Life Before (17 page)

Like he’s concerned.

“I did. I’m fine.”

“I’m so glad, man. My grandpa died. Like ten seconds after you walked out of here, my grandma called, and we all packed up and got on a plane to Montana.”

I am such an asshole. “I’m so sorry.”

Curt asks the guys in the back to hold down the fort and sits down with a giant mug of coffee. Between sips, he spews the whole story about his family and the funeral and the resulting drama. His grandfather’s secretary showed up and cried all over his grandfather’s body.

“All my grandma can say is, ‘What a cliché.’ Can you believe that? ‘What a cliché,’ like it’s no big deal her husband of sixty years has been snaking it to somebody else.”

“I’m so sorry. You must have been embarrassed.”

“Me? No! I’m not my grandfather’s boneheaded decisions. Feel bad for my grandma, though. She was embarrassed. Frankly, she’s always been a bit of a witch. Abrasive, you know. So I’m not surprised. I mean, good on him for getting some action in his eighties. Most men are dead by then.”

Curt is awfully glib for someone who just tossed some deep family secrets to a guy he’s known all of five seconds.

“So, where are you sleeping, Graham?”

“I found somewhere here in Burlington.” Truth—100 percent truth.

Curt mulls that for a minute. He’s sharp. “But that night I left, where did you sleep? You seemed pretty hard up.”

“I slept outside.” One thing about the actual truth: I don’t even have to try it on for size.

“No way.”

I’m almost proud of myself. “Yeah. Cosley Woods?”

His laugh is huge, boisterous. “No way. Where’d you get a tent?”

“No tent. No sleeping bag. Just me and my duffel.”

He laughs again. “Good on you.”

He’s right: good on me. I’m still waiting out Gary—and that’s a little piece of family history Curt doesn’t need to know—but I’ve made my way five hundred miles from home (or seven hundred if you count actual miles traveled), and now am enduring what I hope is a brief stint as a homeless guy.

Good on me.

Curt doesn’t ask where I’m sleeping tonight, and I don’t tell him.

“Well, Graham, wish I could have found you and given you my couch for a couple nights.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

He says, “Coulda used your help with my ma and her caregiver while I was in Montana, too.”

“Oh. What did she do while you were gone?”

“I played to the sympathies of my ex-fiancée. My ma needs a lot of help, and we have a caregiver, but it’s never quite enough. My ex was happy to help.”

I’ve been thinking of Curt as just a little older than me, but having an ex-fiancée relegates him straight to adulthood. Double adult, even.

I don’t want him to see me as a kid. “I’m glad for your ex-fiancée. I mean, not that she’s your ex. Unless you like that she’s your ex, then that’s fine. I mean, sorry.”

Man, am I an ass!

Curt tips his mug to drain it. “No worries. We’re friends. She didn’t realize until after we were engaged that she was a lesbian. So, it wasn’t really her fault.”

Curt drops these bombs like they’re no big deal. Dead grandfather, BOOM. Grandfather’s mistress, BOOM. Bitchy Grandma, BOOM! Lesbian ex-fiancée, BOOM, BOOM!

Here I’ve been burying all my secrets, and Curt just lays them out for the world to see, like there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

Regarding his ex-fiancée, he says, “She even set up a blog to post stories about what they did while I was gone. It automatically pulled photos and locations from her phone, too, so I knew exactly what they did every day.”

Someone who set up such a fancy blog probably knows about other stuff, like Internet tracking. It’s worth a shot. “Do you think I could meet your ex-fiancée?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

It’s almost a relief to tell him. Curt gets an (admittedly abridged) version of my story. I skip the whole abuse section and don’t mention Mom’s murder, and after I admit that my estranged father may be tracking me online, Curt is intrigued.

“That’s like secret spy stuff.”

“I know! I’m also still looking for a more permanent place to stay, if you know anyone.”

“I’ll keep an ear out,” he says, in a way that means he wasn’t ready to change the subject. “My ex isn’t that kind of computer person—she’s just a blogger—but I know there’s no way to track where email is checked. If he’s hacked into your email, he would know that you’re reading your email, but there’s no way to know from where. And there’s probably a way you could send email, too. Probably.”

