The Whole Stupid Way We Are

by N. Griffin

  The stillness doesn’t last for long, though. As Dinah stands silent by the bank, there’s a tremendous sound, like iron; deep; a sound as large as an avalanche.

  Wharnk.

  The river. The rushing water underneath makes the ice buckle and crack. The tectonic breaks sound like the singing of an otherworldly creature; spare, eerie, sad.

  Wharnk.

  Wait. Someone is out on the gray-blue surface of the ice. It’s not uncommon to see, especially in a winter like this, a winter so cold even the oldest people in Aile Quarry aren’t talking about how different things are now because of climate change. They should be: climate change is the reason behind this extra-cold winter, too. But it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, the cold: pervading, like an understanding in the bones.

  The walking person is no ice fisherman, though. He has no equipment, just a body, tall and gray against the snow. You have to be careful, walking on the river ice, not because of thin spots but because the ice is not smooth. It’s full of ridges and swirls, ready to trip a person down. But the person doing the walking is stepping without care, walking like he’s slouching along any dirt road.

  Skint? Dinah cups her mouth to call, imagining his breath coming out in ice clouds, his inward-turned eyes; pockets stuffed with rock candy and pens. She should walk out over the ice to meet him. But he wouldn’t want her. He wouldn’t tell her so, but she’d feel him freezing inside, cold to the core and being too polite.

  The figure bends at the waist. Dinah’s vision snaps and she sees, clearly, that the figure is much too old to be Skint: dressed all in gray, an adult, a man, wearing a coat, even; some ice fisher, probably, just checking the ice. How could she have thought it was Skint?

  She drops her stones. She doesn’t feel like skipping them anymore, not all alone, not by herself.

  Dinah climbs back up the embankment to the road and then walks along past the Rural Routes’ house (zero Rural Routes out; when was the last time she waved?). She passes their mailbox with its faded letter E and heads up the hill toward town, past the little gray house where Bernadine lives with her mother.

  Framed in their window, kitchen light on, Bernadine and her mother sit at their table. In front of each is a cup of tea; a clock is frozen above them on the wall. Neither woman sips or talks or moves. Still as snow, they perch as solitary as owls. Each might as well be alone.

  Bernadine moves her head suddenly and stares out the window. Dinah freezes. Does Bernadine see her? But Bernadine’s face looks like nothing.

  Unhappy. Unhappy. All Dinah’s fault. She’s made everyone be extra all alone.

  Dinah reenters her house by the front door to avoid the kitchen and its denizens and goes up to her room. She takes up a skirt flung over the back of her chair but is distracted from dressing by the sight, out her window, of a lanky, coatless Skint pushing his bike up the driveway.

  Dinah sticks the skirt on over her pajamas and runs down into the kitchen, shoving her arms into her coat sleeves again on the way.

  “Where’s my paper?” wails her dad.

  The river’s edge, cold; paper blowing in the snow.

  “I left it outside,” Dinah says, grabbing up the tote full of food she gathered last night for the Rural Routes. She flies out the door toward Skint.

  Skint’s head is sweaty, his hair sticking up from his forehead in spikes.

  “You must have been riding fast,” says Dinah, thumping toward him down the driveway. She stops short when she reaches him, staring at his knee. Skint’s jeans are ripped, the edges of the tear crusted in red.

  “You’re hurt!” she exclaims.

  Skint glances down. “I’m fine,” he says.

  “But you’re bleeding!”

  “No big deal. Perils of biking. Come on.”

  He starts down the road, pushing his bike. Dinah hurries beside him.

  “Well, I am going to dress that for you as soon as we get to your house.” Skint tumbling, sliding, bike end over end, gears slashing, Skint falling, crashing down. Dinah’s own knee knifes beneath her skin.

  Skint glances at her. “Probably would have been better if you had dressed yourself.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Dinah. Peroxide. Gauze. Tape to hold it in place. She hopes they have all that at Skint’s house. “You’re the only one who’s going to see me. Right?”

  Skint nods. “Their appointment is right now.”

  The road ahead of them is rutted and full of ice.

  Skint steers his bike with purple-knuckled hands. Dinah touches the scrape on the side of his hand with one forefinger.

