14
Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
=========MARY==========
The weather report called for an all-day rain. What a surprise. How very original of Gilmore Park. It always endlessly rained throughout the summer. And it was never that pour yourself a cup of tea and snuggle up with a good book kind of rain. It was that infrequently spitting drizzle making a disaster of your hair, leaving everything smelling humid and gross kind of rain. Whatevs. I'd given up on my hair a long time ago. And the downpour was still to come.
The cloud-covered light dimmed the colors of my room, and the damp-smelling draft tousled the blinds, clacking them side to side against the windowpane, blowing threads of hair under and across my neck.
Squeegee Boy called on his work break to tell me that once the rain started, he'd be let off and would come straight over to get me.
Flipping through the pages of Danny's sketchbook (that he really insisted I take home after the night I slept over), amused by the little-kid doodles he seemed to have left intentionally intact, I saw a picture he'd drawn of two boys. Under the drawing of the smaller looking one, written in magic-marker, was the word ME, and under the other boy, CONOR. An old kindergarten pal, I guess.
Discovering Danny through his notebooks was sorta fun. Like, I felt sorry and everything for all those girls he must have pined relentlessly and embarrassingly over to write all those cheesy lyrics about, but now (many broken hearts later, I'm sure) it entertained me. The greatest comedy is someone's shit luck. But as I wavered the pencil in my hand over a blank page, I couldn't help but think of those lyrics, the ones that I'd read in his notebook. The lyrics that started off with: I want to die.
A hefty gust of wind clashed the curtains against the windowpane. Dashing my startled hand across the page. Scratching the paper with the first pencil stroke that became my drawing.
My illustration started off as just a dress. Then it became a girl in a dress. Then, a few etches later, it became a girl in a dress, who I guess sort of looked like me, standing on a windy beach. Black tears, like running mascara, poured from her empty white eyes. And since I'm shit at drawing feet, I left her ankles as a single ghastly arrow. At first, I thought maybe she was a mermaid, but she turned out to be a ghost.
Then the phone rang. Danny.
"Froo Froo..." I answered, trying to be cute.
"Oh My Go—you know what? I'm not even going to say it. Because Gilmore Parkians? Are we Gilmore Parkians? Gilmorians? Whatever. Since the Gilmorians are all terrified of rain, they're driving slow as hell. Sorry for being late. I'll be there in five minutes, if Grandma Sue in front of me could drive the speed limit."
"Okay, sure. That's okay. Remember, Fisherman's—"
"Even though it's raining?"
"Yes."
"Okay, see you in like two minutes."
And he hung up before I even got a chance to tell him to say Hi to Grandma Sue for me. I started regretting my decision to hang out with Danny. I wanted to spend more time with my ghost girl. But he'd throw a fit if I ditched him again.
After actually playing eenie-meenie-miney-mo with myself to decide whether I was going to cancel my plans with him (I lost), I made the grand effort of removing myself from my warm, cozy bed. And just as I reached for my bedroom door, the wind wrapped its cold hands around my bare arms. Lifting the invisible hairs up my spine to my neck. Behind me, I heard the pages of the sketchbook ripple in the breeze left behind. When I turned around, I saw the sketchbook had blown open onto a blank page.
The rain began. Sitting, leaning against the screen door, lacing up my white Converse, there was only a subtle tonal difference between the gray light and the transparent shadow crossing over the sailboat painting mounted on the wall. Through the mesh screen, I watched how the rainwater ran in thin lucid lines along the bottom of the canopy, and then dropped in a stream of beads onto the floor. From an unseen distance on the road, I heard the tires of a car roll over the damp concrete and slash through the puddles. I stood up, ready to get mad at Danny, but instead, as the oncoming vehicle came into view, I saw that it was a white van coming towards my house.
I panicked.
The van crunched the loose stones as it hauled up into my driveway. But then, to my relief, I saw that it was a Splendid Arrangements floral delivery van. Now, unless Jim had some secret admirer, or someone had actually thought of us, there was only one damn person in this world who would send flowers, and that meant he was beginning to spread like a contagious disease, showing up everywhere in my life. I bit down on my lower-lip, resisting my cheeks from rising as I watched the delivery dude open the trunk and pull out a bouquet of the richest red roses I had ever seen. My palm pressed and pushed open the screen.
