The Summer Kitchen

by Lisa Wingate

  “You’re right.” Holly was pleased. For years, she’d been subtly trying to convince me that worrying about how things looked and what everyone thought was an unhealthy response to the subliminal presence of my mother. “You go, girl.” Holly waved over her shoulder as she went out the door.

  I poured a couple sodas and carried them to the media room. Chris was still sitting on the sofa with his head back and his eyes closed. “Here, sweetheart. I brought you something to drink.”

  Chris shook his head, and his eyes closed more tightly, tears squeezing from beneath his lashes.

  “I really screwed up.” His lips barely moved with the words.

  “Sssshhhhh.” Leaving the drinks on the table, I sat down beside him, then slipped my arm around the little boy inside the nearly grown body.

  “Dad’s going to get the phone message.” His voice trembled with apprehension. “As soon as he’s out of surgery, he’ll get it.”

  “Ssshhhh,” I said again. “Let’s just sit here a minute.” I pulled Christopher closer, and slowly his muscles surrendered the resistance, gave in to the pull. He collapsed against me, leaning his head on my shoulder. A sob escaped his throat, a low sound filled with pain and grief that seemed to come from someplace deeper than just today.

  “If Jake was driving, it wouldn’t have happened,” he said, his sadness, his disappointment, his yearning for his brother evident in the words.

  “We don’t know that, Christopher. We don’t know anything yet. Let’s just take one step at a time. Whatever happened, your dad loves you and I love you.”

  Chris sagged against my shoulder. “I wish Jake and Poppy were here.” His voice was little more than a sigh.

  “I know you do,” I whispered. “Me, too.” It was the first time in six months that Chris and I had let ourselves openly admit how much the empty space in our family hurt.

  “I wish Dad hadn’t said what he did … to Jake,” he whispered. “He shouldn’t have blamed Jake … for Poppy …”

  Outside, the garage door rumbled upward. Christopher stiffened, all the softness replaced by tension.

  I left Chris on the sofa and met Rob in the kitchen. He was angry and red-faced, his jaw hard with frustration. “Where is he?”

  My stomach wrenched into a familiar knot that had little to do with Rob’s outburst. A part of me rushed back in time, as always, and remembered being little SandraKaye, standing like a statue in the corner of the room, trying not to be noticed while my mother flew into a tirade.

  “I can’t believe he wrecked the car again!” Rob’s teeth were clenched, his hands hard knots hanging on stiff coils. “That’s it! That’s it for the car. Until he learns to be responsible, he can walk.”

  A part of me cringed. Responsible—Rob’s whipping word for Chris, one of my mother’s whipping words for me. Why must you be so irresponsible, SandraKaye? Why can’t you be more like Maryanne? I’ve told you over, and over, and over—no schoolbooks on the counter. Haven’t I? Haven’t I? These filthy things … The hand flew, the books scattered, and I dodged. My essay about reindeer in Siberia dropped quietly from my hand, the gold star suddenly one more insignificant item.

  Stop, I told myself now. Stop this. You’re not a child. You’re not powerless. “I don’t think we should make any snap decisions. Holly’s convinced that the other party might have hit Chris on purpose, to collect insurance.”

  Rob’s hand flailed toward Holly’s house. “Oh, come on. She probably saw that on an episode of 48 Hours.” Pursing his lips, he let out a long breath, ran a hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair, then let it fall. His anger was burning out like a flash fire, and now he looked tired. His eyes flicked toward the doorway, as if he were considering proceeding to the media room to deal out Chris’s sentence this very minute.

  “It is possible,” I pressed. I hated fighting with him like this. Lately it seemed we couldn’t have a conversation that wasn’t hijacked by wild swings of emotion. Every conflict rebounded off a tightly stretched net of frustration and spiraled out of control. “She could be right. We really don’t know anything yet.”

  Rob’s gaze leveled and connected with mine in a sardonic way that said, Come on, Sandra, don’t be so gullible! “Holly’s always making excuses for her kids. That’s why she and Richard can’t get them to move out of the house.”

