Dirty

by Megan Hart

  I got to my feet, dusting off the crumbles of grass from my long skirt. I bent and arranged the flowers in a prettier fashion. I cleared away some weeds sprouting up at the corners of the headstone. I traced the letters of their names with the tip of my finger and thought how insufficient the inscriptions were to describe the lives of the men whose bodies lay beneath the ground.

  “He loved British comedy,” I said aloud, my hand on my father’s headstone. “He loved Irish music. He used Old Spice cologne and liked to fish, and he always ate what he caught. He was born in New York City but moved away when he was three and never went back.”

  There was more. Memories of my dad. My tribute to him, the best one I could give. The one for Andrew I thought would be harder, but maybe remembering about the stars had opened the way for me.

  “He played games with us even when he was too old for them. He taught me how to ride a bike with no hands. He was the first one to tell a story about Princess Pennywhistle.” I spoke on, not caring if I sounded like a loon talking out loud to a grave. I wept again, the tears not so effortless this time. They wet the throat of my sweater and made me cold. “He was my brother, and I loved him. Even when I hated what he did.”

  The something I’d been waiting for happened, though it wasn’t as dramatic as an angel chorus from above or a cheap horror movie thrill. I let go. Not everything, and not all at once, but I took in a breath of crisp fall air that didn’t weigh me down. I wiped my face. I took in another breath.

  Then I walked away.

  When offering an apology, it’s always better to bring a peace offering to smooth the way. For me it was a box of chocolate éclairs and a thermos of hazelnut coffee to replace the sludge we usually had in the break room. I knocked on Marcy’s door, the bright-pink box announcing the arrival of sugar-filled treats.She looked up from her desk with a pinched smile. “Elle. Hi. C’mon in.”

  She’d breezed into my office plenty of times and plopped into my chair. I wasn’t quite as relaxed, but I did slide the box toward her. “I brought you something.”

  She leaned down to sniff the box, then slit the tape with one manicured fingernail. “Oh, God, you bitch. I’ve been on a freaking diet…”

  The moment she called me a bitch, I knew things were all right between us. Coming from Marcy, it was almost a term of affection. I held up the thermos.

  “I brought good coffee, too.”

  “Oh, my God, I love you.” She twirled around on her chair and pulled down a mug from her shelf and held it out. “Caffeine’s supposed to slow weight loss, but I’ll be fucked in fudge if I can understand how.”

  I’d brought my own mug and filled them both. “Wouldn’t that get messy?”

  She gave me a blank look at first, then laughed. “It might.”

  We raised our cups and she pulled out éclairs, one for each. She bit into hers right away and moaned so long and loud I laughed. A moment later, biting into my own pastry, I managed an enthusiastic echo of her exclamation. Together we stuffed ourselves with sugary goodies and strong coffee.

  “Marcy,” I said when the feeding frenzy had eased. “I’m sorry.”

  She waved a hand. “No big whoop, hon. I’m a nosy bitch. I admit it.”

  “No. You were trying to be my friend, and I wasn’t being a very good one. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t fuss yourself!” she cried.

  “Marcy, damn it! I’m trying to apologize, would you let me? Please?”

  She laughed but nodded. “Yes. All right. I was a nosy bitch and you were an uptight shrew. We’re square?”

  “Square.” I sat back in the chair. “I missed your gossip.”

  She clapped her hands. “Oooh, and have I got some for you!”

  She certainly did. A full half hour’s worth of time we both should have spent working, but instead spent giggling over speculation about the new guy who worked in the mail room. Marcy was convinced he was a stripper on the side. I hadn’t noticed him.

  “What do you mean, you haven’t noticed him?” She crowed. “Are you blind? Are you dead? Are your legs glued together?”

  “I thought you were getting married!”

  “I am getting married, but I’m not dying. It’s okay to look, Elle.” She paused. “I wouldn’t tell Wayne, of course.”

  “Of course not.”

