Get in Trouble: Stories (28 page)

Harper is snoring in Thanh’s ear. Is this what has woken him? There’s another noise in the room. That rustling again. That cellophane noise. Do you hear that? Thanh says. His tongue is thick. Harper. Harper says, Ungh. The noise increases. Harper says, What the hell, Thanh. Thanh is sitting up in bed now. He’s still drunk, but he is piecing together the things that Harper tried to tell him a few hours ago. Naomi has had the baby. Harper, he says. Harper gets up and puts on the light. There is movement in the room, a kind of black liquid rushing. Beetles are pouring—a cataract—out of the Bad Claw onto the table and down the wall, across the floor, and toward the bed and the window. Something urgent in their progress, some necessary, timely task that they are engaged in. The lively, massed shape of them is the shadow of an unseen thing, moving through the room. Scurrying
night. There will be a night in the NICU, much later, when Thanh looks over at another isolette. Sees, in the violet light, a spider moving across the inside wall. Every year, the nurse says when he calls her over. Every spring we get a migration or something. Spiders everywhere. She reaches in, scoops the spider into a cup. “Christ on a bicycle!” Harper says. “What the fuck?” He and Thanh are out of the room as fast as they can go. Down the stairs, and out of the house. They stumble down the rough beach to the dock. The lumpy yurts silent and black. The sky full of so many stars. God has an inordinate fondness for stars and also for beetles. The small and the very far away. Harper has the suitcase. Thanh carries their shoes. No doubt they’ve left something behind.

They sit on the dock. Do you remember anything I told you last night? Harper asks. Thanh says, Tell me. We have a son, Harper says. His name is William. Your mother picked that. William. She wanted him to have a name. In case. We’ll call when we get to the mainland. We’ll get the first flight. If there are no flights, we’ll rent a car. We could swim, Thanh says. That’s a terrible idea, Harper says. He puts his arms around Thanh. Breathes into his hair. It will be okay, Harper says. It may not be okay, Thanh says. I don’t know if I can do this. Why did we want to do this? Harper says, Look. He points. There, far away, are the lights of the mainland. Closer: light moving over the water. The light becomes a boat and then the boat comes close enough that the pilot can throw a rope to Harper. He pulls the boat in. A man steps off. He looks at Harper, at Thanh, a little puzzled. This is the bridegroom. He says, “Were you waiting for me?” Thanh begins to laugh, but Harper throws his arms open wide and embraces David. Welcomes him. Then David goes up the beach to
the house. His shadow trails behind him, catches on beach grass and little pebbles. What kind of person is he? Not a good one, but he is loved by Fleur and what does it matter to Thanh and Harper anyway? Even caterers get married. There’s no law against it. They get on the boat and ride back to the mainland. Fish swim up under the glass bottom, toward the light. Harper pays the pilot of the boat, whose name is Richard, a hundred bucks to take them to the airport. By the time they are on the prop plane that will take them to Charlotte where they will catch another flight to Boston, Thanh is undergoing a hangover of supernatural proportions. The hangover renders him incapable of thought. This is a mercy. Waiting for flights, Harper talks to Han, and once to Naomi. Thanh and Harper hold hands in the cab all the way to Children’s Hospital, and Han meets them in the main lobby. “Come up,” she says. “Come up and meet your son.”

On an island, Fleur and David marry each other. There is cake. The wedding gift, which cost too much money, is opened. Days go by. Months go by. Years. Sometimes Thanh remembers Bad Claw, the procession of wedding dresses, the caterers, the boat coming toward the island. The place where he picked up a pebble. Sometimes Thanh wonders. Was this it, the thing that he had wished for, even as he had tried to wish for nothing at all? Was it this moment? Or was it this? Or this. Brief joys. The shadow of the valley of the shadow. Even here, even here, he wondered. Perhaps it was.

There is a day when they are able to bring the boy, their son, home from the NICU. They have prepared his room. There has
been time, after all, a surplus of time to outfit the room with the usual things. A crib. Soft animals. A rug. A chair. A light.

One day the crib is too small. The boy learns to walk. Naomi graduates. Sometimes she takes the boy to the zoo or to museums. One day she says to Thanh, Sometimes I forget that he didn’t die. Things were so bad for so long. Sometimes I think that he did die, and this is another boy entirely. I love him with all my heart, but sometimes I can’t stop crying about the other one. Do you ever feel that way? Harper still works too much. Sometimes he tells the boy the story about how he was born, and the island, and the wedding. How Harper’s wedding ring fit over his wrist. How Harper, wearing a wedding dress, rode over in a glass-bottomed boat, and was told that their son was born. Han gets older. She says, Sometimes I think that when I am dead and a ghost I will go back to that hospital. I spent so long there. I will be a ghost who washes her hands and waits. I won’t know where else to haunt. The boy grows up. He is the same boy, even if sometimes it is hard to believe this could be true. Thanh and Harper stay married. The boy is loved. The loved one suffers. All loved ones suffer. Love is not enough to prevent this. Love is not enough. Love is enough. The thing that you wished for. Was this it?