  “How are you?” she asks awkwardly. “I mean, are you . . . good?”

  “I’m fine,” Skint says shortly. He glances at Dinah’s tote. “What did you bring?”

  “Soup,” says Dinah. She tugs her tote open so he can look. “Tea. See? And those crackers you like with pepper in them. Lots of other things.”

  Skint stares incredulously at the sight of a plastic bag on top of the rest. “Craisins? You brought them Craisins?”

  “Yes,” says Dinah firmly. “For an additional treat besides the cookies. People need more than one treat.”

  “Something that looks and tastes like little sacks of nearly coagulated blood is no treat, Dinah.”

  “Grargh.” Dinah makes as if to Handcreature his nose, but he shies his head away.

  Skint’s house sits gray and dark, garage door down, heavy under snow. He unlocks the front door and they go in.

  The living room smells stale. But underneath that is the Skint-house smell Dinah remembers from when they were small: breakfast cereal and heat coming through the vents. The couch is crumpled under a blanket, a nightgown tossed over its arm.

  “The extra blankets are in the hall closet,” says Skint over the clatter of Dinah’s bag of cans and the wiping of their feet.

  “To the bathroom first,” says Dinah. “We have to do your knee.”

  “Shut up, dork. I’m fine. Come on.”

  He starts down the hall and Dinah follows, cans clanking and banging. She remember this hall, its walls lined with books: fat ones about countries and politics, some plays.

  Skint stops short. He puts his hand out behind him to stop Dinah. Her bag of cans hits her in the knee.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks. Then she notices it is wet underfoot; water is trickling toward them from the bathroom, stenching.

  “I’ll get paper towels from the kitchen,” Dinah says, turning.

  “Shh!”

  Voice ahead of them, from the left, from Skint’s parents’ room.

  “—every goddamn day? Every goddamn day?”

  Skint is motionless in front of Dinah, one foot raised.

  “Two fucking hours now, for pants?” cries the voice.

  Skint wheels around. “Go, Dinah!” he whispers fiercely. “Go!”

  From the bedroom, louder:

  “Can’t even get out the door without you peeing and fucking yourself up—”

  Ellen?

  “—and now it’s two fucking hours to convince you to dress?”

  Who is she talking to? Mr. Gilbert?

  “Dinah!” Skint’s whisper is a piston. “Go!”

  “Are you going to wet yourself and the floor every fucking day now? Are you?”

  Wet yourself? For an irrational instant, Dinah thinks Ellen must be shouting at Beagie. What is going on?

  “Toilet overflows and I can’t even deal with it because of you? Get over here!” Ellen’s voice rises and rises.

  Skint: “Dinah! Go!”

  “No more of this fucking shit! No fucking more! You overgrown, useless fucking infant of a man!” Ellen is screaming.

  Dinah’s heart pounds. Mr. Gilbert. Mr. Gilbert.

  “Get the fuck over here! Get the fuck over here, now!”

  Skint grown enormous—“Go, Dinah! Go!” His face is fury, frozen, pushing at her—“GO!”

  But Ellen’s screams are louder, tearing out into the hall.
<
br />   “I said FUCKING GET OVER HERE! GET OVER HERE, NOW!”

  Ellen. Mr. Gilbert. Screaming. Skint’s dad.

  Skint pushes toward Dinah, blazing, pushing—“Go!” he yells at her. “Go!”

  Behind Skint—Dinah lifts her hand.

  Mr. Gilbert, bent. Backing up, inching backward out of the bedroom into the hall.

  bent back; thin legs; bowed body; bent

  Naked

  shoulders bent, gray chest; inching backward into

  the hall

  Naked.

  Dinah lifts her hand; mouth open, no sound. No. Skint; don’t turn around. No. She grabs Skint’s wrist to pull him toward her with all her might.

  But Skint’s already turning around.

  Ellen flashes in the doorway and cranes her neck until she’s screaming into Mr. Gilbert’s face. “GET OVER HERE NOW YOU FUCKING USELESS—”

  Mr. Gilbert flinches. Dinah’s legs buckle, and she falls to her knees. Ellen’s head whips around. She howls, an otherworldly sound.

