“Okay, quick, come in.”
Des pulled the door shut against the wind picking up. “Holy shit. Did you see the sky?”
“Yeah. There are already tornado warnings for the counties south of us, but they think that stuff will miss us. We’re just getting rain and high winds.”
“Let me get you a towel and I’ll start some coffee.”
“I’ll take the towel, but after my twelve, I’m vibrating. Skip the coffee.”
Lacey was still in her scrubs from the hospital and collapsed on a kitchen chair. “I peeked in on Sarah.”
Des handed her a towel. “Yeah? I was there last night, but because of the weather I hadn’t made it over there.”
“Did she tell you she got her MRI date for her preop images?”
Des grinned. “Yeah. She said they’re just to help the surgeon plan but that it will definitely be a revision, not a replacement, and probably not as involved as they originally thought.”
“It’s all good news. She’ll have to wean from her blood thinners, but I bet she’ll get a surgery date for early this summer. I’m kind of thinking she’ll get discharged in the next couple of weeks and continue PT outpatient before her surgery, as long as she continues like this.”
“That’s what Sam was thinking, too.”
“She’s still planning on discharging to Betty’s?”
Des took the towel from Lacey and started folding it, then refolding it. “Yep.”
“So that’s kind of crazy.”
“She won’t move in with me.” Des experimented with folding the towel in thirds versus fourths.
“I know.”
“Like, she refused, then called Betty without telling anyone, knowing Betty would completely take over.”
“I know that, too.”
“And when I ate dinner with Betty the other night to work out a potential schedule with her so that I could help her with Sarah, she told me she had it handled.”
“Yeah.”
“Sarah won’t talk to me about it, not even a little bit.”
“Good.”
“Right. Wait. What?”
Lacey looked at her and gave her one of her smiles that curled up the corners of her mouth and curled down the corners of her eyes. Pretty and wise-like. Those smiles always made her nervous because they usually meant she wanted to tell her something that was for her own good, like the time right after she graduated and was drunk on her new job and potential new paycheck and almost leased a fancy car.
That smile was always right, but it was never fun.
“You know I love you, right?”
“Shit.”
Lacey grinned, then. “Have you talked to Hefin, lately?”
Des looked away. She had planted clematis all around the dome yesterday, thinking, that way, even once the twigs underneath had started to give, the clematis vine would be strong enough to stake into the general shape of the dome. Then there would always be a dome, even once it was a ghost dome. She’d cried the entire time.
Then she’d been angry with herself for crying, especially since she had also gone out to lunch with Sam that day, and he’d seemed almost happy, not that she lived her life to see Sam happy, but it was good to see.
He and Lacey had gotten approval for the grant to open their low-income health clinic in their neighborhood, and the approval meant they could move faster than they had been and even look at opening to real patients maybe in the fall. Which meant by then, Sarah would be through her surgery, and maybe Sam could back off his hours at the urgent care, and things would be just a little more settled.
She could maybe look at a visit to meet Hefin for a trip, maybe. If it was before he went to China, since she wasn’t sure she could afford a trip there.
Or if he’d want her to come.
“He called me last night, the middle of the night his time. He couldn’t sleep.”
She traced a loop of fake grain in the tabletop. He’d called her, his voice gravelly with his insomnia and sounding so clear and so close that it was devastating.
“Are you in bed?” he’d asked, and she was. Holding the slick surface of the phone against her ear so tight she could hear him breathe.
“I am. It’s a little early. But it’s raining, sleeping weather.”
“It’s raining here, too.”
She had absorbed that. Had loved that, actually. It put something irresistible inside of her imagination.
A single stroke of something on the canvas.
She could see Hefin, and she could see him in bed, the covers up around his ears like he preferred them, rain sliding down the outside of a window. The sound of it, like it sounded right here. “What did you do yesterday?”
“Very glamorous. I pulled up dying shrubbery from my mum’s garden and helped her stake where she wanted a new fence. Then Dad and I scrubbed his boat deck. I walked to the shore and all day, I did what I always do.”
“You thought of me.”
“I did. Yesterday I thought of how you look when you’re workin’ on something on your computer, how your forehead goes to a mass of wrinkles and if it gets very difficult and bothersome, you chew your hair.”
“I can see why you can’t stop thinking about me.”
Then they’d talked a little more, but like always, stopped before it might have gotten going in any direction. He hadn’t told her he loved her again, or asked if he would see her, or if she would visit.
One night, she had yearned for him so much it tipped over into horniness and she had stared at his contact page in her phone for almost an hour, daring herself to push it and have what would undoubtedly be incredibly hot phone sex with him and not feel awful about it because, of course, if she would do that, it would mean she was admitting what it was she wanted.
“So you’re still talking to him?”
Des looked at Lacey. “Almost every day, somehow. Nothing deep or important.”
“I want to talk to you about Sam. And other stuff, too, but let’s start with him.”
Des felt a belly swoop of alarm. “Is he okay?”
