Quiet, Rigorous
by Holly Grigalunas
I’m taking you by the arm, wrapping my fingers
around the inside of your elbow and feeling the limb bend, the
bone a round fulcrum in my palm. I’m leading you through
the driveway and up the sidewalk. We stand together on the front
stoop, and there are clothes in the dryer in the basement, just
beyond our feet. We breathe the warm exhaust and think about
beds. There is an aboveground pool that hadn’t been cleaned
all summer, and the bottom became blanketed with leaf sludge
and strange, large insects that seemed foreign and vulgar here
in Illinois. But now it is November, and your father has covered
it in a black tarp, using plastic yellow rope and milk jugs
full of rocks to hold it taut. It looks like a Glad bag; you
make a joke about Christo but are depressed when the pool stays
this way for the next two years, until they tear it down and
resoil the spot. It takes years for the lawn to match again,
despite the toil put forth by your mother every spring.
We agreed on a whim to come down here together for the holiday.
It was more economical to share a car; we both have the long
weekend off. I ran into you downtown, where you were walking,
tall and bored, with your girlfriend who wore a long fur coat
and clung to her collar with a small, shocked hand and wide-eyed
disdain, as though unaccustomed to humanity and weather. She
had scoffed politely at the wind, mentioning her trip home to
Raleigh, where she is now on a blond porch having mimosas and
a passive-aggressive chat with her siblings. We’ve been
here in your backyard for five minutes and have said very little.
And we could sit on the patio, but then we’d have to go
inside for chairs, so we sit down on the stoop. I look at you
as we sit, you staring forward. I can tell you’re thrashing
around inside to say something, and it makes me feel inexplicably
sorry. I’m still holding your arm, so, with my index and
middle fingers, I absently press the fleshy spot in the crook
of your elbow. It feels thready and warm. I ask you where you’ve
left your jacket, and you glare at me quizzically before telling
me you left it in the car. When we finally look across the street,
my yard is a stain. They’ve already razed the remains
of the frame, though we can still smell wet smoke. There is
a dumpster in the driveway, cold with cinders and ashes. When
I look at you this time, you notice and mutter something superfluous
about cigarettes and shake your head.
We go inside and will get our bags later. Your mother has made
the same spaghetti she’d make when we were children. She
still leaves the bay leaves in the sauce. When we were little,
they’d always end up in your plate. You’d bite one,
it’s texture hard and alien against the tomatoes, how
the leaf would break into splinters, edges sharp against your
small mouth—you would spit everything into your hand,
thinking it was an insect wing, opening your mouth wide enough
to let everything slide out in one small lump, your saliva pooling
coolly in your outstretched hand. You’d be sent to your
room, and I’d eat sheepishly with your parents, who’d
always be watching the evening news and would comment on my
impeccable table manners. I’d head home afterwards, my
house a tomb, my father either out or passed out cold, and I’d
sit on my bedroom floor pretending I had been scolded and sent
there.
Now older, so quiet and rigorous tonight, you rake through the
pasta with your fork and find the elusive bay leaf. You wring
the herb through flat, pressed lips and place it on the table,
under the rim of your plate, where you can see it fine. Your
father asks about my father’s condition, I tell him he’s
better, they’re moving him next week. You all glance out
the window and into my yard, and I notice this and feel awful
for not feeling loss right now. I take another small bite, and
when I feel the bay leaf in my mouth, austere and formal against
the rigmarole of noodles, I press my fingertips to my lips and
lower my head. When you all get up, rushing to console me with
your eyes and hands, I am trying so hard not to feel good.
....
Holly Grigalunas lives and writes in Chicago. She
works at a grocery store.
