The Boyfriend

by Abigail Barnette

  “Yes, life is infinitely more interesting when hopping about from one exciting city to the next. But it’s also infinitely more tiring.” Neil grimaced. “Or does that make me seem even more ancient?”

  “You’re not ancient, and no one said you were,” El-Mudad scolded him. “Are you going to think I’m ancient when I’m in my fifties?”

  “It depends on how nice you are to me between then and now.” Neil picked up the sleek black phone on the end table. “I’m going to ask Julia for a bit of lunch. Does anyone want something?”

  “A latte.” Though my brunch intoxication had decreased greatly on the flight back, I could still use a little sobering up. “And water and four Motrin.”

  El-Mudad laughed. “Brunch got a bit wild, then?”

  “Brunch was brunch,” I protested, hoping we could drop the subject from there. Though Neil really was so much better than he’d been before, I didn’t want to normalize drinking in our household. “Have you and Olivia eaten?”

  “Mariposa fed her and put her down for a nap around noon,” he said. “But I could stand something.”

  I pulled my feet up and tucked them beneath me, scrolling through my options in the Kindle store while Neil called Julia. After he hung up, we all settled into our own worlds, all together. El-Mudad dozed with his feet in Neil’s lap on the couch. Neil scrolled idly through his phone. Olivia chattered to her doll and occasionally asked us questions about what was happening in the movie, even though she’d seen it a dozen times.

  It was peaceful. It was charmingly domestic. And it was as far from the life Neil and I had planned as Earth was from Jupiter. But it worked.

  It more than worked. I was incredibly blessed. But Deja and Holli were right; I would never be the kind of person who could just sit around, waited on and content.

  “I’m going to write another book,” I said casually.

  Neil looked up. “Are you? Sophie, that’s wonderful.”

  El-Mudad didn’t open his eyes, but he did ask, sleepily, “What will it be about?”

  “I think I’m going to write a novel.” I paused to let them process it. El-Mudad opened his eyes, and Neil’s brows rose in interest. I went on, “I’ve written two memoirs. But I’m only thirty. I don’t have a lot of life I haven’t already shared with the world.”

  “And what you have now, you can’t share with the neighbors,” El-Mudad said, and I knew he referred to my mom and the rest of our family and friends.

  “Right. But I do have stuff I could write about from a fictional perspective. If I can figure out how to write fiction.” I considered. “Maybe I could take a class at a community college or something. It isn’t as though I don’t have the time.”

  “This is wonderful, Sophie. It truly is.” Neil’s face fairly beamed with pride. “The changes we’ve gone through haven’t been easy for you, I know. I’m glad to see you’re finding a constructive direction. And you did seem to like writing.”

  “And you’re good at it,” El-Mudad backed him up. “Though I’m sure it wasn’t easy, writing the things you did.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Those books were more about healing. This would be for fun. I’m looking forward to it.” I flicked the screen again. Maybe I could read Harry Potter to Olivia. Or Superfudge. Or James and the Giant Peach.

  The fact that most of the books I could think of off the top of my head were children’s books gave me pause. It hadn’t really been that long since I’d read a book, had it?

  “Well, no matter what your reason is for writing it, I’m sure it will be wonderful.” Somehow, Neil was able to make statements like that in a way that was genuine, rather than condescending.

  “Do you know what a good plot would be?” El-Mudad asked. “A story about a pirate.”

  “Okay...” I drew out the word. “Any particular reason you landed on pirate?”

  With a smirk, he pointed to Neil’s ear.

  I knew Neil didn’t appreciate the laugh we had at his expense at that moment, but I couldn’t feel too badly about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the end of March, Molly was well enough to have visitors. Once again, I packed my bags and headed to Calumet. This time, I went it alone, leaving Neil and El-Mudad behind with Olivia. Mom didn’t even want to come, which surprised me; she would usually have jumped at the opportunity to visit home.

