The Difference Between You and Me (20 page)

“I hope so.” Arthur’s expression is shaded with worry.

“I would. I swear to God I’m not doing drugs.”

“All right. I believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is. Forget it. It’s nothing.”

“I have my own theory about what’s been going on with you,” Arthur says. “If you don’t mind my sharing it.”

Jesse shrugs:
okay
.

“We talked about your mother’s illness a lot while it was happening. But we haven’t talked about it so much since she started to get better. One thing I’m wondering is if you’re still thinking about it now. I wonder if you’re realizing, now that she’s healing, just how close we came to losing her.”

Jesse stays very still, keeps her voice perfectly calm, when she says, “No. I’m not thinking about that.”

“Okay.” Arthur nods, and waits. He never expects Jesse to finish what she’s saying in only one sentence.

“She’s too tough to die,” Jesse observes.

Arthur smiles. “That’s funny, and she is very tough,
but we both know that’s not really true. That’s the kind of thing we say to comfort ourselves when we’re feeling worried.”

“I’m not feeling worried,” Jesse insists, sharper this time.

“Okay. Well, I’ll speak for myself, then. I’ve noticed that lately I feel a lot of confusing things about Mom. Sometimes right in the middle of doing something unrelated to her, right in the middle of feeling perfectly fine, I’ll suddenly feel very angry or sad. Just out of nowhere, I get a big burst of sadness or anger. And I think to myself, Ah, this must be a little bit of those feelings that I had to put to the side when we were so focused on her treatment, coming back to haunt me now. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Not really. No.” Jesse keeps her voice light and disengaged. “I told you, I’m not thinking about that at all. I have, like, real problems to deal with.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “I see. Well, that’s fine. We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

He gets up and goes to leave the room. When he’s almost at the door, Jesse calls after him. “I just don’t want to live in a cave, okay?”

Arthur stops and turns to look at her.

“What do you mean, ‘live in a cave’?”

“I mean, I don’t want to live in the dark with, like, piles of junk and garbage everywhere. No matter what happens
I just want you to always get dressed in the mornings. And sleep in your own bed.”

Arthur considers his response, as always. “I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to,” he says carefully, “but I hear that you’re worried that something might happen that would cause me to neglect our daily routines. And you don’t want that.”

“No I don’t!”

“You want me to keep taking care of myself, and you, even if something happens to disrupt our life.”

“Yes.”

Arthur crosses the living room to sit down on the couch beside his daughter. Jesse pulls her legs up close to her chest to make room for him, and he puts his arm around her bent knees.

“You know, I’ve had the funniest feeling lately, like I want to try to build something with my hands. You know how terrible I am with power tools, so nothing big, just something small for the yard. Like a birdhouse, maybe. I don’t see clients until four forty-five. You want to come with me to the hardware store and get some supplies? And then maybe we can work together on a little building project?”

“Okay.” Jesse leans down and puts her cheek on her father’s arm. She feels him bend to kiss the back of her head.

“Something tangible,” he says, into her too-long hair. “Something solid, that won’t go away.”

***

Arthur holds the door to Murray and Sons Hardware open for Jesse, and it tinkles nostalgically as it falls closed behind them. The store is dark and smells like paint, tar, and chalk.

“Somewhere in here I know they’ve got birdhouse kits,” Arthur says thoughtfully, more to himself than to Jesse. He disappears down the Plumbing and Electrics aisle, and Jesse wanders down Screws and Brackets, letting her fingertips dip into and get nipped by each box of sharp metal barbs.

“Help you, dude?” Jesse turns and looks up into the baseball-cap-shaded face of Mike McDade. When he sees her he takes a step back and begins to stammer. “Oh, sorry, I mean, sorry, I just—”

“It’s cool,” Jesse says automatically.

“I just, I thought you were a guy from behind.” Mike is obviously flustered; he’s also obviously never heard of quitting while he’s ahead.

“Yeah,” Jesse says. “I get it. It’s cool.”

Mike nods. They stand there, waiting to see what will happen next. Jesse’s mind is racing. She thinks,
I’ve kissed her a hundred times. You’ve never even heard of me. Her tongue was in my mouth only days ago. You don’t know anything about me. You get to kiss her today and tomorrow and probably for the rest of your
life. I’ll never touch her again. You don’t even know my name.

