Althea and Oliver Read online

  “There’s nothing happening with me and Oliver,” Althea had protested into the phone, and in retrospect it was obvious that her vehemence had given her away.

  “Oh, Thea,” Alice had said. “Be patient.”

  • • •

  Oliver wakes her up a week later. In the dark, she hears him padding down the basement stairs, recognizes those familiar footsteps. Garth is a heavy sleeper, and Oliver’s been slipping into the Carter house with his own set of keys for years. According to the cable box, it’s almost three a.m. Sitting on the edge of the couch, Oliver slides an arm around her waist.

  “You’re here,” she mumbles, rolling over onto her back. The quilt slips away, and her T-shirt rides up. He joins her, biting lightly on her shoulder, his bared teeth pressed against her skin through the cotton. “When did you wake up?”

  “I’m hungry,” he says. “I want Waffle House.”

  “Waffle House is gross.”

  “I want Waffle House.” Oliver’s eyes are glassy and swollen, a slight purple sheen to the lids. His icy fingers loiter on her bare knee, and her leg breaks out in goose bumps, calling the blonde stubble to attention in a way that makes her follicles ache.

  “But you hate Waffle House,” she says.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Can’t I just make you a sandwich?”

  “It has to be Waffle House.” Wrapping his arms around his knees, Oliver begins to rock back and forth, chanting “Waffles, waffles, waffles” in a little-boy voice she hasn’t heard him use since there were still training wheels on their bicycles. She had known he would be upset when this second episode was over, but she wasn’t expecting a peculiar, childlike regression.

  “Did you just wake up? Does Nicky know?”

  “Waffles, waffles, waffles.” Already he has repeated this word so many times that it’s in danger of falling apart and losing its meaning. Althea’s goose bumps spread to her arms. The sofa shudders with the force of Oliver’s insistent rocking. This is all totally unlike him, but she’ll do whatever he wants if it means he’ll stop this creepy chanting.

  “All right,” she says slowly. “Quit with that shit and we’ll get you your fucking waffles.” She slides off the couch and pulls on her jeans in a dark corner of the basement. “How is it outside?” she asks.

  “Cold,” he says, but when she reaches for her car keys, he stops her. “Let’s walk.”

  On their way out the back door, she pulls her hair into a ponytail with a black rubber band. When she’s done, he takes her hand and stuffs it into his own pocket. He won’t answer any of her questions, but she has missed him so much that right now it’s enough to be walking with him under the streetlights, see his breath bloom in the cold, and have their thumbs wrestling in the pocket of his black hoodie. The night is clear and smells like the ocean.

  Oliver doesn’t talk. He sings “Welcome to the Jungle” from start to finish twice, pausing occasionally to play air guitar for emphasis, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort.

  “Are you feeling okay?” she asks when he finishes his encore. It’s a stupidly pedestrian question, but she’s compelled to say something.

  “I’m hungry,” Oliver says.

  The Waffle House sign is made of letters like enormous Scrabble tiles. Inside it smells like syrup and cigarettes. The dozen other patrons are mostly truck drivers and college students, engrossed in their own nocturnal conversations. Althea and Oliver settle into a booth next to each other, Oliver against the window, and put their feet up on the other seat, tennis shoes squeaky against the vinyl. Their legs are the same length. Althea was taller through the first half of high school, but Oliver caught up over the last year. The jeans she’s wearing actually belong to him.

  The waitress approaches, a tiny redheaded woman with a gap between her front teeth, her arms and face covered in freckles. She takes their orders. “I’ll be right back with your coffee,” she says.

  Oliver gives Althea a frantic look, tugging on her pant leg with canine urgency. “I’m starving.”

  “I understand.”

  Finally Oliver’s food arrives and keeps arriving—pecan waffles, a cheese and bacon omelet, scattered and smothered hash browns, and grits. Althea drinks her coffee while he eats, his arm wrapped protectively around his plates, as though he is afraid at any moment she might try to take them from him. He eats noisily, without looking up or pausing to make conversation, chewing big, sloppy bites with his mouth open. A briefly masticated bit of waffle falls back to his plate, landing where the maple syrup and grits overlap. Althea stifles a gag and looks past him, out the window at the traffic rumbling by on the highway and her own ghostly reflection staring back at her.

