by Hart, Megan
“Sometimes I dream I’m young again,” she said. “I dream I’m a girl. And then I look at my hands, and I know I’m really an old, old woman.”
Janelle didn’t know what to say to that, but when Nan squeezed her fingers and smiled, she realized that sometimes nothing needed to be said.
TWENTY-FIVE
“I SAW YOUR brother at Mass last weekend.” Marlena Tierney’s red hair had gone gray long ago, but in the past few years she’d started dying it again.
The color was garish, unnatural. Clown-red. It matched the bright lipstick she still insisted on wearing. The nail polish. She wasn’t an old woman, but time hadn’t been particularly kind to her, and she knew it.
“He sends his love,” Gabe’s mother continued. “Said to tell you to make sure Andrew gets to church. You, too.”
Mike probably included their dad in that, but Marlena would’ve stuck her hand in a jar of angry wasps before she mentioned Ralph’s name. Gabe leaned forward to light the cigarette she held up. She gave him a coy smile, the way she always did, but refrained from cupping his hand the way she would’ve if he’d been another man and not her son. He knew her ways, all right.
“You should tell him we need to see him more often,” Gabe said, knowing it made no difference. “Andy misses him.”
“He’s very busy. He’s got an active congregation, you know that. His parishioners need him to be there for them. It’s not,” she said, “like he can just go on vacation or something any time he wants to.”
Since Gabe knew for a fact that his brother had indeed gone on a vacation, a cruise to Mexico and the Bahamas, no less, this argument held little weight with him. Gabe hadn’t taken a vacation in years, not unless you counted the hunting trips to camp, which he did not. “We live less than three hours from him. He could make a day trip more than once every six months.”
Marlena shrugged and drew in the smoke, holding it for a few seconds before letting it stream out the side of her mouth. She looked at him through squinted eyes. “You could go see him, too, you know. He’d love to see you. It wouldn’t kill you to go to church, either.”
“It might.” He smiled.
After half a minute, she smiled back. That was the mother he remembered best, or at least wanted to. The one who smiled and laughed and got down on the floor with him to play with Matchbox cars and LEGO. Not the one who sat and wept at the kitchen table or locked herself in the bathroom for hours. Not the one who’d left them. And not this present-day crone who’d asked Jesus for forgiveness plenty of times, but never her own sons.
“How is your brother?” Marlena asked after the clock’s second hand ticked in silence one time too many. “Andrew.”
“You could come see him yourself. Find out.”
Marlena stubbed out her cigarette only half smoked. “You know that’s not a good idea. What with the...problems.”
They’d been over this before, a dozen times over the years. Gabe guessed he’d go over it a dozen more without any expectation her decision would change. Marlena had come to the hospital to see Andy after the accident, when he was still unconscious. She’d stared at his bruised and bloodied face for a long time without a word, then turned on her heel. Gabe had followed her to the parking lot, where she’d fumbled with a cigarette and leaned onto the hood of her car as if she might be sick or faint.
“I never wanted it to be like this,” she’d said without looking up at him. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Gabe, who hadn’t eaten or slept more than a few minutes at a time in the four days since the accident, had pulled his lighter from his pocket. It was the first time he’d lit her cigarette, and that time she had cupped his hand to hold the flame steady. Her fingers had been cold, the flirtatious smile she gave him warm before it slid from her face and left her expression blank.
“Nice lighter,” she’d said.
“It was a present.”
Marlena had nodded as if that made sense. He remembered how greedily she’d sucked at the cigarette, as if the smoke was oxygen. The sun had turned her hair to fire.
“Don’t you understand? I thought I was doing the best thing,” she’d told him.
Gabe knew the smell of bullshit. Whatever his mother had thought when she decided to leave her husband and three sons behind without so much as a forwarding address, he didn’t believe it really had anything to do with anyone but herself.
“We all thought you were dead,” he’d told her, just to see if she looked surprised.
She hadn’t. “That was your father’s idea. Not mine.”
“But you let him do it.”
That was the first time he’d seen her smile. “Don’t you get it? Nobody lets Ralph Tierney do anything. He does what he wants, how he wants it, and you’d better do it, too, or else....”
“Or else you end up almost dead or wishing you were,” Gabe had said.
That was when she got in her car and left him there.
Years had passed, but nothing changed. Andy woke up, forgetting most everything in his life. They never told him his mother was alive. Mike had sided with her on that one, and Gabe hadn’t had the heart to fight them. Mike knew Andy better, after all. As for their father, when he heard his wife had gone to see her son in the hospital, all he’d done was spit to the side.
“It’s not his problems that are the issue,” Gabe said now. “It’s yours.”
Marlena scowled. “If you’re going to talk to me that way, Gabriel, you can march yourself right out of here. I don’t need a lecture from you on how to live my life.”
“Surely the blessed Father Mike would tell you the same thing.” Though he couldn’t have, because if the hallowed priest-son had told their mother to visit with Andy, she’d have done it. With bells on.
