“I miss you, too.” I actually meant it. As furious as I’d been the day I left, as much I wanted Uncle Danny to take me far away from her...I’d spent every day since with a deep, steady ache in my chest, wanting nothing more than to see her again.
“I’m getting better, baby girl. I’m getting better and—and I’m gonna get you back. I promise.” Her hands twitched at her sides. She wanted to pull me into her lap. I wanted to let her.
We both looked at the social worker across the room. She took a breath, closed the magazine in her hands, and nodded. “Just for a minute.”
Curling up into my mother’s lap again, after all these weeks without her, broke the piece of me I’d built stronger and stronger ever since I left. I didn’t care about seeming grown-up or brave. I didn’t care about staying mad.
The pills of her sweater made my skin itch. I inhaled the perfume and counted the heartbeats on my cheek when I pressed my face into her chest.
“Nobody’s taking you from me.” Her promise blasted out in a fierce, hot stream down my neck. “We just hit a rough patch, you and me. We’ll be okay. You’re my everything, you know that, don’t you?”
I nodded. I didn’t know that. But I wanted to believe her.
It was a year before Dad tried to visit. They didn’t let him.
Uncle Danny visited the most. Dr. Greenfield came with him once, and when I saw them holding hands, I asked if they were gay.
“Where’d you learn that?” Uncle Danny laughed. His face pinched behind the smile, like I’d made him nervous.
I shrugged. I didn’t know where I learned it. Between skipping grades and living with so many girls older than myself, I’d learned a lot of things that year.
“I am gay,” he answered, finally. “Does that.... It doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“No. Why?”
This time, his smile looked sad. “I don’t know. It bothered your mom. She doesn’t live with me, anymore.”
“Where’s she live?” The last time I’d seen her was two months ago, on my seventh birthday. She talked about house-hunting and her new job at the Laundromat like she’d discovered gold.
“I don’t know,” he said again. He kissed the top of my head. “But I’m glad me being with Cam doesn’t bother you.”
There was one thing that bothered me about my uncle being with Dr. Greenfield, actually: the ring I noticed on the man’s finger when he stepped away to answer his phone. I decided not to ask about it, but I had a feeling it was why Uncle Danny visited by himself, after that. He never mentioned Dr. Greenfield again.
Mom was back with Dad. No one ever told me. No one had to. He was the only reason her visits would stop—the only thing that could derail her life all over again, just when things were going well. He’d breeze into town with his paychecks and baggies, locked doors and heavy eyes, and transform her into the person I hated.
I was eight before he left for good. By then, I knew what “junkies” meant. I knew I came from two of them.
Mom went to rehab. She got a divorce and a new haircut. She found a townhouse, lawyered up, and did everything she promised. She got me back.
I’d lived with Ms. Faye for two years, but leaving was easier than I expected. Most girls came and went so quickly, I hadn’t bothered making friends. Even the long-timers like myself didn’t grow close. There wasn’t much point. Everything could end the very next day.
Ms. Faye cried when she heard I was leaving. “I’ll miss you,” she said, hugging me into her ample bosom until I couldn’t breathe, “but don’t worry—these are happy tears. Your mama’s worked so hard, getting you back.”
I told Ms. Faye I’d miss her, too. At the time, I didn’t think I would: she was nice, but I’d spent the last two years reminding myself she was temporary—even when a week became a month, and a season became a year. In my final days at the farmhouse, though, I did feel kind of sad to leave her. She’d treated me well. She might have even loved me.
The day Mom took me home, it was snowing.
“What do you want for Christmas? Another Pageant Girl, maybe?”
Her new car (used, but new to me) smelled like the bag of donuts at my feet. I reached in and passed her one, then took another for myself. My teeth sank into the dough and I suddenly wanted to cry, I was so happy.
He was gone. Finally. For good.
“I want to change my last name,” I told her, and took another bite before finishing the first, wanting nothing on my tongue but cinnamon and sugar and this one good moment.
On my ninth birthday, he tracked us down.
I sat on the stairs of our townhouse and listened. Mom had the door open an inch, no more, but I could hear his voice oozing inside like bad breath.
“Please, Josie. I know you’re moving tomorrow.”
Mom sighed and rested her forehead on the doorframe. “Collin, you have to stop this. It’s over. When it ends, it ends. Accept that.”
“I do accept that. Can...can I just come inside, for a few minutes?”
“Have you been using?”
A pause. “Monday.”
It was Thursday. Three days, if I felt like rounding up. Which I didn’t.
“I can’t be around you, if you’re still.... I can’t let Mara be around you. I’m not getting in that shit again, Collin, I won’t. I’m not letting anyone take that girl from me, ever again.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear my mother cry. I was surprised to hear him.
“I know you’re leaving because of me. I deserve it. And I promise, I won’t follow you—I won’t contact you ever again, if that’s what you want. But at least let me tell her goodbye.”
Mom took a breath. No, I told her silently. Don’t let him in.