  When he’s finished, the waitress clears and leaves the check on the table. Apparently sated, Oliver yawns, stretching his arms over his head. “Jesus. I’m so tired.”

  “You just slept for a week.”

  Even as she lodges her complaint, he rests his head on her shoulder. His breathing turns heavy, and Althea realizes too late, a mile from home, without her car, in the middle of the night, that she was wrong. It isn’t over, and she doesn’t have her Oliver back. He’s come by in the midst of some strange intermission, and the lights are about to go down for the second act.

  Althea snatches the check off the table. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m fine right here.” Lying down in the booth, he rests his head in her lap, tucking his fists under his chin.

  “No way, come on. Get up.”

  “I said I’m fine here,” he says, loud and peevish.

  She can’t get to her wallet with Oliver sprawled across her thighs, pinning her. “Get up,” she says. Behind the counter, the waitress is beginning to stare.

  He still won’t move, so reaching down and taking hold of his collar, Althea yanks him upright, propping him against the window.

  “I told you, I’m tired,” he shouts, slapping her hands away.

  The space between her shoulder blades tightens like a bolt is being wrenched into place. A mortified Althea watches the other patrons in the window’s watery reflection, their chatter suddenly muted. The college students forget the cigarettes smoldering in their ashtrays, and older men in trucker hats with potbellies and thick wrists brace themselves against their tables as they contemplate intervention. Behind the counter, the grill is sizzling with home fries and bacon fat, but the cook has forgotten, holding his spatula in front of his grease-splattered apron as if he’s wondering whether he might need to use it as a weapon. A harmless country song is playing on the jukebox.

  Althea is shaky from too much coffee. Her body has lost the ability to regulate its temperature—heat radiates under her armpits, dampening her sweatshirt, but her hands have gone icy—and her stomach feels like it’s disappeared altogether. She fumbles for her canvas wallet, embroidered with a skull and crossbones and several unraveling red roses. The sound of uncoupling Velcro is impossibly loud inside the small, hushed restaurant. People are whispering as she counts out her limp dollar bills. Oliver’s head lolls back onto the booth’s cracked red vinyl.

  “Don’t do it,” she says sharply, but his eyes flutter shut anyway. She kicks his shin, hard, and he starts awake, abruptly at attention.

  “What the shit?” he yells. Flailing his arms, he knocks over the ketchup and the hot sauce; the maple syrup clatters to the floor, leaving a sugary ring on the faux-wood Formica. Althea hastily retrieves the pitcher from under the table, but before she can set it back in place, Oliver wrests it from her sticky hand and hurls it across the restaurant. She watches helplessly as it sails into the open kitchen, landing on the grill in a clatter of singed plastic and maple steam. The cook drops his spatula and leaps back, covering his face with his arm as a billow of purple-black smoke erupts, cloying and sweet and toxic. Althea mutters a profanity, her heart rabbiting wildly inside her chest. Leaving he
r pile of damp money on the table, she grabs Oliver by the wrist and together they bolt for the exit, past students she prays are not her father’s. Inside their booths, the truckers shrink away.

  She runs, and this time it’s Oliver struggling to keep up with her long, desperate strides. The sky is getting light on the other side of the highway. Keeping a firm grip on his wrist, she tows him behind her in the wake of headlights and exhaust from passing cars. The sound of traffic fades behind them as they turn off the main road and wind through the narrow suburban streets, silent save for their sharp breaths and the rubbery smack of their shoes against the asphalt. Only when they get to their block does she let their pace slacken to a walk.

  Althea bends double in his driveway, trying to catch her breath. Her ponytail has come unmoored and her mess of blonde hair falls over her face.

  “Why did you do that?” says Oliver unkindly, panting hard.

