Cut Both Ways Read online

  Roy’s the college kid my dad hired to help with remodeling. And Garrett is one of my dad’s oldest friends; they’ve been friends since before my parents even met. Roy’s usually here at any time of day—my dad keeps strange hours and Roy can roll with that—but Garrett doesn’t come around often. Garrett lives out in the middle of nowhere, between Oak Prairie and Minneapolis, on a hobby farm with his girlfriend. Plus, he runs a twenty-four-hour diner in Shoreview. He’s a nice guy, and up for fun, but he’s always pretty busy between the farm and the diner.

  But what’s weird is that Roy and Garrett are both smoking. Inside. I mean, Garrett smokes; so does Roy. That’s not new. But my dad has never let anyone smoke inside before. Even after my mom left.

  Except this house isn’t exactly the same place anymore. It’s not exactly “inside,” either, with all the ripped-out insulation and removed walls and windows too.

  “William,” Roy says, nodding. He calls me that: William. I have no idea why. I’ve never corrected him.

  “Hey, kid,” Garrett says. Slaps me on the stomach. I clench up, not because it hurts—Garrett isn’t that kind of guy—but because it reminds me of Angus.

  Angus over me, Angus’s hand on my stomach, Angus’s hair flopping over his face.

  “We working today?” I ask. I look around. There’s a few rubbery-looking waffles on a plate; Garrett and my dad are drinking cups of coffee out of the coffeepot we used for camping; Roy’s brought his own travel mug because he’s snobby about coffee. Behind my dad, the sink’s full of dishes and there’s a grocery sack of recycling, mostly beer cans. The house smells strange too. Not just like smoke. Like raw wood and sour beer. Like something burned. Like someone else’s house, really.

  “Already finished,” Garrett says. My dad smiles at him, like there’s a joke I don’t get.

  “Finished what?”

  Garrett taps his cigarette on the edge of a plate.

  “Planning, mostly,” my dad says. “Lots of planning. Garrett’s got good ideas. This whole thing being his area of expertise.” He waves his hand around at what used to be our house.

  “I thought running restaurants was your thing,” I say to Garrett.

  Garrett shakes his head, puts out the cigarette on the plate, then stands up to open the window over the kitchen sink. I’m shy, then; can he tell I think it smells bad in here?

  “I used to do carpentry and such with my old man,” Garrett says. “That was another lifetime ago. Your dad just needed someone to bounce ideas off.”

  “Ah, don’t be all humble,” my dad says to him. “You and Kristin put up that barn on your own!” My dad grabs a waffle and starts chewing, not bothering with syrup or a fork. It’s kind of gross, because his mouth is open, and his fingernails are dirty, but I’ve had my dad’s waffles. They’re good, hot or cold, plain or covered in syrup and jam.

  “So, are we working or what?” I mumble. I know it’s the right thing to do, to be up for work, but I’m hoping I can just go back to bed, honestly.

  My dad wipes his hands on his pants. “Not yet,” he says. “Gotta see about some windows, then hit Harbor Freight for some supplies. Who’s up for it?”

  I shake my head. Garrett’s looking at his phone and doesn’t answer. Roy shrugs, says why not. I don’t envy Roy, but maybe Roy can talk my dad down on things in a way I can’t. Roy’s got this long blond hair and kind of surfer-dude demeanor, but he’s actually pretty no-nonsense when it comes to work. When my dad needs him, Roy’s here morning till dark. Drinking his special coffee and smoking his American Spirits and sweating his balls off getting shit done. And even after all of that, some new hot girl will come pick him up in his car, which is this vintage Jeep thing that’s not exactly a Jeep. I don’t know what it is. But he lets all these different girls drive it while he’s at work and then he hops in the car with her after a long day and then they probably go somewhere and have sex for six hours. It’s kind of sickening, Roy’s excellent life.

  “Sure you don’t want to come, Will?” my dad asks. “I’ll buy you lunch.”

  I smile, feeling weak. “Nah,” I say. “I’m not that hungry anyway. Mom made French toast.”

