Bermuda Grass

Chapter 1: Brandy

When Ken isn't home by 10:00 on Saturday nights I start to wonder. When he isn't home by 11:00 I start to worry. When he isn't home by 12:00 and I haven't heard from the police or anything I start to get frustrated, and when he isn't home by 1:00 and hasn't texted me back all night I normally just give up. It's not unusual for him to be out this late. He likes the club scene, likes to order top shelf martinis and laugh way too loud at everyone's jokes, likes to rub up on college boys in tight t-shirts who get turned on by nice cars. If he's not home and he's not dead then that's where he is, and he won't be back until morning so there's nothing for me to do but turn up the heat, turn off the porch light, and snuggle into a corner of the couch with a blanket and some Netflix until I can calm my churning insides enough to go to sleep.

Maybe I have a right to be mad, and maybe anyone else would yell and rage and demand that he come home, but I don't like to fight. We've never fought, and no matter how many nights he's gone MIA like this I've never had the desire to confront him because I'm not a jealous person, and anyway it's not so bad spending time alone. I can read, or watch the stupid reality makeover shows that Ken hates so much, or talk to Brandy Baker on the phone for hours without him sitting there rolling his eyes and asking impatiently when I'm going to be through. It's my me time, it's when I relax and recover from all the stress of the week, it's when I crack open a beer by myself and try to find uneven edges in the hardwood and remember the taste of sweet tea with so much sugary syrup that you almost have to water it down. It's when I recall what it's like to live in a place where nobody gets their undershirts dry cleaned, where if you're even lucky enough to have a yard it's nothing but three square feet of sand and gravel with maybe a few blades of Bermuda grass struggling through.

Ken's yard is all Kentucky Bluegrass, soft and fine and bright green. Supposedly some 'immigrants with a riding mower' as he calls them come out once a week and touch things up, but I've never seen them. I guess I'm always in class. It's the same with the housekeeper that comes on Tuesdays and Fridays and the county kid who comes through the neighborhood every now and then and washes our cars. I never see them, all I see is everything looking perfect and beautiful one hundred percent of the time, and sometimes it takes everything I have not to remind Ken that I used to be one of those people, a poor, unsightly intruder in dozens of upscale gated communities just like this one, sweeping up grass clippings in ratty old jeans while I watched big men with strong jaws and business suits slide into their sleek sports cars and take off for something that I imagined was far more important than anything I'd ever be privy to. I can't tell him that because he doesn't like to talk about that part of my life. He doesn't like to dwell on the fact that we come from two vastly different worlds that even after five years sometimes still don't seem to quite fit together.

The house is big and silent now, even more so than during the day. When it's light outside the house is full of sunshine, the view from the bay window is the bright red and orange of changing leaves, chocolate labs and golden retrievers with bejeweled collars or bandanas around their necks jogging next to their spandex clad owners, sprinklers misting over glistening lawns, still shockingly green even as the temperatures fall and frost crusts over them in the mornings. At night the house becomes so dark though, and the feeble glow of a couple lamps never seems enough against the cold, black expanse of the living room window. Sometimes I fall asleep on this sofa and wake up at four or five a.m. to bright headlights in the driveway and Ken weaving his way drunkenly up the porch steps. I'll kiss him and help him to bed, but I won't ask where he's been or what he's been doing because really that's just a silly question.

I still have several hours to wait until that happens tonight though, if it even does. Some nights he doesn't come back, just goes straight to work in the morning like he does every other day of the week, so at about 5:30 if I still haven't seen him I'll look online to see if a black Jaguar XK has been found in a ditch anywhere, and if it hasn't then I'll go to bed. It just usually seems to take me a long time to get to sleep.

My phone chirps at me as I'm flipping through my Netflix queue so I pick it up to see what it wants. It's a text from Brandy, a picture of her at what looks like Johnny and June's, her hair in two long braids and her plaid shirt hiked up way too high and missing a few too many buttons to be acceptable anywhere but a bar. She's wearing denim shorts that barely cover two inches of the top of her legs and a long, sparkly belly button ring, with a beer in one hand and her tongue sticking out of her mouth. She's clearly drunk, although that doesn't come as much of a surprise, but it does make me a little reluctant to answer the phone when it starts to ring a couple seconds later.

