Iceling Page 4

  And he’s right, it is.

  But even if Suck City’s where we’re both living, at least now we know that we’re neighbors. We can start a neighborhood watch program. Maybe even elect a new mayor, who supports better education and immigration policies and has socially progressive views. Or maybe we start up an underground militia to bring about the revolution, the one where everything finally works out, and there’s income redistribution, and women make as much as men. And there’s free education and healthcare for everyone, and everyone is finally okay with being scared of things that are different. I don’t know. I’m just wishfully thinking about the possibilities of life in Suck City. The point is: Stan and I know we’re not alone in this anymore. And that’s kind of amazing.

  We tell each other we’ll call or text if anything weird happens or if we just need to talk. Which I have a feeling will be relatively soon. Because I feel like we’ve both barely even seen the tips of the giant icebergs of our feelings about our lives with our Icelings. I know that I feel as though Callie is my sister. And I love her. And something happened to her that I don’t understand, and all I want, all I’ve ever really wanted in my life, aside from a Barbie house and a boyfriend and a car—none of which were as cool as I thought they’d be, except the car—is to understand and be understood by my sister. To look in her eyes and see her looking in mine and to hold that feeling like that. I can see it; I know it’s in there. But it moves around. And I can’t tell who understands whom. And Stan and Ted. It seems like Stan just feels like he’s only there to keep Ted under control. Like that’s all his dad wants or needs from him, and all Stan ever seems to feel is that it’s his responsibility to prevent more bad things from happening. And I have no idea what any of this means, or what to do with the way it makes me feel, or the way it makes Stan or Callie or Ted feel, for that matter. But here they are.

  Here are my feelings.

  SIX

  MY PARENTS LEAVE for the Galápagos in two weeks, which is apparently all the advance warning they think I need before they leave the family home—and Callie—in my capable, responsible, and wholly trustworthy hands.

  So while I still have them here, I’m mostly just out driving all the time with my best friend, Mimi. The thing about Mimi is she’s amazing. And so cool, and she wears animal prints always and to the extent that when she’s not wearing them, I get very seriously worried. I like that with Mimi, and I guess also with Callie, I know what my job is. I love it. I know how to be around them. With Mimi, my job is to be quiet, and to listen, and to participate when called upon. I drive, and she talks about her future, in which Mimi’s decided she’ll go to school in New York and intern at Rookie or somewhere like it.

  “The thing is,” she says, “wherever you end up, you’re probably just going to be updating mailing lists and getting coffee. But at least at a smaller place, unlike, say, Vogue, it could probably turn into something more. Not in terms of, like, money or anything. But experience. And making contacts with people who are above you and know what you should do next.”

  We see a group of dudes walking on the sidewalk, and Mimi rolls down her window and we start dog calling. Dog calling is like cat calling, except you tell random guys on the street about how you think they’d make great father figures, or that they seem like really responsible men who would probably stay at home in order to help you advance your career, or that they look like they really know how to cook for a lady and make her feel like gender is just a concept and like she is a wonder of individuality, just a pearl of competence.

  “Hey, baby!” Mimi says to the entire flock of guys. “I bet you have a good relationship with your parents!”

  “I bet you’re a great listener!” I shout from the driver’s side. “I bet you have a really nice heart!”

  “Don’t lie—I bet you have a favorite bedtime story that you’re dying to tell the child we’d raise together!”

  “Wow, good one,” I tell Mimi, who winks at me.

  “Hey! You should smile more! I bet you have a real nice smile!” I shout as we’re driving past, leaving them in the dust.

  “So,” says Mimi, “how’s Dave?”

  “Lord, Mimi,” I say, sighing. “Can we just be two girls having a conversation that isn’t about boys?”

  “Sure,” Mimi says, powering down her window and yelling at a new guy: “I bet you understand that gender roles are a social construct!”

  “I bet you’re comfortable enough with yourself to not project a bunch of weird, assumed desires on other people, thus allowing you to communicate with others on a real and sincere personal level, culminating finally in a fulfilling partnership that will last as long as it has to until something else happens totally beyond everyone’s control!” I shout across Mimi.

  “Damn,” Mimi says. “That was something. But seriously. How’s Dave?”

  “Ugh,” I say. “What did he tell you?”

  “That you won’t let him meet your parents in any sort of official boyfriend capacity.”

  “His exact words, huh?”

  “Verbatim.”

  “Look. I like Dave. I think he’s great. But.”

  “But . . . ? But what?”

  “I don’t think I . . . love him? I don’t think he’s the kind of guy I can picture myself, like, being with forever. He’s great, and he’s cute, and he’s basically sincere, and he’s kind of smart. But I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of committing to him, for some reason. I don’t feel like he’s that for me. Like some sort of blinding crush. I don’t feel crushed, and I want to. And maybe that’s shitty of me. My parents will love him. Because he’s great. He’s so great! But I don’t love him, and that’s shitty of me, and there’s no way to tell him that. I don’t know how to tell him that, and I don’t know how to introduce my parents to this totally great guy who I’m really into, but not super really into. Because then what happens when they fall in love with him, but then one day he’s gone, and I’m in college, and they’re all, ‘So how’s Dave?’ And then I have to be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Living a wondrous life full of love and promise and finding, I hope, getting emotional fulfillment from whatever and whoever is capable of giving him the sort of emotional fulfillment he so richly deserves!’ And they’re all, ‘What a wonderful life!’ and then I can only agree, and then this conversation happens again and again, and per usual all it does is make me feel like I did something wrong by trying to be honest about my feelings.”

