by S. Massery
“We drank too much,” Avery groans. “Dancing. Lots of dancing. Did we have sex?”
He lifts his head and looks at me. Most of the blankets are on the floor, and we’re completely naked. I look further down and… “You’re still wearing a condom,” I giggle.
“Oh, shit,” he says. He laughs, then groans, and rolls onto his back. “Does your head hurt? My head is killing me.”
I start to nod, but that exacerbates the issue. “Yeah. We’re not eighteen anymore.”
“You were getting drunk at eighteen?”
No, I think. I was in therapy trying to stay off of pills. Instead, I say, “Weren’t you?”
“More like sixteen, remember?” He nudges me.
“Oh, of course. Getting drunk on a stolen boat.” I roll my eyes. “Not many girls in high school wanted to be my friend.”
He turns to look at me. “Why was that?”
“I was the outcast. Through middle school and most of high school, I was good at school, sat in the front row, sucked up to the teachers. It was practically beaten into me that I had to do well in school in order to get into a good college,” I say. Mom and Dad would pick over my reports, tests, every grade my freshman year. By sophomore year, I was skipping classes and getting high after school with Colby. Somehow, I still scraped by with honors.
“That must’ve been tough.” He picks up my hand and kisses my palm. “I’m glad for it, though.”
I make a face, because I am not glad for my past, for Colby, for losing my best friend, for my parents. I close my eyes again before I respond. It has been getting brighter in here, and the pulsing behind my eyes eases, slightly, when I duck my head back into the pillow. My voice is muffled when I ask, “Why’s that?”
“It made you who you are, and I love who you are.”
“You…” I open my eyes and he is way too serious for the hour.
“I love you, Charlotte.”
I lean forward and kiss him; bad breath be damned. For once, I don’t mind. I examine my feelings for him, holding onto this feeling of being so happy around him I want to cry. And when I am sure, I say, “I love you, too.”
31
Getting in the car was easy. Talking with Avery through the two-hour drive to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving was easy.
It was getting out of the car that was not easy.
I knew the scrutiny that waited for Avery inside that house. To make myself feel better, I told more and more stories—good ones—about my parents. I told him about how we went to Maine every other year for the winter holidays, and how it was the one place my parents seemed to be at peace. I told Avery about how I became associated in high school with Jared’s friends, and then when Colby took over, I remained in the group. But they weren’t my friends. They were secondhand friends. I told Avery to avoid the subjects of kids and marriage and where will you be in ten years? It was hard because the holidays tended to bring out the worst in my family. I knew this going in. I knew this three weeks ago, when Avery mentioned that he was staying in Boston for Thanksgiving and I immediately invited him home.
I couldn’t figure out why I had invited him home. We hadn’t spoke about meeting parents or siblings or aunts and uncles. We hadn’t really talked about the future. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to pluck them out of the air. He had blinked at me, slowly, making sure he heard me correctly, and then he smiled.
Unfortunately, that meant I had to call my mother and explain that, one, I had a new boyfriend and, two, he was coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. She hadn’t taken the surprise very well. It had gone something along the lines of, Charlotte Harper, are you seriously telling me you kept a secret boyfriend for almost three months? She made me admit my shame. Yes, Mother, I have a boyfriend and we’re going steady. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and Dad.
So maybe it’s natural that, when we pull up in front of my parents’ house, I can’t move. Avery says my name a few times, the concern sweet but also annoying because no, I’m not okay, shut up and let me panic.
I am already sinking into the etiquette that has been instilled into me since I was young. One by one, the rules start to resurface. I want to flinch as each one rolls back into me. Yes, not yeah, are you dumb? and Stand up straight, Charlotte, only hags and homeless people slouch, and What are you wearing, young lady? Are you auditioning for a position at the local strip club?
Avery shakes my shoulder, until I do flinch, wickedly, and knock some sense back into my skull via the passenger window. “Oh, my god, are you okay?”
I rub my temple, which took the brunt of the hit. “I’ve had worse,” I say. I smile at him, making sure my eyes crease just a tiny bit. It is the perfected skill of a faker, and he buys it. He smiles back before he leans over and kisses my cheek. It should make me cringe: affection after pain. I’m numb to that.
“You’ve got this,” he tells me.
I nod, and we approach my house.
“Hi, honey! We missed you!” Mom speed-walks toward me as we shrug out of our coats in the foyer. She wraps me in a tight hug, angling so she can analyze Avery. “Not bad,” she whispers.
I turn red, shaking my head slightly at her.
“We were having a wonderful autumn, but it got mighty chilly the past few days!” She releases me, turning to my boyfriend.
“Mom, this is Avery—”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Galston,” Avery interjects. He steps forward and shakes her hand. Maybe a normal parent would’ve said, No, by all means, call me Lydia, but not my mom. She thrives on the formal speech. “You have a lovely home.”
My tough, graceful, socially adept mother blushes. She, Queen of the Poker Faces, blushes. At a comment that probably wasn’t the sincerest, seeing as how he’s seen one outside wall and one room inside. I wink at Avery, making sure Mom can’t see it, before turning and going to hunt down Dad. It would only make matters worse to linger and let him come to us, thus putting him in an annoyed mood.
