You first, p.11
You First, page 11
“Fuck off.” I grin.
“Come on. We’ll make it our project. We’re good partners, right?”
I weigh the potential for disaster. Making myself a joint renovation project could be fraught, and our powers are so different that I question how much he could help. But his face is so sincere and hopeful that I find myself fitting my hands in his and saying okay.
“Yeah? For real?” He practically vibrates with glee. “Oh my gosh, it’s gonna be fun. Like that time you helped me cram for my MassComm exam, remember?”
I nod, letting his smile feed mine. It will be fun, I tell myself. I’ll get good enough to do the kind of flashy, TV-ready jobs that thrilled me as a ten-year-old Nature Channel fan: wrangling fifteen-foot pythons into vans for the Reptile Relocation program, driving wild hogs from neighborhood gardens without so much as a lasso. I’ll be as good as Jay, but different. Uniquely me. People will smile at the two of us in a there-goes-the-power-couple way, and it’ll feel as exhilarating as the laughter feels when we partner up on Pease & Caritz shows.
“Hey.” I rest a hand on his knee.
“Hm.”
“I miss doing our shows together. For the kids.”
“Aw, me too.”
“Will you do one with me?”
He smiles. “As you wish.”
“Yeah?” I hate being this needy, but I have to ask. “When?”
He pulls the desk drawer out and finds his little blue pleather appointment book, which he got to keep track of all the recent additions to his schedule: livestreamed secret-of-my-success interviews with bloggers, Q&A panels at regional super-cons, local school visits.
“This Saturday I’ve got that library thing. That’ll deplete me for a whole day. But the Saturday after I’m completely free.” He scribbles in the planner. “There. Wishpenny’s in the books.”
“Pease & Caritz rides again.”
“What skit should we do?”
“How about the Hansel and Gretel one? Or the Nut Salesman? That always gets laughs.”
“We might have to add more animals. Your powers are gonna be poppin’ by then.”
I ignore the painful use of poppin’. “You think?”
“I do,” he says, and he smiles his same old smile, and as the first birds chatter to welcome the dawn, only good things seem possible.
now
How does one describe what actually happens when a lifelong power slacker—with the aid of his sudden coach-slash-boyfriend—tries to course-correct in fast motion?
One describes it in fast motion, I guess.
Picture a training montage in a sports movie, only this one is a two-week patchwork of calamity and does not illuminate a satisfying arc of growth. Stitch the following scenes together and score the whole thing with some fist-pumping anthem, strictly for ironic effect. Survivor. Pat Benatar, even. I deserve that.
On Monday, Jay puts a brain-boosters-for-supers app on my phone and leads me through a battery of puzzles, games, and meditations that leave me befuddled and sleepy. He follows up with eighteen ounces of a power-enhancing smoothie (“way better than Horton’s, I promise”) that tastes like strawberries strained through a gym sock. I choke down three-fourths and pour the rest down the powder room sink in private.
On Wednesday, Jay presents me with a folder of online research he’s done on animal talkers who leveled up. He’s scoured the forums, curated the best advice from talkers who claim to have miracle fast-fixes. On the advice of *~territalker98~*, I do ninety minutes of aerobic exercise to the entire 1812 Overture repeated six times. Following a recipe from msdoolittleNY, Jay makes me an omega-3-packed stir fry teeming with tofu, Brussels sprouts, and anchovies, which I eat while quietly inventing new curse words. chats_2_cats cites research on sex improving brain function and swears a three-hour session notched him up a half-level, but after the aerobics and the stir fry, I can only make it to minute thirteen before I collapse on our bed in surrender, and not the sexy kind of surrender.
On Friday, Jay stands beside me at Pawprint Pets while I try to chat up a tree frog, a bearded dragon, and a Burmese python that’s about a fifth the size of the ones I’d be wrangling in Florida. Jay cheerleads relentlessly—massaging my temples, giving me sips of smoothie, even asking to hold the python so I can talk to it up close—but when the animals talk it’s all garbled, like when Leo and his friends used to speak Ubbi Dubbi when I was around and they wanted to shut me out.
