SNOWBIRDS, Part II

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last week that we will be featuring fiction by Emma Straub, Flatmancrooked’s first LAUNCH author. If you like what you read, you can invest in Emma’s future. Head over to her LAUNCH page for more details.

Read “Snowbirds, Part I” here.

Read “Hot Springs Eternal, Part I” here.

Read “Hot Springs Eternal, Part II” here.

Sherry made biweekly trips to the salon, and was rarely out of sorts in regards to her personal grooming, but Nikki at Shear Elegance had gone on maternity leave. Jenny’d brought her scissors—she rarely went farther than 14th Street without them—and offered to take a look.

The master bathroom was the size of a studio apartment in Manhattan, with his and hers sinks on opposite walls and toilets tucked discreetly behind sliding pocket doors. A granite bathtub, large enough for three NBA players, sat in the middle of the room, a proclamation. There were speakers embedded in the ceiling, small black mesh squares that let out nearly imperceptible notes of soprano saxophone. Direct TV offered several channels of Easy Listening Jazz, and Alex seemed to hear it everywhere in Florida; at the mall, on the toilet. His father could care less about jazz, Alex knew. There had been no singing in his childhood, no concerts, no music. Jenny told him once about the time her mother took her to see Michael Jackson, back when he was the greatest in the world, and how happy she’d been; she’d worn one glove for weeks despite the summer heat. He’d had no story to counter hers, no follow-up. Sherry, who was in charge of the household music, probably thought the lite jazz sounded sophisticated, in the same way that she thought the built-in bookshelves looked refined, despite the fact that the only books in the house were ones that Alex himself had sent for holidays; 1001 Places to Golf Before You Die was a favorite, and still resided in a place of prominence on the coffee table.

Alex perched on the edge of the tub and watched as Jenny set up her tools on his stepmother’s vanity. In the mirror, softened by Sherry’s forgiving lights, the pink tips of Jenny’s hair looked friendly, full of youthful exuberance.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Alex said. Jenny looked pretty, Alex thought, and relaxed. She could have been standing in her own bathroom, or in his. She was always the same.

“Alex, they paid for our tickets. And plus, her bangs need me.” She spun around and did a dip, stretching her curvy calves out in front of her like a Vargas girl. The toe of her right foot collided with Alex’s shoe. “Ouch,” she said. Alex felt the spot where she’d crashed into him hum a little bit, even after she’d moved away.

A polite knock on the double-doors prompted both Alex and Jenny to stand, as though they’d been caught in a coital embrace. Alex’s stepmother pulled both doors open and stuck her small head in between. Sherry had been married to Mel for almost five years, which was already longer than his marriage to his second wife, the one after Alex’s mother, but she continued to act skittish around Alex, as though he would throw her to the ground and wag her back and forth between his teeth if she said the wrong thing. Alex knew that Sherry had to be scared to death to put her sensible blond bob anywhere within reach of Jenny’s scissors, and the fact that she was willing to do so irritated him. Also, he had thought that Jenny would say no.

“How are you all doing? You have everything you need, Jennifer?” Sherry was in her early fifties, played golf every morning, and worked out every afternoon. Her limbs seemed to want to hug in close to the rest of her body, as though waving them around might suggest too much width. Jenny hurried to the bathroom door and kissed Sherry on the cheek, something that Alex had never done. They’d only started hugging a couple of years ago, and kissing seemed entirely too intimate. Sherry and Mel had met at a black-tie function at the community’s clubhouse; either Casino Night or the Big Band Dance, Alex couldn’t remember which. They’d both been married to other people at the time.

“Of course! Come in, come in.” Jenny giggled loudly. It was her confidence that had first made him notice Jenny, and had prompted him to ask for her phone number. As soon as Alex’s hair was wet, Jenny’s face had darkened in concentration, and even before he’d looked in the mirror, Alex knew he’d been given the haircut of his life.

