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009. 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲
𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘄.
“𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋?” 𝐌𝐀𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐃, from the far end of the kitchen.
Lori heard the voice as she stepped into her house, her eyes low and stomach swelling with multiple emotions that she couldn’t even identify. Her head felt a bit heavy, and she didn’t know why, but it felt like that all the way home and now only intensified when she’d walked down the Harrington driveway. She thought it baffling that merely moments ago, she was standing there with him, not hating every second of it. Not every second. Mostly because she had her cassette back, and the mention of new Bowie tapes lifted her displeasure a tiny bit.
She’d walked down his driveway and up her own driveway with her eyes unfocused— which was unusual because she always had her eyes pinned on something, at least— and her shoes pounding on the pavement. She’d walked up the front steps, trying to pretend she wasn’t at least a little bit distracted by what had happened. Steve, was standing by his garage door, staring at the ground, until he heard her front door close. And then he had walked around the bend of his house, swirling the wrench in his hand and thinking. He glanced up to her window on his way.
On the way up her driveway, Lori had noticed something outside her aforementioned window. It was a ladder, a long ladder, leaning on the exterior wall of their house, reaching her windowsill. She had narrowed her eyebrows, but she was too busy thinking of other things to wonder about it.
Lori paused in the entryway of her house, her eyes heading right for Maureen, who was sitting at the head of their small dinner table. She had a mug in her hand, and a large newspaper spread out on the table, along with the cable phone.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Lori questioned, it was the first thing that came to mind. She was standing by the door, beginning to kick her shoes off.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dropping your cousin off,” Maureen replied back, her tone of voice casual. “Lor, you promised you would wait for him at least a few minutes.” Her shoulders slumped. “Please tell me you didn’t forget— what did we talk about?”
“I didn’t leave him there and I didn’t forget.” Lori narrowed her eyebrows, a dumbfounded look on her face. “The little shit nearly threw his shoulder out telling me to go home from all the way down the lot.” She said, not harmfully. She was walking over to the kitchen, away of the living room.
“Don’t call your cousin a little shit,” Maureen said, flipping through a page of the newspaper. “And what was the commotion, did you find out?”
“No.” Lori said, simply, as she stepped over to the fridge. “Why’s there a ladder outside my window,”
She scoffed at Lori’s lack of attention span. “A handyman came to fix it— remember it wouldn’t open? Go try it out later.”
“Why’d he leave the ladder,” She asked, more to herself than to her mom, her eyes searching. She made a face.
Maureen suspired. “Well, then.” she said, her lips forming into a tight line. “I might have to call Claudia and see what was up.”
“You should,” Lori mumbled, as she grabbed the jug of cold water. “We never got a pumpkin, by the way.” She spoke, while pouring water into a clean glass. Her voice was sarcastically casual, emitting that she would still like to have one.
She didn’t really know why she was still on about the pumpkins. It came to mind as soon as Maureen mentioned Claudia, and it was a topic that automatically just spilled out from curiosity, whether Lori wanted to talk about it or not. It was always racking on her brain.
“What d’you want with a pumpkin, Lor, Halloween is over.” Maureen said, her eyes focused on the words of the Hawkins Post.
“Nothing, I guess.” she brought the rim of the glass up to her lips. “So you haven’t seen?” Lori took a big sip of her water.
“Seen what?” Maureen questioned, her eyes focused. When Lori didn’t answer for a few moments, Maureen sighed. “Is something wrong?”
Lori widened her eyes suggestively. “Not really.” her tone of voice admitted that there was, in fact something wrong. “It depends who you ask in this place.”
“Oh come on, Lor — what are you trying to say?” Maureen turned slightly in her chair, facing her daughter who was leaning against the kitchen counter. “Is this what we’re doing, now, seriously?”
“What am I doing,” Lori lowered her eyebrows, remaining monotone.
“Trying to find things to hate about this town, I don’t know,” Maureen lifted her hand and let it fall on the table lightly. “I was waiting for this.”
“The only thing I’m suggesting is the fact that you’re not looking around,” Lori slowly stood up, growing defensive. “Shit’s weird here, ma.”
“Come on,” Maureen scoffed again. “I was waiting for when we’d have this conversation,”
Lori knew what she was talking about, but she didn’t let that show. “What conversation is there to have?” She said, her voice angry.
“Do you wanna talk about it,” Maureen let out a long breath. “We can talk about it.”
Lori placed her glass on the counter. “Talk about what.”
“What do you think,” Maureen lowered her eyes, her voice softening a bit.
Lori knew that meant her father, and she did not like to talk about her father, let alone even think about him. “Spare me, please.” she was about to roll her eyes and walk away.
Maureen flipped a page of the newspaper and placed her hand on top of it, sighing loudly. “There was nothing else I could do. With him moving and the divorce, Claudia brought the suggestion of Hawkins and mentioned there was a real nice house on the market— and she’d see about the realtor for us. I couldn’t say no.” she explained.
Lori tapped her foot on the ground.
