Cut Both Ways (24 page)

“I know this story already,” Taylor says.

“No you don't,” I say. “This is a different story.”

I have no idea what this story is, except that I'm ripping it off
from that movie we saw the night before. And in this version, the time-traveling orphan is a girl named Brandy (“like your girlfriend!” Kinney yells, and I have to shush her) who meets a boy named Carl with a magic rock.

“A
rock
?” Taylor says. “A rock's a pretty dumb thing to be magic.”

I tell her it's not. Because
this
rock can make anything become a perfect place to stay for the night. When you're tired and worn out from all your traveling, you kiss the rock and say, “Take me home,” and it transforms into the place you've been wishing for. Everything you need. Like, if you want a hammock, you get that. Or a big fluffy bed, with a canopy and feather pillows, that's what would appear.

“I'd want a big fluffy one,” Kinney says, yawning.

“I'd want bunk beds,” Taylor says. “But not to share. I'd get both.”

“Hogger,” Kinney says.

“Shhhh,” I tell them. Then I keep up the story, which really doesn't go anywhere. Carl and Brandy meet people who are nice and set up a place to stay with their magic rock and they have a good time. Or Carl and Brandy meet people who are horrible and mean and they run away just as Carl wishes and kisses the rock and then they are saved, escaping into a castle with a drawbridge slamming shut, and the moat full of alligators gets the horrible people. Carl and Brandy don't get anywhere or do anything, but repeating the same formula seems to make my sisters happy. Or bored. They fall asleep as I'm describing Carl's wing of the house,
which has its own skateboarding ramp and movie theater. Again, I wait, superstitiously, for a long time to make sure they're all the way asleep.

It's kind of nice, sitting on the floor, listening to the pinwheel light whir. I like knowing Angus is downstairs. It's not even eleven o'clock.

I get up slowly. Turn to look at my sisters. They are asleep, their heads turned in opposite directions, their hair tangling together on their pillows. Taylor's mouth is partway open. I don't stare at my sisters much and I don't admire them, really. They're always driving me nuts. At least Kinney is. But now I can see a little how they'll look when they're older. My age. They'll look like my mom, mostly, and a little bit of Jay. They'll be cute. Pretty.

I back out of the room, pick up a couple towels that got left in the hallway after the screaming shower disaster, and hang them on the rack.

When I go downstairs, the lights are off. I can't hear the TV. No Angus.

I go into the bathroom, smiling to myself. I brush my teeth, take a piss. My dick's already getting hard, just thinking.

In my bedroom, he's there. The nightstand light's on and he's already in bed. Reading a book. One of Jay's, about climbing Mount Everest, a true story. He's not wearing a shirt. Probably nothing else.

Taking off my clothes like this feels strange but I pretend it doesn't. I strip down to my boxers, and kind of fiddle around
at the last minute. Pull my wallet out of my jeans, charge my phone. I can avoid Brandy all I want, but I have to make sure my mom can still reach me. With it snowing like it is, they could be delayed awhile.

I look at Angus. But his eyes are intent on his book.

I could have another night of this, maybe.

If I was gay, I could have this every night. Not every night. But you know. We could move out, get our own place. How hard would it be, me and Angus, to do that? Carl seems to manage it okay being a dishwasher.

Except Angus is going to college. In Chicago.

And then there's Brandy. She's got two more years after this.

“You going to get in bed or what?” Angus says. He doesn't look up from his book.

I turn around, fiddle with my phone again. I get into bed with him and he turns off the light, drops his book to the floor. Wraps himself all around me and we stay like that for a long time before we do anything else, and I can't stand it, how good it feels, this thing that I shouldn't be doing.

In the middle of the night, I think I hear Kinney. I get up and put on my boxers and glasses and listen at the bottom of the stairs. Nothing. I go into the kitchen and get a glass of water. It's 3:28 a.m. I shut off the drying sequence on the dishwasher and listen some more. Nothing.

Then I go back to my room. Angus is in a heap under the covers. Naked. One of his feet is sticking off the edge of the bed. He's
kind of a covers hog, it turns out. Or else we need a bigger bed. It's not easy, with two guys of our size; his bed is actually better.

My phone is fully charged on the nightstand, the little blue light blinking. I unplug it and turn on the light. Then Angus rolls over.

