She reads this and smiles a little.
Then her smile fades. “My dad’s gonna kill me.”
“R-really?”
She sighs hard now, and suddenly looks older than she’s seemed this whole time. “Not literally. Guess I might as well tell you I don’t really have bars on my window.”
Yeah. No shit.
We fall into silence. She flips through Glamour. I try to work up enthusiasm for Newsweek, but I can’t focus. My mother’s hysteria on the phone keeps playing in my head, like a mosquito buzz that won’t go away. What’s waiting for me back home. But why did I expect anything different?
The fact is, I didn’t think very far ahead. My future after the bus ride was a big blank, but that blank seemed refreshing and clean. An inviting sheet of paper ready for sketching, without all the messy scribbles of my stupid school I hate and home with its tension so bad I’m surprised we’re not all twitching. When that big bus rumbled out of Grand Rapids, I felt dizzy with freedom and pushed all thoughts of home out of my head. Even my sisters. Probably because I knew if I pictured Jewel’s face, I’d never be able to leave.
The door swings open, and we both jump. A uniformed lady cop comes in carrying sandwiches and drinks. “Well, if it isn’t Romeo and Juliet. Well, star-crossed kids, you’re probably hungry.”
She plunks the sandwiches down with a couple of Cokes.
“Thank you,” I mutter, glad to get that out without stammering.
She regards us with one hand on her hip. “You know, I’ve got kids. Littler than you, but I’ve got kids. Most of us do,” she says, gesturing out the door to the rest of the police station. “What you two did to your parents, you don’t have the faintest idea what that’s like, the hell they were going through. You took years off their lives with this stunt.”
I can feel a blush creep up the back of my neck. I’m sure thinking of my sisters, now. And my dad, and Mom, because I gave her a reason to freak out, this time. I wonder if Casey was worried. Probably.
“Well, eat already. I don’t want your folks thinking we starved you. I’ll check on you later. Juliet, your dad should be here soon.”
Tiffany isn’t eating. She’s just picking at the bread.
I know the feeling. But I eat it anyway, because the officer was nice enough to bring it to us. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.
Chapter 24
Michael
When my dad pulls into the driveway, Casey’s in the shower. I go upstairs to knock on the bathroom door.
“Yeah?” she says.
“Hey, babe,” I say loudly over the sound of the water. “My dad’s here, we’re heading out.”
She pokes her wet head around the curtain. Tendrils of hair are stuck to her forehead. Makes me want to grab her face and kiss her.
“I’ll see if Mallory will go home. Give you some space.”
“See if she will? How about sending her. Dylan’s fine, and this isn’t her house anymore.”
My head starts to throb, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.
When I look at Casey again, her face has sagged with resignation. “Sorry. It’s fine.” She pulls the shower curtain back in place with less force than before. “I’ll be fine,” she says over the spray.
I have more to say, but it’s hard to talk over the water.
We’ll talk when I get back, about many things that we’ve put off for too long.
I bribe Jewel with a trip to get doughnuts Sunday morning if she does her homework like a good girl, and make the same offer to Angel, only with lattes.
Angel nods, and then announces she’s going to take a nap. I can see that she’s caked makeup over the bluish hollows under her eyes. I give her a tight hug before she goes.
Mallory is making fresh coffee in the kitchen.
“So,” I say, pulling on my coat and peering toward the front of the house to see if Dad has pulled up. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Mallory is radiant. I haven’t seen her like this since she was pregnant with each kid. “I know! Thank God.”
“So, listen, I can drop you off at your apartment on our way.”
She stops in mid-pour of the coffee. She tries to shove it back in the coffeemaker and misses, sloshing hot coffee all over the counter.
She puts her hand on her hip, eyes squeezed to slits. “Are you throwing me out?”
“The crisis is over.”
“So? I want to be here when he gets home. I don’t want to miss a minute. In fact, I’d insist on going with you if your father didn’t hate me worse than Hitler.”
“I’ll pick you up then, on the way back. You’ll see him even quicker, in the car.”
She looks up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “You are throwing me out. I cannot believe after what we’ve been through the last forty-eight hours—”
“This isn’t your house!” As always with Mallory, my voice is louder than I mean it to be.
“So Casey wants me out, is that it? Can’t handle the ex hanging around? Please. As if I’d want you back.”
“You don’t need to be here.”
“I want to be here, isn’t that enough? What were you saying yesterday, about how of course you want me to spend more time with the kids? If this has taught me anything, it’s that I’ve been too cavalier. Yes, fine, I admit it. I’ve been inconsistent about parenting time. I get migraines, and you know when I don’t feel well what it’s like for me. And for them.” She pauses to stare at me, hard, making sure I understand her code. “But I’ve been through hell, these last two days. That’s my boy, my baby, I carried him in my womb and I thought we’d lost him. Let me unwind with my girls, Mike.”
“So you’re feeling well now? For how long?”
“Fuck off. I’m asking you a favor, and don’t think this isn’t humiliating for me, to have to beg to stay in the house that used to be mine to spend time with my own daughters, just so your new little girlfriend doesn’t feel any discomfort.” She makes a mock-sweet face and adds, “I promise not to cause any trouble.”
