Authors: Joann Swanson
“You okay, Lilybeans?” Margie’s voice is distant.
Everyone’s quiet, looking at me, gathered in the kitchen and silent. Now Nick will see where I go, see that watching a sunset and holding my hand won’t make me a new girl. This hollow, these bees, they’re my life now.
“Did you know she
’
s hiding money?
”
“Did you know you
’
re poor for nothing?”
“Did you know she
’
s sleeping with every guy she meets? Did you know your mother
’
s a slut and a whore? Did you know, Lily, did you?”
“Lily, you know you can
’
t do that, right? You know you aren
’
t capable, that you don
’
t have the intellect?” Dad
’
s asking me this in his soft, low voice, his mean voice, his voice that tells me some part of him is enjoying what he
’
s saying. It
’
s just before we left, when Hank wasn
’
t Dad hardly at all anymore. Grandpa Henry
’s voice was in Hank’
s throat all the time by then. Whiskey every night, Mom making plans I didn
’
t know about. Our lights flickering more and more.
Mom
’
s holding me in her arms on the couch. She
’
s pressing my face to her chest like she can shield his words going into my brain, like she can make me think something different. “Shut up, Hank. She can do anything she wants. Lily, don
’
t listen. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. You are brilliant.”
I hear my father laugh like this is the funniest thing he
’
s ever heard. “Brilliant? Brilliant, Rachel? Are you serious? The girl can barely pass math. She can barely get through a history test for god
’
s sake.”
“Get out, Hank. Go to the bar. Do what you have to do to get this meanness out. Leave our daughter alone.”
I hear Dad launch himself from his barcalounger. Mom doesn
’
t flinch. I unbury my hot, wet face and turn toward him, ready to scratch his eyes out if he touches my mother. He leans over, pointing a finger at her. I smell it on his breath—the booze, the stuff that lets him be as mean as he wants. “Don
’
t you speak to me that way, Rachel. You know better.”
“Get out,” Mom says in her softest voice. “Please just leave us alone for a little while. You say such cruel things. She
’
s our daughter, our beautiful daughter. Don
’
t you see the damage you
’re doing?
”
My father straightens and looks down at me, down into my brown-black eyes with his little chips of cold onyx. “Sometimes I think she
’
s too stupid to be my daughter.”
My eyes flood again and I know he
’
s right. I am stupid. It
’
s been almost a year of Grandpa Henry in Dad
’
s throat and I still cry when he says these things. The fact that I hurt so much proves his point. I don
’
t learn too well.
Dad stomps out of the house and Mom tries to undo the damage. We both know there isn
’
t a thing she can do to pull back the words, to make them different or not true. They slip right into the open cuts left by a father who used to love me, but hates me now. His words, they slip in like poison and they infect my blood and I live down to his expectations. I believe him.
“Lilybeans, come back to us,” Margie’s saying.
I blink once and then again. “I’m here, Aunt Margie.”
She’s sitting on my bed, holding my hands. I’m in my room with no idea how I got here, kneeling at my bed like I’m getting ready to say some random prayer. I feel Binka on my back, her tiny arms as far around my neck as she can stretch. She’s got her nose pressed into my hair. Someone’s making noise behind me and pretty soon Sam’s sitting on my bed too. I’m flanked, pinned.
“How long?”
“Only a few minutes,” Margie says.
“Okay.”
Margie’s eyes have pain. Sam’s are serious now. I focus on Sam.
“You okay, Lilykins?” he asks like I’ve fallen off my bike and he’s trying to keep me from crying. Casual-like he asks if I’m okay.
“Do you have any kids, Sam?”
He shakes his head.
“Do you want kids?”
“Very much. My partner Jason and I want to adopt, but there are… obstacles to overcome.”
“If you ever have a kid, even if the kid isn’t the brightest bulb in the pack, don’t tell them that, okay? Don’t tell them they’re stupid.”
Sam’s eyes go extra bright and I hear Margie let out a big breath like she’s been holding it for hours.
