Know Not Why: A Novel (23 page)

“I’m not making you, like, miserable or
something, am I?” I say.

“Why would you think that?” he asks. It’s in
that brisk, unaffected voice that I’m starting not to trust.

“Hey, man, could you just answer?”

“Maybe a little bewildered. A tad frustrated.
Not miserable.”

“Okay.” Well, that’s a relief, at least. There’s
something about the way he’s looking at me that makes me feel like
he’s the one person in the whole damn world that isn’t going to get
on my case about this.

I reach over and tug absently at his scarf. “I
just … they can’t know, y’know? They just can’t. It’s not you, it’s
just … the whole thing. I can’t do that to them.”

Kind of a lame explanation, but it’s true. It’s
what I got.

“I understand why you feel that way.”

Thank you, Jesus.

“Oh yeah?”

“Believe it or not, I even have some past
experience with it,” he adds, smiling slightly. It’s not a happy
smile – maybe ‘bitterly nostalgic’ would be the more apt
description.

“Okay,” I say. “Good.”

“It’ll work out eventually,” he adds.

For the moment, I’m gonna choose to believe that
by ‘It’ll work out eventually,’ he means, ‘I have no qualms
whatsoever with living in secrecy for however long these crazy
hijinks might ensue between us.’ That’s about as much as I can
handle.

He lifts his hand and brushes it against my
cheek, looking at me fondly. This must kind of suck for him too, I
realize. He could’ve gone for someone who isn’t gonna have to keep
this a secret until the day he dies.

“I’m sorry,” I catch myself saying.

“For what?” he murmurs, but his eyes have
drifted to my mouth and it doesn’t seem like conversation’s his
number one concern at the moment.

In which case I’m not really big on making it
mine either. I kiss him instead.

This goes on for awhile.

Until the fucking bells on the fucking door let
out a merry fucking jingle, to be precise.

“Oh!” comes a girl’s voice.

We scramble apart so fast I almost fall
over.

“Dennis and I have come to pick you up,” Emily
says faintly. Behind her dweeby Potter glasses, her eyes are
huge.

Chapter Sixteen

“We should hang out with Amber sometime soon,”
Dennis suggests on the ride home.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I say numbly. “Sure.”

“How’s she been doing?”

“Good.”

“You mean ‘well’,” Emily informs me
placidly.

‘Bitch, recognize the English majordom and
back off’
is what I want to say. However, because she owns
me now, what I do say is, “I did mean ‘well.’ Thank you,
Emily.”

“You’re welcome, Howie.”

It’s like Basil the Butler ought to show up with
the tea and cucumber sandwiches any second now.

Even Dennis notices. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yes,” Emily replies serenely. It is the most
bizarre, conspicuous reply in the history of language.

+

“I don’t eat pigs,” Emily informs my mother
placidly when we sit down to dinner.

There’s a split-second where Mom tenses. I can
tell she wants to smack Dennis. “You’re a vegetarian?” She arches
her eyebrows in my brother’s direction. “I’m so sorry, Emily,
Dennis didn’t mention it to me.”

“Oh, I’m not a vegetarian. I just don’t eat
pigs.”

“Ah,” my mother says. “You’re … Jewish?”

“No,” Emily says. “I don’t have any particular
religious affiliation. Although Neo-druidism does sound
interesting, doesn’t it? I wish more people still wore cloaks.”

“Um,” says my mother. “Well. If there’s
something else I can whip up for you instead—”

Whip up? Okay, that’s just not gonna happen.
Especially considering the only other thing that’s remotely
meatlike in our refrigerator is a half-empty pack of turkey hotdogs
that’s been in there for so long we stopped recognizing them as
anything other than the fridge’s benign(ish) extraneous growth. You
don’t
eat
those. At this point, it’s just a matter of
respect.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Emily says. “I’m very
fond of salad.”

“Well,” Mom says, “good.”

And that’s that.

We’re halfway through eating in terrible silence
when, out of nowhere: “When I was a little girl, we used to go and
visit my aunt and uncle’s farm in the summers. There was a pig
there that I got to be very good friends with. They have such wise
eyes, you know? I didn’t have very many friends when I was little,
especially ones I could really talk to, so he became very dear to
me. I named him Gilbert, after Gilbert Blythe from L.M.
Montgomery’s
Anne of Green Gables
. That was my favorite book
then. It’s still one of them, but I very much like
Mansfield
Park
too. Anyhow, that was a tangent; I apologize. My point is,
near the end of the summer, my uncle butchered Gilbert and we wound
up having him for dinner, and I didn’t know it was him until after
I’d eaten. I felt very bad about it for a very long time. I was
sure he’d never forgive me.”

