by RJ Martin
“Really?” Mom said what I wanted. “That must be very exciting.”
“Sometimes.” He shrugged. “It just kind of happened, you know? I was at a party with Ja… my mother and this friend of hers handed me a card.”
“Have you done anything we might have seen?”
“Not unless you’re in the market for wristwatches in Japan or bathing trunks in France.”
I guess that was more than enough, and stewing more than the meat in his bowl, Dad rose from the table. Not looking at anyone, even my mother, he just grabbed the faded puffy coat he’d worn since I could remember and went out on the porch. He was officially a nonsmoker now, as was our whole house, but on occasion my father succumbed. On this night, judging by the milky plumes that wafted past the yard light, either the bushes were burning, or Dad had once again lit up.
“I’m sorry,” Rusty said softly as at last he started to eat. He sounded childlike when he said it and reminded me of the twins—how sometimes the words came out of them when they didn’t even know what they were apologizing for.
“Rusty, how old are you?” Mom made the question sound casual. My ears perked up knowing a lot hinged on the answer. Angie was not allowed to date anyone over eighteen. I mean, if my parents knew about it.
“Seventeen.” His answer was a relief to Angie and me too. I didn’t want him to leave.
“Are you in school?” she persisted. I guess her mother side temporarily tamped down the starstruck one.
“I was, but with the modeling, it got a little impractical, so I took some time off.” His voice was cordial, making conversation the way summer people do.
“An education is very important.” Mom didn’t sound like herself. As if she were trying to match his no big deal tone. It all made me a little queasy.
“I think traveling and meeting people is a great way to learn about the world,” Angie chirped in his defense. Then—typical of her—she went too far. “I mean it’s a lot better than sitting in some community college classroom.” That was where Angie was destined to go after she graduated that spring.
“That’s why doing well in high school is so important.” Mom’s face and fingers tensed.
“I may go back in the fall,” Rusty said, appeasing Mom. “My mother wants me here with her for now.”
The mention of Rusty’s mother quieted mine. If his was okay with it, then who was she to question? Angie smirked just a little, and I shared her secret grin. After that the only sounds were those of our spoons rattling in our bowls as we silently ate and kept our eyes on him, this beautiful but reckless alien. A creature of the summer for the first time had passed through our door and not even in season. He found us on one of those loneliest of winter days: the short and pale ones between the Epiphany and Lent.
The eruption of laughter on the porch made everyone jump. First off, no one in my family ever laughed that hard except the twins and their endless congestion made them sound like hogs gone wild. This was a grown-up woman’s shriek of joy. People on late-night talk shows laughed like that, loud and long like their guts might rip.
“That would be Jace.” Rusty smiled like he’d been kicked. Mom and Angie raced from the table to get a good look, as if Jace Naylor might just fling an arm in and snatch her boy before any of us could get fingerprints on her bubble of fame. Alone and almost forgotten by my parents and Angie, Rusty remained at the table. Mark and Luke did not understand celebrity. Every new person through the door was fascinating except in this case they weren’t done yet with Rusty. Both gawked at his ponytail, stopping only to look at each other in amazement.
Rusty stood up but didn’t leave the table. He turned his back to them and bent over backward so his ponytail became the trunk of a mastodon. He made elephantine trumpet blasts as he swung the hair trunk back and forth. Mark and Luke were delirious, a shrieking pair of giddy, wheezing tykes. I was too old to laugh. Also, I had no clue if Rusty liked me the way he seemed to, pre-crash. Or if he wanted to bounce me off a wall, the way he did after it. He spun back around, half a grin left on his face, and his eyes shifted to me.
Mémé shuffled back from the kitchen hefting her old blue-speckled stockpot with both hands as the twins went scurrying toward the flashing glow from the lights of the tow truck that had just pulled up out front. I prayed she wouldn’t, but my überfrugal grandmother proceeded to dump the contents of each bowl back into the pot. Rusty did not lose his semismile, but his eyes widened. Mémé had no interest in the handsome stranger and pushed between him and the table. She dumped his untouched stew back in and it landed with a soft, echoing splat. “May I carry that for you, ma’am?”
