by K L Hughes
As she shuffled away, Rosie gave Fiona a smile that made her look constipated and uncomfortable and followed after. Fiona turned toward Michael and raised a brow. She could sense every eye in the room on her, stares boring into the side of her face. Her stomach felt like it was trying to fold itself in half.
Michael looped an arm around her and pulled her into his side. “Hey, at least she didn’t mention any Chinese restaurants, right?”
“Oh yeah, because what she did say was so much better.” Lizzie appeared at Fiona’s other side. “Sorry about her. Her grandparents emigrated here and pretty much spoke only Scottish Gaelic, but for some reason, she still thinks she’s more American than anyone with a skin tone two shades darker than hers.” She looked down at the pale skin of her own arm and laughed. “Which includes just about everyone outside this family.”
When Lizzie looked up again, her different-colored eyes caught Fiona and held her. She offered up an easy smile that made Fiona suddenly wish Michael’s arm wasn’t around her. It became the elephant in the room, a weight knocking her down a size or two as she tried to decipher the weird energy bouncing between Lizzie and her and figure out why she felt so comforted by her presence.
“I guess that’s just the South for you,” Michael said. “It pretty much stays the same while the rest of the country evolves.”
“That’s most old white Americans, actually,” Fiona said, “no matter where they’re from. Missouri isn’t any better, and you know it.”
“True,” Lizzie said. “She’ll probably die before she changes her views.”
“Who’s dying?” Charlie Sr. had made his way over, shoulders hunched up awkwardly toward his ears, the same constipated expression on his face that Rosie had worn. Fiona had seen that look so many times in her life. It was nearly as uncomfortable as the conversations that always inspired it.
Jessie, who passed by them toward the foyer, said, “Everyone this afternoon.”
“You wish,” Brian called after her from the living-room couch.
“Oh, I don’t have to wish.” She paused at the intersection of the two rooms. “It’s a scientific certainty, Brian. You need to come to terms with that. In fact, you all do.” She pointed at her own eyes then at everyone else in the room. “Prepare yourselves.”
Fiona looked up at Michael. “What are we preparing ourselves for, exactly?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see.”
“That sounds ominous.”
Charlie Sr. chuckled at his daughter. “That’s a lot of big talk, Jess.”
“I can back it up,” she said, then disappeared into the foyer.
Once she was gone, Charlie Sr. focused on Michael and Fiona. He glanced between them, tucked his hands into his jean pockets, and shrugged. “Listen, hon,” he said to Fiona, “I just want to apologize for my mom. She means well. It’s just, she’s from a different time, you know.”
The familiar compulsion to comfort him hit Fiona like a tidal wave. She felt obliged to tell him it was all right, to tell him that he didn’t need to apologize. She’d struggled with that compulsion for as long as she could remember. It sprung up like a weed in every similar situation she’d ever found herself in. She was driven to assuage guilt she wasn’t responsible for rather than stand up for herself, rather than comfort herself, rather than address the issues of offering an excuse dressed up as an apology. It should’ve been easy, as easy as saying, “Hey, so that’s not the best way to go about this. Try this instead.” But it wasn’t. It wasn’t easy, and it never had been, because no one liked to hear that they were in the wrong, that they’d done something offensive, that they needed to change. It invited controversy and, as Fiona had learned in the past, opened her up to worse issues than the ones she’d started out with.
“That’s really not an excuse, Dad,” Lizzie said, stepping up to the bat before Fiona could even work out what she wanted to say. Michael, on the other hand, only shuffled in place, quiet and apparently content to let the issue die unaddressed. “We all grow up in different times. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn to adapt or change the way we look at things. People do it all the time.”
“Well, I know that.” Charlie Sr.’s shoulders hunched even higher toward his ears so that his neck rapidly began to disappear under the rising collar of his flannel button-up. “But you just got to acknowledge that these things take time, you know? She didn’t grow up the same way all you kids did.”
