Billie, stop rocking on two legs. You’ll break the chair.” Mom beckons my brain back to the dinner table and looks past me to the television.
The New Madrid Fault Line rang like a rotary phone for four or five seconds yesterday—only a 3.5—and the newscasters are acting like we’ve never had an earthquake before. It happened during church and was over so fast no one even thought to get under the pews. It also happened while the church was recognizing—by standing ovation—that the preacher’s daughter had been nominated for the Corn Dolly.
“You don’t think the two things are connected?” a lady asked another in a way that suggested she most certainly thought they were.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” one gentleman replied.
I wish Dad hadn’t overheard that.
He hasn’t brought it up, because he’s focused on a more earth-shaking conversation he had with Davey’s mom at the BI-LO, which is not technically BI-LO anymore, but we can’t be bothered to call it Greg’s Market.
“Clare!” He often addresses my mother as though I am not at the table. “I ran into Hattie Winters today at BI-LO, and she looks like she could use someone to talk to. I wondered if you might phone her up or invite her to coffee.”
A typical pastor’s wife job. He traffics in souls; it’s her job to traffic in hearts. I am currently trafficking in roast beef, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, and three bags of LEGOs on my placemat. The LEGOs have priority. I try to bring a distraction to the table that isn’t my life.
Dad, wanting my mother to pay attention to him instead of the news, says her name as if she is deaf. When that doesn’t work, he taps the tines against her plate. “Clare, did you hear me?”
“They’re showing coverage of the quake,” she explains. The news channel shows a picture of the elementary school, looking far better than it did two weeks ago, but several windows are broken.
I was on that roof recently, I think. I was on that roof falling out of love with Woods.
We have a small television in our kitchen that has one channel when Dad’s around: Fox News. It is this nine-inch screen that my parents squint at now rather than the fifty-five inches of HD beauty in the living room, also visible from the kitchen table. My mother wipes her mouth with a napkin. Folds the cloth into a triangle and places it neatly in her lap. She gives my father her full attention.
He says, “I wish someone would buy the school and tear it down. It’s an eyesore.”
I sit bolt upright. Four chair legs on the floor.
He continues, “Nothing useful will ever happen there again.”
So many useful things have already happened there. Who would have thought that a game of Beggar and a kiss could change the future? That school is directly responsible for my surname never being Carrington. I hope it will soon be responsible for saving the Harvest Festival.
Mom gently guides the discussion back to where it was previously going. “What were you saying about Hattie, Scott?”
He crams another bite into his mouth. “She could use someone to talk to.”
I’m adding LEGO bricks to my prototype of the elementary school, the very one my father wants to tear down, but I’m listening intently.
Dad speaks again. “You know everything she’s been through. First, John. Then losing her dad. And now . . . Davey.”
If we were a normal family, my mom would give my dad a look, and they would finish this discussion far from my ears. I’ve seen the Carringtons employ this tactic.
“What’s wrong with Davey?” Mom asks.
Dad checks in—I am a blank page—and answers, “Hattie was hinting that he might be gay. That maybe he’d experimented with a friend in Nashville, and he’s . . . I don’t know, dating someone? Billie, what do you know about that? I mean, I’ve noticed the eyeliner. But when I was your age I loved grunge bands and they used plenty of eyeliner and seemed pretty hetero. So I didn’t assume. Maybe Hattie is assuming.”
“Maybe she is.” Mom shrugs. “Maybe she’s not.”
Dad ignores Mom and taps his fork near my LEGOs. “I’m asking you.”
Lumpy mashed potatoes have never tasted so good. I fill my mouth, lift my shoulders as if I give zero shits.
This doesn’t suit him. “Come on, you have to know something. She needs some comfort.”
“Dad,” I say, using universal eye contact for I’m not answering that.
His head whips toward Mom. “Clare?”
A simple tone that has come to mean: control your offspring.
Being nominated for the Corn Dolly clearly doesn’t fix everything.
“Elizabeth”—Mom is typically the only person who calls me Elizabeth, and she only does so when she’s caught between Dad and me—“he’s not asking you to betray your friend’s confidence. He’s asking if Hattie has any reason to be concerned. Right, Scott?”
“No,” Dad asserts. “I’m asking if Davey Winters is sexually fluid.”
Despite my best efforts, my tongue nearly licks the carpet. Sexually fluid? When did Dad zoom out of his century and into mine? Some preachers’ conference over the last year? “Dad, we don’t . . . we don’t talk about sexuality.”
“Please! I’ve read books about this. I’ve listened to podcasts and they all say your generation doesn’t care to define sexuality,” he says with all the confidence of an expert.
I curl tighter into my chair.
“There’s a whole alphabet of letters. L-G-B-T-Q-I-A-B-C-D—”
“Dad.”
“Oh, Scott, you’ve embarrassed her,” Mom says.
Dad slaughters roast beef with a steak knife, lifts his fork, and chews a tine long after the meat is gone. “Hattie is the one who seemed embarrassed. She’s troubled over this, feels like her son’s not talking to her.”
I’m instantly pissed off on Davey’s behalf. Why would he talk to his mother about his sexuality if she seemed even slightly embarrassed? Before I remember I’m talking to Brother Scott McCaffrey, I say, “Would it be so bad if Davey were gay?”
“See?” Dad says to Mom. “I told you, they have talked about it.”
“No, we haven’t,” I say.
His retort is a classic parental redirect. “Please take the LEGOs off the table.”
