Harder

by Robin York

  He buckles his seat belt. I back onto the highway.

  “I talked to someone in the financial aid office about your case last week,” he says.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

  “I know you turned me down, but I keep hoping you’ll change your mind. You have so much potential. You remind me of the way I was at your age, and I can’t stand to see you throw it away. I keep thinking there’s got to be a way I can do this for you.”

  “You’ve done more than enough already. And I’m sorry about that tuition that got wasted spring semester. I’m gonna see about paying that back to you.”

  “You don’t have to pay it back.”

  “I want to.”

  He turns in the seat, fixes me with that sharp gaze of his. “West, I’ve been trying to see this whole situation from your perspective. I know taking money was always hard for you. I’ve said more than once that the way I see it, money’s a neutral thing, not good or bad. But if I can use what I have to help someone like you, that’s not neutral, it’s overwhelmingly positive. I understand it’s hard for you to see it that way, okay? That’s the reason I’ve hoped that this scholarship might be something you could accept. Because it’s not me, not my money. This is a Putnam scholarship. They’re only going to give it to you because you deserve it.”

  I don’t deserve anything.

  “All you have to do is fill out some paperwork, and the scholarship is yours. The college tells me they already have records showing you’re a student of exceptional merit.”

  Exceptional merit. I’d laugh if the phrase didn’t make my throat tighten.

  I licked your wife’s cunt. Up against this truck. While Caroline watched.

  “It could be good for your sister, too,” he says. “I heard she’s living with you now. You could take her along. Give her a fresh start.”

  I watch the white line on the highway, willing my mind to go blank.

  I can’t think about what he said, because when I start thinking about shit like whether I could take Frankie and leave, just go, I pore over every angle of it. I work through every possible way it could go down, and then I shut them off, one after another.

  I don’t have to reach for impossibilities because they’re all right there in front of me—the impossibility of tearing Frankie away from everything she knows.

  The impossibility of juggling work and child care and classes all at the same time.

  The impossibility of taking one more favor from a man I’ve screwed over in every conceivable way.

  I can’t tell myself I deserve to, not when I can conjure up the smell of Rita Tomlinson’s perfume and the blank white horror in Caroline’s expression.

  Wanting things makes me miserable.

  Wanting things makes me look at trees and guardrails when I’m driving, makes me ponder whether I should buy a bottle of whiskey and take it out to Bo’s, drink it in the driveway until I’m ready to unlock his gun cabinet, load up his .48, and put an end to this.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “You can,” Dr. T insists.

  “No. I can’t. I just fucking can’t.”

  After that, he’s quiet. Too quiet.

  His hands are folded in his lap, his gaze on the middle distance. It takes him another mile to speak. “I had another question I wanted to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s about Rita.”

  My arms are made of lead. My foot’s a block on the gas pedal.

  “I noticed at the funeral,” he says, “and after the funeral when I tried to speak with her … but I’m not being honest if I say it’s the first time I wondered.” He pauses. Flashes me a quick, uncomfortable smile. “I’m concerned she might be somewhat obsessed, I guess. With you.”

  Obsessed with me.

  Is that what you call it?

  “She talks about you a lot. We talk about you, of course, in the usual way, but since you’ve been back in town, her interest seems like … too much.”

  He wipes his hand over his mouth.

  “I know this is an awkward question, but has she behaved in any way that’s inappropriate? That might cause concern?”

  He wants me to reassure him.

  He’s scared, because he’s figured something out, but he won’t let himself see the real shape of it. He doesn’t want to add one and one and get two, so he’s looking at me to tell him, Hey, no worries, it’s three. Look. I’ll show you the math.

  I flip the signal and turn the wheel. The truck bounces into the middle school parking lot.

  “No,” I say. “Nothing to be concerned about.” And then I manage a smile. It takes everything I’ve got to make it look real, but I give it everything, because I don’t want Dr. Tomlinson to know what his wife is like.

  It’s bad enough that I do.

  “Nothing at all.”

  Scrutinizing my expression, he brightens. “Oh. Okay. Good. Well, look, if you’ll do me a favor and let me know if there’s anything I should be concerned about, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Will do.”

  I slow. Brake. Put the truck in Park.

  School kids are streaming from the building, running, laughing. I see my sister come out the door alone with her head down, hair hanging in her face.

  She doesn’t look like a kid. Not when I see these other ones. She’s different from them, marked, like there’s a line around her.

  New clothes will help.

  Maybe we can see about getting her hair cut.

  “And just to go back to the scholarship for a minute,” he says. “Promise me you’ll at least think about it. The semester’s already rolling, but the person I talked to said it won’t be too late if you hustle out there.”

  I open the door. Hop out of the truck.

  “West.”

  “Sure. I’ll think about it.”

  I say it just to shut him up.

  When Frankie arrives, I make the introductions, load her into the back, drop him off at the lot, and keep going, toward the strip where Ross’s is.

  “Who was that guy?” she asks.

  “I used to caddy for him.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “He wants me to go back to Putnam.”

  She’s quiet for a while, looking out the window. “Caroline’s at Putnam.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Where would I go if you did that?”