  “Holly did us a big favor today!” I spat, my temper rising, the words carrying into the hall. “If she hadn’t been there for Chris, who knows what might have happened? You could show a little gratitude.”

  Rob’s face reddened, his nostrils flaring. “Holly’s not the—”

  “Stop arguing!” Chris’s voice rounded the corner first, and then he followed it. Standing in the doorway, he looked out of place, sad, wounded. “All you guys ever do is fight!” Tears spilled onto his cheeks. Sniffling, he wiped them impatiently with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry about the car. I’m sorry … I’m … sorry Jake’s gone and not me!” The words crumbled into a sob. He ran from the room and up the stairs.

  Rob turned to follow him, but I caught his arm. “Leave him be, all right? Don’t say anything now while you’re angry. Don’t …” do what you did with Jake. Don’t drive him away because he messed up. “He feels bad enough. I’ll find out more tomorrow when I can talk to the insurance company and get the details of the accident report.”

  “I’m in surgery tomorrow. I can’t get away.” Rob moved toward the door, grabbing his keys and wallet in a way that told me he was heading back to the hospital.

  “I didn’t suppose that you would.” The words were quick and bitter, a knee-jerk reflex.

  “I need to check on a patient,” he muttered, then walked out, his arms stiff at his sides.

  I went upstairs to Chris’s room. When I opened his door, he was sitting on his bed, digging stuff out of his backpack.

  Wiping his face on his sleeve, he hardened his shoulders. “Is he coming up here?”

  “No. He had to go back to the hospital. I’ll check into the accident tomorrow, and then we’ll talk.”

  Letting out a long sigh, Chris nodded, then proceeded to spread papers out on the bed. “I’ve gotta cram for history and English.” It was his way of saying he wanted to be left alone instead of getting another parent talk.

  “All right.” I was suddenly exhausted by the day, too weary to try to bridge the gap between Chris and his father, or to pump Chris for the details of the accident. Rob would say I was being too much of a pushover, too willing to make excuses and smooth things out, as usual. Perhaps he was right, but I’d never wanted the boys to feel about me the way I’d felt about my mother.

  Leaving Chris to himself, I pulled the door closed behind me and headed downstairs. A strange woman passed me in the mirror on the landing, and I took her in—frazzled hair, strawberry blond tipped with paint in a few places, sweat suit spattered here and there, white on her index finger where she’d been holding a brush.

  Rob had never even noticed.

  The thought stung, pressing tears into my eyes as I settled onto the sofa.

  How had we ended up here, fighting over who’d been wrong and who’d been right, and who was to blame for Poppy’s death and Jake’s disappearance?

  If you hadn’t insisted Jake join that stupid fraternity, none of this would have happened. I’d wished over and over again that I’d never said it in those dark, dizzying days after Poppy’s funeral. In spite of the fact that all logic told me Rob could never have predicted what would come of his pushing Jake into the best fraternity, a part of me wanted to lay the blame in some tangible place.

  What happened was nobody’s fault, I should have said, but I didn’t. I hadn’t. I wasn’t even sure why. Clinging to the blame was like clinging to Jake and Poppy. Making peace with it would be like admitting they were gone, and life had to go on without them here.

  Through a rising fog, I watched the blurry image of Holly’s house across the street. All the lights were on, shining i
nto the darkness, pointing out that just a short walk away lived a healthy, lively family. No matter how hard Rob and I tried, we seemed to be drifting further and further from anything good.

  I closed my eyes, and the tears came harder. I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here, trapped in my own life.

  The sound of Rob coming in again roused me from a light sleep just as the evening news was signing off. I got up and went to the kitchen. “Hey,” I said, and he stiffened, like a prowler caught in a home that wasn’t his own.

  He glanced at the clock on the stove. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Just dozing,” I answered, watching as he pulled out lunch meat and made a sandwich.

  “How’s Chris feeling?”

  “All right, I guess. He’s studying, if that’s any indication.” The conversation felt bland, but at least it wasn’t an argument.

