My Best Everything

by Sarah Tomp

  Someone handed me one.

  “Thanks, sweetie.” My hands were sweating, but I covered that up by taking hold of the arm next to me. “Will you please pour me a splash?”

  With a low chuckle, he poured a finger’s worth of the moonshine into the glass. I picked it up and raised it to the room. “Here’s to good business with good men… and good women.”

  I chugged the drink before second thoughts could get in the way.

  It felt both cool and hot as it hit the back of my throat. The fumes burned my nose after I’d already swallowed, setting my eyes to watering. But I let loose with a “Woo-hoo” and laughed.

  “Well, all right,” said Claude. “I see who has the balls around here.”

  He took the bottle and sniffed. Then pulled out a mini-hydrometer to measure the proof, eyeing you as he read the numbers. Finally, he swooshed a mouthful like it was fine wine. Then he passed the bottle on to the next guy. Once the bottle made its way around he said, “So, firecracker, how about another?”

  I don’t think I had much choice. At least I was given apple juice as a mixer this time. The white-haired, hippie-looking guy even sprinkled my drink with cinnamon.

  You watched us from your barstool, one step out of the circle. One of the men said to you, “I see why you couldn’t leave your girl at home. She’s way too wild to run free.”

  Oh, how I laughed.

  You must have kind of—or more than kind of—hated me that day. To me, it was simply getting things done. I could make a fool of myself because you were there to watch out for me.

  You know better than I do how long we stayed and what was said. I don’t remember leaving. I vaguely remember stopping on the side of the road and replaying the first night we met. After throwing up, I was somewhat aware of having a body again. No way could I go home like that, not at two in the afternoon. Especially with Daddy in town.

  I couldn’t even hide out at Roni’s, since she didn’t want me in her head. I was so delirious you could have dumped me anywhere.

  I know you’ve felt the sickly panic of waking up in a strange place. The painful reconnecting to consciousness, the grasp to fill dark and gaping holes. The certainty that there are things you need to remember, yet absolutely don’t. You know awful attempts to make sense of where you are and how you got there.

  I had no idea where I was when I woke up. Besides the hideous taste in my mouth, my head pounded. A desperate, impossible thirst consumed every inch of me. When I sat up, the room spun. I fixated on the open window, but all I could see were shadows of dark greens and blues.

  I felt the tiniest bit relieved to see your hat on the table beside the bed. I hadn’t been left at Claude’s. I had all my clothes on. But I could not remember arriving in this bed I hoped was yours.

  I crept out of the bedroom, fingers pressed against the wall for support.

  You sat at the kitchen table. “You need to puke again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  As soon as I stepped in your bathroom, I smelled your shampoo and shaving cream. It soothed me, until I caught my reflection. My hair was matted on one side and gone wild on the other. My eyes were red, my skin pasty. I tried to clean up, but that wimpy thing you call a comb would have snapped every tooth one time through my hair. I splashed water on my face and poked around until I found toothpaste. My mind wasn’t agile enough to speculate about the box of condoms I found in one of those drawers.

  Eventually I made my way to your kitchen. I sank down on a wooden chair I was sure you’d made. I rubbed my fingers along the smooth surface.

  You said, “I called Roni. Your parents think you’re with her.” You placed a banana, toast, a cup of seltzer water, and ibuprofen in front of me. “Eat.”

  I nibbled at the toast and sipped the bland but fizzy drink. Once you seemed satisfied that I was following orders, you turned your back on me and put away the few dishes from the drying rack. Everything back in the cupboards, everything back in its place. Except there wasn’t a spot for me.

  I rested my heavy head on the table.

  You sat beside me. Ran your fingers along my neck beneath my messy hair.

  “What?” I lifted my head, but you pressed it back down.

  “Shh.” You held your finger against my neck, staring at something across the room. Then said, “Your pulse is still fine. Keep eating. You need to soak up the alcohol.”