  From behind her veil of hair, Althea looks at him with disbelief. “Do what?”

  “You got us into trouble. Why did you do that?” He’s yelling and pouting.

  “Keep your voice down.” Straightening, she watches the houses around them, waiting to see bedroom lights flip on, neighbors peek out from behind their curtains.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Oliver shouts.

  “I didn’t do anything. Just go inside. You’re not making any sense.” When she turns to walk away, he grabs her wrist and jerks her back to face him.

  “Why did you do that?” he repeats, his voice softer and suddenly ominous. The motion sensor light ticks on in his driveway.

  “Go inside, Oliver. I’m going home.” He tightens his grip, bringing her closer. She tries to see him as the people in Waffle House must have seen him, as crazy or a freak or a threat.

  “Where are you going?” he says. His hand slips inside the cuff of her sweatshirt, twisting at her skin, his fingers roughly edging toward her elbow.

  “I just told you, McKinley. I’m going the fuck home.”

  “Come on, Carter. You know I hate to sleep alone.”

  The fine hairs on his cheeks and neck are illuminated by the harsh lamp above the garage, and it’s his licentious smile that frightens her most of all. The leering expression looks grotesque on his face, and she is terribly embarrassed for her Oliver, not this impostor with his face and hands, one of which is still clutching her arm. But if this isn’t Oliver, then who is it? Who’s inside? The light in the driveway clicks off again, and again she turns to go. He clamps down harder, pulling so roughly that pain sparks in her shoulder.

  “Let go of me!” she shouts, forgetting the neighbors, the hour, the sky lightening over her head. A garbage truck rolls down a neighboring street. Oliver releases her, but too suddenly. Stumbling backward as if she’s been pushed, she catches herself before she falls. He reaches out, but she slaps his hand away, clumsily but hard enough to sting her palm.

  “I’m so tired,” he says, kneeling on the sidewalk. “I’m so tired.”

  “Get up,” she whispers, trying to wrench him off the ground. He goes limp like a nonviolent protestor and slumps sideways, but he isn’t being passive-aggressive. Oliver has fallen asleep. She lays him down gently until his cheek is pressed to the ground and he is drooling onto the mottled cement and she is sitting beside him, barely noticing as the chill of the sidewalk seeps through her pants.

  The front door opens and Oliver’s mom, Nicky, appears on the porch, her long brown hair gloriously backlit by the foyer light.

  “Why are you two screaming at each other like white trash in my driveway?” she asks, her voice a testy stage whisper. She observes Oliver’s state of unconsciousness. “Did he just fall asleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nicky comes down the steps like she’s descending into the shallow end of a swimming pool—carefully, but with grace, one hand trailing lightly on the banister. “Help me get him inside. I can feel the neighbors’ eyes on me.”

  “How should we carry him? Ankles and wrists?”

  “We’re not moving a dead body, Althea. Put his arm around your shoulder.” They hoist him to his feet. “Come on, Ol, help us out a little.”

  Issuing a small grunt, he stumbles forward, nearly slipping out of their joint embrace.

  “Unbelievable,” Nicky mutters.

  They coax a still-sleeping Oliver inside, depositing him on the couch. Though Nicky is wearing pajamas—cropped sweatpants and a long-sleeved thermal—Althea does not get the impression that she had been asleep. As Nicky drapes a chenille throw over her son, Althea waits for a reaction, some sign of dismissal or an invitation to stay.

  “I’m sorry,” Althea finally says. “He came into the basement and said he wanted Waffle House. I didn’t realize he was still—still sick, I guess, so I took him there.”

  “He wakes up sometimes, but he acts weird. Not himself. I guess you saw. Why don’t you come on into the kitchen? I’m going to make some tea.”

