The Project
Mia
I’m wading through the mess of empty beer cans that is Rob’s front room, and Ian and I still haven’t said anything to each other. I knocked, he opened the door, I came in.
We haven’t talked since the demo, although I think it’s pretty clear I made a mistake. If it wasn’t for this stupid project, I don’t think I’d even be here.
Ian indicates a chair in front of the only cleaned-off portion of Rob’s dinner table, and I sit.
“Are we down to the interviews?” he asks.
“We’ve been putting it off,” I tell him. “We need to get it done. The deadline’s next week.”
“Okay,” he says and we sit there uncomfortably for a minute.
“You look good,” he says.
“You really don’t have to do that,” I tell him. “It’s not like I’m an ex-wife you happened to spot in public.”
The one good thing about Rob’s unwillingness to clean his house and the strange reasoning behind his insistence that nobody else do it is that you can always hear someone coming.
Ian and I are both looking at the open doorway before Rob ever makes it there. When he finally does, he comes in and heads for the fridge.
“Sorry,” he says. “I know you two are working. I just needed another beer.”
Ian and I don’t answer, but look at each other a moment.
He looks good, too.
“How’s it coming?” Rob asks.
“It’s, uh…” Ian starts.
“We’re pretty close,” I answer.
Then there’s silence.
Then more silence.
“Holy shit the two of you are awkward together,” Rob says, laughing.
“Would you mind?” Ian asks.
“Oh,” Rob says and quickly leans back down, reaching into the fridge and pulling out four beers between his two hands. “Have fun, kids. If you’d rather not speak to each other, I think we have a notebook lying around here somewhere—”
“Rob,” Ian interrupts.
“Right,” Rob says and walks out of the room.
“How do you not have things living in all this garbage?” I ask Ian, hoping to lighten the mood a little.
“We probably do,” he says, and we’re back to having nothing to say to one another.
“So, the one thing that’s been holding us up from doing the interviews is that it’s hard to get bigots to admit their bigotry and come together for a college psychology assignment,” I start again, really working at keeping this professional. “Do we have any ideas on how to get past that?”
There’s nothing: No answer, not even a nod of acknowledgement.
“I don’t think we can,” he says finally. “I think we’re going to have to just do as many interviews as we can in one day and hope we get at least a few people who match the description, so we can make some sort of point.”
“Yeah,” I answer.
There’s another long pause, and I’m really wondering if it wouldn’t be better for us to both just figure out our own way to do the interviews, have him give me whatever he’s got when he’s done and finish this off myself just so we don’t have to endure this seeming inability to communicate to each other anymore.
“You know what it was?” I ask.
“What it do you mean?” he returns.
“It wasn’t the skateboarding,” I tell him, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, I was impressed and everything—kind of mesmerized to be honest—but that’s not what made me want to give you and me a shot.”
His bottom lip recedes into his mouth for a second before he speaks. “Okay,” he says. “What was it?”
“Why haven’t you ever brought up working at the animal shelter?” I ask.
“Oh,” he says, his eyes moving back and forth.
“It’s really not that difficult a question,” I tell him.
“I guess I just never thought about it,” he says.
“It’s kind of funny that we ever thought something could work between the two of us, isn’t it?” I ask, hoping my timid smile can manage to keep him from overreacting.
“I didn’t think it was so far-fetched,” he says. “We have a lot in common.”
“We do,” I agree. “When I saw you in there, though—I don’t know, I guess I just felt like there was more to you than I knew, and that I hadn’t really given you a fair shake.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says.
“You didn’t,” I respond. “Well, not until…” Neither one of us needs me to finish that sentence. “How long have you been working there?”
“I’m a volunteer,” he says. “I started there the summer after high school, but they were already over budget, so I offered to just come in and volunteer when they needed the extra help.”
“How long has that been?” I ask.
“Since fall after I graduated,” he says. “We got a huge influx of animals a couple of weeks after I started working there and, being a no-kill shelter, that can become pretty expensive if people aren’t adopting as quickly. They were either going to have to fire someone or start turning animals away, so that was that.”
There’s a pause, but this time it doesn’t feel quite so ominous.
“I think it’s really cool that you do that,” I tell him.
“Thanks,” he says and he even starts to smile a little before his eyes are back on the notebook in front of him that I honestly hadn’t seen until just now over the mound of cans, wrappers and other clutter piled two-feet high over most of the table.
I know we’re not together anymore, even if we haven’t said the words, but I’m still sensitive to the fact that Ian is going through a stressful time right now. That’s no justification for the way he spoke to me after the demo, but I can’t see any way that he’s going to have his head straight by the time the Midwest Championships actually happen.
There are only two days left.
It’s not my job to take care of him anymore, though, if it ever was. It’s not cruel, it’s just reality.
I just wish things were different.
“How’s your dog?” I ask.
“Gerald?” I ask with a smile. “He’s good,” I tell him. “He’s got a surprisingly loud bark for such a small dog.”
“Yeah,” he says. “He’s a bit of a handful. He was actually the runt of his litter, but even by the time you came and picked him up, he’d already outgrown his sisters.”
“He was born in the shelter?” I ask.
“Yeah,” I answer. “His mother was brought in pregnant and she gave birth to three puppies, two girls and a boy. Does he still do that thing when he pretends like he can’t understand you unless you have a treat in your hand, then he’s the master of all dog tricks?”
I laugh and scratch the back of my head, “Yeah. I was really proud when I found out he’d sit and shake, but when I went to show my dad, he wouldn’t do it. My dad had to suggest trying it with a treat.”
