Cheesequake
by Joel Henry Little

Seated alone in the back of Grace’s dad’s hatchback, Stella kept her chapped fingers curled beneath the hem of her skirt on the off chance June or Kara should catch a glimpse in the reflections that flickered across the dusty rear windows. She didn’t mind it like this, facing the wrong way while the cracked parkway and the charred trees and the low gray hills blistering up from behind the endless gray distribution centers unfurled before her like the conveyor belt of the world. She didn’t mind being alone in the other girls’ company while they blathered on about defunct sororities and the legendary wastrels of the class of ‘14 – there was nothing so unusual in it for her, being there and being apart. She didn’t like their company much anyway, though she hoped they wouldn’t say the same for her. 

When they told her the arrangement, it even came with some relief. Stella figured she could let her hands breathe in the shame-free air a while if she wanted, nails chewed and hangnail-swollen as they were, knuckles perennially scaled and bloodied no matter how she lotioned them with the travel-size cortisone that was never far from reach. But that relief soon faded, as all good feelings must. 

Over the greatest hits of Shania Twain and the throaty rumble of the engine, she hadn’t noticed her phone buzzing.

“Mother calling,” said Kara. “Mustn’t leave mother waiting, Stells. She did birth you, you know. By proxy, that is.”

“Mommy dearest!” said June. “Oh mummy, mummy, might I’ve a spot of pie?”

“Shut up, skanks, I can’t hear Siri,” said Grace. “What’d it say? Exit what?”

“Your butt?”

Grace flipped her middle finger in the rearview mirror and then pointed it down her throat, mock retching. Stella reached inside her purse, careful not to let the Klonopins rattle, and squeezed her phone until the call from Heather (Stepmom) disappeared.

“It was her, wasn’t it?” asked Kara, leaning over the backseat. “The wicked? Stepmother, that is.”

“No shit, shithead,” said June from Stella’s other side. “Who else could it’ve been? Ben Feldman?”

“Mention that name in this car again, June,” said Grace, “and I swear to God… How many times do I have to… Just try it, I dare you.”

“What? What’ll you do?”

“…I’ll cut you. I will, I’ll do it this time. I, Grace Wendy Abernathy-Howe, will cut you, Juniper Whatever-Your-Middle-Name-Is Jacaruso.”

“Look at her, with the names,” Kara said.

“You’re gonna cut moi, Miss G.W.A.H.? With what, those elbow calluses?”

June and Kara cackled and plopped back down. Now that the calluses had been mentioned, Stella knew her eczema was fair game. It was only a matter of time before all their true feelings came spilling out. She slid her hands under her thighs.

The night before, Heather stopped by her room to assure her that just because the invitation to the beach trip was last-minute and delivered with a text didn’t mean the other girls wanted her there any less. If Stella hadn’t felt like an afterthought before, she certainly did then. It was just Heather’s way to mortify when she meant to reassure, like that first lunch at Outback Steakhouse where she encouraged Stella not to apologize so much.

All those little cruelties which cost Heather nothing to say could take Stella months to recover from. They made her long to smash the jar of fake lemons Heather kept in the foyer where once her dad stored the Highlander posters he’d purchased at various garage sales around Montreal while away on tour and then forgot to frame despite many promises in that lost-time-chasing period after the divorce. She would’ve done it, too, or worse, were it not for the thing between Heather and Stella’s sister, that weird, unspoken nonaggression pact of theirs. They killed her, those types of understandings she couldn’t understand. To see them at the dinner table each night, in silent conversation while Stella sat there like a voodoo doll, pricked and prodded with every confidential smirk and cocked eyebrow – it was just so unforgivably cruel. It was always about her, she knew, always about Stupid Stella and her hideous hands. And when she looked to her dad to save her, he was too far gone, lost in other lives.

“Look, I get it, babe,” Kara murmured confidingly through the gap in the headrest. “It was the same when my mom married the Dutchman. It all passes away, in time.”

“I love her mind… so philosophical,” said June.

Kara was a habitual liar but few dared press her on it. If they did, she’d only start crying until they dropped the matter out of pity. Stella knew this all too well, and still she couldn’t stop herself: “…the Dutchman?”

