The Opposite of Everyone: A Novel

by Joshilyn Jackson

  Candace swallows audibly, then whispers, “Do you think they’ll come in here and get us while we’re sleeping?”

  This is the last place they will start it. Mrs. Mack’s suite is exactly under our room. But Candace isn’t a fighter, and she doesn’t think strategically. She is staring at the door, big-eyed. I soften and I add, very exaggerated, so she’ll get it, “They could burst in any second and kill us all. If I were you, I’d sleep under the bed.”

  She makes a tittering sound and relaxes. “They wouldn’t mess with me nohow,” she says, “excepting Kim.”

  “Kim’s big, but Shar’s the one you have to watch for.”

  I may not be crying about the fight, but it is coming. It’s nice having a living body, even Candace’s, between me and the door. Or maybe, tonight, it’s simply nice to have a living body close.

  “Are you really scared?” Candace whispers, as if the idea I might feel human things like fear is new to her.

  “Who wants to get the shit beat out of ’em?” I ask instead of answering.

  “I could help you,” Candace says, almost truculent. “If you wanted to make friends with me.”

  I snort at that. Candace cringes at the sight of any lifted hand. I can’t wave at the girl without her shivering and crawling backward like a beaten dog, except a dog is at least a vertebrate. Candace is as spineless as a bag of jam.

  “I’d like to see you be my friend in front of Shar,” I say.

  “You never wanted me to before,” she says, sulky. “I can’t hardly even come in my own room. All Joya ever said to me was Get out, and you let her.”

  “Well, Joya’s a bitch. I don’t want to hear her name again,” I say, too loud. To my surprise, I start to cry again. “I mean it. I don’t want to hear her name.” I am crying so hard now that I’m not sure Candace understands me.

  She must though, because she says, “Well, you ain’t got no one, then, huh?”

  I don’t answer, and Candace’s mouth turns downward, thoughtful. After another minute, she squirms over closer and wraps her weirdly spongy arms around me.

  “There, now,” she says, patting at me awkwardly, like I’m a tiny baby. “There, now, don’t be sad. There, now.”

  I spin in place, turning my wet face to the wall, and I can’t imagine I will ever stop. I will lie here and weep for my mother—my best, first love—until I am a husk, as dry and light as dandelion fluff. The wind will lift me up and blow me away, and Candace can make a wish on me.

  She scoots in even closer, spooning, her knees tucked into my knees, her belly pressed against my back. She rocks and coos and squeezes me, saying it over and over. There, now. There, now. We stay like that until at last, the crying stops. I stare at the wall, hitching and gulping until I catch my breath. As soon as I am quiet, Candace falls into a boneless sleep, untroubled. Eventually I sleep, too, uneasy. In my dreams, I run down bare and endless hallways, seeking something lost. There are no hiding spots, and none of the empty hallways brings me to it.

  I was still looking. Sometimes the lost thing was Kai, sometimes a little girl with a cloud of dark curls and crescent-moon eyes. Sometimes I didn’t know what it was. I only knew I had to find it. I ran, my footsteps echoing off the bare walls. Then I thought that it might be above me, in the world that was awake. I found myself rising toward the surface of my sleep. I felt another body, soothing me with breath, easing me with heartbeat. A living warmth, a proof against the darkness. I tried to ask, Is that you? and my own voice woke me up.

  I jerked my gummy eyes open, disoriented. I smelled ripe dog, and my throat was sour and dry from remembered, ancient crying. It took me a moment to orient. I recognized the ugly wall of plaid in front of me; my face was crammed up against the back of Birdwine’s wide sofa. The body pressed against my back was Looper’s. I glared at him over my shoulder. He thumped his tail at me, and his giant mouth gaped open in a stretch just inches from my face.

  “Ugh, your yawn smells terrible,” I told him, and struggled to get myself around him and up. He stretched and rolled onto his back into my warm space. I said, “Honestly, dogs,” and gave his belly a scratch.