“You know,” Ian says with that little smirk he gets before he says something clever, “you’d think that, being a student of psychology, you would have remembered Pavlov’s dog. There wouldn’t have been a response to the bell if there hadn’t been food involved.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, and chuckle a bit with relief.
It’s awkward. It’s so awkward, but at least the tension isn’t quite so palpable anymore.
“You want a drink?” he asks.
“Sure,” I tell him. “Grab me a beer.”
“You’re too young,” he comes back, but he gets out of his seat and heads to the fridge anyway. “Let’s see, we’ve got beer and…” he moves a couple of things to get a fuller look at the contents of the fridge, “beer,” he concludes. “Looks like all we have in the fridge is beer, but I can get you some water.”
“Water’s fine,” I tell him.
He opens a cupboard and removes a glass from inside. He fills it with water and brings it over to me.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the glass from him.
“Yeah,” he says.
“So,” I start and take a quick sip before continuing, “how are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “How are you?”
“The competition’s almost here,” I tell him. “Are you still going to go through with it?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “After everything with the demo, I’m kind of soured on the idea.”
I’m quick to defend, “Hey, I was just reacting to the fact that you were being very disrespectful, and—” He puts up a hand to stop me.
“I didn’t mean that,” he says. “That was all me, and I’m sorry. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just so frustrated, angry. I never thought I’d actually come in last.”
“You weren’t—” I start, but he puts up his hand again.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Nothing excuses the way that I spoke to you. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t cool, and I’m sorry.”
My brain and endocrine system are all geared up for a fight, but it doesn’t look like there needs to be one. We both agree that he was being a jerk.
“I can still come to the competition if you want,” I tell him.
“I don’t even know if I’m going,” he says. “I want to try, if for no other reason than to say that I gave it my best shot, but I really don’t think I could deal with another disappointment right now.”
“Fair enough,” I tell him, “but do you really think you’re going to come through everything easier if you bail on it? That kind of seems like the sort of thing you’d regret.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking past me, sucking the inside of one of his cheeks, pulling it inward, “I guess so.”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, though,” I tell him. “It’s not my decision.”
“Do you really think I’d have a shot at making an impact?” he asks. “Not the ‘fall on my face’ kind of impact, but do you think I can actually do this thing without humiliating myself? After getting my ass handed to me by those kids, I just… I don’t know if it’s going to be worth it to torch my career.”
“I don’t think you’d be torching your career,” I tell him. “I think you’re still young, and even if you don’t take home the first spot in the competition, you’ve still got as much of a career ahead of you as you want. Vert was never your thing anyway, you said so yourself.”
“Yeah,” he says hesitantly, scratching his earlobe. “It’s kind of the only thing I can think about, though. Now that I can drop in… I just wish the competition was a few months further out,” he says. “If I had a little more time to get comfortable and really work on my overall vert performance, I might be able to integrate it into my overall…” he trails off. “You weren’t really asking for a big explanation, were you?” he asks.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “I just don’t know what’s got you so scared? Yeah, your first vert performance wasn’t what you wanted it to be, but you did it. Now you can build on it. If you want to start doing vert as well as street and park, I say do it.”
“There’s nowhere around here to practice it, though,” he says. “Apart from that one big drop-in at the park, there’s nothing that would even adequately simulate the experience.”
“Who says you have to stay around here?” I ask.
“What?” he returns.
“If you’re going to go pro, you’re going to be traveling around quite a bit, right?” I ask. “So, while you’re out there on the road, start keeping an eye out for places you might like to live—places that have everything you need to practice what you need to practice and do what you need to do.”
“I can’t just move,” he says.
“You moved in with Rob,” I tell him.
“That’s different,” he says. “I had no choice. I had to move in with Rob because my dad kicked me out. Even if your rosy painting of the future does come true and I do end up going pro, I can’t just leave my mom here. She’s the whole reason I’ve been pushing so hard to make this happen.”
“How’s she doing, by the way?” I ask. “Is your dad letting you come by and see her?”
“Yeah,” he says. “The old man wasn’t to thrilled about the idea for the first week or so, but I finally convinced him that if he didn’t let me see her, I’d start letting his business associates know how he’s been treating his family.”
“What’s that going to do?” I ask.
“My dad only cares about reputation,” Ian says. “It’s not about money, it never was. Money, for him, is a means and a prop. Some people put classic literature on their coffee tables to look smarter to their visitors, and that’s my dad’s whole life. It’s all about the appearance of success, but what it really comes down to is that his world is just a big collection of books on a coffee table. It’s all appearances.”
“I guess I can see that,” I tell him, “but who’s saying you have to leave your mom behind? Why don’t you take her with you where you move?”
“I still have school here,” he says. “Actually, I don’t really know if that’s going to be true after this semester. I can always apply for student loans, I guess, but that’s one of the biggest rackets on the fucking planet.”
“Maybe so,” I tell him, “but if that’s what you need to do to get an education—assuming you actually want one and it’s not just your dad that was pushing you into it—maybe you just need to do it. Besides, nothing says you have to stay here to go to school. You can go anywhere you want once you’re pro.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I can’t help but notice that you’re not in any of these plans.”
Strained silence returns for a few seconds while I try to figure out a decent way to respond to him.
“Yeah,” I mutter.
I feel like I’ve planned to say more, or at least there’s more that I should be saying right now, but nothing else is coming out.
“Well, I guess that’s just the way it goes, huh?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer. “I guess so.”