Bubbe shuts her mouth.
“We don’t need it that bad,” Ma says, but her voice has lost its conviction.
“Yeah, we do.”
“Honey.” Ma comes closer, running her hand over my shaved head. Back when I let my hair grow, she’d tuck it behind my ear. “You shouldn’t have to worry about that. We’ll figure it out.”
Memories of Dad sitting me down, telling me I’m going to be the man of the house one day and that it’ll be my job to take care of Ma and Stacey, surface in my mind. I try to push them down. Because he knew, even then, that this was how it was gonna end. Soon after that, I learned the cancer had spread. Some lady at the grocery store told me and I never said a word to anyone that I knew, just kept it to myself. I straighten my shoulders, look her in the eye.
“It’s not a big deal, Ma. It’s just a shift, I don’t even have to talk to anyone.”
She drops her gaze. The nail polish on her thumb is chipped, the spot she bites when she’s stressed.
When my bosssees me clocking in, he comes straight over and asks me what I’m doing there.
“I’m down for a shift tonight, right?”
“Yeah, but Evan.…” He trails off, rubbing the back of his neck.
I shrug. “I wanna work.”
Bob studies me and I force myself to hold his gaze.
“Okay,” he says finally. “But if you need to go home at any point-”
“I won’t,” I cut him off. I don’t need babying. “I just wanna work.” I repeat.And we need the money, badly.
I’m grateful for the monotony of the job. Ittakes my mind off things. I make sure not to go on autopilot for once. I leave my earphones out, not wanting to listen to music. Tune into the sounds around me instead. Women complaining about their lazy husbands. Thethump-bumpthe machine makes as it churns out more boxes. Thebeepof the forklift truck as someone backs it up.
I don’t even realize it’s clocking-out time until I look up and see everyone on my line getting ready to leave.
Ma and Stacie are asleep when I get home. The lights all off in the house. I’m careful not to make noise as I come in, walking past the living room quickly to get to the kitchen. Ma usually leaves a sandwich out for me, but this time she must have forgotten. I open the fridge and make my own, eating it standing at the counter. My legs and feet starting to ache now that I’m not focused on a particular task.
It’s so dark outside, I can’t see shit through the window—just my own reflection as I stuff the last of the sandwich in my mouth. I rinse the plate off, trying not to look at myself.
Ma fixesher tights at the kitchen table while people walk around the house, talking, eating the food people have been leaving for days. Most of it’s been taken away again without being touched. Can’t say the same about the liquor. I can see how hard they’re all trying not to smile. To pretend they don’t wanna have a good time.
Ma gets a run in her tights and tries to pull them up so it’s hidden under her black dress, but it only makes the run worse. I can’t watch her anymore so I get up and go into the garden, walking to the farthest point from the house to light a smoke.
From here, I can watch everyone moving around insidemy house. People we haven’t spoken to in years. Everyone wants to be at the funeral of the guy who was dying for years now he’s finally croaked.
A familiar face passes by the kitchen window and I have to do a double take to make sure it’s really him. Nate Castellani. My next-door neighbor for fifteen years. My childhood best friend. Now he’s got his hair in some douchey style and he keeps running his hand through it self-consciously. The suit he’s wearing looks expensive, even from all the way out here. A fire burns in the pit of my stomach when I look at his face. It’s familiar, like it was the most familiar fucking face in my life for years. Until it wasn’t anymore. Seeing how much older he is now, it’s like seeing one of those Photoshopped pictures where they’ve merged a familiar face with someone else’s. It’s him, but it’s also kinda not.
Last time I last saw him, we must have been about eighteen. He was on the boardwalk in his private school uniform with some guys in fancy clothes. I was gonna go over and say hi. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since we’d last seen each other, and to be honest, the sight of his familiar face still drew me automatically to him. But then he looked up, and I swear he saw me. But he looked away, like he hadn’t. Like he’d be embarrassed to be seen with me in front of his new, rich friends.
I don’t want to think about that stupid day. I’m about to look away when he looks out of the window and his eyes lock on mine. For a second, it’s like no time has passed at all. He’s still Nate. My Nate. The kid who spray-painted graffiti on the boardwalk because I told him to. The kid I ate Cheetos under the blanket with. Smelling his breath and his sweat and seeing his face so close I could make out the flecks of brown in his green eyes. The guy who’slips I stared at for so long, I could memorize the shape better than my own.
I look away, throwing my smoke into the bushes. Nate, the guy who threw me under the bus when we were fifteen and then left. Pretended he didn’t know me when I’d been ready to forget all about that. That guy standing in my ma’s kitchen in a designer suit isn’t my Nate.MyNate doesn’t exist anymore. That guy in there is just a frat boy in Nate’s skin.
When I turn around, Nate’s stepping out of the house and coming toward me. I keep my head down until he’s practically on top of me.
“Hey,” he says. “Evan, I’m so sorry about your dad.”
His voice is different. He talks with some upstate accent now. I bet he calls his ma ‘Mom’ and his stepdad ‘Sir.’ I bet he drinks brandy at the country club with his frat bros and those tennis club buddies Ma’s always telling me about, like I’d want to know. I wish she’d stop spying on his ma’s Facebook page. All people do on social media is brag.
I try to walk around him, but he puts a hand on my chest to stop me. I flinch at the challenge. Finally look up into his eyes. There are those brown flecks, still. That fifteen-year old kid staring out at me through the body of a 20-year-old rich guy.
“Fuck off, Nate.”
