Fixing Lia

by Jamie Bennett

  I kind of had the idea that it was going to take longer than a weekend, but when Connor held out his hand, I took it, and I held on like he was a lifeline. Which maybe, he was.

  Chapter 10

  “Jared’s asleep,” I told Connor, closing the door to his guest bedroom. It looked like he used it mostly for storage, because there were taped-up boxes and a bunch of guitars that I hadn’t known he could play. It had reminded me that even if he was doing some savior thing for us tonight, I didn’t really know him.

  I had to keep telling myself that, because Jared clearly thought that Connor had been sent from the heavens for us, and I needed to be the levelheaded member of our family. The moment I woke up my brother on the floor of my house and he had laid eyes on Connor, he had relaxed. “I knew you’d come,” he’d sleepily said. “That was why I called you.”

  “After I got your message, I had to. Let’s go, J,” Connor had answered, and helped me nail up the house while Jared snuggled with Misiu in the middle of the bench seat of the truck. My brother had fallen back asleep on my shoulder as we drove north to Connor’s apartment, and I had let myself hug him and kiss him as much as I wanted because he wouldn’t be able to push me away and tell me that he hated me.

  “He’ll help us,” Jared had told me, just before he fell asleep again in Connor’s guest bedroom.

  I had kissed him for the millionth time and smoothed the blankets over his skinny body. He was fine, I reminded myself. “He’s fine,” I repeated to Connor also, as I walked into the living room.

  Connor sat on his white couch, looking tired and a little harassed. “Please come here and tell me more about what’s happening.”

  My heart quickened. “Just the stuff with Jared. I already told you.”

  “I listened to that message and ran out in the middle of a client dinner, thinking you both were in danger. I think you are.”

  “No, and you didn’t have to leave your client. We’re—”

  “Don’t tell me again that you’re fine, because clearly, you’re not. Jared certainly isn’t.” Connor sighed. “Lia, I’m sorry, don’t cry. Come here.”

  “I’m not crying,” I said. And if I got any closer, I was going to throw myself on him, and I didn’t want to do that. “I told you what happened with us having to move. What else do you need to know?”

  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me everything?” He patted the couch next to him.

  I didn’t plan to tell him more than I already had, but suddenly, words were pouring out of my mouth. “Everything? Like what? How Jill is calling my brother for heart to heart chats? Yeah, that happened, so I’ll probably be back in court soon with Jared telling everyone how neglectful and terrible I am as a guardian. I’ll lose him, for sure. And probably get arrested for child abuse, if Richie and Jill have anything to say about it. I deserve it.”

  “No, but—”

  I nodded. “I do. Wait, did I tell you that the plumber I hired stole all the pipes I bought, along with everything else I had inside the house? Including the front door I was going to fix? And now I have a furnace, but when I went down to search for the pipes that were already gone, I saw that the basement is completely flooded.”

  He rubbed his forehead and grimaced. “Flooded. The plumber stole from you?”

  I nodded again. “It was my fault, to hire someone like that and not watch him. And then tonight I saw that somebody broke the windows we put in. Every single piece of glass! Every single goddamn one.”

  “Lia. Can you please sit down for a second? Take a breath?”

  “Do you know the motto of Detroit?” I asked him.

  Connor blinked. “Motto? No, I didn’t know there was one.”

  “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus,” I quoted. “There was a big fire, a long time ago in the eighteen hundreds, and practically the whole city burned down. A priest wrote that in Latin to try to inspire everyone or something. It means, ‘We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.’ That was what a nun told me in the hospital. She thought it could be my motto too, I could be like the phoenix rising from the ashes, and I try to think of myself like that. But all this time I’ve been hoping for better things, and I just want to know, when are they going to happen? Because while I’m hoping, I’m also always waiting for it to go bad, and it always does. Always.”

  Connor stood. “No, this was terrible, and what happened to your house, it was a setback. But it can be fixed, Lia. Everything, all the things you just told me. We can fix it.”

