by Piper Lennox
“I haven’t told you this yet,” I start, pausing when the doors to the ER open again, then exhaling when the name called isn’t ours, “but I’ve been completely blown away by how well you’ve handled everything. Dad getting sick, Bennett being gone, having Bentley—”
“Are you kidding? I still cry, like, twenty times a day.”
“Exactly. And then you take a breath, get up, and...and keep going, anyway. You feel what you need to feel when it hits, and then it passes, and you move on and do what you need to do. To be honest, it—it reminds me of Mom.”
The cracked vinyl on her chair squeaks when she pulls one foot underneath her, flip-flop abandoned on the floor. “Really?”
“Yeah. She had a hard time when we moved from Filigree—when Dad lost the properties, and we had to start all over. His drinking got worse. He got worse.” I sit back. The window against my head sweats in the humidity, wetting my hair to the scalp, and somehow snuffs the anger before it can build.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and Mom would have just gotten Dad to go to sleep. I don’t think she felt safe going to bed until he did, because...I don’t know, maybe she worried he’d get sick and choke in his sleep, if she didn’t turn him? Maybe she was worried he’d start in on me. But, yeah—she wouldn’t sleep until he did.
“Then she’d stay up for an hour or whatever just...cleaning. Rearranging all the furniture he’d stumbled into, wiping up spills...she wouldn’t go to bed until the house looked like it was supposed to.”
“Why? So you wouldn’t find out he’d been drinking?”
“No, I always knew that. It wasn’t a secret. I think she did it so she could wake up to a clean slate. She didn’t want to carry the problems of one day into the next.” I swallow. “That’s what she used to tell me. ‘No sense letting today ruin tomorrow, before it even starts.’”
Caroline gives a small smile. “Not a bad motto.”
“Yeah. But easier said than done.”
“So she never cried about it? I mean...God, I can’t believe she could just clean it all up and forget, over and over.”
“Oh, she cried. Every time I came downstairs to find her cleaning up his bullshit, she’d have tears, like...streaming nonstop down her face. That’s when I started hating Dad. I didn’t until then, even when he roughed me up or yelled. It was when he made her cry.”
I cross my ankle over my knee and check the anger again, failing. My voice grates itself down to almost nothing. “He didn’t deserve her.”
Caroline sips her coffee, teeth sinking back into the cup.
“But,” I add with a breath, “she kept going. She’d cry a while, start cleaning, and by the end...she seemed like she felt better. Don’t get me wrong: I still think she should have gotten the hell out of that marriage, found someone who treated her right—but she stayed. I guess so she could help him, or try. Maybe she just felt stuck, I don’t know. But point is, no matter why she didn’t or couldn’t leave, she made the best of it, the best way she knew how. She stood up and she faced it.” I nudge Caroline’s shoulder with mine. “That’s what I see in you.”
She wipes her eyes, smiling again. “Thanks, Ford. That makes me feel better.”
“Good. I’m not completely useless yet.”
We laugh, but stop when the doors to the ER swing open.
“McLean?”
That’s the problem with emergencies as distractions. When the adrenaline wears off, you’re left with twice the problems.
As soon as the doctor tells us Dad is going to be all right—as all right as he can be, anyway—my fight with Easton starts playing again, mingling with doctor talk of overnight observation and med adjustments until I can’t remember my own name.
“I’ll stay tonight.” Caroline plunks into the lounge chair by the bed. “You go.”
“You’ve got Bentley,” I remind her. “I’ll stay.”
“I’ll stay. April told me they’d watch him as long as I need, even overnight.”
“She was just being nice. They don’t have the stuff to watch him through an entire night.”
“She wouldn’t have offered if she didn’t mean it. Besides, you and Dad always end up arguing. It’s bad for his health.”
“No one’s staying here with me,” Dad interjects weakly. It still startles us both.
