3. CRAZY
3
CRAZY
GNARLS BARKLEY
JACK
Pretzel shop.
Dinah.
Beautiful.
Don't mess it up.
When I woke up this morning with a killer headache and a Post-it note plastered to my face and on my bathroom mirror and the lid of the toilet bowl and another on the coffee pot, I assumed the message was an important one.
Then I discovered more along every inch of my morning routine. In my daily journal. Inside of a boot. On the front door before leaving for work. My assumptions quickly turned to aggravation at the annoying, multi-colored breadcrumbs repeating the same vague message. You’d think if he was so concerned about me not messing it up , he’d leave a more detailed explanation as to why.
The morning progresses and more and more Post-its appear.
I growl when I find a pale pink one taped to the monitor in the shop and make sure to crumple it in my fist before throwing it in the trash at my feet. I don’t have the time or inclination to care about a pretzel shop or Dinah—no matter how beautiful she may be—whether the notes tell me I should or not. Not when I have a desk piled with orders for the day and a headache threatening to cut my workday short.
I start my daily task of organizing purchase orders based on pickup time, variety, and ease, then into deliveries and in-store pickups. The new tenant next door—Dinah, I’m assuming—switches on her ridiculous playlist. Just like she has every morning at the same time for months. I haven’t met her yet, but sometimes I can hear her singing severely off pitch, and it’s more than a little distracting. Today’s off-key karaoke comes in the form of Pharell Williams’ “Happy,” and it makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
Instead, I throw on the pair of noise cancelling headphones my little sister gifted me with last summer and retreat into myself, remembering all the frou-frou calming words the neuropsych encourages me to repeat when I’m feeling overwhelmed. My head feels like it’s splitting in two, despite the fact that I’ve said silence, solitude, and safe over and over again. I’ve nearly convinced myself to march next door and ask Pretzel Shop Dinah to turn down the music—that’s now making my walls shake—when my brother calls.
“Bro. What’s up?” Owen’s chipper. As usual. And lacking in phone etiquette.
“Hello, Owen,” I murmur, rubbing my temples. “Don’t say bro. You sound like a teenager.”
“Ohhhhhh.” He releases a knowing sigh, and it frazzles my nerves more. “Hello, Jack. How’s it goin’?”
“Fine.”
“Clearly.” There’s a pause, like Owen doesn’t quite know what to say, which is fine, because it’s finally quiet in my head, and I realize the music next door has blessedly stopped for now, too. “Headache?”
“Yup.”
“Sorry, Jack. Need anything?”
“Nope.” I brush my fingers over the top of a few carnations before I add them to Mr. Cotten’s bouquet. “You playin’ today?”
My little brother plays minor league baseball for the Honey Hill Badgers. Spring training should be starting about now which means I’ll be seeing less of him, and these morning phone calls will taper off in relation to his schedule. Even though, in so many ways, I wish we didn’t have these little chats, I know I’ll miss them.
Winnie, our baby sister, will likely be the one to take over the morning phone calls in his stead, and I’ll have to be much more careful with her than I am with him. With Owen I don’t have to pretend. He may not like me very much, but he never asks me to be anyone but myself.
“Nah, practice starts tomorrow,” Owen answers. “I’m meetin’ Winnie, Mama, and Pop at the shop and headin’ to lunch. Thought you might wanna come with.”
When I stay quiet, finally feeling as if my headache might be easing, Owen takes it as an invitation to keep trying.
“I can pick you up on my way. I might swing by and see Brooke anyways.” Brooke, his longtime best friend, who’s about as peaceful as a cyclone ripping through an antique store. “So I’ll be downtown anyway. She got a job at the salon, and it’d be no trouble—”
I clear my throat, but don’t answer. He knows how I feel about this topic. About the family’s need to include me when they don’t want to. When I’m like… this.
“It’s alright, bro—I mean, Jack,” he quickly corrects. I imagine the ridiculous way his face slackens when he’s bummed out, and I feel a familiar guilt press up against my sternum. “Maybe tomorrow, right?” There’s little hope in his tone.
“Sure.”
I pick a light pink, velvet ribbon that reminds me of a distant memory I can’t quite place. After wrapping the carnations, eucalyptus, and baby’s breath in brown craft paper then reinforcing it with the small ribbon, the faint sounds of music play again on the other side of the wall.
“Okay, then.” Owen’s voice nearly makes me jump. I’d forgotten we were still on the phone, but somehow the clipped conversation managed to settle me in a way the calming words hadn’t. “I’ll let ya go, alright?”
I hum in agreement.
“Wait. Before you go, did you get the notes?”
“Yes, Owen. I got the notes.”
He sighs again, a sound I’ve grown used to over the last year—and one that grates me more than I want to admit. I hate that our relationship looks and sounds like this now. I just don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what more I can do, but I won’t have my little brother losing sight of himself or his dreams for something he has no control over.
“‘Kay,” he says quietly. “Love you, Jack. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Hopefully when you’re you again , is what he doesn’t say.
“Love you.”
I end the call before he can say anything more.
My morning continues as usual. Crafting in the quiet usually helps. Though when I manage to drown out the noise of my new neighbor with headphones, my own clanging thoughts won't give me a moment of reprieve. This is the way things always seem to go. Every morning Owen calls, or my mom or dad, and on rare occasions, Winnie. I spend the rest of the day analyzing the way I spoke to them. My clipped words. My refusal to engage. Knowing they prefer a specific version of me, and I am not it.
