You Will Know Elasticity by Rachel Ann Brickner

You watch Jim lift a pizza from the oven. His thin pale arms flex then relax as he lifts the hot cheese and dough and slides it into a box for delivery. You knead your dough, sticky and flexible, and try not to look at him for long. He cuts through the cheese and crust quickly—looks at you, smiles, then walks out the door.

Your mother is supposed to pick you up at the end of your shift. You sit outside on the shop’s steps, feeling like all you ever do is wait for her. Two faded yellow lines split the cement road outside the shop. The lines shine the color of the cold, wet pineapple you just swept off the shop floor as she pulls up in your father’s truck. The old steps creak as you stand and walk towards her. Your shirt’s caked with flour and sweat hangs above your lip.

“I’m okay,” you say when she asks how you are. You do not look your mother in the eyes. They can crush you.

“Dad’s home again.”  

“Why?” you say, knowing she won’t answer.

She rests her hands on her lap and picks at her torn cuticles. You look at her—sure not to smile—too conscious of the small gap between your two front teeth and the space that divides you from her.

§

On the couch, your father’s passed out, snoring like a cow. The glare of the TV in the dark room colors his broad face—yellow, blue, and green as the images change on the screen.

You think of the long afternoons you spent in Catholic school, when adultery was just another word without meaning, only something mentioned as you and ten other kids dressed in plaid passed by the Stations of the Cross, Sister Catherine asking you to recite the Ten Commandments as you made your way through the dark church.

Your mother walks by you into the kitchen. You follow her. An I Love Lucy rerun plays on the small TV on the kitchen counter.

“Did you eat yet?” she asks.

You pour yourself a glass of milk and shake your head. You haven’t.

“No ham?”

“No.”

You haven’t eaten meat in years.

Sitting at the kitchen table, you stare at the TV and feel blank until you think of how Jim smiled at you tonight. You try not to smile to yourself because you don’t want to be found out. Instead, you glance at your mother quickly while sinking your teeth into the soft bread, crisp lettuce, and cheese. When Lucy jumps into Ricky’s arms, your mother smiles, sips her coffee, smokes her cigarette.

“Why haven’t you left him?”

You’re surprised by the sound of your voice. You never thought you’d ask her, but tonight you’re feeling older and smarter because of the way Jim smiled at you, his dark hair falling over his green eyes, and you can’t help but feel a little high on yourself.

“Who?” Lucy has all your mother’s attention. She won’t look at you.

“He’s never here.” You pause. “You know I’ve known about him and her for a while.”

“Oh, have you now?” She takes a drag of her cigarette without looking away from the screen.

You watch your mother because she is sad and beautiful, and you wonder if you will ever be like her someday, if this isn’t who you already are.

§

It’s midnight and the playground is empty. You and Jim worked a late shift, and on nights like these, he always drives you home, but not before stopping to swing. The wind is warm and dusty. The tree’s half-naked branches sway, moving with the rhythm of the wind like an ocean in the sky. Nothing but the soft light of a streetlamp lights the old, rusted swing set you’re swinging on.

Jim looks at you from above then from below. You’re swinging at a different pace. He’s up and you’re down, then you’re up and he’s down. You both smile and laugh, smile and laugh. You jump off the black rubber seat in midair and land on both feet, laughing as you stumble forward on the wood chips beneath you. You sit on a large, turtle-shaped stone and watch Jim try to slow himself, his feet kicking dirt in the air as they skid against the ground. You slide your legs over one side of the turtle to make sitting room for him.

The playground sits atop a hill overlooking a soccer field. Tonight, you can barely make out the crooked white lines marking the boundaries of the goal and midfield. You know these lines because you used to play soccer here, back when your father would hold your hand as you walked onto the field, saying “Good luck, hon” behind you.

“Let’s go for a ride,” Jim says from the swing before standing. His keys rattle from the carabiner hooked to his belt loop. You look at the dark field, surrounded by tall, burly trees in the horizon, and kick the turtle’s leg to get the fallen flour from the shop off your shoes.

When you sit in his car, you push five empty cans of Arizona Iced Tea with your feet to make room. It smells like salt and tomatoes. Crumpled receipts are scattered everywhere.

“Where are we going?” you ask him.

“I don’t know.”

“Can I drive?”

He looks at you and scrunches his nose like he does when he cleans the make line. The leftover vegetables, cheese, meat, and pineapple mixed together always smells like vomit.

“You know I’m a good driver,” you say.

“The last time I let you drive, you left the car in reverse and almost killed us.” He smiles while turning the music up.

“That was over a year ago!”

You yell over the sound of some song that reminds you of where you used to be, what it was like a year ago when you were sixteen, when he first drove you home from work.

Your body’s warm even though the temperature has dropped. Jim looks at you with his stupid smile and pats your thigh the way a softball coach would just after you struck out. You feel a warmth rise in your belly, and you want to hug or scream or kiss him, but of course, you don’t.