  He nods, but he looks mad about that. Like he’s the only one allowed to make breakfast or something. Even though I feel shitty for turning him down, I know I’ve dodged a bullet. I’ve been on a million of these Craigslist runs with him and they always take longer than he says they will. He has to barter and haggle over the price. Or the guy selling whatever it is also has some other damn thing that he thinks my dad might want and the next thing I know, we’re in someone’s shitty basement looking at old cans of paint or whatever the hell. My dad goes to take a piss and Roy steps outside. The second we’re alone, Garrett looks up from his phone.

  “You looking for a real job, Will?”

  “Sure.”

  “Might have something for you.”

  “What’re the hours like?” I ask. “Because I’m helping out my dad this summer.”

  “I know,” he says. “But I talked to your dad, and he’s fine with it. Plus, we’re open twenty-four-seven, so there’ll be ways to work you in.”

  Garrett’s restaurant is called Time to Eat. It’s breakfast and burgers and crap. It’s in what used to be an old Embers. They make way better hash browns than Embers, though.

  “Hit me with your cell number,” he says, getting up and handing me his phone.

  My name’s in there already, so I punch in my number. I can’t believe this is that easy.

  “What’s the job? I’ve never been a waiter.”

  “I was thinking you’d make a good cook.”

  “Okay,” I say. I mean, I can grill. And chop stuff. But that’s about it. I kind of want to tell him this but also kind of don’t.

  “You’d start out in the back, learning how things on all the stations work, first. Then I’ll have Carl show you the ropes.” He slaps my stomach again and smiles and says he’ll be in touch soon.

  Cooking for Garrett? It’s not completely out of range. My dad likes to cook. I mean, it’s one of his things. Waffles, grilling, homemade sauce. He doesn’t look like he’d be all fancy like that but he likes to eat, that’s for sure. My mom never has me cook, mainly because she’s always having to make two different things for Kinney and Taylor, and Jay has some weird thing about garlic and onions, so she’s pretty preoccupied serving up three different dinners as it is. But my dad always has made me chop onions or wash vegetables or watch the grill when I’m at his house. I never really thought about it, I guess.

  I head upstairs. My room in my dad’s house used to be in the basement. A little room with a big closet and a ton of privacy. And it opened up to the back walkout, so I could sit outside on the picnic table in the backyard at night if I couldn’t sleep or I was waiting for my dad to come home from somewhere. But now my dad’s filled the basement with construction supplies, the flooring and the new stove and the power saw and the table saw and the mountains of ductwork and wire and Sheetrock he’s accumulated for the remodel. And he had a lot of other shit in there to start with—folded-up Ping-Pong table, vats for the beer making he used to do, fuckloads of tools. Since the bedrooms on the main floor are now gone from the demo, he’s been sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room, but I got the attic, where my mom used to have her sewing and craft room a million years ago. A room she never used, because the attic was either too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer. She always complained about this too. Which was basically their argument: she wanted more and he had enough. She wanted to expand and not just do his accounting, while he was fine with the car wash and the Laundromat. The way things were. There was a reason I was an only child, as far as I could see, because they’d been arguing about that shit since I could remember.

  I guess she’s still arguing about it, actually. In that same quiet way she’s always been arguing about it. What she doesn’t get—and what my dad has never pointed out to her, either—was that giving me Ja
y’s old Audi was a pain in the ass. And the clothes she buys me are way too stuck-up for the school I go to. And the house she lives in? Most of my friends can’t make it out to Oak Prairie, anyway. They don’t drive and the bus doesn’t go out there. She’s still fighting with my dad, thinking she’s doing shit that matters, buying me clothes at fucking Macy’s when half my school gets free lunch in the cafeteria. And of course my dad won’t say anything but you can tell by the way he looks at everything she sends back with me that it annoys him. That’s the thing about divorce. It doesn’t necessarily end after the papers are signed and the people involved move apart.

  The attic’s really hot now. Sticky and close. And emptied out so there’s nothing of my mom in it. A bare window and a futon and a milk crate for a nightstand and a desk. A chair underneath the window that my dad found in an alley on spring-cleaning trash day. The chair is blue with little tiny pink dots on it. Dots that are flowers, if you get up close. It’s supposed to make the room seem more comfortable. Make up for the fact that the pine floorboards have been stripped of the funky mildewy carpet and that the futon once belonged to Garrett’s girlfriend’s daughter.

