The Lateral

Chapter 2

H er mouth dropped open. “Jake…Jake…”

“Koburg,” I prompted. “Do you know who he is?” I held my hand as high as I could above my head to approximate his height. “About this tall, about as wide a single-car garage door.”

But Calandra only stared with her jaws still gaping.

“He’s a Woodcarver,” I said, to jog her memory more. “He looks like a cross between a mountain and a Viking, one with dark hair. I’m sure those guys weren’t all blondes, no matter what they look like in shows.”

“Jake Koval is a Woodsmen ,” she corrected. “He was in your house?”

She was acting like I’d partied with Bigfoot. “Haven’t you ever seen one of the football players?” I asked. “They come in here sometimes, don’t they?” I hadn’t been employed at this club for long enough to know that for sure, but I’d entertained athletes at other venues.

“I have to sit down,” she said, and fanned her face for a moment before she answered. “Yes,” she told me eventually, “sometimes they come in here. We see the second string, the third string. We see guys from the Junior Woodsmen, the development league team. But not the Woodsmen starters. Never the stars.” She fanned herself harder. “He plays on the offensive line, next to Morin and Boone. Next to Seyram Adiang! That man is a god. A big, handsome, muscly god.” She had to take a tissue to dab at her forehead.

“Oh.” I nodded. “Jake must do a good job if he’s so renowned.”

“You talk so weird sometimes,” she said. “Shit, I need to do my liner but my hands are shaking.” She held them up for me to see. “I can’t believe that Jake Koval was in your house.”

I picked up the kohl stick. “Close your eyes. He really was there and Meadow really damaged his truck. I had to pay him almost three thousand dollars.”

“Oh, no! Ember!” Her eyes flew open and I almost drew on her iris. “It was that much?”

“That was what the invoice said. Close, please.”

But she didn’t. “I think he must have scammed you. There’s just no way it cost thousands to fix a scratch.”

I had thought about that, too. “There really was a lot of damage. The invoice looked real.”

“Did you get a copy?”

“Well…”

“Ember, you have no sense,” she chastised me, shaking her head. “Someone could rob you at gunpoint and you’d say, ‘Oh, look! There’s another bill in my pocket that I forgot to give you.’”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I countered. “I know for sure that I wouldn’t, because that happened to me twice already. I just gave what I had and kept my mouth shut.”

“You got robbed at gunpoint, twice?”

“It was in Los Angeles. I lived in a bad area,” I explained. “I bet the Woodcutter guy must make good money if he’s a star. It would be kind of weird for him to spend his time squeezing more from someone like me.” In fact, he’d thought that I was trying to scam him. He’d said it more than once and he’d been angry, but I hadn’t been trying to trick him. I’d been stunned, that was all.

Calandra closed her eyes and I quickly applied the eyeliner to her top lids. “Look up,” I directed, and did the bottoms.

“Thanks. I guess that kind of money would be small potatoes to a Woodsmen player,” she agreed. “What’s he like in person?”

“Just normal,” I said. “He was upset about his car, but anyone would have been.”

“How did you deal with Meadow?” she asked.

Calandra was a mom, a real one, so I trusted her feedback. “I don’t think I did a great job,” I started to explain, but we didn’t have time to talk. She needed to go on, so she quickly covered her lips in gloss and hurried to the front of the house. I didn’t get to explain that I’d tried to talk to Meadow but I had little faith that she had listened to the warning that I’d issued: we couldn’t afford any more of this behavior. “Next time,” I’d started to say, but then I’d shaken my head. “There can’t be a next time. You can’t do stuff like this, not ever again.”

Pretty soon I had to go on myself, and it was a good night. Christmas had come and gone the day before and I’d thought the crowd would be small because of it, but I was wrong. Where we lived in northern Michigan was a destination for vacationers, even in the short, dark days of winter. It meant that we’d drawn in more people than just the group of locals that we would have entertained on a regular Thursday, one that didn’t follow a holiday. After the last performance, we all wanted to go home, but we had to stay a little later to discuss the New Year’s party that the club owner, Travis, was planning. He showed us the outfits we’d wear and I thought they weren’t too bad. A few of the girls complained about the extra hours we were going to have to work, since we were supposed to come early and mingle with the crowd. The idea was that we’d rev them up and get them drinking more.

