Kith and Kin

by Kris Ripper

  Marie held Miles to meet her pastor—Brother James, though aside from the introduction she called him “James”—but couldn’t keep him in her arms much longer than that.

  “You let these strong young men carry Miles, Marie,” Brother James told her, kissing her cheek. “I’m so glad to see you smiling, Sister. It’s very good to meet you both, and to know who’s caring for our baby boy.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Singer said.

  “And, um, thanks for making us feel welcome,” Jake added, blushing faintly.

  Brother James laughed out loud. “Y’all are always welcome here. You let me know if there’s anything we can help with.”

  “Boy needs a barber,” Marie said.

  “In time, Marie.” James winked at Miles, chucked his chin, and moved away.

  This was evidently some kind of sign. The next twenty minutes were all introductions and shaking hands and names (some of which Singer realized he could neither spell nor remember how to say). And black women, mostly older than Marie, handing Miles around, laughing when he began to cry, as if they were sharing a joke with him, which somehow pulled him out of his tears long enough to be distracted.

  They shifted off to the side when they were clearly unnecessary. Jake leaned in, barely speaking above a whisper. “This? Would not happen if we brought him to mass. I don’t mean Miles, I mean any kid of ours.” Jake paused for a second. “Maybe any kid of anyone’s. This is amazing, Singer. We have to do this. I mean, as often as we can.”

  “I agree completely.”

  Shared certainty, Singer reflected, was one of the things he missed most. They stood back, a few feet behind Marie and her extended network of grandmothers and aunties, watching Miles get sleepy, eventually settling on someone’s shoulder, eyes heavy, fluttering, finally closed. Every kid should have this. Every kid should be passed around, in a wide circle of people, kith and kin, who love them, until they’re so sated and relaxed they drift off to sleep.

  Sometime later, after a meal served buffet style in a big room off to the side of the church proper, Singer and Jake extracted Miles from a woman called Sarah, who appeared to be one of Marie’s close friends.

  “Will we be seeing you again, then?” she asked, looking at each of them.

  “Same time next week,” Jake replied.

  Marie laughed. “You sure are determined, I’ll give you that.” She kissed Miles once more. “All right, then, boy, you’ll see your old nana next Sunday. Drive safely home, now.”

  “We will.”

  *

  Jake somewhat awkwardly invited him back to Carey and Alice’s. There were a few bad seconds, when he stood just inside the door, hit with the contrast of how welcome he’d felt in this house when he knew Jake was coming home with him.

  Then Carey was there, suddenly, at his side. “How was church?”

  “Oddly … positive.”

  Carey’s mouth quirked at the corner—which was, for him, a genuine smile. “It occurred to me at some point in adulthood that there are people with uncomplicated relationships with God. I can’t imagine it.”

  “You mean, people who expect church to be positive?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know, Care,” Alice said from across the room, where she was helping Miles peel out of his church clothes. “I’d think it’s the people with the most complicated relationships to God who find succor in a place of worship.”

  “Did you just say ‘succor’?”

  “Shut it, bub. You want some coffee, Singer? Jake?”

  Coffee, yes, then cookies, and Miles falling asleep in his arms, for the first time in days. Singer laid him carefully down in the playpen, set up to the side of the fold-out bed in Carey’s office.

  “I’ll, uh, drive you home,” Jake said.

  They were alone in the car. Singer couldn’t remember the last time they’d been alone together. His heart was pounding, like this was a first date, like what he said now would influence whether or not they’d ever go on a second one.

  “You could stay. With us.” Jake glanced sideways, fingers lightly tapping on the steering wheel.

  “At Carey’s?” In the office?

  Jake shrugged, but Singer could see the tension in his shoulders now, back going rigid. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too. I miss both of you. All day, every day.”

  “Then why not bring some stuff over? It’s not a solution. But it’d be nice to … see you. While we figure one out.”

  Singer felt a wave of stupid, inescapable anger and bit down on his tongue. “A solution to what?”

  “I don’t really know. Whatever’s going on. With us.”

  “What’s going on with us is you left. You took Miles and went to your brother’s house.”

  Jake was already shaking his head, which made little fiery daggers shoot through Singer’s limbs.

  “Isn’t that what happened? You said you needed some time and you’d come back, but how much time? When?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I needed time and that I wasn’t leaving you. And I’m not. I think about you all goddamn day long, Singer.” Jake pulled the car, inelegantly, to the curb. “What the fuck are we doing right now?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who left.”

  “Yeah, because you haven’t talked to me, really talked to me, in weeks! I left? Jesus, Singer, you’ve been gone since your mom showed up, and it doesn’t matter that we were in the same house.” Jake paused, eyes narrow. “So what, you’re waiting for me to apologize?”

  “I’m waiting for you to explain it!”

  “I can’t do what we’ve been doing anymore. This thing where we’re in the same room but we’re not. I don’t understand what changed, except it has to do with Miles and Lisa and your mom, and you aren’t fucking talking to me about it, so maybe it has to do with me, too. Do you even want us to be together, Singer?”

  “Don’t put this on me. I didn’t leave. I sleep, in our bed, every night.”

