My Life Next Door

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  I can’t tell him. I can’t. What can I do? Be there for them is vague and meaningless. Like a T-shirt slogan or a bumper sticker making a statement that never needs to be backed up with action.

  I can babysit. All the time. For free. I can…

  What? Pay the hospital bills? I pull my savings book from my desk drawer, scanning the numbers I’ve saved working, and hardly spent, in the last three summers: $4,532.27. That’ll probably cover some Band-Aids and aspirin. Even if I could find a way to give it to them without them knowing.

  I spend the next few hours coming up with ways. An envelope in the mailbox “from a sympathetic friend.” Slipping money into the cash register at the store. Forging documents indicating the Garretts have won the lottery; lost a sick, elderly, unpleasant, unknown relative.…

  Dawn comes without any brilliant ideas. So I do the least I can do, the only thing I can think of…run across the yard, around our fence, flip-flops slapping up the drive, let myself in with the key the Garretts keep under the kiddie pool, sharp and jagged, nearly buried in the too-long grass.

  I make coffee. I pull out cereal boxes. I try to make sense of the clutter on the kitchen table. I’m wondering who’s here and whether to go up to Jase’s room when the screen door slams and he walks in, rubbing his eyes, then starting at the sight of me.

  “Training?” I ask, although at a second glance he looks too tidy for that.

  “Paper route. Do you know there’s actually a guy on Mack Lane who waits to catch the paper every morning when I throw it? He yells if I’m five minutes late. What’re you doing here, Sam? Not”—he comes up next to me, dipping his head to my shoulder—“that I’m not glad to see you.”

  I wave at the table. “Just thought I’d get a head start. Didn’t know if your mom was home or…”

  Jase yawns. “Nope. I stopped on my way back. She was going to stay at the hospital all day today. Alice rented that pump thing.” He flushes. “You know, for Patsy. Anyway, so she’s taken care of. Mom didn’t want to leave Dad since he was finally talking.”

  “Does he—remember anything?” If he does, he can’t have told Jase, whose open, expressive face never holds a thought back.

  “Zip.” He opens the fridge, pulls out milk, drinks directly from the plastic gallon. “Only being out there, after a meeting, deciding to walk home for some fresh air, thinking it was going to rain, then waking up with tubes everywhere.”

  Is it the disloyal or the loyal part of me that’s so relieved?

  Jase lifts his hands over his head, bending from one side to another, stretching, closing his eyes. Very softly, almost under his breath, he says, “Mom’s pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I mean, not exactly the right timing for the announcement, huh? But I’m pretty sure. She’s been sick in the mornings, chugging Gatorade…let’s just say I know the signs.”

  “Wow,” I say, sitting down hard in one of the kitchen chairs.

  “It’s a good thing, right? I should be glad. I’ve always been glad before, but…”

  “Not exactly the right timing,” I echo.

  “I feel so damn guilty sometimes, Sam, lately, for the things I find myself thinking.”

  For some reason, well as we know each other, I’ve never thought about Jase feeling things like guilt. He just seems too healthy, too balanced for that.

  “You know how much those people piss me off,” he continues, still in such a low voice, as though he doesn’t even want to hear what he’s saying. “The ones who come up to Mom in the supermarket or wherever and tell her there’s such a thing as birth control. Or this asshole guy who fixed the generator at the store last month. When Dad asked him if he could pay in installments, the guy said, ‘Didn’t you know you’d be broke all the time if you had so many kids?’ I wanted to deck him. But…sometimes I think that too. I wonder why my parents didn’t ever…imagine…what having another kid would mean each of us not having. I hate myself for it. But I think it.”

  I take his face in my hands, holding tight. “You can’t hate yourself.”

  “I do. It’s just wrong. Like, who would I want to do without? Harry? Patsy? Andy? None of them…but…but Samantha, I’m only kid number three and there’s already no money for college. What’s gonna happen when we get to George?”

  I think of George’s somber face bent over his animal books, of all the facts at his fingertips. “George is like his own college,” I say. “Garrett U.”

