Chapter 13
— Chapter 13 —
Aubrey’s ripped jeans and black sweaters are hanging neatly on the plastic hangers in my old closet. Steena has always been aspirationally preppy. In high school, she worked hard to look like one of the popular girls in an eighties movie and never seemed to understand that in all those films, the preppy kids were the bad guys. Aubrey’s clothes are one hundred percent weird kid who hangs out in the art room. I know Steena must hate that as much as I love it, so I understand why Aubrey keeps her clothes here. Steena would throw them out.
It doesn’t feel right to borrow Aubrey’s clothes when my guts could bleed all over them. I slide the closet doors the other way and find my old fancy clothes. There’s a couple church dresses, the floral cotton jumpsuit I wore to eighth-grade graduation, my periwinkle damask bridesmaid dress, and the mint-green Gunne Sax hand-me-down from Steena that my mother made me wear to my friend Bee’s bat mitzvah. Behind them, still in the Macy’s hanger bag, is the red chiffon mermaid gown I bought at the Danbury Mall when I helped Jam shop for his dorm room before he left for Juilliard.
We got bored looking for extra-long sheets and shower caddies, and I think Jam was having a hard time shopping for the kind of college things his mom would have bought him. So, when we made a wrong turn on our search for a rolling suitcase and ended up in formal wear, I dared him to play dress-up with me.
We tried on the same dresses at the same time, and Jam took pictures of us with my Instamatic camera. Back then everyone was making clothes for Kate Moss, and most of the dresses looked better on Jam’s straight frame. But the mermaid gown required hips.
Jam stopped cold when he saw me in it. “You look like a grown up,” he said.
“Is that good?” I asked.
“Yeah. You’re beautiful.” He smiled but looked kind of sad, and I knew we were feeling the same way—wondering if we’d be able to hold on to the exquisite sweetness of our friendship when everything was about to change.
When a dressing room attendant threatened to kick us out of the store, I bought the dress to appease her, even though it was only August. Jam vowed to come up from the city and be my date for senior prom.
“We’ll dandy ourselves up and dance like weirdos,” he said. We hadn’t gone to his prom. He hadn’t wanted to.
As a far-off future, attending my prom with Jam was a thrilling prospect, because I suspected it would be the night we turned into more than friends. But the closer we got to June, the higher the stakes seemed. I started to feel like going to prom with Jam was making the choice to spend the rest of my life with him—or without him if our attempt at romance was a disaster. I wimped out, claiming I didn’t have anyone to cover my shift at the restaurant that night.
I wonder if those dressing room pictures still exist somewhere. In my favorite, Jam caught our reflection in the three-way mirror. We were holding each other. Laughing. We were endless. The flash made it look like he was carrying a star.
Now, I can’t get the zipper of the red dress pulled up all the way, but if I tie the sash tightly, it stays on. I wad Jam’s clothes in a ball to bring them down to the washing machine but realize that while I’m at it, I should wash the clothes in my car.
Everything shifted during the drive from Maine. Sweatshirts fell out of grocery bags; books slid on top of them. I have to lean far into the trunk to corral underwear and Thirsty Clam t-shirts. The cold air makes my bare arms itch.
I hear a car door shut, and it takes a moment to realize the strangeness. I am used to living in an apartment building where people are coming and going at all hours, so I didn’t pay mind to the sound of a car approaching. But there’s no need to drive to this part of this street if you don’t live here. We’re at the middle, and the road is too narrow and hilly to be a shortcut to anywhere.
I freeze at the sound of footsteps on the driveway. I can picture myself being shoved in the trunk, almost feel hands on my body and the burn from that scratchy felt lining against my skin. It’s so real in my mind that I am already carsick from being driven to a second location even while my feet are firmly planted on the driveway. I start unlatching the cover of the spare tire. Try to wriggle the board open enough to get my hand in, even though there are a bunch of books weighing it down.
“Excuse me. Hello?” The voice is male, tentative, not entirely unfamiliar, but I cannot place it.
I feel around for the lug wrench, but it’s stuck. I can’t get it loose.
“So sorry to bother you.” It’s the voice of an older man, with the vague hint of a British accent. It is not Charlie. It’s not one of his friends. It isn’t anyone I went to high school with, or even a teacher. “Are you Freya?”
I stand, dress swishing, sash loosening.
The man is not built like someone who kidnaps people in their driveway. He’s about my height, and thin like a person who runs marathons. I am certain I’ve never seen him before. He’s wearing a tweed sport coat and a scarf that makes me think of Sherlock Holmes. He has small round glasses and closely cropped curly gray hair. He’s somewhere in the stretch between fifty and sixty. An old brown Saab is parked at the end of the driveway. I have never seen that car before either.