Imagine this stretching on for five more days: the pet store stalemates and brain-power puzzles, the frenetic classical-cardio workouts that don’t do a thing except make me wish I could unscrew my entire body like a light bulb and replace it with one that doesn’t hurt.
“It hasn’t even been two weeks,” Jay says to me in the shower, as his fingers work my aching muscles. “Keep practicing. You’re bound to have a breakthrough. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
He reaches a hand out, gathers a pulsing ball of water, and freezes it into a perfect heart without even looking. I know it’s supposed to cheer me up, so I take it from him and smile. I’m glad when it melts in the heat of my hand and turns back to plain water, running down our rusty drain with all the rest of it.
***
I am at the bookstore. I think it is Wednesday. I think I am working. I’m so worn out it’s hard to tell.
Mr. Heisey sits behind me in a seedy orange wingback chair, eating gummy worms from a paper bag while I shelve a stack of donations. He’s going on and on about the lack of intemperate passion among today’s literary lovers and how Sylvia Plath bit Ted Hughes on the cheek when she first met him. I’m only half listening. When I misfile a copy of The Blind Assassin in the MEDICAL THRILLERS section, Heisey comes over with a surgeon’s concern and strokes his gray stubble at me.
“You’ve been orbiting Neptune for weeks,” he says. It’s ninety degrees but he’s wearing a long-sleeved plaid button-down and a navy bowtie, the kind you have to tie by hand. “Are your humors out of whack? Do I need to get the leeches?”
“No leeches. But an ice bath might be nice.”
He tilts his head.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you dyspeptic?”
“No.”
“Have you had a tiff with your lover?”
“No! I’m just tired.”
“Why don’t you knock off early?”
“But—”
“Do you know the etymology of knock off, in the sense of leave your post?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, neither do I. There’s your homework for tonight. Get lost.”
He offers me a gummy worm. I take one to be polite. Heisey is always giving me word detective assignments and making me invent weird window-display themes and complaining about the facile clues in the local paper’s crossword puzzles. I love the guy.
I love almost everything about Summerhill.
I take a long walk when I leave the bookstore; I can’t bring myself to go home yet, to face Jay and his cheery advice and his secret side-eyes of disappointment. To stroll Summerhill’s small downtown is to tour all the places, familiar since childhood, that became magic under the Reign of Us. The laundromat I’d pass on the short ride to school became the place where Jay and I lounged on Sundays, sharing earbuds and playing dominoes while our socks and t-shirts swirled together in the dryer. The little brick library where I took out stacks of books as a kid became the place where we stole kisses in the History section and killed whole afternoons the summer our air conditioner broke. Al’s Pizza, where our family used to go after Leo’s Little League games, was now Jay’s and my go-to spot for long, blissfully meandering talks over slices and a paper boat of onion rings.
The town’s grown with us, too, changed in ways that surprised me and made me proud. Small rainbow flags now flutter on the streetlamps of Main Street every June, thanks to Lynette’s Pride committee we joined three years ago. New businesses I feared for—the comic-book shop, the Indian buffet, the whimsical-home-decor boutique—are surviving and thriving. And when the old Over-Easy Diner shut down four years ago, it transitioned pretty smoothly to Miss Delilah’s, a soul-food cafe that makes the best sweet-potato fries I’ve ever had and hangs paintings and photos from local artists on the walls. There’s still a lot that needs to change, still a lot to be done, but someday Summerhill will be the place we always knew it could be.
I always thought we’d be here to help make it happen.
“Hey.” A tap-tap on my shoulder—bony, like a branch at a window. “Uh…sir?”
I turn away from the window of the Sweet Stop, where Jay and I buy each other’s birthday cupcakes. A skinny white girl—early twenties, maybe—is biting her lip beside me in a patchwork dress, a knit beanie askew on her apple-green shag.
“Pease and Caritz—right?” she says.
Getting recognized for P&C is the only time I don’t feel embarrassed when I bump into someone who knows me in public. I return her gap-toothed grin and nod.