“This is going to suck,” Calandra grumbled as we walked to our cars. “Are you still bringing Meadow to my place that night?”

“If it’s still ok,” I answered. Calandra lived with her mom, so that nice lady would be able to keep an eye on everyone.

“If you can promise that she won’t carve a wang into the side of my trailer, then she’s welcome,” she said, and got into her car.

“I promise,” I called. When we’d had the big talk about the damage to the truck, Meadow had pretty much ignored me— but despite that, I felt like things were going better now. Penis vandalism was part of her past, not her future. She was on her winter break from school, which was such a relief to both of us since no one had to get up early. It had also given us time to hang out together, which I’d lured her into. So far, we’d watched movies, drawn, gone sledding, and made a cake. Her Christmas gifts hadn’t been great but she seemed resigned to the lack of bounty, and I had gotten her a new winter coat that was the same as what the other girls in her class wore. She’d put it on and acted ok with it.

But she wasn’t a totally changed person, because the anger was still there. I got to see it when I said that she would be staying at Calandra’s house on New Year’s Eve, because I had to go to work early and would probably get home late.

“I have to stay with that old lady and the stinky kid?” she snarled. “No. No, I won’t.”

“Calandra’s mom is sweet and her son is a nice little boy,” I answered. “He’s so cute!”

“He wears a diaper and he smells like shit.”

“Please don’t swear,” I said. That was an ongoing issue, one that had been brought up several times by her school. I was actively trying to set a good example by not doing it myself, but so far, that hadn’t made any difference.

“I’m not going!” she hollered at me, but in the end, she didn’t have a choice. On New Year’s Eve, I flipped all the fuses and said that there was a power outage. She’d have to go to Calandra’s place for the night if she wanted to stay warm and have lights on.

“That was a good trick,” Calandra told me admiringly as we got dressed at the club. “I’m going to have to remember that when Dreyden gets older and I lose control over him.”

“Do you think you will?”

“Do you remember yourself as a teenager? I remember exactly how I acted,” she said, shaking her head. “I gave my mom hell.”

I hoped that Meadow wasn’t giving that to Calandra’s mom right now. Their trailer wasn’t huge and there wasn’t a lot of space to get away from all the rage she exuded. “I wasn’t like that,” I said. “I was independent and everything, but I was also more of a peacekeeper. Maybe Drey will be the same way.”

“I can only cross my fingers…shit, I have to get going.”

We all did, since this was part of the party. Travis, the owner, had us wandering between the tables and talking to the clientele, who already seemed rowdy to me and didn’t need to be “warmed up” as he had instructed us. In fact, one of the guys was already so hot that he grabbed me pretty roughly as I talked to his table, and he pulled hard enough that my ankle turned and I almost fell over.

The bouncer wasn’t great here and with the big crowd, it would have been hard to see what was happening, anyway. I was glad when a guy from another group stepped in to help.

“Let go,” he ordered, and the grabber did that and then held up his hands like he was innocent. His own friends forced him back into his chair.

“Are you ok?” my rescuer asked me.

“I’m good,” I assured him, and smiled. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I don’t like to see a woman get manhandled,” he said, and smiled back. I thought he was cute, and especially when I considered what he’d done for me. Not every guy would put himself at risk like that. The man who’d yanked on me had been drunker but a few inches taller, which meant more reach in a fight and more weight behind a punch. I wanted to keep talking but the point of the night was circulation, so I smiled at him again and then I moved on.

But when I passed by that rescuer again, he asked for my number. I never gave that out, never ever. “Sorry, I don’t…” I started to explain—but then I stopped. “Ok,” I said, and I told him. He typed it right into his phone too, which made me remember the last time I’d given a man my number. That had been the Woodruff football player, and he hadn’t bothered to record it. Jared Koala knew that he had me pinned down and my identity wasn’t important: I was going to pay up no matter what. But giving my number to this guy meant that I had freedom, which felt nice. His interest did, too.

And he texted me! Before the night even ended, he wrote to say that I was the prettiest girl in the club and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off me. He was only in town for another few days, but did I want to get together and see where it led?

“You want to? Really?” Calandra asked me as we wearily changed back into our regular clothes. It had been a long, tiring shift here. “Are you sure?”