  The huge hole in the day was too big to step around. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  You opened a drawer and pulled out the biggest clump of money I’d ever seen. Tossed it on the table. Bills slid across the smooth surface, a few falling carelessly to the floor. “You did it.”

  “What will they do with all those bottles?” I put my hand against my cheek in an attempt to keep my head straight. “They can’t drink it all, can they?”

  “They’ll sell it. At Claude’s bar, and to other restaurants looking to show off our fine mountain culture. They want you to come back with more.”

  I groaned. “Will I have to drink again?”

  “Don’t you want to?” Your voice suddenly rough. “You seemed to be having fun.”

  “That was an act, Mason. For the sale. Those men are no different than the men who buy parts at Sal’s. I was selling. It worked, right? Look at all that money.”

  “You’d do anything for the money, wouldn’t you, Lu?”

  “Not anything.” I didn’t like the look on your face. “Isn’t that why we went there? To make the sale?”

  “You’re right,” you said. “I’m the one who had it wrong.”

  I felt my own kind of wrong facing you. I’d never felt like a piece of junk under your gaze before.

  You looked away, rubbing your chin. Finally you said, “There are two things I want, but can’t have. And those two things spent the day together.”

  As you headed toward your bedroom, I sat, too miserable to move. You came back and handed me a T-shirt and shorts. “There are towels in the bathroom closet. You need to clean up.”

  A shower is a good place to cry yourself dry. After, feeling a little bit stronger and a whole lot cleaner, I put on your T-shirt and shorts. The shorts hung low, and I had to fold the waistband over, but I made it work. Finger-combing my wet hair was better than nothing. Now I could smell the smoke and vomit stink in my own clothes, so I shoved them into a plastic bag I found beneath your sink.

  “Better?” you asked.

  “Much.” I swayed on my feet.

  “You need more sleep.” My heart thumped wildly as you led me back to your bedroom. All those cramped nights making out in your truck or my backyard gazebo, and here was your great big comfortable bed. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed that you’d never brought me here.

  I grabbed your arm for balance. Then leaned forward.

  You backed away. “I can’t kiss you, Lu. You smell like liquor.”

  I sank onto your mattress, curled into a ball, my arms wrapped around my knees, my head tucked into them, hiding my toxic breath.

  You played with my hair a minute, then said, “Get some sleep.”

  I curled up in your bed while you took the couch. In my previous life I might have had trouble sleeping in a boy’s bed, but that wasn’t me anymore.

  31

  I woke up ridiculously early the next morning. You need curtains in your bedroom. Gone was the fog, the headache, the icky churning in my gut. A deep blue lump sat in my chest, but mostly things looked better in the thin, early sunshine.

  You’d left the money in a neat stack in the center of the table. It seemed too dirty to be where you’d eat, but I left it alone. I heard thumping outside. Through the kitchen window I watched you chopping wood. You’d face a log sitting on the giant stump. Using both hands, you threw the ax up and over your head, down and—thump—into the log. Over and over.

  I poured a couple of mugs of sweet tea and slipped out the back door. I sat on the steps, sipping cold, healing caffeine, and leaned against
the rail, breathing in honeysuckle and sawdust, and watched you tear those logs apart.

  After your haphazard pile grew considerably, you finally paused. Stretched your back, pushed up the goggles with your thick, worn gloves, and wiped your face with the bottom of your T-shirt. Then, panting from effort, you stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me.

  I handed you a mug. “What’s all the wood for?”

  “It gets cold out here in the winter.” You took a big swallow of tea. “But you don’t have to worry about that, do you? You’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks about fifty-fifty to me.” Sitting there with my head too light, my heart aching at the look on your face, wanting to throw my arms around you, I felt fifty-fifty in every way. As we stared at each other, I worked to hold in an ambush of tears.

  You hurled the ax into the pile of splintered logs. “How much money do you still need?”

  At your kitchen table, I made a list. The money I’d sent to USD already—frozen until I turned eighteen, what I had stashed at home, and my share of the group account that Roni held. I counted out the newest stack of bills; it was by far our biggest intake. I wasn’t as far off as I’d thought.

