oh, cool. glad to hear it. callie’s fine too, I type.
And then some time passes, and I stare at my phone, because apparently texting with Stan is roughly as awkward as trying to talk to Stan while seeing if he’ll look you in the eye. Or, it’s not that it’s awkward, it’s just that I just get the feeling that Stan has even more of a guard up than I do. And from what he was telling me about his dad having him wrestle with his brother to calm him down, and basically being a kind of a human tackle dummy, maybe there’s good reason for a boy with a brother like that to not talk so openly about things. And I was kind of freaked out by all that stuff, honestly. It seemed pretty weird to me. But then I looked over the rules again. I’d be embarrassed to say how often I do that, but I do. Anyway, there is this bit in there that basically says that our Icelings are special and that we should learn to understand their specialness. It wasn’t clear if that was a suggestion for the parents or for us, the siblings, or for the person who was writing it. The emphasis on the need to understand the individual specialness of each Iceling . . . it got me thinking about how I really just have no idea what Callie’s been through. Let alone what Stan or Ted have been through. And about that whole nature versus nurture thing. About whether it’s our biological imperatives or our home lives that shape us. But why is that even up for debate? Of course it’s both. Why can’t we just say it’s both?
Anyway, maybe the wrestling has to do with what Ted’s individual specialness is. Ted’s loud. For someone who has no access to language, of course. And Callie—Callie’s quiet. And anyway, the rest of that section in the guidebook is about establishing a baseline for behavior. Like: Understand the individual specialness of each Iceling, so that if they start getting weird, you’ll know whether it’s just “their way” or if it’s the kind of thing to notify an authority figure about. This was something that no one ever really went over with me. Also, the guidebook doesn’t call them “Icelings.” I do. I’m the only one who calls them that. And anyway, look. Over there. My phone. It buzzes.
Actually is it weird if we talk some time?
I call him, right here and now, because that seems easier than waiting to see what happens next.
“Lorna,” he says.
“Stan,” I say.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“So.”
“So.”
“Well.”
“Stan,” I tell him. “Look. I know we don’t know each other that well, or really at all, but it’s just that I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this. You know? Not that your ‘this’ is the same as my ‘this,’ or that I get what you’re going through, or that you get what I’m going through. But we both have these siblings we can’t talk to, but then we also can’t really even talk about them with anyone else. You know? I just feel like if I were to talk to my friends about Callie, like, really talk to them about it, they’d just stare at me and assume she was a total freak. But then if I talk to my parents about it, or Jane, then I feel like there’d be . . . consequences. To that.” I pause, but in such a way where Stan knows that there’s still more I have to say. “I feel like you’re the only person I can talk to about Callie,” I continue, “and that maybe I’m the only person you can talk to about Ted, and nothing bad’ll happen because of it.”
Unless the government’s listening. HA HA HA, I think but don’t say.
Then it’s quiet for almost a minute, which I know because I check my phone to see if he’s still there.
“Hi, sorry,” he says at second fifty-three. “It’s just . . . ugh, man. Yeah.”
And then it’s quiet again.
I’m about to just plow through with my own plan and start talking about Callie when he starts talking again.
“So my mom left a couple of years ago. We were on a trip, me and Dad and Ted, and when we came back she was gone. So that sucked. But I got pretty okay at cooking. Which is nice? Ted is just . . . he’s aggressive as hell. He walks around the house like . . . well, not like he wants to fight. But like he’s convinced that, at any moment, someone’s going to want to fight him. Does that make sense?”
“Kind of?” I say, but then I think that yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense.