Fans of the Impossible Life (15 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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The Christmases that you spent at Tilly's were always a study in chaos. The perfectly trimmed tree never had many presents under it, but the ones that were there were immediately ripped open by the children, played with until they broke a few hours later, and finally abandoned in a heap of youthful victory in a corner. You enjoyed watching the kids indulge so deeply in their own sugar-fueled enthusiasm. This year little Stephanie was taking up most of the middle of the living room with a human-size Barbie head with hair made for styling, while the boys ran toy trucks in circles around her.

Neighbors and families from Tilly's church stopped by, ate from the never-ending cookie plate that Tilly refilled throughout the day, dropped off fruitcakes and hand-me-downs for the babies, remarked on the beautiful tree and the happy children and the lovely holiday and God bless us every one.

You were expected to stay until the end of the festivities,
but there was enough activity that you could sneak out every once in awhile for a cigarette from the secret pack that you kept for emergencies, to the tiny backyard where Tilly had installed a secondhand swing set and playhouse. The grass was covered in a light frost and you wrapped your hoodie tightly around yourself to stay warm. You had the Waitresses' “Christmas Wrapping” stuck in your head.

                    
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas

                    
But I think I'll miss this one this year

By six o'clock the visitors were gone, the cookie supply had finally been exhausted, and the children had collapsed in their rooms, storing up for a second wind. You were sitting in your regular chair in the corner reading one of Daniel's new comic books, enjoying the temporary quiet.

“Sebastian, can you clean up all that wrapping paper?” Tilly called from the kitchen.

You put the comic back in the pile of the kids' gifts on the floor where you had found it, got up, and went into the kitchen. Tilly was standing over the sink scrubbing dishes. The babies were asleep in their portable playpen in the corner.

“Yeah,” you said. “Where are the garbage bags?”

“Bottom drawer on the left,” she said. “I guess it's been a while since you've taken out the garbage.”

You grabbed a bag and went back into the living room, picked up the paper that the kids had ripped to shreds in their
enthusiasm that morning, tied it up, and brought it outside to the curb.

When you came back inside Tilly was sitting in the living room, looking at the tree.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You're welcome.”

“Seems like I haven't sat down all day,” she said.

“You haven't.”

You started to go to your room, where Stephanie would inevitably be found snoring in the corner, clutching her giant Barbie head, when Tilly stopped you.

“Have you heard from Jonathan?” she said.

You turned back to her, looked at her sitting there in the overstuffed armchair, her apron still on, a cup of tea in her hand.

“Why would I have heard from Jonathan?” you said.

“I don't know,” she said. “I just thought, maybe, because it's Christmas.”

You had been thinking about Jonathan on this day too, as you watched the holiday chaos unfold around you. For the past two years he had been the one sitting in the corner with you, the one who would sneak outside for a cigarette with you. And now he was gone.

The day that he left, you came home from hanging out with Mira to Tilly sitting alone in the dark in the living room, a cop show on mute on the TV.

“Jonathan left,” she said. “He's gone.”

She sounded tired and sad. Like she had been crying. You
realized that you had never seen Tilly cry. She had always seemed too busy with the kids for something as self-indulgent as crying. You thought in that moment that Tilly had probably done a lot of crying before you knew her. Maybe she had done all of her crying when she lost her husband, and then decided that was enough.

“Do you know where he went?” you asked.

“No,” Tilly said. “But he's allowed to go.” She said it as if she were trying to remind herself.

You started to go to your room.

“There's cake,” she said. “I made him a birthday cake. He didn't have any.”

“Okay,” you said.

That was four months ago now. And it seemed that you and Tilly had been thinking the same thing, that if he was ever going to walk through that door again, it would have happened today.

Tilly took a sip of her tea.

“I haven't heard from him,” you said.

“Well,” Tilly said. “I hope he's having a nice Christmas.”

You nodded and turned to go.

“You'll leave here when you turn eighteen too,” she said.

You looked at her.

“That's true,” you said, not sure where this was going. If Tilly drank you could have written this off as sentimental holiday overindulgence talk, but she just sipped more of her tea.

“Until then you're going to have to follow my rules, though,” she said.

“Okay,” you said.

The two of you stared each other down for a minute, as if she expected you to say something. Finally she said, “I know that you're not going to school.”

Ah.

“I go sometimes,” you said.

“The school called me. They said you're not going.”

“Maybe they were confused.”

“You need to be going to school, Sebastian. I don't even understand where you are all day if you're not at school.”