  Jase laughs. “Yeah. You’re right. But…I’m not like that. I want to go to college. I want to be…good enough.” He pauses. “For you. Not that guy from the quote-unquote wrong side of the tracks, Samantha.”

  “That’s her. It’s not me.”

  “I guess part of it’s me, then,” he says heavily, “because, Samantha…look at you.”

  “I’m just some girl with an easy life and a trust fund. With no problems. Look at you.” Then I have a horrible thought. “Do you…like…resent me for that?”

  He snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I? You don’t take it for granted. You work hard all the time.” He pauses for a moment. “I don’t even resent Tim anymore. I did, for a while, ’cause he seemed so oblivious. But he really isn’t. And his parents are the worst.”

  “Aren’t they?” There’s Mr. Mason, sleeping his way through life in his recliner, ignorant to everything, and Mrs. Mason with her cheery voice and her cheery Hummel figurines and her miserable children. I think of Nan. Will she turn out like her mom?

  “Jase,” I say slowly. “I’ve got…some money. Saved. It doesn’t mean to me what it means to you. I could—”

  “No,” he says, his voice harsh. “Just stop it. Don’t.”

  The silence between us now is heavy and still, stifling. Different. I hate it. I fuss with gathering enough bowls out of the cabinets, finding spoons, keeping my hands busy.

  Jase stretches, locking his fingers behind his head. “I’ve gotta remember how lucky I am. My parents may be broke, things may be bad now, but they’re great. When we were little, Alice used to ask Mom if we were rich. She always said we were rich in all the things that matter. I need to remember she’s right.”

  So like Jase, to pull himself right back to counting blessings.

  He comes close, touches my chin with a roughened finger. “Kiss me, Sam, so I can forgive and forget myself.”

  “You’re forgiven, Jase Garrett, for being only human,” I say.

  He’s so easy to forgive. No sins at all. Not like my mom. Not like me. When our lips meet, I don’t feel the familiar warmth and ease. I feel like Judas.

  Chapter Forty-two

  There’s a big hole where Nan should be. I could go to her and tell her everything and surely Nan would listen and maybe even help me find my way. Of all people, Nan would understand. She was there the day I got my period, on the tennis court during gym class, in white shorts. She noticed before anyone else did, pulled me to the side and took off her own pants—shy Nan—walking in her underwear to her gym locker to get another pair—and a tampon. I was there the first time we saw Tim really drunk—he was twelve—and hustled him into a cold shower (didn’t help) and made him coffee (likewise) before putting him to bed to sleep it off. She was there when Tracy had a huge “day” party at our house while Mom was at work, then left with her boyfriend, leaving us—at fourteen—to kick out forty older teenagers and clean the house before Mom returned.

  But now she doesn’t answer texts, or return periodic calls. When I come by the gift shop, she busies herself with customers or says, “I’m on my way to inventory the stockroom/have lunch/see my supervisor.”

  How did our entire friendship, the whole twelve years we’ve known each other, get canceled out by what I saw? Or what she did. Or what I said about what she did. I can’t let her just walk away like this, I tell myself, though Nan seems to have no problem doing exactly that. So, at five o’-clock, the end of the B&T day, I catch up with her as she’s making out an
order form.

  When I put my hand on her shoulder, she twitches it off, reflexively, like a horse shaking off a troublesome fly.

  “Nan. Nanny. You’re just going to freeze me out? Forever?”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “Well, I’ve got things to say to you. We’ve been friends since we were five. That counts for nothing? You hate me now?”

  “I don’t hate you.” For an instant there’s a flicker of an emotion I can’t identify in Nan’s eyes, then she drops her gaze, turning the key on the cash register to lock it. “I don’t hate you, but we’re just too different. It’s too much work to be your friend.”

  This last is unexpected. “Too much work? How?” Could I be high-maintenance without knowing it? I scan through my memories. Have I gone on too long about my mother to her? Have I talked too much about Jase? But I know, I know, it’s been at least equal. I’ve listened for hours to the Tim drama-fest. I’ve heard every twist and turn in her relationship with Daniel. I’ve sympathized with her over her parents. I’ve seen her beloved Steve McQueen movies with her even though I’ve never really gotten the charm. All that counts for nothing?