Here endeth the lesson.

The New Boyfriend

 

A
inslie doesn’t rip open presents. She’s always been careful with her things, even the things that don’t matter. Immy is a ripper, but this is not Immy’s present, not Immy’s birthday. Sometimes Immy thinks that this may not be Immy’s life. Better luck next time around, Immy, she tells herself.

Ainslie scores under the tape with a fingernail, then carefully teases the pink wrapping paper out from under the coffin-shaped box.

Ainslie’s new Boyfriend is in there.

Ainslie’s birthday, this year, is just Ainslie and her bestest, oldest friends. Just Ainslie, Sky, Elin, and Immy. No family allowed. No boys.

Earlier there was sushi and cake and lots of pictures to put up online so that everyone will know how much fun they are having.

No presents, Ainslie said, but of course Immy and Elin and
Sky bring presents. No one ever means it when they say that. Not even Ainslie, who already has everything.

It’s normal to want to give your best friend something because you love her. Because you want her to know that you love her. It isn’t a competition. Ainslie loves Elin and Immy and Sky equally, even if Immy and Ainslie have been friends longest.

Immy’s heart isn’t as big as Ainslie’s heart. Immy loves Ainslie best. She also hates her best. She’s had a lot of practice at both.

They’re in the sunroom. As if you could keep the sun in a room, Immy thinks. Well, if you could, Ainslie’s mother probably would.

But the sun has gone down. The world is night, and it belongs to all of them, even if it belongs to Ainslie most of all. Ainslie’s brought out dozens of pillar candles, a small forest of mirrored candelabras, both of her Boyfriends. They both wear little birthday hats, because that’s the thing about Boyfriends, according to Elin, who has a lot of opinions and isn’t shy about sharing them. You can’t take them too seriously.

Of course anyone can have an opinion. Immy has plenty. In her opinion, in order not to take a Boyfriend seriously, you have to have a Boyfriend in the first place, and only Ainslie has one. (Two.) (Three.)

Creatures of the night in silly hats, Vampire Boyfriend (Oliver) and Werewolf Boyfriend (Alan) lounge on candy-striped settees and gaze with identical longing at their girlfriend, Ainslie. Immy decides against having a second piece of cake. One piece of cake really ought to be enough for anyone.

And yet, there on the floor, right under the cake (plenty left, Immy, why not have another piece, really?) and the candelabras, right there under everyone’s noses, the new Boyfriend has been
waiting all this time. Immy knew, right away, as soon as she came into the sunroom, exactly which Boyfriend it would be.

It’s dark inside the box, of course. Night wrapped up in pink paper. Are his eyes open or closed? Can he hear them talking? Love will wake him.

Love, oh love. Terrible, wonderful love.

Ainslie lifts the lid of the coffin, and white rose petals spill out, all over the floor, and—“Oh,” Sky says. “He’s, um, he’s gorgeous.”

Real rose petals, real and crushed and bruised. Probably not the best packing material, but oh, what a smell is filling the room.

Not night, after all.

The Boyfriend’s eyes are closed. His arms are folded across his chest, but his palms are open and full of rose petals. His hair is dark. His face is very young. Maybe a little surprised; his lips parted, just a little, like he has just been kissed.

“Which one is he?” Elin says.

“The Ghost one,” Immy says.

Ainslie reaches out, touches the Ghost Boyfriend’s face, brushes a piece of hair back from his eyes. “So soft,” she says. “So weird. Fake Boyfriend, real hair.”

“I thought they weren’t selling those anymore?” Elin says.

“They’re not,” Immy says. Her chest feels very tight, as if she’s suddenly full of poison. You have to keep it all inside. Like throwing yourself on a bomb to save everyone else. Except you’re the bomb.

Why does Ainslie always get what she wants? Why does Ainslie always get what
Immy
wants? She says, “They don’t. You can’t get them now.”

“Not unless you’re Ainslie, right?” Sky says without a trace of discernible malice. She scoops out handfuls of petals, throws them at Ainslie. They all throw rose petals. When Immy reaches into the coffin, she tries very hard not to let her hand brush against Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend.

“What are you going to call him?” Elin says.

