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“Is that a problem?” Diane’s voice was steady as she watched Karen with eyes that were too sharp for her mild tone. Though she tried to hide it, Karen saw Diane’s hand twitch around her mug in an aborted tremble.
It was the suburban housewife equivalent of a battle stance. A gauntlet clearly laid down, invisible but heavy in presence right there between the hand spun doilies of Diane’s coffee table. Karen was familiar with this sort of battle, she’d engaged in enough of them to recognize the signs. But she was left floundering for a moment as she had clearly missed the signal of the drumbeat.
She hummed quietly to buy herself more time as she glanced quickly around the sitting room.
The Sinclairs were seated on the paisley loveseat across from her, Sue’s face reflected the same polite inquiry she knew was on her own as Charles didn’t bother to hide the confused furrow on his brow. Beside her, Ted took another bite of brownie. She didn’t bother to look to him for answers. At the entryway into the hall, Sheryl was leaning against the wall, her arms and her ankles crossed in a way that might have been almost aggressively casual, had her shoulders not been so tense.
Karen ran back through the conversation.
“Are you two related?” Sue had asked.
“No,” Sheryl had responded, shortly but not rudely.
“Oh, are you renting for a bit then?” Karen had swooped in, addressing Sheryl. The house, after all, had already been established as being Diane’s. It would have been rude to ask how she had managed to afford a house like this on her own, and Karen had to bite her tongue to hold the question back.
“I did that for a while when I got back in the states,” Charles had said. “My buddy had a house and I spent a year in his guest room.”
He, nor anyone else, mentioned the fact that both Diane and Sheryl were well past the normal age of renting out of a friend’s house. Not everyone took the same path to get where they were, Karen reminded herself firmly.
“I’m not renting,” Sheryl has said. “We both own the house. We live here. Together.”
“Is that a problem?”
When understanding finally dawned on her, Karen felt every bit as stupid as she was certain people tended to think that she was.
When a new neighbor moved in, there was usually a swarm of people descending on the new arrivals like locusts. Eager to get a look at the furniture, the decor, the pictures, the clothes, and of course the people who had brought them all in. It was like a race of sorts, to see who could glean the most out of the least amount of information the fastest. The race came with the sort of desperation for news that could only be achieved by bored and underappreciated housewives. Yet, Diane and Sheryl had moved in almost two weeks ago, and Karen hadn’t seen so much as a single casserole dish or Tupperware container dropped off at their door.
She had assumed the cold reception from the rest of the neighborhood had been due to Diane’s single status while owning a house in their part of town. Karen was always friendly with her neighbors, and had always made it a point to come say hello, though she only occasionally engaged in the parade of food that was heaved off on newcomers. Given the circumstances, she and Sue had decided to alter their approach a bit. Karen had made the cookies, three different kinds in recipes she had always received compliments on, and Sue had made a macaroni casserole.
Karen should have pieced together the signs a little faster.
At the entrance of the room, Sheryl’s faux relaxed stance shifted into open nerves as Karen’s face must have given away her understanding.
“Not at all,” she said quickly, offering a swift smile to both Diane and Sheryl.
“Of course not,” Sue said with a fierceness in her voice that surprised Karen just long enough for her to understand it. It had been a long time since the Sinclairs had moved to the neighborhood but Karen still remembered the feeling of standing in Sue’s kitchen for the first time. With her silly little casserole in her hands as she had tried as subtly as she could to commit each and every decoration and flatware choice to memory. It had taken her too long that day too. Too long to notice the surprise on Sue’s face when she had introduced herself. Too long to notice that while there were a few other dishes sitting on their countertop and a single blackberry pie, the number was unusually low.
A decade later she felt that same feeling in a different house on their block. The same twisting nausea and empty embarrassment that she didn’t know how to combat in herself or to reassure her neighbors without coming across as insincere. Back then she stammered something on instinct about their house and their children both being lovely. To date, it had been the only time Karen had ever scheduled a playdate for any of her children without their prompting first.
But Sheryl and Diane had no children to distract with, and Karen found herself embarrassingly out of her element.
Charles was also politely assuring them there were no issues from either Sinclair as Karen scrambled for what to say next.
Karen had been brave once upon a time.
She’d run from her parents' home the minute she had turned 18, and had spent two years that were both the best and worst of her entire life couch surfing and living in general sketchy conditions in an attempt to circumvent what had felt like destiny. Her rebellious streak had worn itself out in time, when she’d run out of money, options, and energy. So she’d started talking to her parents again. She’d put away her boots and started wearing dresses again. She’d married Ted and had three children.
