by Alix Ohlin
“Look who it is,” a voice said, interrupting her thoughts. “Miss United Nations.”
With some difficulty she focused her gaze on the speaker, who was a boy with shaggy brown hair wearing a navy blue T-shirt with a picture of a baby on it. The baby was smoking a cigar. Out of context—and everything felt out of context at the moment—the boy was hard to place.
“You don’t even recognize me,” he said. “I’m wounded.”
“Who are you?”
“It’s Barry,” he said. Seeing her empty expression, he switched to a reciting tone. “Barret Oliver Bernstein,” he said. “You may remember me from trig, and AP history, and music camp between eighth and ninth grade, and also I think we spent seven minutes in heaven at Jane Rodriguez’s thirteenth-birthday party. Man, Africa has made you a snob, Vanessa Palkovsky.”
“Barry,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry. So very sorry. God.”
“Are you high?”
“Kind of. Something.”
“I didn’t even know you were back.”
“I just got here,” she said. She stood in front of him, drinking her Coke, her mouth worrying the plastic straw, fixated on the almost painful burst of bubbles against her lips, the sweet acid of the drink coursing down to her gut. She opened her mouth to say something else but burped instead, and then shrugged. Her time in Ghana hadn’t changed her vitally but it had rendered her temporarily immune to certain things.
Barry laughed. “I’d ask you to sit down, but I don’t think you can.” Only when she followed his gaze did she understand that her foot was idly kicking the stem of the plastic table where he sat, tapping it in concert with the sips from her straw.
“I was thinking of going to the beach,” she said. “Want to come?”
He stood up instantly, crumpling his napkin into a swirl of ketchup. “No offense, but I’d better drive.”
In the car he said he was going to community college, which frankly sucked but was all he could afford after his dad lost his job and emptied Barry’s college fund so they wouldn’t lose the house.
“I didn’t even find out until, like, the last minute,” he said. “I thought he’d been working as a consultant for the past two years. He had a home office and stuff.”
“Consultant’s what old people say when they’re unemployed.”
“I understand this now,” Barry said. They were on the freeway, not rushing freely but moving at a stately, caged pace through midafternoon congestion. Vanessa kept burping, a slow but constant stream. “I was packing for school when he came into my room and said, ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’ ”
Vanessa smiled at him for the first time. “Prefaces are the worst,” she said.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Barry repeated in a stagey tone.
“You’re adopted.”
“I’ve been earning a living as a male prostitute.”
“Your grandparents aren’t in Tacoma. They’re in jail.”
“I really am adopted, though. I just found that out, too.”
“Wait, seriously?” She clapped her hand to her mouth.
“No.”
She laughed. The beach was cloudy and windy, the surf flat, and a row of surfers paddled hopelessly in a line not far from shore. They walked for a while without speaking, then sat down in a sheltered spot in the dunes. Vanessa’s stomach bucked unhappily. After a few minutes she stood up, walked quickly away from Barry, and threw up her hamburger by some rocks, wiping her chin with the hem of her shirt.
“I’m not used to the food here,” she said, sitting back down next to him. Seagulls were already making a feast of her vomit, jostling each other angrily to get at it.
“You’re a tourist in reverse,” he said. “A stranger in a strange land. Et cetera.”
“Don’t say et cetera,” she said.
Her lips were chapped, and she pulled at a shred until it bled, rubbing her reddened fingertip absent-mindedly on her thigh. Farther down the beach a big dog and a small dog were running into the waves, the small dog fearless, the big one hanging back and barking. Which seemed like a metaphor for something, but she was too tired to think of what. Kelsey’s pills were wearing off, leaving a headache behind. Barry put his arm around her shoulder; he smelled—she couldn’t have said what she meant by this, but the notion was clear in her mind—American. For a while she leaned her head against his shoulder, and then she leaned over into his lap and gave him a blow job. When he finished she rested her head on his legs, and he ran his fingers through her hair. It seemed funny that she’d forgotten him, when she’d known him for so long.
