Fixing Lia

by Jamie Bennett

  I stopped thinking about it. There wasn’t any point; that was over now. The ashes of the party store had been bulldozed away years ago to make room for a bail bonds place that had also gone out of business so that it was another empty storefront. The whole neighborhood was revitalizing, though, and maybe something nice would end up on that city lot, springing up from all the horrible stuff that had been there before.

  A noise from the bedroom returned my thoughts to Jared. I imagined the different ways he could have gotten enough money to pay off his babysitter, and what I came up with frightened me so much that I started feeling sick. I gave him an allowance because he was supposed to help with cleaning our tiny apartment and folding laundry, stuff like that. But that little bit of cash wouldn’t have ever amounted to very much. In fact—

  I picked up my phone to look something up. I hadn’t even considered, when Jared had bought it, how much his little gaming machine had cost. He had told me that he saved enough for it and I had been proud, thinking how smart and thrifty he was. But now I decided to check on it, and holy balls. There was no way in hell that he could have saved almost four hundred bucks to buy that thing out of the money I had given him. I had been practically tossing it around, and it was the most expensive thing we had in our apartment. It probably cost more than I could get for my car in its current condition.

  I put on the TV because I didn’t want to think anymore, not about Jared, or my house, or Connor. I watched stupid reality show after stupid reality show and imagined myself in their crazy worlds, where my biggest worry would be about losing five pounds, or my boyfriend looking at another woman, or the struggle to decide where I would go on vacation. It sounded a little like heaven. Before I fell asleep, I roused myself from the plastic TV haze and got a screwdriver from the toolbelt that Connor had been using earlier. I sat down on the floor in front of the front door and did a little work.

  The next day, I roused Jared from his bed and pointed to the table where I had laid out his breakfast. As he ate, he watched me remove the board I’d screwed down so that the front door would only open a few inches. I’d figured that the floor was in such bad shape, no one would notice a couple more holes, and with the board there, no one was going to sneak out of the apartment. Neither of us said a word about it, about anything. We silently walked down to my car to go meet Connor.

  Driving into the suburbs was another new world for us. Jared was probably more used to it than I was, since he had lived for those few years in the shadow of Grosse Pointe, one of the wealthier little towns in the state and smack up on the side of Detroit. But I hadn’t done much traveling into the realms where the other half lived, and my mouth dropped open more than a few times as I looked at the houses, the cars, and finally, the school where Connor had attended. It was a lot like the reality TV I had watched the night before, but this was real reality. I was driving right through it.

  Connor was waiting for us on the field, holding a metal stick with a net on it. “Hi,” he called, and Jared ran over to him. I had suggested that Jared wear something warm, and he had ignored me, of course, but Connor was also wearing shorts and some kind of tight-ish shirt with nothing over it. “Lia, are you going to play with us?” he asked me. “I brought three sticks.”

  “Um, no.” I was not, in any way, sporty. It had been years since I’d engaged in a codified, athletic activity like lacrosse. I pointed to the oval track. “I’m going to run around there.” We would see how it would go. The majority of my exercise—ok, the entirety of my exercise—came from walking around tables and lifting trays of food and drinks. It seemed like enough, but maybe it wouldn’t be for going around this track, which seemed a lot bigger up close than it had from far away.

  “Jared, good to see you.” Connor picked up one of the sticks and tossed it to my brother. “First thing, look at how I’m holding this, and then we’ll pick up some balls.” I watched them for a while, hovering, but Jared ignored me utterly, and Connor was all wrapped up in their sports talk, so I backed off and went to the oval.

  This whole place was beautiful. We had driven in through a gate with a guard who smiled us along instead of stopping us to search our trunk, and past pretty lawns covered in snow, and then by a big stable with people riding around outside of it. Riding actual horses! The lacrosse field wasn’t any different, all perfect, trash-free and clean. And the track looked good, even if it was really long. Really, really long.

  As I ran/walked, I watched Jared and Connor. They scooped up the little white ball off the ground, which appeared to be difficult based on the way Jared struggled with it. They threw the ball back and forth, and it did look hard to catch in that net. But Jared was able to do it a lot of the time. “Good, yeah! That’s it,” I heard Connor encouraging him.

  And then, without any warning, I heard my brother laugh. I stumbled to a stop on the track. Connor laughed too, saying something about tripping over the ball. I stood stock still and watched and listened, realizing that it was the first time I’d heard my brother laugh since he had come to live with me.

  “Lia, come join us!” Connor called. Jared’s smile disappeared as I eagerly approached them, wanting to be a part of it. “What did you play as a kid?” he asked. He handed me one of the metal sticks and I took it gingerly.

  “I did gymnastics until I was thirteen,” I said.

  “Did you get too tall?”

  Jared made a disgusted sound. “She’s not tall.”

  “I am for gymnastics,” I defended myself. “But I only did it for fun with some friends and I wasn’t very good at it. I stopped when we moved to Detroit.”

  “Where did you move from?” Connor asked.

  I glanced at my brother. “We used to live downriver, in Allen Park.”

  “Here. Catch,” Jared said suddenly, and the white ball flew out of his stick and drilled me in the shoulder with a huge thud, just missing my face.