“You haven’t met? He’s a cheese dealer. He deals in Edam.”

“…Edam?”

“It’s a cheese. A Dutch cheese. Have you never solved a crossword? I know that you know from cheese.”

“…why?”

Stella felt the tide of cruelty turning. Why did she bother to speak? Words had only ever brought trouble. She looked around to see if the hatch door could be opened from the inside.

“She’s only messing with you, Stells,” said June. “Ignore her.”

“Look!” Grace had her finger pointed at a road sign a quartermile down the parkway near a service area with a towering fake phone-pole tree at its center.

“Cheesequake State Park,” June read. “Okay…?”

“Cheesequake,” said Grace. “Cheese? … Quake?”
“These are just sounds you’re making, sweetness,” said Kara. “You’re gonna have to elaborate.”

“Were you not literally just talking about cheese, Stella?”

“It was Kara,” said Stella.

“Kara. Whatever. But am I wrong? Is this not, like, a symbol? I mean, is this not, like… I dunno, kinda crazy?”

“Not really,” Kara said.

“Pisces girls, all the same,” said June, rolling her eyes. “So naive.”

“Shit, I think I missed the exit.”

 

They rode in silence the rest of the way to Asbury Park. Grace muttered incoherently a while as she tried to find a parking space near the beach pavilion. She spotted one a ways inland on a residential street between houses alternatingly gothic and gaudy. Kara said she liked the wedding cake houses the best, with their lace arches and their filigree spires which would turn homicidal come hurricane season. June said the sound of cake was making her hungry. Grace said they were already running late, but June’s stomach insisted. So they walked ten minutes in the direction of the glass office complexes downtown to find a place to eat away from the boardwalk and its eight dollar corndogs. 

All the while Grace told Stella in tones just slightly too enthusiastic about the cult suicide she’d been researching on some true crime forum. She said the leader reminded her of their old phys-ed teacher, Mr. DeMatteo with the bushy hands. They passed a young family, one dad pushing a stroller with a watermelon in its seat and another with a floppy-hatted girl bouncing around on his shoulders. Kara honked like a drunken goose as they walked by, then explained she was making memories for the kid to remember her trip by.

First they came upon a bagel place, but June had already had a half of one for breakfast. Then a sub shop – too grimy for Grace. Then it was all corner dive bars and fast food, and a club where a bouncer handed Kara a flier and invited her to come back around 6 for ladies’ night. At the end of the block, she squealed in disgust and slipped the flier down a sewer drain.

“You love it,” said June.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” Kara replied.

“Okay, hang on,” said Grace. “This is getting freaky.”

“What is?”

“Over there. Past the hookah shop. Stella, this place is perfect for you.”

Grace ran across the street toward a store with a striped awning that read: Cheese Be With You. June and Kara exchanged a look and followed warily with Stella close behind.

“But that was Kara who said the cheese thing, not me.”

“What was that?” said Grace. “Never mind, let’s go. You’re gonna love it, Stella. Just look at all that cheese!”

“So let me get this straight,” June said. “When I’m literally dying of hunger in the sweltering heat – many miles from the only home I’ve ever known, I might add – then we’re running too late to find a place to eat… But when Queen Stella just has to have her cheese fix, suddenly we’ve got all day?”

“It’s not that hot. Anyway, eat some cheese if you’re so hungry!”

“Do they have Edam?” asked Kara.

“Only one way to find out…”

Grace held the door and doffed an imaginary chauffeur’s cap as they entered. There was no one in the store but a man at the counter in his mid-to-late-thirties who glared at them with a sort of hateful longing from behind his Discipline and Punish paperback. The smell of the place reminded Stella of the locker room at the public pool where she first learned to change with a towel on. Tiny cartoon mice on toothpicks lunged spiral-eyed into big wheels of cheese. A water-bruised sheet of paper on the back wall beside a gated TV looping footage of old surfing competitions announced the 2005 Spring Cutie Charcuterie Sale … Act Fast!

Kara gasped at a table full of Edam all in candy apple red wax. “They have it! Stella, grab a wedge. No, no – two. Eh, take the whole round. Trust me, you’ll love it.”

