Sweet

by Tammara Webber

  A year passed, and we didn’t talk or say hello. I figured he’d forgotten who I was until the day one of his friends took the playground ball my friends and I were using to practice soccer.

  “Give it back!” I yelled, my fists knotted at my sides.

  “Us boys need this for kickball,” the boy said, laughing. “Go play with dolls or something.”

  Boyce walked up. “Quit being a dick, Rick,” he said, punching the ball from his friend’s grip, bouncing it once on the packed ground before tossing it back to us.

  “What’d you do that for, asstard?” his friend shot back, because boys liked to cuss out on the playground where the teachers couldn’t hear. “They’re just dumb girls.”

  Boyce looked right at me then. “No they’re not.” His mouth didn’t smile, but his eyes did. He scanned the playground, zeroing in on a group of boys kicking a ball back and forth while heckling some girls sitting in the gravel beneath the monkey bars. “Let’s go steal that ball from Clark Richards. Maybe he’ll cry again.”

  “Yeah!” the other guys said, tearing off toward them.

  “Thank you, Boyce,” I said as he turned.

  “You’re welcome, Pearl,” he answered softly, not looking back.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  After shooting down Boyce’s one-lining friend, Melody’s mood improved. From her standpoint, even unwelcome attention had always been better than no attention. After explaining the responsibilities of a junior account executive at a public relations firm, she poked a lime slice into the neck of her Dos Equis bottle and shrugged. “So basically I’ll be coordinating social media publicity for our housewares and pet-products clients.”

  Housewares and pet products? I couldn’t think of anything that said Melody less.

  “I won’t just be posting stuff on Twitter or whatever. I’ll be directing the production of market-savvy graphics that will be used for all the major social media channels.”

  For housewares and pet products. Her words sounded more like justification than new-career enthusiasm. Public relations was a long way from Melody’s dream job when we were sixteen. She’d wanted to work in a museum or gallery, helping curate collections, discovering new talent, unearthing works of genius by historically overlooked artists.

  “That’s great, Mel. I’m sure they’re thrilled to have you.”

  “Damn right they are.” Her smile seemed counterfeit, and I wondered if that’s how I’d have looked on my way to med school. “What about you? My best friend’s going to be a doctor! Better you than me, girl. I am so relieved to be done with school. You’ll have to come to Dallas some weekend, and we can go out for real.” She glanced around the Saloon like it was a dump, and I realized she saw our entire hometown that way and had for a while.

  I shifted and took a deep breath. “Yeah, about that. I decided I don’t want to be a medical doctor after all.”

  Melody arched a brow. “But you got into Vanderbilt! And what else would you do?”

  “You know I’ve always been interested in marine science…”

  She stared. “Pearl—you can’t be serious! You got into a top medical school. Do you know how many people are smart enough to even get into med school at all?”

  About twenty thousand a year, I thought.

  “And oh God. Your mama will shit a brick if you drop out.”

  “This is my life, Mel, not my mother’s.” We both knew what I wasn’t saying. Aside from small, aimless rebellions, Melody followed the path her parents expected of her. Her previous relationship had ended when her boyfriend admitted that he had no plans to give her a ring after graduation, a discussion that had only occurred because her mother began dropping wedding hints over winter break, like the next plot point on the map of her daughter’s life—one she controlled.

  Still, I wished I could take the words back. We’d been friends for a long time, and I had no room to judge. “I’ve already declined the acceptance. But hey, it’s not dropping out if I never start, right?” I smiled, hoping for commiseration, at least, not disapproval. I anticipated plenty of that from my parents.

  “Oh. My. God. You’re seriously going to stay here instead of going to medical school and getting the hell out of this craphole of a town? Have you freaking lost it?” She sat forward and seized my wrist. “Wait. Is this about Mitchell?”