“No.” Mémé circled the table toward the twins’ bowls. Both had been exposed to two weakened immune systems that acted as gracious hosts for all kinds of viruses and bacteria.
“Mémé!” I’d never shouted at my grandmother before, but I couldn’t let her go that far.
“Hmph,” she grumbled but left the twins’ bowls on the table. Her arms quaked as she carried the pot back to the kitchen and left me mortified and alone with Angie’s new man. He didn’t say anything, and I realized he and Angie shared one trait: they were both unreadable. Not like our stone-faced Mémé, but in that every expression, gesture, or tone could be taken two ways.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE TWINS were transfixed as they pressed against the glass of the storm door and gawked at the no-longer-sweet ride being dragged away. “Is the car dead?” Luke asked.
“It’s just sick,” Mark answered.
“Right, Mommy?” Luke asked.
“You say broken.” My mother stopped in the little foyer. She used the mirror there to straighten her blouse and dab at her hair. Dad came in followed by Rusty, but as a woman and older. Jace Naylor wore a red leather coat and carried a purse that matched. She had short hair that hung straight all the way around, a cut I’d never seen before on anyone, boy or girl, over the age of four. Mom used to cut the twins’ hair that way until they were old enough to go to the barber. It involved Scotch tape to get the bangs even and her sewing scissors we were never allowed to touch.
“You must be Sally.” Rusty’s mother took mine by the forearms and leaned in like they were related. “I’m Jace Naylor.” She passed under the dangling, glass and brass light fixture in the hallway that suggested no style other than tacky. Jace wore a lot of makeup and not just on her lips and eyes. It was all over her face. “I am so sorry for all this. This week has been such a trial.” Jace Naylor paused only to chuckle. Mom did too except I could tell she only thought it was funny because Jace did. “Well, at least I know now where he’s been.”
She broke from Mom before my mother got a single word out and turned to her son. “How could you be so stupid?” Jace hugged Rusty so close, she was talking to his back. Her grip was tight, but Rusty’s wasn’t. I knew because her leather coat didn’t wrinkle under his hands. They were just resting there. “Promise me this won’t happen again.”
“It won’t.” Rusty let go first.
“Look at me,” she commanded. He obeyed but kept his head down so he peered out the top of his eyes. Was he being playful, angry, both? Neither? Why did I care?
“I promise.”
“Well, we’ll have to talk more about this later. Now, I need a minute with the….”
“Gregorys,” Dad said.
“Of course,” Jace said, as if she should’ve known, but why would she? “What a lovely family.” Her eyes found each of ours, one by one, as if making individual acts of contrition, or giving us the rare treat of basking in her fame. “We’ve only just unpacked and then this.”
Finished with us, Rusty’s mother studied the oversized collage frames of family pictures that lined the wall. We all watched, rapt, as the author stopped to examine the drugstore prints of lakeside picnics, first Communions, and other bits of our childhood, like they were masterpieces at the Louvre. I hoped she wouldn’t comment on the one of Angie and me naked in the bathtub, but….
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br /> “Oh, how precious,” she said as soon as she saw it. Angie giggled while I was mortified. Rusty’s mother stopped again at one of me in my altar boy uniform. I was still little enough for the term when I was eight.
“Is that you?” Jace Naylor singled me out. It was cool and not at the same time.
“Jonah wants to be a priest,” Dad boasted. His smile looked weird on him.
“Really?” Jace sounded surprised, impressed, and queasy all at once. Like son, like mother, I guessed. Done with me and our family memories, Jace turned her attention to our house.
“What an interesting layout.”
“It’s a raised ranch,” Dad said, and he led Jace Naylor, her name was pretty cool, down to the sunken living room that no one sat in.
“Go get the coffee,” our mother ordered Angie but didn’t join them in the living room. She went outside instead. Angie glided back through our long, narrow dining room that was not much wider than the table and chairs. This was Mémé Olivie’s dinette, thick and pale with dark marks on each wood grain. She said the style was “French Empire.”