Curt studies the ceiling for a minute while I have a little mental party: I probably can send mail!

Dear Gretchen: I hope we still are more than platonic.

No.
Dear Gretchen: I miss you a lot.

No.
Dear Gretchen: I think of our mini-forest all the time and can’t wait to wrap my arms around you again.

Curt, who isn’t privy to this very important email draft, interrupts my train of thought. “How sophisticated is he? Could he hack into your friends’ emails? Because if he can get into their email boxes, he could get your IP address here.”

Well, that sucks. Gary definitely knows Jill. And if he has hacked into her email, he could know about almost anyone else. If I were Gary, and Jill and Gretchen were emailing about me, I would hack into Gretchen’s email next.

So, yeah. No reply for Gretchen.

Curt cuts into my thoughts. “Hey, my dad said you can at least fill in for a week or two.”

The boulder weighing me down shrinks slightly. “Thanks, man. That’s awesome.”

Curt shakes his head. “Don’t thank me until you’ve heard the details: sinks and toilets. Toilets are always the job of the newest person, so that would be you. Sinks are all the dirty dishes. Grace, that woman who licks the ketchup off her plate every day? Somebody has to clear and wash it.”

Gross. Money, but gross. “I’m on it. I can handle it.”

“Pays minimum wage, in cash. Anyone asks, you say you’re just helping the family out while you’re in town. Free. You can’t tell anyone we paid you anything, or we all get in trouble.”

Who would I tell? “Got it.”

“I’ll put you to work after your sandwich, if you want.” He returns my cash. “Meals are on the house when you’re working.”

Curt clearly doesn’t understand what a huge deal this is; his offer has reversed my cash flow.

Only after I scrub my very first toilet do I realize that I got the shit end of this deal, literally. It’s not just about toilets, because people pee everywhere. There is shit on one of the seats. Pee on the walls, on the floor, in the sinks—really, people?

I mean, washing laundry is one thing, but pissing in a sink is just wrong.

Curt gives me a quick overview of the dishwasher and back of the kitchen. I’ll be handling the dirty part of the assembly line, since you can’t very well handle the clean end after you’ve handled the toilets.

At closing, Big Curt inspects the toilet, consults his son, and hands me thirty bucks from the register. That’s easily ten lunches from the convenience store, but still not a hotel room.

While Curt’s locking up, he says, “See you in the morning for more of the same. Ten o’clock.”

I desperately want a bed, but I’m too grateful for the money to ask for one more favor.

I just can’t sleep outside again. With an actual job now, earning actual money, I’m not really so hard up anymore. And I need a shower. I can suck it up and go to the shelter for a shower.

_______

In this situation, Mom would say she put on her big girl panties, but there’s no appropriate analogy for guys. Manning up or growing a set would work, except sleeping at a shelter feels more like a cowardly move.

The walk from Curt’s is short, but I am a whole different person when I reach the shelter. Small. Sad. Defeated. This whole thing is surreal.

All the surreal moments of my life are cringeworthy. Like that night in sleeping bags on my parents’ floor. Or banging on Mom’s chest in our kitchen. Pulling away from Gretchen’s kisses at Jill’s house.

The first time Gretchen kissed also me was surreal, but totally pleasurable.

Walking into the shelter is not.

The upbeat staff can probably tell it’s my first time. Mom and I never wound up at one of those battered women’s shelters, even though we definitely belonged. Unfortunately—or brilliantly, depending on how you look at it—Gary volunteered as one of the good Samaritans who showed up with his car and his muscles when a woman needed to leave her home. The shelter called him a protector.

There’s no irony at the Burlington shelter. I actually, legally, belong here. Seven people form a line toward the processing table, where two men are asking questions and passing out forms. Encouraging posters and twelve-step pamphlets paper the walls between naked light bulbs.

The guy in front of me is wearing a freaking suit, for god’s sake. His pants are shorter than they should be, but he’s clean shaven in a suit. Two people have cool spinner suitcases and are far, far better groomed than I am.

These are decent people. Why are they here? No one remotely resembles the stinking woman in New York City. No one except me, of course.

After a scuffle about my not being a Vermont resident and my repeated assurance that I have nowhere else to go, the guy behind the table asks where I’ve been sleeping. It’s not a trick question.

