Xhenet Aliu - Brass

“Got out of what?”

“The insurance settlement, the whatever. Even people who aren’t worth nothing alive are worth something dead.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Your father, Elsie. I thought you knew that.” She handed the check back to me, but it missed my fingers and fluttered slowly to the floor. “At least it didn’t bounce, right?” she said when it landed.

I’d always believed Dad would try to come back someday. I’d planned the whole thing out. I would be wearing those genuine Levi’s when he knocked on our door. Or sometimes I’d be wearing a corduroy skirt instead, short and black though, not preppy and stupid. Mamie was at work; it was just Greta and me, sitting at the kitchen table we never sat at in real life, me doing the homework I didn’t do in real life. We wouldn’t let him in. We wouldn’t cry or anything, we wouldn’t yell, we’d just tell him from behind the screen door that it was too late. It’s too late, we’d say, we’re all grown up. The work is all done, and you don’t get to come in now and reap the harvest.

“I didn’t know he died. How was I supposed to know?” I asked, and at first I didn’t hear her because her back was turned and the water was on full stream, and she was always saying that she didn’t know why we bothered to talk to her when she was washing dishes, she couldn’t ever hear anything over the faucet.

But then she shrugged. “What’s the difference anyway? That’s what I thought. I thought what’s the difference if he’s alive or dead?”

I didn’t know. I think that’s why I was crying, because there was a correct answer but I just couldn’t tap into it, like when I tried to learn the past perfect tense in French class.

There had been only a couple of cereal bowls and coffee mugs in the sink to begin with, but the water kept running, Mamie kept her hands underneath the stream, and I wondered if she was like me, if her hands got cold when she was upset about something. “The bastard couldn’t handle it here. He did jack shit, and he still couldn’t handle it. Don’t miss him, okay? Don’t mourn him just because you think you’re supposed to. He was already gone, Elsie. Nothing has changed.”

“Yes it has,” I said. “Now I’ll never be able to tell him to fuck off.”

Mamie finally shut the water off. She turned back to me and pressed her wet palms against my cheeks, but hers were wet, too, and not from dishwater. “Oh, but there will be so many other men that you can tell to fuck off, baby, I promise you.”

I didn’t want Bashkim to fuck off. I wanted the opposite of that, for him to fuck on, or whatever you’d call it. It was impossible to predict from night to night which version of him I’d be getting: the one who was going to take me away from the tedious, sweaty, forevermore kind of life lived in ugly sensible work sneakers, or the one who was condemning me to live it forever. Some nights he was a month away from cashing in, because fortunately he had diversed, because he wasn’t an idiot— I am not an idiot, he’d say, to me or to Gjonni or whoever he thought was secretly accusing him of being one—so the money he lost in one account was being made up for in another. On those nights, he was already in contact with a divorce lawyer back in Tirana, and on those nights he would drive me to his place on his break so we could lie side by side on his air mattress, not even screwing, just lying there until his stopwatch beeped ten minutes later and we had to head back to the Ross. On those nights, I would go home with a plan to tell Mamie that I was done paying her rent to keep living under her roof, that I had a new home with a guy named Bashkim, and that she’d better just deal with the fact that he wasn’t Lithuanian, and that we had made a baby together and the baby would be a mutt, which everyone knows are stronger, smarter, healthier breeds. I never really said those things to her, though, because she was always passed out on the sofa by the time I got home, and because eventually I’d remember that I wasn’t going to have this baby, especially since I didn’t even have the guts to tell him about it.

On the other nights, Bashkim was so far away from me that he might as well have been back in Tirana. Those were the nights when I realized I was never going to tell him, because I didn’t want him to have to pay for me to get rid of the thing. I was afraid he’d get so bent out of shape about it that we’d never have one of the good nights again.

And then there was Greta, who kept asking, “Do you have an appointment yet?”

“In two weeks or so,” I’d say.

“You said that two weeks ago. You’re going to be ready to pop in two weeks.”

“I’m telling him tomorrow, okay? Lay off already.”

But once again, last night’s tomorrow was already the past. Once again, I’d shown up too late for Bashkim to sneak out to the Fiero before my shift, and once again, he didn’t get mad, or corner me in dry storage because he couldn’t live without me, or at least without it, for one more night.

“Slowpoke,” he finally said one night while I waited for him to scrape the blackened cinder off a burnt grilled cheese. “I rang that bell two minutes ago.”

“Who do you think I am, Pavlov’s dog?” I said.

“You’re getting fat,” he said.

“You’re getting bald,” I said. “We’re even.”

“You look better. You look better with boobies,” he said.

I almost smiled before I remembered there was nothing to smile about.

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “When you’re finished tonight. You’re running away on me all the time now.”

“I’m not running away,” I said, right before I ran out of the kitchen and into the bathroom to purge the latest round of sick.

After my shift I went outside, hoping for a few minutes alone to air out my pits and figure out what the hell I was supposed to tell him. What new could I come up with about the oldest story in the book? Whatever, I got knocked up, I’d say, it was bound to happen at some point when you buy your rubbers from the clearance aisle at Joey’z Shopping Spree. But Bashkim was already outside waiting for me, leaning with one arm against the wall of the Ross. Dust and asbestos stuck to his skin when he pulled his weight away, like confectioners’ sugar over the pink dough of his forearm. I wanted to gum it, even if it would infect me with something worse than the bug he’d already made me come down with.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I answered.

“You, ah. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said. I pressed my palm hard against my stomach to shut it up.

“You are acting funny lately. Tired. Sick.” He pulled me toward him and kissed me on the mouth, but I must’ve forgotten how to do it, because I couldn’t breathe while his lips were on mine, and I had to come up for air.

“See? Like that. Pulling away from me,” he said.

“I’m not,” I said. “You’re the one who’s been pulling away.”

“Look at me. Is this called pulling away?”

“I mean, not tonight you’re not.”

“I’m right here,” he said.

“Well, I’m here, too,” I said. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Busy doing what?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Not busy, really. Distracted. Thinking about other stuff.”

He shook his head. “You are sick. You have been a long time sick.”

“Maybe it’s cancer,” I said.

He didn’t laugh. “It’s not cancer. Don’t be dumb, Elsie.”

“It was a joke,” I said.

“For you everything is a joke.”

“Take my wife. Please.”

I knew Bashkim didn’t get the punch line but he didn’t bother asking me to explain. Nobody wants to admit they’re not in on the joke, right? We just stared at each other for a minute, waiting to see who would draw first.