Seonaid
“Taog!” I call out as I enter the bakery. “Taog!” I wipe my boots on the carpet by the door. I stomp the clumps of dirt and mud from their crevices.
He appears from the back of the store. He’s wiping his hands dry with a towel. He’s a very clean looking man, never a stain to be found on him. He doesn’t appear too pleased when he notices the dirt I’ve brought in on my shoes.
“Aye?” he asks, slapping the rag down on the countertop, one eyebrow raised.
“Why’d you send that basket over to my house?”
“You didn’t like it?”
“No, I did. Very much so.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I’m married.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a romantic gesture. Just my way of saying thank you for your kindness.” He shakes his head at me and begins arranging pastries in the glass display case. He’s not looking at me any longer. I bend down and peer at him through the glass. It’s not hard to see through the panes, the display case is spotlessly clean. I stare him square in the eye.
“Didn’t you think my husband might find it odd? Me receiving a gift from another man? A letter saying you can’t wait for our next meeting?”
“Not unless he’s got something to fear. You plan on leaving him?” With that question he stands. I follow his lead. The way he looks me over now makes me feel lowly. Have I gotten something on my coat? I glance down at it. I don’t see anything, but I brush it with my hands anyway.
When I feel put together, I place my hands on my hips and pout. “No, I do not! And my marriage is nothing that you should concern yourself with!”
“You brought it up, not me.”
Did I? No, I don’t think I did. Maybe I did?
He walks out from behind the counter and meanders over to the window. He polishes it up with a rag. I follow behind him. I’m still trying to think of what to say.
“I don’t think I brought that up, Taog!”
“Well did he like it?” he says, turning around with that same, strange smile from our last encounter.
“Did he like what?”
“My gift.”
“He liked the cream buns.”
He raises his eyebrows and scoffs. “I’m the best baker in all of Scotland, so I could have assumed that. Did you like them?”
“Your buns?” I ask.
He smirks.
“Stop being so childish, Taog!”
“Well, did you?”
“You’re a fine baker, OK?” I say, leaning into his face. I tell myself that I’m this close to him as a way of showing my frustration, but I can’t seem to hide my attraction to him. He grabs my cheeks and kisses me tenderly. His hands are warm, perhaps from baking. I grasp his face and kiss him back. He opens his mouth wider, and our tongues touch. What a kiss! I haven’t felt this way in a very long time, maybe not ever, it’s thrilling, it’s overwhelming, it’s— Oh no, what am I doing?! I push him away and clutch the cross pendant that hangs from my neck. I shouldn’t be doing this!
“How dare you!” I yell, wiping my lips with the sleeve of my jacket.
“You seemed to be enjoying it.”
“I was not enjoying it! Right in front of this big window nonetheless! Do you know what they’ll call me?!”
“Then leave,” he grabs a nearby broom and uses its handle to point to the door. “Need to clean up the mess you dragged in here.”
“I can’t believe you! Wait until I tell my husband about this!”
“You’re going to tell your husband that you came into my bakery and thrust yourself upon me?”
“You’re a liar!” I fold my arms. Is he a liar? Is that what happened? I can’t really remember. I was mad at him, and then… He kissed me first! That’s right! He kissed me!
“It doesn’t matter, say you didn’t like it, go on. You don’t have to come back here. This is my store, you can leave.” He walks back behind the counter as Eabah from the general store enters the bakery.
“What’ll it be today?” he asks her. I don’t greet her. I stand at the door with my mouth propped wide open. The audacity! I walk out of the bakery and slam the door closed. As I walk away, I start to smile, just a wee bit. It was kind of fun… and Lachlann doesn’t have to know. It was a harmless little kiss, nothing more than that. I think I’ll go back again tomorrow.
Peter
I’m taking a shower. I don’t like baths. The thought of wading in your own filth, it just—It makes me feel dirty. Showers make me feel clean. The dirt rinses away and falls down into the drain, gone for good. This morning I did contemplate taking a bath, however, partially because I thought I might drown myself. I decided against it. We’ve been down the road of suicide attempts before and— No, don’t go there.
Showers are where I do some of my best thinking. Well, not just me. Apparently, a lot of people have their best ideas in the shower. I heard that writers can sometimes figure out the next chapter of their books just by standing in the steaming hot water. Maybe I can figure out my next chapter, my next move? I reach for the shampoo and lather my hair. At the same time, I feel a sharp pain in my chest and nearly fall. No, this is not where I want to die. Picture this: being found dead and naked in the shower? I’ll pass. See? Good thing I decided against drowning myself this morning. How humiliating.