Sam reaches out a hand and touches my cheek gently with his fingertips. “Never,” he says. “I hope, someday, I get to have a daughter like you, Lily. You are very special.”
I feel surprised. Sam wants a tin daughter? A kid who’s buried deep? Surprise is better than feeling all twisted up inside, so I take it.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Sam’s saying. “It’s okay. I think someday you will.”
“How?” I ask because I can see he really does know.
Margie squeezes my hands and says, “One thing you’ll notice as you get older is that we all recognize the hurt in each other when we’ve been through it ourselves.” She brushes the sweaty hair off my forehead. “Sam sees in you some of his own experiences. And, what happened tonight—we all have triggers. For me, it’s when I think someone’s angry with me. Like if Sam jokes that my dinner tastes like crap, I think about how my father said the same thing to my mother, and I overreact. You understand?”
Sam nods. “For me it’s yelling. Even just shouting from one room to the other. Like your Aunt Margie did when she was in the kitchen cooking dinner and we were chatting on the couch? It takes a lot for me not to bolt out of a room when someone’s hollering.”
“I smelled wine on Jenny’s breath. It reminded me of Hank and his whiskey.”
Margie and Sam exchange a look over my head, then glance behind me. I turn around, see Nick standing in the doorway.
“I go away sometimes,” I say.
He nods, but I can see he’s not so sure about me anymore. I can see he’s thinking he’s in over his head.
“It’s okay if you want to go. I understand.”
A little grin touches his mouth. “And miss the lobster? No way.”
I try to smile back, but all I can think about is how these new people with their wholeness, their happiness, can’t understand the bees, the not-Hanks, the hollow inside me. Nick tries with his joking, makes me think maybe I was funny once. Margie tries by explaining about her metal boxes, about how it was for her and Hank growing up. Sam doesn’t try at all. He’s just Sam, not a bit afraid to be who he is. And I think about how there’s empty quiet in me just waiting to get filled up with something, maybe something closer to Hank than Mom if the bees have their way.
I try to let these thoughts go so we can salvage Margie’s party. “I’m sorry I ruined everything.”
Sam scoffs and tussles my hair. “You haven’t ruined a thing, Lily. Not a thing.” He plucks Binka off my back and sets her on his shoulder. “This baby is yet again wasting away. I believe she could do with a drop of kitten food.”
When we go out to the kitchen, Jenny and Derek are getting ready to go. I tell Jenny I’m sorry and she gives me a big hug, says she understands. When she pulls back, I notice a scar on her face that runs from the middle of her cheek to the corner of her mouth. I think about what Margie said about hurt seeing hurt and wonder what happened to her. I don’t ask, though. I just say good-bye.
Pretty soon Sam’s feeding Binka some leftover cheese he found in the fridge and Margie’s scolding him for creating a monster he doesn’t have to worry about.
Nick looks at his watch and says he’d better get home after all, then asks me to walk him out. We head down the long path from Margie’s front door to the curb out front. Nick points out his car where it’s parked across the street, his face proud. It’s an old car, a Mustang I think. He tells me the year, but I can’t remember, can’t think of anything but how Nick knows about Mom, Hank, my spells. The only thing he doesn’t know is that I see not-Hanks too. I decide to keep that little gem to myself.
We’re standing at the curb and Nick’s smiling at me. “I was wondering if you’d see a movie with me tomorrow night.”
I don’t say anything, don’t know what to say. Here I’m expecting Nick to say good-bye for good and he’s asking me out. “What movie?” I finally ask.
“You get so many offers you have to decide whether to say yes based on what’s playing?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t know if you’re into horror, but—”
“My favorite,” I say before I can keep my mouth shut.
“Mine too,” he says. “Well, there’s an indie theater over by the university showing that one with the guy?”
“I’m supposed to know what movie you’re talking about by that description?”
“Come on, I guess your favorite flower twelve seconds after meeting you, least you can do is read my mind.”
“Does it have zombies?”