“Don’t know,” Ainslie says. She’s reading the instructions. “So there are two modes, apparently. Embodied or Spectral. Embodied is just, you know, the usual thing.” She waves a hand in the direction of her Vampire Boyfriend, Oliver. He waves back. “In Spectral Mode it’s like a movie projection and he floats around. You can hang out with him like that, but it’s random or something. Like, he comes and goes.”

“Huh,” Sky says. “So you can’t see him all the time, but maybe he’s watching you? What if you’re getting dressed or on the toilet or something and all of a sudden he’s there?”

“Maybe that’s why they did the recall,” Elin says. She is tearing a white petal into littler and littler pieces, and smiling, like that’s her idea of fun.

“You can customize him,” Ainslie says. “If you have a thing that belonged to somebody who died. There’s a compartment somewhere. Ew. Inside his mouth. You put something in it. I don’t know. That part seems kind of dumb. Like, you’re really supposed to believe in ghosts or something.”

“That’s not supposed to be a good idea,” Immy says. “That’s the reason they did the recall, remember? There were a lot of stories.”

“People are so
impressionable
,” Ainslie says.

“So turn him on already,” Elin says. “No pun intended.”

“What’s the rush?” Ainslie says. “We have to come up with a name first.”

They debate names for the new Boyfriend while Ainslie opens friend presents. They take more pictures. Ainslie holding the bottle of absinthe that Sky made from a recipe online. They throw rose petals at her, and so there are petals caught in her hair. It’s very pretty.

Oliver and Alan in their hats, Ainslie sitting on Oliver’s lap. They change out Alan’s boy head for his wolf head. He can’t talk with the wolf head on, but he’s still very cute in his tuxedo. Cuter than most real boys.

More pictures. The new Boyfriend in his box, Ainslie leaning over to kiss him. Ainslie wearing the red suede boots her grandmother sent. Ainslie holding up the tickets that Elin got her to some show by some band they’re both into. Two tickets, one for Ainslie and the other for Elin, of course.

Immy isn’t really into music. Sky isn’t really into music, either. Music is Elin and Ainslie’s thing. Whatever.

Immy’s present for Ainslie is a beaded choker with an antique locket to sit right over the hollow of Ainslie’s white throat.

The beads are cut glass and jet.

There’s a secret in the locket.

The choker is in a little box in a pocket in Immy’s purse, and she doesn’t take it out. She pretends to search for it and then she says to Ainslie, “Uh oh. I think I left your present at home, maybe?”

Ainslie says, “Whatever, Immy. Give it to me at school on Monday.”

She passes around the homemade absinthe and they all drink straight from the bottle. That way, Immy figures, it’s harder for everyone else to tell if you’re only taking little sips or even only pretending. It’s a little bit herbal and a little like toothpaste.

“You could call him Vincent,” Sky says. She’s looking at baby names on her phone. “Or Bran? Banquo? Tor. Foster, um, maybe not Foster. But it ought to be something old-fashioned, ghost names ought to be old-fashioned.”

“Because nowadays no one ever dies,” Ainslie says, and swigs from the absinthe bottle.

Fake swigs, bets Immy. Let’s all get fake drunk and have fake fun with Ainslie and her fake Boyfriends. Because she’s fairly sure that all of this is fake, this whole night, the way she finds herself acting around Ainslie and Elin and Sky tonight, maybe this whole year. And if it’s not fake, if it’s all real, this fun, these friends, this life, then that’s even worse, isn’t it?

Immy has no idea why she’s in such a horrible mood. Except wait, no. Let’s be honest. She knows. She’s in a horrible mood because she’s a horrible friend who wants everything that belongs to Ainslie. Except maybe Ainslie’s mother. Ainslie can keep her mother.

Immy has wanted a Boyfriend ever since they came out, even before Ainslie knew about them. Immy was the one who told Ainslie about them. And then Ainslie had Oliver and Alan, and then you could buy the limited edition Ghost Boyfriend, and then there was the recall and you couldn’t get a Ghost Boyfriend anymore, and so that was okay, because then even if Immy couldn’t have a Ghost Boyfriend, Ainslie couldn’t have one, either. Except now she does have one.

Immy wants a Ghost Boyfriend more than she’s ever wanted anything.

“What about Quentin? That’s a good name,” Sky says.

“What about Justin?” Elin says.

Then they are all looking at Immy. She stares right back at Elin, who says, “Oops.” And shrugs and smiles.

“Ainslie can call Ainslie’s Ghost Boyfriend whatever she wants,” Immy says. She knows what kind of friends she is with Elin. Sometimes a friendship is more like a war.

Ainslie can keep Elin, too.

Anyway, Immy is the one who broke up with Justin. And
Justin
is the one who can’t get over it, and anyway
anyway
, Elin is the one who still has a thing for him.

