CHAPTER 17
Josh
My father started teaching me how to build after my mother and sister died when I was eight. I don’t know if he necessarily wanted to, or if he had no choice because I just kept following him. He holed up in the garage all the time and if I wanted to see him I had to come out here. He never really talked, but I took what I could get. In the beginning, I mostly watched him. I picked up on a lot just by paying attention, but once I got the tools in my hands, I realized how little I knew. The first thing I built was a lopsided birdfeeder. I ended up making four of them before I got it right.
I’ve been at this for almost ten years and some days I still feel like I don’t know shit.
I wonder how much Nastya picks up on. She watches everything that goes on in shop, though she hasn’t touched so much as a nail since the hammer incident. She’s been watching me here at night for the past two weeks. I haven’t been successful in getting her to leave so I’ve given up. Last night I tried being outright rude. I figured if telling her to get the f*ck out didn’t do the trick, nothing would, so that’s what I told her. She didn’t get the f*ck out, at least not until she felt like it an hour later.
She’s sitting in her normal spot on the counter again, watching me right now, so I guess that’s my answer. Her legs are ceaselessly swinging back and forth, taunting me as if to say, Ha, ha, we’re here and you can’t make us leave—so suck it . I think they’re using a mocking, sing-song, playground voice when they do it. I want to tell them to shut up. I’m pulling the battery off of my drill and putting it on the charger and trying to figure—
“Why do you have so many saws?”
You would think I would spin around at this moment in some sort of shocked frenzy, but it’s almost like I’ve been expecting her to talk to me since the day we met and I’ve just been wondering what she was going to say. I can tell you that I’ve run through more than a couple scenarios in my mind and in not one of them did she ask me about the number of saws I own. I do turn around because I need to see her right now but it’s a lot slower and more controlled than even I planned.
“They’re all designed for a different purpose, for different jobs, for different kinds of wood. It’s complicated. It would take me hours to go through them all.” OK, it’s not really complicated. It would just take a very lengthy, tedious, boring explanation and right now I don’t want to think about saws. I can’t believe this is what we’re talking about. The word surreal does not suffice.
“I don’t think I want anything, but I’ll leave if you want me to.” It takes me a minute to switch gears and realize that she’s answering the question that I asked her over a week ago. Is she calling my bluff? I look around the floor for the gauntlet she’s thrown down because she’s obviously waiting to see if I’ll pick it up. I have to decide if I really do want her gone, because if I tell her to leave this time, I have no doubt that she’ll take my word for it.
I should say yes. Hell, yes. I’ve been trying to get rid of you since you showed up, but that’s a lie and we both know it.
I’m not ready to give her an answer yet, so I answer her with another question. She’s talking; I want to keep it that way. Part of me knows that there’s a very real possibility that when she walks out of here tonight, she may not come back no matter what I tell her and I may never hear her speak again. It hits me, once more, just how much she reminds me of a ghost and how at any moment she might just fade away.
“Who else knows you talk?” I ask, and not just to keep her talking, but because I really do want to know. Does Drew know and he hasn’t told me? Does she talk to her family? Drew said she lived with an aunt—actually he said a hot aunt—
but that’s all I really know.
“No one.”
“Did you ever talk? Before now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’ve taken this vow of silence?”
“No,” she says, looking right into my eyes. Neither of us will break eye-contact.
“And you’re never going to ask. Ever.”
“OK. I’m never going to ask. Check,” I say matter-of-factly. “And why have I agreed to this?”
“You haven’t.”
“And why should I?”
“I don’t know that you should.”
“So I haven’t agreed to keep your secret and you can’t give me any reason why I should. You’re not really making a strong case for yourself. What makes you think I won’t tell anyone?”
“I don’t think you want to.” And this is where she wins even if she doesn’t know it yet. She’s right. I don’t want to tell anyone. I want her secret all to myself but she has no way of knowing that.
“That’s a big gamble on your part.”
“Is it?” She cocks her head to the side and studies me.
“You have no reason to trust me.”
“No, but I trust you anyway,” she says, walking out toward the driveway.
“And I’m supposed to trust you?” I say to her back. This girl really is crazy if she thinks she’s walking in here, out of nowhere, and expecting me to do that.
She stops, turning to level her eyes at me before she goes.
“You don’t have to trust me. I don’t have any of your secrets.”
***
She leaves before I can respond. She never even sat down, but in the few minutes that she was here, everything shifted. Maybe she’s giving me time to decide if I want this, whatever this is. Her secret? Her friendship? Her story? Maybe I don’t want it. I do know that I shouldn’t want it and that may make my decision right there.
I know something about her that no one else does. I haven’t had a secret in years. Everybody knows my story. Mother and sister killed in a car accident. Tragic.
Father
has
a
heart
attack. Dies.
Grandmother fights ovarian cancer. Loses.
A year later grandfather picks up the cancer baton. I don’t know if I’m supposed to die now, too, or if I’m just supposed to be the last one left.
I can’t help thinking that there must be something better to be known for.
I won’t tell anyone about her. I know that much. I still have a hundred questions formulating in my mind but only one that keeps coming back again and again. Why me? It’s the obvious question, the question that still plagues me even hours after she’s left. It’s the one question I don’t ask, because no matter what the answer is, I don’t want it. I just don’t care.
