by Sarah Tomp
Later, when we made our way back to the truck, you couldn’t carry me, since your arms were full of the picnic things. You led me through the dark while I kept one finger holding your belt loop. I would have followed you anywhere.
Back home, I stood at the curb and watched you drive away. I felt wired and giddy. Too awake for the time. I skipped down the sidewalk to my front door. Then stopped.
A figure sat on the dark step. My first thought was Seth. That’s because he scared me. Bucky is broader.
“Roni broke up with me.”
“I didn’t know,” I said, sitting beside Bucky. He smelled of tobacco and sweat.
“She’s going on tour with that fricking band.”
“She loves singing.”
“She can sing. I don’t give a damn about her singing.”
I couldn’t help but think that was part of the problem. Roni needed him to give a damn.
“Give her some time. She’s had a lot on her mind.”
“Like I haven’t?” He shook his head. “It’s all your fault, Lulu. You’ve screwed everything up. For all of us. You’ve got us all making the wrong kind of plans. You have us looking for things we have no business wanting.”
There wasn’t any answer. No argument to toss back.
“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”
“You’ve changed too, Bucky. You’re the one who didn’t want to marry Roni until she had something else to do. What about you and school?”
“That’s what everyone else thinks I should do. Dammit, Lulu. What’s so wrong with Dale anyway?”
I didn’t know how to say it, but I’d learned to love Dale. More than I ever thought I could. I loved the rush of the river and the hundred different shades of green. The sun on the hills and the shadows of the valleys. The smell of the air first thing in the morning and the last breath at night. The rhythms and sounds. Also, the people who made their way through this place. Like you. And me too. We tried to make things better, but we also made do with what we had. We weren’t too proud to scratch and scrape by. We knew how to spot beauty within the rough.
Truth was, sometimes the idea of San Diego was impossible to imagine. It felt bright and shiny, but flat, like the pictures I’d been staring at, trying to imagine myself within them. I didn’t know how I’d fit in there.
Or, if I even wanted to.
“Lulu?” I heard Mom call from inside. “Is that you?”
“I’m talking to Bucky,” I answered, then turned to him. “Want to come in?”
He stood up. “I gotta go. Just thought you should know you blew my life to hell.”
Inside, Mom stood by the stairs, holding the banister.
“Are you and Sal having an affair?”
I hadn’t planned the question. But after an amazing, melting, decidedly delicious night with you, then coming home to the charred wreck of Bucky’s broken heart, I was a storm of confusion. What was the point of falling in love if the crash at the end was unsalvageable?
She stared at me. Unmoving. Pale in the artificial light.
“Are you?” I asked again.
“Luisa Maria Mendez. How could you say something like that?”
“Because Sal’s here more than Daddy. Because I find his nasty tobacco clumps in the trash. Because…” My voice faltered.
“Sal is helping me sell my preserves and baked goods.” Mom sank down on the step. “We need money, Lulu. I’m trying to do what I can to help. Sal seems to think there’s a market for my more unusual recipe items. In fact, I just received my first online order.”
She patted the spot beside her, but I needed to be able to bolt at a moment’s notice.
Softer, she said, “Sal remembers me… from when I was different. Sometimes I need to be reminded I haven’t always been this way.”
“I heard you. In the guest room.”
Her fingers traced the blue flowers on her skirt. “Oh, Lulu. It’s hard with your father traveling so much. We get lonely.”
I shook my head. I’d asked her for the truth. I thought I knew the answer. That didn’t mean I was ready for her to admit it.
“Your father thought…” Her face twisted as she tried to explain. She didn’t look panicky-weak. More like embarrassed. “He thought we should…”
My whole world warped to think Daddy knew.
“Don’t look at me that way, Lulu. You’re old enough to understand. Especially now. You and Mason…”
“Do not compare Mason and me to Sal and you.”
“Sal?” She frowned. “I love your daddy. You know that.”
I thought I did. But things had been so wrong lately.
“I didn’t know you’d hear us.” She breathed out, loud and heavy. “I know it must be hard to imagine your parents that way.” She stood up, reached for me, but I moved in reverse.
“Daddy wasn’t here.”
“That’s why we were on the computer.”
My mother and father were meeting online. Doing who knows what else—I am still not ready to explore that image. It was Daddy making her coo behind the door.
“You were talking to Daddy?”
“Of course.” Then, suddenly, she understood. She blinked and flushed dark red. “You thought Sal? With me? Oh, Lulu.”
Finally, I sat and snuggled in next to her. “I still think Sal is in love with you.”
“No, Lulu.” She wrapped her arm around me. She felt solid, like she could hold me up. “But it wouldn’t matter if he was. Your daddy is the only love for me.”
“Why? What makes him different?”
“Maybe because there is no reason. But we’re better together than either of us on our own.”
If I believed in love, it might look something like that.
35
I went to see Father Mick the next morning. For the first time all summer, I wasn’t at Saint Jude’s secretly hoping to see you. In fact, I was relieved not to see your truck or your bike.
It used to be reconciliation was as easy as getting a haircut. I’d pop in, get rid of the bad things in my mind, say a few prayers to condition my soul, and be on my way.