"Dustin, come out tonight!" she whines into my ear, and then I think she says something else but I can't make it out over the loud music and unintelligible chatter of about a thousand different voices in the background.

I knew she was going to ask. She doesn't ask too much anymore, but tonight is kind of a big deal. "I can't," I tell her. I can, but I won't.

"What do you mean you can't?" she demands, except that her 'can't' sounds a lot more like 'cain't.' I used to sound like that too, back before I met Ken.

"I just…it's a long drive," I try, "all the way out to the county. I wouldn't be back by the time Ken got home."

"So?" she protests. "He probably wouldn't even notice if you were there or not. Just throw on some flannel and come out, you can sleep at my place."

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. I'm too tired to go out tonight, and even if I wasn't I still wouldn't go. It's just too jolting to jump back into that world all at once after so many years in this one. I'd rather bring little parts of it to me, go out to lunch with my mom or have Brandy bring the baby and come stay at my house for a day or two while Ken is out of town on business. Even that can be a tough adjustment sometimes, and that's a far cry from just waltzing into Johnny and June's and getting smashed with all my old friends from high school. They wouldn't know what to think of me now, and more importantly I wouldn't remember how to have a single ounce of respect for any of them. "Brandy, it's just not a good night for that," I tell her.

"What do you mean?" she asks again. "How is it not a good night? It's the only night, Dustin! It's the five year - "

"I know," I interrupt. It's the five year anniversary of the day the Wagoner brothers, Brandy's neighbors and my second cousins, overdosed on Opana in their grandmother's trailer. It's the five year anniversary of the day I realized I needed to get out of the county as soon as possible before I got caught on the merry-go-round just like everybody else. It's the five year anniversary of the day I got in my truck and made the hour long drive out to Ken's house, finally told him yes, told him I'd do whatever just as long as he'd get me out of there for good. It's the five year anniversary of the day I jumped headfirst into something I've been just a little bit unsure of ever since, and Ken not being here tonight kind of feels like a sign…but I can't let myself think like that because I'm sure as hell not going back.

"So then you should come out!" Brandy urges. "It's been five years and we're all doing awesome, Casey and Lee would have wanted us to celebrate!"

"Casey and Lee would have wanted us smoke ice out of a broken light bulb in the back of the trailer park," I say flatly, "but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. They were dumbasses, Brandy. I'm not going to go out and celebrate them dying in the absolute most white trashy way possible, it makes all of us look bad."

She clicks her tongue at me. "You're being snobby," she points out, and she's right, but it's kind of hard not to be. I'll freely admit that I am and always was embarrassed to have to call those two idiots my cousins, and I'm not going to act fake sad and try to make it seem like they didn't deserve exactly what they got. The only thing I gleaned from their death was a wakeup call, but apparently I'm the only one who even got that. All of my other friends are either still living in the county or are in jail, and of the ones who aren't in jail probably half already have kids, two thirds are doing hard drugs, and three quarters still live in a trailer.

"Fine, it doesn't have to be about Casey and Lee if you don't want it to," she concedes. "Just…come out and have a few drinks with your old friends. It'll be fun."

"Mmhmm…" I'm a little skeptical about that. "Let me guess what you have planned for tonight," I say, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. "Everyone from the entire county is going to meet at Johnny and June's, get completely wasted, have unprotected sex with each other, and then drive home and pray that they don't get their third DUI."

She laughs because she's drunk and twenty-three but still hasn't finished her GED and she thinks I'm joking. She always thinks I'm joking, and maybe I am a little bit, maybe I don't really mean to be this harsh, but it's hard not to be bitter when you come from a place where the biggest achievements in anyone's life are graduating from trade school as a certified electrician and moving out of their parents' single wide and into one of their own. "I mean, you're pretty much right," she confesses, "at least about everyone being here. Well, actually Chassity Clemmons can't come because she couldn't get off work, but like…Sterling's here, Tasha's here, Wayne's here, basically all your cousins are here…oh yeah, and Evan's here."