“Why not? I can go out on a date,” I said, but yawned. “I can still live a little.”

“Living a little was how I ended up with a kid,” she pointed out, but she did agree that I deserved some time off. “I’ll watch Meadow,” she offered, because she was a good friend to me. I had moved up here not too long ago, and I felt lucky that I’d already met someone like her—and now, maybe, I’d be meeting a guy I liked, too.

School still didn’t start for another week, so the next morning, Meadow and I both slept in. I felt sorry that I’d had to wake her in the middle of the night before to bring her home, but there was no extra bed in Calandra’s place. She’d been on the couch, scrunched up and uncomfortable, and I wasn’t strong enough to carry her to the car.

That was it: exercise. I needed to be stronger and it would be good for Meadow, too. We’d both gotten out of breath when we’d hiked up the gentle slope for sledding and the last time I worked out…when had I taken gym in school? Was it the sixth grade? Fifth? I got some cardio when I danced, but it probably wasn’t enough. And Meadow’s teacher had noted in one of our meetings that another way for her to make friends could be through sports. I presumed that exercise was the first step toward learning those. The details of how it would work were a little fuzzy in my mind but now I had a goal, and it was that Meadow would become an athlete.

I searched on my phone for a while and found a community center in another little town that offered cheap group classes. It wasn’t too far away and the roads were pretty clear with no snow in the forecast. Why not? It could have been a real win for both of us.

I waited a while for Meadow to wake up on her own but when that didn’t happen, I started to cause a commotion in the kitchen, putting away pots, pans, and dishes then taking them back out and starting again. When that didn’t work, I coughed a lot in front of her door, which was kind of real. I had a tickle that I hadn’t been able to shake.

Finally, I heard the bed frame start making noise and then the mattress did the big squeak that indicated that she was getting up. That was my cue to race back to the kitchen and pretend to sip out of a mug, covering my face.

“Did you drop stuff out here?” she asked suspiciously. “Were you making noise outside of my room on purpose?”

I shrugged and kept the mug in place. I was lying a lot more than I wanted to—first I’d written a deceitful email to her school, then I’d made up the story about the electricity going off, and now this? But I reminded myself that it was all for her own good. “I’m glad you’re awake,” I answered. “I have such a good idea.”

It was the wrong way to go because she immediately said that she didn’t care about any idea I had, and I realized that I should have pretended that I had to do something terrible that I dreaded. She might have been intrigued by that. But this idea was something that would potentially help her out, and I really wanted her to participate. What would a good parent have done next?

“If you come with me to an exercise class then I’ll get you a new backpack,” I said, which was bribery and not good parenting at all, but I did immediately see a spark of interest in her eyes. She’d been wanting a new backpack for months.

And that was why, a little while later, we were in my car and on the way to the community center. It was in a weird location behind what appeared to be a dump, but there was a big fence separating them. The building itself was huge and looked brand-new.

“The Emma Martell-Matthews Memorial Meeting House,” I read on the sign. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said that pets were welcome. Whoever that Emma had been, I bet that she’d led a good life, been loved a lot, or both.

“Do we have to do this?” Meadow asked from the back seat. She’d insisted on sitting there, where no one could see us together.

“Think about the backpack,” I advised, and we parked and went in.

“Can I help you?” A tall, lanky man-boy sat at the front desk. Reddish hair spilled in front of his eyes and he smiled very kindly at us. “Are you here for Helping Hands?”

No, but was this some kind of omen? A helping hand was exactly what we needed. “We could be,” I answered, and he nodded enthusiastically.

“That’s great! Let me get your names,” he told me, so I gave them. We were Ember Easley and Meadow Pruett.

“It’s Meadow Pruett-Weiss,” she said, shooting me a nasty glance.

“Nice to meet you,” the boy-man said. “I’m Jamison. I volunteer here on weekends because I’m a little old now to do Helping Hands. I’m fifteen,” he filled in, and I nodded.

“That’s impressive.”

He seemed to agree. “I don’t see either of your names on my list. I can get Miss Margulies,” he suggested. “She runs the Helping Hands program. She runs everything.”

“Wow, good for her,” I said. “Did she get a special degree or certificate to do that?”

