Grendel's Guide to Love and War Read online

  Ed made a grunt of acknowledgment, which was as much as he cared to discuss Rex Rothgar. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “Don’t you have work?”

  “Not until four,” he said.

  “I have to shower first.”

  “You honor me, Grendel. I’m touched by your consideration for my olfactory system.”

  “You wouldn’t be joking if you were standing downwind of me right now.”

  “Wait, I think I am. Phew. Hang on, let me close the window.”

  “Ha. Just come in half an hour.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “Bye.”

  I’d just gotten out of the shower when Ed showed up ten minutes early.

  I was still running a towel over my head when he walked in without knocking, an old habit since the doorbell bothered my dad, and sometimes it was easier to just stick your head in and call than to make sure you weren’t knocking too loud.

  “I am here,” he whisper-announced. “Have you seen her?”

  “I don’t know why you keep asking,” I said. “I thought you didn’t really like her that much.”

  “I don’t, particularly,” he said, shrugging. “But you do.”

  I rolled my eyes and hung up my towel. The truth was, I’d liked Willow—with her dark hair, dark eyes, and dark sense of humor—more than had been good for me a few years back, and I wouldn’t exactly mind seeing her again. Her brother, on the other hand, was an ass. If hanging out with Willow meant having to deal with Rex, I’d pass. It wasn’t worth it.

  Reginald Rothgar Jr., originally known to us as “Reggie,” had given himself the nickname Rex back in tenth grade, ostensibly because he thought it made him sound like less of a turd than he actually was. Rex and Willow went to some private school in Chambliss, but Rex was pretty big into lacrosse, so he partied with kids from most of the county. Rex was my year, Willow a year younger, and after Rex beat the crap out of me when I was fifteen—just to prove that he could—we’d made a tacit agreement never to be within twenty feet of each other again.

  Ed and I took a seat in the kitchen, where we could see the moving truck through the open window. Minnie and Allison’s stuff had been taken out the week before, cats and all, but it didn’t look like Ellen Rothgar had half as much furniture to replace it. Then again, if she was splitting her stuff with her husband, he may have ended up with a lot of it. I don’t really know how it works when your wife catches you with your girlfriend at a tropical resort. Do you lose all your stuff by default? I have no idea.

  We were sitting there watching when the front door opened and my father walked in.

  Ed put his glass of Dr Pepper down without making a noise, and we waited for my dad to come into the kitchen before we spoke.

  “Tom,” Dad said. “Ed.”

  “Hi. Major. Sir,” Ed said. My dad always made him a little nervous.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, looking down at my watch. It was eleven-thirty. “Don’t you have work?”

  “I was at an off-site,” he said. “I forgot my badge.” Forgetting his security badge is something he’s been doing a lot of, lately. Among other things.

  He fished the badge out of the drawer under the toaster, where he always keeps his badge and his wallet, and looped the lanyard around his neck. I wondered how he could have remembered the wallet and forgotten the badge, but I sure wasn’t going to ask him about it.

  Dad looked out the window at the truck and frowned. Getting new neighbors was not the kind of thing he looked forward to. At all. Plus, he liked Minnie and Allison. They were quiet.

  “You see the new neighbors yet?” he asked, pulling at his collar to loosen it.

  “Not all of them,” I said.

  He breathed loudly through his nose. “Do they have a dog?”

  “I don’t think so. I haven’t seen one, anyhow.”

  Dogs are another thing that makes Dad unhappy, on account of the unpredictable barking.

  Just then, the back of the moving truck slammed shut and we all jumped. Ed cut a worried look to me, which I tried to ignore. Dad’s hands were clutching the edge of the counter so hard his knuckles were white. And his eyes were kind of…blank.

  After a few seconds, he sort of came back to himself. “I have to go,” he said, turning his back on us. Then he left.

  We stared at the door until we jumped again when we heard Ellen Rothgar screaming into her phone from through the window.