4
“There’s something I have to tell you,” Kelsey heard someone saying outside. She wasn’t eavesdropping—she had the kitchen window open because she hated central air, something she couldn’t bring herself to tell Graham, who liked to cool the house to sixty-seven degrees. She’d confessed to him the greatest secrets of her life as if they meant nothing but found it almost impossible to share her small preferences, her littlest needs. Vanessa laughed, a brisk, knowing snort. Glancing quickly outside, Kelsey saw it was Barry Bernstein. Vanessa didn’t ask what the thing he had to tell her was, and he didn’t go on. She wondered why Vanessa was hanging out with Barry; he was nice enough, but they weren’t close friends. He was a little bit emo, he drove a decent car, he wasn’t completely unfortunate-looking. In high school he was just there, a landmark without distinction, like a Del Taco you passed every day in your neighborhood. Why would you suddenly stop in and eat?
The door opened, and her best friend came in looking red eyed and splotchy cheeked, her fair skin a collage of pinks. One day back in California seemed to have weathered her more than eight months in Africa had. Kelsey placed her hands on the graphite counter, spreading her fingers as if seeking traction; she’d thought about taking the ring off when she saw how Vanessa looked at it, but couldn’t bring herself to. It was her favorite thing she’d ever owned or worn.
“You’re allowed to make eye contact, dude,” her best friend said. A few years ago they’d started calling each other dude in ironic imitation of the bros at their school and then found the habit had stuck with them for real.
“Sorry,” Kelsey said. “Do you want something to drink? I was just getting some water.”
Vanessa said breezily, “Let’s have some wine.” She came around the counter, jostling Kelsey casually with her hip, and pulled out a bottle, the opener, two glasses. As kids they’d snuck sips from whatever bottles were open, adding water to keep the levels up. She didn’t ask Kelsey whether she wanted any now, just doled out two hefty pours.
“Cheers,” she said.
“Listen, Van. I feel like we should talk, or whatever.”
Vanessa took a long sip. Her eyes were hazel and steady, her pale hair lank. They used to dye each other’s hair with box color but in Ghana her hair had gone back to the uncertain shade she called blah blond. She was the calm one, the one with the nice house, the girl adults always said had a good head on her shoulders. Kelsey wasn’t any of those things. When Vanessa set the glass down, her lips were shiny and wet. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
“I just—” Kelsey moved forward into the impossible task of discussing the choice she’d made. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
It was the wrong thing to say, she knew, the wrong apology. The right apology was I’m sorry I’m sleeping with your father and it will never happen again and things will go back to the way they were before. But she wasn’t going to say any of those things.
Vanessa said, “Does my mom know?”
Kelsey was startled. “I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t hear it from me.”
Vanessa laughed. “No, I guess not,” she said. She tilted her head to the side, surveying Kelsey, a serio
us, appraising look, and her eyes grew foggy. Kelsey knew that she was thinking about how long they’d been friends. She knew everything that Vanessa was thinking, just as she could predict that Vanessa would drink half her wine at once and then sip the rest; that Vanessa would buy time in the silence by pushing her hair behind her ears, and then clasping her hands behind her back. She’d seen Vanessa invent these gestures, cobble together a personality from them. Some gestures they’d come up with together; many of them they shared. They had the same handwriting. They wore the same size shoes.
They’d met in middle school, when Kelsey’s parents moved to LA from Oregon, and Kelsey Parr was seated next to Vanessa Palkovsky. Was it a friendship, or a habit of long association?
Kelsey wanted to press forward, to dispel the fog in Vanessa’s eyes. She wanted to be seen as she was now, an adult, not as the skinny, friendless kid in Walmart clothes on whom Vanessa—Kelsey knew this—had taken pity. “Your dad is such a good guy,” she said stiffly. “We make each other happy.”
