The Female of the Species (16 page)

I don't like to come home.

Other houses have warmth in them, the lines between the people who live there humming with unspent energy ready to unreel. Conversations from the past still hover in the air, waiting for the threads to be picked up again. The air here is cold, empty to the point of sterility. When I hear my name it's shocking, a word that isn't spoken. Taboo.

It came from the living room, so I follow it, the only light provided from the moon bouncing back off the snow outside. My mother is sitting on the couch, a cut-crystal decanter on the coffee table in front of her, glass in her hand.

“Mom?” I say, which doesn't sound right and never
has. The word carries a history that we don't share, implies picnics and swing sets and trips to the pool.

“Who else?” she asks, and I don't know what to say to that. “Come here,” she says. “Have some scotch.”

I don't want scotch and I don't want to drink with her, but it's the only olive branch she has to offer, so I take it, the alcohol heavy and hot as it rips down my throat. She throws hers back like water and pours another for both of us.

“You've been out a lot,” she says.

I have, and I don't like the guilt that seeps over me with her words. Like maybe I shouldn't be.

“I have a boyfriend,” I tell her. That word feels so meaningless here, lacking the fullness it carries at Jack's house, the weight of his mom's hand on my shoulder as we stand side by side in the kitchen, pouring off-brand root beer into plastic cups. I take another drink of scotch, hoping it will make words come more easily. “His name is Jack.”

Mom investigates the bottom of her glass like she can't figure out how it became empty so quick. “The boy who brought your car back?”

“Yes.”

“He's good-looking.”

I know he is, so I don't reply.

She pours herself another and frowns a little when it
overflows onto her fingers, flicking sticky amber drops off into the dark. “Do I need to talk to you about . . .”

“No,” I say.

We drink quietly in the dark, each swallow going down more easily than the one before. I feel it in a few minutes, my head floating and the words I need to string together in order to get through this sliding off the surface of my suddenly slick brain.

“Do you have other friends?” Mom asks eventually.

“One,” I say. I think about Sara for a second, a person who I spend time with because we both spend time with Claire. “Maybe two.”

“Gotta start somewhere,” Mom says, her words beginning to slur.

We're quiet again, this unfamiliarity of talking to each other not comfortable but not as painful as I thought it might be, either.

“You're so much like him,” Mom says. “It's not easy for me, you know.”

I don't say anything because I don't want to talk about this. Not about how my anger builds in my stomach and boils up into my head, venting out through my hands and mouth like steam escaping on the way. Not about how he was the same and I saw that once or twice, how he wanted to throw a punch or break her jaw. But he always stopped himself, and maybe that's something he could've taught me if he'd stayed.

“Once he was gone I hoped the parts of you that are from me would have more room to breathe,” Mom says.

“That didn't happen,” I say.

“No.” She nods. “I wish I could open you up, Alex, unspool everything inside of you and burn out the parts that are from him, put you back together and see my daughter instead of my husband every time I look at you.”

I take another drink. If she doesn't instinctively understand that's the same thing, then I can't explain it.

“I've been trying to get him out of my life for ten years,” she says, refilling her glass again. “Little things build up when you live with someone. Six months ago I found a vase someone gave us as a wedding gift and I took it outside and broke it. But I can't do that with you. A decade trying to get everything he touched out of this house and I end up raising him instead.”

My mom has poetry in her, something I never would have guessed. It must be where my words come from, flowing through me with a power equaled only by the fire in my gut. They're moving now, escaping in a way I didn't mean to or expect.

“I killed Comstock,” I say.

“I know,” she answers.

And we drink a little more in the dark, that thread hanging in the air. And maybe one of us will reach for it again.

My dad has some crutch phrases. One of his big ones is
this too shall pass
(2 Corinthians 4:17–18, if you're wondering). My mom always tacks her version onto that—
time heals all wounds
, although I'm not sure she's placed her trust entirely on the earth continuing to rotate, because she supplements with chamomile tea. So most of the crying done in my life has been over steamy mugs with herbs floating in them, the musty whiff of Dad's big-ass King James Version flopped open across from me, while well-meaning pats on the back are supposed to make everything okay.