  I stayed with my grandma, which gave her a chance to show me all the pictures from her Ireland trip. She was in raptures; I was a lock for the Christmas letter this year. Staying in Calumet was definitely out of the way in terms of going to visit Molly; they lived near Baraga, a good hour from my grandmother’s house. Growing up in rural areas made one somewhat immune to driving long distances, though, and I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to stay with Sasha and Molly.

  If they had offered.

  There was no reason they should have, I argued with myself as I drove down US-41 toward Baraga. I hadn’t gotten the feeling that my visit to their home was entirely welcome, to begin with. But it was welcomed by Molly, and Sasha was at least polite to me.

  My father’s real family had settled in the woods, in a big log cabin situated in a clearing. From the driveway, I heard the sound of rushing water. A nearby stream was apparently active enough not to have frozen over. It was the kind of place I had fantasized about living when I was a kid. My stomach pitched. I’d always assumed that Joey Tangen had been a loser. That they’d probably lived on nothing because he hadn’t cared enough to provide for them, the way he’d never cared to provide for me. Sasha had been frank about how much Molly’s medical bills had cost the family, so they weren’t rolling in the dough. But at some point, they had done well enough for themselves.

  You’re a billionaire, Sophie. Why are you feeling all this envy now?

  But it wasn’t envy. It was open, bare-faced jealousy, and I had a right to feel it. Joey Tangen had chosen to let me live in that trailer with my mom struggling to support us, while he’d kept his family in a beautiful home in a fairytale setting. No number of designer handbags or luxurious mansions would ever change the past. It made me so furious, I had to take deep breaths and remind myself that it wasn’t Molly’s fault, and it wasn’t Susan’s fault.

  Sasha, I still wasn’t a huge fan of. She’d known about me, and she’d been fine with the situation. No matter how civil we were to each other, I would always carry a little spark of resentment over that.

  Dogs barked as I climbed the stairs to the sprawling porch. I didn’t have to knock; the door opened as I reached it.

  “Sophie!” Molly ran out and threw her arms around me while two huge Golden Retrievers rushed me.

  “Whoa, whoa!” I laughed, and Sasha appeared right behind her daughter to scold the dogs. “No, they’re fine,” I said. “I don’t mind dogs.”

  “I’m so happy you came,” Molly said, still clinging to me. She’d grown since the last time I’d seen her, which seemed pretty damn miraculous considering everything she’d been through. She’d lost some weight that she hadn’t really been able to afford to lose; she felt sharp beneath her shirt, and the girlish roundness was gone from her face. She was beginning to look more adult. More like...

  I took her by the shoulders and stepped back to examine her. My god, she looked just like me at her age, with darker skin and slightly more prominent cheekbones.

  “You’re up and around! I thought you’d be...I don’t know. Not...”

  “You thought I’d be all sickly in my hospital bed?” She shrugged. “Not so much. At least not now that I’m home from the hospital.”

  “You’re all skin and bones though. Are you okay?” I asked, and I couldn’t help but leave my hands on her shoulders.

  Sasha leaned against the door frame, her arms crossed over her chest in the cold evening air. “She had a hard time keeping anything down for a while.”

  “I had to have an NG tube for like, ever,” Molly said, rolling her eyes. “Do you know what those are?”

  “Neil ha
d one for a long time.” I’d hated that he’d had to have one, and I hated the thought of my poor defenseless baby half-sister having one.

  Sasha motioned into the house. “Come on inside,” she said, then gasped. “Molly Lee! You do not go outside without any shoes on!”

  “Oh my god! Aren’t you immunocompromised?” I scolded her right along with her mother. Even the slightest cold could take someone on anti-rejection drugs down. A kidney infection had almost killed Neil.

  “Catching a cold from being cold is an old wives’ tale.” Molly’s tone revealed that she’d been using that argument for a while.

  “And I’m sure when you’re in the hospital, the infection will realize its error and leave,” Sasha said in that dry, sarcastic tone only a mother could perfect. “Go change those wet socks.”

