The Complicated Calculus (and Cows) of Carl Paulsen, page 14
He seems like a nice man, quiet with good manners (that’s where Cathy probably gets them), but he’s probably heard about what my father is thinking about doing with our cows and wants to see if he can get the true story. I can’t blame him for that; he’s just doing what everybody else does around here.
“Fine, just fine,” I say.
“You’re still just doing dairy, right? No crops. Not yet, anyway?”
“Uh-huh. Just dairy.”
“Tough business,” he says. And with that, he lets it go.
And I’m reminded once again about how life can get complicated.
Andy’s no longer my friend, or anything else, if he ever was in the first place.
And the person who’s turning out to be my best friend likes the person I like (there’s Andy again, right in the middle of it).
And if my father has his way, we’re no longer dairy farmers.
If life is about change, as my mother always said, then I know I don’t want any part of it.
When I get home, everyone’s already asleep: a big relief because now I have some time to figure out how I’m going to rehash my date to everyone that satisfies their curiosity without having to get into specifics. On the kitchen table there’s a note for me:
C –
HOPE YOU HAD FUN WITH CATHY. LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING ALL ABOUT IT.
YOUR DAD.
P.S.
ANDY O CALLED.
13
Thanks for Calling
I can’t stop re-reading the last line of the note.
Not that there’s that much to read, but I do anyway. Over and over. Like if I read it enough times, new words that weren’t there before will suddenly jump off the page that will miraculously answer all my questions. But all I have are two words—three if the O counts.
What does it mean that he called? Called to talk? Of course to talk, idiot. But what about? Why now? To say that he was sorry for what he said, to say that he wanted to get back together? Back together. Back together to do what? Be friends but forget what happened? Or back together to be, well, back together. To be together when we’re not stoned, so we can really see each other and know what it means to be with other. Happily ever after. But somehow I have a feeling it’s not going to be that easy. That something’s about to be broken all over again.
I look at the kitchen clock. 11:15. Too late to do anything about it now. But it’s Friday night! Doesn’t everybody stay up a little later on Friday nights?
But then I think about the phone ringing at Andy’s house, his father rousted out of bed because of some goddamned kid without the common sense to know not to call at that hour. Some kid who just HAS to talk to his no-good son who, come to think of it, won’t help around the house, much less the farm. Don’t your friends have enough sense not to call in the middle of the night? And then maybe a slap, like the one Andy’s mother gave him the first time I was at his house for supper. But since it’s his father, it could be something worse, and Andy being Andy, might hit back, or least give him a push, and before you know it they’re trading punches, wrestling around on the floor, Andy’s mother screaming for them to stop but they just keep going.
And it would be all my fault.
And despite everything, Andy doesn’t deserve that.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, do my usual routine, knowing all along that it’ll be a while before sleep comes, if it does at all.
So I drag out the catalog from underneath my bed, because sometimes when I can’t sleep, just turning the pages, and looking at the same things I’ve always looked at, even if it’s stoves and refrigerators, calms me down. It’s something my mother used to do when I was little and I couldn’t settle down. She’d put me on her lap, and we’d look at it together, and before long I was out. It still works.
And as I get into bed and settle the catalog in my lap, I realize that it’s been a long time since I looked at him: my another. Even though it’s completely ridiculous and childish, I feel a little twinge of…what? Guilt? It’s like I’ve been neglectful, and he might feel bad that I haven’t been to see him for a while. But he’s still there, still smiling, still holding his chin, still thinking about something, even if it’s how soon he can relax, put a pair of pants on, get ready for another picture in another outfit, or even in another catalog.
I’d forgotten that I’d put the sketch of Andy next to him, the one I started that day in earth science when Mr. Osterman separated us, as if they could keep each other company. I always thought I might finish it, and give it to him for Christmas, but I never got around to it. I start to crumple it up, then stop, not ready to let go, not just yet.
And there’s still Ellen, the picture one, the only gift he gave me, stuck there, too, waiting for Andy to make up his mind about who he is. She’s going to be waiting a long time.
I know now that Andy is probably not going to be my another, any more than the man in his underwear could be. It comes to me slowly, like it’s in the corner of my eye and moving, and suddenly, it’s there in front of me, and there’s nothing to do but face it.
Why I suddenly know it, at midnight on a Friday night in November not long after I’ve turned sixteen years old, just after I’ve had my first and probably only date with a girl, I have no idea. But sometimes things choose us, rather than us choosing them. More of my mother’s wisdom—that’s what she said when I asked her once when I was very little why we lived on a farm and not in town and why my dad didn’t have a job in a bank or a factory or a hospital. Like the dads I’d learn about in picture books that she and I read together, over and over.
I want to be able to hope for Andy for just a little while longer. But maybe knowing that I could feel that way about a real person is enough.
Not long after that I fall asleep, and when I wake up the catalog is sitting on my chest, closed.
At breakfast the next morning I go over the whole date with Cathy with my father and Ellen: the bowling, the pizza, everything except the most important part. What would I say? I told Cathy Martin that I was in love with Andy Olnan and we fooled around, but first I had to get through the part where I told her that I liked boys.
