Attractive Nuisance

They were out there. The crimped hush of excitement, whispering through taut jaws chilled by the frosty night air and the rush of teen adrenaline, was unmistakable. He couldn’t make out the words, or recognize them as individuals, but they were girls. There was giggling. They were girls who held the wholly unoriginal opinion that his son was soooooo cute. And they were about to express this opinion by pelting the house with something irrefutably unintended for application to the exterior of a home: eggs, maybe, or soap or toilet paper. The hope was that flaming crap in a bag was beyond these girls.

He was cute, Russ knew. His son Benji was cute as all hell: he’d come out of Mags that way, fifteen years ago. Cute from the get-go. And he was kind, as well, always obeying his grandmother’s universal admonition to “smile at the plain girls, too!”—the same thing she’d said to Russ growing up, though, for him, the need to do so had been far less a form of community service. Russ had been lucky to have any girls, plain or otherwise, at whom to smile. So the boy was approachable, affable, kind to all. It sounded great on paper, but in practice, it made for a lot of hovering around the periphery by girls with high hopes; a lot of hang ups on the house phone by those, no doubt, who had either been dared just to call or lost their nerve midway. And it wasn’t an act, this gentle tolerance. More than once, times he’d picked him up after school, Russ had given him his space, hanging back before announcing himself, lingering just around a corner or on the landing of the stairs, and witnessed kids glancing Benji’s way down the ringing corridors, watching him. And he listened in as the bolder ones hailed his son. Russ allowed him a moment to react to these beaming goofballs, both male and female, orbiting around his patient boy: he didn’t put on the manners only when he knew his parents were watching. The kid was genuinely kind.

That kindness—tonight being a prime example—sometimes got in the way, Russ thought, with a stab of self-admission that he was probably a hypocrite. Would he be grumbling about too much kindness if Benji had been a girl? If he’d had a daughter, would he honestly prefer she risk being known as a “stuck-up bitch” among the pining boys, an ice queen who wouldn’t give them even the courtesy of a pleasant hello?

This foolishness from the girls had been going on since Benji was twelve. Possibly before then, though if so, Russ hadn’t yet caught on to the connection. It wasn’t just Devil’s Night, either. April Fools’ Day was big. So was his birthday. Even Sweetest Day. Last Valentine’s Day, while Benji was at a friend’s doing homework and Russ and Mags treated themselves to a rare date night, girls came and decorated the entire north exterior wall of the empty house with a two-story heart. They’d done their reconnaissance work: Benji’s bedroom was on that side. They’d used spray whipped cream, but they must’ve run out midway—judging from the tracks in the snow, they came back with reinforcements—and were unable to find more of the same (perhaps couples with seasonal romance on their minds could account for a shortage of Reddi-wip in stores), so they finished the job with Cheez Whiz. The cans were chucked in a drift. The next day, without having to be asked, Benji put on his coat and dug out every can, discarding them properly in the trash. As for the heart, the Reddi-wip disappeared with weather but remains of the fake cheese spread clung on, well past Easter.

Though Russ prepared himself each time he heard squirrelly rustling outside for the prospect of a same-sex admirer—Benji was a pretty boy, and they’d raised him not to judge—even the heart artists...