Come As You Are (5 page)

“I’m thinking about it. But this class is only offered every few years, so… I don’t know.” It was unusual for a freshman to get accepted, but I’d pulled the birthday card. I’d written a letter to the instructor explaining how I needed to take the class. And it was just possible my father had pulled some strings. Ordinarily that would have horrified me, but this was so important that I hadn’t cared. He could have pulled strings like a mad puppeteer.

“Listen, I know you don’t want to talk about this…but the will… We
need
to talk about it. Not today. Not now, but soon.”

I shook my head. “I’ve said all I want to say. It’s okay. I mean, how much money could he have had anyway? I don’t know what he made, but it couldn’t have been that much. We never had money for anything extra. And this house? Like I said, I’m not attached to it. Really.”

He had a strange look on his face.

“What?”

He shook something off and said, “You can stay here. I told you that.”

“I have my own place.”

“How can I eat all that ham? Did you see all that ham?”

I laughed. And he laughed.

How strange. Less than twenty-four hours ago I’d ripped off his pants and cradled his penis in my hand. And now here we were, standing in my old bedroom next to a poster of Kurt Cobain, talking like two old farts.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, but her tone told me she wasn’t sorry. Her tone sounded defensive. That was Rose. She was a good friend and she was a shitty friend. Like pretty much everybody I knew, myself included, she was self-absorbed until she was forced to focus on something or somebody.

Then she could be the sweetest girl on earth, and she would make me forget about the times she’d stood me up because of a dude or because something better had come along.

I was sitting at the kitchen counter of our duplex, a nasty-looking bowl of oatmeal in front of me, a cup of coffee cradled in my hands. I wore an old T-shirt that I’d slept in and a sloppy pair of yoga pants even though it was too hot for yoga pants.

It was almost noon and I’d just gotten up, mostly because my three roommates had kept me awake all night with their music and partying. A girl doesn’t really feel like partying two days after her father’s funeral. You’d think they would have respected that. But no, Taylor had even poked his head in my room and offered me a joint.

“Come hang out.”

The joint was tempting, but then I remembered how pot gave me a headache. And not just a headache. One time Rose and I made pot brownies and before we knew it we’d eaten half the pan. I had to be taken to the ER because I broke out in hives and my lips and tongue swelled. When they asked if I’d ingested peanuts or anything else I might be allergic to I just shook my head.

I shook my head again when Taylor asked me to join them. He didn’t really want my company. I was a buzzkill right now. Until he’d poked his head in the door Taylor hadn’t said a word to me about my dad, and he’d made a point to leave the house whenever I showed up. Stoners seemed to have a problem dealing with real emotions and serious situations. It was like that part of their brain had been short circuited or something. I’d like to think Taylor felt bad for me, but I wasn’t sure.

But this new thing… It hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Rose repeated as she kicked the fridge door closed with a bare foot and carried a carton of orange juice to the counter. She was dressed in folded up jeans, boots, and a black tank top. Her eyes were puffy; she hadn’t been awake long either.

“I know this is bad timing,” she said, “but Isaac and I have been talking about moving in together for months.”

“Yeah, but I figured he’d move in here.”

“We want privacy. We want it to be just the two of us.”

The biggest blow had come when she’d told me Devin and Taylor were moving out too. Seemed they wanted to live in another part of town, closer to the café where they both worked, and they’d found somebody who could sublet our space. The catch was we had to be out in a few days.

“I figured you’d move into your dad’s house anyway,” Rose said.

Ah, no wonder she’d been after me about moving back to my dad’s yesterday. I swear Rose always had an agenda. The second I thought she didn’t there it was, making me feel like an idiot. Just say it, you know? Just come right out and say it.

I’d been anxious to tell her about the will and my new relative, and I’d imagined her reaction. All shocked and outraged—things that would have made me feel better, but now I didn’t want to share my insane story with her. Maybe later, but not now. Maybe never.

She poured herself juice. “I’m sure you can find another place. People are always looking for roommates. And you could move in with me and Isaac while you look if you have to.”