You didn't say anything.

“I have a feeling that I don't want to know,” she said. “I gave you a second chance a year ago. You got yourself into trouble, and then you pulled that whole running-away stunt, but I gave you a second chance. Now, if you are getting into trouble again, I can't risk you bringing that back here to this house. I have other children to worry about.”

“I'm not getting into trouble,” you said. “I'm not bringing anything here.”

“If you're going to continue to live here, you need to be in school. Do you understand me?”

You took a deep breath. You needed another cigarette.

“Yes,” you said.

“Good,” she said.

“Is that all?”

She turned to the tree again.

“Did you have a nice Christmas?” she asked.

“Yeah. Yes. Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” she said.

You started to go to your room and then thought better of it, headed toward the front door.

“I'm going out,” you said. “I'll be at Mira's.”

“Fine,” she said.

Mira was in her room when you got there. The front door was unlocked and you let yourself in. The house was quiet. Her family went to Mira's aunt's house in the afternoon. Although the lights were still lit on their Christmukkah tree in the living room.

Mira was lying in her bed reading the
Rookie Yearbook
. You lay down next to her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” you said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Is it?”

You rolled over onto your side and rested your head in the crook of her neck.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Tell me a story,” you said.

“Okay,” she said. “What kind of story?”

“One about how we can always run away.”

She smiled. You breathed her in. She smelled like safe places. Like comfort.

“Okay,” she said. “Like, one where you show up here the day before my sixteenth birthday?”

“Yes.”

“And you say, ‘Let's go to the beach.' And we Google ‘gayest beach town in North America' and you read to me about how the Pilgrims actually didn't land at Plymouth first, but farther east. That most people don't know that because of the big Pilgrim cover-up.”

“And I say, ‘We are pilgrims too.'”

“And we say, ‘But this time we won't lie. We will tell the truth about our explorations.'”

You curled yourself around her body as she told the rest of the story and at some point you realized that her shoulder was wet and you knew that it was because you were crying. And you knew that she would cry with you. And that you could always run away again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Dad and Dave and I went to Florida to visit my grandparents for winter break, and I spent my days there floating in their tiny backyard pool, worrying that I was missing things back home. Time spent away from Sebby and Mira or not in the art studio felt wasted. I felt as though I barely existed without them.

The highlight of any day was getting texts from them, usually between the three of us, or us and Rose. As long as I was hearing from them I would feel like I could breathe again, until the texts stopped, and I would become convinced that they had forgotten about me. Dad finally made me put my phone on silent in a drawer during dinner because I wouldn't stop compulsively checking it.

“Somebody's got a girlfriend?” my grandma would say when saw me staring at the screen.

“Just friends, Grandma,” I said.

“Time for some great-grandbabies,” she said.

I got back the Friday before school started again, and texted them as soon as I walked in the door of our house, nearly tripping over poor Dolly Parton the Cat, who did not appreciate the further insult after a week and a half spent with our neighbor cat-sitting her.

“Sorry, Dolly,” I said.

“I'm so glad we got him that phone, aren't you, honey?” Dad said to Dave as they carried in the suitcases from the car. “So lovely to spend your family vacation staring at a tiny screen.”

Mira texted back that I should come over. She was trying to pick out more items to cut up for her Art Club project and she needed help. Sebby wrote that he would meet us later. Tilly was having him watch the kids while she took the babies to a doctor's appointment. This was accompanied by many crying-face emoji.

“I'm going to Mira's house,” I said, putting my coat back on and nearly tripping over Dolly again.

Mira's room was even more of a disaster than usual. Half of the things in her closet were falling off their hangers and starting a slow leak like lava across her floor. She was on the verge of disorganized despair when I arrived, so I made her sit down on the bed while I methodically went through the mess.

“I need more fabric for the dress, but I already brought in everything expendable,” she said.

“How do you even find anything in here?” I said. Trying to go through her closet was like an archeological dig. The layers
were endless.

“I like to forget about things and then let them surprise me when they turn up again,” she said.

I held up a pink tutu.

“How about this?”

“No. No way,” she said. “Look.” She got up and slipped it on over the skirt that she was wearing. “It fits me perfectly.”

“It's enormous,” I said. “You can't fit through the door.”

“It's vintage,” she said.

“Everything in here is vintage.”

“It's not, actually,” she said. “Some of it is genuine crap.”

“Well, can you use the crap?”

“Too crappy to use,” she insisted.

“Okay, you are being impossible.”