Shudder.
I may have had company in those woods. A normal person would opt to stay in a homeless shelter instead of staying outside where a number of unsavory things could happen. I’m not normal. And not the new normal, either.

Using my Graham Bel ID is convenient. Intake paperwork includes lots of embarrassing questions I can evade because I’m Graham. For example,
Are you the victim of abuse?

Nope. Graham’s life is peachy. Georgia peachy.

In the end, Graham Bel is my undoing. They don’t have any beds. Burlington’s only available beds are for under-18s: runaways and youth-in-crisis. And at this point, I can’t very well whip out seventeen-year-old Alexander Fife’s ID.

Why didn’t I know about that before I became Graham Bel? I could have been staying here since landing in Burlington. Nice.

I can’t win. My real self would have been fine in this situation. As Graham, I’m screwed. What the hell?

Can’t they tell that I need a bed and shower more than Mr. Suit and The Suitcases? An adult with a suit or suitcase obviously has resources, whereas I have nothing.

I need to catch a break.

I mean, another one.

An hour later, deep in the forest, I wish on a star for the first time in years:
please, no rain tonight.

T
WENTY-SIX

For the first time in maybe forever, my wish comes true: the rain holds off until morning. I am so famished that one peanut butter sandwich doesn’t do it. I tear another slice of bread in half and slather on the peanut butter. I’ll need a new jar tomorrow or the next day.

If I ever get out of here, I’m never eating peanut butter again.

Plenty of real food is just two hours away at work. I strap on my backpack. I’ve made it through another night undiscovered.

Twigs break in a walking rhythm, and they’re getting louder. I pick up the knife, caked with peanut butter, and hide behind the biggest tree I can find.

I’m not undiscovered at all.

“Hello?” His hello knows I’m within earshot.

I peek from beyond my tree to see a guy in a black uniform. A cop, facing away from me. I scamper to a tree even farther from my campsite.

What kind of trouble am I in? I know there’s no camping, but that’s what? A misdemeanor?

I need to get out of here. I don’t want to leave all my stuff, but I don’t exactly have a choice. I can’t get involved with the cops.

Knife in hand, I drop to my knees and crawl in the general direction of the path until brush and trees stand between us.

Far enough from the campsite that he can’t hear me, I break into a run.

Shit. What about all my clothes? What about that peanut butter?

I do a mental inventory: knife, iPod, IDs, books, Labello, bracelet. The important stuff is on my back. I can come back for the rest later. Jogging toward the trailhead, I fold the knife in my hand.

I emerge from the woods to find a tiny police officer leaning against her cruiser in the parking lot.

She draws her gun. “Lower your weapon.”

I do, in the most literal way: I drop it straight onto the ground.

“Stay where you are, with your hands where I can see them.”

I raise my hands toward the sky and she pulls out a tiny walkie-talkie.

“I’ve got him, Walt.”

Walt’s response is garbled.

I got too comfortable. And there’s no sense running from this girl. I’m out of shape, my lousy backpack is weighing me down, and she looks like she’s fresh out of the police academy; I don’t stand a chance.

She knows it, too. “Why are you running around with a weapon?”

“I thought someone was after me. Protection. Just that, I swear.”

“You the guy who’s been sneaking around here after hours? Lots of complaints from the neighborhood.”

One very important thing I learned from Chief Dale Bernard at a very young age: don’t talk too much. I’ve already talked too much, so I wait for her to ask a genuine question.

“How long have you been sleeping here?”

Do not shrug
. “A couple nights.”

“You have ID on you?”

“I do.”

We stare at each other for a minute before she reaches toward me. No words, just an outstretched hand. She thinks I’m being a smartass, but I’m really, really not. This is a make-or-break moment. Jill’s dad once locked up a guy for thumbing his nose.

I can’t go to jail. It would be all over the news.

This cop is eager. “ID please?”

Another very important thing I learned from Dale? Never lie to cops.

Ever.

My fingers brush quickly over Gretchen’s Labello as I dig in the tiny pocket of my backpack. And here I am, Xander Fife, surfacing in Burlington.

The cop looks at my driver’s license and opens the back door of her cruiser, inviting me in. It’s more demand than invitation. Climbing inside feels very final.