  “I’ve always wanted to think that. But even you don’t, not about yourself,” I said.

  “I’m trying,” he answered softly. “I’m trying.” We looked at each other and all I wanted to do was hold onto him again, hold him and feel his arms around me. He reached out. “Come on.”

  I let him take my hands and take me into his bedroom. Oh, ok. Yeah, this was where it would have to lead, him thinking that he could get something from me because I was vulnerable and weak. I had been right—

  “Here.” Connor tossed me a t-shirt and a pair of shorts from his drawer. “You can sleep in this, since it looks like we didn’t bring up your bag from the truck and I’m too tired to go back down there. I must have an extra toothbrush around here. Do you mind bunking with Jared again? Or you can stay in my room, and I can take the couch.”

  I shook my head, meaning I didn’t mind anything, and also that I had been wrong to assume the worst about what he’d wanted to do in the bedroom.

  “We’ll talk more in the morning,” he told me. “Right now, you need to get some rest.” Not too much later, we had said goodnight, and I was wearing the extra-large, borrowed clothes. I lay in the guest bed next to Jared. The puppy was in his box on the floor and I listened to both of them breathe. We would wake up in the morning to a new day, and Jared would expect our problems to be solved. Actually, escaping to Connor’s apartment had only been a brief vacation from them.

  I turned over again, then again, my thoughts racing. I couldn’t sleep. I was so tired, but I couldn’t even close my eyes. Eventually, I walked out into the kitchen to get some water, fumbling a little in the dark as I tried to find a glass.

  “You can turn on the light,” Connor’s voice told me. “Here.” I heard a switch click and in the soft glow of a table lamp, I saw him back on the couch. “I couldn’t sleep either.”

  I forgot about the water and walked to him. “It’s really late and before you said you were tired. Are you afraid you’ll have those dreams?”

  “No. I was thinking about you, and what you said. What you said about the phoenix and about rising from the ashes.” He looked at me. “Lia, were you talking about something literal? Did you mean the fire at your uncle’s store? Were you there when it happened?”

  I looked back at him for a moment before I nodded slowly. “All three of us were there that day, my uncle, Jared, and me. Uncle Berj was at the counter and we were in the stockroom at the back.” I sat down on the couch next to him because I started to shake. I never talked about the fire.

  Connor looked horrified. “The building was practically destroyed. You were there? Inside?”

  I could hardly understand his words. The noise of the fire was in my ears, that and the sound of Jared’s screams. “We got out. But it started at the front so I had to carry Jared through.” I had poured bottles of water from the shelves onto us and wrapped him in my wet sweatshirt to protect him. “He was ok, just some smoke inhalation.”

  “But you got burned. You said you were in the hospital.”

  My hand went automatically to my back. It had started to itch, the skin tugging and tightening. “I was in the hospital for a while, healing.” I closed my eyes, remembering the pain.

  “Lia?”

  “The hospital,” I repeated slowly, coming back to the present. “I was the main reason that our uncle left us, because of my injuries. He couldn’t support me and take care of me like I needed. When I was finally better, Jared was already in foster car
e. I hadn’t seen him in weeks.” I thought. “Months.”

  “That’s how long you were there.”

  “Yeah, in the hospital and recovering. I had missed so much school, and I just didn’t seem to care about it anymore. I didn’t care about anything and I got into trouble, like stealing stuff, drinking. That was one of the reasons the Samotnys said they wouldn’t take me. That, and because I was still having physical problems that they didn’t want to deal with. My back was a mess from the burns and the grafts. They could have let me live with them, but they didn’t want me. I begged them.” I swallowed down the embarrassment and shame as I remembered all those episodes of me crying and pleading with Jill, please, please let me stay with my brother. They had been sad, too, kind of regretful, but they said it was better that way. “They said that Jared had already been through so much, that he needed to start over again with them. He would be like the phoenix.” I stopped. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Connor got up and found the glass I had been searching for in the kitchen to get me some water. “Take sips of this.” He waited while I did. “Better?” I nodded a little, not feeling much better at all. “You never said anything to me about the fire when I asked you about it, not even when we went to where the store used to be.”