“What are you doing, Will,” he says. His voice is low and scratchy.

“Nothing,” I say. I open the camera app and start to frame him in the shot.

“Are you taking my fucking picture?” he says. Sounding more awake now.

“What if I am?”

“Make sure my dick's not in it,” he says. “It'll ruin the composition.”

I laugh and snap one picture of him sitting up, his arm over his eyes. No dick, but the covers are so low you can see hip bones, his hair.

“Let me do one of you.”

“Not on my phone,” I say. “I don't need a naked pic of me on my fucking phone.”

“On mine then,” he says. He gets up and grabs his from his jeans on the floor. I stand there, holding my phone over my dick.

“Move your hand,” he says, laughing.

“What the fuck,” I say.

He takes the picture and the flash is blinding. I'm blinking and seeing spots. I take off my glasses and press my hands into my
eyes before I get back into bed. A little horrified, a little thrilled. Angus is still bent over his phone. He's smiling.

“Delete it,” I say.

He gets into bed and slips all around me, his hands over my chest, his dick hard on my leg.

“Not a chance,” he says.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I FEEL SO
guilty about the weekend I ignored Brandy for Angus that I go a little nuts trying to make it up to her. We are together whenever I can swing it. She skips her study hall to eat lunch with me. I go with her to take pictures of the debate team and the Mathletes for the yearbook. She goes with me to get my senior pictures done, which is awful, because the photographer lady keeps making me take off my glasses and that makes Brandy laugh for some reason. Plus I think I must look like I'm lying; I have glasses—why put a picture in the yearbook that pretends I don't?

She gives me head once in my car when I skip gym. We have sex once at her house when her aunt and nana are downstairs and once at the Vances' when the kids are outside playing in the snow. But she gets upset with me about the time at the Vances': “What if one of them got hurt?”

I apologize. I apologize a lot. I actually feel sorry, though; it's not bullshit.

It's like, I see her: Brandy, her hair and her flannel shirt and her skirt and tights and the way she dresses, which isn't sexy but isn't not sexy, either, and I just
want.
There's no brain in my head. Just me and her and what I want. I watch her look over photos she's taken for the yearbook, her face all wired up like she's making a decision about which one's best, and I wish I could feel that intensely about any of the dumb homework I do. I wish there was something specifically shitty about her, or annoying, or that she was even a little bit mean, but she's not. That would make it easier for me to do what I'm doing.

And Brandy likes me even though she knows all this crap about me. What my dad's house looks like. How I look naked. How I look when I take my glasses off—“you look kind of surprised by everything, like you just came out of a cave.” How looking at her, being around her, even if we're doing nothing, even if we're not touching, is just so good.

The thing is, I think this is how all cheating people must feel.

One Thursday, after school, I take her with me to spy on my dad, and I hadn't been in a long time. It's the week after Valentine's Day. (I gave her a bunch of flowers and all day, her face was all blushy red and smiling, looking down, like she didn't want anyone to know how good she felt. It was pretty fucking cute, actually.)

Anyway, that Thursday, she doesn't have to go to the Vances' and we have to do the laundry—Thursdays are laundry days at her house, so we usually hit my dad's Laundromat. He hadn't been at the Laundromat when I went with Brandy a few times, and I was disappointed about that in a way. I wanted to remind him that I
was still alive, even if he didn't want to see. And when I thought of the shitty things he said to me at the hospital, I wanted to go past his house and see that nothing has changed. Even with Roy's car parked out front, nothing looks different.

“Why do you do this?” Brandy asks. She's got her camera on her lap, the real one, with the big huge bulky lens, that she uses for the yearbook.

“What.”

“Spy on him,” she says. “Obsess over him. It's not going to make you feel better.”

“I don't obsess over him.”

“It's like you want him to keep doing shitty things to you,” she says. “Like you can't get enough.”

“I don't want that,” I say. Wishing I'd never told her all the crap he said to me back at the hospital rehab. I start the car and don't look back at the house as we drive away.

“I think you want to hurt him back,” she says. I don't answer her.

