Home Waltz by G.A. Grisenthwaite

Author:G.A. Grisenthwaite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palimpsest Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

9:00 AM

The girls glare at Skinny until the door closes behind him. Belinda hisses, “Good riddance, you crumb.”

“Yeah, good-fucking-riddance, a-hole!” Ingrid spits. She scans the kitchen. “You did this? You cleaned all this up?”

“Yeah,” I say. Her hard edges soften a bit and she kisses my cheek. My grandmother wouldn’t be happy with the job I’ve done so far—she’d chew me out for taking so long to get the job done. I should’ve finished the dishes already, even that hateful macaroni pot, and started on the floors. With a little help from just about everyone, almost all of the empties were boxed and stacked against a wall. I’d emptied all of the ashtrays and stacked them near the sink. I s’pose I could’ve kept working while Skinny yakked and sucked them dead soldiers, but I didn’t want to be rude.

“I need some lemon juice and ice cubes to wash away those marks that awful boy left on Ang. Where can I find them?”

“She won’t have real lemons,” I say, trying hard not to sound too sucky. “Maybe a fake one in the fridge. Prob’ly no ice cubes, though. But I could go out and get a pail of snow. That work?”

“Clever boy. It should. Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” I say. Mostly I mean it. It’s not so much I expect her to drag me back to the hand’s shack and do it to me. No, I want her to Home Waltz me into that shack and let me do it to her, or maybe we could do each other until the dance starts.

The clouds have cleared. Water drips off the tips of the icicles. Except for a few crows crowing and a snowplough grinding a path along the highway, it’s quiet. I understand weather less than I understand girls: both can make you feel small and wreck your life in a second and both can fill you with hope. But only girls can fill you with hope and make you feel small at the same time.

Everyone has a plastic lemon or lime in their fridge, even Yéyeʔ, but I doubt she’s ever used hers. Auntie Max’s still has the tag on it. Funny how they make that tag look like a cardboard leaf. I hold Ingrid’s hand a little longer than I should’ve and she lets me. She grabs the lemon. I lean in to kiss her. She pulls away.

“O, no you don’t. You’re not putting those lips on me again, you vampire,” she says. She chuckles but it feels as unfunny as her joke. Now I feel like I should apologize for James, too. One guy does something really bad and every other guy has to pay for it. I don’t get it. Ingrid has a way of making me feel like such a little boy when she should be making me feel like a man. “I’m kidding.” Ingrid kisses my cheek. “Really!”

“Anyone seen Pixie?” Belinda asks, her face as grey as Skinny’s.

“I knew bringing her was a mistake.

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