  “Not ‘our’ bed,” Jake shot back. “Your parents’ bed. In your parents’ house. Where your parents have made it clear that neither Miles, nor I, am welcome.”

  “Not my parents, my mother, and the minute she leaves everything will be back to normal.”

  An extended, painful moment of dead air permeated the car while Jake just stared at him. Then he turned away and restarted the engine.

  Singer’s heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “Well? Isn’t that— Isn’t that what you want?”

  They were almost to the house when Jake spoke again. “I don’t know. I think I want better than normal. I think I want … more. Than that. Than waiting to see what your mother decides to do and going along with whatever that is.”

  “But…” More? Better? What was wrong with how it had been before? The painful tightness in Singer’s chest expanded until he couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to.

  “Anyway, I’ll drop him off Tuesday morning. Did that work okay? With you taking him so I can go to work?”

  Singer blinked back tears. And were tears acidic? Because these seemed to be burning. “Of course.”

  “And you remember we have the visit Thursday with Regina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. See you in the morning. Say hi to Lisa for me.”

  Singer stood there watching the car drive to the corner, stop, turn left. So, no second date, then. God, how did everything get so messed up?

  He went straight to his bedroom (or rather his parents’ bedroom), stripped off his Sunday best, and took a long, hot shower. When he came out he curled up in bed and stayed there the rest of the day.

  37

  Lisa

  96 days since leaving Grace

  “No,” Lisa said. That was it. She was done. The word “no” had never felt so much like an
entire argument as it did right now.

  Mother didn’t seem to catch on. “We have an appointment.”

  “You have an appointment, Mother. And you should go to it, if that’s what you want.”

  “But— It’s— I made it for you.”

  “No. I’m not going to any more of your hand-picked ‘specialists,’ Mother. Not a single one of them has been helpful to me at all.”

  “But what about Susan? She was helpful, and I still don’t know why you didn’t like her—”

  “She was helpful to you. Which is fine. You should go see someone if you want to. But she wasn’t helpful to me, so I don’t plan to see her again. Or any of the other ones.”

  Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Because you liked that man, the one who overstepped. I’m beginning to worry about your relationship to men, Lisa.”

  It should have hit home—Lisa was already worried about her relationship to men—but it didn’t. Somehow barbs thrown by Mother were less and less sharp these days.

  “He didn’t overstep. He respected me as a person who’s different than you.”

  “Well, since I was the one paying—”

  Singer walked into the kitchen (why did all of her fights with Mother happen in the kitchen?) and poured himself coffee. They waited for him to leave, but he didn’t.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Lisa waited to see what Mother would do.

  “Singer, your sister is bound and determined not to accept help from anyone. Don’t you think—”

  “Since when?”

  “Since when what?” Mother asked, in a tone making it clear she was sick of both of them.

  “You said Lisa won’t accept help, but it seems to me like she’s doing better than either you or me, Mother. You’re clearly not facing whatever it is that’s going on with you and Dad, and I’m clearly not dealing with Jake. Lisa’s the one who comes out looking normal from where I’m standing.”

  Lisa shot him a raised eyebrow.

  “Well. Maybe not normal, though the standards around here are flexible. But at least Lisa’s improving. Has she shown you her orchid?”

  Mother was practically shaking (with rage, or maybe just irritation). “What orchid? I have no idea what you’re even talking about, Singer!”

  “Emery brought her an orchid. Very sweet of him.”

  “Shut up,” Lisa mumbled.

  “It’s not every day I walk up to find an extremely attractive tattooed man on my front porch bearing orchids. If only.” But the smile he forced with the humor was a little weak.

  Why was he still hiding from Jake? This was getting ludicrous. It had been two weeks now.

  “Are you going over to Carey and Alice’s?” she asked.

  “I think I’ll hang out here today. Thought we could go bother Frankie at the bookstore. That’s always good for a laugh.”

  “I’ll get ready.”

  “Lisa, we have an appointment—”

  “Mother, I told you: I’m not going. Singer and I are going to the bookstore.”

  “But there’s— We have— Lisa, you can’t go through life doing whatever you want!”

  Singer gestured, a little violently. “Why can’t she? Why can’t all of us go through life doing whatever we want, Mother? What else should we be doing? What other people want?”

  “I don’t understand how I raised such selfish children,” Mother sputtered. When neither of them responded, she stalked out through the slider.

  “Okay, Mother calling us selfish, that’s…” Singer shook his head. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stood there contemplating for another minute. Then Singer turned to the cabinets. “Coffee in a travel mug for you?”

  She’d been really trying not to get into the coffee habit again. Once in a while wasn’t an addiction, right?

  “Yes, please. I’ll, uh, be right back.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Lisa couldn’t decide if she should feel guilty about not going with Mother. She decided to just run with the not feeling bad thing. It probably wouldn’t last, but it was nice for a moment.

  *

  Frankie and Singer were trading digs at each other’s personal lives at the checkout counter, so Lisa wandered through the nonfiction shelves, not looking at anything in particular. She wound up at a table display full of books under the sign “The Road Less Traveled.”