Nick’s eyes go wide. “Seriously, are you psychic or did you actually read my mind?”
“I don’t tell my secrets,” I say, then decide I need to work on my jokiness. “I mean, it’s a secret.” Truth is, Margie and I spent half an hour last night trying to find a good movie to see. She likes romance. I like horror. We couldn’t decide. But when I saw the zombie movie listed, right off I wanted to go.
“So, you want to see it?” Nick says.
Where my heart used to be is pounding.
Thump-crack, thump-crack.
I don’t understand Nick. He’s seen me—really seen me. I don’t know what he wants from me.
Finally, I look up from my shuffling feet. “What do you want from me?” I say. My voice, chock full of anger and I don’t know why. Nick’s been nothing but nice to me. “Why do you want to spend time with me? I’m broken inside, spacey like you said, maybe going crazy.”
Nicks laughs a little. “You aren’t going crazy.” He tries to take my hand, but I pull away from him.
“How do you know?” I’m ready to go back into the apartment, forget this whole thing with Nick, this new life Margie wants me to fit into. All of a sudden I want the bees here, an excuse to go into the quiet place. These new people with their happy lives. I don’t think I can take it.
Nick tucks his hands in his pockets and pulls his shoulders up. He’s not smiling anymore. “I’ve never told anyone this, but after my mom died, I spent a lot of time away from the house. My parents thought I was with my friends. My friends thought I was at home. I’d go to this park and just sit on a swing by myself.” He looks down at the sidewalk, then back up at me. “I’d be there for hours, just spacing out. I never had any idea how much time passed until my phone rang or the sun went down or it started raining and I came out of it.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Hours would go by and I couldn’t remember a single thought. I was just checked out, I guess. I never had anyone die in my life except my grandpa when I was, like, ten, you know? And when it’s your mom or your dad, it’s way worse than a grandparent. It’s like you lost part of what made you you.” Nick looks down at his feet again. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
I reach out and touch his arm. “It makes sense.”
He smiles and pretty soon his light is back, shoving away the darkness. He points behind me, up the walkway to Margie’s front door. “When we were looking at the sunset?”
I nod.
“That’s when I knew.”
Thump-crack, thump-crack
for a whole different reason. “Knew what?” I don’t like the tremble in my voice.
“You get things like other people don’t. I never noticed that stillness thing you were talking about, but it was totally there. I think we see things differently now, you know? Like we notice things other people don’t, maybe the stuff that’s important.”
We’re quiet for a little bit, shuffling our feet, looking everywhere but at each other.
“I know you’ve got a lot going on right now,” Nick finally says. “I was just hoping we could hang out, maybe watch a bunch of zombies get their heads chopped off. And I still owe you that personal fish, so we definitely have to hit Pike’s again.”
“Maybe I could call you tomorrow?” I watch my sneakers, feel my cheeks glowing bright. “Tonight was um… hard.”
“Yeah sure,” Nick says. “Movie’s at eight, so any time before then.”
Finally I glance up. “Okay. Talk to you tomorrow then?”
Nick nods, steps off the curb and crosses to his car. He turns before getting in, giving me a little wave and a big smile. “Don’t worry about tonight, Spacey. I’d be way more worried if you weren’t a little loopy after everything you’ve been through.” He circles one finger next to his ear to make his point.
I grin in spite of myself, feeling amazed by Nick. I can’t imagine him sitting on a swing at some park, spaced out and not knowing how much time has passed. Can’t imagine him anything but whole and happy.
Sam’s leaving when I get back to the apartment. He gives me a big hug, a smack on the cheek and tells me to make sure Binka gets enough to eat.
When I slip back into the apartment, Margie’s sitting on the couch. She pats the cushion next to her, asks me to join her.
“What did you and Nick talk about for so long?”
“He asked me to a movie tomorrow night.”
She grins. “What time?”
“I don’t know if I want to go.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I look up from where I’ve got my hands clasped in my lap. “I told you Nick’s mom died?”