Grime (3 page)

“Put the box aside, we can deal with it
later. Is there a dolly in the truck?”

“Yeah, should be.”

Even with the dolly it takes us a while to
get the fridge out to the trailer. Between it and the bags Val
filled while we were gone, it’s time for another trip to the dump
already. “Will they let us just toss a whole fridge?” Gwen asks.
“Isn’t there some Punky Brewster law or something?”

“Punky Brewster law?”

“Yeah, you know. There was some episode where
a kid got trapped in a fridge. I think they made it illegal to dump
them after that.”

“Because of a kid’s TV show?”

“You’re so stupid, baby.” Ethan rolls his
eyes at her.

Gwen just bats her lashes at him. “But you
love how stupid I am, don’t you, baby?”

I sort of don’t like the way he’s looking at
her, but I really don’t like the way she’s looking back.

Val offers to go with Jamie this time. She’s
hardly said a word since we got back and I think she wants to get
away from Gwen for a while. They never did get along.

With the promise of pizza upon their return,
Jamie and Val pull out of the driveway. “Wanna beer?” Ethan asks,
popping the trunk of his bizarre little red car and pulling out an
old Coleman cooler. It’s not even eleven-thirty, but what the hell.
I’ve been working hard. We all take one and sit on the curb,
watching the nothing go by.

Gwen starts babbling. She tells me about
their apartment, and how it’s not too far away. She tells me about
their dog. She tells me about their friends. It’s always their,
never her. She’s in the middle of telling me about their landlord
when Ethan interrupts her.

“You’re the homo brother, right?”

“I’m the only brother.”

“Yeah, but you’re a homo?”

“Yeah.”

He laughs wheezily. “Don’t worry, man. I
ain’t gonna hate crime you or anything. I’m just curious.”

“Baby, stop it.”

“Don’t tell me to stop it. I ain’t doing
nothing. We’re just talking. See, when you shut up for a minute,
sometimes other people like to talk.” She sneers at him, but he
leans around her to see me better. “You ever know anyone that talks
as much as her?”

I shrug. “I live in L.A. Everyone I know
talks as much as her.”

He likes that. He laughs again and points at
me. A genuine fucking laugh-and-point, like they do after they
catch the bad guy in every cheesy buddy cop flick I’ve ever seen.
Never had a real life laugh-and-point, though. I don’t think
anybody has. I might be the world’s first.

We finish our beers and head inside. Living
room and kitchen done, we move down the hallway. The first door I
open is the bathroom. We all stand there, staring into the abyss
for a minute, then Gwen and I look at each other.

“Leave it for Val?”

“Leave it for Val.”

I shut the door and we move on to a bedroom.
It takes me a few minutes to recognize it as my own. Or at least,
the room where I slept weekends between the ages of nine and
fifteen. I honestly can’t remember what it looked like back then.
Is that the same bed? Is it in the same place? I think it was
against that other wall. Yeah, because the other side of that wall
is the girls’ room and we used to tap to each other in the
dark.

“So you got a boyfriend?” Ethan asks.

“What?” I’m struggling with assembling a box
and the question doesn’t register.

“You got a boyfriend? Or a partner, or a
husband, or whatever?”

Oh god. He’s one of those people, isn’t he?
“Yeah. His name’s Ben.”

“And what is he, then? Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“We need some music in here.” Gwen pulls out
her phone and starts scrolling through. A few seconds later a song
rings out over the tiny speaker, and I know it from the opening
chord.

“Jackson Five? Really?”

“You bet your ass, Jackson Fucking Five.” She
starts dancing around, lip syncing with baby Michael’s wails as the
intro plays on.

I roll my eyes at her and start dropping
books into the box. Some of them were mine. I examine a few Louis
L’amour paperbacks with my name printed neatly on the inside
covers. I couldn’t tell you the plots, but I remember how it felt
reading them.

Gwen’s still dancing, and Ethan is sat on the
bed, watching her bounce around. “Ben,” he says. “That short for
Benjamin?”

“Bennett, actually.” Why the fuck does he
care?

“Mitch, dance with me.”

“Gwen, clean up with me.”

“Mitch.”

“Gwen.”