Mom called it “Franglais Cheap,” but never to her face. We’d needed a bigger table, and my parents prioritized. That usually meant giving something up, in this case, taste.
Rusty was again by my side, both of us not following our parents. “You got a TV?”
“You going to kill me with it?” I tried to sound funny, but I think it came out as kind of pouty.
“Too many witnesses.” Rusty showed his dimples again.
“In there.” I pointed to the family room off our kitchen. It was small and overloaded with the violent clashing of our furniture and Mémé’s, colonial new world versus gilded old. My late grandfather’s projection TV looked like a refrigerator box. Once cutting-edge but now a fossil, it was hard to see in daytime and made crackling sounds during loud shows. We sucked it up and never complained because each of us knew if it went, there might not be a replacement.
“You don’t have a flat screen?” Rusty was amazed. I just shrugged. What else could I do? He already knew we were poor. Now it was a matter of just how much.
“Br-r-r-r.” Mom made a show of shivering as she came back in. She smiled at Rusty mostly, me sort of, and I noticed the library book under her arm. I’d seen it on the floor in the backseat of her car for weeks. She had a terrible habit of not returning them on time. Now I noticed something I hadn’t before: Jace Naylor was on the back cover. She looked younger in black-and-white.
Mom rifled the drawer under the wall phone and tried three ballpoint pens with no caps. “You kids.” She acted exasperated like a TV mom. If we were alone here, my mother would not find it at all funny. At last she retrieved one with ink life. She stuck it in the pages of the book that she clutched, like she was one of the Mormons who every so often knocked on our door. We were never allowed to let them in.
“Mrs. Naylor, would you mind?” Mom handed over the book. Our famous guest was seated in what in our house was the throne, the middle cushion on the puffy couch of cranberry-colored velvet. No one ever used our badly misnamed living room even on holidays, and I could envision Mémé raking the sofa tomorrow to remove any sign of contact.
“I’d love to.” Jace Naylor took the book and pen with unforced grace. “But it’s Miss. I’ve never been married.”
Mom and Dad froze their smiles and nodded together at once.
“Call me Jace.” She noticed the library catalog number stamped on the side of the plastic sheathed binding but merely smiled a little more and flipped open the front cover. Mom was about to sin. I’d never even heard her curse, so I was pretty stunned. Well, maybe not sin but writing in a library book had to be illegal. What if she didn’t return it at all?
“Aren’t you coming?” Rusty, disinterested in my parents fawning over his mother, slapped me on the back. “I don’t want to sit in there by myself.” He didn’t let go, and his touch drew all of my attention to that spot between my shoulder blades. “Be a good host.” He pushed me toward the family room. “It is your fault I’m stuck here.”
Tragic Mark hacked and a fleck of his endless supply of snot hit the wall. Magic Luke didn’t look so good all of a sudden either. I forced myself to ignore them and turned on the set. Rusty dropped across the couch and left no room for anyone else. Mark hacked again, and I saw Rusty kind of wince. If you weren’t used to it, my brothers could be pretty gross.
“I’ll be back.” I handed Rusty the remote that, compared to the slender new kind, looked like a brick. “You boys need the choo choos?” That was what we called their special inhalers: clear plastic hoses that filled with white smoke they breathed. We were all experts at getting them set up, so I plugged in each unit and squirted the menthol-smelling gel into the cups. Once the whole house reeked of cooked lotion, they would be ready.
“You coming back?” Rusty made it sound like a statement and question both at once.
“In a minute.” I dropped a hand on the top of each twin’s head and hustled them down the hallway to my room.
“What about choo choo?” Mark resisted, so I closed my fingers around his hair.
“It needs to warm up first.” I pushed them to their knees with my hands and kicked the door shut behind me. “Start praying.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep….” It was the only one they knew. “Guide me through the starry night.” I fished in my pocket and dug out the baggie of JC. None had broken, a miracle. Since I had no stole I grabbed my bathrobe cord and draped it around my neck. A long time ago, when doing this could be forgiven as a kid’s misguided attempt at helping, I’d drawn two tiny crosses on the ends so it would be like the one the priests wore. It wasn’t, but I kissed it anyway, the same way they did the real thing. I started to silently pray. I asked for protection of my brothers and to forgive me again on jumping the gun on a sacrament they weren’t supposed to receive for another year.