This is how my trauma is handled, everything from Grandma dying to my first kitten tangling with a speeding Jeep to getting my period. I did call Dad out on the
this too shall pass
thing on that last one. Then Mom got all loyal and explained menopause and the fact that
technically
Dad was right, it would just take about forty years, and then I cried harder.

So it's understandable that I didn't bring my broken heart to them, dumping the bloody pieces onto the dinner table after we finished our cherry cheesecake. They knew, though. They couldn't
not
notice that suddenly Adam was no longer a fixture in our house, a guy who was so welcome and trusted that he didn't have to knock anymore. But I guess maybe Mom and Dad are smart enough to realize that pointing out the second hand on the clock isn't going to suddenly mend the fissure straight through my aorta.

Here's the thing, though—they were right.

We're deep into winter and I've stopped feeling like there is a spear in my chest every time he's up against Branley in the hallway. To her credit, I actually saw her push him away a couple of times when I came around the corner. It's not like we're friends or anything. We'll give each other a nod in the hallway or cautiously say
excuse me
when we slide past each other in the senior cut line at lunch, but we're not coordinating our clothes every night. Still, the fact that she's trying to not throw it in my face set a warm glow in the black gaping hole where I picture that spear passing through, so many times that
the wound keeps getting bigger.

Except I think it closed up when I wasn't paying attention.

The other night I got a text from a number I didn't recognize, an anonymous
how r u?

I shot back:
who is this?
A call came in from the same number two seconds later. I let it go to voice mail, listening immediately after I got the notification. And then Adam's voice, definitely injured: “Seriously, you deleted my number?”

I didn't add him as a contact, but I did keep the voice mail. The righteous indignation buried there amused me.

I texted back:
Yeah, I did. What's up?

U talking to Park?

Also amusing. Yes. I am talking to Park, kind of. It started when he texted me to make sure I was okay after what happened at the church, an innocent brotherly text that I didn't read anything into, responding that I was fine and thanks for checking. A couple of days later he asked if I was coming to the basketball game and I answered
yes
and his response—a simple
good
—kind of set that glow I mentioned earlier into a spark.

So we've been playing this careful game with each other, one that's fun to play because I know I can't get hurt too badly when all we're doing is texting sometimes. Once we went on an accidental double date when
me and Alex and Park and Jack all ended up at the same diner one night. Except when I went to grab my bill I realized that he'd already paid for my grilled cheese. When I said something he smiled at me, so maybe it wasn't an accident that we met up after all.

So when my ex-boyfriend asks,
U talking to Park?
I answer
yes
, and our text conversation out of nowhere ends abruptly.

And I couldn't give less of a shit.

I kind of miss Branley.

It's weird. In a lot of ways Branley is my best friend, and suddenly cutting her out made that really clear to me. Yes, sometimes I'd have to plow through piles of shit to get down to the real Branley, the girl who used to sneak up on me in seventh grade and buckle my knee from behind. And it's work to bring that out of her, but it's worth it, always, and I miss that girl even if she's buried inside of a tanned, waxed, lip-glossed, pouty Barbie doll who wants to fuck before starting a conversation.

Because that's what would happen if I tried. I know because she keeps sending me nudes, each a little trashier than the one before since I never respond. She worked
up to a video, and I watched it because
duh
, and then I felt kind of terrible. If she just sent me a damn text with words instead of shots of her tits I might actually answer her.

But I can't. Because she's a crowbar in a door I'm trying to shut and she'll wedge her way in and use the leverage to get me in bed and goddammit I don't know if I could tell her no. I miss Branley, but I miss sex too, and I'm trying to be a good guy and why can't the two of those things be separate anyway?

Tonight is not going to be easy. Park wants us to hang out at the church, even though it's ass cold outside. He's got this big idea that if Alex is there with me then Peekay will be with him by default, but the downside is Adam somehow got in on this too and that means Branley will be there. Park's fine with that because it'll just make it even more obvious that this is a couples thing and he's totally into Peekay. And I can't exactly explain to him that Branley sends me palm-worthy vids and that makes the whole thing weird for me, because then he'd want to see it and I'm definitely not doing that.

I tried to communicate my non-interest in this group thing by just making throat noises when he talked to me about it, or responding with texts that just said
meh
or
whatever
. But somehow Alex and I have become an integral part of getting him and Peekay together, and now
there will be three couples there. Me and Alex, Adam and Branley, Peekay and Park.