“You are Freya, aren’t you?” the man says. “You look like your sister.” He tilts his head. “From some angles.”
My brain short-circuits. I can’t say anything. A few years ago, I read an article about a woman who had been selectively mute as a child, and the description of words unable to form, ideas too vague to be spoken in moments of stress, made me think that I probably had been too. Sometimes the silence still creeps in, and I get stuck in a tangle of words. Even when I can see them forming in my mind, letter by letter, I can’t remember how to give them sound. And there are words I can’t think of at all, as if they’ve been deleted from my database.
“So, you’re not dead,” he says, grinning.
The word Hello spells out in typewriter letters in my mind, but the questions I should ask are just wisps in the air.
“I’m so pleased you’re not dead.”
Who are you? I think, all at once, in a rush that turns into a lump in my throat.
“I tried to call you at The Thirsty Clam, and the gentleman who owns it, Buck? He told me you died. But then a moment later, he asked me if you died, so I felt perhaps he was not… accurate.”
“Hans,” I say, brain untangling. My voice is low and hoarse. I see the word Gruber in my mind but catch myself before I say it. After all of Buck’s confusion, I keep forgetting Hans’s actual last name. I reach back to tighten the sash holding up my dress and try to inch the zipper closer to closed.
“Oh, yes. Foolish me, starting at the middle of things again. Oh, Hans.” He rolls his eyes at himself. “So nice to finally meet you in person, Freya.”
He offers his hand to shake mine. I switch the grip on my zipper to meet his hand with my right. His palm is warm. His eyes are kind. My pulse slows.
“I guess… I guess I just wasn’t sure what to do.” He stares at me for a moment like he’s taking in a sunrise or a puppy, a grin rising across his wrinkled face. “Do you ever root for someone you don’t know?”
“Sure,” I say, thinking of all the sad sacks who drank away sorrows with me over the years.
“Well, I know it’s not my place, but your relatives were all so… if you’ll forgive me… um, disagreeable, I think is the best word, yes. And then there was Freya. Freya of the Fólkvangr!” Hans says, with exacting pronunciation.
“My father’s parents were Norwegian.”
“Ah!” Hans nods. “An ancestral designation—and a smart choice! Who wouldn’t want to be named for a goddess who cares for souls lost in battle?”
“It’s alright,” I say. I always think it’s funny when people see a name as a reflection of the named instead of the ones who did the naming. Whether a name does or doesn’t fit is a matter of coincidence, or maybe how well someone matches the aesthetic of their family. My father’s aesthetic was that he married an Italian American woman who already had a child, so he marked his territory to feel less like an outsider, and I spent my whole life having to spell my weirdo name for strangers.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Hans says. “And you’re here!” He holds his fist in the air like his favorite team just made a goal. “I couldn’t stand the idea of Steena getting the house.” He looks shocked as soon as those words leave his mouth.
The affection he seems to have for me feels like a responsibility I do not want. But I’m charmed by his small wind-burned face and partial to anyone who can see through my sister’s bullshit.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hans says. “Forgive—it’s not my place.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’ve met my sister.”
Hans’s laugh is a gentle rumble. “Well, Freya, I don’t want to impose on your day, but we do have a few things to sort through. I’m next to the Bailey House.” He points toward the general direction of town. “Could you stop by the office when you have a moment?”
I nod.
He reaches in his pocket and hands me a business card. His last name is Gruenberger.
“I should get back to my laundry,” I say, gesturing as if it explains my attire.
“Ah, sure.” Hans laughs again. “Although, finding Freya in a flowing gown seems appropriate.”
I am lost for words, so I wave awkwardly and turn back to the trunk of my car, collecting clothes while I listen to Hans Gruenberger’s footsteps.
“Protect your necklace from Loki!” he yells.
“Will do,” I call because I feel the need to protect him from his own awkwardness.
I remember a story about Loki turning into a fly. Step read it to me from a dusty old book with gold-edged pages that his mother had given him when he was a little boy. He’d sit on my bed next to my pillow so I could see the pages too. There were so many names neither of us knew how to say. And then Step would fall asleep, and I’d take the book and try to finish the story myself while he snored. It’s how I learned to read chapter books, how I know the meanings of so many words I still can’t pronounce. Step introduced me to the myths and Mark Twain, Swiss Family Robinson and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas , all the Hardy Boys we could find in used bookstores, even a little bit of Shakespeare. I loved them all, but I did especially like to see my name in that book about gods.