Page 8 of The Bright Lands

“More like salty.”

Paulette made a littlehmmhe remembered well. Some of Joel’s friends had mothers who gossiped with them about men and their attendant escapades as gleefully as they would with a daughter. Not Joel. He knew that, like subway travel and foreign food and apartment living, his queerness was the sort of thing Paulette could understand conceptually, could even see the appeal of in certain lights, but would rather not imagine in practice.

Why, he wondered, had she even brought it up tonight?

“Oh my word, look who it is!”

Joel turned to see a slim lady with a perfect shell of blond hair staring at him like he’d been fished from the lake.

“I had to come see for myself,” the lady said to Paulette. When she shook her head not a single strand of that hair moved. “Has he been here long?”

“You remember Mrs. Malacek, Joel.”

He didn’t. “Of course.”

“Mayor Malacek’s wife,” Paulette said. She always knew when he was lying. “Three terms later.”

“Soon to be four. My son loves your brother.” Mrs. Malacek let out a cackle like a wineglass striking a pool deck. With the most bizarre combination of pleasure and reproof Joel had ever heard, the woman added, “It takes a real talent to outshine the mayor’s firstborn, you know.”

“Oh my goodness, itishim!” called another thin woman, hustling to prevent any hope of escape. A small terrier trembled at its station in the woman’s purse.

“I told my husband, I told him it was you. Sweet mercy Lord, don’t you look growed? We needed a chest like that when you was in school.”

“Mrs. Mason,” Joel said, giving her a curt nod. Her nephew had gone well out of his way to make Joel’s high school years unbearable. “A pleasure.”

“He just arrived,” Mrs. Malacek said knowingly. “All the way from San Francisco.”

“New York, actually.”

“Have you met Raul?” Mrs. Mason hoisted the bag to show him the dog. Joel saw it was wearing a miniature Bison jersey with a tiny number 7. “He’s your brother’s biggest fan.”

Joel opened his mouth to say something, hesitated. “I’m sure Dylan needs all the support he can get.”

“It just takes one state championship to turn a town around,” Mrs. Malacek whispered.

The dog in Mrs. Mason’s bag eyed the hot dog in the woman’s hand. “And Heaven knows we need it—these stands are liable to rust right out from under us.”

“Has Dylan told you which way the wind is blowing?” Mrs. Malacek asked Joel.

“Well, there’s a storm to the southeast.”

The women showed their teeth when they laughed. Mrs. Malacek said, “You always were too clever for me. Hiscollege, silly. We got us a pool going at the teachers’ lounge. I have my money down your brother’s going to pledge to Baylor University. I know he’s a good Baptist boy at heart, even if this mother of yours has started dragging him around with the Methodists.”

Mrs. Malacek and Mrs. Mason went very still. They fixed Joel with stares so fervid he felt a flush creep over his cheeks. He decided to test a theory. “What do you think would happen if Dylan decided he didn’t want to play football in college?”

His mother’s head snapped up from her phone. The two women raised their eyebrows.

“But we love Dylan too much for him to quit,” Mrs. Malacek said brightly.

Mrs. Mason laughed and set Raul the terrier trembling again. “I think this town would kill him if he tried.”

“Jesus,” Joel said as he and his mother made their way toward their seats, leaving Mrs. Malacek and Mason to make a run on the convenience stand. “Since when did you hang out with the skinny moms?”

“Since they started calling me. Are you saying I weren’t always skinny?”

Joel marveled at the people around him. Here was Mr. Lott, the cartoonish man in the overalls and bow tie who somehow still ran the county’s oldest hardware store, followed by his tall wife and her permanent scowl. Here was the girl who had dropped out of Joel’s class to raise the boy who now trailed behind her with a Nintendo in his face. Joel had thought more people would have left this town. He couldn’t imagine what kept them here.

“How can nothing change in ten years?”