Chapter 9
— Chapter 9 —
Mr. Olbrich has not yet mastered the wiring on his Arduino coffee maker, so I swing by the Swan Deli. There’s a Budweiser truck out front. I have to park across the street and wait for cars to pass, willing the energy to move quickly when there’s a clearing. The rain has faded to drizzle but hasn’t left my bones.
It’s after breakfast, not close to lunch, and I’m the only customer. I used to ride my bike here after school to get a coffee loaded with cream and sugar when my brain was cramped and crabby. The air still smells like bacon grease and coffee, and the worn checkerboard floor is gritty with decades of spilled sugar never quite scrubbed clean. I recognize the guy behind the counter. Steena dated him in high school. Everyone called him Johnny Boy, but I can’t remember his last name. He was the quarterback for the Somers Tuskers, and when he ran onto the field, the kids in the stands would shout “Johnny Boyeee !” with an emphasis on the B , biting the y sound and drawing it out as long as they could.
“WhacanIgechu?” he says, tipping his chin up to greet me, and I’m relieved that there’s no hint of recognition in his eyes. I was only eleven when he and Steena graduated high school, and we didn’t have a bring-friends-home kind of house.
I order a coffee, light and sweet, like old times, and it’s all I’m planning to get, but then Johnny Boy says, “You want eggs? I still got a hot grill.”
So even though I just ate leftover frittata, I order an egg sandwich with double American cheese, no bacon, on the kind of squishy, crusty roll you can only get in Westchester. Once you cross county lines, the bread is either too crusty or too squishy.
Crazy for You is playing over the tinny speakers of an old boom box high on the cigarette shelves. JB whistles along with Madonna while he stands at the griddle making my egg. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other in time with the music, and I imagine him under a disco ball on a parquet floor, slow dancing with my sister, greasy hands all over her strapless peach prom dress.
I don’t know if JB was any good at football. I can’t even remember if Somers ever won. My parents went to games to watch Steena play clarinet in marching band, and I only went because they didn’t trust me to stay home alone. I’d lie on the bleachers in the back and read Baby-Sitters Club books by floodlight. But when everyone shouted “Johnny Boyeee !” I’d sit up to watch him, because Steena always complained about the way he stared at the cheerleaders in their short skirts as he jogged past.
Steena could have been a cheerleader. She was pretty and coordinated and good at remembering dance moves, but our mother insisted that marching band was the better choice for college applications. So she was stuck in a red wool band uniform while those other girls got to wear cute little crop tops. I thought the band jacket made my sister look important. It had strips of black velvet stitched across the front, and gold braid coiled over padded shoulders. With her plumed hat strapped under her chin, she looked like she could command an army, but it never made her happy when I told her that, so I stopped saying it. Steena would only let me hang around if I said the right things or stayed quiet and just listened. She liked it when I acted angry about Johnny Boy looking at other girls, so I tried to pay close attention. I’d report back like an operative, detailing any possible infractions, even though I’m fairly certain Johnny Boy only stared at the cheerleaders to make sure he didn’t bump into them as he ran from the dark sidelines out into the bright lights. I remember the way he looked at my sister. He was awed by her too.
Now, Johnny Boy’s hair is graying at the temples and there’s more flesh under his chin, but he still has the same boyish expression, so it looks like his kid-soul got trapped in a man’s body. I wonder if I also look like an adult who feasted on my child-self for sustenance, although I think maybe my soul has always been old.
He serves my egg sandwich on three wimpy paper plates stacked together for strength, cheese streaming down the sides of the roll. He starts to pour coffee into a Styrofoam cup, then shakes his head.
“You in a rush? I’m gonna make a fresh pot,” he says, and his accent is comforting. I didn’t even know Somers people had accents until I left and the bar folks in Maine made fun of mine. It’s not strong like the boroughs, but it exists, and it was work to lose.
“No rush,” I say. “But it’s fine. I’m not picky.”
Johnny Boy shakes his head. “Could use a fresh cup myself.” He winks as if we’re co-conspirators in this coffee project now. It’s a New York service thing that’s like Watch me, hon, I’m gonna take care of you . A microlanguage I haven’t heard in ages, but I still know how to speak it—what all the subtle gestures mean.