Lacey blew out a breath. “Yes. I mean, not really, but he’s not suffering in the way that you mean, in some acute and awful way, in any way either one of us can do anything about. Is he working too much? Yes. Is all the shit he has to figure out getting in the way of his living life in any kind of normal way? Yes. But this is his shit. This has been his shit forever. That man still has shit from when he was a teenager, from when—”
“When Mom died.”
“Yeah. He was in high school, and you know, they were really close.”
“I know.” Des had been so glad of this new closeness she felt to her mom, years after she died, without even significant experience of living to back up the closeness. She’d never been able to imagine how it was for Sam and Sarah.
“Anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Sam as a way to tell you that I think Sam, from here on out, is going to have to deal with Sam. Sarah, things are moving in the right direction, and she’s going to have to deal with Sarah. If anything, Sam and Sarah have shit they need to work out.”
“Okay, but—”
“Wait, I’m on a roll, and you know how hard it is for me to get on a roll since I’ve been a mom and can never complete a full sentence without having to answer a question about car robots or if earthworms feel pain. And also, PJ. I mean, Paul. He’s always okay. He can be completely delusional about some things”—and at this, Lacey actually blushed—“but I think he benefited from watching all of you act completely crazy for so many years and by being smarter than all of us. Or something.”
“I’m confused.”
Lacey ran her fingers through her wet hair. “Hold, on. I am, too. You know I kind of hate confrontation.”
“This is a confrontation.”
“Yeah, it is. I’ve been thinking, lately, watching you be totally miserable in your self-denial, that it’s pretty stupid to hang out here and wait for something those people are
n’t ever going to give you when you have Hefin waiting around in someplace that has to be way cooler than Lakefield, because almost every place on earth is, ready to give you whatever it is you want.”
“I’m stupid for … Waiting for Sam and Sarah and PJ to what?”
“To notice you.” Lacey reached for Des’s hand, and did that smile-eye-corner thing. “To notice you, Des. To notice you and get you and see you. They’ll love you forever, but you don’t have to grow old around here playing peacemaker and jumping in the middle of all of their bullshit so they give you some kind of meaningful time of day.
“I love your brothers and sister, but they’re assholes. Just in the regular way that brothers and sisters are assholes, nothing to get all psych couch about. If Paddy and Marie were still around, yeah, they’d notice you. They’d see you. I know that’s why it was so hard on you when Paddy died. Your parents, basically, exist to notice you. Like, it’s their job to stop everything they’re doing and look at you jump off the diving board in swimming class for the ten thousandth time in a fucking row.
“But no matter what you do, they won’t really see you because they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re living their lives. They’re trying to get someone to see them, too, and it doesn’t mean anything to them if you see them. And you know what? I don’t think it really means anything to you if they see you. I think you just think that it would mean something to you.”
Des cleared her throat. This was way more painful than the hard truth about a car lease.
“You think I’m just some typical middle sister waving her hands around trying to get everyone to look at me?”
“Well, that’s the really ‘come to Jesus’ way to put it, I’d like to think I’m getting a finer point on all of this.”
“Okay.”
Lacey squeezed Des’s hand, and Des tried not to feel angry and yelled at and tearful. “Look, you’re miserable. I can’t even stand it. When you left the other night, Nathan asked me if I needed to give you a dose of the stuff that makes you poop.”
“Oh. Awesome. You think I’m miserable and Nathan thinks I’m constipated.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Constipated?”
“Knock it off.”
Des put her head down on the kitchen table and the laminate was cool against her hot cheek. Lacey rubbed through her hair and just for a moment she drifted.
She thought of hands with little snagging calluses sifting through her hair. She thought of how she stood in line for coffee the other day and realized that she might never be able to eat another donut.
She thought of how Hefin felt under her hands when they were under the covers and couldn’t get enough of each other. “I’m miserable, Lacey. I’m so fucking miserable.”
“There you go.”
“I just—I don’t even know where to start. I hurt him. I let him go. Now I spend nearly every hour of the day working on my new, supertiny client list and trying to building a bigger one and fretting about how long Sam’s computer is going to last and how long to wait after billing a client to expect a check and if it will be enough for rent and a new laptop. The library gig’s over, and I won’t hear for a week if they’ll accept my bid so I can be their ad hoc developer. Thank God Hefin paid for a year’s contract on my phone, or I still wouldn’t have one. And Sarah. And Sam. And even PJ. Also, Wales is still a blank canvas, and I don’t know how to cut myself out and stick myself on it.”
“I don’t get the last part, but yeah. You’re miserable and kind of poor, but also, you’re kind of awesome, too. I’m so proud of you, starting your own business. I know it will be a long time before it makes you feel comfortable, but you’re so good at that computer shit and so organized and together. It’s going to be great.”
“Thanks, Lacey.”
“Also, did you realize that you can do your business from anywhere in the world?”
Des buried her face in her arms. “I got a passport.”
“What? I can’t understand you.”
Des got up and went to the drawer under the microwave she never knew what to do with and handed the navy blue booklet to Lacey.
“Oh my God. So—”
“I don’t know. I just got one. Sometimes I get it out and look at it.”