  “Jared, what are you doing?” Connor demanded. “Lia, are you ok?”

  I had turned away from them so they wouldn’t see me cry. That had hurt like a bitch, but what hurt more was why Jared had done it. He blamed me for everything, everything was my fault. I held up my hand like Connor had done when I punched him in the stomach, like I was fine, and I walked back toward the track. I shouldn’t have intruded on Jared’s fun and ruined it. And he hated me. He hated me.

  “Lia, hold on.” Connor put his hand on my shoulder again, the same way as when the police had yelled at me for being a bad guardian to my brother. “Are you ok? Let me see.”

  I pulled my sleeve over my eyes and turned to face him. The sun was hiding behind his body and I shivered a little. “I’m ok. It didn’t hurt that much.”

  “Let me see,” he said again, and I pulled the neck of my shirt to the side. I did it very, very carefully, so that he wouldn’t be able to glimpse any part of me besides where the ball had nailed me. I wouldn’t ever let anyone see too much.

  “Jesus.” Connor frowned, looking at the mark that it had left on my skin. “He really threw it hard. It was on purpose, he was trying to hit you. Why did he do that?”

  “He’s a little angry with me,” I said, just as carefully as when I had shown him my shoulder. “We don’t usually talk about the past very much because it brings up a lot of bad memories.”

  “I didn’t know and I’m sorry I asked about it.” He put his palm gently over the round, red mark. “We should get you some ice.”

  “No.” I moved away. “No, it’s fine.”

  “What memories are you talking about?”

  I hesitated. “We had to move in with our uncle because our parents passed away in a car accident. It makes Jared upset with me because of the fucking Samotnys. The people he used to live with,” I explained, when Connor looked confused. “They showed him news articles about the crash to poison him against me. And it worked,” I added bitterly. “They made him hate me.”

  “Why would he hate you?”

  I wiped over my eyes again. “My
parents and Jared were on the road that day because of me. I had won some stupid award at school for my grades and the three of them were driving to see the principal give it to me.” I sighed. “My mom died right away, but my dad and Jared were in the hospital for a long time. And then, we had to go live with my mom’s brother in Detroit.”

  “That’s hardly your fault. Any of that.”

  “The Samotnys made him think it was,” I said stubbornly. “They’re terrible, vindictive people. It’s hard to believe anyone let them become foster parents in the first place.”

  “It’s good that you got Jared away from them.”

  I felt a stab of guilt along with the throbbing pain in my shoulder. Jared wouldn’t agree with that statement. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s really good that he’s with me.”

  “What are you going to say to him about what he just did?” Connor asked, pointing at my brother with his lacrosse stick.

  I shrugged the shoulder that didn’t hurt. “I don’t know what to do with him. He won’t listen to me. I screwed a board down in front of the door last night so he couldn’t leave, that was how worried I was.”

  “That’s really dangerous,” Connor told me seriously. “What if you needed to get out of your apartment in an emergency? What if there was a fire?”

  A fire.

  “Lia. Lia?”

  I realized he was still talking to me, and now he had bent down close, and looked concerned.

  “Yeah. I’ll ask him to apologize,” I said.

  Connor held out his hand to me. “Come on. Let’s have him put down the stick before you say anything to him.”

  I stepped around his hand but he put it behind my back, just hovering in the air above my shirt. It reminded me of when he had been driving behind me on the way to my apartment the day before: not too close, but so I knew that he was there.

  “Jared,” I said. “You could have really hurt me.”

  He didn’t answer and kicked the turf.

  “Jared,” Connor repeated. “Did you hear your sister?”

  My brother’s head came up. “Yeah.”

  “Lacrosse isn’t about hurting people. I’m not playing with you if you act like that to Lia. What do you have to say?”

  Jared looked at me for a long moment. “Sorry,” he finally told me.

  I put my hand over my shoulder. “That’s ok.” We looked at each other.

  “Do we have to leave?” Jared was asking Connor, not me.

  “No. Let’s work more on passing,” Connor told him. “Grab your stick and take a few steps back.”

  They went for a while more, and I kind of exercised while I mostly watched them. Then Connor had Jared run on the track, too, making some kind of game by chasing after him to poke him with the lacrosse stick. It made Jared laugh so hard he could barely run and I fully stopped so I could listen.

  Both of them panted over to me, with Connor resting the net of his stick on Jared’s head. My brother didn’t seem to mind it at all. “He’s a natural,” Connor announced, and Jared grinned hugely. I smiled right back at him and at Connor.

  “Good, I’m glad to see that one of us got some athletic talent.” I tossed my keys to Jared. “Go ahead and hop in.”

  “Bye, Connor,” he called. “Uh, thanks!” He raced off to the parking lot.

  The net went on my head. “You could have played. I bet you’re a natural, too.”

  I removed it. “Thank you. Not for overestimating my athleticism, for doing this for Jared. I signed him up for one of those mentor programs but he would never go and…and he needs something like this.”

  “I’m available,” Connor told me, which was exactly what I’d been hoping he would say. We would have to see if he would follow through, however. He smiled at me and again, I realized I was smiling back. It had to be some kind of daily record for me in terms of that facial expression.