Read as: The Guy Who Used To Bang Branley and His Occasionally Violent Girlfriend Who Doesn't Know Branley Still Sends Nudes To Him, Peekay's Ex-Boyfriend Who She Might Not Be Over and The Girl Who Still Sends Nudes To The Guy Who Used To Bang Her, and The Girl Who Almost Punched Branley In The Face Not That Long Ago and A Pretty Clueless Guy Who Thinks This Is A Good Idea.

It's a small town. There aren't a lot of dating options, but this is still its own special kind of mess.

It's okay because I have my own ideas about how to handle tonight. The six of us all together can only be nonnuclear for so long, so Alex and I are going for a walk after about an hour. We'll be alone, the way we both like it, and I have a surprise for her, and if I said that to Branley she'd think it was my dick even though it's, like, five degrees outside and I am human after all.

Tonight I'm going to tell Alex that I love her. It's been like a pressure inside of me, a combination of words that wants to erupt at the wrong times, sounds that might escape on their own if I'm not concentrating. I swear to God I can feel
I love you
in my throat like a physical thing, and I need to make sure that when it finally gets
out there it happens in the right way.

Because this is special, because Alex is special. And I need to make tonight special, too.

It doesn't start out great.

Park is big on planning, but execution is another thing, and lighting a fire with nothing but soaked wood is not easy.

“Son of a bitch,” he says, as yet another match flares out before catching.

Alex is watching him with her eyebrows crunched slightly together. I know she's trying not to embarrass him by taking over, but it's freaking cold and our basic needs are going to overcome being polite really soon.

Peekay has her hands jammed into her armpits and starts stomping her feet, which makes her boobs jiggle. Park doesn't even try to act like he's not staring and Alex smoothly takes the matches from his hand while he's distracted.

“Christ, it's cold,” Branley says as she walks in, Adam trailing behind her. She's wearing the thinnest jacket possible; it hugs her tiny waist and accents the explosion of her boobs. She looks fantastic, but there's a reason she's freezing.

“I brought body heat,” Adam says, and Park makes a gagging noise onto Alex's shoulder. She knocks him
onto his ass with her elbow as flames flick to life under her hands.

“Good thing Alex got the fire started then,” Branley says, clearly finding her boyfriend as lame as the rest of us do.

Park drags a couple of bigger rocks over to the fire, and I help him with a pew, our combined muscles still not enough to get the damned thing off the ground, so we're making a horrible
screeeech
as oak that hasn't budged in years scratches its way across stone.

It's accomplished eventually. We've got a fire that gives off heat, and seats and beer for everyone. Peekay claims a spot next to Park on the pew so fast that I know this entire thing didn't need to happen in the first place, but we're here now. Branley sits on one of the rocks, her cold hands jammed into her pockets so that the best thing Adam can do is take a rock next to her and put his arm in the crook of her elbow. They look like an awkward prom photo and it's pretty clear if there's dancing she'll be the one taking the lead.

It's kind of funny and my eyes meet Bran's and she somehow finds a way to shrug with one eyebrow and I'm trying not to laugh because secret communication across a fire with a girl who sends you nudes is probably not cool when your girlfriend is right next to you.

Except Alex is not right next to me. She decided
to sit on the ground for some reason, which leaves me sitting on an old aluminum lawn chair that someone dragged here in the nineties and never reclaimed. We're still close. She's by my knee and she does rest her temple against my kneecap for just a second after I sit, which is nice and all, but I like seeing her face and now I don't get to. I settle for running a strand of her hair through my fingers as I crack open a beer.

The fire is hot and the beer is cold enough to have ice chips floating in it, and I'm settling into a comforting haze when Peekay's phone goes off. She jumps, and nobody can miss her face collapsing when she reads her text.

“Sorry,” Peekay says, disentangling herself from Park. She's dialing as she walks away from us, her silhouette lost in the shadows. But her words float in the darkness and the ones her voice cracks on might as well be said to our faces they're so loud.

What? . . . I thought he was . . . your parents . . . okay? . . . about you? . . . of a bitch . . . the cops? . . . don't think . . . fucking terrible . . . so sorry . . .