  She scraped some chocolate from the side of an éclair and licked it off her finger. “So…how’re you doing? Aside from tempting me with disgusting pastry and trying to make me so fat I can’t fit into my wedding dress.”

  “I’m all right.” I reached for another éclair and bit into it. Yellow cream oozed out onto my fingers, and I licked them.

  “Okay.”

  I pretended not to notice what a good job she was doing about not being a nosy bitch, but after a moment I had to give in. “I’m good, Marcy, really. And no, I haven’t called Dan.”

  She threw a wadded napkin at me. “Why not? Call him!”

  “It’s too late,” I told her. “Some things aren’t meant to work. That’s all.”

  “How do you know if you don’t try?”

  I licked some chocolate and studied her sincere expression and thought back to when she’d told me she’d seen him downtown. “What, exactly, did Dan say when you saw him?”

  “Just that you’d broken up.”

  “Uh-huh. Was he alone?”

  She didn’t say anything at first, then gave a too-casual shrug. “No. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Marcy, I’m sad to tell you, it does.”

  “Elle, it doesn’t. He was miserable with that girl, I could tell.”

  I wiped my fingers with a napkin and warmed my fingers on my coffee mug. “You don’t have to save my feelings. Dan and I broke up. He has the right to go out with anyone he wants to.”

  “But nobody can make him as miserable as you can,” Marcy said with a wicked glint in her eyes. “Elle. Call him.”

  “Marcy,” I said. “I can’t.”

  She sighed and tossed up her hands. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop bugging. I can’t stand not having you to talk to around this place. Nobody else gets me.”

  “I’m the only lucky one?” I gathered up the trash and tossed it in the pail, then grabbed my mug and the thermos. I left the other éclairs for her.

  “I like you,” she said without a hint of teasing or mockery. “That’s something.”

  I reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “I like you, too, Marcy. And yeah. It’s something very good.”

  We smiled at each other. I slid the box toward her. “You keep these,” I said, and ducked out of the office with Marcy’s epithets following me down the hall.

  Chapter 20

  My street had been turned into a scene from a crime television show, with the whirling red and blue lights of a squad car and the harsher red strobe of an ambulance. I hurried closer to my house, my eyes scanning Mrs. Pease’s windows, but the light shone in the living room as it always did at this time, though it looked dim compared to the bright lights outside.

  I jogged up her stairs and knocked on her door, which she opened immediately to expose her worried face. It smoothed a little when she saw me, and she reached out her arms. I let her hug me, relieved to find her all right.“Oh, Elle, it’s not you.”

  “No, Mrs. Pease, I thought it must be you.” I looked her over. “The ambulance is parked right out front of your house, and I was worried.”

  “No, they showed up about forty minutes ago and ran up and pounded on your door,” she told me.

  “My door?” I turned to look onto the street. No police officers or emergency personnel maintained stations at their vehicles. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “They pounded and pounded, but I guess you didn’t answer. They must have gone next door to the Ossleys.”

  My stomach sunk. “Gavin.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” Mrs. Pease said.

  We didn’t have to wait long to find out, because the Ossleys’ door opened and the par
amedics came out wheeling a stretcher. The bulky form beneath the sheet could have been anyone, but the white face belonged to Gavin. Mrs. Pease let out a small, sad noise that hurt my ears. She clutched my hand, and hers felt soft and papery against mine.

  “Oh, that poor boy. I hope he’s all right.”

  Mrs. Ossley appeared in the doorway with the ubiquitous Dennis at her side. She clutched a handful of tissues and her face looked tear streaked. He patted her back over and over. A moment later a police officer, the same one who’d brought Gavin home before, came out and watched the medical crew putting Gavin into the ambulance.

  They murmured and mumbled, and I couldn’t hear what they said but gathered it was something about going with Gavin in the ambulance. She shook her head. Dennis said something to the cop, who shrugged and put away his pad and pen. After another moment Mrs. Ossley got in the ambulance and it drove away.

  “I hope he’s all right,” Mrs. Pease said again from my side.