Sherry scooted into her small upholstered chair. Like several other things in the house—paintings, pillows, framed photographs—the fabric was peopled with gleeful monkeys. Alex thought that if Ernest Hemingway hadn’t shot himself, hadn’t been so unhappy, he could easily have ended up in a place like this. There could have been a chain of hotels decorated with African scenes tastefully rendered in neutral tones. In the family room, there was a coffee table whose metal base was formed in the shape of a braying elephant, its trunk raised in helpful support. An unused wet bar sat sunken into the floor of the great room; Mel and Sherry hardly drank, but they were prepared. All that was missing were some polydactyl cats. Sherry didn’t believe in pets. Hair everywhere, unsavory smells wafting out of the litter box, and another thing to worry about when booking cruises. No, thank you. Alex had suggested it once, an easy way to make the house feel less like a hotel, and Sherry’s lips had formed a deep gridiron of displeasure.

Alex looked back into the mirror and was startled to find both his girlfriend and his stepmother staring back at him. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll leave. Do you want me to leave? I’ll just go.”

Walking out, he heard Jenny begin to murmur in her familiar way, talking mostly to herself. She would rake her fingers through the hair, getting a feel for the texture, the patterns, the waves, although of course she’d observed the hair in its natural habitat for days, and already knew what she would find. Second, she would bend Sherry backwards over the sink, a folded towel protecting her neck from the cold granite countertop, and wash her hair, rinsing in and out different potions and creams. Third, she would squeeze the hair in between her toweled hands until it was mostly dry. That’s when she would start to cut away whatever wasn’t needed.

Mel sat in his leather club chair pointing away from the window, his feet resting on a leather ottoman. He hadn’t started golfing until he moved to Florida when Alex was in high school, and Alex still wasn’t convinced that he actually enjoyed it.

“Anybody ever break the window?” Alex nodded towards the golfers shimmying their hips and taking practice swings no more than twenty feet from the back door, where the perfectly green grass rolled into, and then became, the 8th hole of a golf course.

Mel jerked his head around to look. “Glass is practically bulletproof. Sometimes they try, though.” He went back to reading his newspaper.

Alex sat on the couch, nearest to Mel’s right elbow. He clicked on the television. A woman whisked together white powders and said, “Mmm.” Alex held the remote control at eye-level, waiting to see what she was making before switching the channel.

“Jennifer seems very nice, Alex.” Mel folded down the paper and raised his eyes, sending his forehead into a latticework of wrinkles. “Very nice.”

“Yeah, thanks. It’s not that serious, though, so, you know, don’t worry about it too much.” It was an angel food cake, all light, all air. Alex clicked to a motorcross race and watched boys on bikes fly over hills made of dirt, hills made just so that they would have something to stand in their way.

“Has she met your mother?”

Alex nodded, pretending to only half-listen. “For lunch, once. It was cold. Jenny wore a sweater. Makes things a little easier, you know?” Usually the restaurant only lent sports-coats to men, but they’d made an exception at his mother’s request. “She looked cold, darling,” she’d said in self-defense.

Mel chuckled. “Well, Jennifer’s a real cute number, Alexhew, and I like her. No Jewish cemetery, though. It’s different now, for you kids, I know, but I believe those are the rules.” Mel was still smiling.

“Who exactly do you think is going to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, Dad?” It wasn’t a question. Alex hit the volume arrow up once, and then again. His father snapped the newspaper back open and kept reading over the buzzing of flying motorcycles until someone was declared the winner.

Stone crab season began in late December, a short window. Although Sherry did most of the cooking, such as it was, ordering from glossy food catalogues and reheating pre-prepared meals, it was Mel’s job to select the crabs. Alex thought that Sherry just didn’t like buying them, which usually included a lengthy wait in line in the parking lot behind the Publix, followed by a mostly gestural conversation with a guy with long, stringy hair and a sleeveless t-shirt. Alex and Jenny went to keep Mel company, and to drive, although they didn’t say that out loud. Until his parents’ divorce, Alex had eaten with only two major dietary restrictions: no pork, no shellfish. His mother, a blond, like Sherry, was from Connecticut and left such decisions in his father’s hands. It was only after Mel moved to Florida that Alex discovered that he wasn’t the only one to have left such things by the wayside. Alex thought about what else his father had left in New York, if there was a box somewhere in his mother’s apartment filled with abandoned neckties and religious observances.