“Dude,” Vanessa said. Her tone was of arch amusement. “Keep it in your pants.”
“I just wanted you to know,” Kelsey said.
“And now I know.”
She darted forward and kissed Kelsey on the cheek, the kind of kiss you’d lay on your grandmother or your aunt. Her lips were rough. And then she was gone, carrying her wineglass high as if keeping it above water.
Kelsey drank her glass down and poured another. She’d known things would be weird when Vanessa got back—how could they not?—and she wasn’t going to panic about it. With Graham, last night, she’d asked for comfort, because she knew he needed her to; it reassured him to hold her in his arms, murmuring consolations. In the morning they had sex, quietly, and afterward he wore the same look of infused confidence as every boy she’d ever slept with.
In the months leading up to graduation, Vanessa had told all their friends that she was taking a gap year—she kept calling it that, in a pseudo-Euro affectation that Kelsey found more and more irritating—and Kelsey would say, “Yeah, me too. I’m going to spend a year working at the Gap.”
“No, but seriously,” Vanessa would ask when they were alone, “what are you going to do?” She couldn’t fathom that there weren’t any enriching life activities on Kelsey’s horizons; she couldn’t imagine a future that had no plan. The things that drove Vanessa—grades, extracurricular activities, the all-consuming goal of college acceptance—had always felt abstract to Kelsey, the staged rituals of some civilization to which she didn’t belong. She wouldn’t even have made it through senior year without Vanessa’s help, plus the Ritalin, of course.
When her parents were still married, way back when, money was scarce, but then things got a lot worse later. Her mother moved in with a guy named Gary; they both started drinking every day at five thirty and didn’t stop until they passed out. They had nothing in common except the drinking, but it seemed to bond them pretty tightly. Also, Gary paid the rent. One day in seventh grade her dad said he had a job in Vegas and disappeared for a year. When he came back, he took Kelsey and her little brother to the park, bought them ice cream from a truck as if they were little kids, and explained he’d done some work for the wrong people, and as a result of that work, he’d be spending the next five to seven years at a federal detention center in Stockton. “It’s probably best if you don’t visit,” he’d said, although neither of them had offered.
When Kelsey discovered the Palkovskys’ house, it felt like a TV set: rooms impossibly bright and large, people guffawing at familiar jokes as if on a laugh track. With an exhale of relief she began to spend all her time there, the de facto second child. She didn’t cause her own family any trouble. She swallowed her ADD meds in the morning and some illegally obtained Xanax at night. After her high school graduation, she went out to dinner with her mom and Gary at Joe’s Crab Shack and her mom said, “Maybe you should think about the army.”
Kelsey laughed.
“What?” her mother said. “They pay for your college and stuff.”
“I don’t think she’s interested in a military career,” Gary said. He was right, but everything he said was snide. He’d made it clear that she’d have to find her own place to live soon; he’d bought a pool table on eBay and wanted to put it in her room.
“Maybe Dad can hook me up with something,” Kelsey said.
Her mother sputtered, as Kelsey had known she would. “Don’t even joke,” she said.
And that was the extent of their conversation about college.
Vanessa was so alarmed by Kelsey’s lack of a plan that she arranged for Kelsey to work for her dad. He was a headhunter and most of his work involved meeting clients; he was always out for lunch, drinks, coffee. In his absence, Kelsey filed and answered the phones. She updated the website. She emailed follow-up surveys to recently placed clients and employers and categorized their responses. Despite her complete lack of investment in the work, she looked forward to going to the office every day. When he came back from meetings, he’d rehash the meetings for her, imitating the clients, and he was really funny when he did it. She’d always thought he was kind of a fox—he was charming, and he worked out—although she would never have said so to Vanessa.
The first time they slept together, it was at a hotel, because doing it at his house would have been too weird. Afterward he wanted to take a bath together. She was afraid it would be infantilizing and awkward but he was right; it was romantic. Then she stood on the bath mat while he dried her off, working his way downward, until he got to her right foot and frowned. “What’s this?”
