by Hart, Megan
Gabe glanced at his brother, who was busy digging into what looked like a plate of nachos. “Yeah. I can. But why should I?”
“You know, your job? Your business, what you do for a living? You fix things, right? I can pay you.” Her chin lifted. She didn’t mention anything about favors this time. That had been a cheap shot.
“You could pay someone else,” Gabe said.
She’d thought of that, and it was true. Yet here she was, like a beggar with her hand out. And why? “My uncle Joey’s the executor of the estate or something like that, and he won’t approve any major repairs without a lot of legwork on my part. Any legitimate service or person wants a deposit, wants to charge an arm and a leg, and they can’t give me any reasonable estimate of when they’ll be finished.”
Gabe frowned. “What do you mean, he won’t approve them?”
“I have a budget,” she told him. “It’s embarrassing. It’s ridiculous. They want me to get the house in order, so they say, for when Nan...when it comes time to sell the house, it’ll be ready to go on the market. That’s what they told me, anyway, when they asked me to come and stay with her, until...”
“She dies,” Andy interjected.
“Jesus, Andrew. Way to be sensitive.” Gabe reached over casually to knock the back of his brother’s head.
From the living room came a shout. “Watch your language!”
Janelle burst into giggles. It was so much like it had been back then, when they were young. Gabe didn’t laugh, but he did lean against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.
“So you think I’ll just fix a bunch of stuff for you on the down-low? For cheap?”
“I think,” Janelle said honestly, “that you’d do a good job and let me pay you how I can, and if you say you’ll do it, I can count on you to finish.”
Gabe’s expression didn’t change. His gaze didn’t flicker. His lips didn’t twitch. “What do you need done?”
Janelle pulled her list from her pocket. It had gone soft from being folded and refolded over and over again. “I listed everything I think needs to be fixed or changed, but I prioritized. Major repairs at the top.”
“What’s his problem? Your uncle?”
“I don’t know.” She wished she had a better answer than that. “He doesn’t want to face his mother dying? He wants to pretend it’s not inevitable? I wish I could tell you. All I know is, I’m tired of running out of hot water and washing dishes by hand.”
On impulse, she crossed the kitchen toward him. She reached, but didn’t quite touch him. “Gabe. Please? I know I could hire someone else, but...I want you.”
From his place at the table, Andy let out a snort. Gabe and Janelle both looked at him. He held up the empty plate of nachos.
“Maybe you can get him to buy a dishwasher for this place, while you’re at it,” Andy said. “I’m tired of washing dishes by hand, too.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” It was all Janelle could think of to say. The school had called, told her to come get Bennett because once again he’d been in a fight. The same boys, Bennett the victim, yet Mrs. Adams’s frown of disapproval had said he was also somehow to blame. “What is going on with you?”
“Nothing.” Bennett looked out the truck’s window.
Janelle had pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food place, not wanting to wait until they got home to talk about this. At the house he could escape into his room. Lock her out. She supposed he could get out of the truck now and run down the road away from her, if he wanted, but so far he seemed willing to stay put.
“Bennett, I had to have Andy come over and sit with Nan so I could pick you up today. I can’t be doing that all the time. We’re just lucky he wasn’t at work. So I need you to look at me, and I need you to tell me what’s going on with those boys.”
He shook his head, arms crossed tight over his chest. His lower lip trembled. He still wouldn’t look at her.
“Mrs. Adams seems to think you’re friends with those boys.”
“They’re not my friends. I don’t have any friends here,” he muttered.
Bennett had always made friends so easily, Janelle couldn’t believe that he’d had trouble here. “If they’re not your friends, are they bullying you?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. Janelle tried to keep herself calm, but it wasn’t working. She wanted to shake him. What had happened to her get-along kid, her smiley-faced boy? When had he become this grim-mouthed gremlin? This changeling?
“So why were they pushing you down in the hall?”
His shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a sigh. Bennett leaned closer to the truck door, pressing his forehead to the glass. “They were mad at me.”
One piece at a time, that was how she’d solve this puzzle. “Why?”
“Because they said I owed them...something.”
“What? What do you owe them?” Janelle cried, frustrated and afraid. “Why would they push you down in the hall or give you a swirly?”
Bennett reached to his feet to pull up his backpack. He dug inside it, still without looking at her, and drew out a plastic Baggie. He handed it to her without a word.
“Oh, my God.” Janelle stared at the Baggie, the plastic slick and cool in her fingers. She thought she might drop it, but her hand closed convulsively around it.
Harsh smoke filters into her lungs and she coughs. Gabe laughs and take the joint from her, holding it over her head so she has to jump to get it. They’re both high, and she loves being high with him because sometimes—not all the time, but sometimes—it makes him giddy and silly, and he laughs like he never does when he’s sober.
Basically, Janelle just loves being high.
She hadn’t smoked a joint or had more than a couple drinks in years. She’d talked often with Bennett about the dangers of drugs. She never told him about her past habits.
“Why do you have this? Where did it come from?”
