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“I’ve never been here before in my life,” Ted says.
He’s steering the rental car with one hand and his other hand rests on Rebecca’s thigh, their fingers twisting together. His palm warms her through the fabric of her jeans. It doesn’t quite feel real, sitting in the passenger seat while Ted drives them down the country road Beard grew up on. Their phone signals keep going in and out, and in lieu of GPS they have to peer out the car windows at the house numbers on the mailboxes. “I never went home with him for holidays like I did with some of my other friends, because he wasn’t going home for the holidays at all. Beard was the kind of kid who got special permission to stay in the dorm year round. Just him and the international students, sometimes.”
“Did you ever stay with him?”
Ted smiles. He takes his eyes off the two-lane road just long enough to glance at her. “Sometimes.” The smile fades right away. “But it wasn’t like—you know, it wasn’t like the other night.”
If Rebecca was a protagonist in a film, this would be the moment she’d wonder out loud, in a cheeky dismantling of the fourth wall, where she could find her copy of the manual that explains how to conduct yourself in the days that follow a drunken hook-up with two longtime best friends who happen to be your employees. Was that the first date? And if so, where might she locate the intermediate-level manual, the one that explains how to navigate what happens next? Because she’s pretty sure this—an unexpected trip to rural Illinois to take care of Beard, who’s been overseas a few days already, burying his mother and clearing out her house—is taking the place of whatever a second date might be.
But she doesn’t actually feel the need for a manual. Ted is infinitely recognizable to her. They’ve barely let each other out of sight since Beard left for the states. They haven’t had more sex, not without Beard, not after things changed so suddenly and he was there and then he wasn’t, but she’s shared a bed with him every night. Talked through this trip with him—the strong feeling, arrived at separately, that Beard needed them both. A Beard manual might be useful, but she wouldn’t want one. She likes mysteries, and she misses him and is glad she’s about to see him, and she’s good at other people’s crises. And her days of following instructions about herself are long gone.
Sometimes you have a threesome with people you’ve known very well for years, and the next day one of their mothers dies, and you do what needs to be done, even if it requires three commercial flights and a sleepless, jetlagged night in Chicago and a two-hour drive deep into the country.
The road Beard’s mother lived on—and the land surrounding it—is almost unnaturally flat. The yards behind the small wooden houses give way almost immediately to soybean fields, and the visible horizon point is miles and miles away. At home, there are flocks of sheep as you get farther away from the city, and radiant green hills that cut the sky into portions. This morning has been full of cows and junkyards and endless autumn clouds.
Ted pulls suddenly into a gravel driveway that leads to a dilapidated carport leaning against a small white house. He parks behind a U-Haul pickup truck. “You ready?” he asks, and they both unbuckle their seatbelts as soon as he’s stopped the car.
But Beard rushes out before they can exit the vehicle, wearing jeans and a checkered shirt and his KC Sines Original cap, moving faster than his typical steady gait allows. “Hey,” he says, climbing into the backseat. “You all must be hungry. There’s a Chili’s next town over, and we’ll get there right when they open for lunch.”
Rebecca would like to give Beard a hug. He was estranged from his mother, who spent the last couple years of her life looking for signs from Q. She would like to use the restroom. She would like to see the inside of the house. She’s here to do what needs to be done, but she’d like to know what that means.
“Heck yeah, Southwestern egg rolls!” exclaims Ted, who rebuckles as he puts the car in reverse.
At Chili’s, Ted slides into the booth next to Beard. For just a second, he lays his head against Beard’s shoulder, a little micro-rest that makes him smile up at Rebecca as she settles herself into the facing booth.
