by RJ Martin
The faint glow of our streetlight appeared as a low star in the distance. There I would get the last and hardest laugh. “You got your phone on you?” I asked. Angie had a cell phone. I did not.
“The battery died, I think.”
Revenge for the puddle, the sandwich, and all the other little jokes over the years was in my grasp. Whether she meant to hurt me or not, my sister did sometimes, and here was my once-in-a-lifetime chance.
“It does that if you don’t charge it.” Rusty roused and his dimples returned.
“I am not some pretty airhead.”
“No, you’re just an airhead.” I couldn’t believe I said it.
“Whoa!” Rusty started to laugh out loud. Angie looked my way, and I saw the hurt in her eyes. I felt sick all of a sudden. The endless debate in my head about my sister’s motives commenced all over again. Maybe she didn’t mean to wound with her antics, but I just definitely did. I was the bad one now. Our lawn light grew from star to moon, and Angie slowed down. She knew our father got mad at drivers who went too fast past our house. Mostly it was folks that used the road as the back way to the box store off the highway. The only other traffic came from my family, Chad’s, or random lost summer people.
As we got closer, I could see all the lights were on, including the matching lamps at either end of the untouchable sofa in the living room. It was the biggest and nicest room in the house, so no one ever used it. I saw Dad’s head in there now through the window, really his entire top half. This was going to be bad. He would definitely be angry if I let it happen, and if Dad got ahold of Rusty, we might never see him again. That’s probably what I should have wanted but….
“Stop!” I didn’t know I could be that loud. Angie instantly panicked and slammed hard on the brakes. They locked up on the black ice of the evening freeze, and the little sports car that had no business on snow anyway went into a spin.
CHAPTER SIX
WE WENT all the way round twice, then slid backward. “Let go of the brake!” Rusty grabbed at her leg, but Angie was too freaked out to hear him. She tried to push him off and made his hand slip. Rusty tumbled under the steering wheel just as the succubus grin of his taillights connected with the light pole at the end of our driveway.
“Jonah, what the hell?” Rusty huffed as he tried to get free of the weird crash-caused perch. “Why did you yell like that?” He glared up at me from my sister’s crotch. “You could’ve gotten us killed.” He swung to grab me, but Angie didn’t budge and that kept him pinned under the steering wheel.
“You don’t touch him!” Angie defended me as she pointed down at his face stuck between her thighs and the wheel. I was too shocked to be grateful.
“Dad knows you weren’t at school,” I confessed. “Mom was there. You’re getting suspended this time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.”
“A little help?” Rusty tried to find the release lever for the steering wheel. He only got the wipers, blinkers, high beams, cabin light, trunk, and gas tank. To anyone on the outside, each move must’ve seemed like a greater provocation, like waving a red flag at a bull, then flipping it the bird. Especially to someone not used to any challenges, someone like….
“Dad!” I pointed at my father beneath the porch light. He sprang down on the lawn. We had seconds, no more.
“Get rid of this.” With his free hand Rusty handed her the flask. He looked like a scared little boy. Angie tossed it back to me. I slid the little silver bottle into my knapsack and rubbed my pocket that held the baggie of JC I prayed wasn’t broken.
“Find the release button!” Rusty could barely move where he wanted. He made up for it by kicking and twisting everywhere else like a hooked worm. I couldn’t ever do that to a defenseless creature—whether it has a brain or not—and fishing became another pastime Dad and I didn’t share.
“Angelique!” Rusty used her full name. Did she tell him to call her that? Was she pretending to be a summer person?
My sister winked at me. She knew exactly what to do but was messing with Rusty. Was it because he tried to lay a hand on me or just for fun? With Angie it was always a total mystery. I think that was why I liked her, maybe why everyone did. Besides being beautiful and wild, she was hard to pin down.
Rusty’s desperate flailing caught the volume knob and turned up the stereo so loud the bass shook the windows. The white rapper with the dirty mouth was really going off about a girl’s down there. Not in a nice way. It rhymed with hunt.