She grabs my hands and pulls me toward her,
pulling my arms back and forth in time. “God, when did you get so
boring?”

“I’ve always been boring.”

She lifts my arm and twirls beneath it. I
wonder if she’s high. She’s not letting go of my hands anytime
soon, so I finally relent and bounce around with her for a bit.
Ethan leans back on his elbow and whistles as I twist her around in
a pretzel, ducking under and around our own arms and only getting
mildly tangled up in the process. Gwen sings along with Michael,
and I take up Jermaine.

I want another flash of memory. I want to
remember doing this with her as kids. But I don’t think we ever
did.

The song ends and she squeezes me around the
waist before picking up her phone again to look for another.

“This was my room, you know. I moved in here
after you left,” she says.

“Really? So this is your shit I’m cleaning up
while you’re goofing around?”

“Yup.”

I throw a Judy Blume at her and it hits her
in the shoulder. She glances down at it, then squints up at me. “I
honestly can’t say if that’s yours or mine.”

I throw another. She laughs and dodges
it.

"When's the last time you were here,
anyway?"

She shrugs. "April, I think."

"This last April?"

"What month is Easter? It was Easter."

"Why?"

She shrugs again. "I came by a few times a
year. We only live an hour away."

"Yeah, but... why?"

"I don't know."

"He was an asshole. And a convict."

"So's Ethan."

"Six years. Armed robbery," he confirms,
still stretched out on the bed, staring at me with dark eyes,
daring me to pass judgment.

"Hope you stole something worthwhile." Jesus.
My sisters sure know how to pick 'em. I wonder what Billy's deal
is. He probably hunts crippled bunnies for sport. Or blows a
fortune in online poker. Loves scatplay. Something.

"What's worth six years?"

"I don't know. The crown jewels? The story
alone would be worth at least three."

Ethan smirks, then grins. "Yeah, man. The
crown jewels."

At least my little sister's redneck ex-con
boyfriend thinks I'm funny. I've got that going for me.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. “It’s Ben,” I
lie as I slide my finger across the screen.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Okay. Hold on a second.” I navigate the maze
of junk to the doorway. Gwen makes a kissy face at me as I pass. I
shove my gloved palm against her nose, and she squeals and turns
her face away. Once I’m outside I walk around the house and lean
against the garage door. “Okay.”

“Can you talk?”

“Yeah, for a bit.”

“I can call back.”

“No, it’s fine. Now’s fine.” I don’t want to
say it, but it’s coming out anyway. “I miss your voice.”

“I miss yours, too.”

Jesus. I shouldn’t be saying this shit to
him. I shouldn’t be saying this shit at all, but if I was going to
say it to anybody it should be Ben.

“You surviving?” he asks.

“It’s good, really. Kind of weird at first,
but it’s okay. We’re actually kind of having a good time.”

“That’s great. I told you, you were worried
for nothing.”

“Day’s not over yet.”

“God, you’re such a downer. When are you
coming home?”

“Tomorrow. My flight gets in around
seven.”

“Want me to pick you up?”

I hesitate. “No.”

“Oh.” He tries to sound casual, but he’s
terrible at it. “Is Ben picking you up?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Of course.”

This. This is the moment, when I’m feeling
just like this, when I’m hating myself and I’m hating him and we’re
both hating everything we’re doing to each other, this is when I
should end it. This is when I should just tell him it’s over. This
is when he would understand, or at least when he wouldn’t pretend
not to, when neither of us would pretend not to, and then it would
be done.

But I don’t. I won’t. I never have before,
and I won’t now.

Instead I just wait for him to speak again,
wait for his voice. As soon as I hear it the moment will be over.
He takes his time. All I hear is breathing. Then, “So when?”

“Soon.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” My chest feels like I’ve swallowed a
ball of string. “I’ve got to get back. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

We don’t say I love you. We never do.

After we hang up I just stare at his name in
my contact list for a while. That empty star hovers near his photo
like a ticking bomb. I’m tempted to fill it, to tap it with my
thumb and watch it turn gold, declare him once and for all to be
what he is. A favorite. But I won’t, because in the back of my mind
is the nagging fear that somehow Ben will see it. He’ll glance down
and that glaring five-pointed beacon of betrayal will burn in his
eyes and then he’ll know.