  I was creased and rumpled, covered in golden-brown Looper hair that showed on both my black skirt and my white shell. Great. Julian was dead asleep in the baggy leather Barcalounger. I offered to drive him back to his car last night, but he wouldn’t go. He knew I’d drive straight back here.

  So we’d both stayed. I’d booted up my own laptop and gone into my cloud account. I cross-referenced my personal files with Birdwine’s paper one, drawing new routes, taking notes, cussing at Birdwine’s poky Internet connection. Julian alternated between checking my progress and cleaning up. He’d swept up the plaster and other debris and put Birdwine’s furniture back in order. He’d even done the dishes. Now he slept like happy babies do, on his back in the Barcalounger with his arms thrown up around his head.

  I edged closer and ruffled his hair, softer than I’d scratched at Looper, but the same in spirit. He leaned into the touch in his sleep, the way a flower turns its face unthinking to the sunlight. I stopped before he woke up, marveling at the way Julian, even unconscious Julian, assumed that any hand on him reached out in kindness. His eyes moved behind his closed lids, dreaming easy. I let him sleep on.

  I had no more gentleness inside me, not this morning. I’d woken full of thunderstorms, with a strong desire to aim them all at Birdwine. I could hear water running in the bathroom down the hall, so he was up. And bathing, which indicated a certain readiness to come back to the sober world.

  He wasn’t ready for me, though. I wanted to barge in while he was vulnerable, wet and naked, and ask him, What the hell? He’d never so much as hinted that he had a boy, even back when we were lovers. The only clue had been how invested he’d been in the hunt for Hana. He’d been alarmed and overanxious from the first. In my office, when I told him Kai had reinvented herself as a person with no daughter, he had been so cryptic and emphatic, saying, A parent can’t just do that.

  Well, he had. So how complicated could it be?

  And to think last night I’d stood over him all sweet-mouthed and sugar-hearted, almost yearning. I remembered how sad he’d seemed, telling me I had broken his heart. Sure I had. His heart, and probably some unicorns; I was apparently quite hard on mythological creatures.

  Now I wanted to put my face in his face, let him see how done with him I was. Then I’d show him my notes and the new lines and dots I’d filled in on his map, and tell him to get off his bruised ass and find my sister. After that, he was free to go his merry way. All the way to hell. I’d give him a map for that, too, if he needed it.

  Birdwine’s file was sitting on the coffee table. I picked it up, and it was shaking too hard for me to read it. It took me a full second to understand the shaking was coming from my hands.

  I had to pull myself together. I was furious and rumpled, and I’d woken up missing my mother, or maybe missing the feel of any human body in the bed beside me. Well, that second part was fixable.

  The shower was still running, and Julian was out cold, so I had a moment. I went to the kitchen and got some coffee started. My mouth felt like this whole filthy house had crawled inside and died there. Last night, I’d searched the bathroom and come up with a toothbrush I was pretty sure was mine. I’d brought it to the kitchen and washed it with some dish soap, just in case. I used it again, now.

  Then I got Birdwine’s duct tape from the junk drawer and pulled most of the hair off my skirt and blouse. That felt so much better. More like me. I put my shoes on and shrugged back into my jacket. My blowout was failing, so I slicked my wild hair back and secured it at the nape of my neck. I did the two-minute version of full war paint: matte skin, dark striped eyes, a mean red mouth.

  I checked myself in my compact’s mirror and was heartened to find a reasonable approximation of my hardest self. Good enough to break a piece off in Birdwine. Even good enough to go straight to work from here. One advantage of my end
less sleek black suits was that only Verona would realize I was wearing yesterday’s. She had a good eye for cut and label, combined with a twenty-something’s interest in other people’s walks of shame. She’d be so disappointed in me if she saw the hairy drooler who had shared my sofa. From here on out, I would do better. The best way to get the dregs of Birdwine right out of my system was to get some other body into it.

  By then the shower sounds had stopped. His laptop was still open on the kitchen table. I woke it up and turned it toward the doorway, so he’d see it when he came in. As he came up the hall, I poured coffee into two of his random coffee mugs, one plain green and one with happy daisies that said TEACHER OF THE YEAR. If only he’d had a FATHER OF THE YEAR or WORLD’S BEST DAD mug. I was up for a little ugly irony.