“She’s in here one minute and already she’s some big-time cheesemonger,” said June. “Like, Kara, they’re not hiring, girl.”

“Cheesemongress. Oh and that one. Stella, grab the Gruyère. Some crackers too, if they have them.”

“I don’t know if I wanna –”

“Here they are. Rosemary or whole wheat?”

“But I’m –”

“Take both. Different crackers for different contexts. That’s what the Dutchman always says.”

“He always says that?” asked June.

“He says it enough. What are you getting, Grace?”

“I’m not really a cheese kinda gal, you know? Not like Stella, anyway. Look at all that cheese, Stells! Someone’s having a good time!”
“Now be honest – how are you on mustard?” asked Kara.

“I dunno about this,” June said. “Cheese and sand? Now mustard and sand? Don’t you think that’s a bit… I dunno.”

“Your loss… Okay now maybe a couple of the Havartis or something like that. And I’m thinking Stilton? You really can’t go wrong with a nice Stilton.”

“Well well well,” said Grace, looking out the window at the bouncer strolling by, “if it isn’t Hog Johnson.”

“God, he’s like obsessed,” Kara said. “Like what a frickin’ perv. Let’s surprise him.”

“Wait, but –”

“Relax, take your time, Stells. We’ll be right outside. Don’t forget drinks – but you know all that. Don’t worry about me, I’m not hungry. You do you, girl. Have some fun, live a little, go nuts, et cetera.”

Then Stella was alone once more, in the company of a weird half-bald man who plainly despised her, carrying a month’s worth of gourmet cheese that her small intestine would never allow her to eat. Standing there, she pictured Lactaid pills scattered across her nightstand and wanted to cry, at least hypothetically. Dozens of potential excuses for leaving the cheese behind raced through her mind, but none satisfied the imaginary Kara she so feared. After three thought-paralyzed minutes, she brought the cheese and crackers to the register and placed them down with a soft, defeated flump. Beside them, she placed a sweat-beaded water bottle she pulled from the back of the flickering 7 Up-branded mini fridge.

The cashier tented his book on the desk and sighed. “Ready?” 

He remained absolutely still until she nodded. Then he glanced over the pile, scribbled something in his palm, and said, “$43.50.”

“$43.50?”

“What, you think I need to check? You have any idea how long I’ve been working this bullshit, and you ask me a thing like that? The nerve of you people… Paper or plastic? Paper’s extra.”

“Plastic…” His eyes locked onto her hands as she readied her wallet. “…please.”

“My God, what happened to them? I mean, they’re like… They look like my grandma’s hands.”

“Oh.”

“Like, how old even are you?”

“Twenty-four. I can bag them myself, thanks.”

“With hands like that? I mean, you must… Sorry, but, you know… Like wow, haha.”

“It’s a condition.”

“A condition of what?”

Stella tossed the fifty dollar bill her dad left by the door in the direction of the register, picked up her things, and rushed out of the store.

June was stamping out a cigarette with the toe of her Doc Martens as Stella approached. Kara and Grace were witnessing some great tragedy unfold in front of the Quiznos. “So you thought you could just forget about me, you son of a bitch?” yelled the woman with a crowbar in her hand, inching closer to the taillight of an already pretty beat up old Honda Civic.

“Five bucks says she does it,” Kara said.

“What do I need with five bucks, you child,” Grace said.

“There’s a lot of wounded people in this world, Stella,” said June, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, sagelike and stinking of menthol. “A lot of sick, a lot of tired… crazy, even… But there’s really nothing to be done, right? What can any one of us do? It’s scary, but you just… Look straight on or look away, I mean what difference does it make, ultimately? You know, they try to make their problems yours and everyone else’s but… and so yeah… Then you just have to… God, well anyway, you get it.”

The woman dropped her crowbar and ran at the sight of the bouncer leaving the Quiznos. The girls walked to the beach without another word. 