Jesus, Mitch, it’s just a goddamn phone. I
can be so dramatic sometimes.

When I go back inside Ethan and Gwen are
making out on the bed. He has his hand up her shirt and is kneading
his fingers into her like a man clinging to the edge of a
cliff.

“Gwen!” She opens her eyes and looks straight
at me, her tongue still working in his mouth. “Jesus Christ. Knock
it off and help me already.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine.” She pushes Ethan away and
climbs over him to get to one of the empty trash bags lying on the
floor. Eventually he gets up, too, and the three of us listen to
Gwen’s terrible music and chat about nothing while we throw away
forgotten bits of our childhood.

“You like tits?” Ethan asks me suddenly.

“Everybody likes tits.”

He laughs so hard at that one he has to sit
on the sit on the edge of the bed until he recovers.

By the time Jamie and Val get back with the
pizza we're only half done clearing the bedroom. None of us want to
eat inside, with the dirt staring at us, so we all sit on the
porch, using torn up pieces of the pizza box lids as plates. Ethan
gets the cooler out of his car and we all take a beer.

"Remember the people who used to live across
the way?" Jamie asks through a mouthful of Italian sausage. "The
ones with the dog?"

Jesus. Are we doing the remember whens?
Seriously?

"The bulldog?" says Val.

"It wasn't a bulldog, it was a pug or
something."

"Not a pit bull, a bulldog. Like a French
bulldog. One of those little ones."

It was a fucking rat terrier mutt, but I
don't care enough to correct them.

"Like the queen has?"

"The queen has corgis."

"Not bulldogs? I thought she had, like,
British bulldogs."

"Ohmygodidontcare." It all comes tumbling out
of me as a single word. "And you accuse me of talking and talking
without saying anything," I moan to Jamie. She pokes me in the
forearm with her crust.

"Anyway, like I was saying, those people were
dicks."

"I don't remember the people, I only remember
the dog."

"How long did y'all live here, anyway?" Ethan
asks.

Jamie looks at me. "Dad got out when we were,
what, eight?"

"Yeah."

"He got this place about a year later."

"We never lived here full-time," Gwen
clarifies. "It was just a weekend-custody thing."

"I was here a whole summer once," says
Val.

"Really?" I hadn't known that. "When?"

"A few years after you left. After Gwen’s
graduation."

"When she was staying with me?"

"Yeah."

I turn to Gwen. "You never mentioned it."

"I'm sure I did. And if I didn't it was
because you never wanted to talk about home."

Can she really blame me? I feel a surge of
sympathy for Val. It was bad enough spending weekends here. I can’t
imagine how pissed I’d have been if our grandparents tried to dump
me with Dad for a whole summer. I was lucky to get away when I
did.

The afternoon drags on. Ethan keeps drinking
all day. His cooler seems to have an infinite supply, and he
progresses from jovial to surly and back again several times. Twice
I find him pawing at Gwen in an otherwise empty room. Both times
she pushes him away when she sees me. The first time she grins at
me, almost sheepishly, but the second time she gets mad at him.
“Will you fucking get off me?” she growls as she shoves him in the
chest.

He narrows his eyes at her. “Don’t be such a
bitch.”

“Just help us clean up, all right?
Jesus.”

I tense up, worried for a minute that he’s
going to hit her. What would I do if he did? Jump in to defend her?
Dude outweighs me by a good forty pounds. But all he does is roll
his eyes and walk away to get another beer.

Soon it’s time for our third trip to the
dump. Ethan slaps his hand on my shoulder. “You girls stay here.
Mitchell and I have got this one.”

"It's Mitch," I correct him.

"Jamie calls you Mitchell."

"Yeah, well." You're not Jamie, asshole. The
last thing I want is to go for a ride with Ethan, but at least it
means forty-five minutes without a can in his hand, and I don’t
think it’s a bad idea to put some physical space between him and
Gwen for a while.

Jamie pulls the keys from her pocket and
presses them into my palm. “Have fun,” she murmurs.

I glance over her shoulder at Val and Gwen,
who are engaged in a heated debate about the name of some guy from
some TV show nobody else remembers. “You too.”