it's not the '70s anymore
Thor’s dad had been a sculptor, got into the business back in the ’70s when people bought anything, loved new ideas, and every artist knew at least three people who had made it. His mother was a weaver, and when he was little and they still lived in a remodeled chicken coop, her loom had taken up half the house, the clacking lulling her children to sleep.
Sif was born in a commune with no real idea who her mother was, except maybe one of the seven women who left when she was four. When her brother left at seventeen she chose to go with him. Sif spent that first year, nine years old and new to the real world, sneaking out of his dorm before dawn to go to real school, collecting cans and scrap until dusk to help survive.
Jane’s parents were doctors. She grew up in the suburbs, went to college and got a BS, not a BA. No one was sure what exactly happened.
———
When Sif was ten, she and Heimdall bought a camper off an old hippie and started living on a patch of land just outside the city. The farmer didn’t care, said he’d gotten rid of the goats he used to raise there. It was only a half hour bike ride to the bus stop. Sif rode on the handle bars, and in the snow the farmer’s wife drove her to school in trade for shoveling their long driveway. Summer meant exploring the wooded roadsides, digging up dandelions and wild onions, pretending to be a bandit.
When Thor was twelve, he and his brother claimed an abandoned house down the road as their fort. The woodworking he learned that summer, under half an eye’s supervision from Dad, laid groundwork he didn’t think about until much later, halfway through his sophomore year of college. The girl who broke into their fort in August just never seemed to leave. Not even when Loki cut off all her hair.
———
Sif was sixteen when Thor’s mom started teaching summer classes at the college. She had her GED and thought she was done with school, RV to herself and freedom in her grasp. Frigg dragged her along to one workshop, promising new curtains for an hour playing gofer. An hour turned into two, someone sat her at a wheel with a lump of clay, and Sif was sunk. She stayed in school. They taught her how to make vessels as large as her brother and how to build a kiln. But this wasn’t the ’70s anymore.
Thor and Loki went away for college. Loki excelled. Thor made new friends, flunked out in his second pointless year, and tried to move home. His dad pointed out he had a car, told him to get a job, and changed the locks. Sif, good old Sif, let him move in but they had to move to a trailer park. Farmers don’t live forever and sometimes have less open-minded children. Thor found a job working maintenance for the college. The old guy running the place let him have free reign in the shop, and sometimes that felt like the only way Thor stayed sane. When Sif pointed out their lack of space, he stopped giving neighbors lawn furniture and started working small.
Being the only girl to survive four years in the entire science department sucked balls, but when Jane was a freshman she dated a girl in the art department. It crashed and burned halfway through the semester, but Jane was already stuck in a painting elective. After that she just kind of painted when she was drunk. Kept the hands busy. She didn’t realize how much the men in her department drove her to drink until she tried to move out of the apartment she’d had those four years. Grad school was looking a lot less great with every trip carrying canvases down the stairs, every minute her parents harped about it. She probably just needed a break. One year as a hospital lab tech couldn’t hurt that much. And her new, smaller apartment was cute. Right by an art school with a never-ending canvas sale. Crazy coincidences.
Officially, Sif’s degree meant that she could teach. Realistically, she lasted two months before crashing into the worst case of burnout her superintendent could remember. Sure, no one expects to keep a first year teacher, but this was kind of extreme. Heart in throat, Sif was forced to resign. With the job went her last access to a kiln. For the first time, she had no plan. Heimdall had no advice.
It took her three weeks to find a job, working at the printing center at Office Depot. Meantime she built Thor a storage shed, a return to a scrapping past. He’d never felt more helpless, or more in love with her. It was about time he did something about it. Not quite there yet, but about. It was coming. Meantime, he learned some silversmithing from Fandral, an up-coming jeweler with a need for custom displays. His shed turned into a small work studio, with the neighbor’s dog Dragon kenneled to guard it.
Sif made hundreds of bakelite figures and vessels in their tiny stove, though she hated the stuff. It kept her hands moving for a clearance price, kept the too many Volstagg children entertained when she watched them for the generous, machinist neighbors. She didn’t charge, but it kept them in repairs and vegetables all the same.
Jane struggled in her new city, but couldn’t quite bring herself to fill out grad school applications. Getting a roommate helped. Darcy was fiery, deeply interested in the human side of the world, and more into Jane’s art than her science. She refused to let Jane destroy everything, just some things, and dragged her out to gallery openings and art museums. She claimed it was because she wanted to tell people she knew a real artist, rejected Jane’s protests, and drew stick figure scenes on their fridge in dry-erase marker. In her second year out of school, Jane felt herself start to breathe again. Her conversations with her parents grew more stilted by the phone call, but her laughter between them got a little freer. She decided there were worse lives to live than hers.
Darcy still couldn’t get her to call herself an artist, though.
———
Thor sold his first piece of jewelry, a necklace of solid wood with silver inlay, the month Sif turned twenty-one. It was only consignment to Fandral’s shop so it wasn’t entirely, truly sold yet, but it was still money, still actual success. When he told her, Sif kissed him right on the mouth and that was that. The money went to two ice cream cones and finally replacing the camper’s gas lines before they killed someone. They were dating. The world was gold to Thor. If only they could find access to a kiln.
Sif started avoiding the art store and got a promotion to manager at Office Depot. Thor kept a shoebox filled with napkins she’d drawn, doodled, or written glaze recipes on. Someday, he maintained, she would need them. But he didn’t tell her about it.
Summer break ended, reminding Jane that Darcy, the person most supportive of her education procrastination, was the only person she still knew in college. Darcy quit her inflexible gas station gig and picked up a new one at some office store. She bragged about her manager letting her print papers for free, drooled over the hot maintenance guy she’d found “hidden away” on campus, and continued to lock herself out of the apartment on a predictable, if not regular, basis. Jane was more concerned about the possibility of stalking charges than either of the other situations, especially when Darcy started taking pictures.
Though yes, he was definitely, extremely attractive. Didn’t the school have some policy against staff working shirtless? And no, she really, really didn’t want to know more, actually. She refused to let Darcy drag her down with her. One of them needed to stay out of jail.
———
The third time in two months that Darcy forgot her keys, Jane caught it on her way out the door. Stuffing them in her pocket, she texted her roommate a warning that she’d be dropping them off over her lunch, and then forgot about it completely for four hours.
Darcy wasn’t the only absent-minded roommate, maybe, whatever. Jane found them again as she finished off her lunchtime chocolate shake and McDonald’s salad. That was the important thing. And the way she rushed over to Office Depot would hopefully have Darcy declaring her some sort of real life super hero.
Especially because she totally, completely missed hitting one of the managers with her giant clunker of a car by at least a full inch.
And Darcy had a lot of explaining to do for not mentioning that her favorite manager was also really unfairly stunning. Beautiful. Stunning. And nice and unflappable and amused by Jane’s inability to speak real words at first, and also an artist (she asked about the paint on Jane’s elbow, why didn’t Darcy tell her about the paint), and —
dating Maintenance Hotty. As Jane found out when, leaving Darcy’s keys with Sif the manager, she really did actually sort of run smack dab into him.
The parking lot was really stupid.
She’d only started backing out, he insisted he was fine.
Darcy still taunted her about jail, and for a few seconds there Jane wondered if it was too late to leave the city and go to grad school in like England maybe.
Then, putting a ziploc of ice on her boyfriend’s leg, Sif told him that Jane was a painter.
Thor’s face lit up, he asked about her preferred medium, if she had a website, and Jane started wondering if this wasn’t all just a dream.