At a stoplight, you look at him and smile.

“Where are we?”

“Almost there.”

The first side of the cassette ends and it’s quiet. The soft buzz of the city lights, wind, and rattling car feel like electricity shooting through your ears as Jim flips the tape. A song comes on that sounds like nothing you’ve heard before. It’s slow and stiff and makes you feel like you could be balancing on the phone lines above you.

The car sails up a large slope then stops. Jim pulls his keys from the ignition, gets out, walks to your door.

“Let’s go.”

“But where are we?”

You close the door behind you as he walks across the slanted street to a rusted, ivy-covered railing. He looks over the railing before turning back for you.

“Come here,” he says, walking towards you, reaching for your hand. “Look.”

You grip the railing and look at the river below. The city lights illuminate each ripple of water, and you imagine the shiny flecks of light as magical fish, only able to live in this river, in this moment. Jim holds your hand then looks at you in what feels like spacetime, until your lips touch as you unfold from yourself, and you forget about the fish because this is your first kiss, and you’re unsure if it’s really happening because you’ve thought about how it would feel for so long that you don’t know where you are in space or time or if dreams are only dreams because somewhere, sometime, you’ve lived them once before.

The ride home is silent, but his hand’s in yours and he smiles without looking at you. You want to be happy, but you can only think of your mother unable to sleep, smoking her cigarettes, and watching TV while your father sleeps in the other room.

§

At home, you slide off your shoes and look at your father on the couch. He’s asleep before his arms twitch and fall off his chest.

“Work,” you say when he asks what you’re doing home so late.

“A friend,” when he asks how you got home.

There’s a space between you because this is how your conversations usually end, your words trailing behind you, but tonight you ask him why he doesn’t get in bed because you’re feeling high on yourself again, like what you have to say might mean something.

He looks at you like he’s taking you seriously for once, but then he sighs. This is the saddest you’ll ever see him before he leaves for good.

“I don’t know, babe,” he says.

He sinks back into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest before closing his eyes.

Someday you’ll know this was all he was ever able to give you, that he’s only capable of teaching you different kinds of absence.

§

A week later, Jim hasn’t called or come to work. Your boss tells you that Jim quit, but you think it can’t be true. How could it be true? You spend your nights at work kneading dough, looking at the door for him every time it opens, the bell ringing.

That night you walk home, hoping you’ll see him every few feet, stopping at the video store on the way. Inside, when you see Jim and a pretty girl next to him, you hide like the coward you are because you’re alone renting a movie, smelling like salt and tomatoes. You feel sick when he sees you across the store and smiles without showing his teeth like he feels sorry for you. You pretend not to notice as he whispers something to the girl then walks your way.

“How are you?” he says.

“Okay,” you say.

You fumble with the DVD case between your hands because your palms are sweaty and your hands are shaking. You look at him, feeling full of how angry and sad you are, until, all you can do is resist the feeling. You will know elasticity, you tell yourself. You will learn to bend without breaking into pieces so small you can’t put yourself together again.

He and the girl are going to drive across the country. He tells you this when you ask why he quit. He says he was going to tell you. You examine his face. Suddenly, he looks like any other boy you’ve avoided until now.

“Dr. Strangelove,” you say, pointing to the case in his hand.

“You suggested it once, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m the one.”

You smile and stare at him for too long when you realize you could hurt him if you wanted to. The girl is only across the room. Instead, you stare at him until he smiles, laughs, then looks away.

“I hope you both like it. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

He squints and tilts his head like he doesn’t understand. “I don’t know what to say.”

You watch them leave, get into his car where she probably pushes five empty cans of Arizona Iced Tea to make room for her feet, and you imagine her saying, “Who is she?” and a little thrill rises inside of you because this is the first time you’ve ever had a real secret—yours, not only your parents’—and you know that somehow this has changed you.

When you leave the video store, you begin to float instead of walk. You float above the cars and empty sidewalks you’re so accustomed to walking alone and you see this place for what it is—just another town, no better or worse than any other. You run your hands through the remaining leaves of the trees as you pass their branches, but you don’t hold on, you only float and float—float over trolley tracks and through school yards, and you think about how the world is so much bigger than you, bigger than your love for Jim or your parents’ inability to be who you need; the world is so immense and terrifyingly wild in its inability to be controlled by a girl like you, but now you know there’s something freeing in that, so you float a little higher, higher until you’re at the top of that big hill by yourself, standing with your belly against the rusted green railing, staring at the magical fish, knowing they’re only specks of light reflected off big, city buildings. Still, you stare. You stare at the light, your feet back on the ground, and you feel how wonderful it is to only know as much as you do right now.  

Rachel Ann Brickner is a writer and multimedia storyteller from Pittsburgh. Currently, she’s at work on her first novel and a memoir about debt. Her fiction has previously appeared at Joyland, PANK, IDK Magazine, and elsewhere. You can see more of her work at rachelannbrickner.com.