“We grew up right here, in friggin’ rural Arkansas, with the same outdated ideas as everyone else who grows up here. You think we had anything but white Christian kids at our school?”
“Well, I’m not going to argue with you about it, Lizzie, so…”
“I’m not trying to argue,” Lizzie said. “I’m just saying that if she can learn to use the iPad you and Mom got her, she can learn not to be a racist. That’s not an argument, Dad. It’s a fact.”
“Oh my God, Lizzie, we get it,” Brian groaned from the couch. “You live in L.A, so now you’re super ‘woke’ or whatever. What do you want? A pat on the back? Let it go already.”
“That’s exactly the attitude that keeps things the way they are, though,” Lizzie said, and the room went silent, so silent that the air seemed to vibrate. It pulsed in and out around Fiona as if the walls were trying to decide whether to close in on her or not. Her throat tightened, making it hard to breathe. The longer she stood in the feeling, the more desperate she became to escape it. The longer Michael stood beside her, silent in the middle of it, the more upset she became.
She barely managed another two minutes before she shrugged Michael’s arm off her shoulders and said, “I think I’m just going to run upstairs for a bit.”
“Hey,” Michael said, stepping after her. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“No, it’s fine.” She shook her head and backed toward the foyer. “I just remembered I told my mom I’d call her when we got here, and I never did. So, I should. I’m going to go do that now.”
As she turned to go, Lizzie reached for her. Their hands brushed, then caught. Fiona squeezed Lizzie’s fingers as hard as she could manage in the moment, her own silent way of thanking her for caring enough to occupy the uncomfortable space so few others, even Fiona’s own best friend, were willing to occupy.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m fine.” She shook her head again. It felt like the movement of a robot trained how to respond. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to get out of that room before the space got smaller, before the conversation went deeper, or totally superficial, which might be even worse, and before she grew so uncomfortable that she wouldn’t be able to choke back the awkward giggles she was prone to. Those giggles had, on more than one occasion, been mistaken as acceptance or forgiveness. She was no longer willing to offer them up in situations where neither were warranted.
As she left the room, crossing through the foyer to the stairs that would lead to her freedom, she heard the conversation carry on without her. She paused briefly to listen.
“You see what you done now, Lizzie?” Charlie Sr. said. “You ran her off.”
“I ran her off?”
“Now she’s going to think the whole family’s a bunch of racists, thanks to you,” Brian said. “Good going, Liz.”
“Well, maybe she wouldn’t think that if y’all wouldn’t just let Grandma say stuff like that and not even call her out on it,” Lizzie said. “Everybody just makes excuses for her because she’s old.”
Brian laughed. “Jesus, Lizzie. It’s not like she spit on her or something. Every time you come back now, you’ve got some new issue you think you need to educate us all on. You’re not better than us just because you voted for Hillary and bought a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. Just drop it already and get over yourself.”
“All I’m saying is if the girl was uncomfortable, she could’ve just
said so,” Charlie Sr. said.
“Or maybe,” Lizzie said, “we could try to be more self-aware, instead of expecting everyone else to make allowances for us and tell us when we’re being assholes.”
“Now, Elizabeth, I won’t be talked to like—”
Fiona didn’t stick around to hear the rest. She could predict well enough where it was headed, a circular battle in which Lizzie would end up repeating herself a dozen times to dismissive remarks and well, but, and so, arguments as thick as brick walls. Fiona had found herself in the same cycle countless times. This one wasn’t hers to endure. The McElroy family could run the circuit on their own, in their own time, in their own way. She could only hope it eventually got them somewhere and that, along the way, Michael might join Lizzie in trying to steer them out of the loop and onto a path forward.
She ran up the stairs and down the hall to the room designated as her weekend home and collapsed on the bed. She’d never actually told her mother that she would call, but in that moment, she found that there was nothing in the world she’d rather do more. Her mother’s voice, clear as day in her mind, was exactly what she needed to hear.