“Oh my god, no friggin’ way.” She sticks out a hand, thin metal bangles chiming on her wrist. “I’m Carly. Carly Fulks.”
I shake her small cool hand, and suddenly I see her as she was back then: a bright-eyed, mouse-haired urchin in baggy hand-me-down band t-shirts, turning cartwheels in the grass and sharing Cheez-Its with her brother.
“I remember,” I say. “You had that Pearl Jam shirt with the stick figure on it.”
“Holy shit, yeah! Me and my little brother would bike all the way over from Hawk Hills to see you guys.” She waves me into the Sweet Stop with her. “One time you did that Three Little Pigs thing with chipmunks instead of pigs. Remember?”
I flush with pleasure, because that show is at least ten years old but still one of my proudest accomplishments. Carly orders a caramel cold brew and I tell her how I wrote eight drafts of the skit, how I trained the obstinate animals, how I spent weeks rigging up those tiny, just-right straw and stick houses that built themselves up with the pull of a string and collapsed with the pull of another. I suspect I’m blabbering but she listens with more than polite interest, interjecting whoaaas and nuh-uhs that make me feel like an old magician whispering secrets to a young one.
“And then that Caritz guy made the third house out of ice, right? That was super cool.” She digs a five from her dress pocket to pay for her drink. “And you guys had that pigeon playing the wolf? He was like, hopping on one leg and flapping his wings, trying to blow the fuckin’ house down. Was that your idea?”
“It was.”
“Dude. DUDE. My brother laughed so hard at that bird he literally pissed himself.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be, man. Are you kidding? You guys saved our summer that year.” She sips her drink, swipes a fleck of foam from her nose. “Our dad had just left like, definitively—no, don’t make that face, it was a good thing—but I mean, life wasn’t exactly rainbows and kittens back then.” She stabs the bottom of the cup with her paper straw. “To have someplace where we could laugh every week, not think about stuff…that was everything. Seriously. So thanks.”
I manage a you’re welcome.
“You want a coffee?” she says. “I’m buying.”
“No—ah, no. Thanks so much, though.” I’m now terrified that I’ll say or do something inadvertently ungracious, something to smash the impossible, wonderful truth that our silliness meant something to someone. Crap, I should have paid for her drink.
“We’re actually doing a show on Saturday,” I tell her. “Stop by the park. You’ll be our VIP.”
“You serious? Yeah, maybe! Eddie’s up in Jersey now, but I never left. I live with my best friend from grade school. Is that pathetic?”
“I don’t think so.” I shake my head, hold the door for her. “Not at all.”
We finish up our chat and then I float toward Spinney Lane, flooded with feelings I can never sustain for long: peace, satisfaction, uncomplicated joy. When I get home, Jay is at our table with Lynette, auditioning different flower designs for Miranda’s shower cake. I stand outside the screen door and watch him pipe a buttercream camellia onto a silver flower nail, the contentment on his face matching mine. He still takes pride in his non-super power. He’s still got one foot on the ground. I’ll tell him who I saw at the Sweet Stop, how we helped someone without even knowing it. And in a few short days we’ll be together in the park, doing our show for the kids and maybe Carly, and everything will feel normal again. We’ll fall into our Pease-and-Caritz rhythm. We’ll be equals on our plain grass-and-dirt stage, a silly and shambolic and perfect whole.
“Camellias or roses?” Jay asks when I step inside.
“Or both,” says Lynette, holding up the flower nails. “What do you think, Levon?”
“Roses,” I say.
“Boring!” says Jay.
“Classic,” says Lynette.
“Something smells good,” I say.
“Corn fritters. In your kitchen.” Lynette waves her hand. “Eat them, I made too many.”
“You’re an actual goddess.”
On the kitchen counter is a bag of day-old organic mini-muffins from Jay’s work and a red plate piled with Lynette’s corn fritters. There’s spicy dipping sauce, too. My stomach will hate me for days, but it’ll be worth it.
I’m in heaven when Jay comes in. I talk around a mouthful: “Are these especially good today, or…?”