  “GO!” screams Skint at Dinah. “GO!”

  But Ellen is coming at Skint, coming at him, pushing. She pushes him, pushes, pushes.

  “Get that”—push—“bitch”—push—“OUT OF HERE”—push—“NOW!”

  Skint stumbles back, and Ellen pushes at him more, two hands on his chest, pushes harder, her face twisted red and hot.

  Skint falls over Dinah where she dropped, where she’s kneeling on the ground.

  Tears run down Mr. Gilbert’s cheeks.

  “Get out!” Skint screams at Dinah over their jumbled, tangled legs. “Get out!”

  “Your dad—your dad—”

  “Get out!” Skint kicks at her. “Get the fuck out!”

  Behind them there is an awful sound. Mr. Gilbert’s on the floor.

  Dinah crawls until she’s standing, stumbling, running, out the door and gone.

  Dinah crashes through the door at the Center.

  “Mom!”

  “Dinah!”

  Dinah’s gasping, can’t breathe.

  “Dinah, darling, what’s wrong, where’s your coat?” Her mother hurries to her. “What’s wrong, darling, what happened?”

  Her mother’s eyes, brown in their sockets. Her face. Those bones.

  “Tell me, Dinah, what happened; honey, tell me, what’s wrong!”

  Dinah’s breath is a side-crushed keen.

  “Is it Skint, Dinah? Is something wrong with Skint?”

  Dinah shakes her head, then nods it, yes yes yes.

  “What happened? Is he hurt? Tell me, Dinah! What?”

  “Ellen—” Dinah squeezes out.

  “Ellen?”

  “Mr. Gilbert.” Eyes filling, voice breaking. “Help me, Mom! Help! I don’t know what to do!”

  “How can I help, darling, tell me! What do you need?”

  screaming naked pushing wet—“Go there—help him! Help Mr. Gilbert, go!” Snot streams and tears sheet down Dinah’s face.

  Mrs. Beach is already moving. “Call Gail,” she says to the girl behind the desk. “Tell her to meet me. The Gilberts on Pine. Dinah, call your father! Wait for me at home!” No coat on but her cell phone in her hand, Mrs. Beach races out the door.

  The door swings shut. Dinah sinks down, face in her hands, hair hanging down.

  Skint grips his dad’s arms in his hands.

  “Dad,” he says. “Dad.”

  Mr. Gilbert weeps. No words. Only tears. Ellen on the floor, face buried in her knees.

  One arm beneath his father’s shoulders and one beneath his knees. Skint lifts him. Takes him in the bedroom. Lays him down. Finds pants for him, puts them on.

  He kneels, forehead on his father’s knee bent at the edge of the bed. The bone is close beneath the skin, dry and brittle thin.

  “Dad,” Skint whispers. “Dad.”

  Skint never should have left this morning. He never should have left.

  “You fucking useless kid,” Ellen weeps in the hall. “You fucking stupid kid.”

  “Dad,” Skint whispers. “Dad. Please.”

  Thin fingers in his hair, resting light as feathers. “I can’t let you climb that, sweetheart,” his father says. “That branch isn’t strong enough to hold.”

  God. God. Please just let Skint take him. Let him lift his father up, bones thin and spare in his arms; lift him out and walk away with him, swift running down the road; let him run until they lift, until they fly, until they’re gone.

  Long time quiet. Ellen sobs. Skint’s father, unmoving.

  Someone’s at the door.

  Skint lifts his head.

  “Don’t get that!” he shouts to Ellen.

  His mother doesn’t answer.

  “Mom, don’t!”

  Skint jumps up and races into the hall, past Ellen, crouching silent in her spot against the wall.

  “Skint?” Muffled voice through the door.

  Mrs. Beach.

  Before he can get to it, the door opens slowly. Mrs. Beach’s hair is all over the place, her cheeks red. Cold streams through her into the room.

  “Hello, Skint,” she says.

  “What are you doing here, Mrs. Beach?”

  Mrs. Beach’s eyes are worried. “I just thought I’d—are you—is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” says Skint. “What are you doing here?”

  Mrs. Beach’s eyes travel around the room.

  “May I come in?”