“Um, I don’t know. You could ask her,” he offered. “Her dog was sick this morning, but usually she’d be here at the desk meeting everybody.”

“What exactly is the program?” I asked, and he seemed surprised by my ignorance but nicely explained that kids were paired up with adults in mentoring relationships.

“It’s really fun. I loved my mentor and now, it’s like he’s my dad. You may have heard of him,” he said casually, and then, as if he was dropping a bomb, he announced, “It’s Kayden Matthews!”

“Wow,” I said. I had no idea who that was, but I understood that I was supposed to be impressed.

“Wow,” Meadow echoed, but she meant it. “The real one? The real Kayden Matthews?”

The teenager nodded at her. “Yeah. A bunch of the Woodsmen players volunteer here now and some of the Woodsmen Wonderwomen, too.”

Meadow glanced my way and her mouth turned down. “She doesn’t know anything,” she announced. “Kayden Matthews is the Woodsmen quarterback,” she explained to me, speaking slowly as if I would have trouble grasping the fact. “That means he throws the ball on the football field.”

I could tell that the receptionist was holding back laughter, but I didn’t mind if they were bonding over me being witless. That they were bonding, I counted as a win! “What are the Wonderwomen?” I asked.

“They’re the dance squad for the team,” he explained. “They perform at games, events, charity stuff.” He got a dreamy expression. “They’re beautiful and so talented. And they’re generous, because a lot of them give their time here.”

“I’m also a dancer,” I mentioned, and Meadow turned bright red.

“Not like them!” she snarled.

“Maybe one of those girls could be your Assistant Hand,” I suggested, and he said that Miss Margulies was the one to match kids with Helping Hands.

“But I don’t see you on my list, anyway,” he mentioned, scrolling again. I had to explain that I hadn’t signed up, and he said that Miss Margulies would determine if there was room for one more person. “Maybe there is, but this is a very popular program due to the Woodsmen,” he said, and he sounded doubtful. “It fills fast because everyone wants to meet people like Kayden. Kayden Matthews, the quarterback,” he reiterated.

“Let’s try to get you one of those Hands,” I whispered to Meadow. “You can do this instead of the Pilates class.”

She looked back at me with loathing. “I don’t want to do any of it!”

I only had one word: “Backpack.” She frowned, but stayed silent as we waited for the program director to come out. In the meantime, I asked the teenage receptionist about sports, since that was my new focus, and he had a lot to say.

I was facing him as we spoke, so I saw his face absolutely light up with pleasure as the bell on the front door jingled. He was grinning widely but his words were totally casual when he greeted the person who walked in. “What’s up, Jake?” he drawled, but to us, he whispered excitedly, “This is Jake Koval!”

“Hey, Jamison,” a man answered, and his voice reminded me of those big, shiny instruments—what were they called? Tubas, that was it. I turned and spotted the person who I’d last seen driving away from my house in a vehicle without any trace of fruit on its door.

“Hello,” I called.

He stared at me and Meadow and he bared his teeth slightly, an expression which was not a smile. He raised his hand, but it wasn’t to wave hello. Instead, he pointed at her. “Don’t touch my truck. Do you hear me?”

“What?” Jamison asked. He stood up from his chair.

“She won’t,” I said, and stepped in front of her to be a buffer. He was still angry and suspicious, and I didn’t blame him. But I wouldn’t let him be mean to Meadow.

“I don’t need you!” Meadow yelled, and her anger was directed at me again. “Don’t defend me. Fuck off!”

That was the unfortunate moment that the Helping People program director arrived in the lobby to talk to us. “Miss Margulies,” the receptionist whispered urgently.

She looked at us and her head shook back and forth. “We don’t allow swearing here,” she said to Meadow, her voice frosty, and of course…

“Screw you, bitch!” Meadow sassed back, and that earned us an invitation to leave. The boy at the desk watched in dismay and Jake Koval moved from our path so that we could exit.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the room as the door closed behind us. Meadow was almost running and didn’t slow down even when I grabbed the sleeve of her new coat. “Why did you do that?” I asked as she pulled out of my grasp. “Why?”

“I hate you!” she screamed. She flipped me off and stomped across the plowed asphalt to my car. I unlocked it and watched as she let herself in and slammed the door, hard. Then she sat inside and hit the dashboard repeatedly, and I decided to give her a minute. We both needed one.