“?’Preciate it,” I say.
We settle up and I sit on a wobbly wire chair at a wobbly wooden table under a flickering fluorescent tube. Egg yolk splats on the plate when I take my first bite. It has been ten years since I’ve had a real roll. The crust flakes perfectly. I am overwhelmed by all these lost familiars, and it feels dangerous to allow my love for insignificant things to run so deep. In Maine, I tried to exist as if I’d materialized from thin air as a bartender at a clam shack, with no past, no nativity, because it felt senseless to allow myself to miss the textures of a history I couldn’t keep. But now, all the longing I didn’t feel is catching up to me. I eat like it’s been a decade since I’ve had any food at all. When I finish my sandwich, I fold my dirty napkin into the plate. As I push back from the table, the chair legs squeak against the sticky floor, so Johnny Boy is looking at me when I stand, sees me grimace from the pain.
“You alright there?” he asks.
“Sure. All good,” I say, hearing his accent creep into my voice. I hold up the folded plate before I shove it through the flap on the garbage can. “Thanks for this.”
“Anytime.” He walks around the counter to bring me my coffee. “Ya know where we are.”
“Sure do.”
He tips his head like he’s studying my face. My heart does the gross arrhythmia thing it did when I was a kid—a flip in my chest that makes me think about valves and blood and frogs hopping.
“Hey, are you one of the Russos?” he asks.
I shake my head. I’m not lying, because he didn’t ask the right question—Russo is Steena’s last name, not mine—but my palms sweat just the same.
JB squints. “You look so familiar.” I can’t tell if he’s doubting me or his memory.
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Hey, have a good one.” I flash a smile, take the Styrofoam cup from him, and walk out as fast I can.
I have to wait while cars pass from both directions. At the first clearing, I make a break for it and sprint across the street, feeling pain shoot like sparks through my body, spilling hot coffee down my arm. I don’t want to be so easily rattled by someone who isn’t even trying to upset me. I wish I could be the kind of person who would say, “Wow, Johnny Boy! You know my big sister, right? How’s life treating you? Go Tuskers!” But maybe he sees Steena and Charlie at chamber of commerce meetings, or Charlie will come in for lunch and Johnny Boy will say, “Hey, your sister-in-law was just here!” and hellfire will rain down on me before I’ve even had a chance to catch my fucking breath in this town.
Or maybe Aubrey told them and it’s already too late.
My heart flips again. I hadn’t realized it stopped beating funny after I left. But now that it’s started again, I know it’s been ages since it happened. Maybe Somers turns my heart into a frog, like something out of a fairy tale passed down through storytellers, distorted over time, until I’m not even the princess, just the ugly stepsister with a heart that’s amphibial.
Instead of going to the house, I drive to A&P and comb through the tiny grocery-aisle section of hair dye, grabbing a box that has a photo of a woman with ashy-blond hair because I feel like a fugitive, and every fugitive in every movie dyes their hair in a gas station bathroom as soon as they start running. I have a constellation of moles on my right cheek that are almost impossible to cover with even the thickest concealer, so I’m always stuck looking like myself. But I figure if someone sees a blond version of me from across the street, I won’t immediately match their memory. And I won’t look as much like Steena.
I know I should buy other things—actual sustenance, bottled water, maybe some soap, garbage bags, and Pine-Sol—but I don’t want to spend any more time out in the world until I’m feeling a little less obvious.
Nobody cares, nobody cares, I say to myself in my head as I eye the unfamiliar cashier and hand over a couple of worn bar bills.
Nobody cares.
I think about going to Jam’s house to bleach my hair, but it would be strange if Mr. Olbrich came back from his day of antiquing to find me with my head in his bathtub. The electricity works in the house I own, which means the pump from the well has power. Maybe the water will be cold, but that’s all I need.
It’s easier to think about going to the house with a specific goal in mind. So much less overwhelming than Deal with all that shit, Freya , or Get on with your life already, Freya .
Bleach your fucking hair, Freya. At least that’s something I can do.
I drive back over the reservoir. Below, a pair of swans are swimming the perimeter of a narrowing hole in the ice that they keep open with their movement.
I wish when I ran away to start over, I’d actually started instead of stalling, and I’d never had a reason to look back.