“I know, they’re ridiculous. I already had like five.” He pops another one in his mouth. “You’re kinda late. Everything okay at work?”
“Yep. I ran into an old friend.”
“Oh, cool. Who?”
“I’ll tell ya later. It’s a good story.” We grin at each other. It feels so normal, so easy. “Hey, so, we should probably go to the park and rehearse tonight. For Saturday? I know we usually keep it loose, but since it’s been a while…”
His hand has flown up to his mouth.
“Oh god, Lee,” he says.
“What?”
“I have a thing on Saturday morning.”
“We have a thing.”
“No, I mean—” He splashes some tap water in his blue mug. “So—the super who left the position I’m applying for? She emailed me. Said she wants to meet me and do brunch and everything.”
“Why?”
“She saw my resume and I guess she was impressed? And she’s driving up to Jersey for a baptism and Saturday morning was the only time she had free.” He gulps down his water. “I didn’t look at my appointment book. I completely spaced about the show. I’m so sorry.”
“When did she email you?”
“Ah…Monday?”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
He sets the mug on the counter carefully.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it slipped my mind.”
“Can’t we do the show after?”
He shakes his head. “After a whole morning of extroverting? I’ll be drained. Sunday?”
“Sunday’s no good. No one’s ever around.”
He throws his hands up. “I…don’t know what to tell you, then. Next week? Maybe?”
I pull the dishwasher door open and yank out the cracked cutlery basket. On the other side of the half-wall, Lynette flips slowly through Jay’s photo album of designs, as if she’s not tracking every syllable of this conversation and making silent assessments.
“Don’t be mad,” Jay says.
“I’m not.” Fork, spoon, knife: I clank them into their homes in the plastic drawer organizer. So many knives. He uses separate ones for his butter and jelly, as if he’s the king of England.
“You are mad,” he insists. “You love emptying the dishwasher when you’re pissed at me.”
“It’s been a shitty few weeks, okay?”
“Whose fault is that,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing. Whatever.”
“Oh, sorry, you’re right. I should’ve greeted my numerous failures with a song in my heart.”
“Getting frustrated doesn’t solve anything.”
“Neither does breathing down my neck, strangely enough.”
“Um, excuse me. You need me on your back or you’d give up. You don’t believe in yourself.”
“God, you sound like my mother.”
He blinks. “That’s like, the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Let’s forget it. Please. Everything’s fine.”
“But—”
“’Scuse me.” I slam the silverware drawer shut and breeze through the living room, feeling Lynette’s eyes on my back. I don’t stop until I’m upstairs in the green room, the only place in the house that’s escaped Jay’s redecorating fervor in the decade we’ve lived here.
I click the door shut behind me and shuffle to the window, feeling watched. Lynette’s parents owned both sides of this duplex before they died and left the place to Lynette and her sister. Sometimes I imagine that this was her mother’s peaceful shades-of-green reading room, and that her ghost—who I don’t technically believe in—is leaning against the window frame in an avocado silk robe, smoking a cigarette and tutting at my mortal foibles. You overreacted, she’s saying now, peering over her cat’s-eye glasses. I tell her yes, obviously: getting this hurt over a show that involves giant clown shoes is childish, if not deranged. But he knows it’s important to me. It used to be important to him, too. I pick at the deer-printed wallpaper as if it’s a scab, peel off a strip without thinking.
A soft knock.
“Levon?” says Lynette.
I look down at the strip in my hand. Fuck. I shove it into the book I’ve been reading, an oral history of 1970s super-activism, and stow it under the green velvet armchair. “Come in.”
She enters with a light, careful step, like a museum attendant on subtle prowl for noses leaning too close to paintings.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen this room,” she says. “I thought I’d check up on it.”
“Sure.”
She joins me at the window. A car in dire need of a muffler job thunders past the duplex. A small boy saunters by on the sidewalk, pulling a smaller boy in a wagon with a wobbly wheel. Idly, I envision a skit that reimagines the Ben-Hur chariot scene as a race between chipmunks in miniature pigeon-pulled wagons.