“She hates all cars, not just mine.”

I hadn’t realized that Jake Koval had also joined us in the parking lot. “I’m watching to make sure she doesn’t hurt any of the other vehicles.” We both saw her strike my window with her mittened fist.

“I never knew they kicked kids out of Helping Hands,” he commented.

“We weren’t really signed up, so it doesn’t count as expulsion,” I said.

“You’re going to defend the way that little hellion just behaved?”

“No, I’m not defending her! But I understand it, so I’m not calling her names, either. That’s not nice and I think you’re old enough to know better, Mr. Konan.”

“ Koval . You’re obviously not a football fan.”

“No,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Hell, I don’t care.” He was looking at me with an expression that I might have labeled as confused. “We’re having a conversation.”

“Yeah, I guess we are—oh!” I grimaced as Meadow hit the side window again. “Could she break it?” I wondered aloud.

“She’s more likely to break something in her hand,” he said. Before I knew exactly what he was doing, he walked over and jerked open my car’s passenger door, which made me grimace even more. It also seemed likely that he’d be able to pull that right off, but all he did was lean down and speak to Meadow. Then he shut the door, fairly gently for him, and walked back over to me.

“What did you say to her?” I asked.

“I told her to stop that bullshit, and she told me to fuck off. But she stopped,” he noted, and that was true.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve tried to be direct like that, but she doesn’t listen. I’ve also tried persuasion, discussion, punishment, distraction, and ignoration. I don’t know if that’s a word, but I mean ignoring her.”

He nodded as if he’d understood.

“Now I’m trying bribery,” I went on. “I wanted to go to an exercise class here, and I said I would buy her a new backpack if she went with me. I want her to try sports because maybe that’s a way of making friends.”

“It is,” he confirmed.

“But then that boy told us about the mentor program, so I said that I would buy the backpack if she went along with that instead. You saw how it worked out.”

“Looks like the backpack isn’t happening.”

“It’s just too bad,” I lamented. “I really want her to have it but they cost a ton. A few girls in her class carry that kind and I know she thinks that they’ll like her if she does, too, and I don’t necessarily agree but if it would help…it’s hard for her at that school.”

“Jake?” the guy from behind the counter asked. He had opened the door to the community center and was looking out at us. “Uh, they’re ready for your speech.”

“It’s not a speech,” Jake Koval corrected. “I said I’d do a Q and A, that’s all.”

“Ok,” the teenager agreed complacently. “I bet they have lots of questions.”

“Good luck with your answers. Bye,” I told them both, and walked carefully to my car. Someone cared enough to keep up this parking lot, so it was nice and smooth and salted, but it paid to be careful. If I went down and hurt myself, there went our income.

Meadow didn’t talk to me all the way home and I wasn’t actually sorry. I was very upset by her behavior and my continued lack of control over it. It made everything worse that all those people had been there to see, like that nice boy Jackson at the desk and also Miss Mango who ran the program. Jake Koval had witnessed it too, and now he knew that I had made no progress at all in getting her to calm down and to regulate her anger. It made me feel like a big failure, which I already did because I understood how much Meadow needed me to fix this for her. I hadn’t fixed anything.

She went to her room when we got home and I set out to clean. There was still glitter in a lot of places, and I also decided that it was time to strip the house of my Christmas decorations. I was standing on a chair and trying to reach the ones I’d taped to the ceiling when I heard the rumble of a powerful engine, and then I saw a large figure mount the single step that led to our porch.

What was he doing here? “What are you doing here?” I asked Jake Koval when I opened the door. “Welcome, and come on in.”

He didn’t really answer, but he did step inside. “You’re making the house less memorable,” he stated as he looked around.

“What? Oh, you mean how I was having a memorable holiday for Meadow with my decorations. Yeah, I figured that it was time. It was a pretty good Christmas, though. I made a holiday meat loaf and she liked her presents.”

“What did she get for you?”

“Oh,” I said again, and then shrugged. “She didn’t get me anything, but it worked out for the best. In their art class at school, all the kids were supposed to make a card for their parents. She painted a dead bird on hers and inside she wrote that she hates me. They sent me a picture instead of letting her bring it home and that was lucky for me because I probably would have been very surprised and upset by it on Christmas. I’m going to have another meeting with the principal and the counselor when school resumes.”

