Simultaneous

            by Laura Cornwall

 

“I feel like we should be holding half-smoked cigarettes or something.”

            We both sat on the cold cement, leaning against the back wall of the science building. Nate was contemplating his apple core. I was picking poppy seeds off my bagel.

            I turned to Nate. “Because we’re the losers who aren’t in the cafeteria?”

            “Except that in movies, it’s always the cool kids who are sitting behind some building. And they’re always smoking.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, so sometimes it’s the cool kids.”

            “And sometimes it’s the total losers, and sometimes it’s the goths, or the stoners, or–”

            “– or us. We’ll be all of them, all at once, only better.”

            “Yes, I can see it now! You-” I motioned at him with my bagel, poppy seeds hitting him in the face, “you’ll dress in flannel and carry a skateboard around. And I,” I sat up straight and stared meaningfully into the distance, “I’ll wear black fishnets under short black skirts, and you can paint my nails with Sharpie!”

            I leaned back against the wall and started pulling off little bits of my bagel. “Besides, smoking will hurt your voice.”

            “A lot of singers sound better with raspy voices.”

            “But you, darling,” I patted his knee, “are not one of them.”

 

•     •     •

 

            As I walked home, ignoring the looks the old ladies gave me because of the music they could hear through my headphones, I went through my mental homework list. Read a chapter in my US History book. That’d be a no. Do calculus assignment #32. No need. Finish the German worksheet. Or not. Write an essay on The Scarlet Letter. I’m thinking not. Yet another homework-free afternoon. How unexpected.

            I didn’t realize I was home until I tripped over a garden hose. I looked up. The rosebush was completely flooded and water was running down the sidewalk. My mother loves the idea of gardening, but actually doesn’t have the patience for it, nor the common sense to keep the hose out of the middle of the sidewalk.

I turned the water off, grabbed the mail, and walked inside.  Amid the bills and catalogs was another envelope from another college, this time in Florida, telling me to consider furthering my education. I tossed it in the trash.

            “Mom, you forgot to the turn the hose off again!”

            There was no answer. What a surprise. Probably already out at some dank bar.

            Entering my room was like walking into the bottom of the ocean, but I pulled back the purple curtains and flooded the room with light as soon as I walked in. I dropped my bag by the door, tossed my CD player onto my bed, and stared at the easel in the far corner. The night before, the colors had seemed almost decent; now they were just blotchy, the work of a true amateur.

            I picked up my brush and painted over the whole thing in white, then began to fill my palette with new colors.

 

•     •     •

 

            I was swinging in half circles on my stool, staring at the other people in the tiny diner and only half-listening to Nate. The customers were few and far between, and I already knew most of them. They came in every morning, just like us. They used to stare at me and Nate all the time, us rebels with piercing that weren’t through our earlobes, but they must have gotten used to it. Or at least, they’d shifted from staring to pointedly not staring.

            “Hmm?” I asked. As I was signaling Flo (yes, her name was Flo) to get me some tea, Nate had said something to me.

“I’m really ready to leave this town,” he repeated, pouring a packet of sugar into his coffee cup.

            I kept spinning. “More than usual?”

            “Jason passed me in his car this morning with a couple of friends.”

            I stopped, my knees almost crashing into his. “Same old thing?”

            “No, this time I’m not a cocksucker, I’m a fag.” He stared down at his hands, and I watched him, biting my lip.

            After a moment I asked, “Do you want me to make out with you in front of them?”

            He looked up with a weak grin, his face a little pink. “Thanks, but I don’t think that’ll convince anyone.”

            “Very true. Seriously though, how can they think we’re both gay and think that we’re dating?” Flo gave me a small smile as she handed me my tea. She was used to our conversations by now.

            “No idea. And besides, us dating is bizarre all on its own.” He took a big sip of his coffee, then nearly choked when it burned his tongue.

            “Even truer.” I pushed the milk his way. “But hey, he won’t be around forever.”

            “Yeah, only two more months of this. That’s nothing at all.” He grinned sarcastically at me, and then took a sip of his now drinkable coffee. “But I guess compared to the last two years, that’s not that bad. All you seniors,” he raised his eyebrows at me,  “will graduate, and we’ll be done with him.”

            “Right.” I stirred my tea, no longer wanting to drink any of it. “Just two more months.”

