter, only at the man. Nothing to tell her. Only snow.

  Dinah wakes, uneasy, and wonders if Skint is sleeping or awake.

  Skint half sits, half stands at the breakfast table the next morning, one elbow on its surface and his palm across his mouth. He has the table to himself in the mornings because he gets up so early, with or without the benefit of having slept. But with sleep or no, Skint always forces himself to wait until at least five o’clock to get out of bed, so it counts as morning and not the middle of the night. Then he gets up and sits down to the paper (the physical paper, never online) with the fierceness of a militant, fists and stomach clenched, sick at the smell of the ink. He reads every word, from the global headlines on the front page straight through the national news and the county reports to the quarter columns given to local events. He saves the editorial page for last.

  The Gilberts’ kitchen is very cold this post-Walter early morning, but Skint is fired up with reading the paper and doesn’t feel the chill. The news is stomach-turning; Burmese monks seized, killed, maimed. How can people be—

  “Did you make the coffee, Skint?”

  Skint starts. What’s she doing up? It’s not even half past six.

  “Did you?” Ellen reaches behind her and pulls his dad ahead of her into the kitchen. She is still in her robe but his dad’s faded plaid shirt is tucked neatly into his pants, his damp hair streaked with combing. Skint flushes. His hand wavers over the edge of the paper; should he put it away?

  “No. Sorry.” He clears his throat. “Hello, Dad.”

  “No,” sighs Ellen. “That would be too much to hope for. Sit,” she says to Mr. Gilbert, and he does, taking a spot at Skint’s elbow.

  “It would have been undrinkable by the time you usually get up,” says Skint. His mother looks tired but not angry; Skint doesn’t think so, anyway. His dad’s face is still lined with sleep, bristled with silver whiskers. Skint lowers his rear the rest of the way down until it rests on the edge of his chair. “Hi, Dad,” he says again. “You’re up early.”

  Mr. Gilbert glances at the paper on the table and furrows his brow. Then his gaze is caught by Skint’s cereal spoon and he picks it up, looking carefully into its bowl.

  “Say hello when someone says hello,” Ellen tells him.

  “Distortion,” says Mr. Gilbert, moving his head about as he considers his reflection in the spoon. “Distortion and reversal. Good Lord. Look.”

  Skint leans over but the spoon goes lax in Mr. Gilbert’s hand. Mr. Gilbert stares out the window, eyes dim and hollow. Outside the tree branches are coated in ice and snow, silver over bone.

  One Saturday, years before they moved back from Kentucky, when Skint was in the first or second grade, he sat at the kitchen table just like now, with a bowl of cereal in front of him, feet hooked around the rungs of his chair. His mom was at the table, too, while his dad stood leaning against the window frame, looking out into the neighbor’s yard.

  “When is that guy going to do something with that thing?” Mr. Gilbert said, nodding out the window. “Why take a gorgeous antique truck like that and park it out back, practically in the woods, and then let it rust and rot? If that were ours, Skinty, you can bet that you and I would be out there every weekend, restoring the heck out of it. Would you look at those running boards?”

  “I could stand on those and hold on while you drive,” Skint agreed, slipping off his chair to join his dad at the window.

  “Exactly,” said his dad. “We’d get a dog, too, to ride along in the passenger seat.”

  “With his head hanging out the window,” said Skint.

  “Yep,” said his dad. “Wearing a neckerchief.”

  They beamed at one another.

  “Pathetic.” Ellen shook her head. “Not your plan. I mean having a truck like that in the yard.”

  Skint’s father laughed. “Right? He’s displaying that metal carcass like it’s his high-school wrestling award. God. He comes off like that old guy at the mini-mart who stands around making passes at all the teenage girls.”

  “Look who’s talking. You’re the one with the trophy wife.” Ellen grinned. “Seriously, Thomas, if you were the one with that truck, you’d make it amazing. You wouldn’t heap it in the yard and hope it made everyone think you had a big organ.”