The amount of bravery it took to live as Diane and Sheryl were, openly in the suburbs of Indiana, was at a level Karen didn’t think she ever possessed, even at 18. Or maybe it wasn’t bravery, not exactly. Maybe it was just love.
Karen wouldn’t know. She was fairly certain she’d never been in love, not romantically at least. She’d only really loved three people in her life, and all three of them had -for better or for worse- inherited young Karen's inability to resist biting the hand that feeds and were all currently scheduled to complain about her meatloaf tomorrow night at 6 o’clock.
The following lull in conversation was just long enough for Karen to contemplate all of this. Long enough for Sheryl’s shoulders to relax and Diane’s iron grip on her mug to loosen and for Charles to take a sip of coffee. Long enough for Ted to finish his brownie and make Karen regret forcing him to come along.
He swallowed once, clearing his throat in the way he always did before speaking in between bites and Karen shot him a hard glance that he either didn’t catch or just ignored. And then, as casually and indifferently as he might have commented on the weather, he said: “Our son’s a homosexual.”
Several organs in Karen’s body lurched at once as she was suddenly hyper aware of her heartbeat in a way she hadn’t been a minute ago. Across the coffee table Charles choked on his next sip of coffee and she watched with a hazy sort of detachment as Sue scrambled with uncharacteristic awkwardness to grab him a handful of napkins before he could stain the loveseat.
It all sounded like it was coming from too far away, or else her head had been dunked suddenly and inexplicably in a bucket of water as she heard Charles’ deep, painful sounding coughs and Sue’s apologies and Sheryl’s assurances that it was fine. Ted took another bite of brownie just as Karen heard a voice proclaim loudly -too loudly- “he is not!”
It took her a moment to realize she was the one who had spoken. She had meant to say it evenly, had intended to quietly but firmly debunk Ted’s accusations to the room at large, and maybe if she had been more prepared -if she had been given more than two seconds to piece the situation together- she might have been able to do so with the grace she usually tried for in social situations. She could have said it with an exasperated fondness, a gentle eye roll that dismissed the words as quickly as they had come and then pivoted the conversation back to Diane and Sheryl and what a beautiful house they had, but she’d stumbled the mark. She hadn’t even managed pearl clutching horror, which given the current company would have come across as horribly rude and undoubtedly left them with no future invites. But at least it would have been a proper denial.
Karen hadn’t done either of those things because the words had ripped themselves out of her, too loud and too fierce. Not a scandalized socialite and not an exasperated housewife, but a mama bear backed into a corner. There had been no echo in Diane and Sheryl’s tastefully decorated parlor, but Karen could hear one all the same. She felt her face burn as she inhaled through her nose, trying to steady herself under the shocked stares of her neighbors.
“I-” she began without a plan. Swallowed, and tried again. “I mean, not that we would…take issue with that,” she tried to smooth over, as sincerely as she could manage. “If he was. But he’s not. He’s never told us anything like that.”
Ted snorted and Karen gripped the arm rest to quell the sudden urge to strike.
“When do they tell us anything?”
“Even so,” Karen pressed on, feeling like she was walking along a very narrow ledge that Ted had suddenly forced both her and Mike out onto. Mike who wasn’t even here and didn’t know this conversation was happening. Mike, who didn’t know this was a conversation that Ted and Karen had discussed before. Mike, who probably did know that more than one person had whispered something similar when they thought she couldn’t hear. “We don’t know anything.” It took everything she had not to wince. She was being too evasive now. She may as well have just agreed with Ted for how flimsy her counter was. “He has a girlfriend,” she tried, her voice just a little too desperate to seem natural even as she tried to force herself to relax. No one had asked. No one said anything at all as Charles’ coughs finally petered out.
Ted snorted again. “Okay.”
She was fairly certain she was leaving marks in the cushion by now. “That’s not funny to joke about,” she said. “I apologize for my husband, his sense of humor is-”
“Who’s joking?” Ted interrupted, having the audacity to sound indignant. “Why would I joke about that?”
“I have no earthly idea Ted, but you need to stop because people might get the wrong idea.” Guilt was prickling along the back of her head, all the work she had put into her hair that morning offering no protection as it dug deeper and deeper into her skull. Diane and Sheryl had been nothing but kind to them and were so obviously in need of friends that the idea of making them think Karen was anything other than welcoming made her feel sick. It was a tragedy, but if she had to burn that bridge to protect Mike, she would. She’d burn the whole town to the ground if it meant her children were safe.