            We sat in silence for a minute. Nate drank his coffee and I drizzled an endless trail of honey into my tea. I was watching the honey make shapes as it sank when Nate said, “Damnit, we have to be at school in like ten minutes.”

            “Or not,” I said, licking honey off my fingers.

            “Seriously, Holly, let’s go.”

            I looked up at him, wiping my hands on a napkin. “Oh c’mon, it’s Tuesday. You have, what, PE, science, and choir? You can miss those.”

            “Good point.”

            We put our money on the counter, avoiding the spots covered in honey, and walked out the door and down the street, heading away from school and toward Nate’s house.

            The walk was a pleasant one. He lives in the slightly richer part of town, where the sidewalk has fewer cracks for me to avoid, the houses have two stories with paint that isn’t five different shades of brown, the lawns are green and carefully mown, and the flowers are neatly flourishing.

            For some reason, we didn’t speak at all as we walked. I came close to opening my mouth and saying something, anything to break the silence, but nothing came to mind so I left my mouth tightly closed. Nate’s strides were much longer than mine, even more so than usual, so I focused instead on finding some semblance of rhythm between our two walks, still avoiding what few cracks remained in the cement. 

            When we got to his house we went in through the back door, still without a word. It wasn’t until we had gone upstairs to his bedroom that I broke the heavy silence.

“Nate, what’s going on? You’re not going guilty on me about school, are you?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then what? Are you still thinking about what Jason said to you?”

“No… I dunno, I was just thinking about the future, I guess.”

“The future?”

“Yeah, but never mind about that. I wrote a new song and I want you to give it a listen.” He picked up his guitar from the corner of the room and went over to the desk chair, facing me as I sat down on his old oriental rug, the patterns almost completely faded and rubbed away.

He tested a few chords then dove in, closing his eyes as he started to sing. His voice was stronger than I’d remembered, filling the room. His melodic, breathy tone was somehow both gentle and very far from it. I lay back, staring at the plain white ceiling, only half listening to the words. I heard “signs,” “lights,” “missing,” “rising,” the vowels and consonants sliding over each other. I tried to focus in on the lyrics, knowing he’d ask me my opinions, but I just couldn’t get over his voice. Where had this intensity come from?

I looked over at him and suddenly he opened his eyes. They locked onto mine and we held for a moment as he continued to play, then I closed my eyes and turned my head away. His song ended and we sat in silence for another moment. Where had this silence come from?

“So, what do you think?”

“Nate, when… when did you write this?”

“I started last week, I think. It just kind of came to me.”

“I think it’s the best thing you’ve written.”

He blushed slightly. “Really?”

“Yeah. And see, you don’t need a smoker voice. It’d ruin this sound you’ve got going.”

He smiled and started plucking at the guitar strings again. I recognized some of our favorite songs, as well as some of the other things he’d written. I climbed onto his bed and sat cross-legged, looking around the room I knew so well. A Kandinski calendar, a couple band posters. A desk covered with papers, most with lyric ideas and miscellaneous thoughts crammed into the margins in his hurriedly tiny print, sometimes spilling over into the page’s original text. The bed I was sitting on, pushed against the wall, clothes and god knows what else shoved underneath. Books scattered on the floor near the head of the bed, a dresser at its foot. He always attempted to create order on top of that dresser, the arrangement changing almost daily. Today, books and CDs leaned in haphazard piles against the stereo, and a book I hadn’t seen before lay in front of all of it.

I leaned over and picked it up. A photo album.

“Nate, what’s this?”

He stopped playing and looked over at me, his face a little more closed than it had been before. “Oh, I just had a lot of old pictures around, so I put them in an album. Trying to clean things up a little, y’know. There are some good ones in there.” He motioned for me to open it as he set the guitar aside and sat down next to me on the bed.

I flipped through the pages. There were some artistic shots: splashes of color and an abundance of shadow. There were many pictures of me, and many of the two of us, from back when my brother, Sam, would hang out with us and bring his camera. The sleeves of the album only held photos on one side, so as I looked through it I could see his writing in black marker on the backs: even on these photos there were those obsessive notes of his. Not the normal reminders that most people scribble on random bits of paper: eggs, milk, oranges; return alarm clock to store; dentist appt at 3. No, his notes had lyrics from songs he liked (I’m the tune of a lesser band / sea legs on dry land), his own words (too much love not enough ache), quotes (Language is the house of Being, in its home man dwells), and anything else that struck him. And then, if that weren’t enough, everything was labeled. Everything. Holly reading. Playground slide at sunset. Me and Holly on Halloween.