“Jesse, right?” Mike says experimentally, pointing a little finger gun at Jesse’s chest.

Surprised, Jesse nods.

“From Vander.”

She nods again.

“Are you, like, one of the ones doing the whole anti-StarMart thing?” Jesse’s mouth falls open in surprise. “I don’t know, maybe that’s not you, I don’t know.”

Mike swallows hard. He’s more awkward than Jesse would have imagined, only having ever watched him operate from a distance. He always looked so relaxed and confident from afar. But he has a certain nerdiness to him, a certain hesitancy. It throws her off.

“Yeah,” she says, “I am. I mean, I was.”

“Oh, you quit?”

“I didn’t—I sort of—no. No. I’m still doing it.” Jesse makes a mental note to call Esther tonight and pick up where they left off.

“So it was you who put those flyers up?” Jesse nods. “Cool. Cool. I was just wondering, like, is there some way I could get involved in that?”

Jesse pauses, squints up at Mike. “You want to help fight StarMart?”

“Yeah, it’s just…” Mike moves in a few inches toward
Jesse and lowers his voice confidentially. “You know, this place has been here, like, sixty years.”

“
This
place? Murray’s?”

“Yeah, like, Mr. Murray’s dad started it in like the thirties. And I’ve been working here since eighth grade, both my brothers worked here, and Mr. Murray’s such an awesome guy, he gave both my brothers money at their graduations, like, for college, and it turns out he’s, like, totally against StarMart coming in. He told us this story about his friend over in Windsor who had, like, a family-owned hardware store just like this and a StarMart moved in, like, twenty miles away, not even next door or anything, but still he went under in less than six months. It happened last year. Mr. Murray was all like, ‘Sixty years to build a business and six months to kill it dead.’”

Mike kneads the bill of his baseball cap with his left hand, pops the cap up off his close-cut curls, then sets it back down again. In the moment when his hair is revealed, Jesse feels a bright comet of envy streak through her chest; Mike’s haircut is so perfect, so clipped and polished and clean. He has such an effortlessly cool boy-head. Jesse feels a throb of shame about her own shaggy bangs, then focuses again.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what StarMart does.”

“Yeah so, Mr. Murray’s been more and more worried about it lately and we’ve all been saying to him, like, ‘Oh, Mr. Murray, your customers are loyal, they won’t leave you
no matter what.’ But I don’t know, you know? I looked at that website it said about on your flyer and I just, it seems like if StarMart comes in there’s not much you can do, you know? If you’re a small business like this one. And I would feel so bad if that happened here, to Mr. Murray. I just… I don’t… we can’t…”

Mike trails off, either shy or embarrassed or overwhelmed, Jesse can’t tell.

“We can’t let that happen to him?” Jesse supplies, and Mike’s head bobs up and down vigorously.

“Right. Right. So, like, what’s your plan? For defeating StarMart?”

“Oh. Um, I guess it’s not really possible to actually defeat StarMart? Since they’re like one of the largest corporations in the world?”

“Oh.” Mike looks crestfallen. “Well, but what about just this one StarMart, just this one that might come in near us? Can we defeat that?”

When Jesse looks at Mike, she takes in the whole of him, the whole guy who has his whole body around Emily Miller whenever he wants to. For a second, the familiar feeling of being about to let something out—about to blow her cover—comes over Jesse. It’s almost like having a well-known flavor of gum in her mouth. She holds the secret on her tongue, feeling its weight, tasting its comforting bittersweetness, for long enough that Mike McDade shifts uneasily.

“No?” he says. “You think it’s, like, not possible?”

The simplest, most effective thing would be to say,
Look, talk to your girlfriend. She’s working for them, don’t you know that? Find out from
her
what’s going on. Tell her to stop sleeping with the enemy.

Then Jesse thinks,
Who’s the enemy?

Jesse swallows all the unsaid things. Takes a breath.

“I guess the thing we’re working on,” she says, “was, like, trying to convince student council that we need to divest from StarMart. Like, we shouldn’t take their money and use it for school functions.” Mike has assumed a doglike listening posture, leaning in with his ear turned slightly in Jesse’s direction to catch her words. He nods eagerly. “So, like, if you know anyone on student council you could start there. Tell them you don’t want StarMart in our school. That’s one thing you can do. If you know someone.”

