Lakewood(4)

“Lena, come meet my brother,” Stacy yelled.

“Sure, sure.”

“This is Kelly,” Stacy said. His brother was average height, bald, but with a very nice smile. He was wearing a black sweatshirt that had neon paint flecked across it. Lena couldn’t tell if it was expensive or just the sweatshirt he might’ve worn while painting.

Lena shook Kelly’s hand. “So, your parents were lazy, right?”

Stacy looked confused, but Kelly smiled wider. “Our mom was lazy. Our dad probably still wishes he could name us good, strong man names.”

After a pause, the conversation started. Kelly was an MFA student in painting out in the Bay Area. He was interested in portraying the environment as it was, as it is, as it should be. Triptychs. Lena was impressed that he didn’t seem embarrassed about his art. She liked that his tone was soft, not loud enough to be overheard so people would think, Oh, wow, an artist is present. People were getting drunk now. Dancing. Tanya was trying the girl’s vape pen and making an unimpressed face.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Kelly said. “You’re quieter than I imagined, based on Stacy’s stories.”

She looked down at her shoes. “Life’s been. Well, this isn’t a party conversation.” He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, gestured toward the door. “Well, maybe it’s a smoking conversation.” The night was cold, windy. There were few people out, though it was a Friday. A much louder party down the block boomed out bass. Kelly offered her a cigarette, she shook her head. Just six months ago, Lena knew she would’ve been flirting with him. Or she would have been back inside dancing. Or at least would have been drinking.

“Why are you so serious tonight?” Kelly asked.

“My grandmother died a few weeks ago. And—” Her throat closed for a second. “Well, she was my grandma, but she was also my mom. Not in, like, a weird way. She just did a lot of the work in raising me.”

“Is there anything I can do?” He was so earnest, as if he did have the power to make her life much better, all she had to do was ask. The skin on his hands shone underneath the golden porch light.

“Do you want to take a walk?”

He nodded, offered his arm. She put her arm through the crook of it.

“So, why did your grandma raise you?”

“I thought Stacy told you all about me.”

“He did.” Lena was happy she couldn’t see his face. “But I want to hear your version of it. If that’s okay.”

She told him that the first memory she had of her mother was of her having a seizure in their kitchen. Deziree had said something that was wrong right before it happened, and she had said to her mother, “Mom, that’s not how adults talk.” And then she was scared and called 911, then her grandma. And the people at the hospital told her grandma later that it was maybe because her mother fell on the ice earlier that day and something was hurt in her brain. Lena was in the room, listening in, pretending to be focused on her coloring book. She already knew adults somehow thought kids didn’t care what they did and said. Or maybe, the doctor continued, it wasn’t that—it was some sort of disease. It seemed as if all her limbs were arguing with the commands her brain was giving them. There could be many causes for that. She might be severely disabled for the rest of her life. And what were her plans?

The doctor said it as if he was asking them what time they wanted to go get dinner, but her grandmother clasped Lena’s shoulders so hard they hurt, so she understood suddenly that somehow they were talking about death. Lena wished she was tall enough to look directly at her grandma’s face, to see what she thought of all this every time the doctors told her, essentially, we have no idea what’s going on, but everyone’s life is probably different now. But her grandma kept her quiet tone. Whenever they were alone, she would take Lena’s hands and start praying. Jesus will get us through this. “I guess,” Lena remembered replying. Though her mother was sick, she kept it secret that they never went to church except for when they were with Grandma. “Sure.”

As she spoke, Lena was pleased that she didn’t sound like crying, that she was matter-of-fact: This is me.

Lena and Kelly walked to the all-night diner across town and ordered hash browns with feta cheese and onions and tomatoes and coffee. Bacon on the side. They were talking about tacos, and she knew she liked him because, when he said it was impossible to get an actual good taco in this state, she didn’t want to slap him, only gave him a look that said, Do you hear yourself right now? He smiled. They talked about the most beautiful thing they had ever photographed. Joking at first, she said a pile of French toast with syrup and powdered sugar at brunch. And then, sentimental, her family laughing together. Kelly said it’s a cliché, but a sunrise over the ocean.

A song by Davon came on about champagne and missing the girl who was sitting right next to him. Lena bopped her head a little bit to the beat.

“Please tell me you don’t like Davon,” Kelly said. “He’s such a—”

“I like him because 1) he’s good at making you think you’re the one who could change him. 2) He is cut. 3) He is perfect gossip. You can ask almost anyone alive, ‘You hear what Davon did?’ And either they’ll tell you everything or be, like, ‘No, tell me now.’”