 

The sand was cool and wet from the early morning showers. Chunks of it coated Stella’s toes like clay as they trudged along. Down the slope, a boy had buried his big brother up to the neck and built a circle of castles around his head. A couple surfers in gray-black bodysuits paddled far from shore, though the waves were hardly picking up more than a foot or two in the windless calm of late afternoon. Behind them, seagulls circled the parking lots and alighted on the boardwalk, rummaging through the overflow of trash bins for loose Cheetos and funnel cake entrails.

After five minutes, Grace rolled out her famous Navajo blanket and staked a claim to a quiet spot out of earshot of the boomboxes and volleyballers near the pavilion. Kara solemnly announced her need to use the bathroom. June pouted and offered to join, then the two skipped arm in arm toward the nearest stairway up to the boardwalk.

Stella looked away as Grace took off her t-shirt and shorts and laid face down on the blanket. She sat upright on the bare sand beside her for a while, watching rubber balls bounce along the line where the public waters turned private. On the other side, she could see a yacht idling by with the name “Baba Buoy” stenciled on its bow.

“Aren’t you going in?” asked Grace.

“No, I’m not a swimmer.”

“Huh.”

“I can float but I can’t swim.”

Grace looked up at the overcast sky. “What’s the difference?”

“…It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“The water, I guess.”

From her bag, Grace brought out a tattered copy of Helter Skelter, then rolled onto her elbow away from Stella and began to read.

“Well you can float all you want,” Grace said. “No one’s watching.”

Stella looked around for June and Kara but they were nowhere to be seen. She could tell she wasn’t wanted. So she dropped her purse and bag of cheese, hiked up her skirt, and snaked past the umbrellas and tents to the edge of the ocean.

The water was cold – too cold for a good float. It sent shivers up her legs and stung the spots where she’d nicked herself shaving, but she didn’t mind it too much. She sat above the waterline with her feet still submerged and let her hands sink deeper into the sand with every wave that passed. After a few minutes, she lifted them out and admired how soft and delicate they’d become, so unlike their usual state. It made her feel like a little girl again, straddling the shore, watching the waves collapse into foam and charge back in again, searching for whatever beer bottle caps and oyster shells the next turn might bring. She thought of her mom somewhere on the other side of the horizon, watching her, knowing her.

Sooner than she’d expected, the light began to fade. The shadow of the pavilion enveloped her and the sky turned purple at the edges. The wind picked up and she let in a couple deep breaths of the salty air. Then she stood, beat the sand off her skirt, and turned back.

Most of the umbrellas were gone, and Grace along with them. Her blanket was gone too, with a message etched in the sand where it had been, half-blown away:

Left to find tweedle-dum and co.

Back at club ?

Will return, pinky promise here → ⏺

Yr step-m called !!

Stella turned over the phone which had fallen from her purse. The notifications appeared: seven missed calls and three unread voicemails. With nothing better to sustain her as she waited, she called back.

Heather picked up on the fourth ring. Stella heard a faint boiling sound. “Stell?”

“Yeah, hi Heather.”

“Let me put this thing down… Okay, what’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Is everything alright?”

“No, yeah, just saw you called is all.”

“I did? I don’t remember. Oh hey, have you thought any more about that internship thing we discussed? In the fall? It might be good for you, you know.”

“Not yet, Heather.”

“Uh huh. Well listen, S., can I call you back? This sauce is becoming a problem. It’s developed these… scabby things? Like on the top? And, um, well… I should’ve just let your sister do it, I know. La chefina. I’ll call you back, ‘kay? Ten minutes. Oh, but your father’s coming home… An hour. Two, tops. ‘Kay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Bye.”

Heather smacked her lips and hung up. Stella sat and waited.

Half an hour passed as one by one the straggling tent-dwellers packed up and hauled out for the night. Another half hour and she saw the last of the treasure-seekers with their metal detectors extended and knapsacks empty call it quits too. The noise from the pavilion dwindled by the minute, as did the hollers of sun-drunk teens aboard the tilt-a-whirl. Black stormclouds bloomed above the water.