She sat back down in a heap of protest on the carpeted floor, her legs crossed under the skirt so that her bottom half seemed to be all tutu.

“Let's go out and buy new stuff for the project, Jeremy. I can't let go of my clothing babies.”

“Sebby is right. You are a hoarder. ‘Clothing babies'?”

“I worked so hard to get them,” she said. “Look at this.” She grabbed a piece of crushed velvet that was sticking out from the corner of the pile. She unbunched the dress. It was an evening gown, the top covered in black sequins.

“Too small for me,” she said.

“But yet you keep it anyway.”

“Here.” She threw the dress at me. “Try it.”

“On? Try it on?”

“Yes,” she said. “I bet it'll fit you. Here, I'll find something for me. Dress-up time.”

She stuck her head into the closet and rummaged through the pile. I stood for a moment holding the dress, feeling the crushed velvet and the satisfying crunch of the sequins in my fingers. Her butt was sticking out of the closet, the tutu framing it in the air.

“Put in on, Jeremy,” she said, her voice muffled by the clothes.

I unbuttoned my shirt and took it off, letting it fall onto her bed. I held up the dress, trying to figure out how to get into it. There was a zipper down the back. I slid it over my head and then took off my pants awkwardly. The dress hugged my torso, the fabric smooth on the inside. Looking in the mirror I regretted wearing boxers that day. The elastic waistband made the fabric bunch up.

Mira emerged from the closet with an armful of clothing.

“Of course it fits you perfectly,” she said, looking at me. “Life is so unfair.”

She zipped the zipper closed on my back and I felt encased, like the dress was holding me.

“Okay, I think this is a formal occasion,” she said. “Help me pick mine.”

After we had decided on a dress for her, she sat down at her vanity.

“What's the makeup look we want?” she said, rustling
through a drawer filled with half-used cosmetics.

“You are really determined to distract from the task of actually getting some of your stuff out of that closet, aren't you?” I said.

“Cat eye and a red lip?”

I was sitting on her bed, trying to keep my legs together under the narrow skirt of the dress. I watched as she applied makeup, pretending to be interested in a magazine from the pile next to her bed. She turned to me when she was done.

“What do you think? Glamorous?”

“Very,” I said.

“Come here,” she said. She moved over on the little bench.

“Why?” I said.

“You think you're getting away with just doing the dress?”

I scooted off the bed, feeling the strange, self-conscious freedom of having nothing between my underwear and the world, at least the world of Mira's room, and sat on the bench.

“The same as me, I think,” she said.

She stood up and leaned her butt against the tabletop of the vanity, gathering the cosmetics into a pile next to her.

“I don't know about this, Mira.”

“You've never worn any makeup?” she said, as if that was an absurd idea.

“I live in a house of only men. I've barely even ever seen makeup.”

She opened a container of powder, dipped a brush in it and leaned towards me.

“This is sheer with a little tint,” she said. “Might look funny on you, since it's tinted for me.”

She brushed it along my cheeks and forehead. I closed my eyes. It was like being ticked with a feather. Like a breeze.

“Not bad, actually,” she said. She picked up a container of blush. “What's that like?” she said. “Living in a house of just men?”

I shrugged. “Seems normal to me. It's all I've ever known.”

She started brushing blush on my cheeks.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “Families can seem so normal and boring from the inside that you don't know you're different until someone else makes you feel different.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That's how I feel about my parents. There was this one time on their anniversary when we were all going out to dinner together at this fancy restaurant, and my mom was running late because she was still at work. I mean, this was back when she actually had a job.”

She dabbed the brush in the powder, brushed more on my cheeks.

“So my sister and I were there with my dad at a table waiting for her. It was a really big place, with lots of rooms. And my mom showed up twenty minutes late and said she was meeting her husband, and the maître d' said he must not be there yet. Because, you know, there was no white guy sitting alone waiting for his white wife. So the guy sat Mom at a table in another room, and it was only when Dad called her phone that they
figured out the guy's mistake. By that time Mom was furious and she completely freaked out on the guy and we left without eating.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, I had never seen my mom lose it in public like that before. I felt a little bad for the guy, actually. We hadn't been really specific with him. Mom didn't say, ‘I'm meeting my husband and two daughters, ages six and ten.' But it just hit this nerve for her. Like we had been exposed as, I don't know . . . not normal.”

“Right.”

“So then you just think,
Well, I guess we're not normal. So be it. Who cares. We're weird.
”

“Dad and Dave have never been weird. I mean, maybe they were at some point, but you wouldn't know it to look at them now.”