I get out of the shower, dry off, and get dressed. Everyone else is still sleeping. It’s Sunday morning, and I have to run the bakery. The mirror is steamy, and so I grab a small hand towel and wipe it down. I can kind of see my reflection now. I turn on the faucet and start brushing my teeth.
I’ll be waking Danny up soon. He’s proved to me that he can’t be trusted, so for the next few weeks, he’ll be working with me at the bakery every weekend. Two birds with one stone. He’s punished, and I’ll have some help at work.
When I finish my morning routine, I open the bathroom door. I watch as the steam runs from the room, from me. It dances upward to the ceiling until it disappears. When I look back down, I’m not alone anymore.
“He’s not me, you know?”
I laugh. “He’s made that clear, Adair. Did you hear him last night?”
I walk toward the kitchen. He follows closely behind.
“He’s right about some things though.”
I know Adair isn’t actually here… Is he? He’s just a figment of my imagination. So why isn’t he agreeing with me about everything?
“Like what?” I ask, confused. I put a K-cup into the Keurig.
“Your promises. They aren’t real.”
“Well, yeah… I guess you’re right.” I turn to face Adair. He’s standing on a chair. “Get down please.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
“Why not?”
“You wanted to talk to Danny at eye level last night, right?”
“Yes…”
“Well, I want to talk to you the same way. Be equal. It’s important to talk to people as equals.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promises to you.” I sit down on the chair next to him. He hovers above me now. That is, until he hops down. He sits next to me.
“It’s OK, Seamus.”
“It’s not. You’re gone. You should be here.”
“You kept one promise.”
“I did? What?” My coffee is done. I stand up and walk back over to the Keurig.
“You brought me to New York.”
“No, I didn’t. I came here all alone.”
“But, here I am! You brought me with you all along.”
I look away. This is not the way I wanted to bring him here. Not only in my mind and my heart. I want him to be here here. I want to take care of him. I want to hold him. I want him to know his brother made a very bad mistake. That I love him very much. I want him to have a great childhood, and grow up to be a great man. I want him to be with our mother. I want to take all their pain away and put it all on me. I want it to crush me, destroy me, and take every last bit of strength that I have, and send it right back to them, tenfold.
I look back up. He’s already gone. I take a sip of my coffee and sit back down at the kitchen table. I stare at the wall for a moment. Hm... There’s some chips in the paint. Maybe I’ll cover them up with a picture. Something that screams “This is the kitchen of a happy family,” like a ‘live, laugh, love’ sign.
Well, it’s time to get to work. I should probably wake up Ada—Danny.
Danny
I can’t believe I have to wake up every weekend at 4:30 in the freakin’ morning! What kind of punishment is this?! It’s cruel and unusual! That’s against the law! I pay attention in social studies class.
Peter won’t even let me work the register because he’s embarrassed of my face. Instead, he’s trying to teach me how to decorate cupcakes. I don’t want to learn how to decorate cupcakes.
“No, you’re squeezing the piping bag too hard… No, more like—No, try— DANNY ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!”
I throw the pipe bag down and frosting spills out of it. “I’m not good at this, OK?! Can’t I just do the register? No one cares about my eye!”
“Yeah… Absolutely no adult will care that a fourteen-year-old boy with a black eye is being put to work on a Sunday morning. No, you’re staying in the back of the kitchen. With more practice, you’ll get it.”
The bell jingles at the door, there must be a customer.
“For now, just clean up the mess.” Peter hands me a rag and walks to the front of the store. I wet the rag and clean the sticky frosting up from the countertop. I listen to Peter’s conversation with this customer while I do it. Jeez, she sounds like a pain in the ass. I think she’s ordering a birthday cake. She wants every letter on it to be a different color, like a rainbow. Peter seems confused, so she repeats herself louder. He tells her that he must have forgotten to wear his hearing aid today, and thanks her for yelling. He’s even sarcastic to the customers. I laugh.
I hear this loud, angry vibrating. It’s Peter’s phone against the countertop.
“YOUR PHONE IS RINGING,” I yell out. He doesn’t answer me. He’s still talking to the rainbow lady.