***
It’s been days since she spoke to me. I expected her to show up the next night but she didn’t. Or the night after. Or the night after that. I’ve seen her at school every day but she hasn’t so much as looked in my direction once. I’m beginning to think I imagined the entire encounter. Maybe I’m the batshit one in this scenario. I’ve spent the last several days trying to make myself believe that I was glad she had stopped coming and that I couldn’t care less. After all, it was what I wanted. I made several arguments to myself. I wasn’t very convincing.
I hadn’t even had the excuse of seeing her at Drew’s on Sunday. Leigh was here for the weekend and I was with her. It should have made things easier but I think it might have made them worse.
“You don’t have an accent.”
When she finally shows up, exactly one week after she spoke to me, this is the first thing I say.
“No.”
“I thought you would. The name.” I can’t stand the name. It doesn’t fit. But then maybe nothing about her does. She considers this and for a minute I think she might say something, but she doesn’t. She just keeps walking around my garage and touching tools and running her hands across half-built pieces of furniture and it’s starting to piss me off.
“Are you Russian?” I ask, hoping to distract her.
“You got to ask the questions last time. Tonight’s my turn.” She didn’t answer the question but at least it seems to have temporarily shifted her focus away from all my stuff.
“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“I don’t remember giving you the choice.” And she’s back to wandering around my garage again. Studying. I feel like grabbing my crotch and checking to see if my balls are still there because I think they may be in her pocket and I need to get them back. This was fun or different or intriguing for a little while but not anymore. It’s one thing to have her sitting and watching, but if she wants to start with the interrogation and the inevitable teenage girl psychoanalysis, I’m out.
“You know who likes to talk? Drew.
Why don’t you head over there and make his day?” I need to walk away. I pretend I have to get something out of the tool chest across the room. She’s settles back on the workbench and the legs start swinging immediately.
“I think there are other things he’d rather I did with my mouth.” There’s nothing coy or suggestive in her tone. She says it like she’s talking about helping him study for trig.
“Did you really just say that?”
“Believe so,” she says blandly.
“Well, if you do that you might make his week.”
“I could make his year if I wanted to.” Confident girl. Makes me wonder if she can back that up and I shouldn’t be thinking about that at all. The legs are still swinging and it’s driving me crazy.
“Do you want to?” Not what I planned to ask. I wonder how much it would hurt to cut out my tongue.
“I’m asking the questions.”
“Not to me you’re not.” There.
“Do you live here alone?” That lasted a while.
“Yes.”
“Why were you emancipated?”
“Necessity.”
“Is it hard?”
“What? ”
“Is it hard to get emancipated?” I knew that’s what she was asking. Really, I did.
“No. It’s embarrassingly easy.”
She doesn’t speak right away which, ironically, is now unusual. I look at her and she’s studying me.
“What?”
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re being sarcastic.”
“No, it really is embarrassingly easy.
It basically comes down to two things. Age and money. And, really, it’s the money that’s the most important. I think the state would cut you loose at twelve as long as they knew it wouldn’t cost them a dime to support you.”
“So, what did you have to do?” If these are the questions she’s going to ask, then I can deal with it. As long as she’s far away from anything personal, I’ll tell her what she wants to know. She lives with her aunt. Maybe she wants to be emancipated, though she’s got to be almost eighteen so there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to it now. My grandfather and I took care of it a year ago as soon as he found out he was sick.
“You fill out some paperwork, provide documentation that you’re at least sixteen and you have the financial means to support yourself. Then your guardian signs it, quick hearing and you’re on your own.” She nods as if the explanation is acceptable to her. She doesn’t ask about the money. Maybe she has some social graces.
“Who was your legal guardian?” Interesting question, but I’m not opening that door. She could ask anyone else.
Everyone knows the story, but I don’t think I’m in danger there just yet. She’ll find out sooner rather than later. I’m not deluded enough to think it won’t come out somehow, but it’s nice to have one person exist who doesn’t know all of my tragic bullshit. At least for a little while.
“Why do you care?”
“I just wondered if that’s who was visiting you on Sunday. Drew said you had company, that’s why you weren’t at dinner.” I did have company and it most definitely wasn’t my grandfather but I’m not getting anywhere near the Leigh situation with this girl. Not now or ever.
“A friend was in town.” I’m expecting another onslaught of questions but no more come. I have quite a few for her but she seems to be done talking right now and I’m afraid if I invite any more conversation tonight, I’ll probably be the one regretting it.
After about ten minutes of leg swinging and silence, she starts asking questions again. They aren’t what I expect, but nothing with this girl is. And these questions, I don’t mind. She asks about tools and wood and furniture building. I don’t know how many questions she asks but I know that my voice is hoarse by the end of the evening.
When she jumps down from the counter—her
universal
sign
for I’m
leaving now—I say the one thing that I’ve been thinking all night.
“You’re not what I expected you to be like.” I catch her eye and she actually looks a little surprised and a lot curious which I think she tries to hide.
“How did you expect me to be?”
“Quiet.”