  There’s a box fan on the floor, though, new, still in a Walmart bag. My dad promised he’d get one because it’s been so hot. I set it up in the window over the chair, aim it toward the bed. Then I unlace my boots and fall onto the futon.

  My headache is back. And I feel a million kinds of fucked up.

  Am I so desperate that it doesn’t matter who wants to get me off?

  No.

  I roll on my stomach. Take off my glasses. Shut my eyes.

  Am I gay now? Is that what this all is?

  No. Because Angus didn’t get me off.

  Still. I liked it. Liked him. I can’t think a bad thing about it, except that I’m embarrassed. And I can’t stop either thing: the liking or the being embarrassed.

  But it doesn’t feel like I’m gay. Because I can’t see it happening with anyone else. My other friends, either. Even DeKalb, who’s better looking than me. I think about it for a minute: kissing DeKalb, kissing Jack Telios.

  DeKalb’s a big guy. And Jack Telios, who I’ve been friends with since we got stuck in ninth-grade choir, is scrawny and short. Plus his skin’s got this pinkish color, like he’s an albino practically. But . . . nothing. Not a chance. Never ever would I want that.

  I try to sleep. If I could talk to Angus about this, about what to do, about what it means, I would. But I can’t.

  My head hurts. The blood’s thumping in my temples. I try to slow my breath, relax. My mom is always saying that, especially to Kinney when she gets all cranked up: Relax. Slow down. Breathe.

  I slow down. My head sinks into the pillow.

  It was just kissing. Just kissing. We were high and drunk.

  I breathe, slow, then slower. I think about nothing but the sound going in and out of my mouth and nose. Every time I see Angus (or remember feeling him, my dick tightening underneath me) I just slow down. Breathe more. Count it out. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I’m like a dragon sending out fire, not breath, cooling my body off until it’s just the sound of the fan and my lungs and I’m asleep.

  “Hey! Brandy!”

  “BRANDY!!!”

  “BRANDY, COME HERE!”

  “Come here right now! COME ONNNN! BRANDY!”

  Two voices. A girl and a boy. They’re hollering but not in a this-is-an-emergency way. My window overlooks the backyard, so it must be the backyard neighbors. I sit up, put on my glasses, and look out the window. There are new people there now. Before, the people owned a giant sheepdog that ripped up the lawn to bare mud, and they had a giant shed between their fence and the alley. But now the shed and the dog are gone and there’s a little gate with one of those hook-and-eye latch deals. The grass is nice and green; there are pots of flowers on the deck; a garden with bamboo tripod poles that green things are climbing up in twists.

  I rub my eyes. I feel a little better, though I have drool on my pillow. I get up, head to the attic bathroom to take a piss. Stare at the picture above the toilet the whole time. There’s something I’ve always liked about this picture; it’s a dog curled up and sleeping on a big white bed. There’s something about it that makes me relaxed, makes me feel better. We’ve never even had a dog but it makes me want to get one.

  I go downstairs, pour a huge mason jar of water and go out to the backyard. Weave through the piles of wood. There’s a new jigsaw thing—at least I think it’s a jigsaw?—sitting beside a stack of plastic PVC piping. I sit down on the picnic table, pushing aside the full ashtray and citronella candle.

  Then I see movement in the former-sheepdog yard. Two swings heaving back and forth, two kids in them, out of sync. Yelling.

  I wonder if they are saying “Andy” for a minute until I hear a loud girl’s voice:

  “What is going on?”

  And one of the kids jumps off the swing and the other laughs and there’s more yelling and I see a glimpse of the girl coming out through the sliding glass door of the deck and then I get it. It’s Brandy Corvallis. She’ll be a sophomore at Franklin and she was in my Studio Arts class all last year. She also lives by my dad’s Laundromat and washes her family’s laundry there. Which is sort of sad to me—I mean, I wash our laundry there too, sometimes—but I guess I was just surprised. Because Brandy never seemed like someone sad and poor like that. She’s the kind of girl who always takes pictures for yearbook, constantly moving around the edges of basketball games or the cafeteria, taking candid shots or lining up teams or whatever. The kind of girl that’s always got stuff going on like that. Busy. In Studio Arts, she was always deep into her painting or ceramic jug or whatever. Taking pictures. Folding her family’s laundry while doing her algebra.

