The Things We Didn't Say

by Kristina Riggle

  I’m so happy I jump into Dylan’s room.

  He’s putting his sax back in the case, and he looks soooo sad. I run over and jump on him.

  “Hey, take it easy, sis,” he says.

  I’m so proud he hardly ever stutters when he talks to me. He says it’s because I’m a magic Jewel.

  I know I’m not really. But I like for him to say it.

  I lie on my back on his bed and kick the wall with my feet a little.

  “That was really smart of you to run away,” I tell him.

  “What?” he asks me, his face all wrinkled up like he thinks I’m nuts.

  “Cuz Mom is back now. Good work,” I say in my teacherish voice.

  He sits down next to me and puts his hand on my belly. “J., I didn’t do this on purpose. Not to make Mom come home. And I—”

  He bites his lip, and I stop kicking the wall. That’s his “I don’t want to tell you something bad” face. I saw it when my hamster died.

  He goes, “I don’t think she’s here to stay. She and Dad fight all the time, remember? That didn’t change.”

  I sit up now to face him, sitting “crisscross applesauce” like in school. “No, it’s different, can’t you tell? Mom’s being calm.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Anyway, J. It wasn’t always very good when she was home. Remember?”

  I cross my arms. “You’re harshing my buzz.”

  He cracks up. I wasn’t trying to be funny. “What?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Some movie I was watching the last time we were at Mom’s place. It means you’re ruining it, right? Did I say it wrong?”

  Dylan tries hard to stop laughing. I like seeing him smile, even if it’s because I did something dumb. “No, it’s not wrong, just . . . weird coming from a kid. You probably shouldn’t say that.”

  “Oh, it’s a swear?”

  “No, not a swear, just . . . Don’t say it, okay? It’s not nice talk for a little kid.”

  “Bees buzz.”

  “Yeah. They do.” He shakes his head, smiling again. There’s a joke I don’t get. I can’t wait until I’m grown up and I’m in on all the jokes.

  I stand up and start bouncing again. “Take me downstairs, Dylan! Horsey ride, like when I was little.” I jump on his back, and he goes ooof! But I know he’s just kidding. He’s way bigger than me.

  So we gallop down the stairs.

  The sun is out, and everyone’s home. I can’t help myself but leap around the room some more. I’m a frog, and the furniture is lily pads.

  Dad’s putting on his coat.

  “Where are you going, Daddy?” I ask him, and leap up into his arms. He swings me around in a hug, but it’s a small swoop. He must be really tired.

  “Just for a walk. I need some fresh air.”

  “It’s cold!”

  “I’ll bundle up, kid.” He plants a smack on the top of my head.

  He stops when he hears the creaky steps. Casey comes down to the bottom of the stairs, and they trade a really long, serious look before Dad goes outside.

  “Mom!” I shout. “Can I have some Halloween candy? Pretty please?”

  “Sure, honey! Go right ahead.”

  I bounce on into the kitchen and get my bag of candy out of the pantry. Oh, there’s a red jawbreaker. I like the sound they make when they rattle on my teeth.

  When I bounce back in—it’s a sour one, it makes me pucker—this time I’m a kangaroo.

  Dylan’s already back upstairs, and my mom and Casey are having a secret adult conversation over by the computer. Casey still looks really sad. Maybe my mom is telling her that she’s moving back in for good.

  Casey glances up at me and at first it’s like she doesn’t notice I’m there, then she says, “Hey, J. Don’t bounce on the couch with candy in your mouth.”

  “Oh, leave her alone,” Mom says.

  Yay! I can keep hopping! Everything feels so good this morning, it’s like I could touch the ceiling if I jump high enough. So I try, leaning my head way, way back and reaching my fingers up, up, up . . .

  Chapter 42

  Casey

  She glares at me, all trace of girlfriend kindness from last night gone like frost in the sun.

  “Are you going to tell him, or should I?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “About your secret past. About your boyfriend, Tony.”

  At this she produces my phone. I make to snatch it out of her hand, but she thrusts it into her back pocket. I can’t tackle her for it now, not with Jewel bouncing on the couch next to us.