“You,” he says, pointing at me, “go home and fix the shower curtain. And Caroline”—he sits the bed upright with the remote, one stuttering inch at a time—“your brother’s right. As nice as April’s offer was, they’re not set up to take care of a newborn overnight. Go to the Lawrences, thank them, and then take Bentley home. You both could probably use some extra sleep.”
“But Daddy—”
“I’m fine. You heard the doctor, just some dehydration. They’ll fix me up and send me on home tomorrow.” When Caroline’s worried look—Mom’s worried look—doesn’t dissipate, he adds, “Can’t faint again if I’m stuck in bed.”
I grab the marker from his patient whiteboard and write out mine and Caroline’s cell numbers. “We’ll go, but only if you swear you’ll call us if you need anything.” I cap the marker and point it at him. “And I’m going to tell the nurses to keep an eye on you, in case you try to sneak out.”
“One time, I did that. That doctor was an ass.”
“You think every doctor’s an ass.”
Dad shrugs like this is a truth of the world, not his own opinion.
Caroline hugs him goodbye. She cries a little, but straightens her shoulders and smiles on her way out. I pat his shoulder. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to hugging him, but that seems good enough for both of us.
“You’re sure he’ll be okay?” Caroline bites her thumbnail as we drive home, glancing through the rear window like she can still see the hospital. “He looks so bad, Ford.”
I hesitate. “He does. But...yeah. I think he’ll be okay. He’s talking, sitting up—the doctor didn’t seem worried, so we shouldn’t be, either.”
“The doctor isn’t his kid. Of course he’s not worried.”
We get back to the house before dusk. I take my time heading in, while Caroline goes to get Bentley.
Even from our porch, I can hear April’s singsong insistence that she join them for dinner. A minute later, the door shuts; either Caroline’s dining with them, or she’ll return with Tupperware full of food.
Both, actually, knowing April.
Upstairs, I survey the damage. The shower curtain is torn in seven eyelets, but fixable with some duct tape; the rod has torn a decent hole in the wall. I’m going to need tools.
The garage door thunders its way up the track. I can’t help but glance at Easton’s bedroom—both of them. First the darkened, flannel-covered window in what’s now her dad’s office, then the lacy white ones over the garage. The light is on, but I can’t see her shadow. She’s probably enjoying dinner with her family.
She’s probably pushed last night to the back of her mind, the way I’ve tried to do all day.
The worst part is, it felt so close. We almost made it work, this time.
But that’s the problem with trying anything again: you run the risk of the same things happening. The same things going wrong, same shit rearing its head. Especially when, at the end of the day, you’re the same people you were the first time.
Twenty-Seven
That’s the problem with using music to lift your spirits: listen at the wrong time, and you’ll grow to hate every single song.
I lay down last night with my ear buds in and skipped track after track. Suddenly my entire library reminded me of him: thousands of lyrics that had nothing to do with either of us, apart or together; melodies that either made me ache all over with their sad, low notes, or sliced into my nerve endings with peppy, upbeat tunes.
When I wake, his truck is gone. I stare at the window across from mine. The night before last, when I lay in that tiny bed with him and thought the world was finally going right, already feels lik
e years ago. Just another scene in our old story, after all.
As raw as it leaves my sinuses, and as ashamed and foolish as it makes me feel, I wrap myself back up in the quilt, lie on the futon in a patch of sunlight, and cry.
The only thing dumber than falling for Ford once, was doing it again.
“Why can’t you and me ever be about right here, right now, and see what happens?” he’d asked.
“Why can’t we just be this?”
This is what we are. When you get past the bursts of lightning in closets and spiraling summer heat in alleys, the bass from car stereos and moonlight where scars can look beautiful—we’re tears and sobs that wring a soul down to nothing. We’re the sound of choking breaths in the middle of silence. Fence posts that never needed to be planted in the first place, tarnished and splintered until they don’t stand quite right. Dust and motor oil and lost things. Red dirt, rust.
Once I’ve practically cried myself sick, I get up and do exactly what I did the last time Ford broke my heart.
I get dressed.
I wash my face, the cold water ratcheting my headache up to eleven.