  But my dad’s Laundromat is where we first started talking—not in Studio Arts. Because she was good at art and I was suffering through it, mainly. But also because she was younger and while I’m desperate, I just wanted to let her do her own thing.

  When Brandy started coming to the Laundromat that spring I finally said hi to her. She told me her aunt’s washing machine was busted and they were saving up for a new one. She seemed a little less hassled and busy at the Laundromat, even though she was obviously doing her family’s laundry. She didn’t have the camera—yearbook deadlines had passed, she said—and I felt better approaching her. Because I had a reason to be at my dad’s Laundromat and I could help her with stuff. Front her samples of detergent if my dad wasn’t around, make sure she had her own rolling sorting cart, get her a Dr Pepper from the machine. It wasn’t flirting. Just, you know. Friendly.

  I’m suddenly starving. I bolt the rest of the water. A little bit of the headache comes back and I wish I had sunglasses. I never have sunglasses, though. Because I have regular glasses. And prescription sunglasses cost a lot. Plus, I think that is dorky. It’s like giving up. Acknowledging that you’re a full-time nerd or something. I’d rather just squint. I get up and go into the kitchen, then, because Brandy is rolling a blue circular swimming pool toward the yard, where she might see me, and I don’t want to be caught staring.

  At the sink, I pour another glass of water and keep staring. I’m creeping, I know. But Brandy’s wearing cut-off jeans and a bikini top and it’s kind of surprising, but she looks kind of good. I mean, she’s a cute girl. Just younger. And I thought I’d have noticed it, her being kind of sexy. Being in one of my classes is a prime way for me to develop a huge obsession with you, actually. Nothing like sitting in class, being bored for ninety minutes and getting to stare at a girl in front of you, examine every bit of her body and face and watch her move and laugh and frown at her notebook and by the time the bell rings, you are in love with her.

  Which was another reason I never talked to her in class, probably. School’s bad enough as it is. No reason to add your stupid idiot boner into things.

  Still, here I am, gay Will, fucked-up Will, creeping on Brandy Corvallis while she’s babysitting new bac
kyard neighbors. Her boobs are pretty nice—the bikini is green and kind of smashes them together in a way that I can’t stop staring at. The window is smudged—has my dad ever cleaned the windows in this house?—but I can see Brandy helping the kids into the little pool and then grabbing a lawn chair while the boy holds the hose. Brandy sits down with her bare feet in the water and shivers and the kids laugh. Then she sits back and puts on her sunglasses.

  I feel jealous of her then. How she’s working but also getting to kick back like that, her feet in the pool. The kids splash around her feet and she talks to them and splashes back. I’m looking at her tits. I’m half-hard again, sad to say. Or happy to say. I feel okay, really. Though I’m hungry. Starving. I reach for the last rubbery waffle and eat it without a plate or syrup, just staring out the window.

  THREE

  MY DAD’S HOUSE isn’t big. None of the houses next to it are, either. They’re all little boxes that look like the ones you use when you play Monopoly, with matching tiny squares of lawn—so I’m shocked at all the demolition crap we fill the Dumpster with. I shouldn’t be; my dad’s been saying from the get-go how houses are a complex structure, not just “a wooden box that sits outside and rots.”

  Though once Roy whispered to me, “Actually, it is a box that sits outside and rots. It’s just not a wooden one.”

  But the next weeks go on and on, and the shit we haul out from my dad’s house? It doesn’t let up. Tile and wires and ductwork and insulation and rotting Sheetrock from the main-floor bathroom and the old carpet off the attic stairs and more tile and countertops and so much shitty, abused trim. Now it’s really not a house. It’s just mostly enclosed space. The kitchen’s a card table and a coffeepot and a whole bunch of tools. The bathroom’s a toilet with half walls around it, bare studs mostly. Most of the time our breakfast is a bunch of pastries from the bakery on Johnson my dad likes.