To Express How Much

Jack reads the last lines of his story and sinks back into the sofa’s deep white pillows, as if he wants to disappear. He’s kind of small, narrow shoulders, thin arms and neck, so he almost does.

            “That’s your best so far,” Bill says. Bill speaks only in superlatives, but Kevin agrees with him this time. “Authentic,” Bill insists, as if he knows what it’s like to travel the country on his own, the way Jack’s character did, as if his parents wouldn’t make him wear an ankle monitor if they could. He’s the only guy Kevin knows at Middlesex High School who talks like a forty-year-old, but gets treated like a toddler at home.

            “It was really good,” Melanie says, and Jack peeks up at the others in the circle, as if it’s safe now to show his face. Melanie’s mouth is puckered and her cheeks are glistening. She cries every time one of their stories suggests that life can be less than kind. She writes mostly poetry about winter storms and the smell of flowers, and it’s generally not to Kevin’s liking. Still, every now and then she comes up with an image that captures a moment so perfectly it’s like a double play in a tight game.

            The story Jack read to the group was about an eighteen-year-old who leaves his family behind in Milwaukee and sets out cross country. Everyone laughed when the guy wakes up sitting on sacks of lima beans next to an old man in the back of a four-by-four, admitting how alone and scared he is. That’s when Kevin felt the pieces click into place, no holding back, unlike anything he’d heard before from anyone in the group.

            They’re at Liz’s house tonight, a place so big and fancy Kevin expected a butler might greet him the first time he was there. They talk about Jack’s story for a while, telling him what they think worked, what didn’t, until they wander into talking about what life could be like on their own, away from the choices adults make for them. Kevin thinks the subject is making Liz uncomfortable, because she keeps checking her phone. Every time her head moves even slightly, her long dark hair shifts against her shoulders and he wonders what it would be like to touch it.

            She stands and says it’s time to go, and he wishes it wasn’t, because being around her makes him feel like something terrific is about to happen, like waiting to ride the newest, biggest, kick-ass roller coaster. “Your house next week, right?” she says. She’s not that much shorter than Kevin and he likes how determined she seems, standing close to him. He’s sure she suspects that he may try to get out of it again. He wants to, but he’s run out of excuses. The next meeting will have to be at his house.

They started the group eight weeks ago—four seniors and two juniors—all six of them from Mrs. Irving’s Creative Writing class, a special course for honor students. They wanted a chance to read the stuff that was too personal, too important, to share in class.

            Everyone agreed they’d take turns meeting at each other’s houses on Tuesday nights. Kevin’s turn came the sixth week, but he told them his mother had a bad cold and they shouldn’t risk getting sick. The seventh week he told them the living room was being painted and the place smelled terrible. But this time he can’t get out of it.

            On his father’s good nights, having the group over wouldn’t be a problem. He’d be home already and settled into his TV chair, watching the news until a ballgame starts. But if he goes out after work, he arrives home at seven or eight, and there’s no way to know what might happen—at best a screaming argument with Kevin’s mother, more likely dishes flying or a lamp smashing. He pictures their faces—especially Liz’s—in the middle of all that. They’d never feel comfortable with him again, even if they had the good manners to keep quiet about it in school. They’d know that the stories he shares with the group—the ones that are supposed to be as raw and honest as their own—have nothing to do with his real life. But honest or not, they’re stories, attempts at shaping something of his own. He’s never shared the stories he writes about the way things really are—not with anyone.

            The group was Jack’s idea. His mother writes fiction and belongs to a writer’s group that exchanges feedback. So Jack wanted to start one of his own, and Liz was the first person he enlisted. Somehow—Kevin can’t figure out why—Mrs. Irving is convinced he has a gift, and almost every week she includes his paper among those she reads aloud to the class. He assumes that’s why Jack and Liz invited him in.

            Being asked to join them is the best thing that’s happened to Kevin since he came to Middlesex last year, when his father had to start another new job. The infamous Liam Donnegan had pissed off his boss and gotten fired. Again. He says angry things when he’s drinking; he doesn’t mean them. At least everybody in the family knows he doesn’t mean them. But this is Kevin’s fourth school in eight years. He’s an outsider again, and he can tell that kids feel strange with him. They’re not unfriendly. It’s just that he doesn’t know what to say to people, how to get beyond polite. He can be real only on paper, where the world becomes manageable.