Her pinky toe looked like it had been chewed on by a dog. There was a split nail that never seemed to grow right. Instead of trying to make it better, she allowed herself to make it worse. She peeled the skin. She ripped the nail from its bed. As soon as it grew back she started over. The whole toe was always raw and red, rubbing against every shoe she wore, a slice of exposure.
“It’s my worry toe,” she said. “My theory is, everybody needs to destroy a little part of themselves. If you pick it right, like you do it consciously in a small way, then you’re safe from doing it some bigger way. You get it out of your system.”
He continued to look at her, his head tilted, as if he were listening to some sound outside the room. If he kisses my worry toe, she thought, this thing is over. But he didn’t. He got a fresh towel, two towels, and wrapped her in both, then draped the hotel robe over that, and she was laughing and saying “Stop,” and he wrapped her in every towel in the room, making her a terry cloth mummy, layers upon layers, heavy as a cast, and then he carried her to the bed and unwrapped her like a gift.
5
A month passed and Vanessa and Kelsey did not talk again. They spoke often—had dinner with Vanessa’s dad, watched a movie together on the couch—but they never talked because, honestly, Vanessa didn’t see the point. In high school their history teacher, Mr. Calderón, had habitually used an expression she hated: It is what it is. It’s a fucking tautology is what it is, Vanessa had wanted to say, but didn’t because she was an honors student and that kind of comment gave you a reputation with teachers. Mr. Calderón seemed to think this phrase would soften any terrible historical fact he was required to present to them. The Huns massacred their enemies and raped their women as a technique of intimidation. Not very nice, but it is what it is. It used to drive Vanessa crazy, but now it fit her circumstances perfectly. My best friend is going to marry my father. It is what it is.
Of course they weren’t best friends anymore; now they were related instead. They were cleaved apart and drawn together at the same time.
A few weeks after her mother left, Vanessa dreamed she came back, full of apologies and regrets, a dream so vivid that when she woke up she couldn’t believe it wasn’t true. Bereft all over again, she padded through the house to her parents’ bedroom. H
er father, asleep in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, was curled in the fetal position on top of the duvet, the light still on. He’d made a ball of the clothes her mother had left behind and was sleeping with his arms around it. Vanessa could see her mother’s blue cardigan, her Orioles sweatshirt, her bathrobe. Her remnants.
Whenever she tried to be mad at her father about Kelsey she thought of that moment and the anger dissolved, re-forming into some cluster of pity and betrayal and confusion that she held like her own ball of rags, thick in her arms.
And there was something else. To her surprise, she’d fallen in love with Barry, a development that soothed and preoccupied her. Barry was always available, as eager to get out of his house as she was hers. He was taking a couple of classes and working at a car dealership but somehow he always picked up his phone immediately, always texted back right away, was always interested in going to a movie or the beach or on a hike. Not that they did those things very much. Mostly they drove around looking for places where they could park and have sex in his Sentra.
They didn’t discuss their families. Barry knew about Kelsey—everyone from school had heard, and she kept getting texts of fake concern from the most gossipy girls in her network—but he never asked her about it. In return, she never brought up college, even though she’d be leaving for New York in six weeks. They did each other the kindness of pretending their sore spots didn’t exist. When he drove, he put his arm around her and she put her hands on his thigh, his knee, his hip. After they were done having sex they lazed around until they were ready to go again.
By the end of July she’d started spending nights at his house. His dad was too ashamed about the college fund thing to give Barry a hard time, and Vanessa’s dad was in a similar state. So they’d crawl into his bed with takeout and watch TV, chewing messily, wiping their hands on the covers. His room, like hers, was schizophrenic, halfway done molting his childhood self. The shelves held old Legos and a chemistry set and a leather bound Torah he’d gotten for his bar mitzvah, and his desk held his work ID and car keys and macroeconomics textbook.
