Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series

by Rivers, Mary Ann

  “I appreciate your honesty. With that hip, I’m not worried about it.”

  Sarah and PJ guffawed together, and Des smiled to herself. He made her a dome. He sent her sister flowers and a drawing.

  She’d kept him updated over email the last week, she’d even seen the back of him from the corner of her eye at the library, but she was avoiding him. Had been avoiding him for a week.

  Or, more like, avoiding how she pushed her keys into his hand and ignored how that wrinkle dove between his eyebrows and how he tried to touch her hand as she gave him the keys.

  She’d been thinking of her mom a lot, lately. Wondering why her family hadn’t visited hers more, why she didn’t know her mom’s side of the family better. Someday, she wanted to ask PJ about them, because he had gotten to know them much better over the last two years with his professional trips to their city. Maybe she could go to Pittsburgh and watch her brother play, sometime. See her aunt and grandmother. Her three cousins. Two of them had kids of their own.

  She’d realized, since she’d talked to Betty, that those were her mother’s people. She’d spent the last eighteen years wondering what her mom was like, and all this time there was a woman right next door who had coffee with her every morning, and two hours away an entire family who had known her mom their whole lives.

  She could have known. Maybe she could have even understood more about herself if what Betty said was true, and she was like her mom. She’d just never imagined that, looking at her mother’s pictures—dark-haired and pretty like her sister.

  It was the classic Dorothy revelation—the shoes you were already wearing were the magic that would take you home. Except, instead of ruby slippers, Des had a cranky landlady ex-babysitter.

  Her mom gave up her family for love, and Betty said she’d never regretted it.

  Hefin gave up his family for love, and it stalled out almost ten years of his life.

  Des felt like her brothers and sister might have started to gather together after the scatter this winter since their dad died and Sarah got hurt. But it was so new and tentative. It felt like every laugh they had together was a little tender.

  She’d kept to short emails to Hefin, she’d kept away because she wasn’t used to not knowing what she wanted.

  Or wanting two different things.

  She wanted Hefin. She wanted back in his bed. She wanted to curl up in her dome with him. She wanted his tea. She wanted to crisscross their legs together and talk about their day. She wanted how he looked as he came, his brow wrinkled and his eyes closed and those eyelashes tangled in the corners of his eyes and his top lip swollen and wet.

  It was also possible she wanted something from the world. Seeing how unlikely her dome looked in her little backyard had made her yearn, just a little, for other unlikely things.

  Hearing his voice, that singsongy little burr made her yearn in the same way.

  Sitting in this hospital room, eating candy with her family, made her yearn too, but for a different world. The one she’d thought she lost. The one that seemed like it had swirled away in a tornado and she would never get back to again.

  “If he likes you, what’s the problem, Desbaby?” This from PJ, who had now helped himself to the bed’s pillows and adjustment controls. He looked like a curly-headed sheik draped over the luxurious comforts of a silken tent. All he needed were a few dancing girls feeding him dates.

  “He’s going back to Wales,” Sarah said.

  PJ exchanged a look with Sarah. “So go to Wales. It’s nice, actually. I mean, the people were. Most of what I saw was from the windows of our tour bus. We played St. David’s concert hall in Cardiff. That’s the capital.”

  “He’s from Aberaeron, that’s on the coast too, but north.” She had spent an embarrassing amount of time studying the map of Wales.

  “Okay. So go there.”

  “I’ve known him barely a month, not even.”

  “I knew I wanted to marry Lacey Radcliffe the first time she walked through our back door.”

  “You were five years old. You don’t even remember the first time she walked through our back door.”

  “She was wearing a green dress with ties on the shoulders and it was all wet because she had noticed that our outdoor water spigot on the house had broken and was spraying water everywhere instead of feeding it through the sprinkler. She had tried to turn it off, herself, and when she couldn’t she knocked on the back door. Mom got her a towel, and she sat down next to me at the kitchen table. I gave her my cookie. I’ll always give her my cookie.”