Emily starts to look distinctly misty-eyed
behind her glasses. Dennis reaches over and squeezes her hand. “Aw,
hon.”

It’s a weird, silent, mournful,
weird
moment of weird.

“I also don’t eat asparagus,” Emily adds then,
sounding much more chipper.

“Why?” I ask without meaning to. “Tragic pet
asparagus history?”

Damn my inherent wit! The last thing I can
afford is to mess with
her
.

“No,” she replies, totally unbothered. Or at
least that’s what she wants me to think. “I just don’t like the way
it tastes.”

“That’s fair,” I answer lamely.

“What a sad story,” Mom finally remarks.

“It’s all right,” Emily replies. “My mother died
the following year, and that was much worse.”

Well, gee.

“I … expect it was.” Mom. Oh, Mom. “So, you like
Jane Austen?”

“Oh yes. She’s good, isn’t she?”

“People seem to think so.” There’s an
unmistakable flicker of
bitch please!
ery there. I can’t
really blame my mom for that one. Thanks to her and Amber, I’ve
learned how literary ladies get about their Austen. “I always make
a point to teach one of her novels in my class. In fact, I even
wrote a sequel novel, many years ago.” Oh. Oh, that was not
good.

My mom realizes it right at the same time. Hell,
even Dennis seems to realize it enough to come out of his happy
love bubble.

“You did?” Emily asks. So innocently. “What was
it called?”

Smooth move, Mom. Smooth move.

“Oh,” Mom says, backtracking. “I don’t think you
would have heard of it.”

“Probably not,” Emily agrees pleasantly. “But
I’m curious to know the title.”

“Oh, I –” And then, finally, she crumbles.
Doesn’t even try to make up a fake title or anything. It’s damn
tragic, to watch her just give in like that. “Mansfield Spark: The,
um, Hot Nights of Mr. and Mrs. Bertram.”

“Oh,” Emily says, after a very long silence. “I
don’t think I would like to read that very much. No offense.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Mom hurries to agree. “It
was … tawdry.”

Well, jeez. I hope Dennis is happy. His ladylove
got Mom to feel ashamed of her
tawdriness
. Is nothing
sacred?

“Dennis told me you’ve written lots of other
books.”

“Yes, well. Those were … also tawdry.”

Emily nods demurely. “I thought they might
be.”

“They’re done under a pseudonym,” Mom fights on.
“And they’re just for fun, really. One day I’d like to try a
good
novel. But, you know, I just haven’t … haven’t really
had the …” Emily just keeps on watching her, so placid, so creepily
attentive. Mom breaks. “Peas?”

Emily frowns. “I don’t think I know that
expression.”

“Um,” Mom says. “What was that? … Dear?”

“‘Haven’t had the peas.’ Is it British
slang?”

“Er, no. It’s—” Mom holds up the dish, defeat in
her every movement. “Peas.”

“Oh!” Emily nods. “I see. Literal peas.”

“Literal peas,” Mom confirms weakly.

“How nice. Yes, please.”

“Peas,” I say, because, man, I gotta help
somehow. Dennis definitely isn’t leaping in. “Awesome.”

“Yes. They are awesome, Howie.” Emily looks
right at me as she says it. I know, I just
know
that
somewhere in that brain of hers, she’s thinking about what she just
so happened to walk in on earlier. And the fact that she regaled us
over dinner with a story of pig slaying suggests that this girl’s
not really an expert on which topics make for appropriate
conversation and which ones don’t.

+

As soon as Dennis goes downstairs to get Emily’s
bags, I make a beeline for the guest room. Emily is sitting on the
bed, staring at a picture of my grandparents on the wall like it’s
the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.

“So,” I say without preamble. “Uh. About what
you saw earlier.”

“Yes,” Emily replies, shifting her eyes to me,
“that was awkward, wasn’t it?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Was that Arthur?”

She sounds so damn quaintly conversational; it
totally throws me off. “Um. Yep, that’s him.”