“Michael agrees with me that it would be too much for Andrew at this point. It would be too confusing, too hurtful. It’s better this way,” Marlena said stubbornly, but without looking Gabe in the eyes, as if he might use some secret laser power to force her to agree.
Gabe sat back in the chair. “Right.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “You’re so much like your father.”
It was the easiest way to get him to leave, comparing him to the old man, and she knew it. Gabe didn’t give her the satisfaction. He crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned back with a small smile.
“You even look like him,” she said. “I’m sure the ladies just eat you alive, don’t they, Gabriel? I bet you have them lined up for blocks just waiting to get a piece of you. And yet here you are, almost forty years old and not married. Not even a girlfriend. I’ll never have any grandchildren, at this rate.”
“You’ll never have any grandchildren, period.”
She looked sad; he even believed she was. “I guess it’s just as well, since if you had any kids I’m sure you wouldn’t even allow me to see them.”
“I see you,” he pointed out.
“Once every few months, and then you come and sit for a while and berate or insult me.” Marlena sniffed and delicately pulled another cigarette from the pack. It hung from her bottom lip as she spoke, gesturing toward him. “Light me up.”
He did.
“I see you’re still using that old lighter.”
She’d given him a new one for his birthday a few years ago. Shiny, silver, engraved with his initials. He had it in a drawer at home. He flipped the lid closed on this one and tucked it back into his pocket.
“Michael tells me she’s back in town. Living with her grandmother again. She has a son....”
Gabe got up from the table. “Don’t. Even.”
Marlena fluttered her hands, doing her best to look innocent. “What? What?”
She knew what. Gabe grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, already reaching for his keys. “Tell my brother he should come and visit his other brother more often. Andy misses him.”
“I just want to see you have a family, Gabriel. A wife.” Her words caught him at the back
door. “I just want to see you happy.”
Gabe paused with his hand on the knob. “Because that whole marriage and kids thing worked out so well for you, right?”
From behind him, Marlena gave a heavy sigh. “Don’t judge everything by the mistakes your father and I made.”
He laughed at that. Shook his head. “That’s kind of all I have to go by, isn’t it?”
She called out to him from the doorway as he was getting in his truck. “I just want to see you stop being so angry all the time!”
Gabe revved the engine in response and drove away. He looked in the rearview mirror and watched her wave. He didn’t wave back.
TWENTY-SIX
Then
WHEN JANELLE WAS small she could lean out and grab Gabe’s hand across the alley. Surely now that she’s bigger, her legs longer, she can actually step across to the window, so long as his is open on the other side. Trouble is, Gabe’s window is closed, and he has his headphones on. And why would she want to try and get from her window into Gabe’s?
The answer is simple. She’s been watching him, on and off, for the past couple weeks. If she can see him, she knows he can see her. At first she made sure to keep her curtains closed. But one night after she’d turned off her light and lay in bed, September still hot enough to feel like summer, she’d watched him come out of the shower and into his room. She’d watched him take off his towel and lie down on his bed and do that thing boys do. The thing girls do, too.
Did he know she watched him? Janelle didn’t think so. He’d acted too unselfconscious for that. Not like he was putting on a show. Not like she did the next night, when she came out of the bathroom with her hair slicked back and wet, her body still so damp her thin T-shirt clung to her. She’d put on some music and danced and danced, never once looking at the window or giving him any idea she knew he saw her...but she hoped he did.
It’s been about a month of that, now. Back and forth, sometimes her light stays on and his goes off. Sometimes she sits in the dark and watches him. And now, tonight, she measures the distance between their windows with her eyes.
Gabe’s not paying attention. He’s on his bed, eyes closed, hands behind his head, headphones plugged into his stereo. He’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt because it’s finally getting chilly.
Janelle has a handful of beads left over from some craft project Nan packed away in the closet up here. Blue, red, green, yellow. Shaped like stars, with holes in the center to string them. Nan won’t miss them, and since they’re made of plastic, they won’t break the glass. They will, however, catch Gabe’s attention when Janelle starts tossing them, one by one, at his window.
She has to toss out ten beads before he looks up. Another two before he gets out of bed to peer out the window. And finally, after she throws the rest of her handful and the beads plink-plink-plink rapidly against the glass, he opens his window.
“Janelle?”
“Hey.” She leans out, shivering a little in the chill, and with excitement. “What’s up?”
Gabe hesitates before answering. She wonders if he’s thinking about all the times he’s jacked off over there, if he knows she’s seen him. “Nothing. What’s up with you?”
They were friends when they were little kids, but it’s not as if they kept in touch when she was away from Nan’s house. She’s been living here since August, and though they walk to the same bus stop, ride the same bus, even share some of the same classes, she wouldn’t say they’re friends now. Girls at school giggle about Gabe Tierney, and they don’t even know what he looks like naked...but she does.
“Bored.” Janelle leans a little farther, looking down. “What are you listening to?”
“The radio.”
“Oh.” That tin can telephone from so long ago had never worked that great, but she remembers stringing it between their houses. The distance had seemed a lot greater then; now it’s next to nothing. “Can I come over?”
