Cut Both Ways (16 page)

We go inside. Kristin's not back yet so I ask him what the deal is.

“She's at her friend's place for the night,” he says. “They're working on a website Kristin wants to set up.”

“Oh.”

I think he'll make us dinner, but then he just pulls out the bucket of vanilla from the freezer. “You want?”

Garrett and me eat ice cream in front of the television. Like we're old people. Or, given the heaping portions he's put in our
bowls, like we're old people who've just suffered a breakup. All we need is a rom-com on the television. Instead, we watch
SportsCenter
and then this movie about a little kid who sets things on fire with her mind.

“That's Drew Barrymore,” he says, nodding at the TV.

“Who?”

“God, I'm old,” he says, shaking his head. “Want more ice cream?”

I'm not really hungry, but I say yes. Mostly I just like how it swirls in the bowl. It's like hypnosis. I like to move it all around with the spoon until the whole thing's just a bowl of brown, no more lines of caramel or chocolate.

I can't finish the next bowl, though. I swirl it to brown, the spoon making little clinks. My teeth feel all gritty, coated with sugar. Like they're rotting in my head. I can't remember the last time I went to the dentist. My mom would know.

I put the bowl on the coffee table and Garrett turns off the TV.

“I'm beat,” he says.

“Me, too.”

“Hey,” he says, and his tone is different. Now we're going to talk about things. Talk with a capital
T
. I wonder if that's why he gave me a fuckton of ice cream—just to make me all sluggish and immobile so I'd have to stay and listen to him.

“A couple of things, besides you're back on the schedule,” he says. He leans forward toward the coffee table. I lean back into the couch.

“I'm trying to talk your dad into an inpatient rehab,” he says.

“What?”

“For alcoholics,” he says. “He's not even considering it, don't worry. Or maybe”—he laughs a little—“do worry. It's affecting his health, Will. His judgment. My dad was a drinker. In the same way. Had all the same excuses. Same patterns. Said and did a lot of the same kind of shit you're dad's saying now. But my dad never stopped. Wouldn't. Only thing he had left by the end was his job.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Kept his job until he retired. Then he died two years later, from a fall. A fall while he was drunk, of course, but my family didn't call it that. Even my mom, who divorced him, she didn't call it that.”

“Oh,” I say. I feel very cold, suddenly. And the zinging feeling is back. Flying up and down my back, sinking into my stomach. .

“There's kind of a history for me here. And not just with your dad. So I hope you don't think I'm butting into your lives unnecessarily or anything.”

“I don't think that.”

“Good. But you might not like that I've told your mom what's going on,” he adds.

I don't say anything. My stomach clutches up. He's going to have to have this conversation by himself, from here on out. I'm so angry and so close to crying, I can't handle words.

“She's okay with you staying here, but I know she'd prefer you home. Says you've got friends there, says you'll be more comfortable around family.”

“Jay's not my family.” That just flies out. Louder than I mean. It's not like I even hate Jay. Jay and I barely even bullshit; he stays out of my way. I'm his wife's problem, and he's always understood that. But he's not my family and I can't help but point it out, I guess. Even if I'm arguing against something that's already over.

“Your sisters, she means.”

I am quiet.

“She agrees, though, that whatever you decide, you need to give your father some time and space,” he says. “He's not thinking clearly and he's not doing well. You really don't need to see him like this.”

But I
have
seen him like this, I want to yell. I mean, what the hell is everyone talking about alcoholic shit for? It's not alcohol. It's like no one ever asks
why
he drinks like that. When it's totally fucking obvious to me. It's that he's never gotten over the divorce. He's all by himself. Nobody is helping him. Nobody is there for him. Not even me.

Garrett says more stuff. About patience. About understanding. About support. About coming to terms with our parents' flaws. I nod. I nod and say “yeah” and “okay” and “right” so many times I wonder if he can tell I'm not listening. I am listening; it's just that there's nothing to really hear. Nothing I don't already know. Finally, he asks me what my weekend looks like, because it's one of my last free ones before I have to fill in for Everardo's shifts and I tell him that I'm going to Angus's band's thing tomorrow, and he says, “Good, good. You need to keep doing the stuff you do. Living your life.”

When I get in bed, I text Brandy. I'm halfway hoping she's over whatever pissed her off in Photography.
hey what's up

She texts back:
just say it to my face

I have no idea what she's talking about, so I call her.

“What,” is how she answers her phone.

“Hi,” is what I say.

“Just get it over with,” she says. “I don't want to be in some long, dragged-out breakup, okay? I've got better things to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You're not into it anymore,” she says. “It's all right. I could tell all week.”