“This has nothing to do with LEGOs.” I’ve built far more unusual things at this table while they talked to each other. If the diorama of my favorite Marvel scene made entirely of colored toothpicks didn’t piss him off, LEGOs certainly shouldn’t. I shove my plate off the placemat. The fork rattles on the plate. The knife falls to the floor.
He huffs. “I don’t understand what I’ve done to make you so unhappy. Clare, we’ve raised the most difficult child on the planet.”
“Scott! That’s ridiculously untrue.”
“Clare.”
My parents love each other, but neither of them loves the way the other deals with me.
“I’m full.” I’m up and in the kitchen using scalding-hot water to rinse my plate before Mom can say, “Billie, you don’t have to leave.”
I sweep LEGOs into a bowl I swipe from the counter and walk to the garage with Dad yelling at the back of my head. “Why am I the bad guy for caring about Hattie?”
“Why am I the bad guy for caring about Davey?”
“I should ground you from the gar—”
I slam the door.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, my father raised a glass on my behalf. That is the potential of us. The reality of us is me dumping LEGOs on a workbench, finishing my replica, and setting the display on a belt sander. I take out my cell phone, turn on the sander, and record an earthquake. I’m judging it to be 5.2 on the LEGO Richter scale while the argument coming from inside my house is an 8.
The LEGOs explode all over the floor.
I am nostalgic for a time when my family slathered butter on popcorn and watched Survivor reruns on the living room couch. I am nostalgic for parents I don’t have. What would it be like to be raised by a couple who say things like “Fall in love with a person, Billie,” rather than a minister who says things like “Hate the sin and love the sinner”? I am smart enough to understand that Dad’s conversation with Hattie was also about me. There among the subtext, he’s asking a question.
I wait for the yelling to stop before I slink to my room and fall into bed fully clothed.
That night, I dream I am a guy. One hundred percent all-American boy.
There’s no easing into the dream. No sense of being asleep. I close my eyes, and when my brain wakes up, I have a penis and a problem.
I live in the same saltbox parsonage. My father is still an issue. My mother is made of monograms and flowy shirts. My Grandy is still a thunder cat. I have the same friends. Own the same clothes. But I ride a green bike to school. My real bike is black.
Woods calls me dude and bro and hits me on the shoulder. Mash throws up. Fifty makes sex jokes. Davey is missing.
These things are banked in my dream memory, and I am aware of being me as I move through the dream. Only . . . Dream Me is a dude.
I am in the youth room. There is a wine cooler on the floor and an unopened bag of Twizzlers peeks out from behind the couch cushion. There is a stack of Bibles there too. I think . . . I am going to hell for this. Einstein says WAYS FOR BILLY TO EMBARRASS SCOTT.
I am on the couch with Janie Lee.
She’s wearing her big, gaudy glasses, and she is under me. Entwined with me. Her UGGs are scattered, as if she took them off in a hurry. The soft flannel of her pajamas is against my leg hair. I slide my hand under the black Victoria’s Secret cami she wears beneath her sweatshirt and tug until it’s over her head. The sweatshirt that is already on the floor. The sweatshirt I pulled off her.
I inch my fingers around to her spine and press my chest against hers. She is insanely warm, but shivering.
I am shirtless. She’s kissing my Adam’s apple; working her mouth around my neck, under my chin. I didn’t shave today, and the way she’s kissing me tickles. I am familiar with this body I’ve had for dream seconds, as if I’ve had it for years.
“Shhhhh,” she tells me. “We’re going to wake up Mash and Fifty.”
She says shhhhh, but doesn’t say stop. She means, Be quieter, Billie. Don’t let them catch us. They are propped on the opposite couch five feet away. Mash is wearing one of those Breathe Right strips over his nose. Fifty’s snoring. Even though it’s blazing hot, I stretch a fuzzy blanket over us in case they wake up. We whisper. We giggle. I want to know every part of her.
I am scared of being caught. But I am terrified of losing her or hurting her or going too quickly. I want to live on this couch for the rest of my life.
Neither of us is scared this is the wrong thing. She is worth polishing all the pews in every church in America if we are caught. Worth all the service projects we might be assigned. Worth my father hating me.
I tell her that.
She touches my stomach like she did the night at the dam and says, “I feel love right here.”
“Me too.”
Mash coughs once, twice, three times. Smoke seeps under the door, starts rolling in like a fog. It is somehow dark in the room and light enough to see gray clouds consuming the mini fridge. Consuming Einstein. The church alarms go off, the phone rings, and I think, Please don’t interrupt us. Why didn’t we put a Do Not Disturb sign on Youth Suite 201?
“Mash cooked socks in the microwave again,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, as if I care about Mash right now.
Around the room, there is suddenly an orchestra—every player a twin of Janie Lee. Violins, cellos, upright bass, viola. With perfect timing the musicians draw fingers and bows across the strings, manipulating the air with an emotional, haunting melody.
Janie Lee tastes like Gerry. She tastes like music. We’re biting each other’s lips. I lean away from her, realizing again how beautiful she is.
The orchestra sounds like it’s grieving.
How I love her glasses. Her toothpaste has Scope in it. Her blush smells like sandalwood. The song is between us. I taste her soul on my tongue.
I promise I won’t tell Woods that this happened.
She says, “No one has to know.”
Gray clouds of smoke engulf Mash and Fifty. The cello is the only instrument I hear.
Dad bangs on the door. “Billie, the church is on fire. Billie.”
“Ignore him,” I say.
“Ignore everyone.”
“I love you.”
Words I’ve never said in real life.
“I love you too.”
We keep right on kissing until the flames singe our skin.