  “No. This decision has nothing to do with him.” Not that he’d seen it that way—but I wasn’t getting into that. “Melody, I’m not you.” She jerked her hand away, inferring the thing I’d not meant. “I never wanted to move away,” I clarified. “I’ve spent the past four years missing the open water like I’d misplaced of piece of myself. I don’t want a big city life. I want a beach. I want the ocean. I want this. I’ve always loved it here.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “I know.” I sighed, risking a glance across the bar where Boyce, done with his dart game, leaned back in his chair and laughed, engrossed in the animated conversation between Mateo and the guy who’d hit on Melody earlier.

  Until he took a long pull from his bottle and shifted his attention to me down the length of it, like he’d been watching me all along, keeping me in his sights.

  chapter

  Four

  Boyce

  Living with my father had been a nightmare I woke to daily. That’s why I never faulted my mother for getting the hell out when she had the chance. If there’d ever been a time he wasn’t an abusive fuck, it was before I came along. When cussing and screaming and throwing things didn’t make enough of an impact on her, he shoved and slapped and pulled hair. When he was stinking drunk, he landed punches.

  Brent, nearly eight years older than me, started getting in the way of those punches when he was eleven or twelve. While I hid under my bed or in our closet—“Stay here,” he’d order, as if I needed convincing—he would try to talk Dad out of whatever fit he’d worked himself into. He usually ended up with a few bruises for his trouble.

  Days before my eighth birthday, I heard a car pull up out front after one of my parents’ brawls. A minute later, the front door’s rusted hinges whined, and then there was a man’s voice, deep and unfamiliar. I scooted out from under the bed, thinking maybe the cops had come at last. Maybe they’d haul Dad off to jail and he’d have to stay there forever. I inched around the corner to watch. A stranger stood in the doorway, but he wasn’t wearing a uniform. Dad was sprawled in his chair, passed out, a half-empty bottle on the floor, just below his fingertips.

  Mom shot out of their room then, dragging a big black trash bag full of stuff. Her favorite purse—the one with fringe on the bottom and a peace sign of purple rhinestones glued to the front—was slung over her shoulder. I knew the red mark on her cheek would be dark by morning, and she’d tap makeup from a bottle and smooth it over and over until it looked like a harmless shadow.

  The man took the trash bag from her hands.

  “Mom,” Brent said, his voice a harsh whisper, his hands balled at his sides. “Mom, take Boyce with you.”

  She glanced at the man in the doorway.

  “Ain’t takin’ no kid,” he said, turning his head and spitting a wad of chew into the yard.

  She turned back to my brother. “Boyce has you,” she said. “Y’all’ll be fine. Your daddy only hates me.” Her voice quaked as she stared across the room. “You know how to make him calm. I just get him more riled.”

  “Mom, please. He’s just a little kid—”

  The man hefted the bag and strode out the door. “Ruthanne,” he said. A command.

  Mom started after him before swinging back and lifting a hand to Brent’s face. At fifteen, he was a head taller than her. “Y’all’ll be fine, baby.” Her voice was so low I could barely hear her. The rhinestones caught the beam of the floodlight outside and glinted like broken bits of purple glass. “Carl will probably change his mind, okay? Just give me some time to soften him up. I’ll let you know where I am.”


  We never heard from her again.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  Pearl’s parents’ house was on the bay side of town—a neighborhood of houses that looked more like a row of resorts than homes containing only one family apiece. There were docks out back of each one where yachts and fishing boats and Jet Skis were conveniently moored. The more monstrous ones with corner lots and backyards—like the Frank place—had swimming pools, each one just feet from the bay. There was an airstrip nearby too, for the rich fucks who wanted personal access to the ocean and the sky.

  Until high school, though, Pearl and her mom lived in my part of town, just on the other side of the long block where all three schools huddled together—elementary, middle, and high school. Her mom worked for a doctor’s office, scraping by like most working class folks did. I’d see them sometimes at the IGA, leafing through coupons in the cereal aisle while Brent just bought the cheap store brand, or on the public beach, splashing through the surf.