That day, I didn’t know where to begin. Or to continue. Or finish.
Lying was easy to admit. That, and disobeying my parents, was standard operating procedure. I needed to unload the anger I’d been carrying around toward Mom and Sal. Everything else I’d been doing was fuzzy and hard to name within my usual catalog of sins.
Most of all, I was dancing with serious temptation when it came to you. Except, that didn’t feel wrong. Being with you was the one thing that felt right.
Father Mick is patient and asks good questions, but he finally got tired of my starting and stopping and talking in circles. He wasn’t going to give me permission to sin. He assigned me prayers for penance and kicked me out of the confessional.
As we walked down the hall he said, “I didn’t realize you’d gotten your driver’s license.” I don’t know if he noticed the flash of guilt on my face before he added, “I saw you driving Mason’s truck last week.”
I couldn’t answer. Lying to his smiling face above his priest’s white collar and black shirt was a whole lot different than simply admitting a past lie, already done. I wondered what he’d do if he knew I didn’t have my license. That I’d been breaking the law every time I sat behind your steering wheel. That could have been my downfall. Like Al Capone getting busted for tax evasion.
Then old familiar irritation kicked in. Dale was too small, too constricting. With too many eyes always watching.
Now I see it differently. All those eyes weren’t looking to pin me down, they were trying to take care of me. They saw where I was headed when I couldn’t.
Outside his office he stopped walking. “I was surprised when your father said you’d decided to wait to start college,” he said. “I do hope you won’t wait too long.”
Typical Daddy. Making disappointment sound like a plan.
I said, “You’ll have to talk to him
. He’s the one deciding.”
He frowned, looking at me. Then said, “Has Mason found a new job yet?”
I shook my head.
“He does good work,” said Father Mick. “I’m sure he’ll find something.”
Thinking about you and the work you’d done, I went down to your basement room. Our room. The reason we’d met that night back at the start of summer. Where I’d watched you work.
The simple but beautiful furniture you’d built was sturdy and set in place. A rough wooden cross hung on the wall next to a photograph of a sunset over the mountains. Books had started gathering on the shelves, making themselves at home. It still smelled of new paint and cut wood, but I could smell something else there too. Something smoky, a hint of unfamiliar perfume. The room wasn’t only ours anymore.
You know what else I discovered that morning. On one of the upper shelves, behind the statue of Saint Michael, the archangel. His prayer had always made me uncomfortable. Scared me. Maybe because I needed him. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares.…
I don’t know what drew me to him then, what made me pull over a chair so I could climb up, take him off the shelf, and peer closely at his fierce face and battered wings. But when I did, I saw what Saint Michael had been hiding.
A simple box. Wooden. Handmade. Didn’t look like much. If someone were to open it, and then to peek inside the foil wrapper within, she might think at first that it was nothing but a pile of dust. Or tiny pebbles. Certainly no more important than a collection of radish seeds. It’s likely it would look like something that should have been tossed out long ago.
I knew that smell. Almost sour, but tempting too.
Something lived in that box. Lying dormant. Sleeping. Waiting.
My mind swirled as I left Saint Jude’s. We’d only used the active liquid form of yeast when brewing. But I knew that box held the freeze-dried bit for backup. The just in case, back to the source, original start of Baby. It would take some time, some extra-special care and coaxing, but those little nothing-looking particles were alive. They were the key to the Malone family business.
As I left Saint Jude’s my gut felt heavy, full of something dark and rotten. In my head I felt the desperate urge to hurry. I was running out of time.
You were too.
36
Less than two weeks before Labor Day weekend, we headed out for our final push. Our last run. Countdown to blastoff. Soon I’d be on my way. We simply had to do what we’d done so many times before.
I still didn’t have a phone, but I’d told Mom I was spending the night at Roni’s to give us plenty of time for the run. Roni knew to cover for me. I didn’t tell you I could stay out all night, because I didn’t want us both thinking about that all day. It was hard enough to settle what that meant in my own mind.
I had plenty of reasons to feel uncertain that day. You did too. During the drive you were quiet and looked close to frowning. I knew you were worried about running Aunt Jezebel without Bucky now that he wasn’t talking to either of us. It felt twisted and warped not to have Roni and Bucky along. But I also wondered if Baby was on your mind.
She was on mine.
I knew you’d stashed her in that room at Saint Jude’s. That you’d taken her from Jake’s the day you found him dead. Of course you couldn’t leave Baby there when the bulldozers came to clear away his shack. She was too important to your family. I knew you couldn’t turn your back on what she meant, even if you should. I got that.
Only I didn’t know what you were going to do with her now. Why you’d held on to her. If your family knew you had her.
I couldn’t ask questions when I dreaded what the answers might be.
You parked your truck closer to the road than usual, probably hoping not to get stuck in the soft dirt. Instead of lingering in the spot of our first kiss, you hopped out.
You charged up the hill ahead of me. I couldn’t seem to muster any energy. The higher we went, the slower I moved.
I heard your curse, feral and fierce, before I knew what you saw.