  “Holy shit, PJ,” Sarah said.

  PJ looked at Des. “Barely a month is plenty of time. If you know, you know.”

  “Lacey lives in our neighborhood. Hefin lives in Wales. You can know and not be able to do anything about geography.”

  “If Lacey moved to Wales, I’d figure out how to play cello in Wales. Fuck that, if she moved to the goddamned moon, I’d sit on a rocket and follow her. Play in the Martian orchestra.”

  “The Martian orchestra would be on Mars,” Sarah said.

  “Whatever.”

  “I think you mean Lunar orchestra.”

  “I said, Sarah, what. Ev. Er. Doesn’t matter. That’s where I’d go.”

  “You’d go to the moon so she could continue not giving you the time of day on the moon?” Sarah asked.

  “That’s right. Actually, I’d be kind of stoked if she moved to the moon because my odds might be better there.”

  “Mmm. No.” Sarah shook her head.

  “Astronauts,” Sarah and Des said almost together, and laughed. The kind of synchrony she’d walk away from if she left home.

  “Fucking astronauts.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” said Sarah.

  Des suddenly realized that PJ was here, with them, playing in the Lakefield Symphony, not because he was born and raised here and had family here but because Lacey was here.

  He’d been the only one of them to go away to school, to the Boston Conservatory on a full-tuition scholarship, he’d graduated from high school two years early and made it in. There had been a story in the paper about him and everything.

  When he had scrambled so much after he finished to be accepted into Lakefield Symphony’s program, she had really thought it was about his family.

  She knew he’d had other offers, but didn’t even know where.

  Her brother was completely fucking nuts.

  Des handed Hefin’s card back to Sarah. “Well, for now, Wales might as well be the moon.”

  “Okay,” Sarah said. “But don’t you have this hot Welshman at your disposal for the next month or so? Why the hell are you here? My bed bath is not going to be that exciting.”

  “You’ll warn me before that happens, right?” PJ asked.

  “I want to be here with you guys.”

  “It’s boring here, and he gives you his cookies.”

  “Also, Desbaby”—PJ leaned forward—“did Betty seriously give you Marvin’s sweet ride to drive around?”

  Des laughed. “Yeah, she did. Mainly because she and Rennie busted Dad’s limo.”

  “Man”—PJ flopped onto his back—“The Violet Thunder rides again.”

  “You should totally pick up your Welshman and make out in The Violet Thunder, Des”—Sarah laughed—“as long as you are totally prepared for Betty to know. Because she’ll know.”

  “Call the old guy,” PJ said. “He’s not getting any younger.”

  Des couldn’t call him because her phone still couldn’t make outgoing calls. But she opened her laptop and went to his last painfully polite email asking how she was from just a couple of hours ago. She toggled to “Reply.”

  Sarah’s doing okay tonight. Want to meet me around seven at my place? We could go for a walk.

  His reply was almost instant.

  There’d be nothing better.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “I can’t believe you ate dinner with Betty.” Des took the hint of Hefin’s fi
ngertips brushing over the back of her hand and laced her fingers through his.

  “She talks about you. She puts sugar on her meat. An easy decision actually.”

  Des looked at Hefin. It was the first time she’d seen him completely clean-shaven, and he’d gotten a haircut as well. Where it had been trimmed close around his neck, there was a tender-looking sun line. She’d been wanting to put her mouth there while she rubbed her palm over his exposed jaw. He looked younger, the squinting lines at his eyes deeper, his eyes darker.

  He’d put on a shirt with a collar, too. It was white and looked soft, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. It followed his body close, like the kind of shirt you’d wear to a club. He’d tucked it into worn jeans and something about his butter-soft-looking leather belt looked obscene cinched through the frayed loops.

  He’d dressed up for her. Possibly got a shave and a haircut though they’d only made their plans an hour ago. He smelled like something she wanted to put her tongue against.

