* * *
The party is at one.
He stands out on his small balcony overlooking the city, in frayed sweatpants and no shirt, even though it’s on the chilly side, and smokes. He tried to keep a plant out here, but it died in the early frost a few weeks ago. Now it sits like a brown squid in the planter.
Another planter next to it is filled with cigarette butts, and there is a folding chair someone was throwing away. The city is gray today, and a couple walks by in J.Crew-style coats holding hands, gripping white coffee cups, making the most of the morning. A fit woman jogs by in a sports bra and leggings, and a father and little daughter come out of Let’s Bagel with a large paper bag. The girl wears ladybug boots and marches ahead. Luke blows smoke out of his nose.
He has got to clear his head. The party is at one. He hates when things are at one. Too in the middle. Either be at ten in the morning or six in the evening. He hates the middle of the day.
It takes at least thirty minutes to get from Wharton to his sister’s house in Middletown. His sister, Mary Jane, has probably been awake since 4 a.m., arranging the napkins in a perfect fan and trying out some alcohol-free punch recipe from Pinterest. He guesses the party will be circus-themed, since the invitation showed Lizzie in a lion tamer’s costume. Why didn’t he hide the invitation from Hannah? What if she asks to come? Should he bring her to stuff like this? He’s not ready for that. Keep that can of worms inside another bigger can, his dad would have said.
Mary Jane will have made her husband, Alvin, wire up some complicated red-and-white tent and spotlights to the garage ceiling. There will be a tower of cupcakes and a clown walking around. She may even have enlisted their mother to pass out cotton candy and small bags of popcorn. He shakes his head.
He feels his back being touched. “What are you getting her?” Hannah asks.
He cringes. She knows. He turns to look at her. The sun is in her blond hair, and there is this girlishness about her he never noticed beneath all that eye makeup. Her eyes are light green, and he imagines his father saying, She’s a looker, Luke, and doing that thing where he’d push up his eyebrows a few times. Luke lights another cigarette and keeps staring at her.
“Sorry,” she says. “I saw the invitation.”
“It’s okay.” He sighs. “Yeah, a day with the family,” he says, hoping she won’t ask to come. He touches her cheek, and he wants to love this girl. Why can’t he? Because of the disapproval from his mother, his sister? Because she’s not who he pictured he’d end up with? He sees two extra holes in her ear, and feels let down. By everything. By the day getting away, by the fact that he hasn’t bought a present for Lizzie, by the fact that he’s not showered yet and just wants to play his guitar and climb back into bed with a white pill or two. He wants to be better than this guy who stands around in the cold morning with his raspy voice. With his mistake tattoo on his rib cage, another mistake tattoo on his left shoulder.
He wants to bring Hannah to the party and not have his mother whisper to Mary Jane. For him and Hannah to be that couple he saw below with the expensive coats and coffee cups and good degrees and a Range Rover. He wants to wash that pink shit out of this girl’s hair because she’d be so beautiful without it. He wants her to wear a sensible sweater and a piece of heirloom jewelry and stop blowing bubbles with her gum. Stop chewing gum, even. He wants his own hair to be cut better. His face to be clean-shaven. Has he been clean-shaven once in years? He wants his shirt to be tucked in and pressed.
He wants to put Lizzie on his shoulders and not have people wonder if he will fall over. He wants to be asked, just one time, to babysit his niece, his favorite little person. To make a blanket fort with her in the living room and watch a Disney movie and make her some kind of cool uncle specialty sundae.
At the party he wants to say something about circuses that doesn’t sound drug fueled and foolish.
“I didn’t get a gift yet,” he says.
Hannah stoops and picks up a few stray cigarette butts and places them in the planter. “Let’s get dressed,” she says. “A kids’ store just opened on Walnut Street that has old-fashioned toys like Lite-Brites and Barrel of Monkeys. We can go there.” Her eyes are so hopeful, and he can imagine her as a younger girl. As the quiet C-plus student with clothes from Kmart whom teachers overlooked. He wonders if she had the opportunities he had （his father paying him twenty dollars to weed-whack the lawn, his mother proofreading his sixth-grade paper on Lyndon B. Johnson）， and feels worse than before.