Sara Jaffe - Dryland

After, we had to stand around outside while they all smoked cloves. Erika smoked one. For some reason unknown to me there was a long line for the next showing edging the side of the building. Ben was in the line, partway down the block. He was with a couple other guys who looked something like him and something like the guys I was with. They had jean jackets — one of them had the sheepskin-lined kind that looked so warm — and their hair was sticking up as if it were supposed to stick up that way. Ben was laughing and looking like he was having a really great time. That morning he had laughed like that, too loud, as if there was someone else in the room who was in on the joke. Anyone would call it paranoid, but it was possible that he and those guys were laughing about the same thing that Ben had been laughing about earlier, cloaking me out with their laughter again. I went to the other side of the huddle, upwind of the clove smoke, so he wouldn’t see me.

PT and Larissa and their friends were all going to hang out at striped shirt’s house. Erika wanted to go. She whispered to me, Wasn’t I right? Aaron is completely your type.

He had a cute face and I did really like that shirt, and maybe if I hadn’t suddenly felt so tired, or tired of hanging out with these people who, clearly, were including us just to be nice, I might have come. I said, You should go if you want.

SUNDAY WAS UNUSUALLYclear and cold. It was unusual for it to be clear when it was cold out. When I woke up I had gone to look out the window, though I knew Ben only came on Saturdays. It looked like he was done with whatever he’d been doing. It was possible that he wouldn’t be coming back. Something about seeing him last night, or how far or close I’d felt from him at the kitchen table yesterday, made me nervous to show up at the Alderwood without calling. The paper with his number was in my desk drawer.

Ben said, Hey, as if he were expecting someone.

I said, No, sorry. It’s Julie.

He said, Hey Julie. How’d you like the animation?

I said, You saw me?

He said, I’ll admit, I was a bit surprised that that was your crowd. Clove cigarettes! My goodness.

I said, They’re not my crowd. I said, I wasn’t smoking.

He said, Clearly I’m not one to talk.

Talking on the phone with Ben was easier than talking to him in the kitchen. If I hadn’t had the feeling that we needed to have a conversation that called for more privacy than the extension in my room would allow, I might have tried to have it there. Ben said, It looks like a nice one out there. He suggested we go for a walk in Forest Park. He said he’d pick me up at the bottom of the hill in an hour. Neither of us had to say that he shouldn’t pick me up at the house. As I walked down the hill the colors — the sky, the leaves, the shrubs — were crisp from the rain, their one chance all winter to show something off. I couldn’t give a reason for how good I felt.

Ben drove to an entrance to the park I’d never gone in before, up off Skyline. There was a dirt pull-off where he parked the car, and a steepish path descending. He said, You wore good shoes, right? It’ll be a little muddy. There were leaves and trees all above us that filtered the sun and cut it in shadows like paper cutouts. We walked awhile on wet leaves without saying anything. It didn’t feel like we had to.

I said, You can smoke if you want to.

He said, Ha. I am an addict, but I’m not going to smoke in a forest. He said, So if those kids weren’t your crew, who were they?

It was easy to talk to Ben in the forest. I said, My best friend has a crush on one of them.

Ben said, Which one? The cute one?

I said, The one with glasses.

Ben said, The cute one. Water dripped from the leaves above us. Ben was a few steps ahead of me and he stopped and blew air out from his mouth. He turned around. He said, Julie, I don’t know if this matters, but I’m just going to tell you. Not because I think you have the wrong idea, but just to clear things up. We’re friends, right?

I said, Right.

He said, And you probably know already, anyway.

I said, Okay.

He said, Okay you know?

This was cagey, ruthless Ben, the one who would laugh his head off with someone else who was in on the joke. I’d meant it when I agreed that we were friends. Now he was veering. I said, Stop making me feel like an idiot.

I braced myself for the laugh again. We were standing even with each other. He looked at me and gave a little smile, a real one, and said, I’m sorry. He said, It’s weird to talk about at this point, but you’re just a kid. He had his hands in his pockets. He said, You know I’m gay, right?

It was warm enough out that I was wearing a sweater and no coat. I found a pilled ball of wool on my sweater to pull at. I said, Okay. Once I started picking at my sweater, it was hard to stop. I thought of the guy with the lined jean jacket. I said, Was one of those guys you were with your boyfriend?

He said, From the movie? No, those are my pals. They’re sweet.

I said, Are they gay? He said they were. We walked a little more. The air in Forest Park was extra sweet. The smell came from the trees, and it was fresh and clear, a smell that opened up the air. I said, Was my brother your boyfriend?

Ben said, No. Not really. We fooled around a little in high school, but no.

I said, So he’s gay.

It was weird that we were still walking. This seemed like the kind of conversation we should be having sitting still, at a long wood table, or on a log overlooking the river. It also seemed like a conversation we could only have if we were walking.

Ben said, I kind of hate that I’m the one to tell you this. No I don’t. Sure, yes. He is.

I said, He had a girlfriend in high school.

Ben said, So did we all.

I said, Why weren’t you and he — boyfriends?

Ben said, Oh I don’t know. Chemistry? He was into older guys.

I wanted to ask something else but I didn’t want Ben to think I thought all gay people had AIDS. There were so many layers of wet leaves and pine needles under my feet. It was possible that half the forest had sunk below me. Rotted leaves so soft and we weren’t sinking. I said, Older guys like his coach?

We had come to a log. We didn’t sit on it, Ben just rested his foot on it. I put my foot up, too. Ben said, Ech. Yeah, like him. What a sleaze.

I had only the faintest memory of the compact man with very blond hair and a moustache. He had taken my brother with him to San Diego, because he was my brother’s coach and he was moving there, and it made sense that my brother went with him to continue his training, but, if I can explain it, the feeling had always been there that the trip was more than an airplane ride. I said, So the coach was his boyfriend? It felt stupid, these minuscule, simple questions. For whatever reason I trusted Ben to answer them.

He said, I guess you could say that.

The sun was making so many good patterns. I loved how it hid us as much as how it shone on us. Ben sat on the log. He picked up a twig and rubbed it on a patch of moss on a knot of the log.

I said, Stop sawing.

Ben said, You stop sawing.

THE FIRST PHOTOSin the envelope were of my dad on the business trip he’d taken to Scotland, shots of sheep and men in kilts. My dad in a kilt, a glass in his hand of what was probably scotch. We weren’t Scottish. A man with a clipboard pointing to a poster of a scotch bottle. It made sense that my dad had forgotten these photos. The oldness of the film had done something to the color, a dusty reddening in the darker corners. I flipped through faster. Me reading an Archie comic on the beanbag chair. A fallen tree branch in the yard. A long shot of a pool taken from far up in the stands, and the next was of my brother: wet hair, on a podium, gold around his neck. We had an identical photo in a frame on the mantel downstairs. My mom must have brought another camera and developed her film sooner. My brother’s coach or a hired photographer must have taken it and sent us a copy. I went through the rest of the photos. There were no more shots of the meet, just the grainy dark shots I’d taken of the rubber bands on my dad’s desk, of my sneakers, untied. For a second I thought I remembered that when Alexis had mock-posed for her portrait in Yearbook, I’d actually lifted the camera and pressed the shutter. The last photo on the roll was of my painted pinecone. A bar of light struck through the frame like a ghost.