  “I don’t usually talk about it.” And I still couldn’t tell him everything.

  “Does Jared know? Does he know that you carried him out?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, unless the Samotnys told him, and I doubt it. They were mostly busy sharing how I was a delinquent and that was why I couldn’t live with them. And they were busy calling the police when I went to his school to see him, or if I showed up at the park, or waited outside their house. I got desperate. I missed him.” I lost my voice for a moment. “He doesn’t remember the fire and I don’t want him to. He was so afraid when it happened. I think about him screaming,” I said, and then had to stop.

  “Take another sip.” Connor waited again. “Have you ever talked to anyone about all this, like a doctor? A social worker?”

  “I had to when I got into trouble, court-ordered. She was ok, I guess. I’m ok, too, usually.” He didn’t look very convinced. “I am.” I thought of Amy’s ring, still hidden in my purse. Oh, God, I wasn’t ok. “No, I am! It’s just been a lot lately. I wanted Jared to be with me so much, but I wasn’t ready for how he’d hate me and all the other things that came with us living together, like how to negotiate the life of an eleven-year-old…just getting him into the after-school program was hard. I don’t know. I thought I could do it better than I am.”

  “You’re doing—”

  “I’m failing him,” I interrupted. “I’m failing. And I’m so happy to have the new job, but it was really scary to start something I didn’t know, that I still think I’m going to mess up.” The ring. I gulped and put my hand over my stomach. “Buying the house has turned into chaos. I thought I could do it, and I wanted to have a permanent home for me and Jared. Like a place where he would grow up and know he could come back to. I want that for myself, too.” I was babbling. I took a drink of water just to shut myself up.

  “I can understand why you would be overwhelmed,” Connor said. “I also think that it’s pretty amazing that you’ve done all this, given what has happened to you in life.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really, but it is a lot. Sometimes it helps to have someone to talk to. Do you have friends that you can lean on?” he asked.

  “Sure.” No. “I’m good, really good. I know that Jared and I had a rough transition, but I’m certain we can work it out.”

  Connor sat back and looked at me. “Now you sound like you’re talking to the judge again. Isn’t that what you said? You had a script prepared to tell people what they wanted to hear? Don’t do that with me, Lia. I like it better when you tell me the truth.”

  The truth. My stomach dropped. “I did. I just did!”

  “Exactly. I’d rather hear that. I don’t like when you’re trying to fool me with a fake smile and some pre-written speech that makes you sound good. No, hold on.” He picked up my hands when I started to get up. “Don’t get angry. I’m saying that I like the real you. That’s the person I want to be with.” He didn’t let go of my hands, and I stopped trying to pull back. I did hold on, and then turned my head to yawn into my shoulder.

  “We should go back to bed,” he said.

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?” I asked. “Is the stress of this going to make you have nightmares?”

  Connor stood and pulled me with him. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I just meant, if you needed someone there, I could, like, hang out with you. For a while, until you fell asleep.”

  “Oh.” He looked at me in the muted light. “Then, yes. I would like that.” He turned off the switch and we stood for a moment in the dark before he put his arm around me and led me back down the hall and into his bedroom. “Here.” Connor lay on the bed. “Come here with me and tell me more about your house.”

  Cautiously, I sat down next to him, and then slowly stretched out, my head on his chest. He put his arms around me. “What about the house? Do you mean more about how I hired an unlicensed plumber and he stole from me?”

  “Jesus, unlicensed?” I heard him sigh. “No, not about that. Tell me more about what you want the house to look like. What you want it to be.”

  “Oh. I’m not very good at the decorating stuff. When Amy saw my apartment, she thought I had been robbed.”

  “Why did you just jump like that?” Connor asked. “Your entire body shook.”

