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July, 2019. Oberlin, Ohio.
“I’m not mad at you,” Van says firmly.
The teen sitting in front of her sniffles miserably, hands twisting together. The cup of coffee Van made for her is sitting untouched between them on Van’s kitchen table.
Meg has always reminded Van of herself, and this look—queasy frown, eyes darting around the room, shoulders hunched forward to shrink herself—Van knows this look. This is exactly what coach Ben must’ve seen a couple of decades ago, sitting across from Van in his office as he asked what exactly her and Taissa were doing in the team showers an hour after practice.
“Right,” Meg says flatly. “Not mad. Just disappointed. Right?”
“No,” Van says, shaking her head. “No, I’m neither mad or disappointed.”
“Nor,” Meg says quietly.
“What?”
“You’re neither mad nor disappointed.”
Van scoffs, smiling at the kid. Yeah, there’s that too. Meg also has a way of reminding her of Taissa.
“Okay, yeah, I’m neither mad nor disappointed,” Van says. “I’m glad you came to me. We’re… gonna figure something out.”
Meg meets her eyes uncertainly.
“We are?”
“Yes,” Van says, leaning forward seriously. “I’ll help you. I’ll close the store for a few days, we’ll… take a road trip east. I’ll find the money.”
Meg is out of her chair in an instant, throwing herself at Van and hugging her so tightly, Van’s chair tips back for a second. She has to reach out to steady herself on the table.
“Alright,” she says, patting the girl on the back.
“Thank you,” Meg whispers.
“Yeah, yeah,” Van says, delicately disintangling herself from the hug and holding Meg at arm’s length. The girl’s amber eyes are rimmed with tears, curls uncharacteristically unkempt from the past few hours spent panicking. “You know,” Van continues, “when you told me you fucked up, I thought you were gonna tell me you… stole from the register or messed up the online orders.”
Meg laughs tearfully, rolling her eyes. “I don’t need to steal from the register, you pay me way too much already,” she says. “And I literally spend all day fixing your mistakes on the online system.”
Van grins. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Van can’t help the visceral relief she feels that Meg is okay. Or, going to be okay, at least.
Meg showed up outside Van’s door half an hour ago, knocking insistently and then falling silent with her hands hidden in the sleeves of a bulky hoodie and her cheeks streaked with tears when Van answered. Van was terrified immediately. How could she not be? In the wilderness, tears like that meant death, or rotten food, or burning shelter. Her mind snapped immediately to the worst, an icy panic she hadn’t felt in years.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I fucked up,” Meg told her, which obviously did nothing to soothe Van's nerves.
The store is closed today (every Monday), and Van had been fully expecting to spend the day alone, eating 7/11 pound cake on her couch and watching every Christopher Guest movie (well, at least all the ones with Parker Posey), but she quickly abandoned that plan, bringing the girl inside and sitting her down at the kitchen table to figure out what exactly was wrong. She was grateful Meg didn’t catch her with a one night stand snoozing in her bedroom; it’s more unusual nowadays than it used to be, but it still would’ve been awkward.
Van poured them cups of coffee while Meg began to speak, moving around the kitchen for milk and sugar with her back turned. She knew from experience it was easier to confess things without being stared at.
“I thought… my period was just late. But I, um, I took a test last night,” Meg told her hesitatingly. “I didn’t trust it when it came back positive, so I went to urgent care this morning and… I’m pregnant. I guess it happened at the end of the semester, I missed a few birth control pills, figured it would be fine. Obviously it wasn’t. I’m… at least ten weeks. Too late for an abortion. I should’ve taken the test weeks ago, I’m so fucking stupid.”
“In Ohio,” Van said on impulse, before she even responded to the pregnancy itself.
“What?” Meg asked.
Van finished stirring milk into her coffee and took a seat across from Meg at the table, looking at her meaningfully. “It’s too late for an abortion in Ohio,” she said. “Not everywhere. And you’re not stupid. You’re nineteen. Accidents happen. I mean, you’ll have to learn from this. Start being more careful. But we can deal with this. I’m not mad at you.”
Meg is Van’s best (and only) employee, and in the time Van has known her, she’s grown impossibly fond of the kid.
Van had never seriously considered the idea of hiring someone to help out around the shop before Meg. She got plenty of applications from hipster college kids over the years, but the idea of someone being in her space and messing up her routines never really appealed. Besides, she’s never exactly had the extra income to pay someone, even part time—some months, she can barely afford to pay herself.
Meg started hanging around last August—a first year film studies major at Oberlin who walked into Van’s shop for the first time with wide eyes and spent the next two hours looking at every shelf in the place, pulling VHS tapes and carefully reading the backs of them one by one. She was by herself, and Van did her best not to hover as she explored, though she couldn’t help but smile as she worked on inventory at the front desk. She was that kid once; running to Blockbuster on her worst days and spending as much time as she could between the shelves, losing herself in stories.
Meg started coming in weekly, though for the first month, she never bought anything, and never spoke to Van. Van probably should’ve cared more about not making any money off the regular, but she couldn’t really bring herself to give a shit. Van would’ve given some recommendations if it seemed like Meg wanted them, but she was afraid to scare her off, so she only said hello and goodbye from the counter.
One day, Meg came in with a flier and nervously approached Van.
“Can I put this up on your bulletin board?” she asked—the first time Van had ever heard her speak. It was a casting call for a student-made short film she was working on, a high-camp vampire flick called Bitches Bite Back.
“Sure,” Van said. “Though I don’t know how much traction you’ll get in here.”
“Everybody in the film department loves this place,” Meg said casually. “They’ll see it.”