  Once, Brent and I were fishing off the main pier when I caught sight of them. Ms. Torres was propped in a folding chair, reading, while her daughter constructed the world’s most pitiful lump of a sand castle. A humid breeze carried the sound of their laughter when Pearl stood up and stomped it flat like she was Godzilla putting a butt-ugly building out of its misery. She collapsed on a beach towel covered in Disney princesses and spread her arms and legs like a starfish, and her mom handed her a wet wipe and a baggie of orange slices. Watching them made me ache with happiness and jealousy until I couldn’t look anymore.

  Brent had managed to convince Dad that we’d both been asleep when Mom left. That we had no idea how she’d run off or with whom. She hadn’t left any clues for him to follow, either. Thundering through the trailer, he’d trashed their room and anything of hers she’d left behind—as if that black bag hadn’t been full of everything she cared about. As if she hadn’t walked out on everything she didn’t give two shits to take with her.

  My first time through third grade began a couple of weeks after her escape. Needless to say, given that I had to repeat it the next year, that school year didn’t go well. They say the brain can block painful memories, leaving gaps and voids in place of them, but it didn’t work like that for me. I remembered everything.

  My brother always tried to protect me, but I was a burden he never got clear of. I couldn’t ever tell him I’d overheard that last brief, whispered conversation between him and our mom. His plea. Her lie. I’ll let you know where I am.

  I knew by his expression he didn’t believe her.

  But I had.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  Everywhere there’s a group of people, there’s a pecking order, even in elementary school. Once you’re promoted to fourth grade, you’re no longer one of the little kids, and only the fifth graders can lord it over you then.

  Unless forty of your classmates get promoted and you’re the only dipshit left behind.

  Like my brother, I’d always been big for my age. But being held back a year told the world I was dimwitted, too, so I stood out like a mutant idiot next to my new, younger classmates. I stooped low when we walked single file down the hallway to the lunchroom or the library. I folded my body like crumpled paper, hoping to be overlooked when we sat in a circle to read out loud—the most fucked-up thing any teacher ever invented. Invisibility was the superpower I wanted most, but I’d never been more visible.

  Guys learn to talk shit to each other as soon as we can speak. It’s what we do. Even with our friends—sometimes especially with our friends. But with friends, there are subjects that are off-limits. Like your mom running away from home with some random dude and leaving you behind like trash. Like your dad being thrown in jail overnight on the regular for being drunk and disorderly out in public. Like how dumb you must be to get held back in third grade.

  Those are the subjects friends don’t touch, but other guys pick up and throw like stones, because that stupid nursery rhyme—words will never hurt me—that’s a goddamned lie. When it’s bad and it’s true, those words slip beneath your armor and slice deep. And if you fight back with the only weapon you’ve got—fists, in my case—you’re the bad guy. Because their weapons were “just words.”

  I’d heard the word alcoholic before. My mom had said it to my dad plenty of times, when she wasn’t calling him other things. Brent explained that alcoholic was a different way to say somebody was a drunk—a nicer way, because it made it sound like they were sick instead of making bad choices.

  “Is Daddy sick or making bad choices?” I asked. When I was sick, I threw up and I had a fever. I stayed in bed and drank 7UP.

  “Both, I reckon,” Brent said. “But if you’re sick and you never try to get better, at some point it just looks like bad choice after bad choice, and nobody cares if you’re sick anymore.”

  The word I’d never heard was whore. I might not have known what it meant, but I knew it wasn’t good because it was whispered and chuckled over and thrown like a spear when connected with Boyce’s mama.

  “What’d you say?” I asked the one who’d said the word. A guy from my new class. The grin disappeared from his mouth like it’d been wiped off. His eyes bugged and he swallowed hard but didn’t answer.

  “He said your mama’s a whore.” There were four of them, all smaller than me, standing stiff as statues with their hands balled into fists, looking ready to attack or run. It was like a pack of wolves thinking maybe they were gonna take down a grizzly.

  “Shut up, Eddie!” the first guy said.

  Eddie Standish stood farthest from me, so he was full of spit and gristle.

