todd bartlett lives off the disability check the government cuts him for the car accident he was in when he was seventeen. Slammed by a semi and lucky to be alive. His back hasn’t been the same since. You wouldn’t know it just by looking at him.
People don’t trust what they can’t see, he says and that’s his burden to bear. Everyone acts like it’s his choice he can’t work how they think he should; nine-to-fiving it in an office somewhere or behind the counter of some store or outside in the sun. I’ve seen him overdo it, seen him end the day flat on his back on the floor, begging for God to put him out of his misery. He’s in so much pain in those moments, he tells me, he forgets how good it feels to be alive.
My mother, Alice Jane Thomson, was supposed to be in the car with him when it happened, but good ol’ Paul Grey sized her up in the halls of Grebe High the day before and asked her to spend that afternoon with him instead. She marveled with Todd over the wreckage later, their luck. There was no passenger’s side after the impact and if she’d been in the car with him, she would have died. And I guess I wouldn’t have been born.
Todd Bartlett lives on Chandler Street in the house he inherited from his mother, Mary, who had him at sixteen years old. Mary’s house is the kind that always needs a little something more but will probably never get around to having it. A cracked walkway—vines finger-stroked into the cement before it dried—leads up to a ramshackle two-story of worn white siding and red asphalt shingles with brown accents. A small, screened-in sun porch looks out at similar houses, all of them chipped and broken teeth. Todd sits inside on a lawn chair, next to a blue cooler. He gives me a lazy salute as I let myself in.
“How was school?” he asks.
“Prewitt wants me to try out for track.”
“Waste of time.” He opens the cooler, pulls a Heineken out of an ice bath. “You want one?” I do. I keep one arm across my chest and reach for a bottle with the other and he laughs, swatting my hand away. He shuts the lid before the delicious cold air wafting from it can so much as kiss my fingertips. “Get outta here.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
He looks at me through a curtain of brown hair, long enough for a ponytail, but he likes it better in his hazel eyes. Todd is solid; gives the impression of a man with muscles despite the fact he can’t really do much without doing himself in. There’s a faded tattoo on his tanned right arm, an initial. M, for the woman who made him. He pops the cap off his beer, takes a swig.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Picking up dinner.”
“Kind of early.”
“We’ve been working all day. Check this out.”
He gets to his feet slowly and the melted ice pack he was resting against slides wetly down the back of the chair. I follow him in, past the kitchen with the black-and-white checkerboard floor and an old refrigerator that squeals if it’s been left open too long. There are boxes in the living room, I can see them from the hall. Seems like we’ve got more things than space to put them. I follow Todd up the stairs to the room at the very front of his house. Our house—so my room.
Mom unpacked all my things even though I told her she didn’t have to. My bed is beneath the window, looking out over the street below. The sun will rise on me. Shelves full of my books line all four walls, boxing the room in. She’s even alphabetized them by author. My desk sits in the corner, laptop resting atop it. Next to the closet, something that’s not mine: an antique bureau. Todd notices me notice it.
“My mother’s.” He moves to it and runs his hand over the top. “But we can move it, if you don’t want it.”
“No, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
“This was her room. That okay with you?”
“It’s not like she died in here.”
Mary died on the main street, too many years before that kind of thing is supposed to happen to anyone, let alone someone sweet as her. A massive heart attack. It wasn’t the way she was supposed to go. A lifetime of generosity and warmth was to culminate with Todd at her bedside telling her she did everything right, but I don’t think he even remembers their last words to each other.
“Got time for a talk?” he asks me.
“There’s nowhere else I need to be.”
He digs his hands into his pocket and holds out two keys.
“One for the house, one for the New Yorker—but that one’s for emergencies only. It’s your place now too, kid. Short of burning it down, do what you like.”
I take the keys but before I can get any kind of thanks out, the screen door’s splintered whine and the sloppy racket of it falling back into place sounds from downstairs.
“Where are you guys? I got pizza.”
The greasy smell is in the air as soon as Mom says it. Gina’s Pizzeria, one of the last restaurants in Grebe still standing. There are three, altogether. Gina’s, the Lakeview Diner (five miles from the lake), and the bar. Other fine dining establishments have come and within six months, they’re gone. People from out of town—newlyweds, usually—end up here with the idea they can start something that gets the ball rolling on Grebe turning into one of those sweet-spot stops just before the city, Godwit—“The Big G”—but Grebe just isn’t meant to be that kind of somewhere. Even being the founding home of Grebe Auto Supplies, with its countless stores and service bays across the nation, couldn’t put us on the map. People think Grebe’s a bird, not a destination.
“Just showing the kid her room,” Todd calls.
“Oh! I’ll be right there.”
Mom hurries up the stairs like a six-year-old hurrying down them at Christmas and when she steps into my room, her fair skin is flushed with heat, but she’s beautiful. She always looks beautiful, but it’s different now she’s happy. A pale blue shirt—Todd’s, I think—rests over her tiny frame, hanging low over a pair of old jean shorts she’s had for the seventeen years she’s been my mother and I don’t know how she’s made them last so long. I’m more used up than they are, somehow.