One picture jumped out at me. Nate and I are lying in the grass, staring up at the sky. I’m holding a daisy chain that’s actually made with weeds that he and I found, and Nate’s still absently plucking blades of grass from the ground by his hip. I was sure that Sam had taken the picture, and judging by the length of my hair (ridiculously short), it was in my sophomore year, right before he’d left.

Before I could say anything, Nate pointed to it, his arm crossing over mine. “That’s one of my favorites.”

“Mine too.”

“This is the first time you’ve seen it.”

“Still.” I turned the page, then leaned into his shoulder as I looked at the back of the photograph. I expected to see words pushed into every corner, but there were no words in any corner. There was only one word, dead center, tiny but surprisingly neat. Summersong. Of course it said that; we’d listened to that song constantly the summer before last. We’d probably listened to it that day then laid down in the grass, discussing the brilliance of stories within songs. 

“Could I have this one?”

            “Sure.” He pulled it out of the sleeve and handed it to me. My eyes caught his again and I smiled before leaning over the edge of the bed to stick the photo in the sketchbook in my bag.

 

•     •     •

 

It was dark by the time I got home. After spending so much time with Nate, it got difficult to remember all our conversations. But that night, it was hard not to wish that I could. I was running through the day in mind, trying to place words with images as I absently unlocked the front door and walked inside.

“Holly?” My mother’s voice rang through the house as she heard the door open. I sighed. My time for recollection was over.

“What?” As I walked in, I saw her sitting at the table nursing a very full glass of red wine. Her wrinkled light blue suit jacket was hanging on the back of her chair, and a purple silk scarf was thrown on the table, perilously close to slipping to the floor. I pushed it firmly back towards the papers at the center of the table and sat down.

She looked up at me. Her mascara was smeared. “Holly, your brother called.”

“How’s he doing?” I really wanted to fix her mascara. I didn’t get why she had to dress herself up just to answer phones all day. The same reason we had to have roses even though she never tended to them, I thought. She’s trying to turn us into better people. Trying to seem like a better person.

“He said he couldn’t wait to see you.” She took a sip of wine. I watched her carefully, biting the inside of my lip.

When I didn’t respond, she dropped her calm demeanor completely, demanding, “Holly, when did you plan on telling me?” If her glass hadn’t been so fragile I’m sure she would have slammed it down.

“Later. I’d planned on telling you later, sometime when I knew you’d listen, and wouldn’t flip about. But I guess Sam fu-”

“-don’t you dare use that word.”

“I guess he beat me to it. Thanks, Sam, for making this so easy for me,” I said, looking purposefully out the window behind her.

“Holly, you will not leave the way Sam did.”

“Why not? He seems happy out in Portland. A hell of a lot–“

“–Holly!”

            “–happier than he ever was here.” I searched her eyes for something other than her response to my one and a half swears. I couldn’t get through.

            “He left! Just packed up and left, like nothing here mattered, like his own family wasn’t even a part of his life. I’m his mother. He didn’t even finish high school! I don’t understand what was so awful that he had to do that!”

            “What’s so awful? God, where have you been living? And I know you aren’t happy with the way he did it, but I’m not leaving like that!” She raised her penciled eyebrows at me. “Yes, I’m leaving, but look, I’m telling you about it, and I’m waiting until I graduate. And it’s not like I’m abandoning you, because I don’t even really count, remember? I’m the kid who can’t act the way I’m supposed to. Can’t wear dresses, can’t do ballet,” I quickly started ticking them off on my fingers, “can’t take piano lessons, can’t have normal-girl haircuts, can’t go to–”

            “–Holly, stop!” This time she did slam the glass down. It broke and wine spilled over everything. The force pulled the flimsy scarf right off the table. “Oh, great. Grab a towel.” She motioned toward a drawer as she peeled wine-soaked papers off of the table.

            I threw a towel down on top of the mess then stood still. She glared up at me.

            “When school ends, I’m leaving. Sam’s loaning me the money to buy a car, and I’m driving to Portland. Nothing can change that.”

            She straightened up, her body tight with forced composure. “And what exactly do you plan on doing in Portland?”

            I watched her warily. “I don’t totally know yet. I’d really like to go to this art school that’s near there, but I’ll just have to see when I get there.”