  “Hey, J. Don’t bounce on the couch with candy in your mouth.”

  “Oh, leave her alone,” Mallory says, waving at Jewel.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “It rang in the pocket of your coat when you got back from your smoke break.”

  “You have no right.”

  She smirks at me. “I don’t care if I do or not.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Does Mike know about him?”

  I don’t answer, which is answer enough for her.

  She folds her arms and smiles at me like a predator, all teeth. “It won’t matter then, who he is. Michael, if you haven’t noticed, is a bit of a prude about things. I tried to remove the stick from his ass for seventeen years and couldn’t do it. So, good luck with explaining to him why you kept this innocent friendship a secret.”

  And I’m back to Thursday morning again, the hope of a life with Michael and his kids whirling down the drain. I look down at my ring. It catches the bright light bouncing off the snow outside the window.

  She’s right. Michael grants no mercy. There is right and wrong and lying is wrong and hiding the truth is just as bad.

  My heart swells up, and my eyes dart around the room of this house, which now that I’m about to lose it again is not so much drafty and old but inviting and homey, with its archways and moldings, and the kids’ things scattered around like leaves on an autumn lawn.

  A hard thud in the living room draws my attention, and I see Jewel on the floor.

  She’s flopping like a fish, eyes bulging and mouth in a large O, but she makes not a sound.

  I grab Jewel from behind around her waist, hold my fist at the base of her rib cage, and start thrusting. I’m dimly aware of feet pounding down the steps, frantic shouting.

  Jewel is thrashing in my arms, panicky.

  “Honey, I’ve got you,” I say. “Hang on.”

  I thrust again, again.

  The candy shoots out, bulletlike, and skitters across the floor. Jewel makes a huge gasp, then coughs, and gasps some more between terrified sobs.

  Jewel turns in to me and throws her arms around my neck.

  I close my eyes and hold her, letting her tears soak my shirt, and I cry on her hair, and we cling together in a wet embrace. The door flings open and there’s shouting and hysteria between Mallory and Michael, but I’m not listening. I’m holding Jewel and crying for what was almost lost to everyone, and is still lost to me.

  Michael takes her from my arms, and I let him. She belongs to him, after all. Not me. His coat is still cold from his walk outside. He shrugs out of it awkwardly, trying to hold Jewel at the same time, while Mallory frets, uselessly smoothing Jewel’s hair, straightening her glasses.

  I notice Angel and Dylan standing under the living room archway. Dylan’s face is grim and hard, and he’s got one arm around Angel’s shoulders; they are nearly the same height. They’ve grown so much in just the two years I’ve known them. In two more years, when I’m barely a memory, a blip in some snapshots, they’ll be practically adults.

  Michael has lowered down onto the couch, where Jewel cuddles up on his lap. Mallory kneels at Michael’s feet to get a look into her daughter’s tear-streaked face. Red sticky goo from the jawbreaker had leaked out of her mouth and caked on her chin. I go into the kitchen to fetch a wet towel.

  I star
t to wipe Jewel’s chin, but Mallory snatches the towel from me to do it herself.

  “What happened?” Michael finally says.

  “She was jumping on the couch with a candy in her mouth,” I tell him evenly. “She must have fallen, and it got caught in her throat.”

  “Why did you let her do that?” he says. He’s actually asking me that question. Me. The one who did the Heimlich and saved her life.

  “I didn’t.” I weigh what to say next. I could swallow my words and say nothing. I could stay neutral, I could even tacitly accept responsibility. But no. I’ve been doing that all along. Much good as that’s done me. “Your ex-wife thought it was a great idea, though.”

  “How dare you!” she shouts, leaping to her feet. “I told her to stop doing it just before she fell.”

  My first instinct is to look at Jewel for confirmation of my story, but I glance away: she’s a child and should not be put on the witness stand.

  And it doesn’t matter. I can see from Michael’s face he’s made up his mind about me.

  “N-not true.”

  We all turn in surprise to Dylan.

  “I saw it. M-M-Mom told Jewel it didn’t matter, she could keep jumping.”