On the bed, limbs spread wide, Fiona stared at the ceiling. Classical music sung quietly from her phone, which lay beside her head. She’d never much cared for music without lyrics until she’d dated her last girlfriend, a music-history major and Taylor Swift-bashing enthusiast. It had only lasted a couple of months, but the short-lived relationship had left its mark. Fiona had since significantly reduced her daily allowance of repeats on Swift’s “Bad Blood” and added five different classical stations to her Pandora playlists.
It soothed in a way that music with lyrics couldn’t. She would lie back and let herself be carried off into the notes until it felt as if she was floating, drifting, dissolving into nothingness. Classical music had become a sort of meditation for her, a way for her to clear her head and release all the tension trapped in her body. Michael, who rarely missed Friday nights’ Vino & Vinyasa sessions in Forest Park with Yogini Lauren, had tried more than once to convince Fiona that yoga achieved the same result and was “better for your body.” But after he’d successfully talked her into one session, she’d refused to go back for another, and Michael had never really forgiven her for saying that drinking cheap wine and sticking their asses in the air was more ridiculous than relaxing.
“I don’t recognize this one.”
Fiona sighed at the sound of Michael’s voice and kept her eyes on the ceiling. “Did you become a classical-music aficionado on the long walk up the stairs?”
“Not a chance.” He laughed. “Guess I’ve just gotten used to the things you usually play.”
“It’s Thomas Bergersen.”
“Oh. What happened to Beethoven?”
“If I recall, you said my phone was going to mysteriously find its way into the garbage disposal if I played The Moonlight Sonata one more time.”
“It’s so depressing.”
“So is your face.”
“Ouch.” The bed dipped with Michael’s weight as he sat on the edge. “Guess I don’t need to ask if you’re mad at me.” He gently pushed her leg aside and raised her arm long enough to position himself under it. He lay down beside her, let her arm rest across his chest, and slung one leg over hers. “I’m sorry Lizzie made things uncomfortable.”
They stared at the ceiling together, at ease with one another’s warmth and touch. Fiona fingered the edge of Michael’s shirt sleeve, rubbing the material between index and thumb.
“Is that what you think happened?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Completely.”
“Oh.”
The music filled up the space between their words, and Fiona pondered how she should go about explaining how she felt. It had always been simple enough with Michael. Their relationship had never demanded she walk on eggshells. She could blurt out her feelings, no filter, no thought, and he would navigate his way through them with ease. If he was confused, he would ask her to clarify. If he was hurt, he would tell her, and if he didn’t agree, he’d never had any trouble explaining why. That was part of the wonder of who they’d become together over the years of their friendship—they’d learned to ride each other’s waves with trust. There was no need for walls between them, no need for defensiveness or word-mincing. At the end of the day, no matter what they said to one another, there was genuine love and respect between them, and it kept their relationship steady, healthy, and honest.
This time, however, she was unsure of how to go about it. She didn’t want to babble about how she felt. She wanted to be clear and concise. She wanted him to understand without her having to elaborate or talk herself in circles, because no matter how she chose to address it, it was going to be uncomfortable. The less time she had to occupy that discomfort, the better. She had had enough for one day already.
Michael said nothing, content to let her marinate however long she needed. Instead, he lay still beside her, his thumb slowly rubbing back and forth along the underside of her arm. The soft touch soothed her. Fiona closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the sensation of touch, the rise and fall of the music, and the reassuring familiarity of being close to Michael, close to someone who loved her.
“Lizzie didn’t make things uncomfortable,” she said after some time. “Things were already uncomfortable. They may not have been for you, because you weren’t the one having racially charged assumptions made about you, but they were for me. Unfortunately, that’s something I’m used to. I don’t like it, and yeah, it makes my skin crawl, but it’s something I’ve had to learn to navigate.”