“He looked like a very attentive kisser.”

“Yeah, he’s got skills, but, uh, see, here’s the
thing.” She suddenly seems really far away, sitting all the way
over there on the bed, and my voice seems extremely
loud
. So
I sit myself down next to her and continue real quietly. “My mom
and Dennis, they don’t exactly
know
about that whole
thing.”

“Yes,” Emily agrees, “I thought they mustn’t
have.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I think Dennis would have mentioned that you
were gay. He’s told me many things about his family, and I thought
that probably would have come up if he knew.”

“Well.” At least she’s got that much figured
out. “Yeah, so – wait. What things?”

“You cry very much when you watch Old
Yeller.”

“What?
Did,
okay. I
did
cry. I was
five. If I watched it now, I would be—” Right. Not the point. “So,
uh, can I count on you to not … ya know, tell them anything?”

“Yes,” Emily replies. “I don’t feel like it’s my
business to tell your family anything you don’t want them to
know.”

“’kay. Uh. Thanks.” Well, that wasn’t so bad.
I’m about to get up when—

“Why don’t they know?”

I turn to look at her. She’s staring up at me
like she’s genuinely puzzled. (Emily, I can already tell, isn’t the
sort of person to just get plain confused – no, Emily gets
puzzled.
)

“They just … they don’t. It’d just – I dunno,
it’d just be weird or whatever, and it’s not like there’s even any
point in them knowing, ‘cause it’s just a … it’s just like this …
mistake-type … one-time … he tripped and his face fell on my face.
It’s not even a big deal.”

“All right,” Emily says. There’s something going
on in her crazy eyes that I’m not liking at all.

“In fact,” I say, standing up, “you should
probably forget about it. It’s so not even a thing that matters. It
was just—”

“You seem ashamed.”

“I’m not—” I begin, but I’m interrupted by
Dennis dragging her stuff into the room.

“Your luggage, milady,” he declares, leaning
down to kiss her on the cheek. She smiles. “You guys bonding?”

“We are,” Emily replies, throwing a little look
at me.

“Oh yeah,” I say. “Totally.”

+

We haven’t got any milk. Not unusual, but milk,
it’s kind of a household staple. The way I see it, we can try to
impress Emily all we want with Josh Groban and rejected pork chops,
but if there isn’t even milk in the morning, well, that right there
is a surefire sign of inherent dysfunction.

I pitch this to my mom, who thankfully sees
things the same way. Then I gallantly offer to run out and get
some, therefore averting this most horrific of crises.

On my way to the store, I take a little
detour.

Arthur’s the one to open the front door, which
is a relief. I don’t really know how well this’d go with Kristy
interference.

He looks happy to see me, even though his face
gets worried right away, to show he hasn’t forgotten about what
happened earlier. The fact that the first thing he looks is
happy
, though, just because it’s
me
– I dunno. It
makes me feel like shit somewhere in the back of my brain, but not
to the point where it changes stuff any.

“How are things?”

“Cool. She’s not gonna tell.”

He relaxes a little. “That’s good.”

“Yeah. Hey, listen. I’m not ashamed of you or
anything.”

“Um,” Arthur says, frowning a little. “Thank
you.”

“I dunno, man, I just don’t want you to think
that’s why I … I just know how stuff has gotta be, you know? That’s
all. It’s like, my life is this certain way, and that’s how it
works, and I can’t just – but I’m not ashamed of you. You’re good
people. The fact that you like me, it’s … you’re the best person
that ever has, no question. I don’t really get why you even
bother.”

He’s starting to smile.

“And I—” I’m not really sure how to say what I’m
supposed to be saying, so I go quiet and just look at him. His tie
is flipped back over his shoulder and he’s got a kitchen towel in
his hands. Must have caught him mid-dishwashing.

Oh, you son of a bitch,
I think, in the
least oh-you-son-of-a-bitch way possible.

“Can we maybe put this on pause for a little
while?”

His brow starts to furrow.

“Not, like, it’s-over-pause,” I hurry to add.
“Just … I don’t think I can really handle this while my brother’s
here and we’re doing the whole family Christmas thing. And hey, you
know, you’ve probably got Christmas stuff to do, too, right? So you
probably don’t even have time to be dealing with …” Oh, man, the
furrowed brow, it’s not budging. “You okay over there?”