  You sat in the chair beside me, looking over my list. “I could give you the rest.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not fair. I can’t take your money.”

  We’d had this conversation before. You were already doing too much for me. You had to at least make your share. You’d already lost one job. For all I knew, you were chopping that wood for extra money. You had simple needs, but you couldn’t afford to give me anything more. And I couldn’t afford to take it.

  You said, “You’re only one big sale away. I told you Claude wants more.”

  I suddenly wondered why you cared so much about us using corn. Why you couldn’t take sugar-shine on the road. Why your reputation mattered if you were only doing this one last time.

  Your phone rang then, loud and shrill. We stared at it, me not comprehending this outside interruption. You checked the screen. “It’s Roni.”

  I took it from you. “Hello?”

  “Lulu? Your daddy is about to blow a gasket. I told him you were with me but he’s been trying to call you. Some man finally answered your phone, so now he’s really freaking out. I told him you were in the shower. That you must have lost your phone at the movies. But he says if you’re not at church in thirty minutes he’s calling the police, FBI, and the U.S. Marshals.”

  I hadn’t even noticed my phone was missing. I’d left it at Claude’s. And now, with the minutes ticking by, I had nothing to wear to church. I didn’t even know it was Sunday. My own wrinkled clothes smelled of smoke and vomit.

  I tried to see if I tied your T-shirt in back and wrapped it just so, maybe it wouldn’t look too ridiculous over your baggy shorts. You were not my size. Or gender. Looking in your bathroom mirror, I didn’t recognize myself. But it wasn’t only the clothes.

  “He can’t know,” I said, pacing around your house. Panic had hit me square in my chest. “He can’t know I’m here.” I couldn’t stop moving, couldn’t catch my breath. My hands opened and closed, grasping for something I couldn’t reach. “He’s going to think we were…”

  You left me standing there, trying to will myself back to respectable.

  It wasn’t the moonshine I was worried about. Not the making or the selling. It wasn’t even the drinking.

  It was being with you.

  I couldn’t bear to have Daddy think I’d been shacked up having sex with my boyfriend. When I whined, “What do I wear?” my voice sounded as young and shaky as I felt. I headed into the kitchen as if I thought I could cook up some kind of answer.

  Then you were there, standing in the doorway. With a funny look on your face and a purple something dangling from your fingers.

  A dress.

  I eyed it but didn’t move. It was as if, if I thought long enough, the correct algorithm would pop in my head, making everything clear and logical. “Was that…” I couldn’t bring myself to say Cindy’s name.

  “I think it’ll fit,” you said.

  You’re a problem solver. You fix and repair. You’d been in plenty of wrong situations. You’d made adjustments, excuses, cover-ups. It was clear you’d been here before.

  Needing to come up with some kind of jerry-rigged, Scotch-taped paste of a fix scraped against my inner core. Being desperate enough to contemplate wearing your dead girlfriend’s dress was a new low for me.

  But I took that dress from you, didn’t I? I didn’t ask when she’d worn it. Or why you still had it. If you’d known how perfectly it would fit me. The cut shaped my curves just right. I’d never worn that color, but I should have.

  Dressed, with my hair mostly tamed, I found you waiting on the porch. There in the morning light you looked so gorgeous, so close to golden. Too damn good, inside and out.

  I hurried past to climb in your truck. I didn’t want you looking at me in that dress.

  Daddy stood outside Saint Jude’s when I walked up. You’d dropped me off around the corner after a long, quiet ride. He grabbed my arm and led me into the church, where the choir was finishing the processional song. My ridiculous leather shoes made some kind of unclear statement beneath the purple dress. Grateful that we had to be quiet, I stumbled into the pew. Then numb kicked in. I didn’t hear a word of the Mass. I didn’t even take Communion, seeing as I was most definitely not in a state of grace. Daddy noticed. But he’d never make a scene in public. Then he’d have to admit we weren’t perfect.

  When the service was over, I ducked away from Daddy and headed to the basement room, hoping I’d find you.