“I brought it from California,” Bennett said in a low, shaking voice. “I got it a long time ago, from Ryan’s house. I had it with my stuff.”
Ryan. It figured. Dull and aching fury filled her, drying her mouth so speech was nearly impossible until she forced herself to swallow hard, several times. “Did you smoke any of this?”
He looked at her then, eyes wide, mouth turned down. “No, Mom.”
“Bennett, don’t you lie to me. Did you smoke any of this pot?” She tucked the plastic Baggie with its load of four or five joints against her thigh, out of sight in case anyone happened to look into the truck.
“No! I didn’t. But those boys at school, they wanted it. They offered to pay me a lot of money for it, so I said I would.”
“How did they even know you had it?” Visions of child protective services being called rose up. Of being arrested. Worse, of Bennett being arrested, tossed out of school.
“I told them.”
She sagged. “Bennett. Why? Why would you do something like that? Didn’t we talk about how drugs are bad for you? Even pot?”
“They were all bragging about how they could get drugs. I thought maybe everyone did it here.” He gave her a bleak look. “I didn’t want to do it, but they said they’d give me money. I wanted to buy the new Crazytown game, and you said you wouldn’t get it for me. They promised to pay me, but only after I gave them the stuff, and I said I wouldn’t do it until they gave me the money up front.”
She’d raised a dealer. Janelle clapped a hand over her mouth to keep herself from bursting into hysterical laughter. Some strangled chuckles leaked out, anyway.
Bennett looked alarmed. “I’m sorry, Mom!”
The school couldn’t know, or else Bennett wouldn’t just be sent home. He’d have been suspended. The other boys, too. “Mrs. Adams has no idea?”
Bennett shook his head. “I don’t think so. They told her we were just fooling around, and I said the same thing. She never said anything about the money or anything.”
Janelle pushed the
Baggie deep into her pocket and took a long, slow breath. “You’re done with this, you hear me?”
“But the guys—”
“Done,” she said sharply. “Do you understand? You go to school and tell them your mom found your stash and took it away. Tell them you can’t get more. And you pay them back any money you took from them.”
“They didn’t give me any money,” he said sullenly. “That’s why we were fighting.”
Janelle rubbed at the spot between her eyes. “Do you understand me, Bennett?”
“Yes. Mom, I’m sorry.”
“Your grades, homework, all of it better improve. You’d better put your focus on school. I want to see an improvement, immediately. No comics, no video games, no TV, no computer. No iPad,” she added, “until I see that your grades are better.”
A moment ago he’d looked grateful; now Bennett’s expression darkened. “You don’t ever let me do anything. You don’t trust me to do anything!”
“You think I should trust you to do anything when this is the sort of thing you do?” she cried. “My God, Bennett, how could you be so stupid?”
“It’s not fair!”
“No!” Janelle shouted, startling them both. “What isn’t fair, Bennett, is that you took drugs to school and offered to sell them to other students! Do you even know what that could do to you? To me? Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you could get into? They could take you away from me!”
“Maybe I want to be away from you!”
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. They stared at each other. The joints in her pocket seemed to have taken on weight, to be on fire; she could feel them burning her.
“You don’t mean that.”
Bennett didn’t answer.
“Why would you say that to me?”
“Because,” he told her, “you’re never any fun. Nan says when you were a kid, you were fun. But you’re not now.”
“I’m your mom. I’m not supposed to be fun,” Janelle said through numb lips. “I’m supposed to raise you with good morals and values, and make sure you’re taken care of. I’m supposed to make sure you’re disciplined and that you do well in school so you can be a success in life.”
The words exploded out of her in short, sharp jabs, stabbing the air between them.
“I’m supposed to be your parent. Not your friend,” Janelle said.
She put the truck in gear and drove them home in silence.
TWENTY-NINE
RYAN HAD ALWAYS called at night. Late. This time, Janelle was the one waking him.
“How’s Bennett?” he always asked.
“He’s been selling pot he says he got from you.”
Ryan coughed. “The hell? No. I never gave the kid any weed.”
“He got it from your house,” Janelle said. “The last time he was at your place, he was eight years old.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. Do you know what kind of trouble he could’ve gotten into? Or me?”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Ryan said. She imagined his familiar hand gestures, telling her to chill.
“He’s doing shit in school. He’s not making friends. And now this.” Her throat closed, and Janelle forced herself to take a breath. Then another. “And your damned weed!”
“I didn’t know,” Ryan told her. “I’m sorry. Believe me. You want me to talk to him?”
She found a small laugh. “You haven’t seen or spoken to my son in four years, Ryan. What are you going to do, tell him drugs are bad?”
“They are bad, for little guys.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re going to convince him. No, thanks. I’ll just keep making a mess of my kid all on my own,” Janelle said bitterly.
Ryan was silent for a few seconds. “That kid is anything but a mess.”
“It all feels like a mess.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said shortly. “Thanks.”
Ryan sighed. “How’s your grandma?”
“She has her good days and her bad days. That’s to be expected. She’s probably awake now. I should go check on her.”
