The Baddest Girl on the Planet

by Heather Frese

  Your dad said, “You have to think about what kind of example your relationship is going to set for your son.” He scooped Austin up off the floor, and that’s when Walter bit your dad’s ankle, latching on even as your dad waved his leg in the air. He hollered for his sister, your Aunt Fay, to come “restrain this beast!” and carried Austin into the kitchen where your mom was scrambling eggs for breakfast. She’d put Austin’s eggs on a plate shaped like a teddy bear’s head.

  Shortly after you moved in together, Daniel issued a ban on nonstick pans. He scrambled eggs in a stainless steel skillet, which made them fuse in a flaky mess that needed soaking before the pan could go in the dishwasher. Daniel said that Teflon causes cancer. Sweet’N Low causes cancer. Hair dye causes cancer. Daniel was paranoid about cancer, not that you could blame him, since the reason he was there in your kitchen in Buxton, North Carolina, was because, the year before, he’d been biopsied for presumed cancer, which prompted him to make some Life Changes. Daniel stood in your kitchen and leaned against the sink.

  “We should really think about getting rid of the microwave,” he said. “Irradiated food troubles me.”

  You looked at him, there in your little kitchen, solid and beautiful and asking you to go back to the Dark Ages of food reheating. “I hear what you’re saying,” you said. “And I understand. However, I disagree.” You were proud of yourself for using “I” statements and arguing in the way your former therapist, Judy, had taught you. You took a bite of Teflon-free scrambled eggs that tasted of rosemary and basil.

  Daniel grinned and kissed you on the forehead. This wasn’t your first fight; you’d had bad ones before, like when you’d bought Twinkies and nonorganic milk three weeks in a row and Daniel lectured you about putting healthy things into our bodies. When he was still living with his brother after four months; when he didn’t get you a present for your anniversary. When he’d proposed and you’d said you weren’t ready. “I’m still not irradiating my food,” he said.

  “That’s not even scientifically validated,” you said, annoyed that in-the-midst-of-med-school-applications Daniel couldn’t Google “are microwaves safe” and realize they were.

  Austin galumphed into the kitchen, throwing his backpack on the table and dropping a packaged pastry into the toaster, asking what wasn’t scientifically validated.

  Daniel began explaining electromagnetic radiation, using words like magnetron and thermal effect. Austin, who’d recently gotten past his Daniel-hating phase, nodded as he poured his orange juice, his brow furrowed in a way that reminded you of Stephen. “We should do a microwave experiment for my science project,” Austin said, and your heart jerked at that “we.” Austin plucked the Toaster Strudel out of the toaster and dropped it onto a plate, blowing on his fingers. He took a bite, and strawberry goo oozed down his chin.

  Now, at the bake sale in the high school/middle school parking lot, amid the Festival of Fun, you rearrange pleasingly lumpy raspberry scones and plump peach tarts, stack fat peanut butter chocolate chip cookies in a pyramid and fan out what’s left of the lemon bars. Jennie, your sister-in-law, joins you at the table. She tells you that Nate has their two-year-old and is feeding her cotton candy and winning her goldfish. Jennie’s worried the goldfish will die. “How do you explain loss to a two-year-old?” she asks, taking money from a customer for one of your macaroons. You didn’t know when Austin was two, and you don’t know now.

  “Sesame Street never did talk about death,” you say. “No Grover Goes to a Funeral episodes.”

  Jennie thanks the macaroon customer, then turns to you. “How am I supposed to survive with you across the country?”

  You say you haven’t decided to go yet. You and Jennie discuss the options for what must be the hundredth time—Stephen allowing Austin to go away with you full time, Austin staying with Stephen, or joint custody, and how the idea of losing time with him pulls on your heart like a weight, an anchor. You have full custody, you always have. You don’t want it any other way. But you acknowledge that Stephen will probably ask for joint custody if you take his son halfway across the country. Who would you be without Austin? Who would you be for all those months, alone in Wichita or Ohio or San Francisco?

  “What about long-distance?” Jennie asks.

  But you and Daniel don’t want to do a long-distance relationship for eight years. You think if you’re going to go, you need to go now. You don’t know what to do. It’s not like you can just break up. You live together. His life has intertwined with yours, twisting like wires, like tangled hair, like DNA.

  Jennie pats your hand. “You’ll figure it out,” she says.

  “How?” you ask. “Tell me how to figure it out.” You lean against the metal chair; your back sweats as the sun beats down. The warmth seeps into your skin, becomes part of you. You breathe deeply, and the molecules of heavy, humid beach air settle into your lungs. You love, like always, the way the air moves and feels alive.