“Goddamn, a dead bird?”

“The artwork was very creative and she really captured the bleakness of it. Would you like to sit down?”

He eyed the couch. “The last time I was here, I got glitter all over me. I went to practice and one of the guys on the defensive line asked if I was sprinkled in fairy dust.”

I smiled. “What did you say?”

“I hit him in the mouth. Not too hard,” he clarified, because I must have seemed surprised.

“They don’t allow fighting where I work,” I said. “There was space for me there because one of the girls had just gotten fired for it. It wasn’t punching, though. I heard mostly hair pulling and slapping.”

“They don’t really like it where I work, either, so I did it in the parking lot. Gently,” he clarified again, but I looked at his big hands and wondered how gentle he could possibly be.

I nodded and climbed back up onto the chair. “I went too far with the glitter. I really wanted to make it special and festive, but it was more of a mess than I anticipated. Luckily, my coworkers don’t frown on glitter like your teammates seem to.”

“Who are your coworkers? Where do you work?”

“I’m a dancer at B-Dzld. The strip club,” I added, in case he wasn’t familiar with it. Calandra had certainly never seen him there.

“That’s how you say the name of that place? I drove by it a few times but had no idea.” His eyes flicked toward the bedrooms. “Does she know that you work there?”

“Yeah, ‘be dazzled’ is tough without all the letters. And yeah, Meadow knows,” I answered. “I’m not ashamed or anything. It’s pretty good money and it paid for her new winter coat.”

“Do the kids at her school know?”

I stopped trying to grab the paper above my head. How had I gotten it up there? “No, they don’t, and it’s better that way. I’m not ashamed but you’re right, she is. She’s had it rough and I don’t want to add to it by embarrassing her with my job. I know exactly what they would all say and she doesn’t need to hear it.”

“What did she have so rough?” he asked me.

I glanced toward her bedroom door, the one that had the same sound-blocking capabilities of the butcher paper that I was trying to pull off my ceiling. “I don’t think it’s my place to share it,” I said. “It’s personal to her.”

He didn’t answer, not with a word or a nod or anything, but I felt like he got it. He walked over and without even getting on his tiptoes, he pulled down the paper that I’d been fighting with.

“Thank you!” I said, and again, he didn’t speak. But this time he did nod, and he kept reaching up and taking down the rest of my drawings. He did it carefully, too, not messing up the ceiling paint and draping the long pieces of paper over the back of the couch.

In not very much time at all, the walls and ceiling were cleared, leaving only the glitter and the tree in the corner. He watched as I removed the bulbs we’d bought. There were only a few and they hadn’t made the tree as bright and festive as I’d wanted. I also took down the ornaments I’d made to supplement, using yarn, more paper, and lots of glitter. I wound up the lights as he silently observed and when I was done, he picked up the tree and carried it outside for me.

“Thanks again,” I told him. I wasn’t exactly sure why he was here, but I was glad that he’d stopped by. “You were a huge help.”

Jake Koval nodded. He took his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, and removed a stack of bills. Then he placed them on my kitchen table.

“What is that, money? Why did you put it there?” I asked.

“It’s what you gave me before. I don’t need it.”

“That’s the money for the truck repairs? I owed you,” I said. “I owed you because Meadow damaged the paint.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the paint. You keep it.” As he spoke, he moved toward the front door and with his long legs, he arrived there in less than a second.

“Wait, that’s not right,” I said. “Hold on.”

“I said to keep it,” he told me, and he walked swiftly back to his truck, which was still so shiny and gorgeous.

“Wait,” I repeated, but he drove off, and his tires didn’t even shimmy on the ice. As I had done before, I watched him disappear over the little hill in the road, and then I realized that I was freezing and went back inside.

He’d given me more than what I’d paid him, because now I counted exactly three thousand dollars. It was in crisp, new hundreds instead of the crumpled bills I’d gotten out of my savings box in the ceiling. I looked at them and then I went to my bedroom, where I put the chair on the dresser and then climbed back up to my box behind the vent. As I squirreled away the money, I thought about Jake Koval returning it. I thought about him in general.