Mike swallows uncomfortably. “I do, actually,” he says, “but it’s kind of like, really complicated? I can’t actually be public about this? Like, I really want to help, but I can’t help in school. I can’t be
seen
helping.”

“I get it,” Jesse says. In her mind she thinks,
Great
.
Now even her
boyfriend
is telling me he can’t be seen with me in public.

“No, it’s really complicated,” Mike continues, “I can’t really explain it because it’s, like, too complicated to even explain.”

“I
get
it,” Jesse repeats. “You have a conflict of interest.”

“What?” Mike’s face clouds over with incomprehension. Then resolves. “Yes.
Yes.
I have a conflict of interest. It’s a really complicated conflict of interest. But is there still, like, a way for me to pitch in… in, like, secret?”

“Maybe.”

“Like maybe I could make some more flyers for you?”

“I don’t think we need any more flyers.”

Mike looks crestfallen. Then brightens again: “Or like, free tape? I could probably get you free tape or something from here. Mr. Murray would probably be into helping.”

Jesse smiles. “We could maybe use free tape.”

“Or other supplies, tacks, glue—whatever you wanted. Just keep me posted. Let me know what I can do.” Mike bobs his head up and down, then says searchingly, “I’m not, like, generally this guy. I’m the guy who’s like, ‘It’s none of my business to tell anyone else how to live their life.’ I never even do the Juvenile Diabetes Walk, even though my brother has it and my whole family does it every year. But this, I don’t know. It just feels, like, personal. I just think this is really important.”

“Yeah, it is,” Jesse agrees.

“So, seriously, come find me here if there’s, like, anything I can do. I work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and weekends. Or, oh!” Mike’s eyes light up with a new thought. “I bet I could get the guys from baseball to participate in something. Maybe I could, I don’t know. If we had snacks for them or whatever.”

“That would be awesome.”

“Do you do athletics?” Mike asks, friendly. He shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs them deep down into the legs of his khakis. “You’re not on softball, are you?”

Jesse smiles faintly. “Um, no.”

“You should go out for it. I bet you’d be great.”

“Thanks, but I suck at sports.”

“You?” Mike grins. “Naw. No way.”

“It’s true. Some lesbians actually suck at sports.”

Mike’s face goes up like a boiled lobster. He blushes so deeply he’s practically purple.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, uh—” he gropes helplessly.

At this moment, Arthur comes around the corner of the aisle.

“There you are,” he says to Jesse, and Jesse says to Mike, “My dad.”

“How are you, sir?” Aggressively, Mike reaches out and takes Arthur’s hand, shakes it too hard and too long. Arthur looks confusedly at Jesse.

“We wanted to build a birdhouse,” Arthur explains, and Mike stammers, “Birdhouse, yeah, yeah, we have kits for that!” before dropping Arthur’s hand and practically bounding off toward the back of the store.

“Nice fellow,” Arthur says. “Who is he?”

“My former nemesis,” Jesse says, and smiles.

***

An hour later, Jesse and Arthur are hunched over their half-constructed birdhouse in the dusty garage, trying to figure out how to slot Roof Part A into Wall Part B.

“There must be a part missing,” Arthur says tensely. His normally oceanic patience is starting to run out.

“I don’t think so.” Jesse consults the hieroglyphic line-drawing instructions. “See how this little pokey thing is supposed to go into that little gappy place?”

“I see that there in the instructions, yes, but I do not see it here in life.” Arthur points accusingly at the half-built box.

From across the room comes the sound of Fran clearing her throat. Jesse looks up to see her mother silhouetted in the doorway, haloed by afternoon sunlight, arms crossed in her typical fashion. “Cured, I see,” Fran observes.

“Oh. Hi. Yeah. I feel a lot better.”

“Yes,” Arthur says, flinging Roof Part A down onto the worktable a little harder than necessary. “A trip to the hardware store and a constructive hands-on project turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.” He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know why I’m sweating. The damn thing is only twelve inches high.”

“What are you guys making?” Fran strolls into the room and approaches the worktable.

“A birdhouse, allegedly,” Arthur says, the closest thing
to gruff that he ever gets. “Though at this point it’s more of a bird pen.”