  “That’s Frankie’s favorite table.” The Asian guy. Logan. Whom she’d distinctly not known in high school. He smiled. “She gets off on the whole ‘man turns his back on his life and has adventures that show him how to find meaning in the mundane’ thing.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, that’s her shtick. You know she went to college in the UK, right? She’s bored here. I think she’s jonesing for adventure.”

  Frankie Derrie, adventurer. That was a weird thought.

  Lisa studied the books. (Classics like On the Road next to books with covers that advertised film versions starring beautiful women and mysterious men, and why didn’t women ever get to be mysterious, anyway?) “I don’t think this is my thing.”

  “No, it’s not mine, either. I’m more kind of ‘stand your ground and fight’ than ‘go on epic quest.’ Not that I’m anti–epic quests, but it doesn’t seem to be a theme I can readily apply to my life.”

  “But ‘stand your ground and fight’ applies?”

  Logan’s smile twisted at the corners. “Hell yes. Can I help you find anything, Lisa?”

  “I’m just looking around. Any minute now they’re going to piss each other off and we’ll leave, so I thought I’d kind of browse until then.”

  “Sounds good. Let me know if there’s anything I can track down for you.”

  “Okay.”

  This being out of the house thing was still unsettling, but she could do it. She could stand here in the bookstore and not constantly think about snakes, or dying, or Anthony Grace. In fact, she hadn’t checked Twitter since this morning.

  She might have to thank Mother. Avoiding her was apparently the only thing powerful enough to get Lisa voluntarily out of the house.

  Another entire table was full of crafting books, and who knew they made crafting books? She flipped through, wondering if she could actually make a scrapbook. All the stuff was sitting there in her room, not being used. But what would she do a scrapbook about? Baby pictures of her and Singer? Definitely not.

  Then again, baby pictures weren’t a bad idea. And everyone had been taking them. Emery would help. And Alice, too. Huh. She glanced at Singer, wondering what he’d say if she presented him and Jake with a scrapbook of them and Miles. Jake would love it. Singer might get that look on his face like he was too freaked out to even come up with a fake smile.

  Lisa couldn’t remember how many hearings or whatever had to pass before they actually got to keep Miles, but it probably meant she had some time to work on her idea. If she decided to do it. And why not? It wasn’t like she was busy.

  Job, job, she needed a job. Was Frankie hiring at the bookstore? Twenty minutes Lisa could do, but eight hours … probably not. She swallowed nerves and reminded herself that she didn’t actually have to do this yet. She could coast on Singer and Jake’s goodwill for a little longer.

  “God, you’re irritating, Frances,” Singer said. She was already walking toward him when he turned to look at her. “We’re leaving.”

  Logan grinned over Singer’s shoulder. “Nice seeing you again.”

  “You too.”

  “Don’t be nice to Singer, he’s on my shit list,” Frankie said.

  “I wasn’t. I was being nice to Lisa.”

  “Oh. Fine, then. Lisa’s not on my list.” Frankie waved vaguely. “Try not to join any cults.”

  That should have been offensive. It wasn’t. “Bye, Fran
kie.”

  “She drives me up the wall,” Singer muttered as they walked out. “The nerve of her, lecturing me on relationships…”

  Lisa didn’t have to participate, so she kind of nodded along while Singer ranted.

  She probably couldn’t make, like, one of those really cool scrapbooks from the books, but with Alice’s help, she might be able to pull off a kind of low-level cool scrapbook. Now she just needed to collect some pictures.

  38

  Singer

  74 days with Miles

  Regina looked tired. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was loosely pulled back, but parts of it were coming out of the ponytail, crimped-looking, not straight like the rest, lying limply against her skin.

  She smiled when they came in. “Hey, baby. Hi, guys.” This time she didn’t swoop in to grab Miles. She waved. Jake went to sit beside her on the two-seater, and Regina reached out to touch Miles’s cheek.

  He didn’t hold up his hands to her like he did to Marie. Miles was in silent observer mode. Singer watched his responses, wondering what he sensed when he looked at his mother.

  “So he’s one now. You’re a great big one-year-old, Miles.” She played with his fingers, which grabbed at hers and never captured them. “Did I tell you Miles means ‘warrior’? Regina means ‘queen,’ and I thought, you know, I thought he’d need to be a warrior. Not that bein’ a queen has ever done a damn thing for me, right? I mean, obviously. My little warrior.”

  Miles wiggled, wanting to get down. Jake set him on the floor between his feet, and Regina leaned over to watch as he climbed up, fat hands grasping at Jake’s jeans, at the plastic of the little sofa, until he found purchase on the ridge of the bottom frame.

  “Aw, look at you, baby! You’re so big.” She leaned back, eyes never leaving him. “You all really take him to Mama’s church?”

  “We really did,” Jake said.

  Regina laughed softly. “I’d pay to see that. Were y’all scared?”

  “We were not scared, Regina.” Jake smiled, his tone the same as the one he used to tease Frankie. “But we decided it was a good experience. For us and for Miles. Plus, he got to see his grandmother.”