“And God bless Jonah,” they gasped. “Amen.” I put two hosts on the lid of my cigar box; the hinges were broken, and it made a good paten (Communion plate). The old cedar case still smelled of Grandpa Hank’s stogies and was where I kept my valuables: a wooden rosary Father Dom gave me, an old New Testament in French that had been Dad’s as a boy, and some Canadian dollar coins with birds on them. Grandpa Hank had given them to me every time I did well at school or volunteered at church. They were called “loonies” and when I was a kid that was my favorite word.
After he’d palm me one, I’d run around the house going “Loonie, loonie, loonie!” I’d been sure the birds were crazy like their name. When he’d pointed them out to me once on a boat ride up on Lake Champlain, I discovered they were just big, pretty birds, nothing strange about them. It was their sound that gave them their name. Loo-loon they said over and over. I loved them and told JC I thought they were some of his dad’s better work.
“The body of Christ.” I waited with one of the hosts in my fingers, but Mark just let his tongue hang out like a tired dog. He grinned; this was a game. Probably why they made kids wait until they were six to do this for real. I moved on to Luke, but it was like they shared a brain. Not only were their tongues hanging out, their top teeth were set against them. “You’re making him mad,” I scolded.
“You are.” They spoke at once. Maybe they were right. I was rushing it tonight. I tried to tell myself it was because with all the activity in the house, I didn’t want to get caught. They might go without, and I didn’t want that to happen. Their lungs needed him. I also knew as soon as we were finished here I could go watch TV with my sister’s new boyfriend.
Needing to get this done, whatever the reason, I got on my knees too and shut my eyes. “They’re good boys,” I pleaded. “Please don’t damn them to hell.” I started to nod as if being lectured from on high. “And keep them safe from all the monsters down there.” I peeked to see little eyes increasing in size by magnitudes of ten like in an old cartoon. “Snakes, yuck.” I shuddered.
Mark caved firs
t. “Tell Jesus we’re sorry.”
“If they take Communion in the next thirty seconds.” I acted like I was listening, quoting. “And don’t tell anybody….” I looked at them. “Can you do that?”
Both heads bobbed and their mouths fell open super-wide like at the doctor’s office.
“The body of Christ.” I placed it on Magic Luke’s tongue.
“Amen,” he nodded, emphatic.
“The body of Christ.” I laid it on Tragic Mark’s too.
“Amen.” His response was softer; he’d been worse lately. I’d given them the nicknames when I was still too young to process their—worst case our pediatrician had ever seen—asthma and all the problems that came with it. Allergic to everything but each other and one was always magically recovering just as the other took a tragic turn.
“Now pray.” I got up to leave. Neither protested as they chewed the host, something you were not supposed to do, and made their medicine faces. My good deed done, I was ready for my reward and split the twins as I rushed to my door.
“I can’t work it.” Rusty was waiting in the hall outside my room and handed me the remote.
“Guide me through the starry night.” Mark was too loud. I guess he wanted more for it to work.
“And wake me with the morning light” came from Luke.
“Prayers.” I shrugged as I shut the door behind me on the twins. “It’s easy, you’ll see.” I took the remote from him as if somehow my knowing how to use it was a sign of greatness.
In the kitchen Angie helped Mémé with the coffee and rolled her eyes around twice as we passed. Mémé’s only acknowledgment of us was her usual scowl and grunt. Maybe it was having grown up in a cold, dark place that made her that way. Dad told us when he was a little boy, he’d visit Mémé’s people in the “true north” every summer. The family’s farmhouse was miles from anyone, had an outhouse, and they used lanterns at night. He made it sound cool in a way that made me think he preferred their rustic existence. When even our isolated mountain home was too much civilization for our father, he’d just pack up his truck and rumble farther into the wilderness, sometimes for days.