  I grabbed the guy next to me by the shirtfront, swung him around, and used his body to tackle Standish. We went down in a heap, and the last thing I saw before the world went red was the fear on both their faces. I’d put that there. And I wasn’t sorry.

  I was also about to be expelled. From elementary school. Staring at the scraped-up fists on my lap as if they belonged to someone else, I’d been silent when Principal Jaynes asked, What in heckfire were you thinking, young man? I didn’t mean to tell what they’d said about my mom, so I said nothing. I didn’t want anyone to know. Two of the guys were still in the nurse’s office, and two had talked to the principal before me. Now he was calling parents while I sat in the outer office, alone. Elbows on knees and head in my hands, I hid my face and imagined my dad showing up, his hands and clothes spotted with axle grease, his breath sour with whiskey and anger.

  “I need to talk to Principal Jaynes.” The voice was soft, but I knew who it was before looking.

  Through my fingers, I watched the smiling lady on the other side of the counter and the small girl with her back to me. Her long, dark hair was somehow tamed into one fat braid that hung straight down her spine.

  “He’s a bit busy right now, Pearl. Can I help you with something, hon?”

  Pearl placed her hands on the tall counter, which sat just under her chin. “I need to talk to him about the fight. About what those boys said. I was a witness.”

  My mouth went dry, my NO wedged in my throat.

  The lady glanced over at me, then said, “Oh, well then…” She turned away and dialed the phone. Mr. Jaynes’s deep, murmured voice drifted down the hall, answering the call. A minute later, Pearl was led into his office and the door closed behind her. When she came out, she flicked one glance at me as she passed. She was so tiny that we were almost eye-level with each other even though I was sitting down.

  “You’re better than them, Boyce Wynn,” she whispered as she passed.

  Pearl

  Mama blinked at me as if she’d forgotten how to speak English. Here we go, I thought.

  When she and Thomas had come home from Houston, I’d been out on the dock, staring across the shifting water at the closest sandbar across the channel and practicing my I’m-not-going-to-med-school speech. Not that those rehearsals curtailed the shock factor one bit, judging by her atypica
l muteness and the fact that her eyebrows had receded into the wisps of dark hair across her forehead.

  When she found her voice, she said, “You’ve canceled your acceptance at Vanderbilt? As in—”

  “As in I rejected the acceptance, yes.”

  Her mouth hung open for a moment before she clapped it shut, jaw locked. “What about Harvard? Michigan?”

  It was my turn to hesitate, perplexed. I’d just told her I had made the decision not to pursue a degree in medicine, which wasn’t specific to Vanderbilt or Harvard. In an effort to soften the blow, I’d added that I’d been accepted into the doctoral program in marine biology—which she was pretending she hadn’t heard. “Um. I was waitlisted at Harvard, Mama, I told you. Michigan also. But—”

  “Columbia?”

  I shifted on the sofa. “I turned it down.”

  “Stanford?”

  “Mitchell didn’t get into Stanford, remember? I turned it down last fall in favor of Vanderbilt.”

  “Which you’ve just rejected.”

  I nodded, sighing. “Yes, but the rejection, the waitlists—none of this is relevant to what I’m trying to tell you. Becoming a medical doctor isn’t what I want—”

  “You are not throwing your future away, Pearl. I’ve worked too hard. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve never been afraid of any challenge—never in your life. Why now?”

  She didn’t know me as well as she thought, or perhaps she just selectively overlooked anything that made me seem less than the perfect daughter. I’d faced down fear plenty of times—though fear had nothing to do with this decision. If anything, I feared departing from the expected plan to do something that felt right but at the same time recklessly impulsive. I feared disappointing her—which I was clearly doing.

  “Mama, my choice isn’t about fear. This is about what I want to study, and how I want to live my life. This is about what’s important to me—”

  “No.”

  No? Oh boy. This was going even worse than I’d imagined. I stared at my lap, searching for the words to make her understand before this deteriorated into a total stalemate.