  “Well,” I said. “This should be just great.”

  Major Aaron Grendel (aka my father) has not always been quite this tense.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. He was always tense. He’s the kind of man who will relace his shoes if one side comes out longer than the other. When I was younger, he used to sit me down in the kitchen and measure my hair with a ruler to determine whether I was due for a haircut. Stuff like that.

  A few years ago, after Mom died but before we moved to Masonberg, he was deployed to Iraq. My sister, Zipora, was still living at home, our grandmother had moved into the house to look after us, and things were about as normal as they got back then. We went to school, Grandma made way too much food, and we waited for Dad to come home while I waited for my voice to finally change.

  Then the convoy Dad was riding with hit an IED, and pretty much everyone else who was with him died or lost a limb. I don’t really know the details, because he doesn’t talk about it. I only know that whatever he saw or heard or went through was bad enough that he didn’t come home for six weeks, after which he showed up at the local rehab center with a detached retina and acres of stitches. It wasn’t long after that that his bosses realized his nerves were all shot to hell and gave him a permanent stateside post so he’d never deploy again.

  That seems like it was a long time ago. I was thirteen, and Zipora was eighteen. We’re all pretty much back to normal now, though. Zip went off to college, Dad and I moved to our quiet house by the lake, and all was well with the universe. Or well enough, anyway.

  After Dad left for work (again), Ed and I emptied the rest of the fridge while, outside, Ellen Rothgar supervised the move by yelling at people through her phone while the movers went in and out of the house.

  “We should go someplace,” Ed said, checking the time on his phone. “Greenmont’s open. And Pear Valley.” Greenmont and Pear Valley were two of the local vineyards. There were several in the area, and in the last year or so—since getting his first fake ID—Ed had developed an obsession. His life’s dream was to go off to a college that had a winemaking program and become a premier vintner.

  “It’s too hot,” I said, which was a lame excuse, and code for I want to stay here and see if this girl I kind of used to like actually shows up.

  “Are you just going to sit here all day waiting for her?”

  “No,” I said, even though that actually had been my plan. Ellen was being especially loud. I wasn’t exactly listening, but my ears perked up when I heard her shout, “I specifically said the milk had to be organic, Willow, are you listening? ORGANIC.”

  “She’s yelling at Willow,” Ed said. When I failed to answer, he prompted, “Willow’s at the grocery store. Right now. Which means if you go to the grocery store right now, you will see her there and not have to waste the rest of the day waiting for her to show up here.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Isn’t that stalking?”

  “It isn’t stalking.”

  “It might be stalking.”

  “Has she ever told you to get lost? Go away and never come back?”

  “No,” I said. “Not really.”

  “It’s only stalking if she doesn’t want you there. Otherwise, it’s just,” he said, framing the imaginary scenario with his hands, “opportunistic.”

  “That’s a pretty fine distinction,” I said.

  “Or, you know, you could just call her like a normal person.”

  Outside, Ellen was inquiring about whether the salmon Willow was trying to buy was farm-raised or wild-ca
ught. I said, “I would call her if I had her number, which I don’t.”

  Ed said, “You could get it.”

  “How could I get it?”

  He gestured toward Ellen, who was still upbraiding Willow about groceries. “WHAT PART OF QUINOA DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?” she shrieked.

  “Just think,” Ed said. “This goes well, you guys could all be having Thanksgiving together this fall.”

  I groaned and grimaced at Ed. “Let’s just go find Willow.”

  I started having second thoughts about this course of action once we were in my car on the way to the store. I tapped my foot on the floor when we were stopped at a light, trying to imagine a conversation with Willow in the middle of the organic-food aisle while her mother screamed through the phone and Ed hovered in the background. It didn’t seem like much of a plan, even if I could help her find the quinoa, which was doubtful because I was still a little confused about how to pronounce it.

  “Why is it keen-wa?” I asked. “Why isn’t it qui-noah?”