Van tried not to smile too big at that.
“I’ve been saving up, by the way,” Meg blurted out, as she thumb-tacked the flier up. “To get a VHS player, I’ve always wanted one. I have so many movies to watch for my classes, I want to start renting them on tape.”
“Saving up?” Van asked, eyeing the players on the shelves around the counter. “How much you got?”
Meg eyed her uncertainly, pulling out her wallet and quickly counting bills.
“About… $87,” she said, self-consciously adding: “I’m paying tuition. And buying textbooks. Not exactly rolling in disposable income.”
“I can do $87,” Van said immediately, grabbing one of the players off the shelf and sliding it across the counter to Meg.
That was the first time Meg hugged her.
After that, Meg was in the shop weekly, chatting on and on about movies, and her classes, and the state of the film industry. She had just moved to Ohio from Missouri, as it turned out. She was the only child of a deeply religious Baptist father who was diagnosed with emphysema a few years ago and moved into a group home once she graduated high school, leaving her without a home to go back to. She never mentioned her mom, but she clearly wasn’t in the picture, and she said she’d never been very close to her dad either. She grew up sneaking movies into the house—she mostly likes cheesy thrillers, but she also worships Spike Lee, and shares Van’s soft spot for Fight Club.
By November, Meg had started helping Van off the books with big inventory shipments and new technology, getting paid in free rentals or discounts on gear. She updated Van’s website, shaking her head the whole time at the antiquated design, and laughing as she tried to show Van how to use it.
When the winter came, Meg glumly said that the radiator in her apartment was busted and the place was freezing, and she started turning up to the shop after class every day, bundled up in sweaters and scarves, to do her homework and stay until closing. Occasionally, she watched her assigned films on Van’s shop TV which, without fail, distracted Van from whatever she was supposed to be working on and led to her sitting on the floor next to Meg (complaining about the backache she would have the next day, she’s not twenty anymore after all) commenting on the movies.
Meg always had Van proofread her film class essays, and a few times, they spent tortuous late nights at Van’s kitchen table working through homework assignments for Meg’s other non-hummanities-classes together. Van had to relearn earth science basics so she could explain them to Meg and help her pass her midterm. When Meg showed up the day after the fall semester ended with her grades—all A’s and B’s—Van was so proud, she took Meg out for dinner at Olive Garden and embarrassed her by telling the waitress what they were celebrating.
“You’re so lucky your mom lives close to campus,” the waitress told Meg, which led to Meg and Van both laughing uncomfortably once they were alone.
“Have you ever thought about having kids?” Meg asked innocently.
Van just shrugged with an indulgent smile.
“I’m forty and single with no savings,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you’ll meet someone,” Meg said, her brown eyes all bright with optimism.
“In Ohio? Not likely,” Van said, hoping that would end the conversation.
Meg didn’t need to know that the only person Van would’ve ever considered having a child with was happily married to someone else with a son and a real career.
In December, Van officially hired Meg to help out with the holiday rush, insisting she had the extra cash to pay her. By Christmas, Van got tired of Meg’s complaints about her apartment super, and fixed her busted radiator and fridge door while Meg packed her things to visit her dad for the holiday.
Van drove her to the airport and assured her that she had plans for Christmas, even though she decidedly did not. She spent the night eating frozen turkey and feeling a little more alone than usual. When Meg got back, she surprised Van with a slightly lopsided knitted hat that she’d made on the plane, a late Christmas present that Van proudly wore all winter, and Van upgraded Meg’s VHS setup, switching out her player for a better one with more settings.
Meg stayed on at the shop after the holiday, obviously.
Now, a few hours after Meg first broke the news, Van waits in the foyer of Meg’s tiny campus apartment for Meg to return from her bedroom with a bag. Van just packed the essentials for herself. A change of clothes, snacks, a handful of cassettes for them to listen to on the drive.
Meg returns with her duffle packed full, and something held behind her back.
“I have about $400 saved,” Meg says, producing a stack of crumpled bills. “Do you think it’ll be enough?”
Van hesitates. She should make the kid pay for this herself, shouldn’t she? That would be the responsible thing to do. After all, this is supposed to be a learning experience. (Van already considered stocking Meg’s apartment with condoms and decided against it). And Van has already found and called a clinic on Meg’s behalf, making her an appointment while Meg whispered her date of birth and answers to the operator’s questions into Van’s ear so she wouldn’t have to talk herself. But the sight of all of Meg’s hard earned dollars—money she should be spending on drinks with friends or clothes or new tapes—makes Van’s heart break a little bit.
“If it’s not, we’ll figure something out,” Van says.
Meg nods, pressing her lips together and looking dangerously close to crying again.
“Kid, look, you do want to do this, right?” Van asks. “Because if you don’t, if you want to keep it, we can figure that out too.”
Meg shakes her head quickly. “I don’t want it,” she says. “Just… you’re… you’re being so nice about this.” Her voice is thin, eyes glassy. “I mean, my dad would kill me if he knew, and… I mean, you’re my boss. You don’t have to help me.”
“You’re family,” Van says immediately, then thinks maybe she shouldn’t have. Was that too much?
Meg just sniffles and hugs Van again.
“I know,” Meg murmurs.
Van hugs her back, and tries not to think of Taissa Turner collapsing into her arms a million and one times when they were young.
It feels like an especially cruel trick of fate; a kid with light brown eyes and skin, dark curls, and a sarcastic little smile.
“We should get going,” Van says.
Meg pulls back. “What’s this place called again?”
“It’s called Wiskayok, New Jersey,” Van says. “I grew up there.”
Hour two of their road trip, and Meg is already fidgeting in her seat, clearly becoming less and less interested in their game of twenty questions.