  He limped around the corner in an old T-shirt and some Levi’s that looked even older. His dark hair was wet and brushed back off his face, giving me a good view of his bruises. The swelling had gone down a bit around his eye, thanks to the cold peas, but the colors were coming in: black and violet and a spectacular deep plum. He gave me a wholly fake sheepish look; the real expression in his eyes was wary.

  He did not apologize for last night. He’d once told me he never did, for drunk. Sorry implied a promise to stop, and he’d sorry’d about it endlessly at Stella. He could no longer muster the required faith to form the words, lifetime-level tired of watching himself fail to mean it.

  Then he saw the picture open on his laptop’s screen. I’d left the browser open to the best close-up of his son, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Hubs. The boy’s head was already even with the man’s.

  Birdwine stopped, his eyes gone serious and blank. If I’d had any lingering question that this was his kid, his face was answer enough. Birdwine’s good eye met my gaze, and his fingers moved to press against his temple.

  I held out the mug with the daisies. After a second, he came over and took it. He leaned on a piece of counter catty-corner to me. He still didn’t speak. Neither did I. I used his own old cop trick. I was obvious about it, giving him prizefighter eyes, letting the silence build and charge. He took a sip, considering me over the rim of the cup. He knew what I was doing.

  He said, “Okay. Let’s start with the kid.”

  Oh, it was a good opener. His speaking first gave me the win—his way of saying he was sorry, after all. But it begged the question, which damn kid? We had a herd to choose from, he and I: my orphaned brother snoring in his Barcalounger, my missing sister, his abandoned son.

  “Why don’t we start with yours?” I said. It came out sharp, accusing.

  He’d given me the opening, but I could see he was regretting it already. “Really? Because I know where mine is.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get to Hana when Julian’s up. He should be in on that conversation.”

  “Okay. But I don’t want him in on this conversation,” Birdwine said, like a warning. He would talk about the boy, but he was setting a timer.

  “Fine,” I said. I tried to sound impersonal, as if I was questioning a witness on the stand. “When did you last see your kid?”

  He looked deliberately to the screen, then back to me. “One second ago.”

  Okay, so it was a hostile witness. “In person.”

  “When he was three.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Ten years.”

  I had my next question locked and loaded, but his answer paused me. The timing was odd. Ten years ago, Birdwine started going to AA. It felt backward, to get in AA and then stop seeing your son. Most people started twelve-stepping so they could see their kid. I changed course.

  “Why haven’t you seen him?” I asked.

  “Wasn’t invited.”

  “So?” I snapped. This was now the least impersonal cross-examination in the history of the justice system. “Do you need an invitation?” I amended.

  “Yup.”

  Birdwine was good at hostile witness. He’d give opposing counsel exactly what they asked for, and no more. But this was not a courtroom. This was the kitchen of a man I’d almost loved. I’d been ready to try at least, last night. Now I felt that sweetness like a bullet I had barely dodged.

  “Why?” I asked, and it came out like a donkey’s bray, raw and angry. He didn’t answer and it only made me angrier. “Why won’t you explain yourself?”

  He shrugged, impassive. “I don’t see the upside, Paula.”

  “You don’t? Well, I do. At least I’d understand your choices, even if—” I stopped myself. The rest of the sentence was stuck in my throat. I’d almost said, even if I can’t forgive them.

  Birdwine gave me a rueful smile, eyebrows raised. I tipped my head to him, acknowledging the hit. He was right. There was no upside.

  I dropped the line of questions and said, flat, “You should have told me. Before. When we were a thing.”

  “Oh, yeah. Because you’re taking it so well.” That sounded more like him than anything he’d said so far, and as he went on, I finally got why he had ditched me in the first place. “I don’t have a good bedtime story for a chick with abandonment issues.”