She took a deep breath and released it in another long sigh. “What I’m not so used to is someone stepping in to challenge those assumptions the way your sister did. It made you guys uncomfortable when she did that because, up until that point, you were all content to just stand there and let your grandma say what she wanted to say and pretend like it wasn’t a problem, or make excuses for her and expect me to smile and laugh it off so none of you would have to feel guilty about it.”
Michael continued to keep quiet, though she could see in her peripheral vision that he had turned to look at her. She didn’t want to look back, because she was afraid to see his discomfort. She didn’t want it to sway her or shake her or make her feel obligated to comfort him. She wanted to be firm and resolute, and that was hard to do when staring at a scorned puppy-dog face. But he was also her favorite person, and she wanted to comfort him, even when she didn’t want to. So, she rolled onto her side and looked at him anyway.
The frown tugging his features down appeared more contemplative than upset. Fiona pressed the pad of her thumb between his eyebrows and pulled the skin upward.
“You promised you would put an end to it if your grandma said anything shitty.” His skin turned whiter around the edges of her thumb as she slid it down his nose and over to one corner of his mouth. Her eyes burned and watered as she pulled that side of his frown upward. “You didn’t.”
He wormed his way closer, laying one large hand over the top of Fiona’s where it now rested on his cheek. “I should’ve done what Lizzie did,” he whispered, the words nearly lost beneath a sudden swell in the music enveloping the both of them.
“Yeah.” She pinched his cheek then flipped over and put her back to him. “You should have.” He lay silently behind her, nothing touching her but the warmth emanating off his long body. The morning winter sun, shining in through the sheer window curtains, didn’t offer the same comfort. The contrast of her cool chest and arms and warm back made her shiver, so she inched back a bit. “Hold me.”
He did. His pale, freckled arm, decorated with white-blond downy hair, circled her torso and slid her back against him. Warm breath puffed against the back of her neck as he rested his forehead against her loosened braid.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“Do better.”
“I will.”
Chapter 4
“Don’t stress.” Michael fluffed up the thick scarf Fiona wore. The plush plaid material pushed up over her cold chin as he tugged and batted it about, making sure it covered all the exposed skin of her neck. “You’ve got this.”
Fiona fidgeted under Michael’s reassuring pats. Each pat made a whoosh-and-pop sound as his big hands smacked against the puffy material of the coat Rosie had conjured from the hall closet and insisted Fiona wear. The brown material was soft and fat and bulging, and her earlier glance in the foyer mirror had confirmed Fiona’s suspicions. She had indeed transformed into a walking toasted marshmallow. “I am a tiny person.”
“Yes, you are.”
The cold curled around them like angry hands, digging at the skin as if attempting to burrow under and freeze them from the inside out. It had been nice at first, a blast of cool air after hours inside a hearth-warmed house, but now it was biting. It seemed to grow colder the longer they stood in the snow, and Fiona’s bones were beginning to hurt. “What if I get buried in a pile of snow and no one can find me because I’m so tiny? What if I die a slow, painful, freezing death? What if all that’s left of me is a pathetically small block of Fiona-shaped ice?”
He smiled. “My parents have always wanted an ice sculpture in the yard.”
“Michael.”
He laughed. “You’d thaw out in spring.”
A poke to the gut did nothing. His coat was as fluffy as hers. His scarf was just as thick. His fiery hair frizzed out in all directions, riddled with the static of piling on too many layers. Fiona would have teased him if she wasn’t so busy worrying about her impending doom. There was bloodlust on the McElroy’s faces. This wasn’t just some family game to them. It wasn’t a fun holiday sport they indulged in once a year.
It was war.
The maniacal grin on Jessie’s face as she hid behind a self-made wall of snow and created an armory of snowballs faster than should have been humanly possible was all Fiona needed to see to know that she would likely never see her parents again. She would never again walk in the warm sun. She would never finish school and become a nurse practitioner or fulfill her lifelong dream of opening a lesbian coffee shop and naming it The Les Bean. Today, she feared, would be her final day on earth, for a rabid clan of country-bred redheads had drafted her into battle, and she was woefully unprepared.