Gabe twitches back from the window and actually looks around, as though someone might’ve overheard. “Now?”
“Sure.” She grins; he doesn’t grin back.
“My dad’s home.”
“So? Doesn’t your door have a lock?”
Gabe’s mouth opens. Shuts. He looks at her suspiciously. “Yeah. It has a lock.”
“So then he won’t even know, right?”
Gabe looks around again. “How would you even—”
Janelle swings her leg over the windowsill. The night air that seemed cold a few minutes ago is now deliciously cool against her suddenly heated face. The wood presses between her legs. She’s wearing an oversize T-shirt nightgown and a pair of cotton panties, and that’s it. She wiggles her toes, swinging her foot.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m coming over.” Carefully but quickly, so she doesn’t have time to think about it, Janelle grabs the windowsill and stands. With one hand gripping the ledge and one foot on it, toes curled around the edge, she stretches her other leg out, out. Her foot easily finds Gabe’s windowsill. “Grab me!”
He does, his big hands gripping her around the calf and just below her elbow. Janelle pushes off with her other foot. For a few heady, giddy seconds she’s hovering in the space over the alley, before her momentum launches her the rest of the way onto Gabe’s windowsill with both feet. In seconds he pulls her down and through his window, but he yanks too hard and she ends up falling.
“Shit,” Gabe whispers at the thump. “Shit, shit.”
She’ll have a bruise tomorrow, but Janelle doesn’t care. “That was awesome!”
Gabe looks as if he’s sweating. He pulls her to her feet before backing off. He goes to his door and double-checks the lock before looking at her. “You’re crazy.”
She laughs and bends to peek out at her window. “Hey, you have a good view here. As good as mine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She wants to tease him, not make him angry or shame him into keeping his curtains closed from now on. “Nothing. Just saying.”
Gabe still looks nervous. At school he never says much. He stalks through the halls a head taller than most of the other guys in their grade, his shoulders broader. His clothes are never trendy. He favors torn jeans and T-shirts, mostly black, with band names on the front. Despite this, he’s not a rebel. He gets good grades. He’s not stupid and doesn’t play at it, either. He’s been in class his whole life with the kids in that school. They should all know him better than Janelle does, even though she’s known him since childhood, too. But something tells her he’s less a stranger to her than anyone else...or at least he could be, if he let her.
If there’s anyone in this town who does know her, aside from Nan, anyway, it would be Gabe. She’s not the little girl blowing bubbles or making a phone out of soup cans. She’s changed, and out of everyone, he’s the one she wants to know it.
“What did you think of the history test?” She doesn’t care, but needs something to talk about.
“It was okay.”
Janelle sits on Gabe’s bed. He stares at her. He pulls up a chair from his desk and turns it backward to sit on it.
From the hallway comes a muffled thumping. Footsteps. Gabe puts a finger to his lips.
“Your dad?” Janelle whispers.
Gabe nods.
“Will he come in?”
Gabe shakes his head.
This time, when Janelle smiles, he smiles back.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THIS TIME, JANELLE knew enough to go around to the back door. The front was for visitors and salesmen, not neighbors who’d known each other for something like thirty years. The front door wasn’t for friends, and if she was going to make this work she had to act as if that’s what they were.
Even so, she knocked hesitantly, softly, thinking that even though she saw lights on, saw Gabe’s truck parked out front, maybe nobody would be home to answer. Andy did, though, after a minute or so, just as she was starting to leave. Janelle
turned back.
“Andy, hi!”
“Hi, Janelle.” He peered around her. “Where’s Bennett? Was I supposed to come help him study tonight? I didn’t think so.”
“He’s at home. And no, you weren’t. I came over to talk to Gabe.”
One brow lifted. “Huh?”
“I’m here.” Gabe looked around his brother to stare at her. He didn’t seem surprised. “Don’t be a turd, Andy, let her in.”
Andy muttered and stepped aside to let her pass. “Right. Sure. I’m not a turd,” he added under his breath.
Janelle tried to think if she’d ever been in the Tierneys’ kitchen before, and couldn’t. It was bigger than Nan’s, with room for a table. “Sorry, was I interrupting dinner?”
“No. We already ate,” Andy said. “I was just having a snack.”
Janelle eyed the litter of dishes on the table, the crumpled wrappers. “Some snack.”
Andy shrugged. “I got hungry.”
“Andy, man. Beat it,” Gabe said.
“He doesn’t have to go,” Janelle told him. “What I came to ask isn’t...private, or anything.”
Gabe smiled, just a little. “I didn’t think it was.”
Same old Gabe...though, not exactly. Time seemed to have given him a better sense of humor than she remembered. Or maybe she was imagining it.
“I really, really need you to come over and do some work for me.”
Gabe’s brows lifted and he pointed at himself. “Me? What?”
“Yes. You.” She pointed, too.
Gabe’s smile had faded. He gave her a narrow-eyed look. “I already told you about the dishwasher....”
“I’ve got some carpentry, some plumbing, some electrical. I know you can do all those things.” She ticked them off on her fingertips.