“Are you Taxi Driver?” she asks.
“No,” Van says. “That’s sixteen.”
“Are you Mean Streets?”
“You can’t just guess every Scorsese movie, Meg, try asking a question.”
“Are you Casino?”
Van sighs. “Yeah, I’m Casino.”
“How long is this trip?”
“We have about seven more hours,” Van says.
Meg groans, tilting her head back.
Van looks over at her. “You know, I did want to talk to you about something,” she says.
“You wanna change our genre system again?” Meg asks.
Van smiles. “Not this month,” she says, clearing her throat, staring straight ahead at the road as she tries to think of how to begin this conversation. “I just… I haven’t heard you mention any boys. And I’m… glad if you’re exploring and… having fun—”
“Oh my God,” Meg interrupts. “Is this, like, the talk?”
“I just want to make sure you’re not being pressured into anything,” Van says. “If you’re meeting boys at parties when you’ve been drinking, or if they’re talking you into having unprotected sex—”
“Jesus, stop it,” Meg says. “It’s not… like that. It’s just one boy, it’s… casual, he’s not pressuring me into anything. And I don’t get invited to parties, I thought you knew that.”
“Alright, good,” Van says. “Just had to ask. And I’m sure you’d get invited to more parties if you didn’t work so hard all the time. You could make some more friends.”
“Film department parties suck anyway,” Meg says. “It’s just a bunch of people getting drunk and talking shit about each other, they don’t even play music.”
Van scoffs. “Maybe if you try talking to some athletes,” she says. “They can usually be counted on for idiotic college fun.”
“Maybe,” Meg says noncommittally.
Van falls silent for a little while.
“So, this boy—” she says eventually, cut off by Meg’s groan.
“Fine,” Van says. “We don’t have to talk about it.
The kid falls asleep by hour five of the trip, and by hour six, Van’s stomach is aching with nerves.
She hasn’t been home in years. Back in the safety of Ohio, blinded by worry for Meg, Van didn’t think twice about going back to Wiskayok. She knew the way, she knew the area, remembered the Evangelical protesters outside the clinic that she used to walk past on her way to school. She thought it would be best this way—more seamless if she could usher Meg through familiar streets and not have to worry about directions or different bigots than she was used to.
Only now, as they get closer, Van swears she can feel her scars hurting like they used to when she first got home. Her chest hurts too—there’s a Taissa Turner shaped hole carved right through the center of it.
The summer Taissa ditched her for a real life, Van burned through a hundred packs of cigarettes and listened to Springsteen until she almost went numb. Jersey heartbreak—summer heat and PTSD and broken knuckles from hitting things until she couldn’t feel anything else.
Now, with Meg still asleep, Born in the U.S.A. is playing quietly over the car radio and Van’s eyes are burning.
Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull
And cut a six inch valley through the middle of my skull
At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train runnin’ through the middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire. Oh, oh, oh, I’m on fire.
She turns the radio off. That song sounds like being twenty-one and hating herself and she can’t stand it.
New Jersey is Taissa’s territory now. Funny how she won it by leaving it behind. Van could’ve staked a claim if she wanted to, but the whole town, the whole state was laced with Taissa’s perfume, and full of girls with curls like hers who Van saw from behind in grocery stores and stopped being able to breathe. She had to go, had to leave it all behind for Taissa to conquer at her leisure when she was done with Manhattan and D.C. She just wonders if Taissa smells the drug store cologne she bought for Van in tenth grade whenever she drives past their old high school.
Van knows she won’t see Taissa while she's home. Big time lawyer. She won’t be hanging around their old neighborhood; she lives in the big two story place a few blocks over from where they grew up now, the one that got built over spring break one year. All the girls on the soccer team used to walk past the construction site real slow to see the workers with their shirts off. Van recognized it in one of the pictures on Taissa’s website.
As far as Van knows, her mother’s old house is still vacant. Her old house. She wonders if Meg would be opposed to a squat. It wouldn’t be the sketchiest thing they’ve done together; they’ve been dropping the store’s trash into a deli’s private dumpster for months now, not to mention some light piracy.
Van shakes her head. They can afford a hotel. If she puts it on credit, it should be fine.
Meg’s clinic appointment is tomorrow. Van will drive them back whenever she feels better. And then it’ll be done and they’ll both be fine and Van’s hometown blues will be all forgotten.
The fireflies in New Jersey are still the same. They’re all congregating in the open fields, blinking their lights on and off at Van like they’re surprised to see her back here already.
“Hey, kiddo,” Van says, hand coming off the gear shift to rock Meg awake by the shoulder. “I need to find us a place to stay. You wanna pool our funds for a motel room? Or… I have a key to a house around here. It might still work. Owner died earlier this year, I don’t think they sold it yet.”
Meg is all groggy, slowly blinking and stretching out her shoulders, and it makes her look so young. Van gets this weird thought that if she hadn’t woken Meg up, she might’ve been able to carry her into whatever place she found them to stay in. And even stranger, she can’t stop herself from thinking that they’re here to see Taissa. They're not. But Van can't stop herself from wondering whether Meg and Tai will get along.
It’s like there’s a world two degrees to the left where Van’s driving their daughter home from college, and now they can all spend the summer running around that open field with the fireflies, and a soccer ball, and more energy than could possibly be good for them.
Shit. What the fuck is she thinking?
“I didn’t realize breaking and entering was on the agenda,” Meg says.
Van scoffs softly. “Right,” she says, shifting car gears. “I’ll put the motel on credit.”
“I didn’t say that,” Meg says.
Van raises an eyebrow.