            As Tuesday approaches, Kevin tortures himself about what could go wrong. He knows there’s no point in talking to his mother about what might happen. She never refers to the drinking. She just cleans up whatever’s broken, pieces it back together if she can. Later, when his father falls asleep, Kevin will hear her crying. By breakfast the next day, all evidence has been removed or repaired. His dad, fresh from his long, hot shower, is clean-shaven and ready to start the new day. His mother, pale and tight-lipped, seems grateful to have another day over with.

By Monday night, Kevin’s stomach is twisted up. He finds his father in the garage, working on the car. Kevin stands around, aimless, spinning the screwdrivers that hang in their neat little niches.

            “What’s up with you?” his father says. He’s bent over the engine, his head deep into its parts.

            “Nothing.”

            “Has to be something,” his father says, his voice muffled beneath the raised hood.

            “Nothing.”

            “What?”

            Kevin waits until his father finishes tightening something. “Some friends of mine are coming over tomorrow night.” He takes a few steps toward his dad, smells the mixture of grease and gasoline that shrouds him whenever he tends to the car. These smells have always comforted him. They mean his father is sober, predictable.

            “Yeah, so?”

            “We have a group,” he says and comes closer, leaning against the Chevy’s passenger side.

            “What do you mean a group?”

            “A writer’s group.”

            “A what?”

            “We read stuff to each other, stuff we’ve written, and talk about it.”

            “What kind of stuff?” His father is standing upright now, fighting open some stubborn piece of motor with a grimy cloth.

            “Different things. Essays, poems, some stories.”

            “You still writin’ stuff?”

            “Some.” When Kevin doesn’t say any more, his father goes back into the engine, curses softly at its insides. “So it’s my turn tomorrow night,” Kevin says, loud enough to be heard beneath the hood. “To meet here.”

            His father straightens up, eyes squinting, as if what he wants to see is too far away to be clear. “So how come you’re telling me? Is Mom against this or something?”

            “No.” Kevin shrugs. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

            “Okay, so I know. Now are you gonna tell me what this is really about?”

Kevin rolls his eyes and slouches his way toward the door to the house. He’s almost back inside before he can make himself say it.

            “Dad.” His father doesn’t hear him. He’s bent over the engine again. “Dad.”

            “Yeah?” He straightens up, slaps his greasy rag down onto the Chevy’s fender. “What?”

            “I don’t want them to see you and Mom fighting.”

His father looks down, as if he’s been accused, exposed. Kevin waits for him to answer. He doesn’t and Kevin turns toward the door again, but his father calls after him.

            “Kevin, gimme a break,” he says. “Who are these friends anyway? You think your friends’ folks don’t have disagreements?”

            “Disagreements?” The word comes out with a mocking chuckle.

            “That’s right, disagreements.” His voice is harsher, louder, and the raised hood doesn’t muffle it.

            “Yeah, they disagree. They just don’t bust up the furniture.”

            His dad shakes his head slowly, as if there’s been some grand misunderstanding. The gaslighting is pretty much what Kevin expected. It has taken him so long, so many years, to talk about this, to name it. It isn’t his father’s anger that kept him from doing it; the man never gets seriously angry unless he’s drunk. Kevin just didn’t want to be the one to make it plain, the ugly thing that no one in the house wants to name.

            It’s ironic, he thinks, how he and his mother protect his father from himself, keep him from having to face who he is and what he does to them. But that’s the drill. They pretend there’s nothing wrong.

            “The lamp was an accident. You know that,” his father tells him, referring to the last time he came home drunk and crazed, just a few nights ago. He leans heavily on one arm, speaks into the engine, not looking at his son.

            “Come on, Dad.” Kevin doesn’t mention the countless other lamps—or the tables and vases and even the toppled Christmas tree one year. Their home isn’t just a war zone; it’s a prison. He can’t let anyone in and he never really gets out, because the tension is inescapable, like a jailer stalking him everywhere he goes.

            “It was just a lamp, for heaven’s sake. What do you want from me?”

            “My friends are going to be here tomorrow night. I want you to stay sober—for one night. That’s what I want.”

            “Come over here,” he says, stepping away from the car. When Kevin reaches him, his father talks low, as if what he’s telling Kevin needs to be kept between them. “That don’t mean nothin’ when me and your mother fight. You understand? We’re okay. It’s nothin’ to worry about.”

            “Yeah.”

            “And don’t worry about your friends either. I’ll be home early. I’ll pick up some chips and we can nuke some popcorn. Think they’d like that?”

            “Yeah, sure.” Kevin isn’t convinced, but he doesn’t have the energy to say any more.

            Then he feels his father’s big hand on his shoulder. “That’s not a promise, Kevin. That’s a fact. Understand?”