  In contrast, she was wearing five-year-old cargo pants and a DISCOVER LAKEFIELD! T-shirt that she had caught as it was blasted from a T-shirt cannon during a local minor-league baseball game.

  She wondered if she casually unclipped her hair from her barrette, would there be a barrette dent. Probably.

  His hand was big with lots of calluses and held hers tightly.

  “So did Mrs. Lynch spill all my secrets?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did she tell you about the time I tried to pick up an opossum that I found on our back stoop and it bit me in the nose and I had to get stitches and rabies vaccinations?”

  “Is that what that scar on your nose is about?”

  “Yep. I was mauled by a wild animal.”

  Hefin leaned over and kissed her nose and he might as well have had his tongue in her mouth and his hand between her legs because it felt as awesome.

  They were walking around her neighborhood, and Ohio was providing perfect spring weather for once. It was just starting to get dark, but not so dark the streetlights had switched on, just the kind of dark that was sort of transparently navy blue.

  The air was soft. Whatever the heck Hefin’s devious barber had put on his skin kept floating around and making her horny when she was supposed to be thinking about what to say to him about important stuff.

  The future. How the world was small, but not really small enough. Geography.

  Of course maybe none of that had to matter on a beautiful spring night like this one. Maybe because beautiful spring nights in central Ohio were so rare that it was easy to forget they even existed until one came along and reminded you of all the other beautiful and perfect spring nights, most of which seemed to have happened when you were a kid, and maybe the only thing you were supposed to do was enjoy it.

  Maybe she could pretend that she didn’t hear anyone calling her home to wash up for dinner for just one more minute.

  Maybe she could ride her bike around the block just one more time.

  This moment was a bit of a free pass, wasn’t it? Her sister was better, her brother was with her, and they were watching a movie on his laptop as if the whole world was pausing and allowing a moment of grace.

  She squeezed Hefin’s hand, and he squeezed back.

  A square of yellow light appeared on the sidewalk in front of them, and she automatically looked into the front windows of the house that had turned on their lights. It was a family she didn’t know—a lot of new families were moving into the neighborhood lately, lured by the cheap real estate—and she watched the woman put a baby in one of those little swing things while the man turned on their TV.

  They sat together in a big armchair instead of on the couch, his arms around her.

  Seriously, was everything making her cry, lately?

  “You can see right in,” Hefin said.

  “Yeah. I loved that when I was a kid. I mean, I probably still love that. Walking around in the summers, your bedtime much later than it got to be during school, looking into everyone’s front windows and talking to people sitting on their stoops.”

  “It’s not dissimilar where I’m from, actually. It’s a small village, and a traditional Welsh one. Almost everyone speaks Welsh. Everyone certainly knows everyone. There’s a bit over a thousand people in my village, I’m certain I know all of them. Summers were exciting, growing up, because all the tourists would come in and fill the inns and the hotels and resorts. New faces, new people, new gossip.”

  “That’s how you met Jessica.”

  “That’s right. I was taking a bit of a holiday, in my own village, that summer. I’d finished my internship and didn’t have a thing to do until September.”

  She laughed. “So you got married.”

  “Obviously I can’t be left at loose ends.”

  They stepped over a huge root breaking through the cement of the sidewalk. “Do you want to see the house I grew up in?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s just another block up this way. If the Massersons are home, maybe they’ll let us look around. They haven’t changed much yet since they bought it this winter.”

  She pulled him down the sidewalk as familiar as her own face. Her neck prickled and she realized she was more nervous showing him the little house where she grew up than introducing him to her sister, then her brother.

  On this beautiful night it was just her showing him the little pieces that made her. The corner of the world she belonged in.

  Where she lived.

  She stopped in front of the brown-clapboard bungalow. Everything was still the same. The seven in the wrought-iron house numbers, nailed over the porch gable, was still crooked. DeeDee Masserson was on the porch, sitting in the old metal glider that had always been there.