  Jewel nods her head in the circle of Michael’s arms. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she croaks out. “I didn’t know it would happen.”

  Dylan screws up his face, concentrating on his next words. “Casey was awesome. A hero.”

  “Oh, some hero!” shouts Mallory. “Some hero getting plastered when her stepson is missing, talking to her boyfriend on the phone, too.”

  I should point out that I was not plastered while Dylan was missing, but late at night, after he was found, when everyone was asleep. I should point out that Tony is not my boyfriend.

  I should point out I’ve just saved his daughter’s life, and the man I thought I’d marry has yet to thank me.

  “She was awesome,” Dylan repeats, and I see his fists tighten. “You just stood there and s-s-stared.”

  “I was afraid!”

  “Y-y-you . . .” He stops, scrunches his eyes, and sucks in a breath. When he opens his eyes, he says with clarity and volume, “You were useless.”

  “My own son turns on me, now. I get it. What about you, Angel, huh? You think Casey’s so much better than me?”

  Angel folds her arms and tosses her hair, an echo of her mother. “She does have a boyfriend. I read it in her diary.”

  Michael startles at this, visibly.

  “Casey?”

  He’s wounded again. He strokes Jewel’s hair, and in that moment it doesn’t look like he’s comforting her so much as soothing himself. Jewel looks at me sideways, her glasses crooked again.

  They all stare at me, waiting. A fresh wave of nausea rolls through me, reminding me of my bender last night, of my history, of what I used to be that Angel and Mallory have opened up now.

  I stare past them all outside, at the people clearing their driveways, tossing aside the snow.

  I walk up the stairs slowly, feeling dreamlike and oddly serene. It’s an easy thing to retrieve my duffle bag, which was already packed. My computer is already inside, too. I’ve probably got angry clients trying to e-mail me, so I should go find some free WiFi soon.

  My books and things I will let go. My clothes that I didn’t put in the bag can be replaced by one trip to Target.

  It’s noisy downstairs, but I don’t really hear it. It sounds like a loud movie, muffled by the floor.

  I pick up the picture from the top of the dresser, consider whether to take it. I place it facedown, instead. My ring slips off easily now, and I leave it on top of the overturned frame.

  My vision is blurred as if through a scrim. I only recognize Michael by his size and shape as he blocks my path on the landing in the curve of the staircase. I nudge him aside, forcefully, when he won’t move at first.

  I drift down the steps. The kids in my peripheral vision look like angels to me, out of focus and distant.

  I should get my phone back, but I won’t. I’ll get a new one.

  Change my e-mail, change my number, change my address. Maybe I’ll be Eddie again. I liked that nickname, better than Edna at least.

  I stroke Jewel’s hair once before I go, cup her cheek for a moment, which still feels soft like baby skin, but that might be a trick of my senses, still clinging to the hope I’d had for a baby in this house.

  There are voices, but they are babble to me.

  I close the door and walk down the porch with a heavy step. The whole world seems muffled by the wet snow as I walk away, up the hill, turning east, then north again, then I stop paying attention because what difference does it make?

  I’m not wearing my boots, so before long my feet are cold, my toes numb like the rest of me.

  I walk, and smoke, past the Wealthy Street Bakery, full of happy weekend couples, past the Literary Life Bookstore, these landmarks I’d started to feel belonged to me, in my new life.

  I have no phone, and no one knows where I am. Out of my numb haze comes a blast of giddiness. No one knows where I am!

  Minutes, maybe an hour, pass as I coast on my anonymity. Up ahead I see a huge rectangle of glass with a neon Miller sign hanging in the middle, a cavelike interior beyond. Without a thought I swing open the door and step into the comforting dark of a neighborhood dive. Not my neighborhood, and the patrons can tell, but they merely look up, note my presence, and look back to their tables and drinks and video Keno.

  I seek out a corner table. The middle-aged waitress recognizes my silence as a fortress. She bothers me as little as possible, no doubt well versed in the body language of those who’d like to get quietly drunk. As it’s afternoon, I go with my standard afternoon drink and order a beer on tap. There’s a college football game on a small TV in the corner. I don’t know who’s playing, and I don’t care.