“So am I right to assume that you’re going to ask her out again?” my father asks. Even though he’s worded the question like a prosecuting attorney, there’s something in his voice, a hopefulness that maybe I’ve turned out okay after all, that I just needed a little more time. Nothing wrong with a late bloomer, he’d say, so long as you bloom.
“Well, she asked me, remember. But maybe.”
Ellen gives me a look.
“But just as friends.”
My father frowns. “Oh. Well, nothing wrong with friends.”
It doesn’t seem right to offer him any encouragement that I’m going to live happily ever after with Cathy Martin, or with any other girl, for that matter. And that I told Ellen before him seems wrong, too, though I told someone. Ellen and Cathy: two down, how many more in my life to go? I know that, sooner or later, the talk with my father is coming. Not specifically about what happened with Andy Olnan, necessarily, but the truth. Or to put it another way, my big secret, though I’d rather not think of it that way, because then it sounds like I’m keeping something from him when I’m really not; it’s been there all the time. I’m the only one who feels like it’s a secret. I think of it as something on my to-do list: get through high school, go to college in the Twin Cities, tell my father that I’m gay. Or, given my father and how he feels about the English language and the importance of always using the right word at the right time, maybe the scientific term—homosexual—would be better.
But for today, the goal is sort things out with Andy, or at least figure out how to say goodbye.
I’m in the living room, the telephone on my lap, and for what feels like the most important conversation of my life, I actually have the whole house to myself. Ellen’s taken Anna into town to look for a new pair of winter boots because she’s already outgrown the ones we bought for her last year. My father’s out fixing the fence on the northern edge of our pasture so the cows don’t escape, not that they would anyway; if anything it’d be impossible to get them to leave. And of course that brings up the other dilemma in my life: what our future is, what happens next with the farm. It’s been there, on the fringes, trying to find a way in, but I keep pushing it out, locking the door. I have this idea that once I have Andy figured out, and it seems like I do, then I can move on to the next item on the list. I’ve got all of this under control, I think as I dial the number. I’m strong.
I’m not ready when it’s Andy who answers the phone. I was expecting the usual routine of asking to speak to Andy, please, followed by a little chit chat with his mother about Anna, the weather, safe things, followed by background comments from his sister, who’s probably sitting at the kitchen table because she just got out of bed, smoking a cigarette, about Andy’s boyfriend being on the phone or some other smart comment. But there he is, and there’s nowhere to go except through.
“My dad said you called last night.” I think about my tone of voice: all official business, not nasty, but not friendly either. The way my mother would be when she had to call to complain about Sears sending the wrong-sized dress, or when she wanted to know from the electric company why they had made a mistake in the bill. You don’t get anywhere being mean, she’d said when I asked her once why she didn’t sound like herself, but you can’t let them walk all over you either. I can’t see any reason to be mean to Andy. There’s no way that I could ever be, even though he’s hurt me. But to pretend that everything is fine when it’s not doesn’t seem right either. I’d like the size 6 sent to me immediately. There it is: the tone that I want.
“Hey,” he says. Hey. It’s soft, drawn out a little bit, all Andy. I picture him saying it, with a little half smile, his head cocked to one side, which makes his hair fall over one eye more than the other, his arms folded in front. I can feel the hardness in my throat, in my chest, which I didn’t realize was even there, starting to melt away, warmth spreading from my toes all the way up into my head.
I think I’m in trouble.
“So how ya’ been?” he asks.
“Okay.” Maybe if I keep it short, I can get out of this thing in one piece.
“So,” he says. He lets it hang out there for a few seconds. “So I heard you had a big date last night.” He chuckles.
“How’d you hear about that?” Even though I know perfectly well how. Somebody probably saw us at the bowling alley, or getting into Cathy’s dad’s car. Word gets around.
“You. On a date. Man, you surprise me.”
Man. The old Andy. I realize how much I’d missed it, how close he is at this very moment even over the telephone. How easy it would be for things to go back to the way they were. If I was just willing to…what? Go along? Forget?
“So spill it, Paulsen. What all did you guys do?”
“Well, it wasn’t really a date. It— ”
“It sure sounds like a date to me. Then what was it?”
“I don’t know.” My mother on the phone with her Sears voice is long gone. “I—I just thought it would be fun to do something with Cathy Martin.”
“Was it?”
Fun really doesn’t describe it when you spill your guts to someone about yourself. “We had a nice time,” I say.
“Did you get any?”
“Any what?” Even though I know perfectly well what he means.
“You know.”
“It wasn’t like that. We’re just friends. Good friends. She’s a good listener.”
“Only you would go out on date with a chick and talk.” Andy lets out a long sigh. “I was really hoping that maybe you were okay.”
“I am okay,” I say. “I’m pretty good, actually.”
“I mean okay as in, well, okay. Not…”
“Gay?”
“Um-hm.”
“You can say it. It’s not like it’s contagious or anything.”