I take ibuprofen, comb my hair, and face myself in the mirror.
You’re going to go on. Ford wasn’t the end of me at eighteen, no matter how much it felt like he was. And he won’t be now.
The walk from the garage to the house feels like the march to an enemy camp, if only because I have to prep myself on how to fit in. Smile, stand straight. Don’t let anyone know. Because the more people know, the harder it will be to forget.
Grandma, for once, isn’t giving Mom hell over taking her pills. She’s too busy watching the drama unfold between my parents. Over, of all things, coffee creamer.
“It’s loaded with sugar, Jason.” Mom flips the top on the bottle and poises it over the drain. “We agreed to get everything sweet out of the house. You promised.”
“I’ve used that creamer all week and tested just fine. Look at the serving size—I use less than half that, mixed with milk. Hell, I can barely taste it, I use so little!”
“Then you won’t mind if I pour it out.” Mom cocks her eyebrow. The bottle’s angle increases.
“This,” I announce, as the screen door clatters behind me, “is the most ridiculous fight you guys have ever had.”
“He promised not to bring any more sugary food in this house, Easton.” Mom slams the bottle on the counter, splashing a streak of what, even I have to admit, smells like absurdly sweet liquid all the way to the coffee pot.
“And your mother,” Dad retorts, staring her down with a bravery I sure as hell wouldn’t have in a situation like this, “promised she would lay off. She follows me around at mealtime, measures my food—I feel like a goddamned child in my own house.”
“If you didn’t act like a child, then I wouldn’t—”
“Lord Jesus, help me,” Grandma shouts, slapping her palms on the table, “I’m stuck in this home all hours of the day, with two kids who don’t even know what real marital problems look like.”
Everyone shuts up. I hold my breath.
Grandma grabs her walker and, incredibly, manages to somehow both stalk and shuffle her way to the sink. She holds out her hand.
Slowly, Mom gives her the bottle.
“Jason, take your damn creamer.” Grandma holds it out to him across the island. He hesitates, like he thinks he’s being tricked. I would.
When he grabs it, Grandma nods, takes a deep breath, and says, “When I was sixteen, Peter went to Vietnam. We’d been married less than two months, I was pregnant—and now I had to do it alone.”
She glances between them, making sure they’re listening. They are.
“Then,” she goes on, “when I finally got him back? He just wasn’t the same. Always shouting. Drinking, slamming things. He got to having nightmares so terrible, he’d wake us all up screaming in the middle of the night. You remember that, April? It was better by the time you came along, but it still happened. I know you remember. Not the kind of thing a child forgets.”
Mom’s eyes drift to the floor. She nods.
“People told me he was out of the army,” Grandma says, “but he ‘wasn’t out of the war.’ I could look right at him, hold his hand, sleep beside him.... He was home. But I still didn’t have him back.”
She looks at me, and her stare is so clear I have to hold my breath again. It’s like she knows I’m thinking of Ford, right this second. Thinking of our war. The one we just can’t get out of, no matter how much time passes.
“So for the next decade, you know what we did? Worked on bringing him back. We scrimped and saved to get him into a shrink’s office. I stayed up more nights than I can count, wiping sweat off him when he’d have another bad dream.
“And he worked hard, too. Worked right through all that pain, so he could provide for us. Gave up drinking, gave up poker with his friends, whatever he had to so he could make it work.
“Funny thing was, during all that, not once did we fight. We didn’t have our first fight until we’d been married almost thirteen years.”
Grandma looks at the creamer in Dad’s hand. “Do you know what our first fight was about? Cigarettes. I yelled at him when I caught him smoking out behind our shed one day, because he’d sworn to me his last pack was it, he was done with those things. And he yelled back, saying that after all he’d been through, he needed just one thing to get him through the rest.
“So the fact of the matter is, April Anne, you’ve caught him doing his one thing. Just one. But Jason, you need to understand that it isn’t about that ‘one thing’—it’s that April is scared. You broke part of that promise, so in her mind, what’s stopping you from breaking it completely? You shouldn’t have bought that creamer without changing the agreement you two had.