  “Is this to make up for you saying that I was a moron for wanting to have my own house?” I asked.

  His eyes widened. “I didn’t say that, and I don’t think it. You’re not a moron for wanting a house, or for trying to make it nice for you and Jared. But…”

  But I was for thinking that I could do it. I got it. “Ok. Thanks again, we’ll see you around.”

  “Lia, hold on. I know a CPA who’s looking to hire someone, an office assistant. Someone to answer phones, do filing, maybe some basic bookkeeping. Would you be interested?”

  “What does it pay?”

  He told me, and it was more than I’d make working at the casino, even with the good tips. “What’s the guy’s name?” I asked, already feeling suspicious. I’d had a few “job offers” before, which seemed to turn into me having to remove my clothes.

  “She. It’s a woman, Amy Whitaker.”

  “Like, the Whitaker you work for at Whitaker Enterprises?”

  “His wife,” Connor told me. “What do you think?”

  “I mean, yeah, I’m interested. What do I have to do to get it?”

  “Do?” His eyebrows went up. “I’ll give you her number, you call her and set up an interview. Bring your résumé.”

  “Sure,” I said, looking closely at him. “What’s the catch to this?”

  He seemed even more startled. “There’s no catch. Give me your number and I’ll send you her contact information. You can look her up and see, she’s legit.” He gently tapped me on the head with the lacrosse stick. “Maybe you’d be able to save up for the foundation work on your house.”

  I felt a little glimmer of hope. “You think I should keep it, now?”

  “I think you’re going to, no matter what I say. If you’re working during the day, you’ll be home nights. No need for the board in front of the door, right?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah.” I took the stick off my head again. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to you next week,” he told me.

  “You will?”

  “I will,” he said, and smiled.

  And there I went again, also smiling as he jogged across the field.

  Jared was sitting in the car, fiddling with the radio when I got in. We had driven a few miles south toward Detroit when he spontaneously spoke. “I like him.”

  “Connor?” I asked, and Jared nodded.

  I nodded back. I liked him, too, just as much as I had when I’d sold him his cigarettes. That thought made me very, very nervous.

  Chapter 4

  “So, this will be your desk,” Amy Whitaker told me. “Ok?” She looked like she was waiting for my approval of it.

  “Um, great,” I told her, and she immediately smiled back at me.

  “Wonderful! I’m so glad you’re working here!” she said.

  I tried to make myself smile back, or at least look pleasant, but I was more than a little freaked out. I had left a message on Sunday night for this Amy Whitaker, the CPA who Connor had told me was hiring. She had immediately called back and asked me to come in the next day to talk in person, and I had. I had left the meeting thinking that the interview had been just all right, but that she probably wouldn’t hire someone with no college degree and absolutely no experience working in an office.

  But that very afternoon she’d emailed me and offered me the job as an “assistant” working for her in the Whitaker Enterprises building where I’d gone with Connor over the weekend. I had been shocked, especially when she asked if I could start right away. As in today, so here I was, wearing the black pants and white shirt that had been my uniform at Atelier Anson. Maybe I had an office job, but I still looked like a fine-dining waitress.

  It was all a little sudden. It was all very sudden, and had left me anxious and wary, waiting. Nothing was this easy in life and I’d never been lucky, so something was about to go down.

  But here was Amy Whitaker, still smiling at me, still apparently so happy that I was her new office assistant. “So, um, what do you want me to do first?” I asked her.

  Fortunately, she had a lot of assistant tasks lined up, and be
ing busy made me focus less on the weirdness of the whole situation. That was until lunchtime, when she invited me to come out to eat with her so we could “get to know each other,” which wasn’t something any of my bosses in the past had ever wanted to do. In fact, one of them had called me Mia instead of Lia for the eight months I’d worked there, and another had fired me by saying, “There’s no more money. You, go. Yes, you, the dark-haired girl, get out.”

  Amy Whitaker and I walked through the biting wind over to a vegan/vegetarian/agro-healthy place that she was really into. She immediately ordered one of their infused waters when we sat down and insisted that I have one, also. “It will give you energy for the whole afternoon,” she assured me. Our server practically threw them on the table and didn’t ask if we were ready with our food order before he ran away. Amateur, I scoffed to myself. But I bet that Amy tipped well, no matter the quality of service she got. She had a bit of a sucker vibe about her.

  Amy showed me pictures of her kid and I had to say how cute he was, and actually, he was pretty cute. “Connor told me that you have experience with children.” She smiled encouragingly. “He told me that you have custody of your younger brother?”

  “Um, I do.” What the hell else had Connor told her? “His name is Jared.”

  “That’s wonderful that you were able to take him in so that he can grow up with you.”

  I nodded vigorously. Damn straight. “Siblings should always be together.”

  The cherry-sized diamond on her left hand flashed as she sipped her water. “I’m an only child, and I always wanted brothers and sisters. My husband and his younger brother are best friends. That’s what I hope for my kids, too.”

  I was a little transfixed by her ring. I wondered if her hand got tired after hefting it around all day. “Kids?” I asked. I had thought she had mentioned just one son, Luke.