“Well, I’m not putting an ad in the paper,” Ted continued. “I should be able to mention it to his own people.”
They had just met these women, and though they were perfectly friendly they were not, as far as Karen was concerned, Mike’s people. Karen was Mike’s people. Not these women.
It was an indulgent and unhelpful thought and she kept it to herself.
Less subtle was her quick glance at Sue and Charles. The latter of whom was staring straight into his coffee mug, as if he might be able to divine the future from the dregs. Sue was watching Karen with a face that was blanker than the surprised eyebrow raises Sheryl and Diane were giving her, but there was something careful about it. Not a lack of thoughts, but an overflow of many that she was trying to hide.
“Karen,” Ted said in her least favorite of his tones. The one he used when he thought she was being silly. Like he was the center of rationality in this family. “They know,” he told her, like it was obvious.
Karen saw Sue’s mouth twitch in an aborted gesture she couldn’t read before she cleared her throat, turning her face to Sheryl. “Our son, Lucas -he and Mike are friends- he’s been mowing lawns over the summer for some extra money,” she said, her voice friendly and relaxed, as if the last excruciating five minutes hadn’t happened.
Charles nodded quickly, catching up to Sue faster than Karen could. When he spoke, his voice was still raspy. “Right, you’ll have to let us know if you need yours done. He does an excellent job.”
“Much better than his father,” Sue joked, earning a gentle elbow nudge from Charles and a faux insulted exclamation.
Karen found herself laughing lightly along with Diane and Sheryl as they all allowed Sue to steer the conversation into safer waters. She smiled at the correct times and took more careful sips of her coffee, but the tension was still there. She could still feel the blood in her veins and there was sweat cooling along her neck despite it not being very warm in Sheryl and Diane’s house. Both of whom also keep glancing at Karen at least once a minute as subtly as they could like they were trying to piece something together without her noticing. When Sue looked at her there was nothing other than the general neighborhood friendliness she usually extended towards Karen. Charles didn’t look at her at all, which was a bit of a relief really.
They wrapped up shortly after, just enough time to discuss the weather and any vacation plans, enough time to pretend the uncomfortableness of Ted’s declaration had passed and to end the night as cordial friends. Karen’s smile was steady but her legs still felt slightly shaky as she said her goodbyes at their door.
Sue and Charles were halfway down the walkway, the bright green of Sue’s dress just fading into gray as she left the reach of the porch light and Ted was on the last step after politely complimenting Diane’s brownies one more time, when Sheryl touched Karen’s elbow, stopping her from following her husband.
Karen plastered a smile in place to cover the way her stomach twisted at the gentle ask for her attention.
Sheryl’s tongue was poking out between her lips, just a hint of pink in a gesture that Karen was sure she wasn’t aware of as she seemed to gather her thoughts. “Your son, Mike?”
It took Karen a moment to realize Sheryl was asking for clarification on his name. Sue had been the one to mention it, not Karen, and it made her feel odd that this woman might have an impression of her son and what this town might think of him before she even knew what Karen had named him.
“Michael, yes.” She didn’t know why she corrected to his full name. He hated being called Michael.
“Michael,” Sheryl adapted quickly with a smile. “Does he need any summer work? Lucas has already been volunteered to help with our yard, but Diane might need some help when we redo the kitchen cabinets and maybe we can give poor Lucas a break from spending his entire summer with two middle aged ladies he doesn’t know.”
“Spread it around so we can get on multiple teenager’s nerves,” Diane interjected with a grin that reminded her of Charles.
Karen felt her heartbeat in her chest and the sweat on her neck and the tension in her face at holding her smile. “Oh, I’m not sure you’d want Michael’s help. He’s, uh, not much of a…” she trailed off, suddenly uncertain as to where to take this train of thought. Admitting Mike wasn’t good with tools or manual labor felt like a further betrayal of her son somehow.
Sheryl’s smile didn’t waver even as Karen’s silence stretched on too long, but there was something soft in her eyes that Karen didn’t know what to make of. “Well, if you want to let him know, we would be happy to have his help.”
“And we would pay him for his time, of course,” Diane interjected quickly.
Karen glanced between the two of them, these two women who had never met Mike and by all account would probably think just as little of him as most of the people in this town did. And then she thought, as she had been all during this trainwreck of an evening, of Mike.
Mike, who had already been labeled too strange and too different by half of this town before he’d even reached middle school and who had done nothing to even begin to try and make himself blend in. Mike who lost himself in stories about magic and dragons and spent hours concocting imaginary foes for his friends to imaginary fight in an imaginary game she couldn’t even begin to understand.