When they reach Vicky Palmer’s house, Van’s stomach drops out, just for a second.
They sold it.
Van didn’t see a penny of it, of course; her name wasn’t on the deed. Her mom’s wasn’t either, it went to her dad’s brother and his family—she knew it would. She just didn’t know it would be this soon. That house was a dump—cluttered, walls falling apart, ceilings waterstained, floors cracking.
The lights are on now, though. Through one window, she can see Jeopardy on the TV.
She scoffs.
“Shit,” she mutters.
“Soooo,” Meg says, and Van just looks at her, shaking her head.
“Sorry, kid, I didn’t… realize,” she says, staring at the house a little longer.
If she broke in the window of the second bedroom right now, would she find her seventeen-year-old self frozen there? Poised on the bed, slipping a hand under Taissa Turner’s sweater, flushed bright red and trembling as she pretended she knew how to make a girl cum?
Or if she climbed up into the bathroom, would she find herself at twenty-one in the shower with all her clothes on, ugly crying under the frigid water the day Taissa left for the city without her?
What the hell was she thinking coming here?
“Motel it is,” Van says.
“Can we afford that?” Meg asks.
“Yeah,” Van says, looking over her shoulder to pull out and get them back on the main road. “We’ll have to, um…”
She stops, trails off as she rounds the corner. There’s a woman, jogging down the sidewalk across from their car.
Long honey-brown curls, long limbs, her gait familiar from a hundred gym classes racing each other around the track.
Van can’t breathe.
The car behind her honks. Van curses again, tries to shift gears, but the woman is looking over at them now, her eyes drawn by the sound of the horn, and while Van had been convinced a second ago that she was just seeing another hometown ghost, a lookalike, close enough to catch her eye, now her whole body is burning.
The car behind her gets impatient, and drives around her, honking loudly.
“Van,” Meg says, eyes wide, brows furrowed.
The woman. Taissa. She’s walking over to them.
“Um,” Van says, trying to swallow. Her mouth is too dry. Meg is saying her name again.
When Taissa reaches her, Van just stares at her through the window glass. There’s sweat on her face, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are just like Van remembered them.
Van fingers feel their way to the button that opens the window. It seems to roll down comically slowly.
And then Taissa is scrunching her face up and saying: “Van?”
And Van is forcing herself to nod, forcing herself to hold Taissa’s gaze as she says: “Uh, hey, Tai.”
There’s silence for a moment, and all Van can think is that Taissa is breathing so close to her face that Van can taste it; hot air, stale cigarettes.
Taissa never used to smoke.
Taissa’s eyes leave Van’s face and find Meg’s. She blinks, brow furrowing a little more.
“Is this your… uh,” Taissa says, tilting her head uncertainly.
“My employee,” Van says tightly.
“Hi,” Meg says, with that bright smile that always charms customers, and fuck, she really does have Taissa’s face and she shouldn’t because that is not Van’s life anymore.
This is not Van’s life.
“I, um, I thought you might come around when they sold your mom’s house,” Taissa says. “Is that why you’re here now?”
“No, no, we’re, um, running an errand,” Van says.
“An errand?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Van sees Meg shift uncomfortably.
“An errand,” Van repeats.
“Right,” Taissa says.
Another honk behind them startles them all. Meg flinches badly. Van curses, throwing on her hazards and flipping the driver off out the window.
“Are you… in a rush?” Taissa says, with the tiniest of smirks at Van’s still-extended middle finger.
“We just drove for like nine hours actually,” Meg says, with an awkward smile. “Do you, maybe know of, like, a bathroom I could use?”
Taissa’s smile turns strained.
“Yeah, of course I do,” she says. “I live just a few minutes from here. Unlock your back seat, I’ll give you directions.”
“I know how to get to your house,” Van mutters. “But we don’t want to intrude. I’m sure your family is waiting for you to get home. Your wife won’t be too thrilled to see me.”
Meg’s eyes narrow at that comment but she, mercifully, says nothing.
Taissa laughs.
“That’s funny?” Van asks.
“Uh, my wife is two states away living with her parents,” Taissa says. “And my kid is at a summer camp I didn’t approve because Simone is trying to get my custody revoked.”
Van’s mouth opens in surprise.
“Drama,” Meg mutters.
“Megan, stop it,” Van says
Taissa laughs brightly, though her eyes are shining with unshed tears.
“Your employee, you said?” she asks.
“Just get in,” Van says, unlocking the back seat.
“Divorced?” Van says.
Meg is in the bathroom. Taissa is shrugging at her, filling a glass of water out of a brita. Van is perched on one of Taissa’s fancy kitchen counter stools.
“This is so fucking weird,” Van says, shaking her head.
“I’m weird?” Taissa says. “Since when did you have a kid?”
“Shut up, she’s not mine,” Van says.
“Seems like yours,” Taissa says. “What’s this errand anyway?”
“It’s serious, and it’s none of your business," Van says, looking at Taissa imploringly. Then, sighing: “I’m, um… sorry about your marriage.”
“No you’re not,” Taissa says.
Van scoffs, looking at her disbelievingly.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Again, infuriatingly, Taissa just shrugs.
“I think I kind of know how you felt now,” Taissa says, a little quieter.
Van’s lip curls in annoyance. Taissa says nothing.
Taissa set her iPod down on the counter without pausing it when she got inside, still glistening with sweat from her jog, and now there’s sound leaking out of her headphones, very faint in the stillness of the kitchen. The Killers. Van feels nauseous.
I never really gave up on breakin' out of this two-star town
I got the green light, I got a little fight
I'm gonna turn this thing around
Can you read my mind?