“Mara?” she called, then started when she turned and saw me. “Oh. I didn’t know you were.... Someone’s here for you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I never meant to hurt you, baby girl. You know that, right?” His arm appeared in the gap of the door. I could hear his breathing turn ragged, like air coming through a broken straw, and it made me feel like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen, myself.
Mom stepped back. He stumbled into the entryway.
We stared at each other. His eyes bore right into mine.
Everyone else, even my mother, looked at the scar first. Sometimes it was only a millisecond; they weren’t even aware of it. But I was.
That was one of many truths I’d learned, the last few years: when you’re broken, it’s the first thing anyone will ever notice about you. Most of the time, it will be the only thing. No matter how well you piece yourself back together.
Just once I wanted someone to look me in the eyes without even a glance at the scar. I wanted someone to look at me and see nothing else.
But I didn’t want that someone to be him. He deserved to see the scar like a billboard. He deserved it stamped onto his own face, or the backs of his eyelids, so that even when he slept he could never forget what he’d done to me.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
Dad had less of a reaction than Mom. While she covered her mouth and cried harder, he simply kept staring.
His tongue was a sick-looking, pale kind of pink as it wet his lips. Then he did something I never would have expected.
He smiled.
“Then we’ve got something in common,” he said shakily, and put his hands in the pockets of that old coat. “I hate me, too.”
No one made me hug him goodbye. No one even made me say the words.
We packed up the last of our things early the next morning. Mom wedged her suitcase underneath my feet and gave Uncle Danny one more hug, before he leaned into my window to kiss my forehead.
“Call me as soon as your phone’s set up,” he said. I hooked his pinky with mine. My heart ached, a real and physical pain in the organ, when I thought about being so far away from him.
I’d learned it wasn’t him being gay Mom didn’t approve of, but his tendency to date married men wh
o had wives and kids. He broke up families, she said, and I wondered if she resented him for breaking up ours. I would never be able to thank him enough for that.
As we drove away, though, I wondered something else: if you could even break something that was already so broken on its own.
14
“Is your dad still alive?”
Mara nods wearily, spent from the story. I can tell it’s not something she tells just anyone. Maybe she’s never told it at all.
The raised edge of her scar catches the light. She follows my hand with her eyes and then shuts them, when I’m an inch away.
When I touch it, she tightens her jaw.
“If it helps...I didn’t notice it the first time we met.”
Mara opens her eyes. She looks at me for a long moment, then takes a breath. “No offense, but that doesn’t mean as much coming from someone who also didn’t notice his wife cheating on him for a year.”
My laugh comes out as a sigh. “Good point.”
We relax together, weight sinking into the couch. My hand trails from her face to her neck.
“You really didn’t notice?”
“Not until the reception. And even that was more of a passing glance kind of thing.”
“I am really good with makeup.” Her blanket bunches as she pulls her knees to her chest. “That’s when it all started, really: once we left Indiana and came here, I realized I could start over, kind of. Hide it better. I got into makeup and hair really young, and now it’s like....”
“An obsession?”
Her elbow digs into my arm. “Ha, ha. I was going to say ‘hobby.’”
This time, our laughter doesn’t relax us. It fizzles into tension and sits between us.
“So your dad still lives in Indiana.”
“Yep.”
“Does he still use heroin?”
Her expression draws tighter, like she’s equally surprised and confused.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just...weird, how easily you talk about all this. Most people use euphemisms and shit. You know, gloss over everything. ‘Does he still have problems?’ ‘Is he still ill?’”
I rub some dried-on orange juice from the mimosa fountain off my palm. All that rain, and it’s somehow still there. “My dad was a junkie too.”
“Wow. So I guess I didn’t have to be nervous, after all. Telling you this stuff. You know what it’s like already.”
“Well, my story’s not like yours. My mom never used, and she didn’t stay with him. The second she found out about it, she was gone.” I don’t mean to pause, but I have to, just to fight the sting that hits my throat. “And my dad never hurt us. He wasn’t around enough to get the chance.”
“Ah. You’re going to tell me I’m lucky my dad at least tried to be in my life, right?”
“No. I’m saying I’m the lucky one.” I catch her eyes when she looks at me again. “And that I understand your choice not to have your dad in your life. I think Cohen and I are considerably less messed-up than we would have been, if our dad had stuck around.”
“Are you saying I am messed-up?”
“Kind of.” Now I elbow her. “But everyone is.”
“True.”
I remember my cider, now cold, and reach for the mug on the console table she had me place behind the couch. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which one?”
“About your dad. If he still uses or not.”
“He says he’s clean. In the voicemails he leaves me, anyway. I’m not sure how he keeps getting my number.”
I watch the hair slip down over her face as she looks into her drink. “You’re not interested in talking to him, or seeing him? Now that he’s not using?”
“He’s still an addict. That doesn’t go away. And it’s not just the drugs, honestly. It’s...it’s him. My mom had the chance to have a really good life, until he came along. What kind of grown man sees an eighteen-year-old girl and thinks, ‘Let me knock her up and get her hooked on heroin,’ you know? She got clean so many times, when I was growing up—then he’d come home and ruin everything.”