  Your beautiful room stood silent. Bits of dust swirled in the dim light. That’s the room where your AA group meets. That’s why you offered to fix it up. That’s what you were doing at Saint Jude’s the night we met. You’d stayed after the meeting to take measurements. By the time you discovered the problem with your bike, Jessie and your other sober AA friends had left. Then you saw Bucky and got stuck riding home with a couple of drunk girls. One threw up in your helmet. Why weren’t you completely pissed off at God that night?

  I didn’t know what or how to feel that morning. I’d made the sale to Claude and his friends but was still tallying up the cost. I thought I’d helped when I drank in your place. I knew you couldn’t drink, and yet, you’d watched me. Smelled it on me. Cleaned up after me. Then you’d dressed me in some piece of the past you couldn’t leave behind. That purple dress was way over my budget.

  Daddy never asked me where I was that morning. We pretended I’d been at Roni’s even though we both knew he knew I wasn’t. Daddy is legally blind when it comes to problems in our family. He only sees the good, the best, his hopes. His perpetual optimism is why he’s a good salesman. Any dark and dismal truths fester in silence. Problems simmer and bubble below the surface. Like mash in a bucket.

  He didn’t recognize this new me, didn’t know how to talk to her. She didn’t have anything to say anyway.

  You didn’t drive past me as I walked home in Cindy’s purple dress simply so I wouldn’t have to be in a car with Daddy. You weren’t waiting on my front step when I got home either. I didn’t have a phone, but somehow I knew it would have stayed silent. You didn’t stop by and surprise me with something you’d whittled from wood any time during the whole long afternoon I spent lying on the couch with my head in Mom’s lap while she stroked my hair.

  She didn’t ask me what was wrong, and I didn’t ask her if she wished she could ride the rapids one more time.

  32

  I couldn’t stay on the couch with Mom. The next day I woke up ready to do… something. The weather was oddly cool, making me feel like I’d lost a big chunk of time passed out in your bed.

  Sitting at your kitchen table counting up money, I’d realized I might actually escape. This crazy thing we’d done wasn’t just me wishing and throwing a fit. I had to keep going. I had to surge onwa
rd and cross the finish line one way or another. I was too close to quit.

  That was the day I called USD and asked about work-study options. I filled out the online application even though I was told I’d be on a waiting list. You’d helped me see I needed to look at different options. Before that summer I’d imagined myself as someone special. Someone carefree and lost in higher thoughts and studies. Someone who didn’t work at the junkyard.

  I knew now, I was a Dale girl. Even though I needed to leave this place, I was going to take a bit of it with me. I’d never forget how to scrabble between the rock and the hard place. Working ran through my blood, made me get up in the morning. Being busy and tired helped me sleep at night. I wanted to be sure I’d be doing something hands-on to balance my book studying. Even if it was slopping food in the cafeteria or cleaning toilets.

  I asked Daddy to take me to Roni’s, armed with chocolate ice cream and potato chips. Without thinking, I went to the driver’s side of the car. He looked at me funny as I tried to cover my mistake by asking, “Can I drive?”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t have a permit.”

  “Let me anyway,” I begged.

  He must have been desperate to have things nice between us, because he actually let me. He was impressed by my natural talent. All thanks to you.

  When Roni opened her door, I said, “If you let me in, I’ll stay out of your head.”

  “Let me get the bowls.”

  Out on a blanket in a sunny spot in her backyard I said, “Mmmm,” as I bit into the cold salty sweet. “Why don’t we eat this every day?”

  “Tell the truth, Lulu-bird. Will you eat ice cream with potato chips in California?”

  “Damn straight.”

  She laughed. “You’ll be marked as a hillbilly forever.”

  “That’s me.”

  Maybe she knew I was eyeing her tummy or maybe she simply wanted to get the elephant out of the room, but she said, “I’m not having a baby.”

  I wasn’t sure what she’d gone through to get there—whether it had been a false alarm or if it was a not anymore kind of thing—but either way I knew she’d lost something.