  “I told him no, Franks.”

  “But if you did.”

  “You’d go with me.”

  “Without Mom?”

  “Without Mom.”

  “Isn’t that against the law? Like, since she’s my mom?”

  “I could take you if she says it’s okay.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s all she’s got to say on the subject. Oh.

  She tries on jeans. I get angry and then angrier until I’m incapable of producing any response to her fashion show that satisfies her. She gets pissed at me for not being excited, and I guess that’s fair, because I’m pissed at her for saying Oh.

  I’m pissed at myself for wanting her to say something different.

  Want is a bottomless black hole, sucking at me. Tentacles of faith and hope and trust, wisdom, good judgment, principles, pride—everything I don’t have—pulling me down.

  I can’t. I fucking can’t.

  I pick up a bottle of whiskey on the way home.

  Ten minutes after Frankie goes to bed, I pour myself a glass.

  “Hey, Joan.” I grab the bag with my lunch out of the fridge. “What’s up?”

  “Are you at work?”

  “No, I’m on my way in.”

  I pull the apartment door closed most of the way with my foot, dangle lunch from a few fingers so I can use the rest to snag the knob and operate the key in the lock.

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “I’m never late.”

  I hear her exhale. Blowing smoke out on the porch. “No, I don’t guess you are.”

  St
epping up into the truck, I glance at the glove box, but I leave the pack where it is. I’m trying to cut back. Caroline wants me to quit.

  Again and again, I come back to Caroline.

  Come back to her accusations. Come back to the sight of her in her funeral dress and muddy feet, shoveling dirt.

  I come back to Caroline’s laugh, Caroline’s mouth, Caroline’s body naked against mine.

  I come in my hand in the shower, inside her, inside my own memories.

  It’s almost a month since she left Silt, and I need to quit Caroline worse than I need to quit smoking.

  “So listen,” Joan says. “Your uncle Jack is talking to a lawyer.”

  He put my name down on the paperwork at the hospital, told them I’d pay for breaking his nose. Some fucking nerve. “I’m gonna pay the bill.”

  “This isn’t about what you did to his face—it’s about your dad. The ambulance-chaser Jack’s hooked up with thinks he can make a case against Bo. Emotional distress or whatever—like what what’s-her-name’s family got against OJ.”

  A civil trial, she means. Since the authorities aren’t pursuing a criminal case, my uncle’s going to take justice into his own hands. “What kind of case has Jack got? He’s a deadbeat alcoholic dickbag. What’s he going to say, Dad’s death made him more of one?”

  “Watch your mouth. That’s my son you’re talking about.”

  “Sorry.”

  She sighs. “These guys only make their money if they win,” she says. “The lawyer must think it’s worth his time. I’m telling you because of Frankie.”

  “What about her?”

  But I have a sinking feeling I know exactly what.

  Frankie wakes up thrashing in the sheets, shouting. Sometimes “Daddy.” Sometimes “Bo.”

  Always, “Don’t!”

  I stand in the doorway of her room and say her name, Franks, Franks, Franks, until she stills because she’s heard me, and that’s usually when she starts to cry.

  I wish I knew if I was fucking her up.

  I sit in the living room after she’s asleep and think about how if Frankie ends up depressed, ends up cutting herself, ends up dead, ends up pregnant at fourteen—it’ll be because of me.

  Something I did or didn’t do, some sign I missed that it was my job to see.

  “They could make her testify if there’s a trial,” Joan says.

  “No fucking way. Even Jack isn’t that big of an asshole. He’s got to know I’d kill him for even trying it.”

  “I think that’s the idea. He’s got it in for you since the funeral.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “But if he gets at her—”

  “She was at a fucking sleepover!”

  Joan sucks at her cigarette so hard I can hear it. Exhales. “Day before the funeral, Frankie talked to Stephanie.”

  Jack’s wife. Shit.

  Shit.

  “Stephanie’s telling everybody Frankie was there at the trailer when Wyatt got shot. Frankie will get dragged into this thing if it happens—it’s not going to do any good to pretend she won’t.”

  She’s right. Fucking Leavitts—there’s a reason I stayed away from them so long, and the reason’s that it’s always like this. Drama after drama, fighting and feuding, arguing over money and sex and drugs and whatever the hell else they can think of. They feed on it. They love it.

  Jack’s going to put Frankie right in the goddamn middle of it.

  “Can’t you talk him out of this suit? Bo hasn’t got much money. Whatever went down in that trailer, I guarantee you Wyatt deserved it.”

  “When have I ever been able to talk a Leavitt man out of anything?”

  I laugh. Don’t mean to.

  I don’t have any control over myself.

  I don’t have control over anything.

  Six years ago, Frankie was too young to be hurt by this kind of Leavitt bullshit, but I wasn’t. I cut ties to the Leavitts because they wouldn’t take my side, wouldn’t protect me and my sister from my father.

  They won’t protect us from this, either. I have to.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I say.

  “Let me know when you decide what to do.”

  I disconnect and drop the phone on the seat next to me.

  The morning is cool, the sun bright over the mountains. The wind’s blowing through the cab of the truck, rattling the paper bag with my lunch in it.