            Kevin doesn’t answer; he steps toward the door. “Hey,” his dad calls. “You think I don’t know how important this is, this group? You think I don’t know what a good writer you are?” He tosses the rag on the workbench, reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, steps toward his son. They’re small, awkward steps but he seems determined about something. He pulls a faded, frayed paper out of a secret place. “See this?” he says. “This is that composition you wrote for me for Father’s Day.” He opens it up, a single folded page, yellowing and precariously thin. The creases have worn some of the words away. “Jeez, it must have been seven years ago. You were only this high. I read this to your Uncle Pete and Uncle Conor. This was really something. It had Conor in tears.”

            Kevin remembers how his hand trembled as he gave it to his dad, how he laughed, called him Shakes for Shakespeare for weeks after. Kevin never knew he’d even read it a second time. “That thing?” Kevin laughs.

The composition had been assigned to the whole sixth grade class: Why I’m So Proud of My Dad. He remembers everyone leaning over their papers, gripping their pencils. His paper sat there blank, barking at him like a hungry dog. The window near his desk was open and he could hear a lawn mower in the distance. Birds called to each other, dancing in and out of trees, oblivious to what might be wrong in the world.

            Kevin knew what he would write. He’d stay with the safe stuff, talk about how his father worked hard and mowed the lawn and fixed the car. He’d make everything sound normal. They’d never know the difference. But every word he wrote shut out another one screaming to be heard. Each sentence separated him a little more from what he really felt, until his shame became something outside of himself, something he didn’t have to admit. He was splitting—half lies, half real—and he knew that if he didn’t do something to stop it, the lies would take over. That night he wrote his first story about what it was really like to be his father’s son. His dad never saw that story. No one has. When Father’s Day came, Kevin gave him the one he’d been assigned.

            Kevin and his father don’t say much for a minute, and then, with great care, his dad puts the paper back into its place in the wallet.

“Don’t be worried,” he says. “Understand?”

            “Okay,” Kevin says, but he is.

 

 

Liz is tapping her pencil to the rhythm of whatever it is dancing in her head, and Kevin is sure it has nothing to do with the Stamp Act. He knows she can’t manage to focus long in Mr. Gleason’s class. She winds up passing Kevin notes and building tiny paper chairs from the pages of her rainbow-colored assignment pad.

            This time Kevin is the first to send mail. He wants to let her know all systems are go for the group to meet at his house tonight. She sends the note back with her typically brief commentary on any news good, bad, or neutral. OK, the note reads, followed by a few lines from “A Considerable Speck,” the Robert Frost poem about a mite that lands on his writing paper.

            It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,

            Yet must have had a set of them complete

            To express how much it didn’t want to die.

            He knows Liz is inviting him to take off with it, add some lines of his own. So he does. As always, she goes on this way for a long while, building on whatever he gives her. In any other communication with Kevin, she’s brief and guarded, just as she is in her stories, just as she is in real life. She doesn’t smile all that much, and when he first met her, her frowns made him feel as if she was about to scold him. He figured that being distant was her way of discouraging him from getting any ideas, so he avoided her. 

            He learned soon enough that no one is allowed to get too close to Liz. Hers is not the welcome ear for tales of how you spent your weekend or complaints about school or parents. Kevin figures her impatience comes from having wealthy parents whose lives are free of anything gloomier than a drop in the Dow. She lives in a huge house and has a gardener and a housekeeper. She already has her own car. Her parents, the little Kevin has seen of them, are among the beautiful people—tanned skin, shiny hair, clothes that show off their long limbs and gym-nurtured muscles. There’s no question where Liz gets her looks, but unlike their daughter, her parents seem wooden, as if every move is practiced.

            Her smiles, when they finally came—like a late spring—made him wish he’d paid more attention from the start. He was sitting near her when a jump shot cinched the win in the county championship game, and the joy on her face made him feel like he’d found religion, like there was something to believe in after all. He passes more lines to Liz and watches her smile.

            I touched the nib to the page, a bridge to higher

            spheres, but it scooted round a capital D

            and slipped between the lines to find its own escape.

            She bends over the page, eager to respond, and passes it back.

            I watched it wander through the lines,

            impervious to where they led,

            insisting on its own direction.

 

            The bell interrupts Kevin’s turn so he scribbles to be continued and passes the note back. She smiles and says, “For sure,” and he’s struck again by how her smile makes him feel.

            “Hey,” he says, “should I call you?”

            She gives him a puzzled look.

            “With directions,” he says.

