Chapter 41 Wreckage and Rain
Summer
January in Chicago is a different kind of cold than I knew existed.
The wind off the lake comes down Division Street like an insult.
The puffer jacket I bought in November is no match for it and I've downgraded my expectations of human dignity accordingly.
I leave the apartment in two scarves, mittens, the puffer, and the boots Mama gave me at twenty.
I look in the mirror by the door, I look like a small overstuffed couch with eyes, and I don't care.
The mittens are non-negotiable. The mittens are how I get through the third week of January in this city.
Colt comes out of the bedroom in jeans and a hoodie, barefoot, and laughs at me.
"Stop."
"What."
"You're laughing."
"I'm admiring."
"You're laughing."
"I can do both."
"You aren't allowed to laugh at me until you've survived a January in this city without crying once."
"I haven't cried once."
"You cried at the Sears Tower last week."
"That was the wind. The wind makes my eyes water."
"It was nine degrees and the windchill was negative twelve and you stood on the observation deck and stared at the lake and a single tear came out of your right eye and you wiped it with the back of your glove and pretended I didn't see."
"I didn't pretend you didn't see. I conceded the point and we moved on."
"I love you."
"I love you. Go to your class. Come home."
He kisses me at the door. Once. Quick. The new way. The asking-without-asking way. I kiss him back and step into the hall.
The new apartment is in Lincoln Park, on the second floor of a brownstone, with a real kitchen and tall windows and a fireplace I've decided to use even though we have central heat.
We have been here for six weeks. We're still unpacking.
There's a box in the front hall marked TWENTIES that we haven't opened and may never open.
It doesn't contain anything urgent. It contains the parts of Charleston I couldn't throw away and couldn't look at and so I've decided to let it sit in the hallway as a kind of permanent residue I'm going to address in March or April or June.
***
Bex puts me in the front row now. She has done that since the milestone show in October.
I'm no longer in the back of the room hiding in the mirror.
I'm in the front, with my hair tied up, in shorts and a tank top, and I do the choreography with the same body that did it on the stage that night, the body that lives in my own skin without apology now, the body that's been mine my whole life even though I only met her months ago.
Lucia is in the corner with the babysitter Marisol pays for in cash from the Sunday show. She waves at me with a fist full of crayons.
"Auntie's hair is bad today."
"Auntie's hair is on purpose today."
"On purpose bad."
Marisol from across the room, mid-stretch: "Lucia. We don't insult Auntie's hair in the studio."
"Outside the studio?"
"Outside the studio, if Auntie asks."
Lucia nods, satisfied with the jurisdiction, and returns to her crayons.
We do the class. Bex pushes me. The transition from second to third movement still defeats me sometimes. Bex makes me do it three times in a row at the end while everyone else is putting on their coats, and I do it because she says so, and the third time I get it.
"You'll get it on the night."
"I always get it on the night."
"That's correct. I'm tired of you telling me you aren't sure you will."
"I'll stop saying it."
"Thank you. Out."
I gather my coat. Lucia trundles over with a piece of construction paper.
"Auntie. I made this for you. It's a horse who is also a moon."
"That's the best kind of horse."
She nods solemnly and returns to her bag.
***
I get home at noon. Colt is at the kitchen table in his reading glasses with the laptop and a stack of folders, working through the Bennet Ventures Q1 forecast. He looks up.
"Lucia made me a moon-horse."
"Where on the wall is it going."
"Above the toaster."
"That's the third moon-horse-adjacent piece in the toaster gallery."
"Lucia is making a series."
"I respect a body of work."
I put the moon-horse on the wall above the toaster, next to last week's pancake-moon and the week before that's shnake. The toaster gallery is the most important art collection in this apartment.
"Jake's flight gets in at four. I told him I'd pick him up at O'Hare."
"You're picking him up at O'Hare in this weather."
"He has driven through hurricanes for me."
"I'll go with you."
"Colt. You have a meeting at three thirty."
"I'll be in the car before three thirty. The meeting is on the phone. I can take it from the car."
He stands up. Comes around the table. Kisses my forehead.
"I'll drive. You navigate."
"O'Hare doesn't require navigation. There's one road in and one road out."
"You navigate the radio. You can pick the music."
"You're letting me pick the music."
"I'm taking my chances."
"You're going to regret this."
"I'm going to regret nothing."
***
Jake comes off the jetway in a Carhartt and a fishing cap that makes him look like he's been at sea for three days, a duffel bag in one hand and a tackle box in the other. There is nothing to fish for in Chicago in January. He brought the tackle box anyway.
Jake hugs me first. Hard. He has gotten taller since I saw him last month, or he's just standing straighter, or I've decided to perceive him taller because I love him.
"King."
"Holloway."
"You look good."
"You look like a man who took the cheapest flight he could find."
"I took the cheapest flight I could find. Tell me your husband isn't still taking calls in the car."
"He's taking one call in the car. Then we'll be done."
"Bennet. Get off the phone."
Colt holds up one finger from the driver's seat. Jake gets in the back with his tackle box. I get in the front. Colt finishes the call before we leave the cell-phone lot, which he plans for, because he plans for everything now.
"All right. Holloway."
"Bennet."
"Welcome to Chicago."
"Take me to a bar that has good fries. I've been eating airport food for four hours."
"I know a place."
"You aren't taking me to your wife's bar."
"You're going to my wife's bar."
"I want fries."
"They have fries."
"Burlesque fries."
"They're excellent fries, Jake. You're going to be impressed."
He goes to Vibes that night. He sits at the bar. Sam brings him a beer and a basket of fries. Jake eats half the basket, watching Sam work the room with the easy economy of a man who's good at his job. Then he carries his beer down to the corner where Sam is restocking.
"Sam."
"Jake."
"So. I hear you're family now."
Sam stops, mid-pour. "Is that the word going around."
"That's the word. Summer's people are my people, and Summer's people decided you were one of them, so it's done. Congratulations. There's no opting out. We're clingy and we travel in a pack."
"I've noticed."
"You earned it, for the record. You looked after my sister when she got to this city with nobody, and I found out secondhand, and I decided right then that you and I were going to be fine. So you get jokes from me, not a speech."
"I appreciate that."
"Everybody else already gave you the speech anyway. The long pause, the part about being careful with the women. How many's it been."
"Five."
"Five. You don't need a sixth from the fishing guy.
" He holds up a finger. "Real questions instead.
One. Are these fries always this good, or did you hear a Holloway was coming and panic-train the kitchen.
I flew in on the cheapest seat on the cheapest plane and I need to know Chicago was worth it. "
"Always this good."
"Then I forgive the city its weather." A second finger. "Two. My sister tells me you've been circling Autumn like a man defusing a bomb."
Sam sets the glass down. "Summer talks too much."
"Summer talks exactly enough. Ask her husband.
" Jake grins. "Here's what I know about Autumn.
Friends since we were twelve. Most patient woman in the state of South Carolina.
She does not spend that patience on men who haven't earned it.
So the fact that she's spending it on you tells me everything I need.
You don't need my blessing, man. But you've got it, for whatever a fishing-obsessed almost-brother-in-law's blessing is worth. "
"It's worth something."
"It's worth almost nothing and we both know it. Take it anyway." He pushes the empty basket across the bar. "And bring me another one of these. I'm here all weekend, and I fully intend to ruin your food cost."
Sam almost smiles. He gets him another basket of fries.
I watch all of this from the corner table where Colt has parked us. Colt is laughing into his bourbon.
"You raised him?"
"I raised him."
"He's going to make a wonderful uncle one day."
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting."
"You're starting."
"I'm observing."
***
Autumn comes by at eleven.
She has moved to Chicago officially. Two weeks ago.
She has a studio apartment three blocks from us in Lincoln Park and she's been working from it remotely while her firm sorts out her transfer, and the long-distance commute to Vibes has become something she does four nights a week even though it doesn't technically need to be.
Tonight she comes in with snow in her hair and the look of a woman who's decided not to overthink why she's at this bar at eleven on a weeknight.
She sees Jake first. Squeals. They hug. They have known each other since middle school and they'll hug like middle schoolers in their forties.
Then she sees Sam.
The look between them lasts a full beat longer than casual. Sam, behind the bar, sets down the glass he's holding. Autumn, in the doorway, brushes the snow out of her hair.
"Bourbon," she says.
"Coming up," he says.
She crosses to the bar and takes the stool next to Jake. Jake looks at Autumn, then at Sam, then at me, and reads the whole situation in about three seconds.
"I'm going to go sit with my sister," he announces, to nobody in particular.
"Good idea," Sam says, not looking up from the pour.
"Thank you, Sam."