  “Hey, DeeDee!” DeeDee had been in Lacey and Sarah’s class though they didn’t run with her. She’d participated in a cosmetology vocation program in high school that kept her off campus most of the time. She’d opened a small salon in their neighborhood that always looked busy.

  “Hey, Des! What’s up? You guys wanna beer? The kids are in bed and Mike just left to pick up a shift.”

  Des pulled Hefin up the walk and checked on him. He was looking at everything, his eyes open and soft. Where his collar was open, some chest hair curled out. She wanted to stick her hand in, tug it, run her hand over the jut of his collarbone and the smooth curve of the muscle in his shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at her and it made her blush.

  “I just wanted to show my friend the house, if that’s okay? Promise I won’t wake up the kids.”

  “Oh, honey, you go on in. Nothing could wake those kids, anyway. There’s a Disney movie blasting in Mikey’s room, and he’s snoring right over it.”

  “Thanks, DeeDee.”

  She stepped onto the porch and DeeDee stood up; she still had on the black pants and white shirt she always wore at her salon. Little bits of cut-up hairs glinted on her pants in the porch light. This week, she had a big, bright pink streak in the front of her hair, which was done up in an old-fashioned pinup-girl way. It fit her figure. “Show your guy the place on the porch.”

  “Okay.”

  She backed up and pulled him into a crouch on the cement porch, right before the threshold. Written in the cement it said:

  The Burnsides

  Patrick

  Marie

  Sam

  Sarah

  Destiny

  And Paul “PJ”

  All around their names were handprints pushed into the cement, and a little baby’s footprint for PJ. Des traced her little girl’s handprint, then pressed her hand into her mother’s. Her fingertips overshot her mom’s.

  She realized that if her mom were still alive, she’d be taller than she was. That she’d have to lean down to give her a hug and a kiss.

  She could still remember what it felt like to curl into her lap.

  “I love that, I told Mike we’re gonna leave that just as it is, and then when we replace the walk comi
n’ up to the porch this summer, we’ll do the same in the square just in front of the steps before it dries. Won’t that be awesome? Two Southie families livin’ large in the same place all through the years. I love that shit.”

  “Yeah, thanks, DeeDee. I love that too.” Des stood up and gave DeeDee an impulsive hug, breathing in the perfumes and chemicals of the salon. DeeDee squeezed back.

  “Man, I miss your dad, Des. It’s been nice seeing his limo around the neighborhood again. You know he took me to my cosmetology-school graduation in the limo? Me and my mom.”

  “I remember. You always cut his hair for free—he loved that.”

  “He had great hair, too. I love redheads. So introduce me to your man, here.”

  Hefin stepped from behind Des and reached out his hand. “Hefin Thomas, at your service.”

  DeeDee stuck her hand out and grinned conspiratorially at Des. “DeeDee Masserson. Nice to meetcha.”

  She looked at Des. “Hol-ee shit, girl.”

  Des laughed. Hefin stuck his hands in his pockets and she could see his blush even in the yellow porch light. “We won’t be long, DeeDee.”

  She waved her beer bottle at them. “Take as long as you want. Don’t kill yourselves trippin’ over the mess.”

  Des opened the screen door, the creak so familiar she shouldn’t have even registered it, but for the first time, she really did feel like she was walking into another family’s house.

  The feeling didn’t go away as she stood with Hefin in the living room. The built-in cabinets and green-brick fireplace meant that everything mostly looked the same, even with another family’s furniture, but she didn’t feel all empty and heartsick like she had the last few times she’d visited.

  She just felt interested. She looked around and her gaze landed on a paint-chip strip taped to the wall with a deep, rich green circled in Sharpie. She wondered what it would look like in here with the walls painted that color and thought it would look good. Old-timey.

  “It’s nice,” Hefin said. “I can’t believe a family of six lived here, it’s quite small, but it has lots of lovely woodwork.”

  “That’s why Dad said he’d bought it. He always meant to get around to stripping and refinishing all the woodwork and the built-ins but I think four kids got the best of him.”