“I think that’s positive.”
Des held her hand out and Lacey gave it back. She kept it in that drawer because if she didn’t, she would sleep with it under her pillow. She looked at it for the three millionth time and put it in her pocket.
Lightning cracked and thunder followed almost on top of it, and they both jumped. Lacey stood up. “Nathan’s going to freak if I don’t get home soon. Look, I’m sorry for the tough love, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t stand looking at Sam every day and thinking about you making him secretly happy because you didn’t go because that’s just bullshit and Sam drives me nuts.”
“I will definitely think about all of this again, if only to bother Sam for your benefit.”
Thunder and lightning erupted so loud that the widows rattled, immediately followed by a drumming deluge of rain. “Shit. I’m going to have to run for it. Nathan’s probably wailing.” Lacey grabbed Des and hugged her tight. “You know I love you, Desbaby, right?”
“I do. What you said sucks, but I love you.”
Lacey leaned back to kiss Des on the forehead. “Call me tomorrow and we can talk about what you think.”
“Okay.”
Des went to open the door, and all the lights went out.
“Well, there went the neighborhood transformer. You have candles?”
“No. Sam lectures about candles. But I have flashlights.”
“Okay, I’m going!”
Des opened the door, the rain was crazy loud and coming down so hard that it was bouncing back upward as it hit the ground. Lacey laughed and started running toward her house across the street and a few doors down. She was going to get soaked. Des watched until she saw her wave from her own front stoop, then she closed the door.
It wasn’t quite dark yet, so she didn’t get out the flashlights, and went to curl up on the sofa, but stopped in front of her dad’s recliner. She hadn’t sat in it for a long time.
It creaked like it always did, and though the cigarette smell was faint, it still curled up around her as she reached down and pulled the lever to lean back. For a long time, she just stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain.
So here’s the thing, she thought. This is the only place where I’ve known you.
She waited to see if he’d answer, but all she heard was the rain.
You always loved it here. The neighborhood, the people, the city. I love it, too.
She did. Daughter of a limo driver, she knew every corner, and all the corners’ corners. If every other place on earth was a blank canvas, Lakefield was like one of those Richard Scarry books she loved when she was a kid with the infinitely detailed drawings of the insides of houses and buildings, of city streets and farms.
Every little piece new, but familiar, and there was always the little worm with the hat, the touchstone to find your way.
She wondered how long it had taken her mother to know Lakefield when she came here as a young bride. She had only just graduated high school and lived with a lady at their church for a year while she went through catechisms and converted.
Her parents had met as summer-camp counselors in Hocking Hills the year before their senior year in high school. He said that he watched her play guitar in the opening-day talent show and fell in love. Spent the rest of the summer convincing her to marry him.
Her dad had never told many stories from their early years of marriage. Sam wasn’t born until they’d been married almost four years, and she wondered what that time was like.
She wondered if it was hard, or if they had fun growing up together.
She still couldn’t imagine how much her mom would have missed her parents. She hadn’t ever really considered her paren
ts’ history, not from the perspective of an adult, not from the perspective of a woman in love, herself.
Eighteen years old, and her mother lived in a strange woman’s house, away from her family, learning about a god she hadn’t grown up with, just so she could be with a skinny redheaded boy.
As a kid, the story had never seemed like a sacrifice. Maybe because people making sacrifices for you was the entire reality of being a kid.
Growing up, the only way she heard the story was from her dad, who was a romantic and a good storyteller. The beautiful pictures of her mother seemed to confirm his position that she was a heroine in a perfect love story.
She curled up in the recliner, and a memory surfaced, hazy but complete—her parents squeezed together in this chair watching television. Her dad’s arm wrapped around her mother’s bottom, her feet tucked under his legs. Des would sit on the floor and lean back against the recliner and her mom would sometimes reach down and touch her hair and let her stay up just a little past her bedtime.
So Des tried something she never had before, her cheek against the cracking leather.
What should I do, Mom?
She listened for a while, and mostly thought about Hefin. She pulled her phone out and went to the folder with photos, and pulled up the one of her love spoon.
Six wooden beads captured in the handle. She’d brought Sam and PJ to see it with her. PJ had been reverent, then grinning. Talked about how they should pool some money, when they all had a chance, and buy a memorial brass plaque with their parents’ names on it to have mounted in the marble cladding alongside the panel with other donation and memorial plaques.
She knew, too, that before Hefin left, PJ had taken him out to dinner, to thank him and get to know him, and that Hefin had been so pleased, had said PJ was a “good bloke.” Had called him Paul.
Sam had stood in front of the panel, his jaw tight, his arms across his chest. When Des saw his eyes were wet she touched his shoulder, but he stepped away. Has never said anything else about it.
Sarah couldn’t wait to see the panel in person but was mostly over the moon about the letterpress block Hefin had sent her. Sarah had it on her bedside table where she could look at it all the time. She said it inspired her to work hard in PT so the surgery would go well and so she could take it to Marnie’s press and print with it.
Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series Page 30