  “Everything all right with his semester finals?”

  “I think so. Sounds like physics is eating his lunch a bit.”

  Rob nodded. “Guess that’s understandable.”

  “Did you know his sax was broken?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious. Rob would have had to be home to know that. “All semester, I guess. He never even said anything about it.” I wondered if Rob would pick up on the fact that our son was struggling. Music had always been the way Christopher worked out his thoughts. I could tell by the songs he played how he was feeling. After Poppy’s funeral, he had played for hours.

  Rob rubbed the back of his neck and stretched it from side to side. “He’s busy with other things. Too busy, if he can’t keep his mind on his driving.”

  “Please, let’s not talk about the accident,” I said, disappointed. “Let me look into it tomorrow.”

  Rob’s eyes, which had once seemed brown but now appeared the deepest shade of hazel with his thick, prematurely gray hair, avoided mine. “I’m not trying to pick a fight. It’s good to see Christopher getting after the schoolwork for a change. He’s growing up.”

  “I guess,” I agreed blandly, allowing the conversation to drift back into benign territory. “He’s really trying.”

  “I know.” Rob’s gaze caught mine for just an instant, then the conversation ran out, and finally he picked up his plate and started toward the door. “I have to go sit down. Long day in surgery.” In the past, he would have shared the details—something funny that happened in the OR, or some touching moment between a patient and family.

  I walked to the counter, closed the deli bags, and put the knife in the dishwasher.

  “I can do that.” Rob turned back in the doorway.

  “I know, but I don’t mind.”

  When I started toward the refrigerator, he was still there, frowning at me. “You’ve got something in your hair.”

  I reached up and touched the back of my head, finding a crusty line of paint. “Huh,” I said. For just an instant, I was tempted to tell him the truth, but I didn’t. “Guess I must have brushed past something.”

  Chapter 10

  Cass

  Rusty ran out of gas on his way home from work, and he had to use twenty dollars for a few gallons, so by the time he got back to the apartment he was in a bad mood. He didn’t want to go to Wal-Mart. He wanted me to walk across the street and get some stuff from the convenience store, but I knew that was a bad idea. If we started buying from the Pakistani dude who had everything marked, like, three times what it was worth, we wouldn’t have enough to last a day.

  “What’s the point in going to Wal-Mart with sixteen dollars?” Rusty asked. He stopped halfway through taking off his boots, and sat in the kitchen chair with his arms on his knees. His head sank into his hands, and his fingers disappeared into the stick-straight red hair the kids in school used to tease him about. “What’s the point in any of it? We’re never gonna make it here in the long run. Everything costs too much.”

  A sick feeling spread inside me, thick and black like an oil slick spilled into the ocean. Rusty looked tired, round in his shoulders, small. It scared me to see him that way. “The point is we’re gonna find Ray John, and then everything’ll be okay.”

  Rusty gave an angry laugh. “We’re never gonna find Ray John. We don’t even know where to start.” I’d never heard Rusty talk like that. From the minute we left Helena, he was sure we were gonna track down Ray John, Rusty’s daddy. Rusty could barely remember him. He recalled him coming to a birthday party once, a long time ago, and bringing Rusty a little guitar. After that, we didn’t see Ray John anymore, but he was a good man, and Mama always had a soft spot for him. She said he was a welder, and a good one. He’d come up to Helena to work on a job, which was how they met. He was splitting up with his wife when Mama and him fell in love, but before they could get married, Ray John’s son got hit by a car back in Ft. Worth, and he went home to take care of his family. He sent money for Rusty whenever he could, and that one time he drove all the way straight through to come to Rusty’s birthday and bring him that guitar. Anybody who’d do that had to be pretty decent.

  “You said the last check from Ray John had a Ft. Worth address on it,” I pointed out. I wanted Rusty to get up out of that chair and stop acting like this was the end of everything.

  He snorted softly, his head bobbing up and down. “What check?”

