Sure, he looks clean: combed hair, trimmed beard, nice clothes. Quite a bit of weight on him, compared to how little was there when I knew him best. He still looks older than he really is. But he does seem healthy.
It just makes me hate him that much more. Clean or not, why does he get to keep living? Why is he okay, while my mother rots away in some nursing home hundreds of miles away, drooling at a television like some middle-aged infant?
“I told you we should have gone out the front,” I snap at Levi, twisting away when he tries to take my hand. “Let’s go back in.”
“Wait, wait.” He steps in front of me and leans against the door. “Look, I know you’re angry with him—”
I scoff and fold myself into the alcove even more.
“—but don’t you want some kind of closure?”
My mouth opens, tongue pressed hard into the roof of my mouth, ready to retaliate. But then I stop.
Maybe he’s onto something. There’s nothing worse than not knowing.
“He’s just going to make excuses,” I protest, but feel myself edging out of the alcove, inch by inch. “Try to sweep everything under the rug, pretend we can be fine now, and—and we can’t.” My stomach aches, I’m so angry. People always say it’s like a coal burning in your gut, but not mine: this is an unstable star, threatening to become a black hole at any given moment.
“That’s okay,” Levi says quickly, rubbing my arms. He lowers his head until I look at him. “You can just yell at him, if you want to. The point is to get everything out there. It’s not for him—it’s for you.” His eyes flick between mine. “You don’t deserve to carry this forever, Mara.”
The star oscillates.
I take a breath.
When I step out of the alcove, he’s staring right at me.
21
We cross the street at the same time. The gravel scattered on the asphalt crunches when we meet in the middle.
Levi steps up beside me. He takes my hand, and I feel the star inside steady itself.
“Hi.” Dad pockets his phone and gives a smile like he knows he doesn’t deserve to smile at me. And yet here he is, doing it anyway, which reminds me this is probably pointless. I doubt I could ever get through to him just how much he screwed up Mom’s life, and mine—and how unfair it is he gets to walk this earth without any scars, inside or out.
Levi squeezes my hand. I take a breath.
“How did you find me?”
“I didn’t. I’m in town for a little while to…. I’m working on something.”
“What a coincidence.”
He gives an embarrassed shrug. “Okay, I knew you lived here. I was hoping I’d run into you, someday, if…if I stayed long enough. You never answered my calls.”
“Yeah, and when I changed my number, what—seven times? I thought you’d take the hint. How did you even get it?”
His hesitation is filled with old habits I instantly remember, after having them locked up all these years: rubbing the corner of his mouth, stretching his neck like he’s pulled something.
“Danny,” he says finally, and drops his hands against his legs. “He gave me your number. And whenever you changed it…he’d text me the new one.”
I stare at him. My heartbeat feels faraway, like it’s beating somewhere outside my chest. “You’re lying. Danny would never let you near me again.”
“Things are different now, Mara. Danny and I have made our peace with each other, and...and I’d really love it if you and I could do the same.”
Fiercely, I shake my head. No. I won’t believe him. Danny was the only person who hated my father as much as I did. He was the one who helped me. He wouldn’t turn on me like that.
And even if he did, I’m not about to jump on the bandwagon over it.
“I know you don’t want anything to do with me,” he says, wedging his hands into his pockets, “and I can’t say I blame you. But I want you to know I’m not who I used to be. I haven’t used in almost ten years. Back in Indiana, I headed up a chapter for Narcotics Anonymous, and helped start a youth drug abuse counseling program with a friend of mine.”
Like the dust that kicks up from the square nearby, funneling through the side streets and choking us, his pause feels gritty and makes me want to spit.
“He’s about your age, actually. Guy named Shepherd. He and his wife had a baby girl last year, and...and it got me thinking about you. More than usual. Don’t know how that’s possible,” he says, with an airy laugh, “since I think about you every day as it is, but—”
“Stop. You’re not going to do this. You can’t just show up out of nowhere, hat in hand and spouting shit about how different your life is, and why that means I should let you back in mine.”
My boots feel like they’re splitting the skin on my heels, I turn and start away so quickly. I hear footsteps behind me and pray they’re Levi’s, not his.
“I told you,” I seethe at him. When we look back this time, my dad doesn’t follow. He stands in the middle of the street looking exhausted, but not surprised or shell-shocked, by my reaction. “He might be clean. But he hasn’t changed.”
“Not like I’m defending him,” he pants, digging his keys from his pocket while struggling to keep up with me; I’m barreling my way out of this festival, “but you didn’t give him very long to explain.”
Every muscle from the waist down locks up. I look at him. “I didn’t have to. It’s obvious he thinks being clean now can make up for all the damage he caused back then, and it can’t.”
“I didn’t take it that way. To me, it seemed like he just wanted to...to preface things with proof that he’s changed, so you’d take him seriously.”
“What ‘things?’”
“Whatever he would have said if you hadn’t left. It sounded like he was building to something, that’s all.”
When he holds the passenger door for me, I mutter thanks and get in, then grab the handle to slam it myself. Through the glass, I catch his long blink, the rush of air out of his lungs.
“I know you’re upset,” he says, climbing into the driver’s side.