  “Lorna,” Mimi says after a pause to make sure I’m done talking, “you realize that, to some people, worrying about something like the intricacies involved in introducing the guy you want to bang to your parents, and the repercussions it could have, like, years down the line sounds a little weird. Right?” And I’m about to say, “Yes. Yes, I know this, this is why I keep avoiding your questions about Dave,” but before I can, she says, “And this is why I love you,” and then I just sort of stare at her.

  “You just have this . . . purpose!” she goes on. “This, like, unshakable purpose, Lorna.” She pauses, and I just keep my eyes on the road, because I’m not super comfortable with people saying nice and smart and precise things about me to my face, so if I stare at the road I can maybe pretend like it’s not happening. “It just seems like you really understand what you want out of life, or at least have an idea of the kind of life you want to live. Or at the very least the kind of person you want to be. I mean, do you even realize that you’re a beacon of light shining in a storm full of awful people who do things like wait for social cues to determine what they’re going to do or say or how they’re going to be? You’re a person, Lorna. And you know your life. You know it deeply, even if you don’t think you do, and you live it every second of the day.” Mimi pauses, and despite myself, I look at her quickly and smile. “I’ve known you since the first grade,” she says, “and it’s been like this since always.”

  And so screw you, Mim
i, because what do you say to something like that?

  “What the hell, Mimi?” I say. “What am I supposed to say to that? Look at you. You just spent this whole drive telling me about all the things you’re going to do to get to the life you know you want to have. And you even have backup plans for those plans, and you read about what you want to do, you know the names of the people who’ve done it and feel totally comfortable approaching them with questions. You figure your shit out all the time! You’re amazing to me, and I’m just lost in my own little world, and then you tell me all that, and now I feel like I know even less what to do.”

  “Look, here’s how this will go. I think you’re great. You think I’m great. So naturally both of us are going to resist the idea that we’re great, and then it’ll get weird, and then . . . and then your parents will call you.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Your parents, they’re calling you now. I can see it on your phone. You probably need to take that, so maybe instead of doing anything, you should just know that you’re the best? And then drop me off at home?”

  And that is exactly what happens.

  I TEXT DAVE when I get home.

  hey bae

  (what)’sup?

  nm u?

  Same. A/S/L? Want 2 chat?

  42/male/boca

  Hot. Into it.

  thought you might be.

  Sometimes I can’t tell if we’re flirting or just finding new ways to not talk about serious things. Either way, I stare at my screen and the blinking ellipses keep flashing and dying, flashing and dying, so I put my phone in my back pocket where it will later tell my butt when I’m wanted. I check in on Callie, who is sitting upright and on her knees, her long and light blond hair tucked behind her ears. She’s examining, really deeply, some large potted plants Mom recently installed for, I’m guessing, just this purpose. She’s been doing a lot of this kind of thing—this withdrawing into herself is how I see it—ever since that night after our dinner out, when she sat in the garden until the small hours, her hands worrying around in the dirt. It’s not like Callie’s ever been some kind of exuberantly social party girl, but this kind of deep, deep withdrawal—it’s different, and it’s happening more than usual. Sure, she is quiet and really into plants, but considering her total lack of language, she’s actually pretty engaged and engaging. So it’s weird watching her just sit around quietly staring at plants nearly all the time.

  My back pocket buzzes.

  How was the dog calling, asks Dave.

  vaguely empowering, mostly rewarding. mimi has gone pro at it. i need to up my game tbh.

  You could try something like “Nice pants, want a healthy relationship based on mutual respect and understanding?” or “I bet you’d make a great stay-at-home dad.”

  I smile. The thing is, I meant everything I said to Mimi about how I feel—or maybe don’t feel—about Dave. But when he says stuff like this, how am I not supposed to want to kiss him on the lips while smiling? And can I want that and also want boundaries? Either way, I text him ugh yr the best, because it’s basically true, and he texts me back a blushing emoji, and all in all, Callie and her plant-staring considered, today is a pretty good day.

  I get so caught up in this fine feeling that when my butt buzzes again with a message from Stan asking how Callie is, I just text back fine! But then I look back at Callie, who is still looking at her plant, and I ignore the flashing ellipses on Stan’s side of the screen and start again.

  actually, I text, callie seems maybe a bit weird? like withdrawn. like more so than usual. idk.

  Ted keeps walking up to this punching bag in our house. And then he sends me a photo of a boy, Ted almost definitely, standing with his nose up against a punching bag. He’s got the same sandy blond hair that Callie has, and her same weird pale skin, but his face is sort of squatter than Callie’s. And he’s not too tall. Actually, he and Callie are maybe the same height, about five eight.

  I type a response: 1) what’s rocky there training for? 2) is ted 5-8?