  Molly made a loud noise of frustration and headed off, her stomping feet punctuating every step on the way upstairs.

  Sasha took a deep breath and sighed with a tired smile. “Kids.”

  “Yeah. I mean, most of my child-related conflict is over things like, ‘no, you can’t take a bite out of every cookie in the package and then put them back,’ but I totally get it.” Or not. Maybe there was unique exasperation that came exclusively with motherhood.

  “Come on in, and have a seat,” Sasha said. “We’re just having pizza tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.” I rarely got to have pizza anymore, and sometimes, I missed it. “I wish you would have mentioned it. I could have picked it up in town.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Susan’s picking it up on her way back from L’Anse.”

  My hackles rose. “Oh. I didn’t realize Susan was going to be here.”

  “She wasn’t going to be, but she changed her mind at the last minute. She wanted a chance to see you, and Travis just happened to have a job in Houghton this week. She’s been visiting old friends, so this will be the first time we actually get to have dinner with her.”

  “Oh. M-maybe I shouldn’t have come,” I stammered. “I mean, so you guys can have family time.”

  Sasha’s face fell. “Of course you should be here for family time. Sophie...after everything you’ve done for us—“

  That wasn’t why I wanted to be a part of their family. I didn’t actually want to be a part of their family at all. “I know, but I also know what it’s like when you don’t get to see your kids for a long time. At least, from my mom’s perspective. When I moved to New York, my visits home were few and far between. And that made them precious. I would understand if you didn’t want to share her with me.”

  Sasha’s expression froze. “Sophie...you’re Molly’s sister. You’re Susan’s sister. Of course, we want to share that with you. I know we weren’t in your life, but we’d like to be, now.”

  I sat on the sofa, smoothing my down my long-sleeved black t-shirt. “I appreciate that. I just got the impression that...”

  “That Susan doesn’t want you around?” Sasha finished for me. “That I don’t want you around?”

  I cleared my throat. It was suddenly very dry and sticky. “Yeah. Something like that. Like, maybe I was a kind benefactor or something?”

  Sasha nodded as though there was some truth to that. “I think Susan sees you that way. But she’s trying not to.”

  “Susan’s a bitch,” Molly called from the loft above us.

  “Molly Lee!” Sasha barked back at her.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to start something,” I said quietly. I glanced around. “This is a beautiful house.”

  It was definitely one of the nicer log homes I’d ever been in. We’d entered into a foyer, where the open-backed staircase rose to the second level. Double French doors stained the same warm golden-brown shade as the walls and ceiling stood open into the living room, and the loft overhead appeared to be a hallway to the bedrooms upstairs. A huge fieldstone fireplace crackled cheerfully in a corner, the chimney rising to heat the upstairs.

  “Joey built it,” Sasha said with a fond smile. “With help from my father. He gave us the land, too. I think he just wanted to get his grandkids closer. We were living in Iron River then.”

  He’d built them a house. He’d loved and cared for them and ensured their comfort and survival through his own sweat and probably blood if I’d inherited my skill with power tools from him.

  And he’d never once wanted to do that for me.

  I almost choked on my anger.

  I didn’t know what to say, and neither of us wanted silence, so she went on. “This started out as just this half and two bedrooms upstairs, but we remodeled shortly before...”

  Before he died. She didn’t have to say it for me to understand.

  “How do you remodel a log cabin?” I asked with overly enthusiastic interest. “I thought once they were all put together, it’s like Lincoln Logs and like, that’s it.”

  “It is, in a way.” Susan looked at the ceiling high above us. “You can really only add on. The girls were happy to get their own bedrooms. And the laundry room. My god.” She crossed herself. “That was such a blessing.”

  Molly came back, her feet in giant, fuzzy slippers shaped like Sully from Monsters Inc.

  “How’s the diabetes, sick twin?” she asked, dropping onto the couch beside me.

  “Managed.” I still hated talking about my diagnosis. I wanted to stay in the “ignore it, and it might go away” stage of chronic illness for as long as possible. But this was Molly, who’d been through so much more. It was probably nice to hear about something boring.

