Kid Stuff

Rea (pronounced “Ray-uh”, thank you very much) sneezed as her younger sister rolled the car window down. In the front seat, her mother sighed happily. The fresh spring air smelled like hay and lilacs, a stark contrast to the city air they’d been breathing in just a couple days prior.

“Look to your right, girls,” said her father, in the same excited voice as always. They were passing a colorful sign, welcoming them to The Middle of Nowhere.

It was spring break, and the family was driving to the small town where Rea’s grandparents lived. Like they did every. Single. Year. Rea had loved this tradition as a kid. Even now, over it as she was, Rea had to admit it was beautiful. Still, at sixteen, Rea was way too old to be spending spring break playing games and cooking with her family. She checked her phone and was relieved for once to see that she didn’t have service. If she saw one more instagram post from her friends, who were spending the week partying together, she would throw herself out of the car and sacrifice her body to the coyotes.

This year, at least, she only had to spend half the week at her grandparents’. She’d spent the previous four days on a trip to New York City. She’d convinced her parents to take them under the guise of seeing colleges there. Rea had fallen in love with the city before she’d even taken a step out of the cab they took from the airport. She had sucked in every detail, wanting to consume it the same way it was consuming her. Her sister had gasped in delight when they’d emerged from the subway in midtown on their way to MOMA. Rea had flushed with embarrassment at this. After all, real New Yorkers didn’t crane their necks to look at the skyscrapers, and Rea felt like she was born to be a part of the city. But when she thought no one was looking, Rea took brief glances skywards. It was dizzying, in the best way. The enormity of it all made her feel both minuscule and invincible at once.

In two short years, Rea would be at NYU, where she belonged. For now, however, she was in the back of her parents’ minivan, wishing for all the world that it was a yellow cab instead.

They approached her grandparents’ town as the light was dying, casting a golden glow over everything like a last wish. The winding road had straightened out, parallel to train tracks for the coal trains that ran through this part of the country. Both the road and the tracks were surrounded on all sides by rolling hills, swathed in mystery by trees and brush and the shadows they cast. As the landscape flattened, they passed a farm, and Rea’s sister squealed in delight at a horse racing through the long grass. It stopped at the fence, and Rea could’ve sworn it looked at her. Her heart panged for it, and for herself. She knew what it felt like to be fenced in, when you were born to be free and wild. Rea put headphones in as the sun set further and the sky began to bleed.

The town itself consisted of a single street. Main Street, and the handful of doomed shops that lived along it. There was a bookstore, a second hand clothing shop (which her mother, much to Rea’s annoyance, had the nerve to call a boutique), a single-show movie theater, a diner, and a grocery store. There were a few other establishments scattered nearby, but that was about it. When she was younger, Rea had found it charming. Now, the thought of living someplace like this horrified her.

“Can we stop for ice cream?” her sister asked.

“No,” Rea said before anyone else could answer.

Her mother threw her a scolding glance and said to her sister, “If I know your grandfather, there will be ice cream waiting for you at the house.”

When they arrived at the house, a charming farmhouse-style home on a couple acres of land, Rea’s grandparents were waiting for them on the front porch. Her sister jumped out of the car the moment the tires stopped crunching forward on the gravel driveway. Rea rolled her eyes. Her beloved younger sister was such a kiss-ass. If life was a game won by those who mastered wide-eyed innocence, her sister would certainly take the cake. Lucky for Rea, it was not.

She took her time stepping out of the backseat. By the time she reached the front porch, her sister had engrossed her grandfather in a conversation about birdwatching, with both her parents smiling proudly. She felt invisible as she stepped forward until she noticed her grandmother watching her.

“Andrea,” she said. “You’re as gorgeous as ever.”

Rea, despite being called the name she hated, smiled wide. “It’s good to see you, grandma.” Her grandmother folded her into a hug, impressively crushing for a woman her age.

She took a step back and felt her grandmother’s ice-blue eyes studying her. Little slipped past the woman. Grandma Blanche was shrewd and beautiful, even as she neared eighty. Rea had always thought that the woman was the term age gracefully made flesh. Some of the restlessness she’d felt on the long drive up slipped away.

Finally, her grandfather stepped away from her sister to say hello. He ruffled her hair, which she smoothed immediately.

“Hungry?” he asked them. “I made my famous spaghetti, and I have a special treat for you after.” It was, of course, ice cream. Her sister’s favorite flavor, mint chocolate chip, which Rea had never cared for.

Rea brought her bags inside the house. No matter how much time passed, the house always stayed the same. There was the colorful kitchen, which her grandfather decorated with old-timey Coca Cola ads and portraits of adequately-drawn farm animals. Past that was the dining room, complete with a dark wood table and mid-century modern chairs that had gone in and out of style twice since her grandmother bought them. Then, the living room, which Rea loved and hated in equal measure. She loved the display of art and knick-knacks that her grandmother set out proudly, collected over the years from their travels. But she hated the moose head on the wall above the fireplace, the hunting rifle mounted by the TV, the taxidermy barn owl set lovingly on top of a cabinet. The pang returned to her chest as she looked at the owl, flightless and trapped forever and ever.

Rea went to sleep early that night. She slept better here than she did anywhere else, despite having to sleep in a twin bed a few feet over from her sister. She woke at the break of dawn to the symphony of birds and glorious stillness outside. The early hours here were the only ones she truly enjoyed. She went to make coffee and sit out on the back porch, watching the day brighten. The crisp air kissed her skin, and for the briefest moment she thought that she could get used to life in a place like this.

