thought you might be.
Sometimes I can’t tell if we’re flirting or just finding new ways to not talk about serious things. Either way, I stare at my screen and the blinking ellipses keep flashing and dying, flashing and dying, so I put my phone in my back pocket where it will later tell my butt when I’m wanted. I check in on Callie, who is sitting upright and on her knees, her long and light blond hair tucked behind her ears. She’s examining, really deeply, some large potted plants Mom recently installed for, I’m guessing, just this purpose. She’s been doing a lot of this kind of thing—this withdrawing into herself is how I see it—ever since that night after our dinner out, when she sat in the garden until the small hours, her hands worrying around in the dirt. It’s not like Callie’s ever been some kind of exuberantly social party girl, but this kind of deep, deep withdrawal—it’s different, and it’s happening more than usual. Sure, she is quiet and really into plants, but considering her total lack of language, she’s actually pretty engaged and engaging. So it’s weird watching her just sit around quietly staring at plants nearly all the time.
My back pocket buzzes.
How was the dog calling, asks Dave.
vaguely empowering, mostly rewarding. mimi has gone pro at it. i need to up my game tbh.
You could try something like “Nice pants, want a healthy relationship based on mutual respect and understanding?” or “I bet you’d make a great stay-at-home dad.”
I smile. The thing is, I meant everything I said to Mimi about how I feel—or maybe don’t feel—about Dave. But when he says stuff like this, how am I not supposed to want to kiss him on the lips while smiling? And can I want that and also want boundaries? Either way, I text him ugh yr the best, because it’s basically true, and he texts me back a blushing emoji, and all in all, Callie and her plant-staring considered, today is a pretty good day.
I get so caught up in this fine feeling that when my butt buzzes again with a message from Stan asking how Callie is, I just text back fine! But then I look back at Callie, who is still looking at her plant, and I ignore the flashing ellipses on Stan’s side of the screen and start again.
actually, I text, callie seems maybe a bit weird? like withdrawn. like more so than usual. idk.
Ted keeps walking up to this punching bag in our house. And then he sends me a photo of a boy, Ted almost definitely, standing with his nose up against a punching bag. He’s got the same sandy blond hair that Callie has, and her same weird pale skin, but his face is sort of squatter than Callie’s. And he’s not too tall. Actually, he and Callie are maybe the same height, about five eight.
I type a response: 1) what’s rocky there training for? 2) is ted 5-8?
Stan texts back What? and then, Yeah, he is, but also . . . what?
I text him a video of Rocky running up and down the Philly museum steps, and then Weird. Callie is too.
Stan texts back a picture of a Post-it that reads, “ADRIAA-AAAAAN,” and I laugh.
“LORNAAAA!” Dad calls, and then it’s dinnertime.
At dinner we take turns telling each other what we did all day, except for Callie, who has never told us anything about her day, ever. But the dinner table is quieter than usual tonight. Normally, Mom and Dad will offer up weird trivia about some totally freak weather phenomena they’ve just discovered or have been tracking. Like when they told us about that time they were on this island they described as “like the state of Indiana, but in the ocean,” where they went to see about these sinkholes that would open up before lightning storms, and they were trying to figure out whether the sinkholes were, like, presaging or predicting the storms, or if they were somehow concurrent but unrelated events. Or the time Mom went up in a weather balloon because the lightning sounded like it was singing. Or when they had to call a friend in the archeology department because a sinkhole revealed a small city or village, but nobody wanted to go in there until a degree-carrying academic gave them the okay.
Anyway, dinner’s more entertaining, and less effort for me, when they’re working, and tonight we’re really struggling to come up with any riveting conversation.
Callie has a salad in front of her that’s full of all kinds of exotic greens. Dad’s been getting pretty good at picking out exotic-looking seeds for Callie to grow into exotic-looking lettuces for her salads, and Callie’s getting pretty good at eating them. I spear a bite of salad from her bowl and make a big show of eating it.
“Sharing is caring, kid sister,” I tell her. Callie just looks at me the way I would try to look at someone if I was feeling hurt and confused. She looks down to her bowl and over at me, and she looks like she’s about to cry, and I feel utterly terrible.