Immy’s been there, done that.

Ainslie says, “I’m going to call him Mint.”

They all laugh and Ainslie says, “No. Really. His name is Mint. He’s my Ghost Boyfriend, I can call him whatever I want.”

“Weirdish,” Elin says. “But okay.”

“Come on,” Ainslie says. So they all go over and stand around the box, and then Ainslie leans down and sticks her fingers into the Ghost Boyfriend’s hair, moving them around until evidently she’s found the right place.

His eyes open. He has really pretty eyes. Long lashes. He looks at them, each in turn. His lips part, just a little, like he is about to say something. But he doesn’t.

Immy is blushing. She knows she’s blushing.

“Hi,” Ainslie says. “I’m your girlfriend. Ainslie. You’re Mint. You’re my Boyfriend.”

The new Boyfriend’s eyelids flutter shut. Eyelashes like black fans. Skin just like skin. Even his fingernails are perfect and so real, as real as anything Immy has ever seen.

When his eyes open again, he only looks at Ainslie.

“Okay, so, we’ll see you later,” Ainslie says.

She straightens up and says to Immy and Elin and Sky, “You guys want to put on some music and dance or something?”

“Wait,” Elin says. “What about him? I mean
it.
Are you just going to leave it in there?”

“It takes them a while to wake up the first time,” Sky says. Sky has a Biblical Handmaiden. Esther. Sky’s parents were kind of religious for a while.

“Oh, yeah,” Ainslie says. “There’s one other thing. We have to choose a mode. Embodied or Spectral. What do you think?”

“Embodied,” Elin says.

“Embodied,” Sky says.

“Spectral,” Immy says.

“Okay,” Ainslie says. “Spectral. Might as well.” She reaches back down, runs her fingers through her Boyfriend’s hair again. “There. Now let’s go out on the deck and dance in the moonlight. Come on, Oliver. Alan. You, too.”

Ainslie and Elin DJ. The moon is perfectly round and bright. The night is warm. Ainslie tells Oliver and Alan to dance with Immy and Sky.

Which is the kind of thing Ainslie does. She isn’t ever selfish. You have to have things in order to be generous with them. Right?

Immy and Oliver dance. She’s in his arms, really, his hand on the small of her back. It’s sort of a waltz that they’re doing, which doesn’t really suit whatever song this is, but Oliver can do either the waltz or the tango—or a kind of sway-y standing-there dance. Sky bounces around with Alan, who still has his wolf head on. Alan is actually more fun to dance with than Oliver is, although the bouncing gets tiring after a while.

“Are you happy, darling?” Oliver the Vampire Boyfriend says, so softly Immy has to ask him to repeat himself. Not that this is, strictly speaking, necessary. Oliver always asks the same questions.

“Sure,” she says. Then, “Well, I don’t know. Not really. I could be happier. I’d like to be happier.” Why not? If you can’t be honest with your best friend’s Vampire Boyfriend, who can you be honest with? Vampires are all about secrets and unhappiness. Secret unhappinesses. You can see it in their black and fathomless eyes.

“I wish you were happy, my love,” Oliver says. He presses her more firmly against his body, nuzzles her hair. “How can I be happy if you are not?”

“Ainslie’s your love. Not me,” Immy says. She really isn’t in the mood. Besides, sometimes it’s just really too weird, playing pretend eternal love with a borrowed Boyfriend when what you really want is your own Boyfriend. It would be so, so much nicer to have your own. “So, I mean, don’t be unhappy on my account.”

“As you wish,” Oliver says. “I shall be unhappy on my own account. How happy it makes me, oh delicious one, to be unhappy together with you.” He clasps her even tighter in his arms, until she has to ask him to ease up just a little. It’s a fine line between being cuddled and being squeezed like a juice box, and Vampire Boyfriends sometimes cross right over that line, maybe without even noticing.

There is also the endless hovering and the endless brooding and all the endless talk about how delicious you are and eternity and they like you to read poetry at them, the old-fashioned rhyming kind, even. It’s supposed to be educational, okay? Like the way Werewolf Boyfriends go on and on about the environment, and also are always trying to get you to go running with them.

Immy doesn’t get music. She doesn’t want to get it. The way it wants to make you feel something. Just because it’s a minor chord, you’re supposed to feel sad? Just because it goes faster, your pulse is supposed to speed up? Why should you have to do what the music wants you to do? Why shouldn’t it do what you want? She doesn’t want a soundtrack for her life. And she doesn’t want somebody’s pretty lyrics getting in the way of what she’s really thinking. Whatever it is that she’s thinking.