The last thing I wanted to do was cozy up with the two of them. In fact, I didn’t even want to be around her right now. I picked up the oatmeal and coffee and headed in the direction of my room. “I’ll figure something out.”

An hour later I left even though I didn’t have to be to work until late afternoon. But I needed to get out of the house. Well, I needed to get away from my roomies. As I pedaled away on my bike I passed my broken-down car. What the hell was I going to do with it now that the duplex was no longer my home? Maybe Rose had been right when she said to just leave it and let it get towed where it would go unclaimed and end up in auction.

I never thought I’d say it but I found myself wanting to go home. My old home. And that’s exactly what I’d be doing right now if not for penis boy.

I thought about his offer. Ha! Offering to let me stay in my own damn house. But it would be rent-free. And if he tried to charge me maybe it would help me hate him. I suppose I’d have to pitch in for utilities, but whatever. It would make it easier to stay in school without the added expense of rent. No car meant no insurance and no gas and no repairs. So there was a savings. The five hundred bucks I got as a pat on the head wouldn’t even pay for all of my books next semester, but it would help.

Halfway to work I parked my bike in front of a Starbucks. I usually support indie shops, but I had a weakness for Starbucks’ pumpkin spice lattes. Inside I ordered just that, then moved to the waiting area where the barista looked over the row of flavorings and asked, “So, how’s your day going?”

“Fine,” I said in a monotone voice, hoping the flatness along with my deadpan expression would be enough to make him stop right there.

“Just fine? That doesn’t sound very exciting.” Now he was flirting. Fake flirting. I swear if I’d been eighty he would have behaved the same way.

“On a scale of one to ten today would be a five,” I lied. “So yeah, just fine.”

“Any plans?”

“I’m going to work.”

“Where do you work?”

I made a sweep of my hand that meant anywhere but where I was standing.
Shut up. Please shut up.

But he just kept going. “Did you make it to the state fair?”

Should I tell him that two days ago I woke up in bed with a stranger who turned out to be my brother? And should I tell him that my recently deceased father had cut me from his will, leaving everything to this brother? And should I tell him that I’d seriously considered jumping off a bridge and committing suicide, a consideration I was really wishing I’d acted on, especially right this second as he kept knocking home the supreme dark and dismal that was my life. And should I tell him that I was now homeless?

“Here ya go.” He gave me a fake but lovely smile that actually reached his eyes. “Have a good one.”

“Like in a good life, or just a good day?” I asked him, putting a cardboard sleeve on my drink.

“Both.”

“I seriously doubt either of those are going to happen.”

Ian didn’t think he’d find a café called Mean Waitress, didn’t think it really existed, but the café showed up on Yelp, along with over a hundred reviews, many five stars but a lot of one stars, those from people who seemed to have no sense of humor.

Using his GPS app, he headed to the Uptown area of Minneapolis to check out the café and see if Molly really worked there—and to see if the service was as bad as some Yelpers claimed.

Our waitress was high!

I never got my fries!

We never got anything to drink!

Our waitress was high!

Ian spent the past four years working his ass off with school and a part-time job at the campus museum. Now, to have his whole schedule pretty much empty except for getting the professor’s stuff straightened out…it seemed weird.

He called him the professor because he couldn’t think of him as his father. Actually he’d called him asshole for years, but that seemed inappropriate now, all things considered. But days and basically a life with no plans seemed wrong and lazy, and he kept thinking he had to get busy and look for a job.

But then he realized he didn’t have to look for a job. He could take a year off and submit applications to different schools. Maybe he’d even check out the University of Minnesota. It had a good reputation, party school aside. What school didn’t have a party rep? What school didn’t have frat boys sitting on roofs with lawn chairs and coolers? Parties that lasted all weekend?

Ian had been pulled into a little of that, but it wasn’t his thing. Not that he was antisocial, but the whole pounding-your-chest and spending every weekend wasted wasn’t him.

Mean Waitress was pretty easy to find, not that far off I-94, but parking didn’t exist and he found himself circling several blocks until he found a space in a residential area.

The café had two sets of glass doors, maybe a buffer to the Minnesota winter. In the entry was a bulletin board. He paused long enough to spot an eight-by-ten sheet of typing paper on top of other notices. Someone looking for a cheap living space. Someone named Molly.