“Are you sure your mom was clean, all those times?”
Her glare burns worse than the alcohol. “Yes.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” I add quickly. “I mean...is it possible there were times you thought she wasn’t using, but she was? At a maintenance level, or something, waiting until he came home so they could buy more? And maybe there were times he was clean, but she—”
“Okay, look,” she exhales, untangling herself from the blanket, “I didn’t tell you all this stuff so you could analyze me.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“So you could—” Mara’s words snag. She stops. Swallows.
“So I could understand,” I finish for her. I get up when she does. “And I do. I’m not telling you to welcome him back into your life, I’m just saying...I think you’re carrying a lot of anger at him.”
“Of course I am!” she shouts. “Fucking look at me, Levi!”
The house breathes around us. I’m not aware of my chest heaving, or hers. Just the swelling and shrinking of boards and drywall, the storm passing over.
“I am,” I say softly. I step closer. She doesn’t move back.
She lets me kiss her.
“You’re beautiful.” My lips move against hers; she shuts her eyes again. “And not ‘except for’ the scar.”
“Let me guess,” she scoffs, tensing like she’ll pull away. “I’m beautiful ‘because of’ the scar.”
“No.” I press my mouth into hers again. Place my hands on her waist, like the night I lifted her down from the fire escape. When I break the kiss and bring my head up, her eyes stare right into mine. “You’re just beautiful. And the scar just exists. They don’t affect each other at all.”
Her hands touch my neck, thumbs pressed below my ears. I know she can feel my pulse, rocketing like the rain across the roof.
Then they slide to my chest, slowly pushing me away.
“Don’t. Please, don’t...don’t act like you know me.” She licks her lips; I lick mine and taste the bite of apples. “And don’t tell me I shouldn’t be angry at him.”
“It’s not for his sake. It’s for yours.” I reach for her arm, but she twists away. “I spent a long time blaming my dad for his addiction, too. When he died—”
“See, this? This is exactly why I don’t tell people about my parents. Everyone wants to fix you, everyone wants you to move on—but I figured it was because none of them had ever been through it.” The blanket drags around her feet as she paces away. “But here you are, someone who has been through it, telling me how to feel?”
“Okay.” I hold up my palms in surrender. “Feel however you want about it. I think it’s unhealthy to carry that shit around forever, but you do you.” Lightning crackles through the window, flooding the room in blue-white light. It makes us both pause, like a reset button.
“I’m going to bed.” I grab my phone and keys from the end table and stuff them in my pockets. The denim feels too stiff, suddenly. I miss my khakis. “Goodnight.”
I’m halfway up the stairs when she asks, “Unhealthy, how?”
Instead of being in the next room, her voice hits me from a few feet away. I turn. She’s on the bottom step.
“Pent-up emotions in general,” I shrug. “They stress you out. Stress isn’t healthy. I don’t know. You—you can carry that shit with you into everything you do.” I deflate, hands dropping to my sides. What else does she want me to say?
“Like what? What do I carry it into?”
I run my hand down my face. This conversation felt like a regret from the start, and now I want nothing more than to hit a real reset button. “Relationships, for instance,” I answer, after a moment. “It’s obvious you don’t believe in them.”
“Why should I? People either stay in them way too long and mess their lives up, like my mom did, or lose their personalities an
d all their friends, like most people I know—or they get their hearts completely broken, like you did. Relationships are a waste of everyone’s time.”
“What about the ones that work?”
“There’s no such thing. I’ve seen it. People that stay together just do it because they don’t want to be alone.”
I watch her shift her weight from foot to foot, the stair creaking.
“That’s honestly what you think?”
“Yeah. It is. Can you name one relationship you know of that worked?”
“My aunt and uncle.”
“Are you serious?” she laughs. “Everyone knows Timothy Fairfield has, like, eight secret families. I heard that basically the day I moved to this city.”
“Heard what? A rumor? You just said all that shit about ‘Don’t act like you know me,’ and now you’re doing it to my family?” I move a step lower. “My uncle loves Jeannie. They have a good marriage. Whether or not you think it’s genuine doesn’t really matter.”
She’s quiet. There’s maybe two vertical feet between our faces. I stare at her lips, still reddened from where I kissed her, and can’t understand why the hell I want to kiss her again. Clearly, there’s no point.
“And what about Juliet and Cohen?” I add. “Or Juliet’s sisters and their husbands? Think what you want about people just not wanting to be alone, but there’s more to it than that. People can feel real connections. They can care about each other.” I pivot and put my hand on the railing, starting back up the stairs. “Just because you don’t let yourself feel those things, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
I hear her say something else, but it’s not a word. Just a breath. A false start, drowned in the storm.
15
Levi’s door clicks shut. I wait until I hear his bed creak before drifting up to my room.
I shouldn’t have said that shit about his uncle. You’d think I’d know better. I did know better.
And I hate admitting it to myself, but what he said was true: it’s not fair to spread rumors. Especially when, just seconds before, I was furious at him for acting like he knew me. For daring to try and help.
Honey, When It Ends: The Fairfields | Book Two Page 10