  “Me, too, Mrs. Pease.”

  Together we watched the ambulance pull away, its lights still flashing but no siren blaring. She invited me in for tea and cookies, and I accepted. I stayed and chatted, but though we spoke of recipes and the upcoming holiday season, my mind stayed filled with the sight of a gurney and a white face.

  Several days passed before I steeled myself to knock on the Ossleys’ door. Mrs. Ossley answered. If she’d spent the past few days overwrought with grief, she showed no sign of it. Her hair and makeup had been immaculately done, and she seemed still dressed for work in a neat linen suit and fashionable pumps. I remembered I didn’t know what she did.“What do you want?” she asked, and I hoped whatever career she’d chosen wasn’t anything to do with customer service.

  “I came to see if Gavin’s all right.”

  She lifted her chin and crossed her arms. “My son is fine, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  That seemed to take her aback, and she sniffed. “You’d like to know what happened, I guess.”

  “Mrs. Ossley,” I said gently. “I know Gavin’s been having some problems. He was cutting himself. I think I can guess what happened.”

  The color leaked from her face. “Don’t you blame me!”

  I held up my hands, trying to make peace. “I’m not blaming you—”

  “Because if you knew,” she continued, agitated, “you should have done something about it! Said something! You should have…you could have…”

  She trailed off, sputtering, and I let her silence fill the space between us on her doorstep. I remembered what my mother had said, about how blaming someone else had made it easier. My shoulders were broad. I could take Mrs. Ossley’s blame, if she needed me to.

  “He told me,” she said after a very long minute, “that you’d never done anything to him.”

  I nodded, relieved. “Thank you.”

  She nodded, too, hers stiffer and looking as if it hurt her neck, but an acquiescence I appreciated, anyway. “He’s at the Grove. He’ll be there for observation and counseling for about two weeks, and then he might be able to come home.”

  The Grove was a well-established mental health facility in the next town. It had a great reputation and wasn’t cheap. Whatever problems Gavin and his mother had, she wasn’t skimping on getting him help now.

  “I didn’t want to know about it,” she said stiffly. “It’s been hard without Gavin’s dad around. I hoped having Dennis here would help.”

  I didn’t want to hug her or reach for her hand. I might have made great strides in my own issues over the past few weeks, but they didn’t extend to becoming a casual hugger. I settled for another nod, one I hoped seemed meaningful.

  “Blaming yourself can’t help him, Mrs. Ossley,” I told her. “The most important thing is that he’s getting help and that you’re willing to listen to him.”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her arms as though chilled. “If you want to visit him…”

  “Would that be all right with you?”

  She didn’t nod right away, and when she did, she didn’t soften it with a smile. Yet she did nod. “Yes. I think Gavin would like it.”

  “Then I will,” I told her.

  There seemed like there could be more to say, but neither of us said it. We shared an awkward silence for another minute before I excused myself. She’d shut the door before I even got down the first step.

  My visit with Gavin took longer than I’d thought it would. I went after work, traffic was horrible, visiting hours hadn’t begun when I arrived and he at first wasn’t available. It was worth the trip and the wait, though, to see him. We didn’t say much. I didn’t ask him about the bandages on his wrists or the new haircut. I took him a bag full of books, which he accepted eagerly and with more enthusiasm than I’d seen from him in a while.“Hey,” he said as we cracked open cans of soda from the vending machine. “How’s the painting going?”

  “I finished the dining room. I painted the kitchen, too. A color called Spring Green.”

  “Miss Kavanagh,” Gavin said with a grin, “you’re becoming the Martha Stewart of Green Street.”

  We both laughed at that, more so when I told him I’d been taking baking lessons from Mrs. Pease. It was good to hear him laugh. Good to laugh myself.

  We didn’t have long before I needed to go. Bedtime came early for the patients in the program, and they were strict with it. He thanked me again for the books and we hesitated, not sure of how to say goodbye until at last Gavin held out his hand. I offered mine, and he shook it firmly. Still holding it, he turned it to show my wrist, and he looked at the scar there before looking up at my eyes.