  It was because I had thought of Amy being robbed, by me. “I’ll just tell you how I want the house to feel,” I said, because lying there with him, I knew what I needed. I wanted to walk through the front door and feel just like I did right at the moment: warm, cozy, protected. I cuddled in his arms and listened to his heartbeat. I talked for a while, forgetting that I was supposed to be there comforting him. Instead, I took it all for myself. I fell asleep with his chin resting on my head, with me holding on to him as tightly as I could.

  ∞

  Oh no. Not again! “Misiu, no!” I ran to pull him away from Connor’s pristine, white couch. It was like a magnet to him and his sharp little claws and teeth. “Come on, you and I will go for another walk.” I picked him up and hugged him to me, nuzzling my cheek against his soft ears. If this little guy had missed out on love in the first few weeks of his life, Jared and I were more than making up for it now. Both of us were hugging, petting, and kissing the puppy almost constantly, but it was doing as much good for us as it was for Misiu.

  Jared and I had gotten up late—by the time my eyes had opened, the sun was beaming into the bedroom window. I had sat up straight. It was beaming into Connor’s bedroom window, because I had spent the night in there, with him. I had no memory of it, beyond talking about my house and him making little sounds of agreement, patting my hair. I had no memory beyond the feeling of safety and contentment that I had felt while snuggled against his hard body.

  After I straightened myself up as best I could and re-rolled the waist of his shorts so that they didn’t fall down around my ankles, I walked out into the kitchen, where Connor had been at the stove. I had stepped in to cook and we sat down together to have the big breakfast I’d made. Jared was happy and relaxed, Connor was thoughtful, and I was awkward and self-conscious, so much so that I could hardly eat.

  It wasn’t that I had slept in his bed with him—well, there was also that. But mostly, it was that I had shared more with him than I ever had with anyone. I’d told him stuff that I’d kept secret from the social worker I’d been forced to have “sessions” with in my teens after getting picked up (again) for shoplifting food. I’d never talked about the fire, not with any of the foster parents I’d lived with, or the teachers I’d had as I’d bounced between schools before dropping out. And unlike what I’d said to Connor last night, I didn’t actually have friends to talk to, either. The ones from
before my parents’ car crash had melted away into the past, and I’d been too busy and sad once I’d moved in with my uncle to get to know very many people. In the years since, I’d never stayed long enough at a school, a house, an apartment, or a job to make any real connections.

  Misiu nipped my hand and woke me out of this reverie. “No, no,” I told him firmly. “No biting.” We went out for a walk in Connor’s safe, clean neighborhood. People said hello to me on the sidewalk and wanted to pet the puppy.

  I was happy to be outside, now that I was wearing my own clothes that weren’t in danger of falling down anymore. Connor had decided to move the majority of our belongings out of the truck and into storage in his guest bedroom, which apparently also housed a lot of his brother Teddy’s things. He said it would be safer and easier for us than driving around with everything bouncing around. He had also casually mentioned over breakfast that he was having someone go to my house to deal with the furnace in the driveway. I just nodded, because I was still too embarrassed to talk to him very much.

  As Misiu and I trotted along, I realized that I trusted Connor. I believed him. If he said he was dealing with a four-hundred-pound furnace for me, I thought it was true, and I didn’t need to question it. “Misiu, no! Oh, gross. Please don’t eat that.” Thank goodness that having a puppy was very distracting. I could worry about the disgusting thing in Misiu’s mouth rather than worrying about Jared, oversharing, or me falling for Connor, all over again. Hard.

  Because I was. I was as swept up in him as I had been as a teenager. Even more. I concentrated on the puppy and ignored my shaking hands when I thought about him.

  Connor and Jared were back from a grocery store trip when I got up to the apartment, using the door code and key that he had given to me. He trusted me right back, I realized, as I held the key tightly in my hand. Connor trusted me, the liar and the thief. I gripped the key so hard it bit into my skin, until Misiu saw a neighbor at the end of the hall and took off on his leash to say hello. I really, really loved his distractions.