Once we're at the Laundromat, I get hypnotized watching Brandy's system of sorting. She never explains it, but she separates lights and darks and then household stuff, like blankets and towels. She has separate detergents for certain things. I watch her do it and then just carry her piles to open machines. I like doing what I'm told when someone has a good system. When I can see the point to it.

After we get everything running, we sit down and do our homework.

It's weird, I guess, being in this place my dad owns. I notice one
of the machines is out of order and there's no dryer sheets left in the vending machine, and the floor needs to be mopped pretty bad. But there's a dude that I've seen around last few weeks. He's got a tattoo on his neck that looks like flames. He goes out and smokes in the parking lot and texts on his phone and part of me thinks he's running the place. Like my dad's hired him or something? But then I see him sitting in the corner doing Sudoku, so maybe he's just got a lot of laundry. Who the fuck knows. He could be dead, my dad. Dead for weeks. How long could this place keep running until anyone did anything? .

“I kind of obsess over my mom, too,” Brandy says, looking up from her algebra textbook. “Just so you know. I mean, she's pregnant, did I tell you? She's pregnant. The baby's due in August or something.”

“Whoa.”

“I know,” she says. “She shouldn't have had me to start with. She couldn't handle me. My aunt's freaking out. She's not sure she can handle a baby.”

“No shit she can't.”

“No, I mean,
Megan's
not sure she can handle a baby,” Brandy says. “Because they'll come to her first, probably, ask if we'll take it.”

“But who's the dad? It can't be your dad, right?”

“No, he's still in prison,” Brandy says, and it kills me, how easily she can say that. How it doesn't hurt her. She's tapping her pencil to her chin. Thinking.

“Then it's not Megan's problem, really.”

“It would be my sibling, though,” Brandy says.

“Half sibling.”

“The dad's probably crazy, too,” she says. “Because she's in a psychiatric ward now. Did I tell you that? She got kicked out of the residential place she was in. They couldn't handle her. But I don't know if she got pregnant there or somewhere else. Whoever it is, he can't have much good stuff going on, either. Getting with my mom; it's not like she's super picky.” Brandy laughs.

I don't know how to say how terrible I think this is without making Brandy feel more shitty about her mom and her unborn sibling. Plus I feel kind of terrible for Brandy, too. She doesn't know it but she could have better luck than with me.

But then she changes the subject. We talk about her aunt Megan's new car and Kinney's dance recital that's coming up and the show Angus and DeKalb are doing at Miller Grill. We talk about how DeKalb's dogging Shania and how she's not into him anymore and why that is. We talk about Jack Telios hanging around with these two girls in my grade, Loretta and Isabella, who are actually hot girls, and who also happen to be cousins.

“Bad enough all three of them are together,” Brandy says. “But it's like incest on top of that.”

I'm not even sure Jack's fucking Loretta and Isabella, him being all high-minded about his Swedish chicks and everything. He's all beyond calling people his girlfriends or talking about actual sex, either. He's not into definitions or possessions, he says. Doesn't like labels. I think it could all be bullshit but he never specifically says anything that's going on with Loretta and Isabella. So it could be real, too. The only thing I know about Jack is that he's
for sure dyeing his hair to be that white-blond he's got it and that he has some weird thing about never wearing a jacket, just these heavy wool sweaters all the time, which make him smell like a wet dog when it's snowing and everything's melting on his shoulders.

We go back to our homework, then, because despite everything, Brandy and I are those kind of students. I do my homework so I don't have teachers crawling up my ass, mainly; Brandy is trying to get on the honor roll so she can qualify for reduced insurance rates. She's in drivers' ed now, so that's all she thinks about. My mom pays my insurance—I know that. My dad used to but then he let it lapse and I got a ticket for going through a stop sign and my mom freaked out because it involved all these fines and fees and paperwork with the court. She doesn't trust him for shit like that anymore.

After we finish our laundry, I drop Brandy off. I don't go inside, because while I've seen Megan since our big sex talk, I still feel awkward about being around her. And then, even though Brandy says I'm being obsessive about it, I drive back to my dad's house, just to see if anyone's around. It's a split-second decision, really. An impulse.

But this time, just as I roll past, Roy comes out and sees me. He's standing still, about to light a cigarette. He doesn't look thrilled, but I pull over and park anyway.