  “Dude,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  “Keen-wa,” I said. “Keen-WAH? KEEEEN-wa.”

  “Accent on the first syllable,” he said. “Unless it’s the second.”

  “This is going to be a disaster,” I muttered. I wasn’t really sure what I was hoping for, but right then I would have been content just to see her and have her see me. I would smile. She would smile. Maybe I would say something funny and she would laugh. I’d make some excellent joke about tilapia, or goji berries, or quinoa. Keen-wa.

  “Is it Spanish?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound Spanish.”

  “Let it go, Grendel.”

  When we got to the grocery store, we walked up to the lady working in the bakery department. “Afternoon,” said Ed. “My friend is looking for a girl about our age? She might be looking for obscure health food?”

  Her face darkened. “Were you the ones yelling through that damn phone?”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “That definitely was not us.”

  “She wanted a dozen gluten-free bran muffins. I ask you. Have you ever eaten a gluten-free bran muffin? Is there a person alive who would actually desire such a thing? And a dozen!”

  “Is she still here?” I asked.

  “I sent her to the health-food store over on Leslie Street,” she said. “If she wants to eat a cannonball, she can buy it there.”

  “Well,” I said, walking back toward the front of the store. “That was a bust.”

  “Sorry, man. We could still try the health-food store.”

  “Eh. I should probably buy milk while I’m here. I think we’re low.” I walked down to the dairy aisle, where the placard promised CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE, but as I rounded the corner, I walked directly into Willow Rothgar, who was carrying a stack of quart-sized containers of Greek yogurt.

  The topmost one, the one she was holding on to with her chin, popped loose and exploded on the floor between us, nailing our shoes and, oddly enough, my left eyebrow.

  “You have yogurt,” she said. “In your hair.”

  “I’m not stalking you,” I said.

  She blinked a few times. Ed, who was behind me, said, “I just remembered that I’m out of fancy mustard,” and then walked back up the aisle.

  She put the rest of her stuff into the cart, which she’d left at the end of the aisle; her hair was tucked up into a messy bun, and she was wearing a Ravenclaw T-shirt with a hole by the hem. I dimly remembered that I was supposed to be saying something funny. I said, “Hi. By the way.”

  She turned back to me and said, “This isn’t really the best—”

  She was interrupted by Rex, who came around the corner with a package in his hands. “I couldn’t find regular bacon,” he was saying. “All they have is this weird stuff that doesn’t need to go in the refrigerator.” Then he looked up and saw me and laughed really hard like he’d just made a great joke, only he hadn’t. Over the loudspeaker, someone called for a cleanup on aisle two.

  Willow closed her eyes and clutched the shopping-cart handle with both hands, muttering something I couldn’t hear that was followed by “You were supposed to be getting peanut butter, not bacon.”

  “I thought you were getting the peanut butter.”

  “You were getting the peanut butter! And the bread! Which you also don’t have!”

  “Right. And you were getting”—he gestured at me—“what, exactly?”

  She grabbed the shelf-stable bacon out of the cart and hurled it at him. He hooted and then went back around the corner.

  “You know he’s not coming back with the peanut butter, right?” I asked.

  “Don’t even,” she said.

  “I feel like I should offer to help.”

  “Please. Don’t offer to help.”

  “I won’t, then,” I said. “I guess. I guess I’ll see you later. Probably.” I ducked my head and turned to go, but she said, “Tom.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi. By the way.”

  I smiled. And then I had to move because I was being nudged by a guy with a bucket and a mop, who said, “Move it or lose it, kid.”

  I found Ed at the front of the store, perched on top of a gumball machine with a plastic grocery sack dangling from one arm.

  “Did you get your fancy mustard?” I asked as he hopped down.

  “Fancy mustard and breath mints,” he said. “One counteracts the other. It’s like the circle of life or whatever.”