  “It was the truth, though,” I said. Understanding it did not make me less angry. I didn’t want a conversation, anyway. I wanted an apology; it would feel so ugly-good to not accept it. “And you were supposedly in love with me.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Then you should have told me, Birdwine, shit. I think I was in love with you, too.”

  “I know you were,” he said, so sad and sure and world-weary all at once that the urge to hurt him, to pick a bruise and press my fingers hard against it or to bite, was almost overwhelming.

  I stepped to him, tall enough in my shoes to jam my lips against his swollen mouth, not carefully. Not carefully at all. He hummed the hurt of it against my skin, but his hand went to my hip, automatic, like a reflex. His mouth opened, surprised by pain, and his breath came out. I pulled it in, tasted old bourbon down behind the mint.

  I broke the kiss, but stayed close, eye to eye, so angry. “I’m not starting anything.”

  “I know,” he said, even though his hand on my hip had already pulled me closer.

  My lips twisted. “You should send that memo to your pants.”

  He flashed me that gap in his teeth, though the grin had to hurt. “You’re so damn romantic.” This close, I could smell the faded copper tang of last night’s blood.

  “You understand that was good-bye.” I said it like a window closing.

  “Yeah,” he said. He dropped his hand and moved away to the coffeemaker for a refill. He didn’t speak again until his back was to me. “It’s not what I want, but I can’t change it.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the boy or me.

  It didn’t matter. Either way, the love was breakable. All love was. At my job, I helped dozens of couples who were staggering out of it, shell-shocked or enraged. Many of them tore their kids in half and shattered that love, too. Even crazy Oakleigh with her murder-kittens had loved Clark Winkley, once. Now he was risking a broken neck to worm across her roof to pee in her compact and scribble out her face in pictures. My clients, every one, had made promises in front of priests and rabbis and judges and all their friends and their relations. Made a home. Made babies. Then happily ever after cracked, and I came to break it open and divvy up its jagged pieces.

  There was something left between me and Birdwine, or I wouldn’t feel this way. I wouldn’t be closer to crying than I had been since—I could not remember, and then I did. Since the last time I saw Candace. Some feeling for him was alive inside me, still, and I would have to break it. Fine. Breaking things was what I did best.

  I stepped back, but it wasn’t far enough. I backed all the way across the kitchen, and he stayed by the coffeemaker. So Birdwine and I had loved each other. So what. We’d each had a share in wrecking it—he’d been too silent, and I’d been too cynical. Now here we were. He was still silent, and I was still cynica
l enough to know a hungry body could be fed on anything.

  “Are we back to emails titled ‘Here is the information’?” I asked. I didn’t want him to quit, now. The specific ways his life was wrecked made me want him on this case. It was like me and my pro bono work, getting my mother’s little avatars out of prison. No other PI on the planet would be this overinvested.

  “That’s what I said I wanted, all along,” he said, with no inflection. But then he quirked an eyebrow up and added, wry, “How lucky that it’s all working out for me.”

  It was his best and blackest kind of funny, and I would have laughed before. The job aside, Birdwine and I were over enough to have an after. After started now.

  “Good morning,” said Julian from the doorway. Looper was with him, lolling out a happy tongue. Julian seemed almost as eager, but he drew up short as Birdwine and I turned to him. Looper, oblivious, trotted through to squeeze out of his doggy door into the backyard. My brother’s human nose lifted, though, as if he smelled the fury and the pheromones that still charged the air.

  I said, “Birdwine, I don’t think you’ve officially met my brother. This is Julian Bouchard.”

  “Julian,” Birdwine said. He moved forward, impassive as a pile of bricks, to put his hand out.

  Julian shook it, looking back and forth uneasily between us. “Oh, sorry. I’ve interrupted something. I should have stomped more, coming in, but Paula said that you two weren’t a thing.”

  Birdwine answered, when I didn’t. “I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”

  I’d been too surprised by Julian’s directness. He stated the truth so baldly, even when it brought discomfort to the room. It was another way the kid was like me, but we didn’t get it from our slippery shared parent. Was it some odd recessive gene? Or had we each gotten it separately, from our fathers? Maybe Kai had had a type, after all.