Mike who still sometimes came home with bruises on his jaw and blood on his lip and wouldn’t meet her eyes when he told her he fell off his bike. Mike, who even in the deepest throes of teenage angst still never lost the puppylike excitement that lit him up every time he saw his friends, even if it had only been a day since they had been apart.
Mike had a girlfriend but never seemed to want to clarify any further thoughts about her other than a vague ‘she’s amazing’. Mike who tensed up in something far more aggressive than teenage awkwardness whenever Karen tried to ask about her. Mike, who never so much as turned his head at the pool when a girl his age walked by. Mike, who she had once overheard respond with an incredulous ‘so?’ when Dustin had tried to convince him to watch a movie solely based on the fact that an actress took her top off.
If that had been all she might have been able to write it off as another quirk of her already strange son’s. His disinterest in sex and girls lined up with just about everything else she had ever understood about boys who still played make believe into their teen years.
But she had also heard the way he talked about Eddie, the leader of club he had joined, the way his mouth seemed to move faster than his thoughts as he gushed about the campaign in a breathless sort of tone she didn’t think had much to do with the goblins -or was it ghouls?- they had pretended to fight. The flush on his face when she'd asked a question about him.
She’d seen the awkward way he’d held himself that time his lab partner, a handsome young man in a Hawkins High Tigers shirt, had come over to finish a project at the kitchen table. The way he suddenly hadn't quite known what to do with all of him limbs when he'd made the other boy laugh.
She’d seen the tense line of his shoulders as he’d spent hours trying to get through to the Byers on the phone in California.
No, these women weren't his people, but maybe they would be able to help him through something in a way Karen could not.
With a smile in place and a knot in her stomach, Karen had thanked them, assuring them that she would talk to Mike before throwing in one last compliment about the brownies on her way down the steps.
As soon as she was out of the reach of the porch light she had to resist the urge to grab at her hair and breathe through her teeth, the way she might have several decades ago. It wasn’t quite dark enough out to go forgetting herself like that. Especially not after that disaster of a performance in her new neighbor’s parlour.
The air outside was colder than she had expected. It always seemed to be getting colder in Hawkins, but maybe that was another one of her own neuroses rearing its head. Maybe it wasn’t getting colder, maybe she just didn’t feel as warm as she used to. Regardless of the why, the cool air felt good on her overheated skin.
She allowed herself one deep breath before she continued down the driveway, towards the huddle that had formed out of the other three members of the welcome committee.
“Karen.” Sue kept her voice low as she approached, breaking away from the cluster, standing in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Karen saw her raise a hand but couldn’t see the details of her face as she approached.
Behind her, Ted and Charles were still talking, and if she cared enough to listen she would have been able to hear their conversation. But there was a pain building behind her eyebrow, a tension that had held itself steady throughout the evening but now that the danger was behind her, she knew it wouldn’t be able to contain itself for much longer.
“They have such a lovely house, don’t you think?”
Karen attempted another smile, but hoped that the shadows helped hide what was most likely a grimace. There was always so much smiling involved in her life. A fact that sounded so much nicer than the reality of it.
“Oh, it was lovely. But I’m sorry Sue, I think I need to call it a night. Holly had me up until 3 last night with a nightmare. We should-”
“Karen.”
She already had one foot behind her, inching herself ever closer to her own house, to the sanctity of her own bathtub and a glass or two of merlot, but Sue’s tone brought her to a halt. Her heart, which had just begun to calm itself down in the chill of the evening, crept its way back into her throat. “Yes?”
Sue tilted her head, and now Karen could see her eyes again. They darted to the side, not anxious exactly, but like she was steadying herself. Double checking a script in her head. Karen watched as Sue found her place again and straightened up, giving Karen a smile that looked nothing like the strained ones she knew she had been sporting, but also wasn't one of the politely friendly ones Sue had given Diane and Sheryll. It was little more than a quirk of her lips, one side pulling up just slightly as she met Karen’s eye.
“I think they were lovely,” she said softly but pointedly, keeping that sharp eye contact. “I know Lucas is going to think so too.”
Karen's heart was still much higher than it was supposed to be, and it made swallowing around it difficult. “I’m sure.”
Sue nodded once, before she crossed her hands in front of her skirt, straightening up her shoulders in a way that seemed to indicate she too was about to lay down a challenge that Karen was unprepared to pick up, but her smile only grew. “I’m…I’m glad we moved in so close to you and Ted, you know. Mike has meant a lot to Lucas. He’s like a brother to him. And…I just mean to say, that I’m glad that Lucas has Mike. That he’s lucky to have Mike. Charles thinks so too.”