Ted orders a beer, but switches to water when Beard asks for unsweet iced tea. They order egg rolls and quesadillas, dinner quantities of food even though it’s lunch. When their orders are in, Rebecca excuses herself to the restroom. When she comes back, there’s been a shift between Ted and Beard’s bodies, and Rebecca can tell they’re holding hands under the table. She feels a flare of preemptive anger at anyone who’d dare mess with them. Ted notices her noticing, and stretches his free hand across the table to take hers. The warmth of his grip is comforting, but the pit of longing within her only grows wider. She wants to hold Beard’s hand, too. She wishes she could get up and sit on his other side, press against him with something approaching Ted’s abandon, help him feel squeezed and loved and held up on all sides. A second date, now with mortality and its aftermath. She has the instincts, but she doesn’t have the delivery. She knows what she wants but she’s frozen. Sitting still in the booth—as opposed to a moving vehicle—makes it more surreal than ever to be so suddenly in America, in a chain restaurant at a not quite noon that feels like six p.m. on a Tuesday she’d normally spend at work.
“How are,” she starts. “How are, um, things at the house?”
Beard rotates his neck slowly, a stretch she herself often performs to relieve tension, and the motion creates a series of audible pops. “Things are interesting.”
“Did she have a will?” Ted asks.
Beard shrugs with a grimace. “She did, but it’s a mess. She made a lot of handwritten changes. Hard to decipher. I hired a lawyer and he’s sorting through everything. Other than cleaning out the house, there isn’t much for me to do. And about the house—” He pauses to look at Rebecca. “This pit stop is a calculated move on my part. Gotta ease you into shitty American things like my mother’s horrible house.”
Rebecca stiffens. “I’m certain I can handle it.”
Beard manages to nod and grimace at the same time. “You can. Doesn’t mean the buffer isn’t necessary.”
⁂
The house is completely full. It’s a stark contrast to the empty sky, the vast stretch of farmland. Each room is crammed with layers of belongings, the decomposition process having begun long before Beard’s mother’s life ended. At first, it’s difficult to breathe, walking room to room and feeling the sheer weight of stuff. Rebecca hates clutter. Fears it, even. She looks at a desk piled high with papers, and imagines each year of bills and letters and junk like a ring in the trunk of a tree.
“This is after I’ve been here three days,” Beard reminds them. “I’ve taken that rental truck to the dump every day but there’s always more.”
“She was a hoarder,” Ted says softly, the weight of Beard’s mother’s possessions overriding his usual tact. “I didn’t know that.”
She feels a little nauseated—the mustiness, the recent but still-vague death, the way none of the rooms have proper edges or right angles because every wall is softened by piles of stuff. She glances at Ted. He’s pale, and she thinks he might be nauseated too. They’ve talked about their fathers recently, the delusion of self-protection that made Ted keep the details of his father’s death to himself for so long, the related delusion that made Rebecca try to convince herself she could avoid confronting the distance between herself and her parents. It’s strangely comforting to watch Ted process new information about a person who’s been his best friend for nearly thirty years.
“Most of the houses around here aren’t like this,” Beard says, fixing Rebecca with a stare again. He points at the wall where a TV lies nestled in magazines. “The woman on this side runs a little music studio out of hers. The guy on the other side of her gave me my first copy of The Anarchist Cookbook when I was fifteen.”
“Not all Trumpers and QAnon out here,” Ted reinforces. He glances at Rebecca too. “We know.”
“Of course,” she says, although she hadn’t thought about it much, hadn’t thought about what stereotypes she might confront because she hadn’t known what she’d find here. “How can we help?”
Beard bows his head for just a moment. “Thanks,” he says. “Trash bags are in that box by the door. We’ll start another load.”
They work quietly—almost in silence but for the rustle of paper. Beard googles hours for the nearest recycling center, then joins Rebecca in piling magazines and papers into bags they’ll empty out when they get to the facility. She tries not to let her curiosity about publication dates and cover photos and old headlines distract her. She doesn’t suggest that some of this stuff might sell at a thrift shop. Ted is alone in a room down the hall, and Rebecca imagines the expression on his face as he tackles whatever he finds there, letting the thought of him distract her from focusing too intently on the objects in her hands.
After an hour or so, Ted emerges with an armful of clothes on hangers, a rust orange jumper in front. “Hey bud,” he says gently, “are you thinkin’ about a Goodwill donation pile, or—”
As soon as Beard sees the clothes, he pushes up to standing from his crouched position on the living room floor and bolts to the front door. He doesn’t close it behind him, and Rebecca and Ted can see him grip the railing and lean over the side of the porch to puke.
