by John Coy
Suddenly I realized how Dad’s threats had power as long as I did what he wanted. When I didn’t, he was unsure what to do.
Dad rubbed his eyes. Maybe the reality that I wasn’t going to be a doctor was finally sinking in. For a second, I even felt a little sorry for him.
“You may have graduated,” he said, tapping the table in front of him, “but you still follow our rules around here. You don’t get to do whatever the hell you want.”
The second passed and a familiar feeling returned. The trap was snapping and I desperately needed to get out.
AGE APPROPRIATE
AFTER LISTENING TO DAD, I didn’t feel like going out to dinner, but Mom bustled about and talked about how cozy it was to have “just us time” before we went to Uncle Ed’s. That sounded terrible, but after Dad’s lecture, there was no way I was getting out of it.
At Los Corrales, an older woman rushed up to us. “Dr. Franklin, I’m Carol Gallagher. I’m so happy to see you. You did surgery on my husband, Pat, a year ago, and he’s doing great. You saved his life, and I always meant to send you a thank-you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Dad said. “Please give Pat my greetings.”
“Yes, I will.” She shook Dad’s hand vigorously. “Thank you, Dr. Franklin.”
I slid into the booth opposite Lansing, and Mom raised her eyebrows in a see-I-told-you way. The waiter brought a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa and I took a handful and set them on my plate. Mom and Dad both ordered margaritas, and Lansing and I got Sprites.
Dad asked me about finding another job and I was glad to tell him I couldn’t stay late at Ed’s because I had orientation and I’d picked up three morning shifts for the week.
“Are those permanent?”
“No, but more hours are available when people take vacations or call in sick. Stephanie, my supervisor, has other houses where she needs subs.”
“You need to get something permanent,” Dad said, but it felt more automatic, less like he was ripping into me. Maybe something had shifted. Or possibly he was making an effort since we were out in public.
“Are you getting chilaquiles?” Lansing asked me.
“Definitely.” They’d become a favorite since we’d had them in Mexico.
“Me too,” he said.
“What other plans besides working do you have for the summer?” Mom asked.
“I want to save some money for a trip.” I dipped a chip in salsa.
“Where to?” Lansing asked.
“Europe.” I slid back in the booth.
“Europe! You’ve never mentioned that before,” Mom said. “Where in Europe?”
“I was thinking about Scotland.”
“You don’t want to go to Scotland. It rains all the time,” Dad said. “It’s a terrible place.”
That seemed extreme even for him. “I’d like to see Glasgow and go over to Skye.”
“Who would you go with?” Mom asked.
“Maybe my friend Rayne.”
“Don’t let anybody drag you someplace like Scotland that you’ve got no reason to go.” Dad frowned. “Remember, you need to pay rent. That’s what you need to make money for.”
“But what about college?” Mom asked. “Why don’t you defer a year and live at home and we can straighten things out?”
“There’s nothing to straighten out,” Dad said. “Cray made his decision. Now he has to pay the price.”
I broke the chips on my plate and avoided looking at him.
“You don’t have to tell people at Ed’s what you’re doing,” Dad continued. “They don’t need to know everything.”
What a hypocrite. He wanted me to pay the price for my decision but not tell his brother’s family about it. I was sick of playing his games. If I had to pay rent at home, I could take that money and go someplace else, someplace where I was free to make my own rules.
* * *
“HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CAKE.” Aunt Laura presented me a piece with lots of frosting. “Do you want ice cream?”
“Please.”
My cousin Jeremy, who was a star med student, came over carrying a carton of Häagen-Dazs vanilla. “How many scoops?”
“Two.”
“What are you doing this fall?” Jeremy plopped a small mountain of ice cream beside my cake, and Mom watched how I’d answer.
I wasn’t lying for Dad. “I’m taking a gap year. Going to do some traveling.”
“Good for you,” Jeremy said. “I wish I had done that.”