“Mal . . .”
“You want me to beg? Does that make you feel like a big man? Okay, fine.”
She gets down on her knees in front of me, hands balled up together as in prayer.
“Jesus, Mal. Get up. Fine. But, listen—”
“Daylight’s burning, Mike!” shouts my dad from the living room, and I have to leave it there.
My dad is ruffling Jewel’s hair as she hangs off his leg.
“Hey, Dad. Thanks.”
“All gassed up, warmed up, Cleveland programmed into the GPS. Your mother whipped up some sandwiches for the road.”
I check my watch. Four o’clock. It’ll be the dead of night before we get there, the wee hours before we get back, assuming we turn right around and don’t stay the night somewhere.
Casey has appeared now, hair slightly damp, smelling like something sweet and floral. I check back over my shoulder. Mallory has remained behind me in the kitchen, sopping up the spilled coffee.
“Hi, Dr. Turner,” Casey says.
“Hello, dear,” he replies politely. Courtly, almost, with that little nod of his head.
I wish he’d tell her not to call him by his title.
“Angel’s napping,” I explain to my dad.
I give Jewel another enormous hug, telling her to stay warm and do her homework and that she should go to sleep like a good girl tonight. “Listen to your mom. And Casey.”
I pull Casey in for a hug, but she’s stiff in my arms. She returns the hug, but it’s with formality. For show.
“Sorry,” I whisper in her ear. “Just one more day.”
Her smile is thin as she waves at me.
I walk out of my childhood home into my dad’s huge car and into the passenger seat, with snacks packed by my mother, and wonder if I’ll ever shake off this déjà vu.
Chapter 25
Casey
I need a cigarette.
This will cause Mallory to roll her eyes or w
orse. I will stink. It will blacken my lungs and yellow my teeth and give me throat cancer.
But I may tear out my throat otherwise. So.
I dread the cold, though the wind appears to have subsided, as the snow is falling still heavy but now more or less straight down instead of sideways.
So I leave Angel to her nap and Jewel and Mallory to their channel flipping on the couch and step out to the front porch, which is more sheltered than the back patio.
I test the cut on my lip with my tongue. It seems to have scabbed over, so that it must look like hell but will probably not split open, if I’m careful.
After several tries to light up, my cig finally catches and I suck in, both loving and hating that pinch in my lungs that comes before the light-headed relief.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t contact Tony again this weekend, not until I’d had a chance to decide what to do. How much to tell Michael and when. Ideally before Angel decides to let fly with my secrets.
But it’s too much to hold this all in. There aren’t enough cigarettes in the world to make this feel better. I’m a boiling pot with the lid bolted.
So I text him, as it’s safer than calling.
Dylan found. He’s fine. Thx.
Moments later, a return text: PTL—which I recognize as Tony’s texting shorthand for Praise the Lord—what happened?
Ran away. Long story.
Glad he’s OK. U?
SHE is still here. Makes me crazy.
Hang in.
I pause in the texting, finishing the last few drags of the cigarette, deciding what else to say, what I can reasonably type with my thumbs that will sum up everything.
Don’t know if M. still wants me. Want to stay. Hope I can.
Minutes go by with no response. He’s a volunteer firefighter, so he probably got called to a wreck.
I feel better having said it to someone, even though Tony may not have gotten the message yet, even though Tony is a relic from my past, a secret.
We were neighbors during my JinxCorp days. We’d get home at about the same time many nights. He was bartending and operating sound for local bands, so I not only saw him in the hallway in front of my apartment but some nights going out I’d go to his bar. Sometimes I’d see him with a band, fiddling with those knobs and sliding buttons for the budding rock stars who called him Gramps. He called them “Assholes” and smiled, so they assumed he meant it affectionately. For some of them, that was true.
He would later tell me that my rock-bottom moment was also his.
“You’re young, Edna Leigh,” he told me, when my stitches were itching under the bandage and he’d brought me some stuffed grape leaves and baba ghanoush from Olive Express. “If I did that, I bet I’d be dead, or paralyzed or something. I’m sixty-some, and I’m not made of rubber like you.”
“Ha, I only wish I’d bounced,” I said back, sounding cockier than I really felt.
He quit his bartending gig and gave up working sound. He went to work for his brother, though there’d been bad blood there for the longest time.
The cold finally gets to me. I should also check in with my mom. She never used to be the “checking up” type, but after Billy, everything changed.
In the house, Jewel has fallen asleep in her mother’s lap. Mallory’s asleep, too, her head tipped back on the couch. Not sure why she should be so tired, since she seems to be the only one who slept last night. Rather soundly, in fact. So soundly she couldn’t hear me knocking on the door just a few feet away, when I was locked out.
I prefer privacy for talking to my mother, anyway.
These two halves of my life will have to mesh if we get married, but I find it hard to imagine this.
The phone rings a few times before she picks up.
“Hi, baby,” she says.
“Hi, Mom.”
“How was your day?”
“Ummm . . .”
There are tears, now.