“I triggered him,” Ted whispers.
“No,” Rebecca whispers back. “If we weren’t there, he would’ve found those clothes and he would have been alone.”
Beard comes back right after.
“I’m so sorry,” Ted says. “Whatever it was—”
“Nah, don’t be,” says Beard, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That shade of orange—bad memories.” He glances at the armful of clothes again. “Goodwill pile, for sure.” He walks down the hall to the bathroom, and Rebecca’s eyes widen when she hears the sounds of tooth-brushing.
“He’s been sleeping here,” Ted says, incredulous.
“Have you been staying here?” Rebecca asks when Beard walks back into the room.
Beard nods. He points at the sunken couch and she notices, then, that he’s cleared a space around it, and left a water glass on the end table. The everywhere of the mess isn’t actually everywhere.
“Coach,” Ted says. “No. We’re getting a hotel room. You’re doing so much, you don’t have to stay here—”
Beard shrugs. “No shame in living like this.”
“No,” says Ted. “No shame, but—”
“You could still use some space from it,” adds Rebecca.
“It wasn’t full-on hoarding when I lived here. That started later, I think, after my dad left and she just…turned in on herself.”
“I think—” Ted starts, then cuts himself off.
“No, what?” Beard says.
“I think we should call Servpro and have them clear all this stuff out. You don’t need to sort through every piece of it. If they’ve got any appointments available tomorrow, in twenty-four hours it could all be gone. We could pay off anything she owes and be done with it. You can sell from a distance, or—I don’t know if it’s possible to just surrender a house, wash your hands of it, but we could learn how to do that, too.”
“Just have someone else take everything away?”
“Yeah,” Ted says. “They won’t bat an eye. Those fellas see this kinda stuff all the time.”
“I’ll think about it,” Beard says.
⁂
It’s late afternoon by the time they check in at the Holiday Inn not far from the Chili’s, and as soon as they make it into their double room Rebecca co-opts the shower and pulls on her pajamas and gets into bed, time zones and jet lag be damned. Realistically, she’ll need to dress again later, when they strike out in search of dinner, but the possibility of feeling comfortable now is too enticing.
Ted sits at the desk, making a few notes and scrolling on his phone. Beard takes a shower as soon as Rebecca is done, and when he’s out, standing in the middle of the room in boxers and a t-shirt, Rebecca lifts up the bedcovers and tells him he’s welcome.
“Friday actually happened, didn’t it,” he says when he’s under the covers with her.
“It did,” she says, and for once she doesn’t look at Ted or draw from his energy. “Is that all right?”
His mouth pulls up at the corners. “Yeah, I mean. Yeah.”
“Let me rub your back,” she says. “Take off your shirt?”
He sits up again, turning away from her to shuck off his shirt, and stays facing away from her when he lies back down. His skin is a little cool, and she warms him up, and feels warmth spreading within her. The first time was easy—they were drunk and happy and open. But this feels easy, too.
“Servpro office closes in twenty minutes,” Ted says from the table. “If you wanna speak to a human, anyway.”
Beard sighs, and Rebecca pulls him so close she’s nearly spooning him. “Can you call?” he asks.
“Sure can.”
Ted steps onto the small concrete balcony, but they can hear through the glass when the call connects. Not all of the words, just some: “…passed away recently…hard time…we need a little help…”
“You want to know something I appreciate about Ted?” Rebecca murmurs, the words almost lost to Beard’s shoulder blade. She traces the narrow lines tattooed onto his bicep. He hums very briefly, an open sound, so she continues. “He doesn’t assume I’m unaffected by things even when other people do. I imagine that’s something you like about him, too.”
“It is,” Beard says. “He doesn’t get everything but he never assumes I’m immune to—to whatever.”
“No.”
Rebecca slides her arm down until she can place her palm against his hip, half over skin, half over the worn plaid fabric of his boxers. It’s better than what she’d wanted to do at the Chili’s. It isn’t too late. “Want a handjob when Ted’s back?”
Beard coughs. Rebecca smiles; she’d thought he was unshockable.
“Yes,” he says.