“Brandy?”

“Just say it already.”

“Okay, I'll just say it: DeKalb and Angus have a band and they're doing a show at this coffee place tomorrow and I have to be there. To help with equipment.”

“So?”

“So, after that, do you want to go out?”

She's quiet. I can hear her breathing. Is she crying? I hate this. I wish we were just texting. This feels different from waiting for a text back. Waiting while she breathes. While she withholds. It's terrible.

“What if I don't want to?”

“Brandy, Jesus Christ. What the hell?”

She's quiet. God, I hate people when they're quiet. Or maybe I just hate
her
being quiet.

“I don't even believe you,” she says. “You say things, but there's
no truth behind them. You don't mean it; you sound like you're totally over it.”

“I'm not over it,” I say, lowering my voice for no good reason. “I like you. This week kind of sucked, okay? I had to move out of my dad's. It's sort of complicated. He might go to rehab.”

“What?” Suddenly, she's back. “What happened?”

I tell her, then. About the basement and about the house being all unfinished and about Garrett telling me I have to stay with my mom and how I don't want to do that, but probably don't have any choice.

“Why don't you want to do that?” she asks.

“My mom'll be all
I told you so
about my dad. She's just kind of, I don't know. A jerk about it. She's never understood him.”

“Good they're divorced, then,” Brandy says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess it is.” Though it doesn't feel like it. It feels like they're still together and unhappy with each other, but it's just from a bigger distance. Even if she started over. Even if he didn't. It feels like he didn't on purpose, kind of.

“So you'd rather live with your dad, then?”

“I don't know.”

“Oak Prairie is so far away,” she says.

“We'll figure it out.” I tell her how my car broke down, but then got fixed. I tell her, as I'm stripping off my clothes and getting into bed, how I'm back on the schedule. How I'm off for a while. How I'm sorry my fucked-up situation made me an asshole. How it won't happen again. She laughs at me.

“I have you beat in fucked-up family situations,” she says.
She laughs again. “I can't even talk about it without getting depressed,” she says. Her voice lowers.

“You can, though,” I say. “Talk about it.”

“No,” she says. “Because I'm in bed and I just want to fall asleep listening to you. I don't know why I freaked out. I freaked out for nothing. I do that. I get ideas, I hear rumors, I assume the worst. I always assume the worst.”

“I missed you,” I say. Finally meaning it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE NIGHT ANGUS
and DeKalb's band plays, and Brandy'scoming. Because her friend Shania is all into DeKalb lately.There's nothing I can do to talk her out of it, because then she'd ask why and I can't explain that, either. And I can't get out of helping my friends.

I can barely eat any dinner. Kristin looks at me sadly. Garrett is preoccupied with something on his phone. I take my plate to the dishwasher pretty quick and thank Kristin for the food that I didn't really eat.

It gets worse, though. Brandy calls to say that she's told her aunt that she's staying at Shania's. She tells me I should tell my mom I'm staying DeKalb's house or something.

“Then we can be together,” she says. “All night, even. And Shania knows of a guy whose parents are out of town; DeKalb knows him. Maybe you do, too? Just a sec . . .”

I listen to her ask Shania what the guy's name is, even though
I already know. Jack's parents are in San Francisco for the weekend. He's not having a party but has invited some people over later. “A select, specific few,” he said, which made me want to kick him in the face.

“Jack Telios,” she says. “You know him?”

The coffee place is in a strip mall by an Olive Garden and a bunch of other little shops. A nail place, a dry cleaner, a dollar store, a Radio Shack. The kind of place nobody hangs out at, really; you just run in and do your errands and leave. It's kind of embarrassing—this is where they're playing?

Angus has parked his mom's Escalade out in front of the coffee place when I get there; right away, though I'm not late, I feel a little shitty. DeKalb and him are already unloading their gear.

“But it's just this bass and one amp?” I ask. Now I'm pissed; they hardly need any help.

“The keyboards are heavy, though; everyone else isn't here yet,” Angus says. He looks at me just a second too long and then DeKalb butts in the way and we start unloading the stuff and dragging it inside the coffee place.

I feel the zinging again. My stomach is growling but I don't feel hungry. I look at Angus, at how his jeans slide low, how his boxers stick up when he bends over. I remember touching him and I feel sick. I feel sick because I like to look at him. I want to touch him. I know him, I think, but then I don't know him, either. It's been a lot of years since we talked about our hopes and dreams, our favorite colors. Not that we have favorite colors. Maybe he does. I just have
colors I don't like. Purple and red and yellow. Angus mostly wears black and white. Angus smells like aftershave and deodorant; he uses the same deodorant as me. I want to touch his chest. Angus wants to go to college and major in art; he's been working on applications since last spring. Angus, I don't know why it matters, but I can't stop thinking of what we did and I'm so stupid. Brandy's on her way here and she has no idea. I'm so fucking stupid.