  “Dinah’s dad had a big organ,” said Skint. “Remember? Back in Maine? But I don’t think he was a show-off about it.”

  Skint’s parents wheeled around to look at him. Skint swallowed and his throat felt as though his cereal were stuck in it sideways.

  “He did,” he said feebly. “I remember. In the church.”

  Skint’s parents looked at each other and laughed and laughed.

  “Oh, Skint,” said his dad, grabbing Skint up and kissing him. “You are a treasure and a dear and I love you unspeakably. Get dressed. If we can’t have that truck, then we must stir up some other kind of adventure. Hurry! To the Museum of Natural History we go! There’s an interactive exhibit called Dinos That Soar, and those mechanical pterodactyls are not going to fly themselves.”

  “The snow woke us up,” says Ellen now. “Falling off the roof.”

  “What for a world,” Mr. Gilbert murmurs, “that has such—”

  Ellen puts a bowl of Cheerios down in front of her husband. “Eat.”

  Skint clears his throat. “Has such what, Dad?”

  The trees outside are still.

  “Thomas!”

  Mr. Gilbert starts. His gaze falls on Skint, and he grins, slowly, beaming as if with remembered delight. Skint’s heart pounds, but Mr. Gilbert’s eyebrows fall, as they always do, from delighted arcs back into furrowed, puzzled lines.

  Quit it, Skint tells his chest. Just quit it.

  “Hello, Dad,” he says. “I was just saying hello.” The pounding lessens but his cheeks flame.

  Mr. Gilbert stares at Skint, head cocked as if trying to catch the edge of a tune playing in some other room. There isn’t any tune, though, only the sound of coffee dripping, and now, outside, some wind.

  He drops his gaze.

  “What for a world,” he says, “that has such people in it?”

  Ellen sits down and takes the spoon from Mr. Gilbert and puts it in his bowl. “I said, eat.”

  “What’s that from, Dad?” Near quote, maybe; something about it’s wrong.

  “Dream of man?” Mr. Gilbert wonders. “Or dream of Atman?”

  What is that, “dream of Atman”?

  Ellen takes a sip of coffee.

  “Hello, there,” says Mr. Gilbert to his wife. “And who might you be?”

  “Just some broad you picked up on the street,” she says. Skint shoots her a look. “Oh, Skint, stop. It’s not like he’s going to remember who I am if I tell him, anyway.”

  Shut up. “You don’t know that.”

  “Don’t be irritating, Skint.”

  Don’t be an ass, then.

  Skint crunkles u
p the corner of the paper and clears his throat. Do not antagonize her. Do not let her get shirtier.

  “Dad?” he says, waving his fingers slightly toward the open page. “Mr. Tedges has the editorial today.”

  “In exile?” cries Mr. Gilbert. “In hiding? Did they run my byline?”

  Skint’s heart pounds again.

  “Jesus God,” says Ellen.

  “No.” Skint swallows. “I don’t think so.”

  Mr. Gilbert stares out the window and his face grows grave. “What for a world,” he says. “Dream of man or—”

  “For God’s sake,” says Ellen. “Eat!”

  But Mr. Gilbert is still, caught by the trees.

  “Gus Tedges,” Ellen mutters into her coffee, “is a work-shirking ass.”

  “Dad is perceptive about tone of voice,” Skint says to his mother, forcing his own to be light.

  “Skint, if he had two memory cells left to speak of, your father would say the same thing. He practically had to run the paper alone that last year.”

  Mr. Gilbert’s gaze breaks and he looks at Skint with concern. “Is your father ill?” he asks.

  Skint swallows. Mr. Gilbert’s face softens.

  “I’m so sorry,” says Mr. Gilbert. “How long since he passed?”

  Skint folds up the paper and wedges it under his chair, taking care not to bump his father’s unshod feet.

  “I am wiped,” says Ellen. She frowns. “Put that paper away where it belongs.”