Right then, the balcony door opens and Ted whistles as he walks into the room, the sound so soft it’s almost just plain blown air.
“Hi,” she says, aware of his presence near the bed though she doesn’t turn to see. “All set?”
“All set,” he confirms. He clears his throat. “Hey, uh, I can give y’all some privacy if—”
“No,” Beard says immediately, and Rebecca swears she can feel some tension drain from the room. She chuckles, and feels Ted step closer.
“I still need to shower,” he says, his voice warm with affection. He bends to kiss Rebecca’s temple, then stretches enough to be able to do the same for Beard. “I’ll be right out.”
But he doesn’t leave for the bathroom right away, because he’s glued to the side of the bed when Rebecca pushes the boxers down Beard’s hips. He’s half hard, and she takes him in her hand very gently, aware of the lack of lubrication as she tries a tentative stroke. “You can last for him, can’t you?” she asks. “Until he’s out of the shower?”
Beard sucks in a breath, then exhales slowly. “Yes,” he says resolutely.
“I’ll be right back,” Ted says, a little frantic.
“Tell me if you need me to slow down.”
“No, that’s perfect.”
It’s almost meditative, stroking him so carefully, listening to the shower start in the other room. Not much time passes before he’s fully hard, and wet with precum, emitting little involuntary whimpers from his throat. She notices him struggling to get comfortable against the pillows so she maneuvers one to better support his neck and that makes him gasp, “Stop, stop, I need a minute.” Rebecca slows to a stop, her hand still wrapped around him, and not long after Ted rushes out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel that he sheds as he gets under the covers on Beard’s other side. He kisses Beard’s forehead.
“Love,” Rebecca says, hoping they both register the word as theirs. She feels herself flush, but she doesn’t regret the endearment, not when Beard’s face is blotchy with color and his breath is heaving. “Should I keep going?”
“Yeah,” Beard gasps, his hips undulating against nothing, then against the stroke of Rebecca’s hand. “I’m almost, oh no, oh no—”
“It’s okay,” Ted says. “You lasted such a long time, baby, you can let go.”
Beard’s cry is a little mournful, then it fades into gasps of relief as he comes.
Ted’s towel is still next to him in bed and he uses it to mop up Rebecca’s hand, Beard’s stomach, the worst of the mess on the sheet. “We can always sleep on the other bed,” he says with a grin.
“What can I do,” Beard starts to ask. “Uh, what do you want—”
She wants sex. She’s exhausted, which always makes her barriers a bit lower than usual, and she’s wet and thrilled and hungry. But she’s hungry for food, too, and if they stay in bed much longer now, they won’t leave it, and she’ll never adjust to Central Time.
“I can think of so many things,” she says, “but first—if we were seventeen and thirsty, where would you take us tonight?”
⁂
Rebecca wakes up without a hangover. They might not be seventeen anymore, but apparently they managed to remember that fact last night, too, at the dive bar Beard spent the second half of high school sneaking into for fried food and cheap beer. She stretches her legs experimentally, just enough to feel her muscles burn, and the movement makes Beard and Ted stir on either side of her.
Servpro is scheduled for 10 a.m. They leave the hotel at 9, and even with a drive-thru stop for coffee and egg-and-cheese English muffins, they’re at the house by 9:45. They stand in the living room, because a living room is where you start when you go to a house, surrounded by the leftovers of Beard’s mother’s life—Margaret’s life—for the last time.
“It’s okay if there’s something you wanna keep,” Ted says.
“I don’t wanna keep a damn thing,”
“Okay.”
“I wanna see this place empty and I wanna convince you that we should drive eight hours to Wichita and surprise Henry and then I wanna go home and beat Chelsea on Sunday.”
“Yes,” Rebecca says quickly. “All of that.”
“That sounds really good,” Ted says quietly.
“We can just wait on the porch,” Beard says.
Rebecca steps forward and takes his hand, and she feels a new emotion bubble up her chest at the experience of Ted following her lead to take his other hand in his. They walk out of the house together and stand on the porch and the strangeness washes over them, the strangeness of having a few minutes with nothing to do but hold on to each other and look out at the too-big sky.