“And April: it’s not a candy bar. It’s not ice cream. This might be a step back, but it’s not all the way back. It’s a cigarette behind the shed.”
Grandma nods at me, and I feel my stomach clench in pure panic until she says, “Easton was right. This is the most ridiculous fight. You two have been through much worse—don’t let something petty wear you down. Get yourselves some perspective.”
And with that, the tennis balls on her walker shush their way ahead like steeds parting a crowd, and she adjourns to the living room. A Reba rerun blasts through the television.
The three of us, meanwhile, stand here like Tony Robbins just slapped us in a lineup.
Dad puts the bottle on the island, sliding it towards Mom.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have talked to you about it, first.”
Mom pushes it back. “No, no, I...I didn’t have to get so worked up about it.”
They quiet, then nod at each other, as though some kind of compromise has been made. I’m not sure what: Dad still broke his promise, and Mom is still worried. What now—he gets to do as he pleases and drink it anyway, while she just has to accept it? What about when he wants just a little chocolate again, or just one of those snack cakes he used to hoard in his office?
The doorbell rings, a frantic ding-ding-ding that snaps both my parents out of their peace summit. Mom pushes the bottle back as she runs to answer it, smiling at him before she goes, and I fight the scowl I want to give with every bone in my body. Just like that, she’s given in.
I pour myself a cup of coffee, add some of Dad’s no-longer-forbidden creamer, and join Grandma in the living room. With the speakers turned to her usual preference, I can barely hear Mom at the front door.
When she comes back, she’s got a baby in her arms.
“Someone selling babies door-to-door?” Dad jokes, and Mom hits his arm and laughs at him. Laughs. I love my father—but how my mother has put up with him all these years, switching so fluidly between furious and infatuated, I’ll never understand.
“Caroline needed a babysitter for a few hours,” she explains, bouncing the baby I’ve now recognized as Bentley in her arms. “Mama, can you turn that down
a little?”
Grandma mutes it without complaint. She’s cantankerously set in her ways—but she does love babies.
“Let me see that boy,” she says, arranging a throw pillow before Mom passes him to her. Her soft, adoring smile relaxes me and reminds me of when I was little.
“Sure is a cute one,” Dad comments, getting a look before sinking into his chair. “How long do we get to keep him?”
“She didn’t say. They’re taking Reese to the doctor—must be something with his liver, but I didn’t ask.”
I cough, sputtering coffee out of my mug. “His liver? What, um…what’s going on with his liver?”
“Easton, we all know. You don’t have to pretend.”
Mom’s casual brush-it-off motion doesn’t numb my shock. “How’d you find out?”
“Have you seen Reese lately?” Dad asks, but his sarcasm’s edged with sadness. “It’s not an easy thing to hide.”
“We didn’t know for sure, mind you,” Mom adds, taking Bentley from Grandma and sitting beside me, “until I ran into Caroline at the festival the other day. I just plain asked her, because I’d already suspected as much, and she answered. Poor girl. I know Reese and Ford like their privacy and what have you, but doesn’t seem fair to her. It’s wearing her down, having to keep it to herself.”
“There’s a reason for it, though,” I say. Why am I defending Reese? And why, in doing so, does it feel like I’m defending Ford? “Once one person in Hillford knows your business, everyone knows.”
“And?” Mom asks Dad to get the diaper bag from the front hall, then turns back to me. “Why’s it a bad thing if Hillford knows? Your friends and neighbors can’t know what’s going on in your life?”
“Because they spread rumors, and gossip, and...and half the time, they don’t really care about what you’re going through. They just want a good story.”
“Of course there’s a few people like that in Hillford. There are people like that anywhere.” When Dad comes back, Mom thanks him and digs until she finds a bottle and formula. Dad offers, with saccharine politeness, to fix it for her. What the hell did Grandma’s little speech do to them? Usually my parents’ fights stretch into days of bitterness and passive-aggressive gestures.