I smiled at Mom. That gap year answer was magic. It sounded like doing something positive rather than avoiding things, and it cut down on the follow-up questions dramatically.
I took a bite of cake and surveyed the room. Uncle Ed was a surgeon. My cousins Jeremy and Jessica were set to be surgeons. Lansing was on his way to being a surgeon. The only other person who wasn’t sat down beside me.
“I love cake,” Jacob said.
“Yeah, who doesn’t?” Then I remembered Rayne. She couldn’t eat this. But that didn’t mean she didn’t love it.
Over by the piano, Dad, Ed, and Jessica argued about insurance reimbursement while Lansing listened.
“Got any new Batman stuff?” I asked Jacob.
“Yeah, I’ve got two new comic books. You want to see them?”
“Sure.”
So after we finished our cake and ice cream, Jacob and I went down to his room and he showed me his Batman stuff. I wondered what Kirsty would say about the age appropriateness of Batman for two seventeen-year-olds. But all kinds of adults were into Batman comics and movies. They dressed up in character and spent thousands of dollars collecting stuff like Jacob had. That was the point of living in America. We were supposed to be free to choose what we wanted.
I picked up a detailed Batman model and turned it over. When we were little, I always got to be Batman and Jacob was Robin. It might be time to switch. “Would you like to be Batman, Jacob?”
“No, you’re a good Batman.”
So while the rest of the family discussed the future of medicine, Jacob and I teamed up against Catwoman and the Joker, and I felt like I had the best partner in the house.
* * *
I RECOGNIZED KIRSTY’S MINIVAN IN THE DRIVEWAY when I arrived at Oakcrest and hoped Rayne was already inside. I was hesitant to talk to Kirsty by myself since this was the first time I’d seen her since she turned me in. I wasn’t looking for a confrontation, but I also didn’t want to pretend everything was fine. I walked up the steps and paused. I didn’t need to ring the doorbell. This was my work. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
On the couch, Rayne sat beside Kirsty holding a ball of purple yarn and a pair of needles. I said hello and they went right back to their knitting tutorial.
Kirsty demonstrated how to hold the needles and Rayne asked questions. I sat down on the other couch and tried to figure out Rayne’s new interest. Slowly it dawned on me. Rayne was using knitting as a way to connect. She glanced over and I knew she was letting me know that there was no point in bringing up the complaint.
When Kirsty left she waved good-bye and said, “Have a good orientation.” As soon as the door closed, Sean and Nicole came out of their rooms.
“Hi, Race Car,” Sean said.
“Kirsty said you’re supposed to call me Cray.”
“Kirsty’s not here. Rayne is.” Nicole sat down.
“She won’t care, will you, Rayne?” Sean sat down in the chair next to her.
“No,” Rayne said. “Just call him Cray when Kirsty’s around.”
“Okay.” Sean looked over at me. “How you been, Race Car?”
“Good.” My new name had stuck.
“I just got another Justin Bieber poster, Race Car,” Nicole said. “You want to see it?”
“Sure.” I walked down to her room and she showed me how she’d taped it inside her closet, the only place she still had room. “Nice. You can’t have too much Bieb.”
On the way back, Kate peeked out of he
r doorway.
“Race Car’s here,” Nicole said.
As I sat down on the couch with Rayne, Kate came out in her robe and slippers holding Chimney.
“We’ve got everybody here but Brent,” Nicole said.
“He’s sleeping.” Sean tapped his feet.
“He always goes to bed early,” Nicole said.
“Knock, knock,” Sean said.
“Come in.” Kate giggled as she sat down next to Nicole. I was starting to understand her better.
“No, you say who’s there,” Sean said. “Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?” we all said together.
“Harry.”
“Harry who?”
“Harry up and open the door. It’s freezing out.” Sean laughed deeply like this was the funniest joke in the world, and we all laughed at his laugh.
“I’ve got one,” I said. “Say the word most five times fast.”
“Most, most, most, most, most,” everybody repeated.
“Now what do you put in a toaster?”