“I’m not upset. I’m simply the angriest a person can be without bursting into actual fucking flames.”
“Okay, whatever you are? You don’t have to take it out on me.” Levi’s hand drops from the ignition. “We were having an amazing time together, Mara. Let’s go back to that.”
“Maybe I could, if you weren’t trying to doctor my life right now.” For once, I’m the one refusing direct eye contact; I can only manage to look at him from the side, through the hair falling in my face. It smells like pumpkins instead of shampoo. It’s everywhere.
“You said you understood,” I whisper. If I talk any louder, I know the star in my stomach, that anger I’ve treated like fuel all these years, will collapse. And I can’t take whatever would come next, if that happened.
“I do understand.” Levi twists in his seat and reaches for me. My instincts kick in, every muscle braced for an escape. But as soon as his fingers spread across my face and guide my mouth to his, the flight response shorts out.
“Did I ever tell you,” he says, pulling back and chewing his cheek, “that I have dyslexia?”
Confused, I shake my head. Not that it should surprise me: I noticed he was a slow reader as soon as I moved into the house. He has to follow every line with his finger, eyes dragging across the paper like boots through mud. And even then, he often has to double back and reread entire sections, whether it’s a bill or the newspaper. Brow furrowed, lips moving without sound, he slogs through until it’s done or he gives up. Whichever comes first.
“It’s a lot better now than it used to be,” he goes on, sitting back in his seat. He flexes his fingers against the steering wheel and stares straight ahead through the windshield. “But for a long, long time, it was pretty much hell. Actually, it’s why I dropped out.”
My hands won’t stop moving. They zip and unzip my purse, then pick a scratch on my arm from wo
rk, until I slip them under my legs.
“My dad had it too. So I blamed him for it my entire childhood.”
“Not really the same thing,” I mumble, but my sarcasm rings out loud and clear.
“Then,” he continues pointedly, “I thought, ‘Okay, this is stupid; he can’t help that he had it any more than I can.’ So I let the anger go. That was the exact moment my dyslexia started getting better.”
“Levi,” I start, but he holds up his hand.
“Please, just—just let me get this out, okay? It’s not an easy thing for me to talk about.”
His honesty shuts me up. After all, I should know how hard it is to spill your guts, praying the other person will just listen.
“Anyway. While I was mad at him for that, I was also mad about so much other stuff—the drugs, him not being around...it piled up. I spent most of my life hating him.”
His silence fills the cab. We watch a family cross the small lot in front of us, balloons tied to the children’s wrists. They tug them down from the sky before batting them back up and laughing, like it’s the greatest game they’ve ever played.
“But then I let that one thing go.” He holds up his finger, and I stare at it until he goes on. “Deciding not to be mad at him for the dyslexia, it still wasn’t easy. It didn’t matter if it was stupid or not—I’d spent so long being mad, it was hard to imagine feeling any other way about it.
“But like I said...it was a decision. Every time I got mad about it, I had to choose to let it go all over again, until it became easy. Then I started letting go of all the other stuff, the things that really were his fault.”
“I get what you’re saying, okay, but it’s not that simple.”
“I didn’t say it was. And like I said: this is for your benefit, not his. Maybe your dad doesn’t deserve to get your forgiveness.” I feel him look at me again. “But you deserve to give it to him.”
I’m quiet, but inside I’m screaming a hundred responses. Even if I could forgive him for what he did to me, what about all the shit he did to my mom? I can’t forgive him on her behalf. It’s not my life to make peace over.
All the damage he ever did was in the name of relationships. He wanted a relationship with his daughter, wanted so much to stay in my life, he didn’t care that it gave me a relationship with his addiction, too. He said and acted like he loved my mom so much—told her constantly she was the best thing that ever happened to him. He called her his queen. And look where it got her.
“Can we just go back to your house now, please?” I whisper. The click of my seatbelt cuts his next sentence short.
Levi shifts into drive and crawls out of the lot. “Yeah,” he says, like a sigh. Like I was the one who argued him to death, instead of the other way around.
I rest my head on the glass and let every groove of the road drill into my skull. Anything to rattle away the thoughts. Anything to stop wondering how things can change so fast in twelve hours and then, before you even get the chance to believe it’s happened, change right back.
The house feels about as inviting as a tar pit when we arrive. I’m positive the only reason we even walk inside is because we can’t think of anywhere else to go.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, slipping off my shoes in the foyer. Mara pauses with her hand on the banister and shakes her head.
“I just need some time to myself,” she says, and starts climbing.
“You can talk to me, you know.” The short walk to the bottom of the steps leaves me out of breath—until I realize, no: that’s just her. It feels like whatever happened with us last night, all the glowing, cool air and easy music from the festival, is slipping. And I’m scared shitless we’ll lose it.
Then again, if you can lose something that easily, did you ever really have it?
“Dinner,” she says, with the smallest smile. “Promise.”
My panic subsides. “Dinner,” I repeat.
After she turns the corner, I lift my hand from the banister and drag it through my hair. Maybe it wasn’t the best timing, telling her she should forgive her dad. It’s not like I’m her boyfriend, the kind of person who’s allowed to give her that advice. Am I?