“Shall I go on?” Maureen blinked. “Is that was you wanted to hear,”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear— what she wanted to hear was why he did it. Lori wanted to ask the question so badly, why did they divorce, but every time she mustered up the words, they never came out. Every time she was about to ask, her eyes stung and the worlds tumbled back down her throat and settled into her stomach— where they brewed into hatred.
Lori felt her throat tighten just a little bit. “He left us the house. We could’ve stayed.” she said instead of the question, holding her glass and staring right at her mother.
Maureen placed a hand on her forehead, rubbing it. “You don’t understand, my love.”
“I do understand,” Lori fought back bitterly, standing up straighter. Her heart was doing something in her chest.
“No, you don’t.” she replied, sternly. It was the tone of voice that kind of made silence seem heavy afterward, she was serious. Her eyes were now locked with her daughter’s. “And speaking of your father— there’s something on the stairs for you.” she then said, finally looking away.
“This is such bullshit,” Lori mumbled under her breath, as she placed her glass on the counter and proceeded to walk out of the kitchen, her stride powerful.
“And stop the cussing, please,” Maureen called after her, her voice echoing in the large house.
Lori’s hands were clenching into fists, and as she was walking through the living room to the staircase by the entrance, she tried not to think about what was awaiting her. It was a mystery, how Kent Philbin had actually sent something in the mail for his daughter— as he was cruising through the streets of California in a Mercedes convertible and they were in boring Indiana.
Put in perspective: Kent never got the Father of the Year award. Not once. And Lori knew that he wasn’t ever going to get it, even if he sent her something from across the country.
Anger was brewing in the pit of her stomach, as she walked over to the stairs and laid eyes on a cardboard box, that had a shipping label on the top of it. It had the shipping address of somewhere in California, with their address at the bottom, and the first thing she thought of was how he knew it. Pressing her lips together tightly, and walked up to the box and grabbed it in her hands, bringing it up to her chest.
Maureen was watching her daughter from her spot at the kitchen table, her eyes heavy.
As Lori began to step up the stairs, she heard the phone ring and within seconds, her mom was answering it. She thought it funny, how she could hear her mom’s voice sounding throughout the house, and her father’s voice in the back of her mind. Her stomach was turning with each step up the stairs, all the way to the top. She turned into her room and shut the door with her foot, her eyes on the box in her hands.
Her room was so painfully out of order that she had to place the box on the edge of her bed because piles of clothes were covering most of it. Her bed now had a frame and her mattress was on top of it, in the corner of her room. The moving truck had disposed her furniture a few nights ago, and everything was sort of placed all over, like someone had shaken up her room from Michigan and dropped it in Indiana.
She wasted no time in reaching for the pair of scissors in the hallway that Maureen had been using to cut open their moving boxes the night before, and reached for the package. With the sharp end of the scissors, she sliced the tape and unfolded the edges of cardboard, revealing a sheet of white parchment. She grabbed the sheet and let it fall somewhere behind her.
In the box, there was a Jersey. A baseball jersey with a team logo that Lori recognized. Immediately, she thought of her father. Instant memories began to flood her mind— of when she was little and sat in the living room, where her father watched every baseball game ever played. He was a big baseball fan, and it sort of stabbed her that she couldn’t remember his favorite team— because when she got old enough to remember things like that, she’d begun to drown out her father. She recognized the team, the Cincinnati Reds, because it was the team she always rooted for. Now, she couldn’t care less about baseball, the jersey, or the stupid team.
Her chest began to fire with a certain anger as she picked it up in her hands. She knew it was typical of him to send something that he liked, but still, she hated the fact that her father had sent her a jersey, of a sport he knew she didn’t care about, for his last attempt at being a dad.
She didn’t really know what she was expecting from the package, but she knew it wouldn’t make her overjoyed. And she was right, she was nothing close to thankful, because what was she going to do with a jersey?
Annoyed, she picked the box up and let it fall to the floor, where she shoved it under her bed with her foot. The jersey, she placed it on the top of her dresser, carelessly. She could’ve shoved it under her bed, too, so as to never see it again, but for some reason she didn’t think of that. She tossed it on the dresser without care, and then let out a long sigh before sitting on her bed and staring up at the ceiling.
After eight o’clock, the maze that was her room, was slowly being put into place.
Lori had sat at the dinner table with her mom, over plates of stir fry and underneath the dim lights of their small crystal chandelier. They didn’t talk all that much, mostly because the day’s conversation was still weighing on both of them, since they hadn’t talked about Kent Philbin since Michigan. Lori talked about her day at school, which wasn’t much of an explanation because there wasn’t much that actually happened. She left out the part with Steve and his driveway, and the cassette tape and her locker.
At one point, Maureen had asked about the party. And it was confirmed, Lori knew now, that Maureen had let her go on purpose. Somehow she knew about the party— probably from Dustin, which Lori was going to have to grill him about sometime soon— and didn’t seem all that mad about the fact that the teenager had taken the car without permission. Maureen wasn’t angry because, precisely, it was her plan, and she wanted her daughter to get out in the new town and have fun, whether or not she actually did have fun in the end.