Then this girl and guy show up, park right behind Angus. The girl is wearing pigtails looped with pink ribbons and a black dress and a necklace made of tiny rubber ducks and she's got star tattoos all up and down her forearms. The guy is just a guy; nothing rubber ducks and tattoos about him. The guy has a keyboard thing and the girl opens a violin case—her violin is yellow and has a big duck sticker on it. So this is Andrew and his girlfriend who made him pussy stupid.

Once everything's been heaved into the stage area, there's nothing for me to do. I look around the coffee shop. Just a few people sitting in front of their laptops. I don't know where to sit, though there are plenty of tables. The guy at the counter is squirting whipped cream on top of a giant mug of something for a customer. The zinging feeling is back. Buzzing in my stomach, all the way to my spine. It's the worst. I wish I could curl up and go to sleep.

Brandy and Shania show up then. Shania's a cute girl; she's very tall and smiley. DeKalb thinks she's cute but he says she talks too much shit about people. As if DeKalb doesn't! They come over to me and look around. Shania looks at the place like it's kind of disappointing, but she waves at DeKalb, who waves back, and then
she says, “This where we're sitting?” She points to an empty table by me and I just nod and sit down while they go get their drinks.

I'm watching Angus while he sets up a microphone with the rubber ducky–violin girl. She's laughing at something he's saying, he's smiling back. Then he puts his guitar over his head and his shirt rides up over his stomach. The part where he has the little trail of hair down to his dick. Trail to the whale, DeKalb calls it.

Just as they start doing sound checks, Brandy sits down with a cup of coffee and a muffin. She leans into me and says, right into my ear, “I packed like I was going to a sleepover. I brought all my face cream stuff. And pajamas.”

“Oh really,” I say. I watch Angus tie his bandanna up to get the hair out of his face. See his shirt slide up again, the strip of hair on his stomach.

“They have owls on them,” she says. Then she kisses my cheek and Angus makes eye contact with me at just that second. I see, for the first time, something on his face. Like he's disgusted with me. Pissed, too.

“Sexy,” I say. But it's not sexy. And now Angus is moving out of the way so the pigtail-rubber-duck girl can stand next to him and they don't even say anything about who they are. The girl just says, “Good evening,” even though it's only like seven o'clock, and then they start playing a song with no words.

Then it's kind of boring. The zinging/buzzing fades a little, even. Like, I don't know what the hell I was worried about. Angus is just playing his guitar and Brandy is just sitting by me; it's not that big of a deal. It's sort of lame. They don't do anything but play the music,
which is nice and everything, but there's no one singing. When I look around, there's really no one paying attention, either. They're like a living version of background music. Except they don't seem to notice this. They're just playing and looking at each other, not the rest of us. Shania's on her phone, texting sometimes, and holding it up other times, clicking away like she's taking pictures. Brandy's just staring. In a way that's natural. Normal. Like she's happy she's here. Like she likes the band. Her face is calm and pretty, and I like how her hair won't stay tucked behind her ear. How it slips out, slowly.

It'd be nice, sitting here next to her. If she weren't looking up at Angus. Angus isn't looking at me anymore. He's just focused. Intense. Looking at the music in his mind, maybe? He doesn't look at me. Or the other people. Only DeKalb, and sometimes the rubber-duck girl, and sometimes the keyboard guy. It's like nobody else is even here. I almost feel jealous of him. Like the music builds a big loud layer between him and people looking.

After a while, the zinging feeling is almost gone. Because the music? It doesn't stop. There's no break. There's no singing. And it's like, what's the point of watching? I go and get Brandy a muffin and a thing of Coke, which they only sell in a bottle and it costs, like, three bucks but whatever. I eat the muffin and then I go get another one. Shania is texting, still. People come in and go out of the coffee shop; the guy working the counter looks bored, and when I go up to get a third muffin, I say so.

“I've been here since six, man,” he says. He shakes his head.

“That sucks.”

“Yeah,” he says, pushing the muffin onto a plate across the
counter. “Plus this music? It just makes me want to fall asleep. Not that it's bad. It's good. Seriously.”

I laugh and he laughs. The second I think how he's kind of a good-looking dude, it panics me, though. I quick hand him the cash and take the muffin and then neither Brandy or me eats it. It was four bucks and I stare at it like everything's the muffin's fault. I want to leave. I don't want to go to Jack's.