The stale smell of spoiled mash filled my ragged breaths as I made it up over the last part of the ridge and took in the devastation.
Poor Aunt Jezebel.
She’d been knocked over and smashed. The branches of her disguise had been tossed aside. Someone had ripped her from her nesting spot and beaten her copper sides to crumpled lumps. Her pipes were left twisted and mangled among the trees’ roots. The propane tank sat twenty feet away, lopsided and with its valve broken off, a spiderweb of cracks along the top, the gas released into the atmosphere.
You stood, silent. Only your eyes roamed.
“Who would do this?” I paced around the destruction. “Can we fix it?”
I tried to pull a piece of copper—I think it was the door to her mixing tank—from the dirt where it was wedged. It didn’t budge. I kicked it. Hard. Again.
“Lulu,” you said. “Stop.”
I hated the calm in your voice. The concern in your eyes. The maddening dependable way you stood close by, ready to hold me up. I shrugged your hand off my shoulder.
I picked up a piece of pipe and threw it against the closest tree. The metallic clong sounded horribly, wonderfully, perfectly off-key. I grabbed another, bigger bit of pipe and smacked it as hard as I could against the tree.
I reared back and hit it again.
I banged and smashed and pounded and walloped that pipe—I don’t know how many times—into that tree. Every bit of anger I’d felt that summer smashed into that innocent sycamore.
By the time you circled in from behind, wrapping your arms around me, forcing me to drop the pipe with a final dull thump in the dirt, my hands vibrated clear through. As the numbness wore off, a new tender set in. It matched every other inch of me.
I turned around, still in your arms, my voice thick with tears. “It’s such a goddamn waste.”
“I know,” you said. “I know.”
“If they wanted to steal her, I’d get that. Or even take her to be recycled. Sal pays good money for copper.” I wrapped my hands around my head, trying to make sense of it. You stroked my hair.
“Who would do this?” I stopped my rant. Looked up at you. “Was it Seth?”
“This isn’t his style.”
I pulled away. Sat down in the dirt, exhausted.
I’d been so close.
Only one more run on Aunt Jezebel. Only one more load of liquor for sale. Only… only nothing. It wasn’t going to happen. It was over.
Done.
No more hopes. No more dreams. No more chances or choices or maybes or mights or anything shiny at all.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and rocked back and forth.
I ached all over. Inside and out. My body threatened to disappear into the growing chasm in my chest. I didn’t understand the gaspy, squeaky noises I couldn’t seem to stop.
It was the waste and the mess and the overwhelming ruin. But also, I’d truly thought of Aunt Jezebel as part of our crazy, mixed-up family. Someone had left her in pieces, battered and bruised. They’d invaded our magical hideaway and made it ugly.
“I hate it here,” I said.
I’d gotten so wrapped up in the pretty parts of Dale, so enamored with all our favorite spots, the places I thought I’d miss, I’d forgotten what I’d known all along. “Everything gets trashed here. There’s no point in even trying. I quit. I surrender. Uncle.”
“Hell no,” you said. “You don’t get to give up. We have worked too hard and too long—and you’re too close.”
“It’s over.” I rested my head on my arms.
“We just need a new idea. I bet it’s something obvious and right in front of our faces.”
I knew it was like Bucky said. Everything blown all to hell.
All summer long, from the moment Daddy broke the news, I’d been fighting fate. Refusing to see what was right in front of me. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I worked, or how low I stooped, whatever line
I was willing to cross, I simply wasn’t meant to go to San Diego. Seeing Aunt Jezebel smashed to smithereens had left me no more room to doubt. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. Wanting was not the same as happening.
I staggered down the hill on weak and wobbly legs. Grief and exhaustion worked like a shot of moonshine while you kept me moving in the midst of my confusion. As you drove us away, I leaned my blank and empty head against the window, steeping in my shame.
It was more than hopelessness. More than misery. More than feeling beat up and beat down and simply beat.
It was you.
All the things I’d made you go through that summer. All those trials and temptations. Risking your future, your sobriety, your best everything—all of it, for nothing.
At your house you poured me lemonade and added mint from your yard. Sat with me on your couch. “It’s going to work out,” you said. “We’ll get your money.”
I shook my too-heavy head. Then rolled over and buried my face in the cushion.
I woke up later, alone. The glass of lemonade sweated in a pool on the table beside me. I wiped the puddle with my shirt and went looking for you.
I spotted you through the kitchen window, talking on the phone in the sunlight. When you put your phone in your pocket, you looked up and gave me the crooked smile I love.
I joined you outside. A breeze ruffled the air, keeping the heat at bay. You showed me your blackberry bushes, full of plump, sweet fruit. Mom used to make blackberry cobbler every year on the last day of summer because Roni needed the sugar boost to get her through the idea of starting a new school year. I felt fall lurking behind the brambles and green leaves, but I pushed it away. It didn’t mean anything anymore. There was no school to consider.
We picked blackberries and gobbled them up, staining our fingers purple. “Roni and I used to pretend this was—”
“Blood,” we both said together.
“Seth and I did too.”
We laughed to have one similar childhood memory.