"Oh my gosh! Those are so pretty!" I gushed as the guy jogged through the rain up to the porch steps, holding one arm above his head. "Um. Whom might these be for?" I asked, recomposing myself, curbing my stupid girly embarrassment.
He quickly scanned the card. There was a card. And before he said anything, I just hinted, "For a Mary? Maybe?"
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what the order form says."
The delivery dude handed off the roses with a smile before power-walking back to his van through the intensifying rain. Pelting louder against the porch canopy, the rapidly flashing lines zipped to the left with a swell of wind. The ignition of the van rumbled, and with a flash of the headlights onto my house, it pulled away. I lurched forward down the steps, expecting to see The Stang parked somewhere around the corner. I hated Squeegee Boy so much. But his car wasn't in sight.
I took a step back under the canopy and looked down at the bouquet in my hand. Feeling the long thornless stems through the plastic wrapping, and admiring the perfectly flourished curves of the petals; not a spot of discoloration or wilt along any of the brims. These were some hella quality roses. I removed the taped-on card, and let my inner girly-girl savor the moment, holding it dear and close to the center of my chest. Never in my life had I received flowers from anyone, let alone roses from a boy. All I could think of was how so right I must've been that the Danster was writing something about me—for me.
The wind wheezed through the crevices in the porch. My bottom teeth sunk deeper into my lip. With a surge of effort, I was able to pull the card away from my chest, peel open the sealed flap, slip the letter out, and unfold it crease by crease. I felt my heart flutter and held the roses right up to my nose and inhaled the sweetness—and then read the headline.
The letterhead was addressed to Jim. And then when my eyes followed the trail of words to the bottom of the page, and there were no more words left to read, my eyes fell down with the letter drifting out of my numb fingers to the floor.
=========DANNY===========
"You've just been crushing that pussy, huh?"
A random comment from Max. We were in the middle of rag folding during my first shift at the carwash in over a week. Just as I was about to accept what he'd said, to tolerate what he had said—writing it off as just Locker Room Talk—he then had to follow it up with: "Does Mary have a stank?"
I stopped folding. Placed two upright fists on the worktable, and stared out the window. Raindrops rolled down the glass. Slowly trickling down, occasionally merging with another. I exhaled deeply through my nose, and then continued folding, ignoring Max to the point where I didn't talk to him for the rest of our shift. From time to time, out of the corner of my eye, I'd gaze at him, and see him just smirking—proud of the fact that he'd been able to piss me off. I'd clock anyone who dared talk about Mary that way. The only reason why I didn't punch Max was because he was my friend.
Max had shown up to work before me, and by the time I got there, he was jumpy as all hell. Before he'd made that stupid comment, he'd gone on a talking spree since Rob wasn't hovering over us. So Max was yapping, as per usual, but no one was home behind his eyes. While rag folding, I saw that his pupils were dilated. Black holes devouring his irises.
Speaking of friends, Mary was my friend. Or so I convinced myself. Our skin hadn't touched since that night in my car. And our kiss in The Alley was long-gone, forgotten. A million miles away. That kiss was just an entity of the moment. Just another grandiose example of Mary's mood swings. That kiss was just a part of her bad habit of letting whatever spontaneous emotion that rolled on through sweep her away. I was okay being a friend. Honestly.
But then––My Sweet Lord. Her panties laced around her fingers, dripping with water. Those sly, one-sided smiles. How her bottom lip pursed with the words she took the time to seductively produce. The beads on her skin as I read her tattoo. Her body as she swam in the pool. The sexually perplex puzzle numbed my mind. What the hell was she?
Outside, the branches clashed together with a loud gust. The rain swept over the parking lot.
Rob emerged from his cave in the back, and walking straight by Max and I—with no remarks made—hit the red button next to the cash register booth, closing the garage door.
"Fuck it. We're not gonna be getting any cars today," Rob said over the rumble of the garage door working to close. "You guys take off." He had hardly looked at us as he spoke. But right before he disappeared behind the car washing machinery back to his office, he said, "Don't you guys forget about the meeting tomorrow. 'Specially you, Max. Nine-am."
The last panel of the garage door locked in place against the ground. The cylindrical metal dryer continued to whirl and rattle, and the motors of the conveyor belt whined with a static buzz.
Just as I grabbed my keys off the hook, along with my jean jacket, Max asked for a ride home.