  She straightens up, looking me in the eye. Her hands are unsteady, I notice.

  “You’re rich and beautiful. You have the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect grade point average, and you never have to work for a thing,” she hisses at me. “Nothing comes hard to you, Samantha. It all drops into your lap. Michael Kristoff still writes poetry about you. I know that because he was in my fiction class this spring. Charley Tyler tells everyone you’re the hottest girl in the school. And lies about having had sex with you. I know that because someone told Tim and Tim told me. Now this Jase Garrett, who’s definitely too gorgeous to be real, thinks you hung the moon. It makes me sick. You make me sick. Hanging around with you and being your sidekick is way too much work.” Her voice drops even lower. “Not to mention the fact that now you know something about me that you could use to ruin my life.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone,” I say softly, trying to swallow down the hurt. My chest feels so tight, I can’t take a deep breath. Way too much work, Nan? What, because there’s no way to cheat at being a friend? “Don’t you know me at all? I would never do that. I just— You don’t need to cheat—you’re too smart in every way to do that, and I want to be your friend and…and I need you. Something happened to Jase’s dad and—”

  “I heard,” she says briefly. “Tim told me about it. And your guy came by the house the other day too, to let me know how fabulously helpful you’d been and that you missed me. Not going to tell anyone, huh? Hometown Hottie obviously knew something was up.”

  “I didn’t tell him everything. Hardly anything.” I hate that I sound self-justifying. “Just that we’d fought.” Looking down at her hands, I see that her nails, always ragged, are now bitten to the quick, bloody and painful. “I never expected he’d come to your house.”

  “Well, he did. Mr. Hero to the Rescue again. It’s the thing you always get. While I get…Daniel.”

  I want to say You picked Daniel, but that wouldn’t make anything better. She’s red in the face now, with that look I know comes right before tears. “Nan—” I begin, but she cuts me off.

  “I don’t need your pity. And I don’t want your friendship.” Picking up her purse and hauling it up onto her thin shoulder, she says, “Come on. I have to lock up.” I follow her into the hall. She flips the deadbolt, turns, and walks away. At the last moment, she swings around, looking skinny and stiff. “How does it feel not to get what you want, Samantha?”

  I’ve never felt like this before.

  I’ve had that thought again and again since I met Jase. But it’s always meant good things, not this pit in my stomach that travels with me everywhere.

  Jase picks me up at the B&T, asking if I mind if we swing by the hospital.

  I feel a fist grip my insides. I haven’t seen Mr. Garrett since what Mom did. “Of course not,” I say, the kind of polite lie I’ve never told him before.

  The ICU is on the fourth floor and we need passes to get up there. When we do, Jase braces himself visibly before heading into the hospital room. Invisibly, I do the same.

  He looks so shrunken in his hospital gown, tubes sprouting everywhere, his tan skin startlingly pale in the bluish hospital light. This is not the man who carries stacks of wood easily on his shoulders, hoists Harry and George up high, arcs a football effortlessly. Jase pulls the chair closer and sits, then reaches out for his dad’s hand with the tape and the tubes. He bends to say something in Mr. Garrett’s ear, and I stare at the heart monitor going up and down and up and down.

  Driving home, Jase stares straight ahead. He doesn’t reach for my hand as usual, but keeps both of his on the wheel, gripping tight enough that his knuckles whiten. I edge down in my seat, propping my heels on the dashboard. We drive past the exit for Main Street.

  “Aren’t we going home?” I ask.

  Jase sighs. “I thought I’d head to French Bob’s. See what he could give me for the Mustang if I sold it back. I’ve put a lot of time into it, not to mention cash.”

  I grab at his arm. “No. You can’t. You can’t sell the Mustang.”

  “Just a car, Sam.”

  I can’t stand it. All the hours Jase has spent on the Mustang, whistling through his teeth, tinkering away. How he pores through Car Enthusiast or Hemmings magazine, dog-earing the pages. It’s not just a car. It’s the place he goes to relax, find himself again. The way I used to search the stars. Or watch the Garretts. The way I swim.