“You like?” she asks me.
“You didn’t have to unpack it.”
“I wanted to. It wasn’t a big deal.”
Todd makes his way out. “I’ll leave you two to it. No doubt your mom wants to walk you through her adventures in shelving. I’m telling you, kid, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Hey, smart ass,” Mom says, smiling. “Set the table.”
She’s still smiling when she sits on my bed and pats the spot next to her. “Park yourself right here,” she says and I do and then she asks me again: “You like it? You think you could?”
“It’s just a move across town. I’ll survive.”
“Just a move across town.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s something different.”
I look away. I can hear Todd in the kitchen.
“It’s a nice room,” I say. “Thanks.”
She gives me a hug, tells me she’ll see me downstairs and heads there herself. I uncross my arms and pick through the clothes in my new bureau, lovingly folded into place.
I find my bra. I put it on.
* * *
after the plates are in the sink, I get ready for work. I change into a skirt and shirt. I got the job at Swan’s Diner six months ago when I realized money was the only thing standing between me and any other town I wanted to live in. I told Todd I was looking for a job where no one would know my name. He suggested Swan’s because it’s right on the county line between Grebe and Ibis and hey, there’s nothing to being a waitress, right? There wasn’t, at first.
Before Leon.
It’s a long, hot ride in. By the time I coast my bike into the parking lot, I think the four slices of Gina’s pizza I wolfed down are going to end up all over the pavement, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing someone’s puked up here. I go in through the back, to the kitchen, and everyone’s hustling. Holly Malhotra doesn’t even have time to fill me in on the latest thing her daughter’s done to piss her off and she’s always got tim
e for that.
Leon’s sharing the grill with Annette tonight. He’s nineteen and he started here last month, but it’s not his first time. He worked here all through high school, left for a while, and then came back. I watch him for a moment. His black skin glistens with sweat, the muscles of his arms shining with it. His warm brown eyes are fixed intently on the task at hand. My stomach tightens. Leon is … I forgot what it was like to want before he came here.
But who said I needed to remember.
I grab my apron and catch his notice.
“You look like hell,” he says.
“Hi to you too,” I say. He winks at me and my tongue turns to sand because the other thing is last week, Leon told me he liked me as plainly as any person could. We were on break out back, standing next to the Dumpsters when he said it. I like you, Romy. Whatever you want to do about that. It was nothing like the movies but it probably never is. Did set something off inside me, though. Maybe. Enough for me to spend the rest of that shift in the bathroom trying to decide what to do about it. Leon is nice. This is what nice is: he’s nice and you like him and it’s nice. Until. “How is it out there tonight?”
“Busy as hell. Get ready to work your ass off.”
“She’s always ready for that,” Tracey, our manager, says as she steps out of her office. She smiles at me. “I don’t want anyone waiting to be waited on, got it? In this heat, everybody’s looking for a reason to bitch.”
“Got it.”
“Hey,” Leon says. “Break? Later?”
“Sure.”
I step into the heart of the diner and Leon is right. It’s busy as hell, and it’s okay at first but then it starts to wear, like it always does. Three hours into my shift, I reek of grease and my ponytail is loose, strands of hair plastered to my face. I duck into the bathroom across from Tracey’s office and clumsily retie my ponytail, my fingers tired from taking orders. I’ll have to shower when I get home, get all this off me. If I don’t, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night convinced I’m still here and I’ve got tables waiting. When I go to the kitchen, Leon is taking off his hairnet. He scrubs his hand over his short black hair and nods toward the back exit.
“That time already?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Hey, wait for me,” Holly says, untying her apron. Her long black hair is falling out of its bun, haphazardly framing her exhausted face. “If I don’t have a smoke, I’ll lose it.”
I’m glad for her company, but a quick glance at Leon tells me he’s only just tolerating it. I reach around to take my apron off, but think better of it. I like that extra layer.
The three of us head outside and shuffle into casual poses. I lean against the building and stare at the ground while Leon stands next to me and stares at the sky. The gritty flick of Holly’s lighter fills the quiet, drawing my eyes up. She inhales deeply and studies the cherry, says what she always says when she smokes: “These things killed my father. Awful way to die.”
“Yeah, that is,” Leon agrees.
“I don’t want to do that to my kids.” And yet. Holly told me it’s either cancer sticks or pills, that’s how stressed out she is all the time. Used to be smoking was vogue. Take the edge off and look sophisticated doing it. People see you smoking in public now, she says, and they just give you this look, like you’re not entitled. Raising four kids alone while her husband is deployed and her mother-in-law with Alzheimer’s just moved in because they can’t afford assisted living so all her care is getting pinned on her eighteen-year-old son when Holly’s not home but sure, look at me like I’m a piece of shit for sucking on one of these.
She turns to Leon. “Speaking of my kids, you going to be at Melissa Wade’s party this weekend?”
“Nope,” he tells her. “My sister’s having a get-together with all her coworkers and friends before she pops and I’ve got to be there.”