The phone screen reads “STONY BROOK HOSPITAL.” I think that’s where Allen is. Shit.
“PETER, YOUR PHONE!” I yell again. He still doesn’t respond, so I answer the call.
The woman asks to speak with Peter, and so I tell her I am Peter. Hell, she won’t know the difference, right? She says that I should get down to the hospital quickly. I ask if Allen is OK, but she doesn’t give me a real answer, she just says I should get here. I hang up the phone. I need to tell Peter about the conversation, but I know if I walk out there, he’s going to be mad. So instead I just wait back here and pace around. I hope Allen is OK.
Peter comes back into the kitchen and slams his notebook down. “ROY GEE BIV.” He says to me. “Have you ever heard of this shit? What the hell is a ROY GEE BIV?!”
“It’s red, orange yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet! But that’s not even important at all, Peter!” I yell and grab his shirt.
“Oh… How the hell do you know that?”
“You learn it in Kindergarten, but who cares! I think Allen is dying!”
“Allen is dying? What do you mean? He just has a UTI.”
“No! Your phone was ringing and ringing, and you weren’t answering me, so I picked it up.” I make my hand look like a phone and raise it up to my ear. “And the lady was from the hospital, and she asked for Peter, and so I told her I’m Peter, because like I said, you weren’t answering me, so then she said that I, meaning you, should go to the hospital now. Like now, now. I asked her if Allen was OK, and she wouldn’t tell me, she just said to get there now!”
“Fucking hell…” he says and puts his hand on his head. “Alright, we’re closing up early. What could be wrong? Don’t people get UTI’s all the time?”
“What is a UTI?”
“It’s a urinary tract infection, see we both learned something today… Danny, do me a favor and flick off the open sign?” Peter walks to the office and grabs his keys and his jacket. I run to the front of the store and turn off the lights and lock the front door. We both walk together out of the back of the store and into the car. I close my eyes for most of the ride. I don’t want to hear about any more deaths.
Peter
I sit at Allen’s bedside. Kidney Failure. Sepsis. Who knew this could all have come from a UTI? Damn it, why didn’t I get him to the hospital sooner? Is this my fault too? How much blood can one man have on his hands? I stare at my palms. It’s like I can see the red staining. I grab gently onto Allen’s arm, but he’s sleeping. They don’t expect him to make it through the night.
Danny sits far away from the bed with his hood up. I can’t see his eyes, but I know they’re on his cell phone. He sniffles and then wipes his nose with his sleeve.
“Get a tissue, bud.”
He stands, walks over to the small table by Allen, and grabs a couple of tissues. He wipes vigorously.
“These tissues are like sandpaper!”
“Better than your sleeve.”
“Not really.” He shuffles back over to his seat. He still doesn’t take his hood off. I’m kind of glad about that. The caseworker said she couldn’t tell me who made the CPS referral last time, but I’m pretty sure it was the hospital.
I let go of Allen’s arm and lean back in my chair. I’ve visited him here quite a few times, and each time I saw him, he had no idea who I was. His cognizance never came back. I don’t think the antibiotics helped at all.
A nurse enters the room and explains she’s changing Allen’s IV. She asks if I’m Allen’s son, and I tell her I’m not. I tell her that the social worker is aware that he has no family, and that I’m an employee of his. She looks over at Danny who has his legs up on his chair. He hugs them into his body with his head down.
“He’s very upset,” I say. “Allen was a good friend to us.”
I’m sure Danny is upset about Allen to some extent, but I think it’s about way more than that. She doesn’t need to know. When she leaves the room, I walk over to Danny and touch his back. He looks up at me with his swollen black eye.
“You OK if we stay here for a couple of hours?”
“I guess so…What if he dies while we’re gone?”
“Then we’ll come back.”
“OK.”
“Alright,” I pat his back and return to my seat slowly. When I sit, I notice he’s still looking at me.
“You know why I went to that party even though you said no?”
“Now isn’t the time, Danny.”
“It’s never the time. I don’t even care. I went because Reese said that we’re poor and that you’re stealing food stamps from the government. So, I wanted to wreck his party to teach him not to mess with us. Everyone needs to leave us alone. We don’t hurt anybody, but everyone tries to hurt us.”
I sigh. I’m not going to argue with him. Like Adair said, he is right about some things.
“You’re right, Danny. It’s never the right time for me, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m right?” he asks.