  “If you ever a need a kidney someday, I’ll be able to walk you through it,” she chirped. “But I hope you don’t because that was not fun.”

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked, still concerned about how frail she’d felt when I’d hugged her.

  “It was a lot easier to recover than I expected. Even with the setbacks.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure if I’m going to go back to school this year. I’m kind of afraid of all the germs.”

  “I told her we could homeschool if she thought it was necessary. But I really would like to get her back to socializing normally. The past few years have been challenging.” Sasha’s voice took on a melancholy note. Maybe she was like my mom, always blaming herself for circumstances that were out of her control.

  A stab of guilt surprised me. Thinking of my mom here, in the home Joey Tangen had built with the woman and children he hadn’t abandoned, felt like a betrayal. Even though he and my mom hadn’t been in love—they hadn’t even been dating—his actions had negatively affected her life. The fierce loyalty I felt toward her—and the intense hatred I felt for him—somehow tricked my brain into believing I was in deeply dangerous enemy territory.

  If it hadn’t been for Molly, and her excitement to see me, I would have jumped up and run out and never looked back. But I was willing, for her sake, to endure whatever I had to in order to stay in her life.

  “I’m not really much for school dances, Mom. But I do miss drama club,” she complained, then immediately brightened up. “Thank you for the iTunes cards, though! I got the Spongebob musical and the Mean Girls musical, The Great Comet...have you seen any of those?”

  I grimaced in apology. “Yeah, you’re going to hate me once you know this since I live in New York, but I don’t really go to the theater at all. I go to Fashion Week, but not like...Hamilton.”

  “But you live in New York,” she said, repeating my point in confusion. “Why wouldn’t you go see, like, every single Broadway show?”

  “Not everyone is as interested in your interests as you are,” Sasha said gently. It must have been a conversation they’d had several times before.

  “I promise, you can educate me when you come to visit me.” I glanced at Sasha, realizing I’d made the invite without her input. “Whenever that may be.”

  There. That left it open-ended. She could visit me when she was eighteen if Sasha made her wait that long.

&
nbsp; I hoped she wouldn’t.

  “Like when I go to college,” Molly said wistfully. “I hope I get into NYU. Then I’ll be close by you.”

  Oh, she would get into NYU. If I had to buy them a fucking building or establish some kind of grant, she would go to NYU.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to try Juilliard or something like that?” I asked because I would buy her way into that, too. I remembered exactly what it was like to be a teenager in the middle of nowhere, longing for the city.

  “Maybe when the time comes to tour campuses, Sophie could take you,” Sasha suggested, to my surprise.

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. “I went to NYU. I would love to have an excuse to go back and see how the place has changed.”

  The front door opened and Susan called out, “Hey, I’ve got the pizza! I could use a hand!”

  “Molly, go help your sister,” Sasha said.

  “Um, there are three people in this room, and only one of them has had a kidney transplant,” Molly reminded her.

  Sasha remained unimpressed. “You can’t use that excuse forever. Unless the kidney actually falls out, you can go set the table for dinner and help your sister bring things inside.”

  Left alone again with Sasha, I thought I should atone for my thoughtless remark. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up the visiting thing.”

  “No, it’s all right. It’s perfectly all right.” She rubbed her hands on the thighs of her jeans. “I couldn’t give my girls everything I wanted to when they were growing up. You know how that is.”

  No shit I do. I nodded. “Yeah, my mom had it pretty hard trying to raise me, too.”

  “We weren’t really poor. We were broke a lot, but not poor. Still, after losing Joey and then all of Molly’s hospital bills on top of his...Sophie, if you and Susan had never met, I would have lost everything. This house, maybe Molly, if I couldn’t have paid for the surgery. I’m not asking you to buy your way into our good graces. I don’t expect anything from you. But Molly loves you, and if you want to give her things, so be it. You tried to give her your kidney, for god’s sake.”