The morning here was so different here than it had been in New York, but it was consuming in a different way. Rea could hardly believe that this place, with its rolling green hills and hay-scattered farms, existed in the same world as New York City. Strangely, in those moments, Rea felt solidarity with herself the same way she had on the winding streets of the West Village. She felt completely anonymous, unnoticed by the world, in a way that was spectacularly freeing.

Inside the house, she heard her family begin to stir, and the moment was shattered. She thought once more of the lifeless owl inside. Her own wings stuffed and mounted, Rea went inside to join her sister and mother for breakfast.

They had no plans for the day until late that afternoon. At her sister’s insistence, they were going to the movies to see the only show that was currently playing. It was new from Pixar, a kid’s movie that Rea had no desire to see.

With nothing much to do after having breakfast, going for a run, sneezing some more at the excess of wildlife, and showering, Rea did her hair and makeup for their big outing to the movies. She emerged from the bathroom to change, running into her sister in the hall.

“Why’d you do all that?” her sister asked.

“All what?”

“Your hair and everything. It’s just us.”

Rea rolled her eyes. “I felt like it.”

“Oh.”

When it was time to leave for the movie, her grandfather took one look at her and said, “How can that beautiful woman be my baby Andrea? You look like you’re twenty-five.”

Rea took it as a compliment, although she got the distinct feeling that it wasn't meant as one, not really.

“She looks just as old as she wants to,” said her grandma, and Rea gave her an appreciative smile.

At the theater, Rea made it twenty minutes into the movie before she excused herself to go to the bathroom. She’d been sitting on an end, and no one batted an eye as she disappeared. In the dingy theater lobby, she sat under the fluorescent lights on a plastic bench, resting her head against the wall. In two short years, the only theater lobbies she’d sit in were on Broadway.

“You’re not liking the movie?” a voice called out, interrupting Rea’s fantasy. She looked around. She was the only person in the lobby, apart from the person who’d spoken. It was the ticket-seller, a guy who looked like he was in his late teens. Rea had noticed him on the way in. He was good-looking in a stuck-in-a-small-town sort of way, and it had satisfied her the way his eyes had lingered when she’d walked in with her family.

“I’m not a fan of the kid stuff,” Rea said.

“I’m not surprised,” he said, walking over to sit on the bench next to her. “I’m Trey.”

He stuck out his hand. It was strong-looking and calloused, like a farmer’s. Rea shook it.

“Rea,” she said.

“Cool name.”

“Thanks.”

They fell silent for a moment. The lights flickered.

“A buddy of mine is having a party tonight,” Trey said. “I’d be a hero if I got a girl like you to come.”

Rea didn’t allow herself to blush. She tilted her head and gave him a practiced, coy look. “A girl like me?”

Trey gave her a once over. “Yeah. A girl like you.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by,” Rea said, to herself as well as to him. It would break up the mundanity of this visit, and she might be able to get a barn-party sort of instagram post out of it.

“I’ll text you the address,” Trey said. “You know, if you give me your number.”

Rea did. By the time she sat back down in her seat inside the theater, she’d already started to hate this trip less.

That night, Rea rolled out of bed as silently as she could. She’d “gone to bed” early but hadn’t removed her makeup. Touching it up was priority one, obviously. Next, she slunk into the kitchen, careful that her steps didn’t make a sound. She grabbed her father’s car keys and, on a whim, took a pull of a tequila bottle that had been left out on the counter (that night had been taco night, complete with homemade guac and margaritas for the adults). Not so much that she wouldn’t be able to drive, but enough to calm her nerves about the next part. She would have to get the car out of the crackling gravel driveway without waking up anyone in her family.

Rea slid the back door open, only wide enough for her to slip through it, and stepped out into the welcoming evening air. The stars were brighter here than anywhere else, so bright they could give her vertigo. She took a moment to feel them pressing down on her and felt the weight she’d carried with her throughout the day fall away. She wondered if her whole life would be this way. Heaviness and feeling caged, with the rarest glimpses of joy. She couldn’t imagine feeling caged once she was a real adult, with the freedom to do as she pleased and make whatever choices she felt like. Was it even possible to feel trapped in a place as vast and alive as New York?

Rea was about to step off the porch when a soft voice interrupted her. “Got somewhere to be?”

Rea dropped the keys and nearly fell over in surprise. Grandma Blanche was sitting in one of the porch chairs, looking up at the stars.

“I -,” Rea scrambled to come up with an answer.

“It’s not my business,” Blanche said. “I won’t be the one to stop you.”

This made Rea pause. She wondered what sort of trick her grandmother was trying to play.

“Why not?” she finally asked.

“I know this isn’t your favorite place to be,” Blanche said, giving her granddaughter a knowing smile. Rea blushed. “It wouldn’t have been mine when I was your age either.”

Rea didn’t know what to say. She took a half-step forward, and her grandmother’s voice interrupted her momentum yet again.

“But I’ll say just one thing.” Here it was, Rea thought, as her grandmother continued to speak. “It’s easy to go your whole life wanting to be somewhere other than where and when you are. It’s a great deal more difficult to spend even a moment completely engaged in the present.”

Rea didn’t know why, but she whispered, “I just want to grow up.” In the cover of night, and to the graceful woman who had always seemed a kindred spirit, it was not such a shameful thing to confess.

“I know,” Blanche replied. “But you have your whole life to be someone other than who you get to be right now. Why waste that?”

Rea took another step, but this time, she stepped towards the chair next to her grandmother. She collapsed into it, and together, the two of them looked up.