“You are. You’re right about a lot of things, and I’m wrong about a lot of things. More than you even know.”
“Oh…OK. Well, anyway, I really don’t want to apologize to him today.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t?”
“No. I’ll call his father back later today and explain your side of the story. Maybe you can apologize to his parents on the phone for making a mess of their house, but if he threw the first punch like you say he did, you don’t have to apologize to him. You were defending yourself.”
“I swear he did!”
“And your swears aren’t like my promises, aye?” I say, walking away from Danny and grabbing back onto Allen.
“No! They’re nothing like your promises! They’re the one hundred percent truth!”
I laugh quietly and shake my head at the same time.
“Does this mean you don’t have a job anymore?”
“Huh?”
“When Allen dies, does the bakery close?”
“Well—I’ll keep running it until someone kicks me out, I guess."
I’ve been keeping the books and paying the bills. Allen owns the building. I’m sure someone will come looking to collect what’s theirs soon enough… But then again, Allen has no family… Who would he leave the bakery to? I look back over at Danny. He’s typing vigorously on his phone. I hope he’s not fighting with anyone else.
“Who are you texting?”
“Selena,” he says. He throws his head backwards, stomps his feet, and slumps down in his chair.
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“She’s all mad at me for yesterday.” He folds his arms.
“Oh… I’m sure you two will uhm—sort it out soon. Maybe you should—”
“I don’t want your advice on girls. You’re terrible with girls.”
Once again, he’s not wrong. Speaking of girls… Maybe I should call Kara to let her know what’s going on. I pick up my phone and dial her number. She doesn’t answer my call. She probably thinks I’m still mad at her… Or maybe she’s mad at me? I don’t know. I know she’s not working, it’s Sunday. I don’t understand women at all. I’ll just talk to her when we get home.
Kara
This time when I hear the door open, I’m in the living room. I contemplate collecting my things and going into my bedroom. I don’t want to be involved in this any longer. Danny walks up the stairs first, quietly. He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t wave. He walks straight past me, grabs the remote, and changes the channel. Guess I wasn’t watching that? Peter trails behind and hangs his keys on the hook. He looks at me. I’m waiting for him to say something first. He doesn’t.
“So, I’m moving out,” I say. Breaking the silence.
“What? Why?” Danny asks, putting the remote down.
Really? He cares?
“Because I don’t want to be involved in your relationship with Peter. Living here makes it impossible not to do that.”
“Kara—” Peter says, rubbing his forehead.
“No, really. I’m going to find somewhere else to stay.”
Peter leans against the wall and pretends to bang the back of his head into it like he can’t take much more.
“Stop that and listen to what I’m saying, Peter.”
“I am listening! I am. OK. I heard you. You said you want to move out. Fine! Bye! See you never!” He walks away, proving my point exactly. He won’t even hear me out.
“Kara, don’t leave,” Danny says. I’m shocked that he cares about this. Just yesterday he was manipulating me into letting him go to this party. Maybe he wants to keep me around to make me the scapegoat some more.
“No, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right place for me to be.”
“Peter’s just upset because Allen died!” Danny blurts out.
Allen died? What? When?
“Did you just say that Allen died?”
“Yeah, a couple of hours ago. Peter’s gotta plan the funeral and everything. He says he doesn’t really know what to do.”
Fuck. Wasn’t expecting that.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too,” Danny says. “You can have the TV if you want.” He picks up the remote from the coffee table and hands it to me. Really? He thinks that will make it better? I take the remote and put it down at my side.
Peter’s gone into his room and closed the door. I can hear him talking though. Probably to himself. I’ve caught him doing that a couple of times, but I haven’t said a word about it. It’s like he has full conversations with no one. I really think he needs therapy. Danny and I sit together quietly, until I change the channel and put Dancing with the Stars back on.
After a few minutes, Peter steps out of his room. He has his phone up to his ears.
“Danny, come in here when you can please,” he says, and then shuts the door.
Danny sighs, “I gotta go apologize to Reese’s parents for getting Kool Aid and Chex Mix all over their nasty ass basement now.
I laugh. “Is that all you did?”
“Well, no, but Peter said that’s all I have to apologize for.” He stands up, yawns, and stretches really big. Then he puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and walks into Peter’s room. I don’t know what to think. Just because Allen died does not mean I can forget what happened yesterday… Or how living here is affecting my mental health. It just happens to be unfortunate timing.