The gate of the fisherman’s truck was lowered, and a large cardboard sign sat beside the Styrofoam coolers, advertising his wares to the passing traffic on Okeechobee Boulevard, although the twenty-person line would have been reason enough to stop. Alex pulled the car into a wide slot in the parking lot and narrowly avoided getting slammed by a train of ten jangling shopping carts being pushed by a teenage boy in an apron with the supermarket’s name in blocky type.

“So, what is a stone crab, exactly?” Jenny twirled the pink ends of her hair around her pointer finger.

“A noble creature, my dear.” Mel turned his hands into sharp pinchers and snapped them in Jenny’s direction. “A terrifically delectable crustacean.”

Jenny snapped her own pinchers back. “Sounds great. Alex, where are yours?” She nipped at his neck with her finger and thumb. He pulled away, and moved forward in line. Jenny growled.

Mel cleared his throat into the pit of his fist, no longer a claw. The people in front of them in line turned around to look, large sunglasses taking up most of their faces.

“I hate Florida,” Alex said.

“Oh, come on,” Jenny said, tucking her elbow into his. “We’ve got stone crabs, we’ve got sunshine, and I’m wearing flip-flops and my feet aren’t filthy. I’m giving Florida the thumbs-up.”

Mel cupped his hands over his eyes and looked towards the beginning of the line. “Okay, kids, what do you think, four a piece?”

Jenny’s head rocked backwards on her neck, squeezing the heart into shadow. “Isn’t that a lot?”

“It’s only their claws,” Alex said, allowing his own claw to remain clamped under the weight of Jenny’s arm. “If you chop them off in the right place, they grow back. Even bigger, right, Dad?” Mel told Alex about Florida in lieu of other things: who had moved in to the house next door, which golfers had won the community tournament, how the Gators were doing. Alex closed his eyes, and the direct sun painted the insides of his eyelids orange. He drew himself a larger left forearm, larger fist. He could join the arm-wrestling circuit, maybe, or look into boxing. Eventually someone else would be squeezing just as hard on the other side. He’d even out, someday.

It was their turn. The fisherman with the stringy hair took one long, lingering look at Jenny and put an extra two claws in the bag, then raised his hammer and smashed their shells. In Florida, nobody liked a challenge. Jenny turned away, setting Alex’s arm free, and walked towards the car with her head down, so as to avoid the glare of the harsh direct sun.

Sherry set the table on the patio, and when everyone was ready to eat, she made a big show of pushing a button that sent screens descending from the overhanging ceiling, blocking them off from the golf course. Jenny applauded.

The cracked claws sat in a large yellow bowl in the middle of the table, their banded shells like silent macaws.

“Alex, doesn’t Sherry’s hair look dynamite?” Mel nodded approvingly at his wife, who dutifully fluffed her tresses, unable to conceal her happiness. The haircut had managed to soften Sherry’s tense cheekbones and jaw line, as though some of Jenny had rubbed off in between the follicles.

“Dy-no-mite.” Alex reached for a claw and dropped it onto his plate with a sharp crack. Jenny jumped a bit, and her spoon, already halfway in the horseradish dip, jerked to the right, sending a dish of melted butter onto the tablecloth. Jenny brought both hands to her mouth, raising the spoon like Excalibur before her shut eyes. “Shit!”

Sherry leapt to her feet, shushing. “Oh, no, no, don’t be silly, it’s not a big deal.” A mound of paper towels were plopped on the offending spot, and as Sherry made her way back to her chair, she stopped to kiss the top of Jenny’s head. Alex turned to his father, who was smiling beatifically while simultaneously sucking the meat out of a narrow claw.