“Tough business, taking care of someone like that. Just want to make sure you’re okay. That’s all. You don’t tell me anything, Janelle.”
That’s because you’re not my boyfriend anymore and haven’t been in years, she thought, but didn’t say. “I’m fine. Tired.”
Normally, Ryan was light as air. The fiddling grasshopper instead of the toiling ant. Now he sounded so serious it disturbed her. “You should be careful, Janny. You’re in a weird place.”
He was the only one besides her dad who’d ever called her that. She hadn’t liked it, had only tolerated it while dating him because she’d imagined herself in love with him. Thick and cloying nostalgia swept over her at the sound of it, surprising her as much as his question had.
“Careful of what, exactly?”
“Trying to do everything yourself.”
“There’s nobody else to do it for me,” Janelle said.
“I know you, Janny. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“I’m sure you think you do.” Across the alley, Gabe’s light came on. Janelle turned her face from it, though his curtains were drawn. From the baby monitor came the first noises of Nan waking. She hadn’t yet called out for Janelle to help her, but she didn’t always. Janelle swung her legs over the bed, feet finding her slippers. Gabe’s curtains twitched, then opened, and she twisted her body to shield the light from her phone that would alert him that she was awake.
“You can say you know me, Ryan, but the truth is, you didn’t know everything about me, and you don’t now.”
“I didn’t say I know everything about you. Just that I know you.”
“What did you do, a tea-leaf reading? Chant over a prayer bowl?” It was mean, and she wished she hadn’t said it.
Ryan didn’t sound as if he’d taken offense. “You might not believe it, but I loved you. Always will.”
“I know that.” It was true, but Ryan “loved” a lot of things. Weed, rainbows, surfing, spirit quests. “But I’m fine.”
“Is there a guy?”
“What? No!” She sounded as if she was protesting too much.
“Just asking. You know you could tell me.”
“I don’t want to tell you anything about my love life, Ryan. God.”
“Is he the one from that newspaper article? The one who shot his brother.”
The world spun, making her dizzy. “What?”
“You have a newspaper article about it,” Ryan said blithely, as if he hadn’t just punched her in the gut with his words. “You keep it in your yearbook.”
“You...” She couldn’t accuse him of snooping. The memento from her senior year had always been on her bookshelf, next to her commemorative coffee table book about the movie Titanic and one on polar bears. It had never been a secret.
“I asked your grandma about it once when she called and you weren’t home. She said they were your neighbors.”
Janelle’s mouth and throat had dried; she swallowed hard to moisten them. “His name’s Gabe. It was an accident.”
“You never talked about him to me.”
“I didn’t talk about a lot of things with you, Ryan.” The words were hard, but true.
“Is it him? He still lives in town?”
The lights on the monitor went from green to orange, then briefly, red. It sounded as if Nan was opening drawers. Maybe opening and closing the closet door. “I have to go.”
“How do you feel about your grandma dying?”
The question came out of the blue, yet somehow smacked Janelle hard. “How do you think I feel about it? Terrible!”
“But it’s going to happen, anyway, right? She’s old and sick. You can’t do anything about it. Anyway, everyone dies, am I right?”
“Yes. Everyone dies. She is old and sick, and I can’t do anything about it. What would you like me to do, Ryan? Mourn for months and
months? Spend the last bit of time I have with her wondering how much I’ll miss her when she’s gone?”
Ryan huffed. “How can you be so practical about something so emotional?”
“Why,” Janelle said through gritted teeth, “are you being such an asshole?”
“And this guy, the one you like. There’s no point in getting close to him or anything, right? Because it won’t work out. It never works out, really. One way or another, everything ends. Right?”
They were her words, she realized. Said to him long, long ago, one night after they’d spent a few hours wining and dining, smoking up a little. It had been the first and last time she’d smoked since finding out she was pregnant. Bennett had been safely asleep. She and Ryan had talked about a lot of things that night. They’d been dating for nearly a year, with only two more left before the relationship ended. If you’d asked her then if she thought they’d be together longer than that...well, Ryan had asked, hadn’t he? And what had she said?
“Nothing lasts forever,” Janelle whispered now through numb lips. “You are the last person in the world I’d have thought would throw that back in my face. What are you trying to say? What are you trying to do?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I know you loved your grandma a lot. I know she was important to you. You never really talked much about when you lived with her, but I know she was.”
Janelle swallowed the bitter flavor of tears. “She still is. Jesus, Ryan. She’s not dead yet.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m being a major douche canoe.”
That made her smile a little. “You are. God. Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I got a little jealous.”
She laughed out loud at that. “Sure you did. After all this time, suddenly, you’re jealous? You want another go?”
Ryan laughed, too, sounding embarrassed. “Nah. We were a train wreck.”
It was true, but hearing him say it wasn’t very flattering. “So, what?”
“So, someone’s in your life, and he’s going to be able to hang out with you and your awesome kid... Oh, shit. Shit, Janny, I forgot. I’m sorry.”