            “You can’t just–”

            “– it’s my life. It’s happening no matter what you think or want.” I walked out of the room, barely hearing her as she calmly asked, “What’ll happen to Nate?”

 

•     •     •

 

            I stared at my canvas. Ever since I’d painted over it, the whiteness had taunted me. I picked up my sketchbook and flipped through it, searching for anything that I could use to start over.

            The photograph from earlier fell to the floor. I picked it up and held it in front of the canvas, staring at the two together. Something clicked, and before I could have second thoughts I glued the picture firmly to the center of the canvas and started mixing paints.

 

•     •     •

 

             “What are you doing?” Nate held a hand in front of his face in a half-hearted attempt to hide from my camera. I snapped a picture.

            “I’m working on a piece.” I pulled the Polaroid from the camera and set it aside to develop next to the salt and pepper shakers. The diner booth’s blue vinyl was going to look perfect with Nate’s pale skin, especially with the dark sky outside the window above him.

            “You paint.”

            “Paint is still involved.” I twisted sideways and took a picture of Flo handing a regular his evening cup of coffee. She looked up and smiled at me as I turned back to face the table. I put that piece of film next to the first.

            “So can I see this ‘piece’,” he made air quotes, “as you’re calling it?”

            “Not right now. I mean, it’s nothing I’m hiding, and I know I owe it to you, since you play all your new songs for me. It’s just that my dear mother is freaking out at me. And if she sees you come over and hang out in my room with me…”

            “She’ll get ideas.” He blushed. “Remind me why she’s still so uptight?”

            “She’s lived here too long. It poisoned her. And since I’m not her perfect little girl, that automatically means that if, god forbid, there’s a boy in my room, we must be doing drugs and fucking.”

            He sighed. “After all this time… but I still think maybe you’re being a little hard on her. I dunno.” He looked down at his hands. I snapped a picture. As I set it next to the other ones, their images starting to emerge, he looked back up.

            “Describe it?”

            “Describe what?

            “The piece.”    

“There’s just… old photographs, kind of like how you put that album together. They’re overlapping with some abstract stuff I painted. And I put random bits of paper from the past couple of years in with the paint, so they got all stained and wrinkled. And now I want to do a Polaroid layer. What better way to use the film that I’ve been saving for so long?”

            “God, I wish I could see it. You better not forget me and spend all your time with Eurotrash when you’re famous.” He turned the pictures in the corner towards him, watching his face, or parts of it, swim out of the murky film.

            “Famous? Please. And you’re the musician who’s probably going to end up going on major tours that take you to Stockholm or Tokyo or something. You’d better remember me.”

            “I promise if you do.”

            “Deal.” I stuck my hand out across the table and he grasped it.

            “Alright then. Deal.”

            We held our hands suspended in mid-shake for a long moment.

            “Moon’s out,” Nate said, letting go and running his fingers through his hair. “Let’s head over to the park.”

            “Absolutely.” Every Friday night was the same. We’d had our diner food, now it was time to head over to location number two of the evening

 

•     •     •

 

            We climbed over the low fence into our park, the elementary school playground. For the few children in such a small town, it was surprisingly nice. The large field with the tree in the corner looked blue under the moonlight. The plastic play structure that had so recently replaced the well-worn wooden one was full of ladders shorter than us and slides skinnier than we were. The swings on the far side, near the tree, were exactly the same.

            We’d never known why the swings were so far away from the rest of the playground, but it suited us just fine. We walked over and sat down, the chains creaking as the rubber seats sank beneath us. A lot of Fridays we just lay in the grass, but every few weeks we’d be drawn to the swings. Whenever we were, we sat in the same places; I took the swing closest to the tree, Nate took the one in the middle.

            We swung in silence for a while, completely synchronized. Though I still had trouble matching my stride with his, we always found the perfect balance when we were swinging. Back and forth, the chains squeaking rhythmically.

            After a while, I let my legs drop and my momentum slowed. By the time my swing was making only the tiniest motions, Nate had slowed down as well.

            I stared straight ahead, not looking at him. “Nate… oh god, this is such a cliché… I have something I have to tell you.”

            He didn’t move, but he half-whispered, “I think I have something to tell you, too.”

            We both took a deep breath, and said at the same moment:

            “I’m leaving.” “I love you.”

            We looked up, and our eyes caught.

Then held.

            And held.