  Last month, on a balmy, moonless June night, you and Daniel made love underneath the boardwalk, just like in the song. Austin was with Stephen, and you and Daniel had gone to the Captain’s Table for dinner and then taken a walk on the beach at the pull-off between Frisco and Hatteras. The island narrows there, and standing on the boardwalk steps leading down to the ocean, you’d looked across Highway 12 to the calm waters of the Pamlico. As you walked on the beach with Daniel, your hand in his like it’d always been there, you realized you’d walked this same spot ten years ago with Stephen, on the icy December afternoon when you’d seen tiny footprints in the sand and decided to keep your baby. You didn’t mean to tell Daniel the story, but the words slipped out of your mouth. Daniel squeezed your hand, then led you back beneath the raised deck of the boardwalk. You lay in the sand and kissed, heedless of any possible evening beach-walkers. And just like in a movie, fireworks exploded overhead, bright white, green, and red pops and sprinkles of color over the ocean.

  “Did you see that, too?” you asked.

  But Daniel’s eyes were closed, his face above you, so close to your own.

  After, Daniel rested his hand on your cheek and grazed a finger along your jaw—gritty, but you didn’t mind. You closed your eyes and listened to the waves shush onto the shore, fireworks exploding behind your eyelids.

  Stephen’s hands on you were different. Meaner, somehow. Seven years ago, a few days after you’d found out about his affair, you’d gone home to your little white house on Elizabeth Lane, the one Stephen’s family had bought for the two of you. For five years, though, after they tore your little white house down, there was nothing but a gaping hole on Elizabeth Lane where it’d been. The day you went back to Stephen, he’d been watching television in your living room, a baseball game. You’d left Austin at your parents’ inn; he’d had another nosebleed that morning. “Let’s talk,” you said to Stephen.

  He muted the TV and turned to you. “Where’s my son? I haven’t seen him in three days. Way to put Austin in the middle of our problems.”

  You said he was at your parents’. You stood in front of the TV. “This isn’t about Austin,” you said. “This is about you putting your penis into another woman’s vagina.”

  “Look,” he said, “it just happened. If I could take it back, I would.” Stephen peered around you, then settled back on the sofa.

  You asked the question that’d been throbbing around in your brain for the past three days. “Why did you do it?”

  But all Stephen said was, “It just happened. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “If it didn’t mean anything, then why’d you do it?” you asked. Stephen didn’t answer. “Give me one good reason to stay,” you said to him.

  “Fuck, Evie,” he said. He stood up and kissed you then, rough and hard. “If you don’t know, then I sure as hell can’t tell you.” You had sex on the sofa, and at one point, your hip rolled onto the remote control and the baseball game blared.

  You stayed. You stayed with Stephen because of blood and bones, yes;
because you’d created a person. But also because his mean hands on your breasts, your waist, your ass, excited you and made you feel alive. One day, one year later, after you’d had your own affair, Stephen would place his hands around your throat. He wouldn’t squeeze, but his fingers on your pulse, his fingers that could’ve squeezed, were what finally made you go.

  Today, in the bright bake-sale sun, Daniel brings the placards for the macaroons. His hands, as he sets the signs on the table, are slender and long-fingered. You think they’ll make good doctor’s hands. You look at a card; you squint, but you have no idea what it says.

  “What is this?” you ask Daniel, pointing to the scrawl.

  “It’s a sign that says coconut-apricot macaroons,” he says. He shrugs and says hello to Jennie, then sits down on the chair beside you.

  “An unreadable sign is not terribly helpful in selling macaroons,” you say. You stack the cards facedown and cross your arms. The first thought that pops into your head is that Daniel messed them up on purpose, like Stephen would’ve done, just to get under your skin. You’re about to yell at him and start a fight. You breathe deeply and remember that passive-aggressive placard-making is not how Daniel rolls.

  “You said to write on them,” Daniel says.

  Austin waves and runs over, his stick-legs moving in a fast, pumping blur as he dodges through the crowd. “Fiona wants a chocolate chip cookie,” he says. He’s not even breathing hard. “Hey,” Austin says to Daniel, nodding. They pound fists.

  Jennie hands Austin a cookie and pulls some money out of her purse to pay for it. “Take it to her quick, before it melts,” she says, and Austin takes off again at a run.

  “Is your shift about over?” Daniel asks you.

  Jennie says she can handle the bake sale table, that you should go. You sit between them, your family on one side, your love on the other. You know Daniel wants an answer. You feel split in two. You stand up. “Let’s go to the beach,” you say.