After an hour and a half, her stomach rumbled but it didn’t occur to her to do anything about it quite yet. She just watched the big green barge as it rode the horizon, rising and falling and never appearing to move an inch. For a moment, she imagined herself out on that barge, away from Heather and Grace and June and Kara and anyone whose attention she’d ever craved and disdained. Then she felt ridiculous, sitting there so alone and forgotten, dreaming stupid dreams again. Still, the image lingered.

Soon the streetlamps sputtered on behind her. The oncoming rain spat lightly on her head and she knew she would have to leave any minute, whether or not the other girls returned. She checked her phone, expecting nothing and finding nothing. Her hands in the cold blue light looked more grotesque than ever. She let out one silent, tearless sob, then quickly checked around to make sure no one saw. No one did.

Precisely two hours after her call to Heather, Stella picked herself up and decided she’d had enough of the waiting and refreshing and stalling her life away. Purse and cheese bag in hand, she looked upon the waves in the moments before the clouds loosed their storm and for once felt a true, unimpeded calm.

Then the screaming began, at first so distant she couldn’t recognize it as human. “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” it went for minutes at a time, with hardly a space to breathe. As he emerged from the dark of the far end of the boardwalk, she saw his horrible, pained gallop, the balding head wet and gleaming under the streetlamps, the book coming to pieces in his trembling hands, and she knew it was him: that poor, angry cheese shop man.

“I’mSORRYI’mSORRYI’mSORRY…” He was headed straight toward her, down the steps and tripping through the dunes. She meant to run away, to duck, to hide, but all she could manage was to stand there and wonder why. The thunder cracked and the rain poured down. She held the cheese bag over her head.

“I’M SORRY!” he screamed, slowing down. When he reached her, he dropped to his knees, smiling grimly. “I’M SORRY! I’M SO, SO, SO, SORRY!”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Are you okay?”

“NO!” He jumped to his feet and lurched past her. He was headed for the water. “NONONONONO!”

“But the rain,” she said. “You can’t…” He didn’t seem to notice. It was like she wasn’t there at all. She looked around for help, but the beach and boardwalk were empty, and the few headlights she could see were all gathered behind the pavilion.

“WATCH ME, PLEASE,” he screamed, kicking off his shoes and stripping down to his boxers. His pale, freckled back was covered in fresh lashes, seeping blood. “DON’T LOOK AWAY! PLEASE DON’T LOOK AWAY FROM MY PUNISHMENT!”

He cast his book out like a skipping stone and tumbled bellyfirst into the water. His arms flailed wildly against the waves like someone who’d seen videos of swimming but never tried it themselves. As Stella watched, raindrops pelted the cheese bag like a bongo out of time. She ran down to the ocean’s edge, so much higher than it had been before.

“But why…?” she called out to him. “Why are you sorry…? Can you hear me?”

If he heard her over the crashing, he didn’t bother to respond. She tried to think of what to do, though she knew it wouldn’t matter much. She threw the bag out to him. It landed with a plop just a few feet behind him. “Grab on! I can pull you back in, I think! Just stay there!” The bag sank in seconds.

She decided the time had come for something drastic. There was nothing else left but to jump, so she unstrapped her sandals, threw them back with her purse, planted her feet down hard and strong, and braced herself for the cold. 

Then the earthquake hit. The ground trembled and with one mighty shake knocked her straight back into the sand. It was then she knew it was over for her, sliding helplessly around in the muddy waste like a pig in a sty, prone and pummeled by the driving rain. When the earthquake passed two minutes later, she looked out over the water, so dark she couldn’t tell where it ended and the sky began. There was no sign of the cheese shop man anywhere. It was as though he’d never been.

The rain trickled and stopped. The world was quiet again. She was alone and she felt so much less than she ever knew she could. She swallowed three Klonopins with a handful of water she wrung from her hair and settled in to dry a bit before heading off to look for Grace and the rest. She was determined never to describe the things she’d seen. She looked up at the stars dimly piercing the broken clouds like so many headlights, remembering signs along the parkway. Then she laughed, then stopped, then laughed again, and her voice trailed off slowly into the night.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so…”

 

Joel Henry Little is a writer and musician from New York City. He received a B.A. in English from Hunter College, and his work has appeared in Maudlin House, Heavy Feather Review, Ghost City Review, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.

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