At the bottom of the paper were phone numbers that could be torn off. One was already gone. He ripped the paper from the tack, folded it, and shoved it in his back pocket before stepping inside, the bell sounding above his head.

It was one of those retro-cool places. They had a lot of them in Berkeley. Meant to be ironic, inhabited by the cool hipsters and cool hippies and a few people who looked out of place and uncomfortable and would most likely never come back. A freestanding sign told him to find his own damn seat. Which he did—at one of the only empty tables, which unfortunately was near the center of the room. He preferred walls.

He spotted Molly and she spotted him at the same time. She didn’t waste time getting to his table.

“Are you stalking me?” She wasn’t happy to see him.

“Thought I’d check this place out, that’s all. And I’m hungry.”

“Everything here sucks.” She handed him a menu. Like the other girls, she wore tight black pants and a tight black T-shirt with the Mean Waitress logo on the front—a vintage image of woman with an order pad. Around Molly’s waist was a short red apron and on her feet were some kind of flat ballet slipper type shoes. Her shiny dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup that he could detect. He wasn’t good when it came to that kind of thing, but since she had dark shadows under her eyes he guessed no makeup.

She left, then returned with a wet rag and wiped down the table, reaching and bending and showing a lot of boob. Which he’d already seen, and which belonged to his half sister. Sick bastard. He swallowed and opened the menu. “So, what sucks the most?”

“Probably the
heuvos rancheros
.” She pointed with the chewed end of her pen. “And the vegetarian burritos. They suck too.”

He pulled the piece of typing paper from his back pocket and smoothed it out on the table.

She made an irritated sound and snatched it away. “Pour your own damn coffee. It’s over there.”

The bell above the door rang as she stepped into the entryway and replaced the notice on the bulletin board. Then she came back to stand next to him. “Listen, penis boy.”

“What did you call me?” He must have misheard.

“I don’t need your help,” she said. “I don’t need anybody’s help.”

“I’ll move out of the house. You can have it to yourself.”

“What are you doing? You don’t know me. I don’t know you.”

“I’m not trying to control your life.” He clasped his hands together, and, elbows on the table, he leaned forward, all to prove his sincerity. But he already knew the wall she had around her was probably unclimbable. At least by him. “I’m not trying to be controlling,” he repeated, lowering his voice although he doubted anybody would overhear because the noise of dishes and talking was deafening. “I’m just saying you don’t need to look for a place to live. You
have
a place to live. That’s all.”

She made a waving motion with her hand, then pulled out her pad. “What do you want to eat?”

He ordered the burrito.

“Are you a vegetarian? It also comes with chicken.”

“I’m a vegetarian. Most of the time.”

“What are you going to do with all of that ham in the refrigerator?”

“You want it?”

“I’m a vegetarian too. All the time.”

He laughed, and in so doing he coaxed a reluctant smile from her before she spun away and shouted his order to the cook. He wondered if, under normal conditions, before her father died and before she’d been left out of the will, she’d smiled that smile a lot.

She was working a waitress job. She was looking for a place to live. And the first semester of classes had just started. This wasn’t going to be easy for her. Somehow he had to make this right. Somehow he had to fix this.

The food sucked as much as she promised, which meant it was delicious, one of the best burritos he’d ever had and he knew he’d be coming back, Molly or no Molly. Before he left, he grabbed a napkin and wrote down his cell number, along with a note.

Call me if you need help moving. I have a van.
Signed,
Ian
. He left the napkin tucked under his plate.

I got a couple of calls about roommates and went to check them out. One was a houseful of cigarette-smoking druggies. I’m okay with smoking as long as people do it outside, but the house—or pad, let’s just call it a pad—was littered with overflowing ashtrays and cans and plates, all full of cigarette butts. Under and over and in between that was the nauseating smell of cat spray. Not piss, but that burn-your-eyes smell that went along with unneutered male cats that liked to back up and raise their tails to walls and couches and legs.