  Stan texts back What? and then, Yeah, he is, but also . . . what?

  I text him a video of Rocky running up and down the Philly museum steps, and then Weird. Callie is too.

  Stan texts back a picture of a Post-it that reads, “ADRIAA-AAAAAN,” and I laugh.

  “LORNAAAA!” Dad calls, and then it’s dinnertime.

  At dinner we take turns telling each other what we did all day, except for Callie, who has never told us anything about her day, ever. But the dinner table is quieter than usual tonight. Normally, Mom and Dad will offer up weird trivia about some totally freak weather phenomena they’ve just discovered or have been tracking. Like when they told us about that time they were on this island they described as “like the state of Indiana, but in the ocean,” where they went to see about these sinkholes that would open up before lightning storms, and they were trying to figure out whether the sinkholes were, like, presaging or predicting the storms, or if they were somehow concurrent but unrelated events. Or the time Mom went up in a weather balloon because the lightning sounded like it was singing. Or when they had to call a friend in the archeology department because a sinkhole revealed a small city or village, but nobody wanted to go in there until a degree-carrying academic gave them the okay.

  Anyway, dinner’s more entertaining, and less effort for me, when they’re working, and tonight we’re really struggling to come up with any riveting conversation.

  Callie has a salad in front of her that’s full of all kinds of exotic greens. Dad’s been getting pretty good at picking out exotic-looking seeds for Callie to grow into exotic-looking lettuces for her salads, and Callie’s getting pretty good at eating them. I spear a bite of salad from her bowl and make a big show of eating it.

  “Sharing is caring, kid sister,” I tell her. Callie just looks at me the way I would try to look at someone if I was feeling hurt and confused. She looks down to her bowl and over at me, and she looks like she’s about to cry, and I feel utterly terrible.

  Which is when she grabs a pinch of my green beans with her hands and grins at me.

  And then she gets up, bolts from the table, and runs out to the greenhouse. I look over at Mom and Dad and ask, Should we do something? with the arches of my eyebrows, but they look back at me with the faces of two people who are used to this and whose flight leaves first thing in the morning. “Don’t worry, sport,” says Dad. “She’s fine.”

  “Will you clean up, sweetie?” Mom asks. “We need to get to bed pronto if we have any hope of making this flight tomorrow.”

  “No problem,” I tell them, then give them both hugs good night.

  I peek out the window to make sure I can see Callie, and once I know she’s safe, I text Stan: callie ran out to the greenhouse during dinner.

  Ten minutes later, he texts back: Ted ran into the greenhouse during dinner.

  wait. for real or are you being funny?

  4 real.

  I can’t help but laugh a bit. wtf, I text.

  IDK, he texts. I want to be worried but right now who knows.

  And I know just what he means. It isn’t like what they’ve been doing is anything other than what they’ve always been doing. It just seems like recently there’s more of it, all the time. I want to worry about it, but I don’t really know how. Or, I guess what I mean is, I have no idea how worried I should be.

  So I text back yeah, because, well, yeah.

  I GET BARELY any sleep and then wake up early to see Mom and Dad off. They’re in the driveway, waving, and I’m waving back, and Callie is next to me and kicking out her legs like a Rockette, but not in any sort of rhythm, which is awkward and adorable, and I decide here and now that this is just her awkward and adorable version of waving. Mom and Dad blow kisses, shout “Be good!” one more time, then get in the car. We watch them drive off into the distance.


  And here we are.

  I close the door and smile at Callie, who is holding a sleeve of Ritz. She smiles at me too and takes one cracker out, real dramatically, then moves it toward my mouth. I open my mouth, take it, and eat it, and she keeps smiling, and I smile bigger, because I have a sister, and I can’t ever hear her voice, but she’s still my sister, and she’s here, and it’s just really, really nice. “Nice” isn’t the word, though, not exactly. I’m tired and thinking too much, so I just hug her, and she makes this kind of sighing sound that feels very warm. And I just hold her like that, and she holds me the way she knows how to, and then the doorbell rings.

  I open the door to see Mimi, and standing behind her and nearly a foot above her but still acting like he could hide, Dave.

  “Uh,” I say. “Hello? Fancy seeing you here?”

  “You mean you’re surprised to see us here, at your house, immediately following your parents’ departure for parts unknown?”

  “The Galápagos,” whispers Dave.

  “For the Galápagos unknown?” tries Mimi.

  “‘Galápagoses unknown’ is probably more accurate,” whispers Dave.

  “Dave,” I say, turning to look him right in his sheepish eyes, “you’re really not helping your case by helping her here.”

  “His case?” Mimi says.

  “Yup,” I say, “the case against Dave.”

  “There’s a case against Dave? What are the charges? Being too sweet and wonderful?”

  “Actually, yes,” I say. “Supplemented by suspicion of aiding and abetting what I can only imagine is a house party, to take place at my house, about which nobody told me, at which minors will be served alcohol.”

  “You left out that there’ll be good times had by all!” says Mimi, with such sheer joy that I actually consider closing the door on her face.

  Seriously, though, why would she do this? After everything I told her about Dave and my family and how overwhelmed I am about having to take care of Callie?