My father took his time walking down the driveway, like the badass star of an action flick about to take his revenge. When he reached the car, he didn’t say anything. He just washed his face. That was what Angie and I called it, because when really angry, my father would rub his whole hand over it like he was using a washcloth. Judging by the vigorous scrubbing he gave himself, the suppressed eruption was bordering on Krakatoa. Dad yanked so hard, I thought he might rip the door off. “Unlock it now.” His eyes burned through the glass and found their way to the one place he’d never, ever look, except if there happened to be a strange boy’s head poking up from it.
“On the steering column!” Rusty pleaded. Angie fumbled with the buttons as he squirmed and slapped up at it like he was having a fit. “Behind my ear!” While Dad kept yanking the handle over and over, Angie swallowed her laughter so it looked like she had the hiccups. She pretended to locate the lever she’d always known was there and got the steering wheel to release. Free now, Rusty sprang into action. He hit the master switch for the doors and flew back into the leather bucket of the passenger seat. Dad matched Rusty’s lightning tempo and had Angie standing behind him in a single move so fast and precise that if I had not been completely terrified I might have clapped. Not my sister, though. She just gave a kind of wee whoop sound before at last getting the seriousness and falling silent. Dad sniffed her breath, and I think he might’ve actually growled.
Rusty climbed out the other side. He didn’t run like I thought he would, should, but raced to the back of his banana rocket and stared down at the damage. Through the rear window, in the blinking red of the now-cracked taillight eye, I watched as the handsome cocky newcomer slumped. Dad yanked me from the backseat with the same surgical skill he’d used to retrieve my sister. In an instant I was his prisoner beside her on the edge of our yard.
A whiff of stew came from deep within the lair of my caveman dad. His favorite dinner was late and would probably not even be enjoyed now. He was too mad to speak, to punish, or anything. Mom waited on the porch with my dad’s mother, Mémé, and held back the twins, one arm coiled around each to keep them from racing down to the smash-up. Both made crashing sounds and crinkled their fingers like they were responsible for crumpling the car’s body like tinfoil. “Crrrr!” Mark roared between snot sniffs.
“Boooosh,” added Luke before hacking twice and sending a bit of phlegm into the air. Illuminated by the porch light, it fell like I imagined the snow from nuclear winter would look.
Dad leaned down and snatched the little black box of a key that in his big hand looked like a bite-size candy. He didn’t say anything to Rusty and just strode back toward the house. I was nearly as tall as him now but nowhere near as thick. My father wasn’t fat, just solid and maybe a little weathered too. He was one of those guys it was easy to imagine hunting or fishing but a lot harder to picture wearing a tie.
“Where are you going?” Rusty shouted from beside the car. “I got to get home.”
Dad didn’t even slow down. “That’ll be for the state police to decide.” This far north, more than any sheriff or town cop, the troopers were the law. They had big Smokey the Bear hats and their uniforms were the same colors as NC3’s: purple and gray. Some were ex-loggers Dad knew from his Forest Service days, and he gave them special rates at the motel without ever asking the company from New Jersey that paid him to run the place.
“She was driving!”
My father wheeled as if he’d be
en pinched one time too many. He turned in slow motion and glared at Angie, Rusty, then me. The wind caught his thinning brown hair and kicked it straight up on top. He took a definitive step toward my sister. My mother gasped and scrambled toward us as the twins struggled to keep up. Both turned into wiggly worms, spinning and flailing to free themselves but not out of fear. My brothers never behaved appropriately when it came to family drama, and the times you were supposed to be somber or at least still. They’d pulled the same nonsense at Grandpa Hank’s funeral, each racing their Matchboxes along the top edge of the pew. Just like I wasn’t sure about Angie, it was the same with the twins. Maybe they were just little and clueless. Or always being one cold away from taking a turn for the worse made them celebrate just being alive.
“Hank!” My mother kept a firm grip on the twins. My Dad shared a name with his father. That’s why we called him Grandpa Hank. Of course, Dad Hank sounded dumb and would get me grounded, so my father was just Dad. “It’s freezing out here, and Jonah is soaked to the skin.”
“Jonah,” Mark said.