  Back in my car, I allowed myself the luxury of resting my forehead on the steering wheel while I replayed the conversation with Willow inside my head. It was just as bad the second time around.

  Ed offered me his mints, and I took some. They were the green kind I don’t really like, but I ate them anyway, too fast for them to have any actual impact on my breath.

  “I take it that went badly,” he said.

  “No, it was great. We’re planning a trip to Aruba for later this summer.” I pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Home? I figured you were going out with Ashlee tonight.”

  Ed made a face. “Nope. I broke up with Ashlee yesterday. After I finished all the mustard.”

  That was news to me. I forced my mind away from Willow. “Any particular reason?”

  He leaned back in his seat and rested his feet on the dashboard before deciding that was really not comfortable and putting them back on the floor and lacing his hands behind his head. “She failed the kimchi test,” he said.

  I stopped at a traffic light and waited for a trio of old ladies to cross the street in front of me before I turned right. “I’m not sure I agree with the premise of the kimchi test,” I said. “Maybe she just didn’t like it? It is kind of strong.”

  “She wouldn’t try it. She said it was gross.” He took the mustard out of the bag and made a show of examining the label. It was the kind with horseradish and champagne, which I also like. “She couldn’t handle that it was fermented, she said.”

  “Huh.”

  “I was all, like, You eat yogurt. You eat bread and take penicillin. But no, that stuff isn’t gross. Just the kimchi.”

  “Well,” I said. “I never liked her anyway.”

  “Sure you did,” he said, because Ashlee actually wasn’t awful most of the time. He stared out the window. “I guess it shouldn’t bother me.”

  “But it does.”

  “Well, it does. I mean, the difference between Ashlee’s crap and Colin Farnsworth calling me Mr. Miyagi because he’s a dumb racist tool who doesn’t know the difference between Korea and Japan is, what? A matter of a couple degrees?” He sighed, and his voice got kind of faraway and quiet. “Some days, I really hate it here.”

  It’d been a while, as far as I knew, since Ed had had to deal with Colin Farnsworth, who I’d met, along with Ed, on my first day at school two years ago.

  My father’s superiors had just transferred him to the National Army Intelligence Center (aka NAIC), and
my first day happened, unfortunately, to fall on a minor Virginia holiday known as Lee-Jackson Day. This was significant because it was the subject of the day’s discussion in my American history class, which was, significantly, my last class of the day.

  I’m not exactly a stranger to the South; my ancestors were in Charleston before South Carolina was a state, Dad grew up in Atlanta, and my sister and I were born down at Fort Bragg. I’ve lived long enough and in enough places to understand it’s a myth that Southerners are more intolerant than other people, but it’s only a myth because there are awful people everywhere.

  “Tell me,” Mr. Rogers said while writing on the whiteboard with great flourishes of green marker. “Why is it so important that we remember Generals Jackson and Lee?”

  When no one answered, I put up my hand.

  Mr. Rogers pointed to me with his marker. “Mr. Grendel?”

  “Well,” I said. “Well, the thing is, sir, I don’t really understand why we’re celebrating Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee, sir. Um, wouldn’t it be more useful to remember Booker T. Washington? Or Lewis and Clark? Or maybe someone else from Virginia who didn’t…um…” I trailed off when I saw the look on Rogers’s face.

  “Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee were great sons of the state of Virginia,” Rogers spat. “You would do well to remember that.”

  At that point, the bell rang, and I decided that discretion was the greater part of valor and fled.

  Unfortunately, I went out the wrong door and found myself being pounded on by four or five of the lads from my history class for insulting the memory of certain Confederate military leaders. One of them informed me, while slugging me in the gut, that he was, in fact, the great-great-etc.-nephew of Stonewall Jackson, twice removed through marriage or something, which was significant because it gave him an excuse to knock my teeth out.

  Before long, I was on the ground trying, futilely, to protect my liver, when one of the guys said, “What kind of name is Grendel, anyway?”