            “Oh, it’s okay. You’re on Hanson, right? It’ll make a good walk.”

            “Okay,” he says, disappointed at losing an excuse to call her. “See you at seven.”

            “See ya,” she says. Kevin watches the confident way she walks, like someone who doesn’t have to guess at things. For a few minutes he’s frozen in place, then he hurries after her. He knows where her car is parked. When he catches up, she’s tossing her jacket into the back seat.

            “Hey,” he calls, “have you started your paper yet?”

            “Paper?”

            “For Gleason.”

            She grunts, clearly not pleased to be reminded.

            “What’s your topic?” he says.

            “Labor unions.” She makes the words sound like tasteless porridge.

            “Be grateful. Mine’s antitrust law.” She opens the driver-side door and gets in. “Hey listen,” he says, tapping on the passenger-side window. She lowers it and leans toward him a bit. “I’m heading for the library,” he says. “Why don’t you come with me?”

            “I think I’ll pass. I’m in no hurry to get into it. But thanks.”

            He can tell she wants him to stop there, but he can’t. “Well, how about we get a soda? Maybe at Sunshine’s?” he says, leaning into the passenger side. She retreats without moving a muscle, her face a blank. “Okay, then,” he says. “A movie Saturday?”

            “Kevin—”

            He raises a hand, as if she’s made her point. “All right then. All right. We’ll spend the day in New York. Top of the line.”

            “You don’t—”

            “Okay, okay, you win. We’ll go away for the weekend. Aruba is beautiful right now.” That makes her smile finally, and he doesn’t fight its effect on him, like a lighthouse, something to head toward. “Or maybe Aruba’s getting old already. Paris is fine with me. We’d just have to be back in time for the group on Tuesday.”

            She laughs and puts a finger to her lips to quiet him.

            “Okay, how about Prague then?” he says.

            “Listen. I like you a lot. I like talking to you and I like hearing your stories.” She has trouble saying the rest, turns her face away. “I’m just no good at that stuff.”

            He doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t want to leave it like this. “Hey, no big deal. I like hanging out with you. That’s all.”

            “I like you too.” She looks directly at him now, as if trying to explain something to a small child. “It wouldn’t work with me.”

            He opens the door and gets inside. “We could try it and see,” he says.

            She sighs, maybe losing patience. “Kevin, let’s not spoil things, okay?”

            “Are you back with Ron?” It’s a bold question, but he decides he has nothing to lose, since he’s already made a complete fool of himself.

            “I’m not back with anybody,” she says, and starts the car. “Let’s leave this alone, okay?”

            “Right,” Kevin mutters. He lets himself out, convinced that if he were someone else, someone from a normal family, someone who’d learned how to behave around people, it wouldn’t have to turn out this way.

            Bill has plopped himself on the couch, his feet on the ottoman; Jack is in the recliner. Mr. Donnegan still isn’t home. Stomach knotted, head aching, Kevin can’t focus on what anyone is saying. His mother has put some pretzels out, with cheeses and slices of apple, as if she can’t decide if the group is a fraternity or a bridge club. She stands at the window in the dining room, which adjoins the living room, hawking the street through slats in the blinds. Kevin knows what she’s thinking: If Dad’s drunk, she’ll get to him first, before he enters the house.

            The rest of the group arrive and settle in, and Melanie reads a poem. Kevin doesn’t hear a word of it. Jack talks to her about it; so do Bill and Carol, but Kevin has nothing to offer.

“You thought it was awful, didn’t you?” Melanie says

            “What?” Kevin says, lost.

            “You hated it.”

            “No. No. It was fine.”

            “People don’t have to comment if they don’t want to,” Jack says. Tires screech to a stop out front and Kevin goes numb. His mother hurries out to the driveway.

            “Carol has something to read,” Liz says.

            Kevin feels sick, dizzy. The car door slams and he can hear his mother talking outside, warning his father to behave. That will set him off. Kevin’s sure of that much.

            “The rain slashed against the loose shutters,” Carol begins. “The boys held their breath.”

            Kevin pretends to listen, but his father’s voice gets loud outside. Liz bites her bottom lip, looks as if someone has told her something she doesn’t want to know.

            “They had only one candle left and no matches . . .” Carol’s words trail off as the heavy sound of a struggle breaks against the front door, and his father yells even louder.

            “I told that fucker to knock it off. I warned him.”

            “Liam, you mustn’t,” his mother pleads, her voice small. Then the door opens. Everyone in the room sits frozen in place, staring down at their laps, obviously afraid to look at one another, afraid to acknowledge what’s happening.