“Honey? What’s wrong?” I hear her clunk a glass down on the table. I imagine her sitting forward in her chair, concern written in the lines on her face, lines put there by me, Dad, Billy.
“It’s okay, now,” I tell her, wiping my face hard, shaking my head. “It’s just been a hard day.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
Her concern does me in.
I do tell her, some of it, anyway, an edited version of events, leaving out most of the stuff about Mallory. She interrupts my story with lots of “Oh, honey” and “Oh, baby,” and commiserating gasps.
Finally she says, “Thank God he’s all right. What happens now?”
I shrug, then remember she can’t see me. “I don’t know. I’ll have to let Michael deal with it, I suppose.”
“You can’t sit on the sidelines forever, if you really are going to marry him. Are you sure you still want to do that?”
“Yes,” I croak out. My throat feels raw.
“Why do you want to put yourself through all this? Edna, honey, you’re so young yet, you can have any kind of boyfriend you want, someone who can afford to pay attention to you, who doesn’t have to spend all his energy on other people, someone without an ex-wife. And don’t you want babies of your own?”
“Of course. And I’m going to, with him.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Mom—”
“He’s got teenagers, and he’s what, thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I guarantee you he’s reaching the end of his rope with kids, especially after this. Would you be willing to give up ever having a baby of your own, to stay with him? Is he worth that?”
“I can’t talk about this right now.”
“I just don’t want to see you throw away your youth by making your life harder than it has to be. Don’t do it just to win him. This is not some TV show with the guy as the prize.”
“So we’re watching The Bachelor again, are we? Will you give me a break, please? We’ve been through hell, here.”
“I’m so sorry my TV watching isn’t up to your lofty standards.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I thought that’s why you bolted town, to go off and live your dreams. This is what you dreamed of? Teenage stepkids who run away and sneer at you?”
“You make it sound so awful.”
“I’m only repeating what you tell me. Why don’t you call Pete? He misses you. We all do.”
“That’s what this is really about. You don’t like that I left.”
“Of course I don’t. I miss my children.”
I suck in a breath at her phrasing, comparing my absence and Billy’s. “I’m right here, on the phone.”
“And never here where I can see you. Are you eating? You sound thin.”
Despite it all, I have to laugh. “I sound thin?”
My mom laughs, too, and the tension falls away like leaves from an autumn tree.
“I hate to see it so hard for you,” she says, her voice softer, still warm with laughter.
“Life isn’t supposed to be easy. If it were easy, everyone would do it.”
“Smartass.”
“My ass has never been smarter.”
We banter like this for a few more minutes and talk about my cousin’s baby’s party and how it’s been rescheduled because of the storm, and while I keep up the prattle I’m entertaining my mother’s question to me: Would I choose Michael if it meant giving up having babies?
Shortly after Michael proposed, we were up late flipping channels while the kids slept. The fire was lit and the room was dark and the ruddy light danced across his face. I kept turning the ring around and around on my finger.
Steel Magnolias was on. Julia Roberts and Sally Field were fighting over Julia wanting to have a baby, despite her character’s delicate medical condition. Michael was about to flip past, but I took the remote out of his hand.
“I understand that,” I told him. “Wanting to have a baby of her own.”
“Real subtle, Casey,” he sai
d, smirking at me and taking the remote back.
“I was just talking about the movie.” Such a reporter. Always suspecting ulterior motives.
“But you do want to have a baby.” He said this matter-of-factly, flipping to a poker tournament on one of the ESPNs.
I shrugged, trying to act like I could take it or leave it, like he’d asked if I wanted some popcorn. It had taken a lot for Michael to risk getting married again. I feared if I pressured him, he would bolt like a skittish horse.
He playfully nudged me. “C’mon, you have baby radar. If there’s a baby within a mile of you, you’ll find it and start playing peekaboo.”
“I’m practicing for the peekaboo championship.”
“So you don’t want a baby with a broken-down old man like me?”
I was almost afraid to look at him, but I dared it. He was smiling at me softly.
“Well, I guess if you can manage it,” I said.
He kissed my forehead. “I think I’d manage just fine.” He moved on to my neck. “I’ll have a baby with you.”
I shivered with delight as he continued kissing my neck.
Then he said, “It would make a nice change to make a baby with someone not crazy.”
The delicious shivers evaporated, and I moved away from the reach of his lips. He looked at me with a wrinkled brow.
“I think I hear a kid on the steps,” I lied.
I know it was a favorable comparison. I know I should have ignored it and kissed him back. But his ex-wife, his old life, seeped always into our most intimate moments.
And now she’s here. In our house.
I hang up from my mother and return to the fridge to rummage for some dinner. The children will be hungry soon, and life must go on.
Chapter 26
Michael
The leather interior of my dad’s Navigator makes me feel like a dwarf. I’m not short, but compared to how cramped I feel in the hand-me-down Honda, there could be a conga line in here.
“Go on, lean the seat back,” my dad tells me. “Get some rest.”
At the push of a button the seat glides down soundlessly.
I jerk back to consciousness with my mouth feeling pasty and my stomach roiling with the confusing motion of rolling along while everything in my sight is stationary. For a few seconds I don’t understand any of it.
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