Can you read my mind?
“You always knew how I felt,” Van says quietly, voice dipping low with annoyance. “That was part of the problem.”
“Maybe,” Taissa concedes. “Still, getting left behind in this fucking town? Feels like shit.”
“Yeah,” Van says. “It does.”
“Does it help?” Taissa says. “Thinking… I had to go through it too?”
“Why are you asking me that?” Van asks. “You feel guilty? Trying to get even?”
“I just thought it might… make things… less angry,” Taissa says.
“You mean make me less angry,” Van says. “You don’t even know that I am angry, you don’t know me anymore, Taissa.”
“I thought you said I always knew how you felt,” Taissa says quietly.
Van stares at her, brows raising in defeat.
There’s a shuffling in the doorway. Van turns her head quickly to find Meg standing there in pajama pants and a tee shirt, eyebrows raised.
“Sorry,” Meg says. “I, just, um…”
“No,” Van says, standing up. “Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. This is… not the time for my shit. Let’s get you that motel.”
“You can stay here,” Taissa says.
Van turns to glare at her.
“She’s already in her pajamas,” Taissa says. “She can take Sammy’s room.”
“No,” Van says.
“Van,” Meg says. Big brown puppy dog eyes. “We could save so much money.”
“We have plenty of money,” Van protests weakly, but she realizes suddenly that there are two of them now. Two pairs of brown eyes. Two tiny smirks.
“Fine.”
“Do you want to watch a movie?”
The words pull Van back from the edge of sleep, and she sits up groggily from the couch she elected to sleep on (declining Taissa’s offer of an air mattress), eyes adjusting to the dark to take in the outline of Meg standing a few feet away, lit up by the bathroom light Van left on so she wouldn't be in darkness.
“At—” Van presses the button to light up her watch face “—2am? Yeah. Always. Of course.”
Van brushes her hair out of her face and gestures for Meg to join her on the couch. She does, sitting with her knees pulled into her chest, blinking at Van owlishly in the darkness as Van gropes around for the remote and flicks on the TV.
Meg’s hair is wrapped up in one of Taissa’s scarves. It’s eerie.
“Is she your ex?” Meg asks.
Van laughs tiredly. “Nothing gets past you, huh?” she says.
“You two are better than Jersey Shore,” Meg says, and before Van can answer, “you know your accent got like twenty times stronger the minute you drove into this town?”
“Accent?” Van repeats. “I do not have a Jersey accent.”
“You do though,” Meg says.
“You wouldn’t know a Jersey accent if it blew smoke in your face,” Van says, shaking her head ruefully, flipping through Tai’s streaming subscriptions. She has like every single one. It would make Van jealous if she didn’t know the joys of internet piracy.
“What are you in the mood for?”
Meg smiles. “I am Jack’s favorite movie of all time,” she says in an Ed Norton voice.
Van rolls her eyes fondly. “Fight Club it is,” she says, typing it into the fancy TV search bar, though the minute she clicks play on it, she can tell Meg didn’t come down here just to watch a movie.
“You know, I’m glad you were awake too,” Van tells Meg. “I was never going to fall asleep down here.”
“Liar. You were asleep when I came down,” Meg says.
“I just was resting my eyes,” Van says, and it’s true. Her mind was racing. She probably would’ve been up all night.
Meg sighs heavily, then says: “His name is Devin.”
“What?” Van says, then, “Oh, the fath- the guy?”
“Yeah,” Meg says flatly. “The father.”
Van nods carefully, not wanting to scare Meg off from telling her more.
“I didn’t tell him,” Meg says.
“You don’t have to tell anyone, if you don’t want to,” Van says immediately.
“I know,” Meg says. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll never tell him. Then it’ll just be, like… a thing. Like a secret.”
Van considers for a moment. “You said it’s just casual with him, didn’t you?”
Silence for a few seconds. On TV, Ed Norton is narrating:
Getting exciting now. That old saying, about how you always hurt the one you love? Well, it works both ways.
“He’s really nice,” Meg says eventually.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she repeats, nodding slowly. “I thought he might get mad. If I told him.”
“About being pregnant?” Van asks. “Or about… the choice you’re making?”
“Both, maybe. I don’t know.”
Van nods understandingly, not sure how to soothe her.
“I’ll figure it out,” Meg says.
“I know you will,” Van says.
“You’ll… come with me tomorrow, right?” Meg asks.
“Of course I will,” Van says.
“Okay,” Meg says, sniffling suspiciously. Van doesn’t acknowledge any tears.
In twenty minutes, Meg is snoring softly on the couch cushions.
Van sighs, standing up and pulling the blanket over Meg’s sleeping form. She walks into the kitchen for a glass of water, and finds Taissa sitting on the counter, already drinking one.
“Oh,” Van says. “I didn’t… realize you were up.”
“I never sleep anymore,” Taissa says, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to listen in.”
“But let me guess, you did it anyway?”
Taissa rolls her eyes.
“How old is she?”
“Nineteen,” Van says. “She just works for me. I’m helping her out. Ohio has a six week ban.”
“Good of you,” Taissa says, and then shaking her head, staring off into space. “I tried… for Shauna, with a bra wire. You remember how that turned out.”
Van shivers. “It won’t be like that for her,” she says.
It’s almost funny. She didn’t even think about Shipman until this moment. The screaming, the blood, the darkness they never really managed to shake that came out stillborn with the baby.
“You’re good with her,” Taissa says, and then her lower lip is buckling, and she’s looking at Van with watery eyes and saying: “God, I fuckin’ miss my kid. I haven’t seen him in a month.”