  You and Daniel are quiet on the drive to the lighthouse beach. You wind through the National Park in Buxton, past the turtle pond, past the candy-spiral lighthouse, past the pine-smelling maritime forest. You reach one of the lesser-trafficked access ramps and park. The engine clicks as it cools, and you run a hand through your hair. “It’s not that I’m stalling on purpose,” you say. You kick off your flip-flops and get out of the car, walking over the dune to the beach. You walk fast and try not to pay attention to whether Daniel follows. You just need a minute alone.

  You trundle through the thick, hot sand until you reach the shore. You stare at the waves, trying to draw the sound and flow into your body, trying to hold onto the way that staring at the water makes everything else go away. Seven years ago, you told yourself you stayed for Austin. You told yourself Austin needed a mother and a father in the same house. You told yourself that people make mistakes, that nobody is perfect, that you loved Stephen. But really, now, you think you stayed because you were afraid to be alone. Afraid to be alone with that tiny, bloody creature. Now, you’re afraid to be alone without him.

  You sit in the wet sand, not caring that your shorts get grainy. Waves wash up and back, water flowing over your legs, salty and cool. Daniel’s shadow falls over you, and you look up into his face. “We can try long-distance, if you want,” he says.

  You study his body, his receding hairline and broad shoulders and hairy legs, the freckle on the big toe of his left foot. You think of how life is like a Tetris game, pieces twisting and flipping and turning, just trying to fit. A wave rushes around your legs, over Daniel’s feet, splashing his ankles, trailing lace in its wake. Over your heads, a seagull caws.

  Daniel sits beside you, and this thing between the two of you, this pact, this connection, this love, just flows and flows.

  “If you get in to Ohio, can we go there?”

  “That’s fair.”

  “Walter comes, too,” you say. Daniel nods. You take his hand. You stay.

  You go.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my wonderful editor, Robin Miura, for all her guidance and support, and to Lynn York and everyone at Blair. Working with you has been a joy. When I was a little girl, I read my favorite book, Taffy of Torpedo Junction, over and over and over again. I must have read the name of Taffy’s publisher, John F. Blair, hundreds of times. It’s a little bit of extra magic for my book to find a home with Blair.

  Speaking of home, when I discovered Lee Smith’s books, that’s what her words felt like—coming home. I’m still in awe that she read something of mine, let alone wrote about it. Thank you.

  For my family, thank you for believing in me in so many ways, and for passing along a love of language and learning. My Grandma Frese would drive out in a blizzard to buy a book. My Grandma Gibson, who had to quit school in eighth grade to care for her mother, loved stories and wanted to be a writer. My mom and dad always bought me a book when we traveled to the mall, even though I finished it on the car ride home, and they just laughed when they’d find me reading in the closet when I was supposed to be cleaning up my toys. My brother, Ben, once read one of my stories on a stage in San Francisco when I couldn’t get out there for the event, and even moved with me for graduate school when I needed help. And those family vacations, just the four of us, the sides of the tent camper flapping in the salty island breeze of the Frisco National Seashore campground, the golden lighthouse beam sweeping across site C-1 or P-68, were the most foundational and inspirational experiences of my life.

  A giant thank you to my husband, José, for all your hard work supporting us and to Jonah, Hannah, and Jordi, my smart, funny, kind, and creative little loves.

  I’m so thankful for the deep friendships in my life that inspired the Evie–Charlotte bond. Catherine Matheny Bell, Michelle Buice, Tamara Lockwood, Lesleigh Taylor Berg, and my friends from all my walks of life from Cambridge to Raleigh, thank you. I love you all.

  Thank you to the teachers who inspired and believed in me along the way: Peggy Brown, Jane Varley, Diane Rao, Joan Connor, Darrell Spencer, Mark Brazaitis, and Kevin Oderman, and thank you to Janet Peery, whose confidence in Evie carried me through the submissions process.

  For everyone in my Ohio and West Virginia writing cohort, thank you for all your thoughtful manuscript comments, especially Rebecca Schwab Cuthbert, Rachel King, Kelly Sundberg, Sarah Einstein, Rebecca Thomas, Connie Pan, Kori Frazier Morgan, and Shane Stricker. Thank you to Sara McKinnon for giving me those cartwheels on the lawn. I miss our hours-long Red Lobster lunches.

  And for Jen Colatosti, writing soul mate, your feedback on this project and everything I’ve written in the past fifteen years has been the most valuable thing in the universe. You’ve helped me out of countless stuck and heartbroken moments, writing and otherwise, and you know what I’m trying to say when I can’t get the words working just right. Our literary codependence is the best thing that ever happened to my writing life, and your friendship is everything. I genuinely could not have written this book without you. Thank you.