  The beer glass is cold in my hand. The bubbles pop against my nose. It’s more bitter than I remember, and for a moment my stomach heaves, No, not again, but soon settles down to the inevitability of it, the familiarity of it. Wake up, liver. Back to work.

  I lose myself in the football game. I used to watch with Billy all the time, and he’d explain offsides and downs. I pick a team to root for based on the color of uniform, to keep myself interested, so I don’t think too much.

  But the game ends, and my cash runs out. It’s getting dark already.

  I should call Tony. I could borrow a phone, and it’s a local call. But I feel myself falling away from him, too, because he would be disappointed in me. Drinking twice in two days, and this time I’ve got no one to blame.

  So I walk some more, not knowing how long, struck that it doesn’t matter now. Kid bedtimes, homework routines, band practices, all of it has winked out of my life at once. It’s only me again, and no one cares when I do anything.

  Pondering this, I unfasten my watch and drop it in the snow.

  I investigate the details of my surroundings as if I’ve never seen them before, as if I haven’t cycled past these places a hundred times. But everything looks different when you’re walking. Closer. Real.

  I start to consider where to spend the night. I figure there’s room on my credit card for a hotel room, if I don’t go anywhere fancy. But that would require talking to people. I don’t want people now. I wonder about overpasses and cardboard boxes. I remember learning in Girl Scouts when I was a kid how if caught in the elements you could dig a trench in the snow and be actually quite warm.

  The beer has made me sleepy, and the cold has been so constant now I don’t feel it anymore.

  From the corner of my eye, I notice a car trailing me. I’m down a side street, I realize. I don’t know which street. I haven’t been paying attention.

  The car pulls almost even with me, and my heart seizes up. The rest of me is unplugged, like someone’s cut a cord between my animal self, which wants to preserve my safety, and my higher brain, which is only mildly interested.

  I hear the cru
nch of a door swing open and my feet take over, forcing me to a sloppy, numb, tipsy run.

  “Casey!”

  I turn before I think better of it, and it’s Michael. It’s his car, with the door open.

  He holds out a hand, beseeching. I just stare at him.

  “Please, it’s at least warm in the car.”

  I shrug and allow my feet to carry me back to the car, though the rest of my soul feels banished and locked away, somewhere far from here.

  Chapter 43

  Michael

  Casey didn’t get the heavy house door closed all the way, and it swings back open, revealing a sliver of white outdoors, letting in tendrils of cold. I shove the door closed, hard, and the sound punctures the quiet in the wake of her departure.

  The color has come back to Jewel’s face, and I’m sickened with myself, suddenly, that Casey saved her life, actually saved her, and all I did was criticize.

  “See what you all did!” shouts Dylan. I startle at this. “You drove her away!”

  “And good riddance!” retorts Angel. “You should have seen what she wrote in her diary about me. All the while pretending to like me just because of Dad and secretly hating me. I expect that kind of crap at school, but not from a grown-up in my own house! Some stepmother. She called me a bitch!”

  “Watch your language!” I shout back. “Jewel is right here.”

  Mallory scoffs. “Oh, like she hasn’t heard worse a hundred times.”

  I turn to her. “Yes, and that’s exactly the problem.”

  She throws up her hands. “And we’re back to Bad Mallory again, how surprising.”

  “Well, you make it so easy.”

  “STOP!”

  This is Dylan. His face is florid and visibly sweaty. Angel has stepped away from him, looking askance as if he might bite her.

  “I can’t take it anymore! Dad, you criticize all the time, and Angel’s so mean”—Angel tries to protest, but Dylan steams ahead past her, not appearing to notice—“and Mom is hysterical and no one listens to me and I’m just tired of it! I wish you’d never found me!”

  “Well, fine,” Mallory spits out. “Maybe I should go, just go forever, you’ll never have to deal with my hysteria again.” She snatches her purse up off the desk at the front of the room, but I recognize the act. She doesn’t intend to go, she probably never did.