“Toast,” Sean and Nicole shouted.
“Toast,” Kate said.
I turned to Rayne.
“Toast,” she agreed.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “You put bread in a toaster.”
“Ahhh,” everybody groaned.
We took turns telling jokes and laughed the hardest at one Nicole told about a monkey on a trampoline where she mixed up the punch line.
After Sean, Kate, and Nicole said good night, Rayne showed me where things were and went through the morning orientation. She pointed to the schedule that Darla, the morning person, had made that listed the times people got up, when their transportation arrived, and the phone numbers to call with any problems.
“Everybody is good about getting ready and will make their own breakfast,” Rayne said. “Brent’s often unsteady at first and you may have to remind Nicole to take her lunch and Brent to brush his teeth. If anybody’s shampoo goes missing, have Sean search through his collection and return it.” She paused at the closet door. “And since you’re not med certified, Stephanie will come in to give meds.”
I worried about remembering everything, but if I forgot something I could always ask the people who lived here. They knew how things worked.
“I had a good talk with Kirsty.” Rayne sat down on the couch in the living room. “She was pleased with how you helped with Brent.”
“Then why did she turn me in?” I sat down across from her.
“That’s the way she is,” Rayne said. “She’s close to Rebecca and misses her. She was going to have problems with anyone who filled in. She said you were okay, so you’ve passed her test.”
I wanted to protest about the stupidity of her age-appropriateness complaint, but it didn’t seem necessary.
“At night when you come in, Sean, Kate, and Nicole might come down like they did tonight. If they stay in their rooms, that means they want their privacy. Only go in if you’re invited. If they come down, they’ll talk for a while and then go to bed. After that, the time is yours.”
Rayne switched to the topic of Marco and how excited she was to see him. I didn’t need to hear more about her older Italian photographer boyfriend, so I wasn’t paying attention, but then she mentioned me.
“The three of us can meet for dinner on Thursday. That will be fun.”
I didn’t think so. Not one bit.
MEETING MARCO
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, I pulled down the sheets on the same bed that Rayne slept in four nights a week at Oakcrest. My gray gym shorts and Clairemont Hoops T-shirt looked worn and I wondered what she wore. Maybe something sexy, some thin nightgown. Maybe nothing at all.
I was working for her so she could be with Marco, and I imagined what the two of them were doing. I held the pillow and inhaled. Even though the bed had been stripped and I’d put clean sheets and pillowcases on, I still felt like I could smell her. I wanted to believe that, anyway.
To take my mind off them, I grabbed Rayne’s guidebook to Skye. On a bookmarked page was a picture of a bagpiper in a kilt identified as Patrick MacCrimmon, one of the hereditary pipers to the MacLeods of Dunvegan. I looked closely to see if I could see a resemblance between that MacCrimmon and Rayne. They both were thin and dark, but I wouldn’t have guessed he was an ancestor if she hadn’t told me.
I paged through the book and came to a picture of the ruins of Trumpan Church. I read the description of what happened there in 1577. A raiding party of MacLeods trapped a group of MacDonalds in a cave on the island of Eigg. The MacLeods started a fire in the entrance and suffocated 395 MacDonalds, the entire island population.
In retaliation, other MacDonalds attacked Trumpan Church, where the MacLeods had gathered for Sunday services. The MacDonalds blocked the doors and lit the thatched roof on fire. All the MacLeods inside but one died. A young girl squeezed through a window and escaped. She ran toward Dunvegan and sounded the alarm. MacLeod warriors mobilized and murdered every single MacDonald.
I studied the picture of the church ruins among green grass by open water. What a contrast with its violent past. The more I read about the battles and retaliations, the more I realized that underneath this peaceful landscape, the soil was soaked in blood.
I flipped to another page and read about the Talisker Distillery near Carbost on the west side of the island. Guests were welcome to sample whisky prior to taking the distillery tour and the drinking age was only eighteen. Bagpipes, battles, whisky—Skye was a place I wanted to go. Maybe that’s why Rayne had left the book out, so I’d get interested. I hoped she was still going there and not to Italy with Marco.