My phone rings after I sink into the sofa: Cohen. We both have the day off, an occurrence becoming too frequent for even his liking.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Hey. Are you aware you’re missing a pumpkin festival downtown right now?”
“Actually, we already went.” I don’t add that we barely attended it at all, or why.
“We?” he repeats, stretching out the word. “Someone special in the picture? Or have you just officially gone insane and invented an imaginary friend?”
“I, uh...I went with Mara.”
“You’re a damn liar. Mara would never subject herself to a pumpkin festival.”
“It was her idea.”
“Wow.” He laughs. “Careful, man, I think that means she likes you.”
“Yeah.” My laugh, by contrast, is strained. She did like me. Now I’d settle for “tolerates.”
“Listen, I wanted to ask if you’d heard from Caitlin-Anne today. She was supposed to come by with some of Banner’s old toys to give to Marisol, but that was hours ago. I haven’t been able to reach her.”
“Nah, man, sorry. You tried Jeannie or Tim yet?”
“Yep. No answer.” He sighs, his breath like a cyclone through the line. “Okay, well, if you hear from her, hit me up. Oh—Juliet’s dad wanted to know if you’re coming to dinner this Sunday. You’ve skipped the last two, you know.”
“I had events.”
“You promised no more work on Sundays. Sunday is family stuff.”
A headache creeps through my sinuses. I knead the bridge of my nose. “I know that. But I need the money, Co. The business needs it.”
He’s quiet. I know exactly what face he’s making: wetting his lips slowly, eyes focused on the ground in front of him, wherever he is. It’s one of very few serious expressions my brother has. “I know.”
We make small talk a little longer. “Heads up,” he adds, near the end of the call, “Mom is about to call you for another flea market find.”
“Of course she is.” Our mother does this pretty frequently: since she and her boyfriend travel anywhere their makeshift RV can take them, they come across plenty of flea markets, yard sales, and vendor fairs. And when they can’t fit her purchases into their van, she calls me. I’ve certainly got the space.
Less than two minutes after I hang up with Cohen, my chat app rings. As usual, when I swipe Answer, I get a shot of only her forehead.
“Hi, Mom. Camera’s tilted.”
“I know,” she huffs, and the phone clatters around until, finally, she gives up trying to see it without her reading glasses. Unlike me, she loves reading; like me, though, she hates the thick lenses we both have to sport, just to see things three inches in front of our faces. To make her feel better, I fish mine out of the case on the coffee table and put them on.
“Look at us old folks,” she grins. “Blind as bats. How’ve you been, sweetie?”
“Fine.” I don’t dare mention Mara to her. She doesn’t even know she’s living here. It’s not like I keep my life top-secret from my mother, but I am selective in how much she knows, and when. Whether news is good or bad, her reactions are huge and immediate. “Co said you found something out in Telluride?”
“No, no, we’re in Aurora, now. Patch heard about a CBD distributor out here he wanted to network with, and you know me—all that business talk bores me to tears, I don’t care what it’s about.”
I pace in a wide circle through the house while she talks, laughing at this part. The patio door screeches when I open it and step onto the deck. “So you wandered off and found yourself a sale.”
“Oh, it was much better than a sale. It was an entire crafts festival. Anyway, I met this woman who makes wind chimes out of old perfume bottles.”
When Mom describes her discoveries to me, I tend t
o zone out. They’re all reclaimed furniture and décor I’d never look at twice, much less buy. Growing up, our trailer and rancher looked like a thrift store: wagon wheels propped against walls, always tripping us; etched and tarnished copper plates, bending the tiny nails Mom tried to hang them from; and figurines of animals made from old washers and tin cans. We had a sofa made out of palettes long before palettes were cool.
This time, though, I can’t help but listen. “Perfume bottles?”
“Mm-hmm. Oh, Levi, they’re just gorgeous—you’ll have to see them in person to really get the effect. She scores the glass for these big, clean cuts, then solders some metal frames around each individual piece—”
“What kind of perfume bottles?”
“Oh...I’m not sure. But they have logos on the center pieces, I can check.”
“No, that’s okay. I was just curious.”
Mom squints at me, readjusting her glasses. “Why?”
I shrug and pretend to clean the camera lens. “A friend of mine collects perfume, kind of.”
“Hmm.” When I look back at the screen, she’s giving that suppressed mom smile when your kid’s lying, but it’s too funny to be mad. “Well, good news is I bought seven of them. So tell your friend to help herself—they’ll be arriving at your house next week. I thought about hanging them from the awning here, but Patch is worried they’ll break if we have to keep packing and unpacking them.”
“Like the Christmas ornaments you bought in Frankenmuth? Or the pottery from Seagrove, or—”
“I’m still going to use every bit of it, someday,” she protests. Patch, Cohen, and I criticize her shopping habit constantly, especially when she buys actual furniture. What use is a coffee table to someone who lives out of a van? What good is a cedar towel rack to a person who showers with collected rainwater?
“Patch and I won’t be nomads forever, you know. We’ll settle down somewhere, and when that happens I’ll need to furnish an entire house.”
Honey, When It Ends: The Fairfields | Book Two Page 14