  “Dad?” says Skint. Mr. Gilbert looks puzzledly at the spoon in his hand. “I’m going to go out in a minute, Dad.”

  “Wait a sec.” Ellen puts down her cup. “Hold up there, kid. You are not going out. I am going out. You need to watch your father.”

  Skint’s stomach twists.

  “You have to go out, this early?” he asks. “I’m cleaning, remember? I do it every week. We have to have it done before nine. I reminded you several times.”

  “You did no such thing,” says Ellen.

  “I did,” says Skint. Be very calm and very measured. “Yesterday when you were making the bed, and the day before that when you came home from the store. I did.”

  “Cleaning,” says Ellen.

  “Yes,” says Skint.

  “For the Girls’ Friendly.”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” says Ellen. “I was up too late with one of your damn uncles on the phone and now I am up too early with your father. I need a walk to clear my head, and then I need to go back to sleep. You’re staying here.”

  “I can’t,” says Skint, irked to hear his voice gone high. He wishes that Ellen would let his dad go to Mrs. Beach’s Center so she could have breaks when she needs them, but she won’t. She hasn’t brought him there for more than two years. (“You want them to take him, Skint? You want them to see how bad it is now and tell us we have to put him in a home?”)

  “I made a promise,” says Skint. “I’ll be back in less than two hours and then you can go out or take a nap or whatever, for as long as you want.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s much more important you keep your promise,” says Ellen. “I’m sure your stripy girlfriend can’t possibly clean that church alone for one week.”

  Mr. Gilbert’s brows are drawn in.

  “I can tell them,” he says urgently. “I can tell them to have it ready to go as soon as you give the word.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” says Skint.

  “Thanks a bundle, Thomas.”

  Skint flinches. “Mom.”

  “Girls’ Friendly,” she says. “You are the most—”

  Skint’s phone goes off, crarking like a crow. He glances at the number. Dinah. He lets it go.

  “That your stripy girlfriend?” Ellen asks.

  “No, it’s a telephone.”

  “Funny, Skint.”

  “Dad?” says Skint, ignoring Ellen, but Mr. Gilbert is silent, staring at the trees. His eyes are dark. Skint’s heart skips, and his cheeks grow warm.

  “You say hello,” Ellen warns Mr. Gilbert, “when someone says hello.” She turns back to Skint. “If she’s not a girlfriend, Skint, then why are you so red?”

  “What for a world—” says Mr. Gilbert.

  “Out last night,” says Ellen. “And I had to come get you. With your father! You had better make sure that girl doesn’t—”

  Skint’s bones tighten. “I said, I’ll make sure. I always make sure—”

  “And now you think you can go out again this morning? As well? While I have to start the day with no sleep and a life-size dress-up doll, followed up with a chaser of adult diapers? Ridiculous. Ridiculous.”

  Dad does not wear diapers and is not deaf. Shut up. Bitch.

  “Nonetheless,” Skint says, “nonetheless, I will, in fact, be ridiculously going out to ridiculously clean that church to a level of ridiculousness that the king of ridiculous himself would approve, and then I will be home and you can sleep or leave for the rest—”

  “I said no!”

  Ellen’s cup bangs onto the table.

  Mr. Gilbert jumps and Skint’s blood pounds in reverse, searing in toward his chest with each beat until his ribs are so tight he could burst.

  His father’s startled gaze moves from the trees to Skint. He beams as if with remembered delight.

  “Son,” he says.

  “Dad,” says Skint, and his chest explodes.

  Ellen stands up, fast, between them.

  “Go,” says Ellen. “Fine. Get out of here. Go!”

  Mr. Gilbert’s smile fades and he stares at Ellen, head cocked as if trying to remember a song.

  Go? Go? Skint can’t go.

  “Hello,” says Mr. Gilbert to his wife. “And who might you—”

  Skint grabs his phone and the paper and he’s out of there, he’s down the hall and in his room.