  “I’m afraid we’re busy just now, Mrs. Beach. I’ll let my mother know you stopped by.”

  Mrs. Beach nods but breaks off with a start, her gaze locked on something over Skint’s shoulder.

  “Thomas?” she cries. She’s in the room and moving swiftly, past Skint into the hall. “Thomas! Are you all right?”

  Bruise blossoming on his temple, Skint’s dad stands in the hall.

  The hospital gown, untied, dangles around Skint’s father’s neck, gray chest hairs exposed over his too-thin bones. Oh, Dad. Dad.

  “They have to check him, Skint.” Mrs. Beach is sitting beside him. Ellen is in the chair across the room, by the window. She hasn’t said a word. “They have to be sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

  “He’s fine,” says Skint. “He’s fine.”

  Mr. Gilbert’s eyes are troubled. He puts his hand on Skint’s head. “Don’t worry, Dad,” he says. “My own fault. Branch too weak to hold me.”

  Skint’s head is too heavy to hold. He rests his forehead on the bed.

  A cluster of voices rises outside the door, a couple of nurses and someone else whose voice Skint doesn’t recognize: a man. The door swings open and the voices grow louder. Skint turns to see who it is.

  It’s the police.

  Food pantry; cuts on his palm—

  Skint leaps up and away from his father’s bed.

  “I’m sorry!” he screams. “I’m sorry!”

  “It’s all right, son.” Huge cop with a mouth full of ecru teeth. “No need to be sorry.”

  “What are you doing here?” Ellen cries. “Who said you could come in this room?” Skint’s mother will kill him, he’ll be in jail, he’ll never see his father again—

  “Mrs. Gilbert—” the policeman begins, but Skint can’t hear the words.

  “Please!” he cries. “I’m sorry!”

  Ellen’s face shifts from rage to blank to terror.

  “Young woman?” Mr. Gilbert cries, sitting up. “Young woman? What’s going on?”

  Mrs. Beach tries to get an arm around Skint, but he snatches himself away. “Get away from me!” he cries, and wheels round to face the cop. “Please don’t tell my dad!”

  Ellen slides out of her chair and onto the floor. “Are you going to arrest me, arrest me; jail?” she chatters. “Are you taking me, arresting me; jail?”

  Nurses all over the place, one of them going to his dad, the other squatting down beside Ellen.

  They’re going to clear the room so they can get him alone, question him, make him
confess—

  “Skint!” cries Mrs. Beach. She takes his shoulders in her hands. “Listen to me! The police are here to help! They’re here to help your dad!”

  Skint stares at her. His dad? His dad?

  “They need to talk to your mom, Skint; they want to help your dad!”

  This is not about the food pantry?

  Ellen, screaming: “Stay away from my husband! Thomas. Tom!”

  The room is quiet again. Skint sits by his father’s bed, his dad’s fingers in his palm. One of the cops helped his mom out of the room a while ago. Skint can’t figure out how long, but now the cop’s back, alone.

  “Mrs. Beach, here, was pretty worried,” he says to Skint. “She gave us a call to come around.”

  Skint raises his head and looks at Mrs. Beach.

  Her face is red, her hair a mess. “I’m a mandated reporter, honey,” she says. “That means I’m required to call.”

  Skint stares at her and says nothing.

  “Penny here works with us a lot to help the elderly, people who need help,” says the cop.

  Skint drops his head. The edge of the rip in his jeans has dried to a dull, dark brown. The knee itself doesn’t even look real. Too skinny, too angular; disarticulated from the rest of Skint’s leg.

  His father has fallen all the way asleep, breath light, chest rising, falling. His hand grows insubstantial in Skint’s and his fingers fall from Skint’s palm. Over Skint’s head the cop is talking, going on and on. It’s been tough at home, huh, son? How have things been at home?

  Skint toys with the edge of the tear in his jeans. The denim has dried to his knee. It’ll hurt like a motherfucker when he tries to peel it off.

  “Mom was angry this morning, huh, son?”

  “I’m not your son.”

  Skint rips the fabric off of the cut. Shit. Now he’s bleeding again.

  “It’s fine,” he says, pushing Mrs. Beach’s hand away.