The music: it goes on and on. Shania picks at the third muffin. DeKalb is sweating and looks like he's in pain. He looks like he's going to fall over. Angus is sweating around his pits and neck. The boring guy never looks up. He isn't sweaty. Or hot. Either meaning of “hot,” really. I hate that I'm all gay about this. While sitting next to my girlfriend. The counter guy is dumping a big vat of iced tea into the sink when I turn back to look at him and catches me looking. Great. Now he probably thinks I'm gay, too.

Then, just when I feel like I might lose my fucking mind, the rubber-ducky girl sets down her violin. Angus stops playing. DeKalb and the regular guy just maintain a little background tune, though, and after a minute, the rubber-ducky girl steps up to the microphone, the one between her and Angus that nobody has used, and she starts singing.

           
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,

           
Go to sleepy little baby.

           
When you wake, you'll have cake,

           
And all the pretty little horses.

It's like a lullaby, but the now the music behind it, DeKalb and the regular guy—it all makes sense. Just when I think they'll go back to instrumental, though, rubber-ducky girl steps away and Angus takes her spot. Then Angus is singing:

           
Black and bay, dapple and gray,

           
Coach and six little horses,

           
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,

           
Go to sleepy little baby.

           
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,

           
Go to sleepy little baby,

           
When you wake, you'll have cake,

           
And all the pretty little horses.

Angus, singing. Looking at me, I think. Or at Brandy.

Which makes me look at Brandy. And she's crying. Brandy's crying. Then Shania's nudging me, like I need to do something. But I can't do anything. I'm stuck between her and Shania, between her and Angus.

And there's something about him singing that I love. Normally, when dudes sing, like in show choir or whatever at school, I think they sound like freaks. Like, the definition of
gay
is right there, when a guy's belting it out. Especially a young guy. It's not like one of those fat old opera guys with the deep-ass voices, who sound like they could knock down a chandelier if they felt like really going for those low notes. Young guys always sound a little girly, even though they don't want to, and it's all terrible. Embarrassing.

But not Angus. He sounds like a guy. Like a man. But also, you can hear the parts where his voice breaks, and it's not gay. It's not embarrassing. It's just
him
. Like everything about him. Good. Honest. Exactly what he is. And it's not sexual for me, none of this is, but it's this exact minute that Brandy takes my hand and squeezes it, and I know it's because she's crying but I think it's because, right that minute, I know that I love Angus. That I'm in love with him and I'll always love him. I'm as gay as any gay choir boy. As gay as any theater kid. Gay. And holding my girlfriend's hand.

Then rubber-ducky girl comes back to join him at the microphone, and she does the next verse.

           
Way down yonder, down in the meadow

           
Lies a poor little child

           
The bees and the flies are pickin' out its eyes

           
The poor little child crying for its mother

           
Oh, crying for its mother

           
Way down yonder, down in the meadow

           
Lies a poor little child

           
The bees and the flies are pickin' out its eyes

           
The poor little child crying for its mother

           
Oh, crying for its mother

Brandy lets go of my hand. She blows her nose into a napkin. Angus and the rubber-ducky girl now sing the chorus together. I'm sweating. The whole room's still. Looking. Watching them sing. The counter guy, too, leaning against the wall, a bus tub
of plates and cups in his arms. I think of all the times I've sat in Angus's garage, listening to him play, drums or guitar or whatever. I've never heard him sing. Not once.

Then Angus and rubber-ducky girl step back from the microphone. She's on her violin, he's on the guitar. They finish out the song, a few extra flourishes, and then it's over. Then Angus steps to the microphone and says, “Thanks a lot. Good night.”

To say people are clapping sounds weak. They are standing up and hollering and cheering. One woman, whose head was stuck in a book the whole time, is whistling through her fingers. Brandy is clapping, wiping her face with a makeup-streaked napkin. I stand, along with Shania, who is taking photos. DeKalb looks a little caught off guard. But keyboard guy is smiling and so is Angus. Rubber-ducky girl is crouched down, just calmly putting her violin in its case, when the counter boy comes up to the edge of the stage and says something in her ear. She shrugs, then smiles at him, and he walks off, still carrying the bus tub.

“That was amazing,” Brandy says. “Just . . . amazing.” She keeps saying that. And apologizing for crying. I tell her it's okay and she kisses me. On the mouth, like she has a million times, in front of other people. But now I can't look at Angus anymore. And I want to just leave. But I have to move equipment. I'm their goddamn “roadie,” after all.