  “The check from Ray John. The stuff that was in Mama’s file box when she went to the hospital.” I felt the oil slick rising up, coming to life like a monster in a comic book. It grabbed all the good feelings I had from getting Opal a book of her own and reading it to her about twenty times while we waited for Rusty. She was curled up on the sofa now, looking at the pictures.

  “There wasn’t any check in Mama’s drawer.”

  “Well, then, the envelope. The envelope from Ft. Worth.” I wanted to throw something at Rusty, to snap him out of it. Of course the actual check wasn’t still in the envelope. If Mama’d had a check there near the end, she would have cashed it, instead of us having to get everything from creepy Roger. “You showed me the envelope.”

  Rusty glared up at me. “Who knows if that was from Ray John. It didn’t have any return address but a P.O. box.”

  “She wrote his name on the front, Rusty. She wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t from him.”

  Rusty gave me a weird look that crawled over my skin like a mosquito looking for a place to bite. “Yeah,” he said finally, like he really didn’t care anymore who the envelope was from. Being seventeen, Rusty probably didn’t have so much to worry about. Even if CPS did catch us, they’d most likely turn him loose to go his own way. They’d have me in for six more years before I finally aged out of the system. They might send me right back to creepy Roger.

  The idea made tears burn in my nose, and I pinched it to make them stop. I wanted Rusty to straighten up. “Listen, let’s go on to Wal-Mart, okay? You won’t believe what I can get for sixteen dollars. One thing I learned from Mama is how to stretch money. It’ll be enough. I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

  “Unnn-unn-gwee!” Opal hopped off the sofa and came trotting over to the kitchen, her tennis shoe and sandal making lopsided sounds on the floor. I got the half-eaten peanut butter and jelly from earlier and handed it to her. I sure wished I’d kept the rest of the sandwiches. Seven free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would make a big difference right now.

  Rusty stuck his feet back in his boots, then pushed himself out of the chair, groaning and twisting his shoulder round and round while he held it with his opposite hand. He pushed his eyes shut and his lips pulled away from his teeth, like it really hurt.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Gob owie?” Opal added with her mouth full of sandwich. She twisted to look all the way up at Rusty’s face. From her height, he must of seemed like the Tower of Pisa.

  “Nah.” Rusty smiled at her, then rolled his shoulder again and made another face.

  “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

  He snatched his keys off the counter. “N
othin’. I fell off a deck and landed on it. No big deal.”

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” Not so long ago, Rusty having any kind of hurt arm would have been something to panic about, because it’d mean maybe he couldn’t play whatever sport was going on at the time. No sports meant no scholarship. The coaches really thought he had a good chance at a free ride to college. This time of year, he’d be pole vaulting and running the mile in track and playing baseball. He was good at all three.

  “Yeah, no big deal. I was in a hurry, and I did something stupid, trying to make up time.”

  Probably the time it cost coming here to take stupid Kiki to work, I thought, but I didn’t dare say it, because with the mood he was in, Rusty’d jump down my throat. He had a thing for Kiki, and whether I wanted him to or not, he was gonna take care of her like he was Prince Charming and she was Sleeping Beauty. But the truth was that Kiki was the reason he had to put gas in the truck when we weren’t planning to yet. A few extra trips back and forth between the construction site, here, and Glitters could eat up twenty bucks quicker than you could say broke.

  “Let’s take off, if we’re going,” he said, then tossed the keys up and caught them behind his back. I thought about how many times I’d seen him do that with a baseball. Rusty could handle a ball like nobody’s business.

  Opal giggled, her face all peanut butter and jelly. Now that I looked, she was kinda dirty all over from crawling around the bookstore and storm ditch. I stuffed a couple of napkins in my pocket, so I could wipe her face when she finished the sandwich.

  Rusty threw the keys up and caught them again, and Opal belly laughed. She tripped on the toe of her sandal and almost landed on her face when we went out the door. She did that about every three steps. Walking in two different shoes probably wasn’t so easy, but after looking through all their stuff, sorting out Opal’s laundry from Kiki’s and taking it over to wash, I hadn’t found anything else to put on her.