A couple flower hand-offs make me feel productive in a way that I lack when I’m not here, working with purpose. Mr. Cotten, who buys his wife the same bouquet once a week, is first. He always rambles on for a while, discussing the intricacies of courtin’ a woman properly. There’s quite a bit to be said for someone who’s been married for thirty years. And who am I to argue with him? But he’s a textbook oversharer.
I could know far less about how Mrs. Cotten likes her morning coffee—hand-delivered while still in her nightgown. Or her daily calf rub—lathered up with vanilla-scented lotion and spa socks covering her feet. No matter how many times I ask—politely, mind you—for him to stop, good ol’ Mr. Cotten just won’t take the hint.
After an exposition on necking in marriage , I kindly kick the old man out of my store before he paints a more repulsive picture than he already has. Then I prep and hand over a couple simple arrangements to my delivery guy, a teenager who lives in Sugartree but works here for a business class two days a week. I miss delivering them on my own, but am glad to have found someone who seems genuinely appreciative of the low paying job.
Everything goes smoothly, and I’m feeling almost normal by noon. So when Charlie trots into the shop, right on schedule, I know I’ll regret taking off my headphones but do so anyway.
She meanders around for a few moments, as she’s prone to do, but eventually sticks her nose into the pots of discount flowers next to my desk.
“Hey, boy.” She pulls up her face and nods at the bouquet in my hand. “That for someone special?”
“Customer.” I find if I keep my answers curt and quiet, sooner or later Charlie loses interest and gets on with her own business.
She nods again and starts picking out stems, shuffling her feet in those ridiculous shoes of hers as she goes. “Sure was some party last night, huh?”
I shrug but don’t answer. God-willing, she’ll take the hint.
“You been over there yet today?” She pulls out a fading blue hydrangea that’s all wrong with the lilies she already has in her hand. Taking the bundle from her, I replace the lilies with pale white roses and begin to build around them.
“Over where, Charlotte?”
“Next door, ya fool. And ya know I hate it when you call me Charlotte, Jackson Jones.”
I do. And I gotta admit to myself, it's strangely satisfying to get a rise out of her now and then.
“Have ya gone to see the girl yet?” She doesn’t wait for a response before moseying around next to me behind the counter, bumping my side with her hip, and strumming through the ribbon spools I’ve got organized below the work surface. “That Dinah seems like the sweetest sort of woman. Kind. Bubbly. Good sense for business. And beautiful, of course.”
Pretzel shop. Dinah. Beautiful. Don’t mess it up.
The words pass through my mind unbidden, prickling at my thoughts like a thorn that’s stuck and can’t be removed. It makes me irrationally angry that, for some reason, everyone seems to think this girl is worth hounding me about all morning. I snatch up the shears and snip the ends of the stems more aggressively than necessary, wrapping them in brown paper, and then in the burnt orange ribbon Charlie hands me.
“You sure are extra testy this morning, young man. Is that any way to treat your kin?”
I roll my eyes and hand the finished bundle to her. We’re only kin in the sense that I’ve known Charlie my entire life and her sons are two of my best friends. “On the house.”
Charlie harrumphs and clutches it to her chest but then reaches on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, patting it affectionately. “Have a good day, Jack. I’ll see ya tomorrow.” She whistles as she leaves, throwing her hands up behind her and hollering, “I like the scruff. Your mama will hate it,” just before she lets the door slam on her way out.
I rub my jaw, where a fine shadow of hair has grown, and the music next door reaches a new decibel. Pulling my headphones up again, I do my best to block out the buzz of static that lives in my brain and the new mix of thoughts pacing through after the oddities this morning. Not the influx of phone calls or visitors. That’s not new.
I imagine the town has a sign-up sheet they pass around monthly, insisting each resident fill public service hours by hounding me daily whether I like it or not.
No, today something prickles my mind in a way I haven’t felt for some time. It’s an itch I can’t scratch. The lyrics to my favorite song that I just can’t seem to remember. The longer the day goes on, the more the lapse in knowledge sours my mood. And every minute I hear that incessant music and singing from next door, above the noise in my head, the more I convince myself I might actually need to visit this Dinah character and teach her some neighborly decorum. Somewhere between boy band mixes and an Adele song that seems to go on forever, I lose all sense of patience.
Head throbbing again and nerves strained, I throw down my seemingly useless headphones and stomp out of my shop to meet the girl next door.
Unfortunately for me, when I enter the pink and orange explosion that is Knotty & Nice, she doesn’t see me right away. Meaning, I have a moment to take in the woman drawing on a chalkboard, singing at the top of her lungs, and shimmying her body like a back up dancer for one of the musicians she’s been emulating all morning.
The woman is oblivious, but in an oddly adorable way. Wearing overalls, mint shoes, a pink crop top, and strawberry blonde hair in braids, she matches her decor.
She finally turns around, startling for a brief moment, but then offers me a coy smile and crosses the room like she’s been expecting me all morning. I freeze, stunned into submission by a gut feeling I can’t explain.
The only thing I can seem to think about as she approaches is:
Pretzel shop.
Dinah.
Beautiful.
Don't mess it up.