“Yeah, it’s fine, Jenny, don’t worry about it. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t knocked things over before.” He looked at Sherry. “You should have seen her this one time, when we were coming out of a bar at what—” Alex caught Jenny’s eyes, which had widened fully. Her neck tensed in his direction, with the bleeding heart tucked inside itself as she listened. “What was it, like four in the morning? And you walked into that garbage can and it ripped your skirt so you pushed it over? Do you remember that? Man, I’d be surprised if you did.” He let out a high-pitched laugh, the only noise aside from the well-fed crickets.

Jenny’s cheeks reddened to match her hair. She lowered her gaze to her still-empty plate. “No,” she said. “I don’t remember that.”

Mel pushed out a mouthful of air. “Come on, Alex, let’s have a nice dinner.” He motioned for Jenny to help herself to some food. Behind the screen, the familiar buzz of a golf cart whizzed by.

Alex sank a piece of crabmeat into his butter, and let the sweetness dissolve on his tongue. “You know,” he said, “lobster really is better. I don’t know what people get so excited about. I mean, it’s good, though. It’s good.”

Every so often, a fork would hit a plate and the noise would ring out. Everyone ate carefully, not looking beyond the reach of their own place setting for the most part. Alex drank all the white wine in his glass, and then finished Jenny’s, after seeing that she wasn’t planning on drinking it.

Alex didn’t have a proper room of his own, even though the house had four bedrooms, three of which had their unused sheets washed and changed on a weekly basis. The room Sherry most often put Alex in was on the second floor, overlooking the front garden. A palm tree swooned outside the window. Like most of the other rooms in the house, this one was painted an inoffensive shade of beige, perhaps slightly darker than the rooms downstairs. Because it was the farthest away from the master bedroom, and because the bed was several feet off the floor, because the framed prints were of flowers and not of monkeys, Alex knew the room was supposed to be romantic.

Jenny washed her face in the sink, scrubbing up and down with water so hot that her skin looked scalded, burned.

“Hey,” Alex said, as Jenny blotted her face with a towel. She looked up at him warily, and waited for him to continue. “I’m sorry if this trip was lame. I mean, Florida is totally lame. I should have known better.”

“Hmm,” Jenny said as she brushed past Alex and out of the bathroom, rolling her eyes. She was wearing boy’s pajama pants, the crotch of which sagged almost to her knees, and a thin tank-top that Alex could see through. “You know, if you decided that this wasn’t going to work, then why did you bring me?”

“I didn’t know that.” What Alex didn’t know was that Jenny could tell the difference, that she could see him weighing his options even now, backed against the bathroom door. “I didn’t know how it would feel,” he said. “I had to try.”

“Oh, is that what you were doing?” she said, cocking her head to the side like a disappointed kindergarten teacher.

Before he could respond, Jenny lay down on the bed with her back to him and the rest of the room. All the lights were still on, the flowery sconces and the overhead chandelier. Jenny pulled the sheet up to her waist, and brought her knees up to her chin. The pink tips of her hair were slightly wet from falling into the sink, and stuck together in menacing points, as dangerous as a rusted fence. The smiling dog between her shoulder blades no longer looked friendly. Alex thought he saw small tattooed foam forming in the corners of the dog’s mouth.

Alex clicked off the overheard light and felt his way towards the bed in the dark, taking slow steps with one hand against the wall. He could hear Jenny’s slow, even breath, hear how she was trying to will herself to sleep. Soon, it would work, and the conversation would be over until the morning. Even the sound of Jenny’s breath sounded like a reminder of the differences between them, the ease with which she could walk away, secure in the knowledge that she had done nothing wrong, presented nothing but the truth. The room got bigger with each tentative step, until Alex had to take his hand off the wall, when it stopped being a room in his father’s house and was just the inside of his own head: dark, cavernous, and cold. The thought occurred to Alex that if he took small enough steps, he might never reach the bed at all.

By Emma Straub