Van feels her shoulders tensing. My kid. The words sound wrong. Taissa isn’t supposed to have a kid, she’s supposed to be twenty, smoking with Van behind their old high school, messing around with Van in the back of her car. Van didn’t realize she was the only one stuck in time.
She didn't realize Taissa went and grew up without her.
“It’s… fucked up she won’t let you see him,” Van mutters.
“She doesn’t trust me,” Taissa says, shaking her head. “She says—”
“Sorry,” Van interrupts, holding up a hand. “Actually I, um… I can’t talk to you about your wife, Tai, I’ll throw up.”
Taissa falls silent.
“You, um… you said the kid was your employee,” Taissa says eventually. “Is that at your… video store?”
“You know about my video store?”
“You knew where I live,” Taissa says.
“Fair,” Van says lifelessly, staring at a crack in the tile on Taissa’s kitchen floor.
Her stomach is still burning.
She shouldn’t have come here.
Taissa is sniffling again. Van looks up.
“Sorry,” Taissa says.
Van purses her lips into a frown.
“Uh, what’s he like?” she asks hesitantly. “Your kid.”
“Oh, he’s the best,” Taissa says with an exhale. “Way too cool for the kids at public school. He’s smart, like I was, he’s good in his classes. Other kids don’t really get him, but who gives a shit about that? He doesn’t need to learn to socialize, it’s nonsense. He just needs better friends.”
Van feels like she can see the ghost of Taissa’s marriage at the edges of the conversation and tries not to let herself be happy about it.
“He’s, um, he’s very imaginative, he loves his dolls, and his action figures, you know, they’re all the same to him. Characters. He makes up stories about them, all the time, just… such complex stuff.”
“A storyteller, huh?” Van asks softly.
Taissa meets her eyes, blinking tears down her cheeks, but smiling anyway.
“Yeah, I always liked the storytellers,” she says.
Van scoffs.
“What about yours?” Taissa asks.
“She’s not mine,” Van says, with a shake of her head. “She’s a college kid. Very independent, hard worker, doesn’t take any shit.”
“Movie buff?”
“Bigtime.”
“I see why you like her. She’s sharp.”
“I know she is,” Van says.
Taissa exhales, eyes running over Van’s form not so subtly.
“I’m really fucking glad you’re here,” Taissa breathes.
“I’m not staying, Taissa.”
“Don’t care,” Tai says. “I’m lonely. I missed you.”
Van raises an eyebrow.
“I’m glad you have someone,” Taissa says.
“I’m leaving, Tai,” Van says firmly. “As soon as Meg’s better. I’m not staying here. So don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Taissa’s lips part, like she’s in pain. Van doesn’t know how it makes her feel.
“Well, can I at least… help out with the kid?” Taissa asks. “I can pay for the procedure.”
“No,” Van says. “No, she can pay for it.”
“I can drive then,” Taissa says.
“She doesn’t know you, Tai,” Van says. “This is personal, she doesn’t want a stranger there.”
“Right,” Taissa says, stepping back in embarrassment. “Right. I’m sorry.”
Van softens. She can’t help it.
“You’re already letting her stay here for free,” she says. “That’s… plenty.”
“Good,” Taissa says, picking up her glass of water and starting back toward her bedroom. “You can, uh, take Sammy’s bed, if you want. If Meg’s taking the couch.”
Van shakes her head, though exhaustion wins out in the end, and she ends up laying in Taissa’s kid’s bed an hour later, staring at the ceiling, feeling sixteen and terrified, and forty and numb.
She tries to imagine reaching back in time to herself in her twenties, heartbroken and hopeless. She thought that was the oldest she was ever going to be. She tries to imagine taking that girl by the shoulders and saying “you will live your whole life, and you will be forty, and you will still be running back to Taissa Turner, only it’ll all be different the second time around, and you’ll lay in her son’s bed in her wife’s house and miss the version of her that broke your heart because at least that one had only ever loved you.”
Van really wants a Jersey bagel. She tries not to dwell on that as she drives Meg through the chilly summer morning to the clinic at the edge of town.
“You feel okay?” Van asks. Meg hasn’t said much since they left Taissa’s house that morning.
“I feel… like I should be more nervous than I am,” Meg murmurs. “I just… feel like I’m getting a tooth pulled. Shouldn’t I feel bad?”
“No,” Van says, shaking her head in a way she hopes is comforting. “No, however you feel is okay, honestly honey.”
Meg nods, looking down at her feet.
Van turns the radio up when they drive through the religious nuts, waving signs in their faces.
“Just keep your eyes down,” Van says. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”
Meg goes quiet at that. Van remembers her saying something once about her dad voting republican every year before Trump.
Inside, Van helps her with the paperwork. Meg takes her hand and Van thinks of Shauna Shipman clinging to her and Taissa, and realizes with a terrible start that Meg is older than Shauna was.
She’s older than all of them were.
It puts a lump in her throat.
Van has never told Meg how she got her scars, or why she didn’t graduate high school. Meg never asked. If she somehow found out, she never let on.
Van wonders if she should tell her, though if she ever does, it won’t be today.
When the nurses call her in, Van kisses the back of Meg’s hand and smiles at her.
“You’ll be fine,” she promises, and feels a little pang of fear as she watches Meg walk into the back with her head held high.
She takes her phone out, thinking, for an instant, to text Taissa, before she remembers that she doesn’t have Taissa’s phone number, and that they don’t talk anymore. So she just sits alone, hugging herself in the waiting room, wishing she had a magazine or a job to do. Is this how it would’ve been for Shauna, if she’d had the choice? Hometown clinic? Jackie probably would’ve driven her.