“Damn. Annie’s going to a sleepover at Bethany Slate’s house and I have a feeling they’re going to end up at the Wade’s. You know anyone who could text me if they see her there?”
“You going to make a scene if she is?” he asks.
“Goddamn right I am. That’s college kids. She’s fifteen years old.” She takes a drag off her cigarette. “I told her not to even think about going, so of course she will.”
“I’ll get Melissa to text you if she sees her.”
“Thank you.” She tosses the half-smoked cigarette on the ground. “Quittin’ by degrees. Not even my break, but I covered Lauren’s shift so I earned it.”
“You’ve been here all day?” I ask.
“Money, money, money. Better get back to it.”
She goes in and then it’s me and Leon. The silence stretches between us. Words aren’t so easy to come by, after his admission. It takes him a while to dig some up.
“Told you it was busy,” he finally says.
“Yeah, you did.”
“You know, I was joking earlier, when you came in.”
“Were you?” I stare out at the back lot. The headlights of Tracey’s old Sprint reflect the flickering light over the door beside us.
“You don’t look like hell. In fact, you look really far from it.”
His eyes are so on me. The blush travels up to my face from the tips of my toes. He slips inside before I can reply, and the compliment lingers and fades. I remind myself it’s nothing I have to hold or be held to. He only said it to remind me that he’s here, he likes me. That he’s nice. Leon is nice. That doesn’t mean he’s safe.
the sun rises.
I press my palms against my eyes and listen to the sounds drifting upstairs from down. I piece together this morning’s scene in my mother’s laughter, in chairs scraping across the floor to be closer to each other, in coffee bubbling as it brews on the stove.
I untangle myself from my sheet, and stare at the fresh red stains next to the faded-out pink ones on my pillowcase. They come straight from my mouth, forever exasperating my mother because I picked the lipstick that doesn’t wash out. I get dressed. In the bathroom across the hall, I brush my teeth and tie my hair back. I do my lips. Nail polish is still holding.
I’m ready.
In the kitchen, everything is how I pictured it. Mom smiles at me from her spot at the table. Her black curls rest limply against her shoulders, worse for the weather. She sips coffee with one hand and the other is reached across the table, her fingers twined through Todd’s.
“How’d you sleep?” he asks.
“Fine.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I can make you breakfast,” Mom offers.
“No, thanks. I have to get to school.”
She exchanges a glance with Todd. “Baby, you set your alarm wrong? You’ve got at least an hour before you need to be there…”
“I know.” I step into the hall and put my shoes on. “I have to be early today.”
“Why’s that?” Todd asks. “I can’t think of a goddamn thing you’d have to be an hour early for that doesn’t qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.”
Because my underwear and bra have been stolen and when things like that have been stolen, you can expect them to show up again in a very bad way. I tighten my laces and grab my book bag from the floor. “I just do. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Try to have a nice day.”
“Yeah, have a good one, kid.”
It takes a moment for that to sink in, this coupling of well wishes for the rest of my day compared to a year ago, mornings in a different house, my mother at a kitchen table alone while her husband nursed bottles hidden in places he long stopped pretending we didn’t know about.
When I open the door, there’s something else: the shock of the view. I look for ground I grew up on. Instead, it’s unfamiliar dying grass and a cement walkway with those faded impressions of vines leading me out to the street I’ll tell people is the one I live on. For a minute, I forget it is just a move across town, like it could be something more.
But o
nly for a minute.
I walk to school. The parking lot is a wasteland. Old clunkers take up the faculty side and as the hour wears on, the students’ side will divide itself between slightly better used or newer models of the same cars, depending on whose parents paid for them. I pull the front doors open and step inside where I’m silently greeted by two old, blank-faced mannequins in the middle of the entranceway. A boy form, John, and a girl form, Jane. John and Jane are the first things we see when we come in each morning, our daily dose of school spirit. John wears a retired football uniform and Jane wears the latest in cheerleading and when the teachers aren’t looking, the boys feel her up and sometimes the girls too, a slick-quick grab of a breast because ha, ha, so funny.
Today, there’s something different about Jane. Her pom-poms are at her feet, her arms are as crossed as they can be, and tucked into the crook of her elbow is a stack of neon posters. Pink, yellow, green, and orange. I know what it’s for but I grab one anyway and take in the bold-faced call to action, the one I’m duty bound to answer because I have finally come of age.
WAKE UP
It’s time for the annual seniors-only bash at Wake Lake, that one night of the year all the parents in town know their kids are getting trashed near the water doing what trashed kids near the water do. We came out of our mothers aware of this party. Our parents went to it and their parents went to it and their parents’ parents went to it. Fuck graduation; this is It. No amount of alcohol poisoning or unprotected sex or accident or injury will get in the way of this honorable Grebe tradition, this very important rite of passage.
Every few years some concerned parent tries to shut it down. It never works. No one can make a case against it because every legendary bit of trouble that comes from the lake is committed by kids from families no one wants to make trouble for. Good families. They’re the business owners, council members, friends of the Turners. And Sheriff Turner is always very good to his friends. I flip the poster over. E-mail S L R for more info. That’s Andy Martin, the yearbook editor.