Know Not Why: A Novel (22 page)

He looks good; he’s smiling as he walks in. Hour
upon hour breathing nasty plane air doesn’t seem to have done a
number on him at all. His hair’s cut really short, and he’s totally
rocking a goatee that I know in an instant will result in an
endless fountain of mockery from yours truly, even though just
between you and me, he pulls it off. He looks like who I’d be when
I grew up if this was some alternate universe wherein I was
awesome.

My eyes lock on the pretty blonde walking a
couple of steps behind him, and I’m in the middle of mentally
labeling her ‘Emily’ when she throws herself into the arms of a
middle-aged couple standing a few feet away from us.

Okay, not Emily.

Which means that Emily must be—

My eyes land on the only other option, unless
Emily is a towering black man or a really bouncy eight year
old.

Uh. Wow.

She’s the kind of person your eyes skim past by
default. Actually making the effort to look
at
her is a
little exhausting. Mousy seems too tame a word. This girl, she
taught mousy how to squeak. Her hair is brown-blonde and stringy
from underneath an amorphous beige lump of a hat. She’s wearing
glasses, but my brain so yearns to classify them as spectacles:
they’re huge and perfectly round, and, like, unless you’re Harry
Potter, don’t even try to pull that off. Especially if you’re a
girl. Especially if you’re the girl who’s dating my
brother
.

This is the girl who’s dating my brother?

+

Turns out, Emily digs the arts ‘n crafts scene.
I tell Mom to drop me off at work on the way back from the airport,
and she can come pick me up at the end of the day. She protests,
but I pretend it’s really urgent, like they really need me there.
(They don’t, but it’s not like anybody else needs to know that.)
This leads Dennis to start singing the praises of his ladylove, who
is, he informs us delightedly, knitting him a scarf.

Oh, jeez, I can’t not ask. I glance at Emily in
the rearview mirror. “Did you make the hat?”

“Yes, Howie. I did,” she replies. She’s got a
nice voice, at least. It’s soft and ladylike and everything she
says sounds really polite, like she’s out of some movie on Amber’s
DVD shelf. One with Emma Thompson and corsets.

Still. The hat. Oh, God, the hat. For real?

“Awesome,” I croak.

“Thank you,” she says with a quaint little
incline of her head.

There’s an awkward silence, punctured only by
the dulcet tones of Josh Groban.

“Hey, maybe we can stop in at this fine
establishment of yours,” Dennis suggests, leaning forward from the
back seat to slap me on the shoulder. “Mom says you’re doing great
there.”

“Not that great,” I grumble, feeling suddenly
humiliated. “Sure, I guess, for selling yarn and shit.”

“Hey,” Dennis says, faux-chastising, “some
people need yarn and shit.”

“Right,” I mutter.

“Plus, I wouldn’t mind stopping in to see your
buddy Arthur,” Dennis continues.

I take the turn maybe a little (read:
infinitely) more jaggedly than I needed to. “You remember him?”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Dennis says. “He was on the
student council with me.”

“Right.” Okay, don’t panic. Keep it cool. And
maybe, for security’s sake, imply some everlasting animosity. “He
sucks.”

Everlasting animosity implied.

“I thought you were starting to get along,” Mom
says.

“Nope,” I reply crisply. “He is one unbearable
pompous motherfucker if I ever met one. Um, no offense.” I throw
another glance in the mirror at Emily.

“I don’t remember him being that bad,” Dennis
says.

Oh,
come on,
family. “Well, he is. He’s
the worst. He’s what the devil pukes up during a hangover. He’s
atrocious.”

“Atrocious?” Dennis repeats.

Okay, maybe that was a little much. Still. Gotta
commit. “I said what I said.”

Dennis chuckles, then turns to his lackluster
ladylove. “I think we can take him, huh, Em?”

“I would like to look around,” Emily replies
demurely.

“You heard the lady!”

“Swell,” I mutter.

+

And so, in a scene only conceivable in my
nastiest nightmares, the family and I march into Artie Kraft’s Arts
‘N Crafts.

“Why don’t you give us the grand tour—”

“Sorry, Mom,” I interrupt, hurrying towards the
back. “Gotta get the apron on.”

“You have an apron?” Dennis asks, starting to
grin.

“You have a goatee,” I snap. (I would have liked
to take more time with that one, really spring it on him in a
glorious festival of barbed wit, but what can you do? Nothing.
That’s what you can do.)