  Dinah, he thinks. He’ll call Dinah.

  “Jesus Christ!” Ellen is shouting. “Can you please just fucking eat!”

  Dinah’s on her bed, hunched over her crochet hook. She is making herself a hat, stripy like the skirts she wears but in a set of colors she hasn’t put together before. Skint makes fun of her all the time for crocheting. He says she’s like a cross between a second grader and an old lady, and the weirdest parts of each. Well, let him say that. Who cares. Dinah loves to crochet. It’s peaceful, cheering and productive all at once. Skint is just mad because of that time she made him slipper booties.

  Beside her on the bed is the copy of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy that Skint gave her last week. Dinah knows she should read it, probably right now, instead of selfishly crocheting herself a hat. But she can’t bring herself to, not just yet. She has to gear herself up. It is awful to think about, the stuff in that book. She can’t think about it every minute, the way Skint can. When she reads that stuff, her stomach hurts so badly she can’t think. So she has to take breaks. It makes her feel guilty, Skint doesn’t take breaks. Ever. It is hard, sometimes, having a best friend who is so aware of everything the whole time. It can make a person feel like she isn’t entirely adequate.

  Ugh. The last bunch of crochet stitches are all messed up. She’s going to have to rip out the whole section. But the Beaches’ home phone rings and it’s Skint, so luckily Dinah is forced to put down her crocheting.

  “Twelve years imprisoned, some of these monks have been! Bones broken, tied with cables, made to stand in tubs of shit.” Skint’s voice is something threaded through a piston. “What is wrong with people? How can people get to the point where they let themselves do that to another person?”

  Dinah does not pay attention to the bones gone jagged beneath her skin or the knifing in her knees. She leans on the hall table and clutches the phone and twists her ankles around each other as Skint talks. She imagines him hot-eyed and pacing, or sitting thin-shouldered with cereal in his spoon, and she racks and racks her brain.

  “Dinah? Are you there? Are you listening? Don’t you get it? These people! They are human. Eve
ry single one of them is somebody’s Beagie!”

  Dinah does get it and feels sick about the monks but it is Skint she is worried about right now, because he feels so bad all the time, reading all those stories and remembering every word.

  “We’ll save them,” she promises. “We can do letter writing.”

  “Letter writing!” Skint shouts. “Dinah, they are dying! You wouldn’t believe what they do to them—”

  “You told me,” Dinah says hurriedly, not wanting him to have to tell it again.

  “I spared you most of it!” says Skint. “I spared you the worst!”

  “Come over,” says Dinah. “Come over. I was calling you before to come over for breakfast before cleaning.”

  There is a pause.

  “No,” says Skint. “We have to go clean in about two seconds. Besides, I’m still getting ready.”

  “I’ll come there, then,” says Dinah. “I’ll come get you. I’ll come right now.”

  “Whatever,” says Skint, still irritable. “Fine. I’ll meet you at the end of the driveway. Bye.”

  Dinah relaxes a tiny bit. Six minutes it’ll take her to get there. Enough time to think of a way to help him think unmonkish thoughts.

  What would really work would be for everybody to be lovely to each other, all the time, but Dinah can’t think of a way to get people to agree to that one.

  She’ll bring him a rock cake. He loves those, and she just made some the other day.

  Mrs. Beach stops by the phone table, Beagie’s plush pony in her hand. “You look bilious,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

  “The world. People. Doing awful things—torturing—”

  “Oh, Dinah! Stop thinking so much. Think how lucky you are, how beautiful it is outside.”

  It is beautiful outside. The snow is thin on the branches, velvet over stone.

  “What does that have to do with anything? How does me looking outside help people who are dying and need help?”

  “Oh, Dinah,” her mother says again. “Why do you let Skint tell you those things? You’re never yourself after.”

  Dinah’s brows draw together in a scowl. Her mother makes no sense, ever, not for a minute.