"Sorry, man, I've gotta be somewhere."
"You better be creaming in that."
I put my jacket on.
"Bro."
"What?"
"Chill, man. I'm just messin' with ya," he said and shoved my shoulder. "Lighten up! You know I'm not serious and shit."
"Yeah, man. It's cool."
"You busy later tonight? I got some friends in some high places I need to see. If I get piss drunk and shit, can ya fetch me, and I'll buy you some munchies? Ya know, like cab fare shit?"
Maybe I am just a sucker for friendship. Blocking out what Max had stupidly said earlier, I just agreed. It didn't really matter to me if he needed a ride to and from somewhere. I somehow always found myself playing taxi for him.
"Brother!" I heard him call as I pushed through the side door, following me out into the rain.
"What?"
"Thanks for being real, man." Max held his fist out for a classic Danny & Max fist-bump. I tapped my knuckles against his.
"Just, like—" Max said. "Like, well, just like come through tonight, bro. Like, life chats, ya know? Stephen and those guys are dumbasses, bro, can't have good life chats. Ya know?"
I nodded. Apologies, sometimes, shine through in someone's actions.
Mary had ditched me again. The windshield wipers scrubbed away at their song, washing back the rain as I idled at the infamous intersection. Fed up and confused because I had just spoken to her on the phone, I decided to go straight to her house. What's the worst that could happen, after all?
I dropped my foot into the clutch, shifted into first, and rolled down Seadrift, turning left onto Bayview Avenue. The windshield became a liquid screen, but when the wipers swept next, washing the aquatic mosaic away, I saw Mary. Drenched on the edge of her porch and screaming as she threw a bouquet of roses through the rain.
Without a second to think, I cranked the emergency brake and dashed out of my car. Drenching my shoe in a puddle as I ran towards the porch.
"Mary!"
Wrapped in her arms she snapped, "I just want to be alone right now." And jerked away from me.
"What––what happened?"
Mary didn't answer me. I took a step closer to her. The waterlogged wood of the porch felt like it was going to split beneath my feet. So I stood still. Trembling. Suspended in motion. I didn't know what to do. My jog through the rain had left me damp enough that when the frigid wind swelled, swarming the porch, the tiny hairs on my arms stood beneath my sleeves.
"Mary!" I said again, and took a step closer to her. Water from my wet sock overflowed between my toes as my foot landed. "Talk to me." I took another step forward. "I'm not leaving until you talk to me!"
"Danny, please. Seriously, just leave me alone."
"What happened?"
"Leave me alone!"
The stream of a thousand marbles drummed on the canopy. Feeling like a helpless idiot, I was about to surrender. Until on the rim of my gaze the brightness of the red roses lying flushed on the lawn averted my thoughts and delayed my departure. The roses were dismembered and shattered on the wet grass. A lone petal flipped over in the wind and then was carried away.
The rain fell harder. The confusion brought on by the unexplained rejection left me unwittingly infuriated. I couldn't take it.
"Stop this!" I marched towards her. "Talk to me, Mary. Tell me what's going on!" Out of frustration, I slapped my hands against the siding next to her head. Startling her, boxing her in.
She turned around. Looked at me. Her eyes were dry. No tears.
"Mary. Come on. Don't––" But before I could finish, she wrapped her arms around my body, digging her brow into my collar.
"It's nothing," she said. "Okay, Danny? It's nothing. I'm not even upset. I'm really not. I just, just––knew it. That's all."
Standing on my toes to lay my chin on her head irritated the blisters that had concocted on my feet. Most of Mary's life was vague and misty. Nothing made sense. A part of me felt insufficient—emasculated even—because I was yet to be the someone she confided in.
The rain had settled into a monotonous patter, a dull incessant tacking on the shingles. A low rumbling thunder rolled in from behind the gray sky as the wind picked up and the rain fell harder. Bending the branches of the trees like lifeless limbs, and landing in loud, hollow plops against the metal drain.
"Mary," I said, soft and low. "Let's go."
Saying yes with the nod of her head, she stepped back from the hug I never wanted to leave. Looking down, I noticed peach blobs of makeup on my jean jacket. When I reached for her hand, she pulled away and then ran through the hard silver falling rain to my car.
Pulling open the passenger door, she squinted through the water that streamed into her eyes and yelled, "Are you just gonna stand there, or what?"