Lori had mostly calmed down by the time dinner was over, and she barely thought about the jersey. Her anger had settled just a bit and Maureen was thankful for it.
Now, she was back in her bedroom, standing in the center beside the dim lamp on her bedside table. The sun was going down, painting the sky in a navy blue with streaks of yellow near the horizon, and she’d opened her window. Thank god, the window could open now. It let a cold breeze slip in.
She still had half of it left to go. She’d moved the dresser and placed all her clothes inside of it, not bothering to fold some of them because they were just going to end up hanging out of the drawer anyway; her bookshelf was against the wall but she still had to unpack the box of books; the rugs were on the hardwood floor and her backpack on top of one. Her desk still needed to be moved, her books needed to be unpacked, and there was still four walls that needed to be covered in band posters and movie sheets.
Just before she was about to bend down and grab the box of books, unseal it and place them on her shelf— she heard a noise outside. It was the slamming of a backdoor, followed by a series of heavy footsteps that repeated as if someone was pacing back and forth. She ignored it at first, because a lot of people slam their doors and pace outside when shit gets hefty. Until she heard a loud, stressful groan coming from the backyard of the house next to hers.
Automatically, she knew it was Steve, for obvious reasons being the noise was coming from his backyard, and it sounded exactly like him. Now, she really tried to ignore it, because she’d had enough of him that day, and reached for the box to cut it open.
But it went on. The pacing, the anxious sighs and occasional angry groan, went on for a few minutes and Lori eventually found herself distracted by it. Which made her mad, evidently, because she knew it was Steve that was bothering her. She could’ve put on a record to drown him out, but today she was doing a lot of things that she normally didn’t do.
She rolled her eyes to the back of her head, and by some unknown force, she somehow found herself walking around her desk and stepping up to her open window. She pushed it open as much as it could go.
Looking down, she spotted him in his backyard, pacing back and forth on his wooden patio. His hands were tangled in his hair, pulling with an air of stress, and his face was tense with emotion.
“Hey, Harrington!” Lori called out, loud enough so he could hear her. “Some of us are trying focus around here, you know!”
He stopped pacing, and turned around quickly, finding her in the rectangle slot of her window, way up high with her hair framing her face. He had one hand in his own hair, and the other one pulled away, clutching over his stomach.
“What?” he called back, his tone of voice exasperated.
She positioned her elbows on the sill of the window, crossing them as the breeze tiptoed up her arms. “I said, some of us are trying to focus— and I’d like to get my shit done with my window open, if you don’t mind.” she said. She was half-teasing him for fun, jokingly sounding serious. She only half-meant it.
“Jesus, Philbs,” he scoffed, looked away and was about to say something else, but then stopped, and changed his mind. “Look, I’m sorry okay? I just—” he cut himself off with a loud groan, and then he turned away and began to pace again.
“What the fuck,” she mumbled to herself, her voice slightly confused at his mannerisms. “I was just kidding, Steve,” she shouted. “Sort of.”
“Whatever, I can’t— just can’t deal with this right now,” he spurted out, and then mid-pace, he walked over to the table on his patio, and placed his hands on the edges, breathing out heavily.
“I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but are you alright,” Lori said, her voice a bit hesitant because she was asking such a question that she never really asked anyone. “What’s that,”
She was referring to a piece of yellow paper on his table, that he was staring at with hard eyes.
“Does it look like it?” he retorted back without looking at her, with annoyance. “God dammit, fuck,” he cursed, and shut his eyes harshly.
“In light of what happened this afternoon, I’m gonna be nice,” Lori called, as she rotated her neck around, stretching it. Her voice remained monotone. “What’s going on.”
He let out another groan. “Why do— it’s just my dad, okay, there,” he said, his tone of voice still annoyed. “And a bunch of other shit— my car is in the garage and I got this thing I needa do tonight but, fuck,” he stopped and placed his head in his hands. “Shit.”
She glanced to his driveway, where there were no cars parked. “Dad’s a bitch?”
She knew well what father issues was like.
Steve didn’t answer to that, just stared down at the paper.
“Right, then,” Lori called out, at no response.
“Just— I’ll let you know if I need your help,” Steve said, emitting that he really wanted her to fuck off, his voice a bit lower now. “Okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, her eyebrows narrowing and her lips forming into a tight line. She didn’t want to say that she wouldn’t help him anyways, because he seemed distraught enough.
So, she stared a him for another moment, wondering how his mood changed from casual and lighthearted— like he’d been in the driveway that afternoon— to visibly irritated, anxious, and angry. But then again, the same thing had happened to Lori, she just didn’t want to admit it.
With that, she shut her window tight, turned around, and went back to the box of books and tried not to think about Steve and his mayhem in the backyard next to hers. She thought she knew what it was— he was mad about his dad just like she was mad about hers. But she didn’t know the half of it, and she was going to find that out within hours.
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