I can hear the sly lilt of her voice as she adds that last name to the list, can feel the way my heart starts to beat a little faster. "Evan wasn't even friends with the Wagoners," I accuse weakly, just for something to say. "He hated them."

"I know," she responds in a self-satisfied sort of way, "but I think he thought you might be here."

"Why the hell would he think that?" I haven't talked to Evan in at least a couple months, and even that was just texting. I haven't seen him in probably a year. I had to cut it off, it was getting dangerous.

"Because…I might have told him I was going to try to get you to come…"

"Dammit Brandy," I mutter. There's no point in asking why in the world she was talking to Evan, even if they're not really friends it's impossible to live in the county and not see every single other resident at least once a month. There's exactly one grocery store and one Walmart, one post office and one bar, one nursing home where everyone's grandparents live and everyone's girlfriend works, two gas stations and if there are two churches it's only because the Baptists and Nondenominationalists just couldn't find a way to get along. Of course Brandy has seen Evan recently, everyone has seen everyone else recently besides me because I don't want to see any of them…except for Evan. Honestly I want to see him so badly right now that it almost seems like it would be worth it to just jump in my car and gun it towards the county line. "Why would you tell him that?" I demand, but it doesn't really sound like a demand, it sounds like I'm giving in even though I don't want to.

"Because," she says, "I miss you, and Evan misses you, and I thought if he was here you might actually come." She pauses for a moment and I imagine her taking a sip of her beer and fidgeting with the end of her braid. "And," she adds as an afterthought, "because it's your anniversary but Ken's not there just like he's always not there, so I thought you might be lonely and…Evan's your Bermuda grass."

It makes my gut clench a little to hear that term, the one that she and I coined together back when we were stupidly young and life seemed like it was just destined to work out no matter what. She's not supposed to say that to me anymore though, not now that I'm older and ought to know better…

As teenagers in the county Evan and I spent every single summer since we were thirteen working for Brandy's dad's lawn care company, and the very bane of Mr. Baker's existence, the thing he hated more than anything else in the world, was Bermuda grass. "It's coarse, it's ugly, and it's all over the place," he used to grumble angrily as he pulled big chunks of it up from the root and brandished them in our faces. "Crowds out all the nice grass if you let it, and no matter how many times you pull it up it's always coming back." Then he'd wipe his dripping brow and give us a dark sort of look, and I'd try to give him one back, act like I felt exactly the same way, but secretly I never thought Bermuda grass was all that bad. It was just trying to grow where it belonged, and sure, it wasn't as pretty as the fancy, foreign, expensive grasses all the suburban upper middle class lawns wore like a badge of honor, but a few little patches here and there in a backyard weren't going to hurt anyone as far as I was concerned. There was even something comforting in knowing that if it all went to hell, if you suddenly couldn't pay to have a landscaper come twice a week anymore and your lush, green Creeping Bentgrass all dried up and died, at least your Bermuda grass would be back. There was never any doubt about that.

I think everyone should have a little Bermuda grass.

I lean my head against my hand, rest my elbow on the arm of the couch, and stare out at the dark window. "I told you to stop calling him that," I remind her, because ever since I called things off the last time it's just been easier not to think about it. "I told you I don't want to do that anymore, I have a good thing going and I can't afford to mess it up."

"I've had a lot of good things going," she tells me musingly. "Doesn't mean I didn't run back to Sterling every time."

"You're too good for Sterling," I say, a fairly transparent attempt to change the subject but maybe I'll get lucky and she'll be too drunk to notice. "I don't know why you do that, he's a piece of shit pillhead and he's a terrible father. You're just settling."