“Hi, Dad,” I say. He’s in his office, typing on his computer, with glasses perched at the end of his nose. When did he get glasses? It dredges up a wash of guilt; I live so close and hardly visit. Not that I want to visit, because of their unpleasant interrogations every time I do, but because they’re my parents. They’re getting old.
“Ah, Charlotte. I thought I heard you come in.” He looks happy to see me, which means we may survive dinner, yet. Unfortunately, his pleased face also makes him look constipated. I try to hide my smile as best as possible. He stands and crosses the study space, patting my shoulder. “Brought a boy with you, have you?”
I nod, scrambling to keep up with his long strides as he seems to fly through the house. We come upon Mom and Avery in the kitchen, where Mom has the beginnings of a feast in the works. “Wow, Mom, this looks great.”
“Thank you, dear. Avery, would you like to give me a hand?”
“I’ll be right back,” I say as Avery moves to stand next to my mother by the sink. He nods at me; my parents don’t react. I slip out of the room and head to the basement. Once down there, I open up the closet that holds all of the things I left behind: sweaters and jackets I have long since grown out of, boxes holding trinkets and shoes, formal dresses that my mother didn’t want to part with, and there, at the back, a smaller box on which I had written, Private!!!
Inside are pictures of Jared and I, and Colby and I, and three notebooks. Most of high school after Colby was arrested is a giant blur. There were the side effects to deal with: a massive detox of pills that landed me in the hospital for a weeklong stay. My “friends” were sympathetic, then mean, then distant. I expected a boomerang effect. I thought, surely, they’d come back.
They didn’t.
Even Leah, whose bravery for standing up to Colby made her instantly more popular than she used to be, slowly withdrew her conversation, her smiles, her eye contact.
I’m tempted to throw away those pictures of Colby, of the lot of us on a lake beach somewhere, of
Leah and me. I stare at them, barely recognizing the girl I used to be. There was a stark difference between fifteen and sixteen-year-old me. I had lost weight rapidly; in one picture with Jared, my freshman year, we looked happy and healthy. A year later, I was forty pounds lighter. My eyes were sunken. I looked miserable. How had my parents missed that?
I keep one of the pictures with Colby in it. We’re standing by the door of his parents’ house, and I know that he had given me something. I don’t even remember taking that picture. He was supporting most of my weight, his hand tightly bunching my shirt at my waist. My arm was around his back, too, but loose. Hair dirty, eyes impossibly wide, I wore something closer to a grimace than a smile.
I keep it to remember.
I keep one of Jared, too, because I need to remember the happy times in my childhood.
My mom’s voice drifts down as I stare at all of these memorabilia.
“So. Avery.” Mom draws out his name into three syllables: aye-ver-ee. “Did you grow up in Boston?”
“No, ma’am.” I’ll bet my mother loves the ma’am. “I grew up in San Diego, actually.”
“Oh, how interesting. Do you have plans to introduce Charlotte to your family? I’m sure she’d love to see California.” She’s sneaky, I’ll give her that.
Their voices fade as they must move into a different room, farther away. I can hear their tones, but the words are indecipherable.
I find the right notebook. Finally. It’s black, and the spine is worn from being bent in half. I flip through, just to make sure, and the words jump out at me: Please come home. I’m sorry. Sliding the two pictures—evidence, I think—into the notebook, I hurry up the stairs and tuck it away in my purse. When I return to the kitchen, Avery is talking about work.
“I know accounting is boring, but it makes money. There are hobbies I enjoy that are expensive and require a decent job.”
My mother nods. “Interesting. And yet, you didn’t want to make a hobby into a job?”
“No,” he says, “because then it wouldn’t be fun. It would be work.”
“They can’t be one and the same?” Dad interjects. This family loves a good, healthy debate above all else. Dad would play devil’s advocate to the end.
Avery shrugs one shoulder. “They might, but I don’t think it would happen for me. I tried it and failed.” We settle in at the dining room table.
“And how’s your job, Charlotte?” asks my mother.
We are suspended, for a minute, in awe of the feast Mom has prepared for us. She comes to the table, at the head, and starts passing dishes to her left.
“We never hear anything from you,” says my dad.
“What do you do, Mr. Galston?” Avery asks.
“We pray,” Mom reminds us. We bow our heads, say Grace, and dig into our plates.
“Pass the butter, Charlotte,” Dad mutters. “I work for an insurance company,” he says to Avery. “It allows us to live in this wonderful neighborhood.”
I smile while handing Dad the butter dish. “It also allows him to play golf whenever he likes.”
“Charlotte,” my mother admonishes.
“You’ve cooked a delicious meal, Mrs. Galston.”
Dad says, “She spent all day working on it.”
Mom says, “Thank you, Avery, that’s very kind,” and blushes again. “Okay, now, what are we all thankful for this year?”
Avery’s palm finds my thigh under the table. I put my hand on top of his and smile at him.
Dad clears his throat, indicating he will go first. Of course, he’s always first. “I’m thankful we managed to elect a Republican as our Governor.”
I groan.