  “And you’re okay now, right?” He did a good job of pretending not to worry. “I mean…it all got better, right? After that?”

  I nodded and squeezed his hand, and then I pulled him closer and gave him the hug I really had wanted to give him all along.

  “Yes,” I said as I let him go. “It all got better after that. And I’m okay now.”

  I hadn’t lied to Gavin, but the visit had left me with a taste for something a bit stronger than soda. I found it at The Slaughtered Lamb, where I had no problem flirting with Jack and even less of a problem turning him down when he asked me right out if I’d like to go home with him.“You sure?” He flashed me the charming grin.

  “I’m sure.”

  We shared a smile and he gave me a one-armed hug as he moved around me to serve some other customers, but he didn’t ask again. I had three drinks while I ate a late dinner and played a video trivia game. I contemplated a fourth and realized I didn’t want to get drunk, after all, and I left the Lamb feeling better than I had expected to.

  I passed Dan on the way out. He had his arm around a girl who could’ve been older than twenty-one but didn’t look it. She was giggling. He was smiling, but when he saw me, he stopped. In the moment’s comedy of errors, Jack pushed through the doors behind me to hand me my sweater, which I’d left on my chair.

  The four of us froze for a moment as the men eyed each other and Dan’s companion babbled on. Then Jack nodded at Dan, and Dan nodded at Jack, and both of them ignored me, and I wished I’d had the fourth drink.

  Instead I took a walk. A long one. I got a blister and I didn’t sober up too much, but the pain in my heel was a good distraction. By the time I made it home I thought maybe I wouldn’t even have to cry.

  Dan was waiting for me when I got home. His shadow loomed on my front steps. He stood aside to let me get to the door. My keys chattered in the lock, but for once it opened like magic.

  “I didn’t even say ‘open sesame,’” I said.

  Dan stepped aside while I went in and closed the door after us. I made my way toward the kitchen, intent on getting a couple glasses of water in me to fend off the possibility of a hangover. I shed my bag, my coat, my keys, a trail behind me as though I might lose my way to the door and needed a trail to find my way back. The thought made me laugh a little, under my breath.

  “Did y
ou fuck him?”

  “What?”

  His words stunned the laughter right out of me, and I turned. The room spun a little, and I reached for the door frame to steady myself. “What did you just say?”

  “I said, did you fuck Jack. Have you been fucking him?”

  I got sober very fast. We stared at each other across a room that had once seemed small and now loomed between us larger than the Grand Canyon. His face was stony, and I hated that he assumed the worst.

  “What sort of question is that?” I gave him my back and went to the sink. The first cup I picked up dropped into the metal bowl and shattered. Blood oozed from a cut on the tip of my finger.

  “I want to know, Elle. Did you?”

  I knew he’d come up behind me, but I didn’t turn. I ran water from the tap, scooped it up and drank it down, unheeding of the blood streaming down my hand. Dan moved closer.

  I turned, water dripping from my lips. “I don’t think that’s a question I need to answer, considering you weren’t alone tonight, either. It’s not my business.”

  “It is my business!”

  He grabbed my upper arms. I thought he meant to kiss me. Or push me. I wasn’t sure. I froze, automatic, muscles clenching and going stiff. He shook me, instead, once, twice.

  “It’s my business, Elle!”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Answer me!”

  “You’ve already decided I have, haven’t you?” I cried. “If you thought I didn’t, you wouldn’t care! You wouldn’t have waited for me, to find out if I did! You’ve already judged me, Dan, so why should I bother answering you?”

  He shook me again, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Did you, Elle? Tonight? Ever? Is he in love with you? Is that why you broke up with me? Because of him?”

  “Why do you care!” I screamed, alcohol and fury making me rage.

  “Because I love you.” His fingers tightened on my arms, hurting. And then he let me go. Pushed me away from him like touching me had burned him. “Because I love you, Elle.”