* * *
IN THE MORNING, Brent ate a brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart out of the package. He hadn’t done a good job shaving but I was afraid to tell him.
“Where’s Darla?” he asked with his mouth full.
“She had a family emergency. I’ll be here the next couple of mornings.”
Kate took out a box of frozen waffles and put one in the toaster. They looked good and nobody seemed to need my help, so I put in a couple for myself.
Sean said that he ate at McDonald’s and they had the best breakfasts. He then proceeded to list every item on the breakfast menu.
“Big deal. You tell us that all the time.” Brent left his wrapper on the counter.
“I never told Race Car,” Sean insisted.
I pointed at the wrapper and Brent put it in the trash.
“Good morning.” Stephanie came in carrying a large coffee.
Everybody said hello, and she turned to me.
“How’d your night go, Cray?”
“Good.” I poured maple syrup over my waffles. I was getting paid to sleep and eat.
“Thanks for covering for Rayne. I know how important it was for her to have the night off.” She unlocked the closet door and used another key to open the med cabinet. She counted out Brent’s pills into a small paper cup.
Brent gulped them down with water. “I miss Rebecca being here.”
“I’m sure she misses you, too. She’ll be back in September.” Stephanie took a sip from her cup. “Remember to do a good job on your teeth and check your chin. You missed some spots shaving.”
“I will. I will.” He headed for the bathroom.
Stephanie gave Nicole vitamins and calmed Kate down when she was biting her arm by telling her she’d join her at Walmart for her performance review. She also reminded Sean about his doctor’s appointment after work. I was impressed by how much she kept track of and how she delivered information in such an easy way.
“Nicole, your van is here,” Sean called out like a conductor.
“Bye.” Nicole grabbed her stuff and hurried out.
Sean continued watching at the front window. “Sean’s van is now here,” he announced. “Hey, Race Car, why was the broom late?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because it overswept. Get it?” He bounded down the stairs.
“Yeah. Ha
ve a good day.”
After everybody left, Stephanie and I sat down in the living room.
“You’re doing well, Cray. You’ve recovered from your initial mistake the way I hoped, and you work well with the people we support.”
“Thanks.” I hadn’t gotten that feedback before.
“I’m already thinking ahead to the fall.” Stephanie finished her coffee.
“What do you mean?”
“Rebecca’s coming back, but Rayne’s leaving us at the end of August and I need someone to fill her full-time spot. Are you interested in being considered for a permanent position?”
I looked up. “I don’t know.” I’d just started and Stephanie was offering me more. I should have been grateful, but the word permanent scared me, as if I’d be doing it forever.
“Think about it,” Stephanie said. “You’d be eligible for health insurance, dental coverage, and vacation.”
“Okay.” I stretched out my feet in front of me. If Rayne was traveling, though, I wanted to do that, too. But not with Marco.
* * *
THAT EVENING I ARRIVED DOWNTOWN AT A TINY restaurant called Adrianna’s that I’d never been to. I paused at the aqua door and felt like running away.
Inside, my eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw the two of them sitting across from each other laughing.
“You must be Cray.” A tall guy with long black hair stood up.
“Hi.” I held up my hand like a little kid learning to wave and felt like a dork.
“Hey, Cray.” Rayne gave me a hug.
I looked back and forth between them and wasn’t sure where to sit. I wanted to be next to Rayne, but that might not be what she wanted. I stood there, hesitating, afraid of making a wrong move.
“Please.” Marco pulled out the chair next to him. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt but looked more stylish than anybody in Clairemont.
I glanced across at Rayne, who smiled broadly, like she couldn’t be happier to have him back.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” Marco said in slightly accented English as he held out his hand.
“Thanks.” I shook it firmly. I wanted to dislike him, but he wasn’t giving me much to work with.
“We love this place,” Rayne said. “Adrianna makes the best arepas.”