“Look.” Then another long sigh. “I know I shouldn’t have called you what I did. That was bad. But I still want us to hang out. And I just thought that if you were liking girls now, then it would be easier, because that meant you were…okay.”
“As in not gay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I am. I’ve always been. I know that.”
More silence, both of us breathing. “If you just hadn’t done that…” He stops, then tries again. “If only you weren’t, then everything would be…good. With us. Being friends, I mean.”
“But I did do it. I did it because I— ”
“Jeez, don’t say it,” he says, his voice suddenly sharp. “Don’t even fucking say it.”
And so I don’t. I don’t need to. Because we both know that everything’s changed between Andy and me, and for good.
“I can’t do it,” Andy says. “I’m not like you. I’m not—”
“Ready?”
Andy doesn’t answer.
There’s nothing left to say. There’s just the two of us, and more breathing.
But even at the end, we try to be nice. Not just me. Andy, too. No names, no hanging up on each other.
“See you in school,” he says.
“See you,” I say. Because I will see him. Every day for the next couple of years.
More change. It’s not like my mother hadn’t warned me. If I wasn’t ready before, I’m ready now.
14
A Secret Life
And I do see him. Every day, several times a day. Gym, English, earth science, the bus. All of our usual places. It’s a small town, a small school, small everything, so there’s no way around it. We’re both there, but separate. In our own orbits, as my mother would have said. When she’d noticed me daydreaming, which I did (and do) often, she’d say, Carl? Where are you? Have you left our solar system entirely? And for a few months, at least, I’d been orbiting in the solar system of Andy Olnan. Now I’ve no one to orbit but myself, which really wasn’t possible, when you thought about it. A planet has to have a moon.
So in that way we seemed to have reached a sort of understanding. We’d have to co-exist somehow, keep the secret of what had happened between us. Except, of course, I hadn’t; Cathy knew the whole story, and Ellen a part of it, and while Ellen and I had not talked about it since, I was glad about that. It made it real. Whether Andy went and told anybody, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t imagine that he had. Because then it would have to be real to him, too, and he wouldn’t want that.
But still, I’m struggling to put a name to what happened with us, because if I can, then maybe I can understand it. We…what? Split up? Could you call it that if you weren’t really a couple in the first place? Or maybe it’s better to use my father’s “on the outs” description, though that made it seem like we’d eventually be back on the “in” again, which I know isn’t likely to happen. But I know that terminology doesn’t much matter when it comes to how you feel. You can still miss someone when they’re right there in front of you.
A few days after our date, there’s another invitation from Cathy. Only this time it’s not to bowl, but to get together at her house after school.
“You can come home with me on the bus, and then my mom will run you home.”
“I’ll have to get my dad to cover my chores,” I say, even though I know my father might be thrilled to know that I was getting together with Cathy again, even if it was just to be friends, and to know that there might still be hope. “But that sounds good. We need to get going on that stupid project for Osterman’s class.”
“Good. We can work on the project, but there’s…something else. It’s…sort of awkward to go into all of it on the phone.”
My stomach drops to the floor. “You heard something about me at school.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Andy Olnan, then.”
“You’re getting warmer, but let’s just wait until—”
“Tell me now. Please.” There he is, back in my orbit. Again.
“We’ll talk.”
Just as I figured, my father says, “Go, I’ll take care of things, be polite and be sure to wipe your feet and give the Martins my best.”
Cathy and I—after small talk on the bus about the project and what we have to do and how we wish Osterman would just slack off a bit on the homework—let ourselves in through the back door to the kitchen, where Cathy’s mother is stirring something in a bowl.
“We’ll be up in my room,” Cathy says. “We’re going to work on our earth science project.”
Her mother turns to me and smiles. “Nice to see you, Carl. How’s everything at your place? Your dad doing okay with everything?”
“He’s good.” I wonder what the “everything” is that she’s talking about, what’s been going around town about our maybe selling out. But in true Minnesotan fashion, she wouldn’t think of coming right out and asking if we’re really thinking of getting out of dairy farming. Too nosy, even though I’m sure she’s already heard things and would love to get the true story.
“And your little sister?”
‘She’s good too.”
“That’s good. She’s a real sweetie. Saw her out with…who’s the young lady who helps out at your place?”
“Ellen.”
“Oh, that’s right. The Hansen girl. She seemed real nice.”
“She is.”
“Bars will be out of the oven in about twenty minutes. Study hard.”
Her mother doesn’t say anything about leaving the door open, or why don’t you just work down here at the dining room table (so she can keep an eye on things). Maybe she knows, without even being told, that she has nothing to worry about with me. Or maybe she does know; Cathy seems like the kind of daughter that would tell her mother everything, and I didn’t exactly swear her to secrecy. And somehow I have a feeling that she would be fine with who I was too. Not just because she was Cathy’s mother, and Cathy turned out the way she did because of her. But also because maybe it was easier for someone else’s mother to be okay with it, since in the end it was going to be some other parents’ problem.