“Did you go to the lake?” Luke finished the sentence. “Mommy.”
“Are we getting a car like that?” Mark finished this time. They did this a lot and it was beyond creepy. We pretended to ignore it. There was so much else about them that needed attention. Both snorted boogers at once.
“Hank.” Mom made herself known once more, and my father relented. He stormed into the house.
MY HAIR was still damp when I sat down to eat. The shower had felt amazing. It washed away some of the bone-rattling chill from being doused with icy mud and my clumsy almost outing of myself with Bart. Everyone else had begun already: Mom, Dad, the twins, Angie, and Rusty. He wasn’t just here but in my usual seat, inches from the wrath of Dad.
“Rusty’s mother is coming to pick him up.” Mine must’ve noticed my shock at his continued presence. What she couldn’t see was that as I gazed at him across the table a whole flock of butterflies burst from a cocoon in my stomach.
“The writer?” I never heard of her, but I was intrigued because she was famous. Also, all things Rusty fascinated me.
“No his other mom,” Angie snarked, then covered it with a laugh. She was consistent at least.
“Angelique,” Mom scolded. My sister was generally hers to discipline.
“The way you let them talk, hmm,” Mémé chimed in. My dad’s parents weren’t French but Canadian, born in the Gaspé, a remote region of Quebec, which sounded redundant. Grandpa was Pépé in French, but he said we were in America and made us call him Grandpa. Grandma demanded to be called Mémé, French for grandma, just to confuse us.
“Mama,” Dad said, but only in a nice way of saying shut up.
“Hmm,” Mémé said. It sounded kind of like a half hiccup and she added it to a lot of her sentences. I don’t think it was a Quebecois thing either, just Mémé.
A long moment, one of those angel-passing kind, and the only sound was Mémé slurping broth with a spoon. I just hoped she wouldn’t fart in front of Rusty. She had stomach problems and prayed to St. Timothy, the patron of digestion. I threw a quick devotion his way too. If she let rip now, I’d die of embarrassment.
I felt so bad for Rusty all of a sudden. Dinner at our house was not a fate I wished on anyone. We were not like a TV family, good or bad, and we didn’t talk much at the table or at all. Our rare conversations were brief, conducted using our “inside voice,” and generally about boring stuff like permission slips or needing rides.
“You don’t like stew?” My father at last acknowledged Rusty even as he still didn’t look up. His voice carried a hint of the old country that was just next door and actually younger than ours. Almost every one of my father’s sentences ended on the upswing and made it sound like he was always asking a question. Although in this case he was. Dad eyeballed the stranger’s fork, the untouched generous portion in his bowl.
“I don’t know.” Rusty’s mouth didn’t open as much as when we talked in the car and his smile lacked any sign of a dimple. “I’ve never had it before.” This brought Dad’s gaze even with his.
“Our food not good enough for you?” He raised his glass of beer, set it down again.
“Hank.” Mom leaned forward. “He’s not ours.” She waited for him to meet her eyes with his. She could talk to Dad without words, and her beauty again soothed the beast. Angie wasn’t just a freak occurrence. My mom was a MILF, at least according to some of the other older boys that used to come to see my sister. That was before Grandpa Hank died, Mémé moved in, and the twins got diagnosed. Anyway, it meant Mom I’d like to….
“At our table, he eats.” Dad looked at Rusty as he said it. “You’d think after almost killing my children he’d be hungry.” Except to the untrained ear it sounded as if Dad were asking a question and not stating weird fact. I was a little startled he’d said children and not daughter. Dad’s slide in interest in me had begun with my failure at hockey. I skated okay but didn’t want to hit anybody no matter how much he explained it was just part of the game. Finally, I told him it was a stupid sport. After washing his face once he gave me a long, disappointed look and walked away.
Then came basketball; no hitting but there was Bart. Fishing and hunting were both a no. Thou shalt not kill. Our only common interest was church. That Dad liked, and he came any Sunday I was serving and never if I wasn’t. I think maybe it gave him a reason for me not being the rough and tumble boy he wanted. I was destined for a collar; no other dad in the parish could say that.