My mother eyes me. We’ve been going around the table clockwise, which means that I will be last. I’ve been known to say, in her words, silly things. “I would like to congratulate my daughter on a successful move to Boston, and say that I’m thankful to be her mother.” My heart stops. I have almost no recollection of my mother being proud of me. Maybe once, when I was in middle school and got a “Most Valuable Player” trophy from my basketball coach, although she was quick to point out that I couldn’t rely on athletics. “I’m proud of you, Charlotte,” she says to me. I feel every muscle inside my body tense and then relax when a “but” doesn’t follow her words.
“Thanks, Mom,” I whisper.
Avery squeezes my leg again. His turn. “I’m thankful that Charlotte came into my life again. The first two times were luck, but the third was fate. And I’m so grateful.” He leans over and presses a kiss to my temple, lingering for a minute.
“What are you thankful for, dear?” Mom asks me.
One may think that I would have been contemplating this as we went around the table.
I take stock of the year behind us: I had been relatively new to working with Tom; I had lived with Georgia; I made the move to Boston and survived alone in the city—I didn’t automatically have a network of friends. I found Rose and Eve, even if that was a temperamental and unstable relationship. I found Avery again, and love. I had managed two successful conversations with Jared.
“I’m thankful for the trials I’ve had,” I finally say. “And that they have made me a stronger person.” Everyone is quiet. Maybe they’re remembering those trials of mine and are looking at me with pity, or annoyance.
My thoughts snag on talking to Jared. When was our last conversation—a month and a half ago? How selfish of me, to ask him for help with my stupid dreams and then fade away from him. What would he be thankful for? Not dying? That’s a shitty year, to be thankful for that.
My father catches my eye. “Are you enjoying work, Charlie?”
I shrug. Do I enjoy work? I want to say, At this point, not really. I pick up dry cleaning and run errands and am Tom’s scheduler and email-answerer. He appreciates me, but it’s menial work, and my brain is dying. Instead, I say, “It’s nice to be useful and keep busy.”
Dad nods. “Well, this is just a stepping stone.”
I glance at Mom, who is way too invested in my response. “What do you mean?”
“You were meant for greater things than a personal assistant.”
My face turns red.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a personal assistant,” I say. “There isn’t.”
Dad grunts. “Of course not. The world doesn’t go around without them. God knows that I need mine more than anything.” I feel a sudden wave of shame, that I would be a lowly servant my father would employ. “But we didn’t raise you to do that.”
What was I meant for? Corporate America? Wall Street, like where I suspected Avery was headed? The thought of moving to New York City with him—I don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t want that much change.
It only occurs to me later, as I am merging onto the pike on the way home, that Avery didn’t try to defend me. When I glance over at him, he is absorbed in his phone. We have been sitting in silence since we left my parents’ driveway.
“What did you think?” I ask.
He looks up, watching the cars in front of us for a second. “You have a nice family,” he says.
I snort.
“You don’t think?”
I say, “I think they can be brutal. And tough. And hard to please.”
He shakes his head. “But you told me those nice stories about them. They honestly seemed pretty nice.”
“I should’ve scared you off with horror stories?”
I wasted my horror stories on previous flings, and they didn’t last. Colby wasn’t afraid of them, either.
“No.”
“Okay,” I say.
He shakes his head at me.
“What, now?”
Avery puts his hand on my thigh. “It’s just, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Why would you want to tell me horror stories?” He withdraws his hand. “Why don’t you want me to like your family?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I say. I try to keep
my voice even. “I didn’t say that.”
“You literally said that. You said you should’ve scared me off with horror stories.”
I say, slowly, “No.” Because that’s not what I said. “I didn't say it like that. You think they’re nice.”
“And?”
“And that’s wrong.”
“How is that wrong? They were nice to me. Your dad and I talked about the economy, the Patriots, and San Diego. Your mother enjoyed my compliments and wanted to know more about my family—”
“Just stop,” I cut in.
He shakes his head again. If he keeps shaking it, it’s going to fall off of his neck.
I grip the steering wheel tighter.
“You’re wrong that they’re nice. They’re not nice to me. Doesn’t that matter?”
I sigh at his silence.
“You’re not going to answer me?”
Still, nothing.
When I glance at him again, he has his head ducked, eyes glued to his phone.
“Seriously, Avery? It’s Thanksgiving. Who is texting you?”
“My sister,” he says quietly.
That shuts me up.
“You didn’t defend me,” I say after almost ten minutes of quiet.
“Huh?”
“When my dad was attacking me for being a personal assistant, you didn’t say anything.”
“Attacking is a harsh word.” I look over at him again.
He looks so handsome today: like he really tried. A nice button down, sports jacket, and black jeans. His hair was freshly cut to my favorite length: where it curls just above his collar. He had shaved, too. He wore pristine black converse, as if to say, I’m vintage. It also said, I don’t get dirty. Which was true. He wasn’t the outdoorsy type. He was a loafers-on-a-yacht boy; he was a suit-to-work-everyday guy.
And I never, ever would’ve guessed he would take my father’s side over my own.
The feeling of utter abandonment makes my heart pick up speed.
“Why?”