In fact, one of the cats backed up to me while I was standing there trying to act interested in the place as the stoner showed me around. I felt something weird through my tights, looked down to see a cat tail quivering in the air and a stream of whatever hitting my calf. I screamed and jumped and the cat took off, skidding around a corner.

“Yeeaah,” I said, dragging out the word as I squished up my face, then kind of grimaced in an I’m-sorry expression. “I don’t think this is right for me. I’m allergic to cats.” Lie, but better than having to tell the stoner dude that I didn’t really want to wallow in their filth.

The next place was the opposite. Two earnest girls with shiny faces who immediately launched into how they had to kick out their last roommate because she played music all night and didn’t do her chores. One of the girls pointed to the chore wheel on the refrigerator.

“Yeeaah,” I said with elaborate sorrow and a grimace. “I don’t think this is going to work for me. You have a great place, but it’s a little farther from my work than I thought it would be. I’m really looking for something closer.”

Their faces fell and I felt bad.

“But I’m sure you’ll find somebody. Such a nice space.” And it was. All sunny and clean and happy. Too happy. Of course I didn’t have to hang out with them, but when you’re dealing with dark crap it’s hard to face such cheerful faces on a daily basis. It’s like the contrast would just make me feel worse, make me feel more of a freak.

They stood at the door and watched me pedal away, and I’ll bet they wanted to tell me I should be wearing a helmet. Dad always told me that too. He’d even gotten me one that was probably buried somewhere in the house.

Most of the time I thought about my father the monster, but occasionally childhood memories came rushing back. My dad, removing the training wheels from my bike and running behind me, holding the seat as I pedaled down the sidewalk, screaming for him not to let go.

What if I erased the monster memories and just clung to the good ones? No, that couldn’t be done. I couldn’t forget who he was. I couldn’t allow death to turn him into something he wasn’t. My little trip down memory lane had been triggered by my visit to the shiny, happy girls. See, bad already. I’d been there a few minutes and I was already trying to rewrite my own history and make my father the hero of my story.

Fuck that shit.

Back at the duplex, Taylor and Rose were already moving out, and the space was beginning to sound empty. Rose’s plants were gone, and her cat, Barney, was nowhere to be seen, his litter box no longer in the bathroom.

I went to my room, closed the door, and pulled out the napkin I’d tucked away yesterday, after Ian stopped by the café. Today was Sunday. I had classes Monday. Needed to be out of the duplex by Wednesday.

I pulled out my cell and called the number on the napkin.

“I can be over in thirty minutes,” he said.

“It’s just until I find a place,” I told him. “And I don’t have much here.”

I gave him the address, and he was there in less than thirty minutes.

A dresser, stereo, boxes of albums, two lamps, framed pictures I’d picked up at thrift stores. That was pretty much it. The bed was staying.

“No Nirvana?” he asked, perusing the space.

“No.”

The dresser was big, with an oval mirror. Using a screwdriver, I crouched down and began to dismantle the frame that held the glass. Ian squeezed between the dresser and the wall to steady the frame, waiting for me to free it. He raised his arms and his blue T-shirt shifted, exposing a waistband of jeans that were faded and worn, and a brown leather belt that was scratched and a little curled. I saw the hard, smooth contours of his stomach, and when I looked higher, beyond the expanse of shirt, I saw the bulge of biceps. He wasn’t as puny as I thought. And of course my mind went back to the one vivid memory I had of him, and I felt myself go weak with the remembering because it was tactile as well as visual.

The screwdriver slipped and I jabbed myself. “Damn.” It came out all breathless and annoyed.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Just like I told the barista yesterday and just like I would tell the barista next week and the week after that.

While I found myself lusting over him I thought,
Ick, how sick.
But then I remembered he wasn’t really my brother, and maybe I should come clean on that. But, no. If I suddenly said,
Hey, I’m not really your sister
, then he’d think it was an invitation, which it would be. But if we were going to be sharing the same house it was best to keep my distance. Couldn’t imagine how awful that would be to have sex with him, then wake up in the same house. Plus have sex with him in
that
house. No. Couldn’t happen.

“Your face is red,” he observed.

“I’m having a hot flash.”

The mirror and frame were unscrewed, and he lifted them up and away. “So you’re in menopause?”