When I get out, he's walking toward me, cigarette lit. He's cut all his hair off; you can see his scalp, and his ears are pink from the cold. They're pierced way up and down, too, but there's
nothing in there, just holes. I never noticed that before, when his hair was long.

“What's going on, Will?” he asks. It's half-friendly, half-suspicious.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just was in the neighborhood.”

“You're in the neighborhood a lot.”

Shit.

“My girlfriend, I drop her off at the house where she babysits sometimes.”

“Don't they live on the other side of the block?”

I don't feel like defending myself. He's a dick if he can't accept that I wouldn't be a little curious.

He sucks in his cigarette, then blows it out over his shoulder.

“Hey, you're not alone. This whole street is up in your dad's business lately. What he's doing. What he's not doing. It's kind of become a big problem. For your dad at least.”

“Why?”

Roy shakes his head, like it's too much to explain. “Listen, I want you to know that I'm helping out again, living here, and things
are
happening. On the inside, at least. It's getting there. It's just, the snow is making it hard to do anything beyond that.”

“I thought the county ruled the house unfit for people to live in?”

Roy shrugs. “Your dad's not in agreement, obviously. He's kind of stubborn.”

“No shit.”

“It's not like he's a jerk, but he certainly could be softer about
dealing with neighbors. That might make them not want to call in the county with little complaints all the time.”

I don't know what to say. I feel so angry, I'm afraid my glasses will steam up. I take them off and wipe them on my coat, even though I know it's a wool blend and will probably scratch the coating on the lenses.

“Is he home?” I ask.

“Not right now,” he says. Takes another drag of the cigarette. “He bought another Laundromat over in St. Paul; he's over there getting that place going.”

“What the hell?”

Roy scratches his head, feels around in his pocket, and pulls out a hat, puts it on his baldness. “Yeah, that happened before I got here.”

“When'd you get here?”

“January,” he says. “I withdrew from school.”

He looks a little ashamed about it, but also like he wants me to tell him it's okay, as long as he's helping my dad. I look at him, sucking at his cigarette, his fingers all dirty and callused. I wonder if he's back on drugs. Like he's not really helping, but staying here because that's all he's got left now.

“Sorry,” I say.

He blows out more smoke, which he tries to exhale away from me, but the wind sends it into my face anyway.

“I'll go back probably,” he says. “Just not right now.” He's not looking at me, but at a FedEx truck stopping at a house down the street.

“Can I come inside and see?” I ask.

Roy steps back. Steps on his cigarette and kicks snow over it. Shakes his head.

“I don't think that's a good idea, man.”

“Why? My dad still hate me?”

“Your dad doesn't hate you, Will,” he says. “I know he mouthed off and said a bunch of shit he regrets. He's told me that. But I know what he's doing right now. And what he's doing is to make up for it. He's dead set on having your graduation party here. That's his goal, that's his timeline . . .”

“Then what the fuck is he buying more businesses for?”

“Cash-flow issues, I guess,” he says. “I'm not making excuses; I wish to hell he hadn't done that either. But the point is, he's focused on making it up to you. And I'm trying to keep him focused, too. He won't let anyone in that easily. That friend of his, Garrett? He won't speak to him anymore. I'm like the last tenuous link here.”

“Is he still drinking?”

“Not at the house,” Roy says. “That was my limit. I can't be around that.”

“But he's still drinking.”

“I think so,” Roy says. “He doesn't like the idea of meetings, though I've tried to get him to come.”

“He's not going to stand for that shit.”

“He thinks that, now,” Roy says. “There'll come a day where it just gets too tiring, though. Where you'll do anything to reverse the direction you're headed.”

“So, what? You work on the house and try to get him to be sober?”

“Not in that way,” Roy says. “Just, I don't know. I'm trying to listen to him. Be supportive. Remind him, through example, that recovery's possible.”

“I hope you don't say it like that,” I say.
“‘Recovery's possible.'
”

Roy laughs. “Oh, no,” he says. “I said that once and he pointed to me smoking and asked what the fuck I thought that smoking was. He's pretty guarded.”

“So . . . you're not going to let me see the house.”

“I promised him,” Roy says. “He's seen you, too. Driving past. And he doesn't want you to see the house until he's ready for you to see it.”

I say okay and his phone beeps and he flips it up and smiles.