"Yeah," she says. It comes off as a little too casual, but I guess we have had this conversation about a million times before. "Maybe you are too though, ever thought about that?"

I have, so it's not exactly news. Granted I didn't expect Brandy to ever really catch on, but I'm pretty comfortable with the concept myself. "Settling for money," I shoot back. "Settling for a stable partner and a nice house and an education that's all paid for, settling for being out of the county, yeah, I think I'll take it."

"Suit yourself," she states airily, "but you'd know better than me how hard it is to get rid of Bermuda grass. I really don't even think it's possible to be honest, so I'm done. I'm just going to let my Bermuda grass take over the whole yard."

"You don't have a yard, you live in a trailer," I snap. "I have a yard and there's not a single blade of Bermuda grass in the whole damn thing, so suck my dick, Brandy, I don't care if Evan's there, I'm not coming out tonight."

She clicks her tongue again and I can hear her long acrylic nails tapping against the outside of her phone. "Bitch," she hisses icily.

"Cunt," I retort.

She laughs at that, the high-pitched sort of cackle that she always adopts when she's been drinking. "I hear the sassy redneck coming out now," she teases. "Your accent's coming back."

"Never," I counter, making sure not to land too hard on the R because that would just prove her right.

"Fine," she huffs. "Don't come then. I'll just go tell your Bermuda grass that you're about to break out the Roundup."

"Fine, tell him," I agree, and I act like I don't care but I do. I don't want to break out the Roundup, I want to throw open the gate and turn on all the sprinklers and let him grow wherever the fuck he wants to because Evan is the one thing about the county that ever felt good to me, and nothing has ever felt as good since. Nothing has ever been that hard to resist.

I hang up the phone and set it down next to me, digging my fingertips into my own chest like that will make my heart stop pounding so wildly. I'm pretty good at lying to myself, and barring that I'm pretty good at thinking clearly, weighing pros and cons, deciding what's going to be best for me in the long run in every situation I'm put in, but for some reason all of that just goes straight out the window when it comes to Evan. He's my Bermuda grass, and no matter how hard I try I just can't get him to go away because that's how fucking grass grows and that's life. There's always that one person you keep coming back to no matter what, that person who isn't polished or good looking but always there, that person who isn't everything you want but who you know if all else fails you could probably be pretty close to happy with, so it's for that reason that I pick up my phone again, scroll to his number, and type the words I need you. Because right now, in this exact moment, I really, really do.

This isn't the first time I've done this, far from it, and every time I've tried to end it before it hasn't lasted long. I had really hoped that those couple weeks in July of the two of us frantically texting back and forth at all hours of the day and night would be the end of it, but as usual it appears that it's not. It just can't be, not when it's our five year anniversary and Ken is out at a club somewhere buying drinks for nineteen-year-olds with gelled hair and airbrushed abs. Not when I'm still alone in this house that feels like it just keeps getting bigger and emptier every night. Not when all the county kids are out at Johnny and June's quite ironically getting shitfaced to celebrate the useless lives of two dumbasses who were so into getting shitfaced that it killed them, none of them even for a second caring or being impressed by the fact that I actually got a degree from a four-year university and am currently in grad school, or that I live in a 6,000 square foot house and drive a BMW…and it's just tonight, I swear it's just tonight, but I almost feel like right now I'd rather be sleeping in the bed of a pickup truck snuggled up tightly to someone who feels lucky to have me than be here for another second.

I shouldn't send this message, the one that's all typed out and ready to go and says something so stupid. I know, deep down I know, that nothing good will ever come of this but it feels like maybe if I try hard enough I could at least make myself believe that it will. I want to believe it so badly, so I talk myself out of thinking and hit send, feeling more than just a little bit sick and guilty as I do it because Evan's a good and sweet person and nothing I've done in my life has ever been fair to him, but I know I've still got him because less than a minute later I have a reply and all it says is, I'm coming.

My hands are practically shaking with anticipation as I set my phone down again, and if I've ever needed anything more than this then I truly don't remember what that feels like.