Instead of going back into the kitchen, I race
up the rickety staircase of doom and prior homoerotic encounters.
It’s probably taking my life in my hands to climb ‘em two at a
time, but Death By Rickety Gay Staircase currently doesn’t seem
like such a bad way to go.

I burst into Arthur’s office without knocking.
He’s on the phone. At the sight of me, he goes, “Can you hold on
just a minute?” and puts his hand over it.

“My family’s here,” I announce, breathing heavy.
There’s a part of me that’s a little disappointed his face doesn’t
immediately contort into an expression of horror. Get with the
program, man. “In case any of them ask, you’re atrocious.”

“Really?” he says, all light and
conversational.

Maybe that was a little blunt. But, well,
emergency.
“I had to tell them something.”

“So you went with … atrocious.”

“Well, yeah. They can’t think I like you.”

“Why not?”

“Because –” Oh, come on, Kraft.
Now
?
Seriously? “Shit, I don’t know, because then they’ll figure out
that I
like-
like you.”

His mouth twitches. “You like-like me?”

Oh, jeez. “Not the time, home dawg.”

“Fine. Should I come downstairs, I’ll be sure to
behave atrociously.”

“That’s all I ask,” I reply, relieved. “Also, I
might have to be kind of an ass to you.”

“Of course.”

“It’s not that I want to. I just, y’know, have
to.”

“Of course.”

Well. He took that pretty well. At least I’ve
got one person I don’t have to worry about amidst the crazy.

When I get back downstairs, it’s bad. Oh, it’s
real bad. The worst part is how, to the untrained eye, it’d look
pleasant. Kristy is talking to my mom and Emily. Cora’s got my
brother. For a couple seconds, I can’t decide which scenario to put
a stop to first. On one hand, Kristy and my mom are looking chummy,
and for all I know, this is going to result in them starting a
bookclub and getting together for tea once a week so they can
discuss my emotional well being. On the other, I wouldn’t put it
past Cora to jump Dennis any second now. It’s the fuckin’ goatee.
It’s got magic.

Not to mention that I
also
wouldn’t put
it past Cora to, like, try to regale Dennis with the epic story of
how she got her hands all up in my business at a showing of Old
Yeller to convince me I was gay.

Cora it is.

“Hey, you guys,” I say, hustling over. “How’s it
goin’?”

“Real spiffy, Jenkins,” Cora replies, and her
huge wicked smile makes it clear she gets exactly how freaked I am,
exactly why, and is delighting in that knowledge. “How are
you?”

“Fine and dandy.” Suck on
that
, you old
she-devil. “What you guys talkin’ about?”

“She was just telling me about how you and Amber
went to see her in a play this weekend.”

Seemingly harmless, but I am not fooled.

“That we did.” I cross my arms and try to give
Cora a ‘Don’t even try anything’ look that’s piercing enough to get
the point across but inconspicuous enough that Dennis won’t notice
it.

For one look, it’s a pretty tall order. I’m just
saying.

It fails spectacularly.

“He even came twice,” Cora smirks away.

I deflect the inevitable suspicion that will
arise from that remark with a quick, ardent, slightly deranged,
“That’s what she said.”

There is silence.

“Wow,” Cora remarks in monotone. “That was
hilarious.”

“I am hilarious,” I retort savagely.

“Hey,” Dennis says, studying me, “where’s your
apron?”

Shit.

“Arthur called me upstairs to talk to him.”
Whoo. Okay. Nice save. “Man, I hate that guy.”

Cora arches her eyebrows.

“
Hate
him,” I reiterate, making sure to
look at her as I do it.

I half-expect her to bust out a snappy “Do you
make out with everybody you hate, or is he special?”. She doesn’t,
thank God. Just gives me this ‘Whatever, it’s your funeral’ look.
Please. It’s my
un
funeral, lady, because I just skillfully
averted this death crisis.

I start feeling like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad
if Arthur showed up right about now. Everything’s under control. My
hatred for him has been established. It’s all good.

He doesn’t, though. They stay for fifteen
minutes, and never once is there that telltale creak on the
staircase. Huh. He must be really … busy, or something. (What the
hell does he even do up there anyway?) I mean, it’s for the best,
no question, but at the same time, now that the apocalypse has
officially come and my mom and my brother have inhabited the same
space as my coworkers, I kind of wish I could get it all over with
in one fell swoop. They see Arthur, they see me hating Arthur, the
end. Simple.