  The kitchen smells like Nicky, like jasmine and rosewater and tobacco. She uses her forearm to clear a space on the table, which is littered with old copies of The New York Times and the rubber balls she uses to exercise her hands. Oliver’s art projects from elementary school, yellowed and curling at the edges, are still well represented on the fridge. Items that have been in one place for too long resemble artifacts from volcanic areas, covered in a thick layer of dust and ash. Potted plants and ceramic figures of geckos and bullfrogs line the windowsills under the sun-bleached strawberry curtains. The rusted watering can is perched on the edge of the kitchen sink, propped up against the tower of dirty dishes. The toaster oven, filled with crumbs, is notorious for periodically catching fire.

  Nicky’s cigarette smolders in a carved wooden ashtray. She’s not even forty, and though it’s been over ten years since Oliver’s dad died, widowhood has not aged her. If anything, it seems to have trapped her in a severely extended postadolescence, full of cigarettes and mood swings and antisocial behavior—despite a steady stream of would-be suitors, Nicky hardly ever goes out. And though she complains about the neighbors’ silent judgment, she does sometimes give the impression that she is daring them to come over and suggest she brush her hair, mow her lawn, or empty the ashtrays. Any fleeting thoughts Althea and Oliver had entertained as children of setting up their respective single parents had been quickly dismissed by an incompatibility so incontrovertible, it was obvious even to a pair of eight-year-olds. The only company Nicky ever entertains is Althea, who loves to hear tales of her long-ago life in Manhattan, when she lived in a place called Alphabet City, walked dogs for a living, and bought her clothing for a dollar a pound at a thrift shop way out in Brooklyn. There are also occasional visits from Sarah and Jimmy, her best friends from that life. In this one, she is a massage therapist at a fancy spa, spending her days opening the chakras of North Carolina’s wealthiest denizens, and her evenings stationed on the front porch with the cordless phone between her ear and shoulder, talking to Sarah.

  Althea sips her smoky tea. She can see the outline of Nicky’s nipples through her thin cotton thermal, and looks away.

  Nicky takes a deep drag of her cigarette and exhales with a shaky breath. “I’ll take him back to the doctor tomorrow—later today, I mean. Not that I even know which doctor to see. But he’s not going to show up at your house in the middle of the night again.”

  That doesn’t sound like good news to Althea. Would she rather have this Oliver or no Oliver at all? It’s so obvious, it doesn’t even count as a question. “He would hate it. If he could see the way he was tonight, he would hate it. He’d be so embarrassed.”

  “If embarrassment turns out to be his biggest problem, I’ll be thrilled. No one ever actually dies of humiliation. I swear.”

  A silence falls between them, and Althea is sure they are doing the same thing: enumerating all the invisible things that could, in fact, be fatal to
a teenage boy, or at least fuck with his mind. After a moment, Nicky shakes her head and puts out her cigarette.

  “Let’s not get melodramatic,” she says. “It’s only happened twice. Now, don’t you have to go get ready for school?”

  • • •

  That afternoon at track practice, Althea takes her place at the starting line, tightening her shoelaces and then her ponytail. Four of her teammates are staggered across the line beside her, and though she isn’t willfully ignoring them, she makes no attempt at conversation, either. Oliver has always suggested that she try lacrosse or field hockey because she might enjoy a sport where she is given a stick and instructed to wield it against others, but she isn’t interested in teamwork or strategy. Her tall, slim frame is built for speed, so she sticks to track. Althea has no desire to stand in a huddle.

  Dirty gray rain clouds are blowing in off the Atlantic, and there’s a clamminess to the air, the kind of wet cold that gets into your bones. Althea pinwheels her arms to get some blood flowing, lazily looking over the hurdles spaced out around the track. Hurdles and sprints are her best events, the ones that are hard and fast and turn off her brain with a nearly audible click.

  The first time she’d ever hurdled had been on a walk downtown with Oliver late at night, when they came across an orange-and-white sawhorse abandoned on a side street where the construction was obviously long finished. There had been a dare, or a bet, or some prize had been offered, and within moments Althea was charging down the street. She saw herself leaping flawlessly over the sawhorse when she was still several strides away, the way you know a dart will find the board’s center as soon as it flies from your hand. And then she did it, hair bannering out behind her, scarcely hearing Oliver’s exclamation of delight.