“They seem great,” she said.

“Yeah, no. I'm lucky. I mean, I don't know how it all ended up for my mom. I assume she has another family by now.”

“You don't know her at all?”

I shook my head. “She lives in Colorado. Or she did the last time Dad talked to her.”

“So what happened? Why did she go so far away?”

“My dad happened, I guess.”

Mira leaned forward and took my chin in her hand to steady it. She pressed the soft tip of the eyeliner against my eye. I flinched.

“Don't move,” she said.

I held as still as I could as she traced along the top and bottom of my eyelids, only realizing when she was done that I had been holding on to her leg to try to steady myself.

“Pretty good,” she said, examining her work. “Don't look in the mirror yet. I'm not done.”

“Okay.”

“So, your mom.”

“My mom.”

“Your dad told her he was gay, and she freaked out.”“Yeah, that's about it,” I said. “I only know really about my mom from my dad. He told me the whole story when I was ten. Before that there was just this mysterious explanation of ‘Mom moved away and we don't ever get to see her.'”

“Maybe he thought she would come back someday. At least to see you.”

“Maybe. But she didn't.”

“Why do you think she didn't?”

I thought for a moment. I had never said any of this out loud to anyone before. Not even to Peter. “I think he broke her heart. So she needed to get as far away from him as she could. And I was a part of him too.”

“Do you think you're like your dad?”

“No. He was popular in high school. Really handsome. That's who she fell in love with. Mr. All-American Dude. And then suddenly he was something else. I mean, he's still that guy. Just not the way that she thought he was.”

“You're handsome,” Mira said.

“What?”

“You said you're not like your dad, but you're handsome.”

I could feel myself blushing under the blush.

“Well, right now maybe you look more beautiful than handsome,” she said.

“I'm not like my dad,” I said.

“Maybe you're like your mom.”

“Maybe.”

She picked up a tube of lipstick.

“Separate your lips a little,” she said.

I did it, and she leaned in, holding my chin again. I kept my eyes open and watched her eyes watching my lips. The lipstick was creamy and cool, her hand warm on my face. There was something about the feeling of her holding me, her eyes fixed on my lips, that I could feel in my stomach. Something comforting and kind, with an indefinable desire hovering just around the edges. It occurred to me that she was so close to me that we were almost kissing. That if I fell toward her now my lips would be on hers. How would that feel? Lipstick on lipstick?

“Did you ever try to call her?” Mira asked. “Or write to her?”

“My mom?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, she knows where I am if she wants to talk to me.”

“But you know where she is too.”

“I could find out, I guess. I kind of . . .” I wasn't sure how to talk about this. “I guess I don't really want to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to me.” I shrugged. “That sounds pretty childish.”

“No, it's fair. I get it,” she said. She leaned back, examining her work. “Sebby never talks about his mom. I mean, he knew her. And he saw her get sick.”

“When did she die?” I asked.

“He was six or seven, I think. Ovarian cancer. He literally won't talk about it.”

“And he has no other family?”

She shook her head. “He doesn't even know who his dad is. He thinks his mom didn't either. Or if she did, she wanted him to believe that she didn't. That's how he ended up in foster care. Although he's been through so many places they keep threatening to send him to a group home if he can't make this one work. Can you imagine having Sebby as your foster kid?”

“No.”

“Right? I mean, these totally well-meaning people who just want to help children have that show up at their door? And you know that boy has been trouble since he was born.”

She took my chin again and applied another coat of lipstick, wiping with a finger at the edges of my lips. I swallowed, suddenly feeling like I had too much saliva in my mouth.

“One day you'll forgive your mom, though,” she said. “And then you'll want to talk to her.”

I didn't say anything.

“You have good lips, Jeremy,” she said. “You would make a great drag queen.”

“Just because I'm gay I should be a drag queen?” I said, teasing.

“A little drag never hurt anyone's sense of self, believe me.” She wiped her fingers on a makeup wipe. “You must always remember what RuPaul says. ‘We're born naked, and the rest is drag.' Now this,” she said, putting down the lipstick and sitting on the bench next to me, “this is fabulous.”

We sat side by side looking in the mirror on her vanity, matching cat eyes and red lipstick, my top of black sequins on crushed velvet, Mira in silver chiffon. Our thighs touching side by side on the bench. I felt that warm tug in my stomach again, an urge to stay safe in the embrace of this dress, the incense-tinged perfume aura of her room, the unity in our matching eyes examining each other. We looked beautiful.