            “Get off me, just get off my back!” The shouting fills the house, making the air in the room brittle, unbreatheable. Mrs. Donnegan coaxes her husband to go downstairs. There’s a thud, maybe someone falling against a wall. Dishes in the dining room breakfront tinkle. Melanie takes in a breath that sounds more like a sob.

            “Listen, eh, I’m sorry,” Kevin finally says.

            Nobody answers or looks at him. Then something crashes downstairs and Melanie jumps up, with a frightened cry. More shouts rise from below.

            “We better go, Kevin,” Liz says. She touches his arm and the contact burns, spreads hot and humiliating through his chest, and he recoils from her. By the time everyone puts jackets on and gets outside, the place sounds like a Three Stooges movie.

            Kevin sits down at the foot of the walkway, clutching his notebook, watching each of them walk away. They move quickly, as if wanting to leave the house as far behind as possible. He doesn’t blame them. Liz is the only one left. She stands in front of him, silent. After a moment, she places her notebook on the ground beside him and sits down on it. She pulls her knees up under her chin.

            “Well, that’s the end of that,” Kevin says.

            “End of what?”

            “The group. For me at least.”

            “Only if that’s what you want.” He doesn’t answer. “It isn’t what I want,” she says.

The kindness cools him, like a clean breeze passing through a stifling night. He tries to thank her but chokes on the words.

            “Want to talk?” she says.

            He stares straight ahead.

            “You can’t let it get to you.”

            “Forget it. This is nothing new for me.” He sounds angry at her, but he isn’t.

            “For me either,” she says.

She’s looking down at her sneakers, not at him, as if the words slipped out and it’s too late to get them back.

“Things get like this at your house?” he says. He can’t keep from sounding amazed.

            “For as long as I can remember.”

            He’s confused. Liz is one of the perfect people. Smart. Pretty. Fancy house. Lots of friends. “You could have fooled me,” he says.

            “Yeah, I guess I could, but where’s that getting us?”

            They watch the passing cars light the darkness, listen to his parents’ voices rise and crash in waves, purposeless exchanges. He doesn’t believe Liz can know how this feels, how ashamed and angry he is, how empty. It’s just not possible. “Your dad comes home in this kind of shape?”

            “No, he arrives mostly in one piece. He finishes his martinis at home.”

            “Does he get violent?”

            “No. Mom does. She can’t hold it as well as he can.”

            “Her too?”

            Liz nods, pulls her hair away from her face.

            He wants to say something, but he’s not sure what, except that he’s grateful somehow, not just because she trusted him enough to tell him, but because someone like her, someone so well-liked, so self-contained, might have the same ugly secret. But he can’t let it in. It doesn’t make sense. She can’t be rotting inside the way he is. The shame rises again from his stomach like bile.

            She touches his arm lightly, hardly making contact, but he can’t look at her. He’s afraid he’ll break down. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he says finally.

            She gets up to go, straightens the legs of her jeans. He hands her her notebook. “If you want to talk, come find me,” she says.

            He watches her walk away, like the others did, her notebook clasped tightly against her chest. He has to let her go because he can’t get up. The shame weighs him down. His parents are still shouting, and Mr. McCorry, the neighbor across the street, closes his window. Kevin stands to see Liz better and watches for a time, his notebook getting heavier and heavier in his hand, a weight of secrets, years of longing, a load so dense he sees that he can’t carry it alone much longer.

            His parents’ voices begin to fade, until they’re lost in the distance. The yellow tulips the neighbors planted along the sidewalk glow in the moonlight as if they hold candles inside. Liz’s head is bowed in a kind of sadness, or loss maybe, and he’s nearly reached her side before he realizes he’s been running, before he knows that he’s already decided which story he’ll read to her.

 

Color photo of the author, Maryann.

Mary Ann McGuigan’s fiction appears in the Massachusetts Review and many other journals. Her collection PIECES includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank her YA novels among the best books for teens. WHERE YOU BELONG was a finalist for the National Book Award. THAT VERY PLACE, her second story collection, will be published in 2025.

Image description: A portrait photo of the author smiling with her arms folded in a medium closeup.


This short story first appeared here, at Prose Online.

Mary Ann McGuigan

Mary Ann McGuigan’s fiction appears in the Massachusetts Review and many other journals. Her collection PIECES includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank her YA novels among the best books for teens. WHERE YOU BELONG was a finalist for the National Book Award. THAT VERY PLACE, her second story collection, will be published in 2025.

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