Nothing good is happening here and the rest of us are all looking at one another, not polite enough to pretend we can't hear it and too curious to talk over her so that we actually don't. Peekay comes back to us, flopping down next to Park but not leaning into him, and
he looks like a puppy that was told he was being adopted but then someone changed their mind. It's dead quiet and he looks at me because he has no idea what to say or do, and then Branley saves him by being a pushy bitch because that's what she's good at.

“What was that about?”

I expect Peekay to tell her to fuck off, but there are three empty beer cans at her feet and the fire's light only extends so far, making it seem like our faces are the only ones in the world.

So instead Peekay looks up from her phone, dark and silent now in her hands, and says, “You guys know about Sara's uncle, right?”

And we do, so it's not like Peekay really has to say anything else. You can't mow your yard here without someone knowing when you started and how long it took, so if you like kiddie porn we will know. We will know and it won't be talked about openly, but whispered behind hands, texted from one mom to the next, auto-correct not picking up on the words we don't use often because they're too horrible. Kids will be kept a little closer when we're in the same grocery store and smiles will be stretched tighter or dropped entirely. But we will know. And you'll know we know.

Except Alex doesn't, because she's just now crawling out of that black hole of a house to become a part of us.
So when Branley says, “Sara has a little sister, doesn't she?” and Peekay just starts crying and Park says
motherfucker
like he means it, Alex doesn't know what to do. She looks back at me, so very lost, and I don't want to be the one to fill her in but someone has to. So I grab her hand and we take the walk I've been planning, the heat from the fire leaking out of our bodies the second we leave the light, her fingers in mine as cold as naked bones.

It's been snowing a little, so my tracks from earlier are filled in, and this could be the most romantic thing I've ever done except it's not going to be, because I don't think I can very well follow up a conversation that has the word
molester
in it with my first declaration of love.

But the dew has frozen and the moon is so bright it looks like the entire woods is made out of shadows covered in diamonds. So maybe I can salvage this thing after all, and I'm trying to reset my brain when Alex says, “What's that?”

She breaks away from me, her feet punching through the snow.

“Hold up,” I call, wanting to be there with her, but she's ahead of me, so when I catch up she's in the little clearing, a solitary Scotch pine standing sentinel in the middle.

I found it last week after work, when Dad told me
Mom said it's time for a tree to go up. Only we can't afford the twenty bucks to go buy one at a lot, so I thought if I could sneak one out of the woods without getting arrested for trespassing that would be all right. And I found this one, the right size, no gaping holes. Like it's auditioning for the role of Christmas tree. So I went to the car and I got my ax, but when I came back I couldn't do it.

There had been a light snow that day, and the branches held on to millions of tiny flakes. Flakes that would be dislodged by the first swing of my ax, then destroyed under my muddy boots as I tore into the trunk, the steel bite ripping through a life lived longer than my own just to die in the living room and be hauled to the street on December twenty-sixth.

I couldn't do it. But I also know it's my last Christmas at home and that's why Mom is insisting on a tree even though everyone knows there won't be many presents under it. So I stayed out until two in the morning and drove to the lot and stole a tree, creeping away with my lights off and the weirdest feeling in my heart. Because what I'd just done was technically wrong, but it felt more right than cutting down the pine in the clearing, and the tree strapped to my car was going to die anyway so I might as well take it.

And I lay in bed all that night and thought about
trees. Dumbest thing in the world. And I wasn't sure what was keeping me up until I realized it wasn't my mom's face (crying; she's that way about holidays) I kept seeing in my head but Alex's, and how she'd told me once she hadn't had a tree since their dad left. And that's when the whole thing came together: the woods, the words
I love you
waiting to be said, and all the things I can't give her because I'm poor and she's not.

I could do this thing, though, and I tried so hard to make it right, and Alex is looking at it now. Ornaments so old that not even my mom can justify using them are transformed by the frozen dew and the moon, every inch screaming with a beauty that will dissolve in the sunlight. Dime-store ribbon tied into bows, razor-sharp with ice, will be wilted trash in a few hours when reality steps in. But this isn't reality and this isn't the morning. It's now and it's my moment and I reclaim Alex's hand and take a deep breath and she says—

“Tell me about Sara's uncle.”