Van has to look down to stop herself from scanning over all the girls waiting here with their moms or boyfriends or other girls their age. She doesn’t want to see a pair of dark eyes or auburn curls and think of the past.
Van meets Meg in the recovery room. She’s all bleary from sedation, shivering despite the blanket draped over her. Van doesn’t know what to say. She feels pretty cold herself.
“You know, I was thinking,” Van says, smiling at her as convincingly as she can. “When we get home, maybe we can update the genre system in the store.”
Meg rolls her eyes hard.
“That would be the eighth time this year we’ve reorganized,” she says. “Palmer, you’re insane.”
Van grins. “I’m fucking with you,” she says.
Meg scoffs. “You suck,” she says, shoving Van with one hand.
“I know.”
“Your ex is cool,” Meg says thoughtfully.
“Oh, I know she is,” Van says. “Always been cooler than me.”
“Nah,” Meg says. “Not cooler than you. Just cool.”
They drive home in the evening. Meg is still trembling. Van helps her into the house and into Sammy’s room. Taissa is waiting for them in the foyer.
“She must be confused,” Meg says, gesturing at Taissa as they walk past her. There’s a bandage on the back of Meg’s hand where they stuck an IV. Van hates it. Taissa trails behind them into the bedroom, watching with a peculiar look on her face as Van lowers Meg down into Sammy’s bed.
“Actually, I overheard you talking last night,” Taissa says gently. “I think you made a really brave choice today.”
Meg’s expression waivers, then crumples into tears.
“Shit,” Taissa says.
“Thanks,” Meg says weakly, wiping her face with her hands. Van shoos Taissa out, then sits on the edge of the bed and looks down at Meg uncertainly.
“I think I just want to go to sleep,” Meg says.
“Okay,” Van says, nodding quickly. “Okay. Well, you’ll call me if you need anything, right?”
She agrees.
In the kitchen, Van can’t avoid Taissa. There’s nowhere else to stand. She doesn’t know this house.
“She likes you,” Van says, shaking her head. “I don’t know when she’ll be good to travel.”
“You’ll just have to stay then,” Taissa says.
“Fuck off,” Van mutters, rubbing one eye with the heel of her hand. Her scars are definitely hurting. They always do when she changes climates. She resists the urge to scratch them raw just to stop the achy itch.
Her breathing feels oddly thick; stuffy nose and blurry vision.
“You did the right thing with her, you know,” Taissa says.
Van shakes her head.
“God, I feel bad,” she says, rubbing both eyes roughly.
“Don’t,” Taissa says. “She’ll be fine.”
“I know,” Van sniffles. “Just… she’s so young. It’s all so fucked.”
When Taissa’s arms close around Van, she flinches.
Tai smells different now. Like money and expensive fabric. She always used to smell like sweat or mall perfume.
“You’re good at this,” Taissa murmurs. Van doesn’t hug her back, just presses her face petulantly into Taissa’s chest.
“Good at what?” she asks, muffled and annoyed.
“Taking care of people,” Taissa says. “Always were.”
Van doesn’t respond.
“It's not my thing. I’m kind of a shitty mom,” Taissa says. “Still fucking miss him though.”
Van pulls back from Taissa, blinking a few times to clear her eyes. Taissa looks all shaky and devastated.
“Alright,” Van says, switching their positions, wrapping her own arms around Taissa and pulling into her chest. Taissa falls against her, clinging to her, gasping in a ragged sob.
“Sorry,” Taissa says.
“No, don’t be,” Van says. It’s easier this way, she thinks. Comforting Tai is easier than comforting herself.
It’s dark when Meg walks up, padding into the kitchen to find Van and Taissa splitting a bottle of wine, speaking quietly. Van learned that Taissa’s son is a Leo, like Van, and that he fucking hates soccer, but he’s always starting fights so they’re trying to get him into a sport. Taissa learned that Meg was the only freshman in her program to get approved for an independent study, that she doesn’t know how to drive but Van is thinking of teaching her when the weather gets warmer, and that Van has never once beaten Meg in an argument.
“Sorry, Ms. Turner?” Meg asks. “What’s the address of this place?”
Van and Taissa exchange a look, holding back laughs. The wine is making Van weirdly giddy.
“What?” Meg asks self-consciously.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Turner, whoo—” Van sings.
“I am for reeeeal,” Taissa finishes, laughing so hard she snorts.
Meg stares at them blankly. Taissa tells her the address.
“Are you getting a delivery?” Van asks.
“Um, yeah,” Meg says, glancing sideways in the way she always does when she’s lying.
Van raises an eyebrow at her.
Meg rolls her eyes, hard.
“Devin’s sending me Doordash,” she says. “He just called, he was like, why aren’t you at your apartment? And I was like, bro I’m doing something, like, I’m in New Jersey right now. But… he was chill about it.”
“Oh, great,” Van says.
“Yeah, so, I’m probably gonna go call him back,” she says, taking a step backward.
“You know, we didn’t finish Fight Club last night,” Van says. “You fell asleep.”
Meg smiles tentatively.
“Has Taissa seen it?” she asks.
“No,” Taissa supplies from behind them. “Didn’t have time. I was in college when it came out.”
“Yeah, and I was spending every day at the movie theater because I didn’t have a girlfriend anymore,” Van mutters.
Meg scoffs. “We could start it over?” she says.
“You don’t wanna talk to your boyfriend?” Taissa asks.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Meg says. “And we have this thing called texting.”
Taissa rolls her eyes. “Okay,” she says with a smile.
They all walk into the living room, giving Meg the couch, Taissa and Van sitting down on the floor, a little too close together.
And just like that, they’re fifteen again, watching Desert Hearts ten inches from the TV in Van’s room, knees touching just enough to drive Van crazy.
Meg rewinds the movie. Van watches it all blur past backward.
That old saying, about how you always hurt the one you love? Well, it works both ways.
“Wait,” Taissa says, an hour and a half into the movie, looking over at Van with narrowed eyes. “You’re showing me a movie about an insomniac with dual personalities? This guy’s alter ego sleepwalks and like, blows shit up and kills people?”
Van’s mouth drops open in realization, glancing back at Meg, who she realizes has fallen asleep.
Taissa clicks her tongue in disapproving disbelief.
“Made you think of me?” Taissa asks, eyes flicking to the movie with a wicked smile.
“Everything did,” Van murmurs, with a little shake of her head.
Taissa stares at her, smile fading.
“Everything still does,” Van breathes.
Taissa puts a hand on one of Van’s legs. Van shakes her head.
“We shouldn’t.”
“You want to?” Taissa asks, and Van is nodding helplessly, and Taissa is helping her to her feet, both their joints popping painfully as they stand up.
They’re not twenty anymore, after all.
Still, they giggle when they kiss, in the entranceway of Taissa’s bedroom. Her and her wife’s bedroom—God that thought is like a knife.
Van tries to stop thinking. Taissa and her rock together. They still fit. Puzzle pieces. Van smiles, laughs, pulls away.
“Tai,” she says. “What the fuck are we doing?”
“I’m sorry,” Taissa says. She doesn’t look sorry. She looks thrilled. Like she just won the game. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”
She’s breathless. They both are.
They don’t have sex. They think about it, sure. Van thinks about it until her pulse is pounding between her legs, and she forgets every other girl she’s touched and can only think of the way it used to feel to slip her fingers into Taissa in parked cars and locker room showers and clearings in the woods. (Heaven. It used to feel like heaven).
Taissa’s hands are all over her, swapping spit, the word divorced echoing in Van’s head like a prayer. Taissa is thinking about Van fucking her too—Van can tell because she starts panting open mouthed against Van’s neck, and pressing her hips against Van’s with her legs spread.
They only stop when the doorbell rings. Doordash from Devin. Snacks, and flowers.
Van can’t really find fault with that. She makes a mental note to invite him over to dinner when they get back to Ohio.
Taissa can’t cook, so while Meg eats in the living room, Van makes her pasta, shaking her head the whole time, her entire body buzzing.
“You wanna stay in my room tonight?” Taissa asks.
“Stop it,” Van mutters, though she does. Of course she does.
When night falls, in Taissa’s marital bed, Van can’t sleep. Taissa is just looking over at her, laying on her side in woefully mismatched boxers and a lace lingerie shirt type thing that can’t be comfortable.
“She might knock on the door, if she needs something,” Van says, batting Taissa’s hand away from her jeans. “She could have a complication, I need to stay awake.”
“She’ll be fine,” Taissa says. “She’s not Shauna.”
“I know that,” Van snaps.
Taissa clears her throat. “You know, for a little while, I thought maybe you were… seeing her mom, though it was like a step-dad thing.”
“No,” Van says. “No, I haven’t been seeing anyone.”
“Me neither,” Taissa says. “This town’s fucking haunted, I don’t talk to anyone here anymore.”
Van lays on her back, staring at the ceiling, thinking.
“Where’s your kid?” Van asks eventually.
“Camp, I told you.”
“Yeah, but where?”
“Upstate, New York,” Taissa says. “Near Frost Vally.”
Van looks over at her.
“What if you just went and saw him?” Van asks.
Taissa scoffs. “Uh, I’d get drawn and quartered in family court.”
“Would you really?” Van asks. “You said she was trying to get your custody revoked.”
“We don’t have an agreement yet,” Taissa says. “But I’m trying to play nice.”
Van is quiet for a few minutes.
“I want to meet him,” she says eventually.
“You want to meet the kid I had with another woman?”
“Yeah,” Van says simply. “He’s yours too. I want to meet him. Let’s take him to lunch.”
Taissa’s eyes dart over her face for a few seconds. And then Taissa is hugging her, pulling her close in bed and draping herself over Van so she can cling to her.
It takes some explaining the next day to get Meg in the car. Yeah, they’re going four hours out of the way to commit a minor infraction against a New Jersey family court judge’s temporary judgement, but Taissa is grinning in a way she hasn’t since Van got here, and Meg is completely invested in the drama of it all.
They pass out of Wiskayok just past noon, Meg leaning against the backseat window with headphones on, Van singing quietly along to the radio as she drives, Taissa watching her with a strange smile and shining eyes. Across the Universe.
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
And it’s strange. At some point, Van reaches over and puts a hand on Taissa’s leg, and wonders if this is what growing up was supposed to feel like all along. Kids that they sort of stole, sort of won over. Driving toward Canada and listening to songs that still feel like carpooling in 1992. Crossing state lines because the magnetism of the family they don’t have seems to be pulling them together.
“I want to see your shop,” Taissa says.
Van sighs. “It’s a long way to Ohio,” she says.
“I work for myself,” Taissa says. “I can take time off.”
“Maybe,” Van says, though she already knows the answer is yes.
She always knew she wouldn’t leave New Jersey without Taissa, didn’t she?
Tai is looking at Meg in the rearview, watching her nod along silently to the music in her headphones.
“She looks like me,” Taissa says, very quietly.
Van feels suddenly on the verge of very long held back tears.
“Yeah, I know,” she says. “Isn’t that weird?”
Taissa shrugs.
“I think it’s lucky,” she says, and turns the radio up.