But Arthur’s MIA, so … whatever.

Emily eventually drifts off into the yarn aisle,
and as soon as she’s become lost in its depths, Dennis grabs my arm
and starts dragging me toward—

Well, wouldn’t you know. The fake flower
aisle.

“Pick one,” he orders.

“What?”

“I wanna sneak one for Emily, and you’re the
professional. Which one’s the best?”

It’s clear what’s going on now: the universe is
mocking me with the fake flower aisle. Thanks, universe. You’re a
pal, you sick son of a bitch you.

“Seriously, man, I don’t know. I’ll get
Kristy.”

“No, we’re being stealthy,” he insists, dragging
me back.

“I dunno, how ‘bout that one?” I ask, pointing
to a pink one at random. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dennis says, grabbing it.
“Thanks.”

“I’m the master.”

He slips me a five and tucks the flower in his
jacket, off to charm his lady. He makes it look so easy. That’s
always been Dennis’s thing: making it look easy. He ditched his
training wheels the same day Dad put them on his bike.

Me, I was a tricycle man ‘til an age I wish not
to disclose.

“Hey,” Dennis says, turning back. “It’s good to
see you, little brother.”

“Yeah,” I reply automatically. “Yeah, you
too.”

+

“Your mom said something about you not getting
along with Arthur,” Kristy mentions later when she and I are
putting price tags onto the zillion new boxes of colored
pencils.

“Yeah, I thought that’d be smart,” I reply
offhandedly, and concentrate really hard on writing
$9.50
on
a price tag.

“How is that smart?”

“That way,” I say, holding back a sigh, “no
one’s gonna find out he and I are … I dunno. Whatever.”

“In love?”

Oh, Christ. “We’re not
in love
,
Kristy.”

“You could be soon,” she argues. “And don’t you
think it might hurt his feelings to have you pretend you hate
him?”

“Nah,” I reply, although just between you and
me, my stomach gives a little contradictory lurch. “He seemed cool
with it.”

“He’s going through a really hard breakup.”

“Went through,” I remind her. “Past tense. It’s
over. They’re broken up.”

“Well, yeah,” Kristy agrees, looking a little
uncomfortable. “And now you’re supposed to be making him
happy.”

“You think I’m not making him happy?”

“I didn’t say that—”

“I’m so making him happy! Earlier, I told him I
like-liked him and he got all smiley. He’s good. We’re happy.”

“You don’t seem happy,” Kristy observes. Her
voice is soft.

“I’m okay,” I insist bluntly, starting on a new
column of
$9.50
price tags.

“You’re not getting along with the girl who’s
been your best friend for like ever. And you seemed so freaked out
earlier when your mom and your brother were here.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because it’s kinda fucking
stressful to have you guys around them. For all I know, you’re
gonna slip and say something to give it away.”

“If you don’t want them to know, we’re not going
to give it away. We’ll be careful.”

It’s easy to believe it of Kristy.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Kristy I’ve got to worry about. “What
about—”

“Cora will too.”

“You solemnly swear?”

She holds up her pinkie.

Ahh. The most sacred of oaths.

I link my pinkie with hers with great formality.
That gets a giggle out of her. Good. Maybe we can actually get off
this sorry subject and onto something tolerable.

“I think your mom is a really nice lady,” she
says as soon as we’ve de-pinkied. So much for new, non-terrible
subject matter. “She would be happy about Arthur if she knew he
made you happy. I can tell.”

I snort. “Yeah, okay.”

“Howie, you should just tell the truth.”

“Yeah,” I say, “that’s not gonna—”

“Howie—”

“I’ll think about it,” I lie. It seems like the
easiest way to get her off my back.

+

Kristy takes off early, leaving Arthur and me
alone. I’m pretty sure it was a deliberate move on her part. She’s
wily, that one.

“You didn’t come downstairs,” I say nonchalantly
as I turn the lights off.

“I thought perhaps it would be best for me to
stay out of the way altogether,” he replies, buttoning his
coat.

I go over to him and kinda just stand there,
watching him do the coat-buttoning thing. He follows it up by
putting his scarf on. Riveting, all over the place. The world’s
most mesmerizing reverse strip tease.