  I’m young and healthy, alive. Free of my father. I should feel good.

  I should be able to find a way to feel good about the giant fucking palm smacking into my back, shoving me toward Iowa.

  Take your sister and go. That’s what Dr. T is trying to get me to do.

  That’s what Caroline said to me, in no uncertain terms.

  But all I can think, looking at the green on the hills, at the black ribbon of asphalt, at the blue sky, is this is one more fucking thing in my life I don’t get to decide about.

  I see Iowa in my mind’s eye. Summertime in Putnam. Green lawns and brick buildings, marigolds and window boxes, students everywhere.

  The hope spikes right into me, spikes my pulse, makes me breathe too shallow so I start to get dizzy and I have to pull over by the side of the road and slam my hand into the steering wheel and tell myself, No way, no way, no fucking way.

  I think, Take Frankie somewhere else.

  Mexico. Oklahoma.

  Anywhere would do—anywhere that’s far enough away from Jack and lawyers and courtrooms to keep her safe from all the traumatic assholery heading our way.

  We could live by a river in an adobe hut. I could learn to train horses. We could eat frijoles and tortillas and I’d be inside that fucking Cormac McCarthy novel I read in my first-year seminar, but it would be better than letting the hope back in.

  Before she left, Caroline told me, You have to find a way to get out from under it, knowing it’s never going away. You have to make your own life, because if you don’t, you just won’t get to have one at all, and that’s the worst fucking thing I can imagine.

  She says that to me over and over.

  She says it in my head every day, and every day I say the same thing back to her.

  The way I’ve lived—the life I’ve had—I can imagine worse things than you can.

  It’s not so bad to waste your life. It’s not so hard. What’s harder—what’s fucking impossible—is thinking you’ve got a future and then losing it.

  I don’t think I can survive it a second time.

  In the glove box, I locate my last pack of cigarettes and light one up. I smoke it fast, sucking in deep carcinogenic lungfuls, trying to get used to the fact that it doesn’t matter if I can stand to live in Putnam or not.

  I don’t have a decision to make.

  We’re going to Putnam, because there’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar education waiting for me there. A bachelor’s degree that means something. I’d be an idiot to turn it down when I can grab it and use it for Frankie.

  I burned my life in Putnam to the ground. I don’t want to wade among the ashes and pitch a tent over top of what’s left of it, but I will. I haven’t got a choice.

  Later, I’ll call Dr. Tomlinson.

  Caroline

  Every year, winter takes me by surprise.

  Fall comes and shears the edge off summer, mellows out the temperatures for a few golden days of gorgeous perfection, and then when I’m ready to live the rest of my life in those stolen moments, snap.

  It turns cold one night. Just like that.

  Growing up, I’d deny what it meant. No, not yet. It’s not time yet.

  I’d ignore the signs. I’d leave my jack-o’-lantern on the front porch long after Halloween, celebrating a season that had passed until black spots showed on the flesh around the pumpkin’s mouth and it started to look ancient and wizened.

  Once the first frost did it in, my dad would make me take it out back and chuck it into the woods. So long, fall.

  But the autumn of my
junior year at Putnam, I was ready for the days to get shorter and the temperatures to drop. I braced myself for the cold, preparing to carry on in a Putnam without West, a life without West.

  It would be cold for a while. Lonely. But I’m an Iowa girl. I was used to the cold. I knew how to bundle up against it, muffle my breath behind a scarf, muffle my needs so I could endure the early nights and the long winter.

  My dad finished annoying the lawyer, and my complaint against Nate got filed in mid-September. Sixty days to respond. Plaintiff identified as Jane Doe.

  The trial date was set for the end of next year. I braced myself for four seasons of waiting and strategizing, subpoenas and scrutiny, depositions and petitions to compel.

  I thought I had it under control.

  Then I got a text from a number I didn’t know. It was West, telling me he was coming back to school.

  Another to say he was bringing Frankie.

  A third to let me know I shouldn’t worry, because he’d keep his distance.

  I think what I was supposed to do when I got those texts was freeze. Snap. Go cold, just like that.

  It would have been easier if I could have locked myself off. Safer to tend my rose garden of ice crystals, pretending to love the cold.

  But I was through with pretending.

  I got those texts, and I felt joy–pure and deep, as real as anything I’d ever had with him. I felt vindicated, because this would be another chance. The future he’d killed off, now brought back to life.

  And maybe our future was an ugly, shambling thing. Maybe it was half-dead, scarred and foul–but it was ours, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t want it. I couldn’t even pretend not to be elated, burbling through the days after I got the news, wondering when and where I’d see him again, how it would be, how it would feel.

  That sounds stupid. Naive.

  I know how it sounds.

  And I know, too, that a jack-o’-lantern on the front porch is only a jack-o’-lantern until midnight on October 31. One minute after midnight, it becomes a rotting pumpkin. My father used to explain it to me every November.

  But it’s the same pumpkin, right? It’s the pumpkin you bought, carried home, planned over, cut carefully into. It’s the pumpkin you gutted and scraped at, lit up, placed proudly on display.