Karen had felt shaky before, but now she wasn’t sure how she was still standing as the ground tried to move beneath her. When she blinked, the light of the streetlight was streaking across the road and the trees, melting into fractal patterns that her lashes held and reflected back. Her next breath was too loud in the quiet of the night.
Her first attempt to speak yielded no results, and so she swallowed and tried again. “Mike is so lucky to have Lucas.” Sacrificing a sliver of her dignity, she gave in to the need to wipe beneath her eyes with the back of her hand. Whether or not she smeared her make up seemed inconsequential in the moment. “I would say Ted thought so too, but I don’t think he’d ever had a true thought in his life.”
Sue’s laugh was a crack in the still of the air, the laugh that she made when she truly thought something was funny and not the one she gave when she was trying to be polite. Her polite laugh was much more organic sounding than most of the women Karen knew, but Karen also appreciated getting to be one of the few people who knew the difference.
Karen breathed out a quiet laugh in return, too afraid of what might else come up if she let it, and gave a self-deprecating huff to cut it off.
Her organs hadn’t quite finished putting themselves back in order, but the next breath she took was deeper than the last.
Sue took a step back before she was forced to think of something else to say. “Are we still good for lunch tomorrow?”
It would have been so rude for Karen to say no that it was almost rude of Sue to ask, but Karen understood the out for what it was. “Of course.”
Sue’s heels clicked on the macadam as she faded out of the light and back towards her house. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night, Karen.”
“You too, Sue.”
Sometime during their short talk Ted and Charles had separated, both of them missing now from the street. As Sue’s outline reached her driveway, merging with the darkness to make her dress look like a smear of ink on an already dark canvas, Karen let out another quiet breath.
And then with no one around to see, she finally gave into the temptation, reaching her hands back to grip at her head with her elbows akimbo and exhaled hard enough that she could feel it in her stomach. There was still too much moisture in her eyes, and she could feel where at least one drop had managed to escape, slipping out the side and along the edges of the crow’s feet she was steadily trying to ignore the existence of. Standing at the edge of her driveway, alone in the dark she felt like she could feel every wrinkle all that more acutely. Or maybe she could feel them deepening, dragging her along the timeline of her life faster than she had ever really bargained for.
She also felt, for just a few minutes, like she was 18 again. Like the world was too big to look at all at once, but all of it was at her fingertips if she just had the audacity to reach for it.
Karen dug her fingers into her scalp hard enough to dislodge her careful assembly of curls. Hard enough to hurt. And then let her arms drop back to her sides.
Ted had closed the door behind him, but not hard enough to latch. Just considerate enough to not disturb anyone else in the house with their entrance. She could hear him upstairs, the quiet shuffle of his routine. He wouldn’t be getting ready for bed yet, that she already knew. He was changing into something more comfortable for sitting on the couch and watching whatever western or cop show it was that he was currently into.
She turned from the stairs and let her feet carry her to the kitchen. She had thought longingly of a glass of wine earlier, but the alcohol was a secondary need in the moment.
The door to the basement was closed, but when she passed, she slowed, just enough to tilt her head and listen.
As she had expected there was nothing to be heard. The light was on, but Mike would be alone. Maybe he was reading or planning a new campaign or writing to the girlfriend he never really spoke about. Whatever he was doing, Karen was certain he would say it was none of her business.
She hadn’t meant to stop, hadn’t meant to do anything more than try to eavesdrop for a moment, but she found herself frozen there, in front of the same door she’d passed by more times than she could ever count over the course of the last twenty years.
The pressure in her head was growing as the world turned watery and fractured once more and she heard her own quiet hitching breaths.
She wanted to knock. She wanted to throw open the door. She wanted to tell her son that she loved him. That she was proud of him. That nothing he would ever do could ever negate the first two proclamations. She wanted to ask him to tell her about his latest adventure in dungeons and dragons. She wanted to ask how his girlfriend was, and how Will was doing in California. And she wanted to tell him that that stupid boy in the Hawkins high t-shirt that he had tried so hard not to stare at should be so lucky to have Mike’s attention.
All of that, even before the last part, would have done little else but scare him though. Especially in her current state. So instead Karen peeled herself away from the door. She poured herself a glass of wine, sipping at it until she heard Ted making his way down the stairs.
As she passed the basement door again, she ran her free hand over the wood, just light enough that no one else would hear. Just firm enough that it felt like a touch.
All she could do was hope he knew that she loved him.
Maybe one day, she’d get to tell him the rest.