“Rusty, are you not hungry or just worried about what your mother will say when she gets here?” Mom mothered the handsome stranger in spite of what she’d just told Dad.
“Both, I guess.”
“I’m sure everything will be okay.”
“You’ve never met her.” Angie had to chime in.
“I know of her, and she sounds like a very reasonable woman.”
It was Rusty’s turn to laugh, and he covered it with his napkin.
“Rusty, I hope your mother won’t mind us not holding dinner for her.” Mom was undeterred.
“Jace doesn’t really eat.” Again he gave the thin-lipped smile. It seemed kind of sincere, like he was lost here and didn’t want to let on in case he offended anyone.
Mom demonstrated her disapproval of the first name usage by pursing her lips and glaring at Angie and me. Don’t even think it. “Well, we’ll see about that,” she said to Rusty. “I have a fresh pecan pie for dessert.” It was from the freezer and not homemade, but I said nothing.
“That sounds good,” Rusty said, like maybe he actually did like pie. In the light of our brass and fake-crystal chandelier, I could tell Rusty’s wool sweater that looked like a knight’s chain mail might be worth more than all of our poly-cotton blends put together. I always wanted pure fibers and pretended the others itched. My mother just bought me store-brand lotions and insisted the synthetic kind were far more reasonably priced. It was a waste of money, especially until I stopped growing.
“Your mother and I will need to have a chat about all this too,” Mom told Rusty as she fingered her fake pearl necklace that looked like the real kind first ladies and TV lawyers wore. Before dinner she’d put on a dress she had on last Christmas. Then she changed again into the nice blouse and slacks she wore on the rare Sundays she went to Mass. I guess my mother couldn’t decide how big a deal meeting Jace Naylor, famous author I never heard of, was going to be.
“That’s a lovely hat.” Mom baited Rusty to take off the beanie. Dad hadn’t said to do so, but we all knew he would’ve liked to knock it forward into the interloper’s uneaten stew. If Mom was being too okay with it all, starstruck to the nth degree, my father’s reaction was chilly unease. Like he wasn’t sure what the boundaries were for disciplining a summer’s son and one touched by fame to boot. I couldn’t help thinking the troopers would have been here and gone by now, Rusty in handcuffs, if it were one of Angie’s local boys.
Rust
y got the hint and slid his floppy beanie off. “Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to wash it today.” It wasn’t dirt we all noticed but the style. All of Rusty’s Hershey-brown hair was pulled up into a samurai-style ponytail.
“Mommy.” Mark was shocked.
“He has girl hair.” Luke got to the point for us all.
Mémé hmphed, slurped. The sphinx expressed herself.
“I think it’s really cool,” I said, surprising myself. I did think it looked kind of great. Maybe it was the freedom it represented. Rusty was a line, versus my line segment self with an NC3 side part above my collar. My day would come. Serving JC, I’d be assigned to some mission in an exotic land. There I’d be a big deal and could have a ponytail if I wanted or shave my head altogether. That was not allowed at NC3 either. It made no sense.
Angie chuckled. “Rusty doesn’t wash his hair every day. It’s better for the follicle.”
“If your hair is dirty, you wash it,” Dad grumbled.
“You people all bathe too much,” Mémé judged. “Too much everything here.”
“Like electricity and indoor plumbing,” Mom retorted.
“Hmph.” Mémé took her bowl to the kitchen.
“Was that necessary?” Dad deflated. When Mom and Mémé went at it, he usually just left the room.
My mother nodded with her wine glass, one of the set of eight she’d gotten as a wedding present, but only four still survived. The rest had broken over the years from falling when Angie or I slammed into the china cabinet during mad chases around the house or from being dropped in the sink when we were asked to clear the table on holidays. Usually Mom only drank from one on Christmas or New Year’s Eve and she’d have the wine box on the sideboard. Tonight it stayed in the refrigerator, and she had to go to the kitchen for a refill.
“Rusty learned about hair care from modeling.” Angie tried to make him the center of attention again and, I guess, indirectly her.