“I’m older than I look.”

On the way out the door he stopped. “How old are you? Really.”

“Twenty-two.” I checked the wound on my hand. Barely more than a scrape. “You?”

“Twenty-five.”

“An old fart.”

“Yup.”

Out the door he went, then I heard his feet thundering down the steps.

Rose and Taylor weren’t home, and I was hoping we’d get out of there before they returned for another load. Since I hadn’t told Rose about Ian, I wasn’t sure how to explain the whole mess in a few sentences, and I didn’t want to. It would take a girls’ night of drinking, and even then it would never make sense.

He’s your what? And you two did what? And he was left everything but five hundred bucks? And you’re moving in with him? Into your father’s house?

Maybe it wouldn’t take a night of drinking. That pretty much summed it up.

In Ian’s van I felt myself unraveling as we headed to my father’s house. I never thought I’d live there again. I’d promised myself I’d never live there again, but for some reason the addition of Ian made it not seem as bad. It took away some of my father’s taint, and even though his stuff would still be everywhere I could already feel a shift in the air before we arrived.

The cloud wasn’t as dark. And I knew I should hate Ian. I kept telling myself I should hate him, but I couldn’t hate him. In the few times I’d been around him I’d experienced this sense of…I don’t know. Safe. Which was weird when I thought about how he was the one responsible for pulling everything out from under me.

I should have hated him for the house. Why? Because he was my father’s flesh-and-blood relative. Unlike me.

We pulled up in front of the green and burgundy bungalow, parking behind a Dumpster with rolls of beige carpet poking out. At first I couldn’t place the carpet even though it looked familiar. Then I realized it had come from the house. So weird, something so familiar that I’d thought belonged to a stranger.

Inside, most of the furniture had been removed and a lot of what hadn’t been tossed into the Dumpster was sitting on the porch.

“Sorry,” Ian said when he saw me looking around the space, my eyes big, mouth hanging open. “I didn’t think you’d be coming over here this soon. Look, I can bring the furniture back inside. I can put the carpet back down.”

He misread me.

The house already felt different, and I could sense the promise of what it would be like once it was done. And I wanted in on it. I wanted to be a part of it. If there was any dismay on my face it was because I wanted in on the purge. I wished I’d been there to help him rip up the carpet. I wished I’d been there to carry out furniture and toss it into the Dumpster, hearing it crash and break.

God, this was perfect. This was exactly what I needed.

“Don’t do anything else,” I told him. “Nothing.”

“Okay. I won’t. I was bored and I started seeing this stuff I wanted to do. But I’ll stop. I’ll put it all back.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I want to do it. I want to gut this place.” I started walking around. “Pull down this paneling. Strip this wallpaper that’s been here since I was a baby. Maybe even refinish the floors.”

Now I was in the kitchen, looking at the nasty cupboards that had turned orange over the years. “We could sand those down and paint them white. I’ll help pay for it.” I didn’t know how, but this was something I wanted to do. Something I needed to do.

“So you don’t care?” He looked baffled. And who wouldn’t? He didn’t understand my need to erase the past. Who could possibly understand that? “Paint everything,” I said. “All the rooms. Top to bottom.” Paint could cover up a lot of ghosts.

“I’m cool with that.”

I ran my hand across the fake wood countertop. “I’ve seen counters you can make out of poured cement. They look awesome.”

“That might be a bit out of my area of expertise. In fact, all of this will be new to me.”

“You’ve never painted before?”

“I’ve helped friends a few times, but they pretty much put the roller in my hand.”

“I painted my bedroom once, but I want to do it again. A different color. It’ll be fun.”

“What about school? This sounds like a major project.”

“I don’t know.” All I wanted to do was work on the house.

“Maybe go tomorrow. Give it a week or so. They usually allow a few weeks to drop if you decide it’s too much right now.”

“Good idea.”

We spent the next hour carrying in my things, depositing most of it in a corner of the living room. Then, exhausted, I went to bed. My old room. My old bed. Creepy, but also comforting. And so odd to think that the man boy was just down the hall. The man boy who thought he was my brother.