  “It’s not,” I say. “Only that.”

  Instead of continuing on the highway toward French Bob’s he pulls off now and loops back on the long road that lines the river, stopping in McGuire Park.

  The Bug is old and noisy, but that’s probably not why it’s so silent when he turns the key and shuts off the ignition. It’s the first time I’ve been here since that night. There are noises—the slow lap of the waves on the rocks, since a speedboat has just hurried by, seagulls calling and plunging, dropping clams on the rocks. Jase climbs out, nudging at a rock on the dirt road with the toe of his sneaker, headed not to the Secret Hideaway, but toward the bend in the road by the playground.

  “I keep calling them,” he tells me. “The police. They just say there’s nothing, really, they can do. Without witnesses.” A well-aimed kick sends the rock skittering off the sandy road onto the grass. “Why did it have to be raining that night? It’s hardly rained all summer.”

  “Does it really matter that it was?” I ask.

  “If not”—he drops into a crouch, moves his finger in the dirt—“there might have been something. Tire tracks. Something. As it is…whoever did this will get completely away and will never know how much harm they did.”

  Or they’ll know and not care.

  Shame burns in my chest now, replacing the anger over Nan. More than anything in the world I want to tell him the truth. From the start, it’s been easy to tell him that, truths I’ve never told anyone. He’s always listened and understood.

  But there’s no way to understand this.

  How can he, when I don’t understand it myself.

  Chapter Forty-three

  “Hi sweetheart! I’m making up some meals for you to have on hand. I’m gone so often these days that we don’t get to have dinners together. I don’t want you living on that garbage from Breakfast Ahoy or the snack stand at the club. So I’ve made up some dinners—that roast chicken one you like with the mushrooms, and some pasta Bolognese.” Mom says all this cheerily as I drag myself into the kitchen after coming home from lifeguarding. “I’ve labeled them all and I’m going to put some in the freezer.” And on and on.

  Her voice is firm and calm, chatty. She’s wearing a watermelon-colored wrap dress and her hair down, looking young enough to be my older sister. Mrs. Garrett has circles under her eyes these days, is gaunt and perpetually distracted. Though I’ve tri
ed to keep things clean, the Garretts’ house gets messier by the day. Patsy’s fussy, George clingy, Harry misbehaving, Andy and Duff fighting like bears. Jase is tense and preoccupied, Alice even more acerbic. Everything is different next door. Nothing’s changed here.

  “Would you like some lemonade?” Mom asks. “They had Meyer lemons at the Gibson’s Gourmet the other day, so I made it with those for a change. I think this is the best batch ever.” She pours me a glass, the picture of graceful efficiency and maternal solicitude.

  “Stop it, Mom,” I say, sliding into the kitchen stool.

  “You don’t want me to mother you so much, I know. But all the other summers when I’ve had to work, you’ve had Tracy to keep you company. Should I post a chart of what’s frozen and what’s fresh? I don’t need to do that. You’ll remember, right? I just suddenly realized how alone you are.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Something in my tone must get to her because she halts, glances at me nervously, then continues rapidly, “When this election is over, we’ll take a good, long vacation. Maybe somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ve heard great things about Virgin Gorda.”

  “I can’t believe you. Are you, like, a robot now? How can you just act like everything’s normal?”

  Mom stills in the act of putting Tupperware in the freezer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

  “You need to tell the truth about what happened,” I say.

  She straightens up slowly, looking me in the eye for the first time in days, chewing her bottom lip. “He’ll be fine.” She snaps a lid tightly. “I’ve followed it in the news. Jack Garrett’s a relatively young man, in good shape. Things might be rough for a while, but he’ll be fine. In the end, no real damage done.”

  I lean forward, hands flat on the counter, my palms sliding across the cool surface of the kitchen island. “How can you even say that? Do you actually believe it? This isn’t some, some nothing—” I fling one hand out, accidentally hitting the Waterford crystal fruit bowl full of lemons, sending it flying toward the wall, splintering on the tile floor with a jarring crash, lemons bouncing everywhere.