Here I Go

by Jamie Bennett

  I shrugged. “Aubree’s the oldest,” I said, which was obviously true. She was also Mama’s favorite, which was also obvious. It had always bothered Amory more than it had me. “You’re the prettiest,” I reminded Mory. Both my little nieces were beautiful, too. Unfortunately, the moment that Gentry had been born, it was clear to all of us that she’d gotten my hair, which must have annoyed Aubree a lot.

  My comment made my sister smile a little. “Thanks, Ari. I’m glad you’re on my side!”

  “Wait, I—” She left me before I could finish that thought. I stood shaking my head to indicate that no, I wasn’t on anyone’s side, except for my little nieces who definitely weren’t dressed slutty at all!

  Amory was already holding her husband’s arm, her mouth moving as she told him about this latest example of Bree’s bad behavior. I watched him patting her hand and shaking his head. Then he bent down and kissed her in a way that would have made our mother mad and put on her disapproving face if she’d seen it, but Mory came away blushing and laughing. I was glad that she’d married JT and it was sweet that he was always on her side. I myself tried to stay neutral.

  “Amory said that you agree that Teagan looks cute in her dress,” my sister Aubree announced when I came out of the bathroom later. “I can’t believe you want your own niece to go around dressed that way, Aria. It’s so inappropriate!”

  “Bree, she’s three! Did you call her a slut?” I tried to move away, but she grabbed my arm.

  “What? No, I didn’t say that! But Aria, you have to go tell Amory that you agree with me. Did you see the way that Uncle Terrance was looking at her? He’s horrified, just like you should be!”

  My head flipped around. “Uncle Terrance is here?”

  “He came with Aunt Harlene,” she told me, and started another long complaint about our other sister, something to do with the upcoming Miss Priss Sequatchie County pageant, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was watching our uncle, who was really just a kind of third-cousin or something weak like that. He stood near where my nieces were playing on Mory’s screened-in porch. I watched and I didn’t hear what Aubree said, and she talked at me until she realized that I wasn’t listening and then went to complain to our mother about me.

  “Thank you, honey,” Miss Liddy said to me a little while later, as I adjusted her pillows. She put her hand over mine, a light whisper of skin against me. “Is everything all right?”

  I’d left my sister Amory’s house without saying anything to anyone, including my mama, and I was going to hear about it soon. I had my phone silenced in my purse. “I’m fine, Miss Liddy. Are you ok? Did you go back to the doctor last week after I saw you for dinner?”

  “That Cain made me go,” she said, but she was smiling gently. I had the feeling that she’d never be too angry at him. “I’m just run down from the treatments, that’s all. You know, Cain wants me to come back with him to San Francisco to go to the doctors there. They’re better, he thinks. More advanced. I don’t want to, but he’s talking about renting a plane so I’m more comfortable. A private plane!” she said, her eyes wide. “Can you imagine the cost of that?”

  “That’s something,” I agreed. He must have been very worried, I thought. “He loves you a lot,” I said out loud.

  “That boy,” she said, and smiled again. “I love him right back. I wish he could have come to me sooner. The things he had to see as a child.” She’d stopped smiling now.

  It wasn’t polite to press and ask what she meant by that, even if I wanted to. I went with a safer question. “How old was he when he moved here? I don’t remember.”

  “You must have been only a toddler yourself. He was twelve but he’d missed so much school that they put him back in the fifth grade again, and it was so difficult for him. He was such a bright boy, but he hadn’t had the advantages, of course.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “He’s all right now. Did I show you the pictures he sent of the house he bought?” She picked up the phone from her little table. “I don’t know if I can get this working.”

  “I can help,” I assured her. The pictures we found together were of a palace, I thought. Cain’s house in California was as grand and fancy and intimidating as my boss’ club where we’d gone to celebrate our case, the place with the marble entrance and dark floors and leather chairs. “Oh, my word,” I said, as we flipped through the images. They were all mixed up with her texts to and from her nephew. The two of them sent a lot of messages to each other, and mostly it seemed like they were worried about how the other one was doing.

  “Has he come back much to visit?” I asked. After seeing him with her and reading all his messages, it seemed strange to me that he hadn’t been here, but I thought I would have heard if he had.

  “No, he hasn’t ever been back since he went to California. But I’ve gone to San Francisco to visit him and we’ve always taken vacations together at the holidays. I wanted to go to Miami and we did and stayed at a wonderful hotel!” She was so proud of him, and I smiled. “At first, it was hard for us to see each other because of the expense of the travel but now, it’s because he’s always working. Sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, he’s working.”

  It sounded terrible to me, but I got antsy at the law office when the clock moved to 5:31 and I had lost sixty seconds of my downtime. “Where is he today? Not working?”

  She got an extremely worried expression. “No. No, he went to see an old friend.”

  It made me get a funny feeling, too, and I put my hand over my heart where it had started to beat harder. “An old friend from here? From before he was, um, before he left?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t heard from Cain in hours and usually…”

  I made myself smile at her, the pasted-on pageant smile that I could still pull out at times. “Why don’t I send him a quick message to see how things are? Just to check in,” I suggested. I took out my phone and wrote, “I’m here with your aunt. She’s worried about you.”

  “Ok, he’ll probably write back soon,” I told her, using my pageant-cheerful tone. We talked for a while and I fixed her a little snack because I hadn’t seen her eat a lot of her dinner, and then I heard the sound of a car turning quickly into the driveway, the tires squealing some. “Oh! I think Cain’s home,” I said, and about a second later, he appeared in the doorway of her room.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and his voice sounded too loud, but Miss Liddy was smiling happily.

  “I’m fine, honey! I didn’t want to go to sleep without saying goodnight.”

  He came to lean over and kiss her cheek, and as he did, I caught the strong smell of liquor. But Miss Liddy didn’t seem to notice and she was tired, and I decided it was time to go.

  I was doing that, opening the door of my car at the curb, when I heard Cain’s voice again. “Are you the morality police, now?”

  “What?” I stopped to stare at him.

  “Sending me messages that I’m neglecting my aunt, giving me that disapproving frown when I get close. I’m assuming you noticed that I’ve been drinking.”

  I’d probably been making Mama’s face again. “I don’t care if you drink. Your aunt was worried but didn’t want to bother you, so I wrote instead. That’s all.”

  “No, you’re keeping some kind of scorecard. That’s the other thing I forgot about the people here. God damn Pharisees.”

  My mouth fell open. “Are you talking about the Bible? The people who didn’t practice what they preached?”

  “Exactly. There was Jeanette Peebles frowning at me from her porch, and she used to beat her old dog with a rubber hose.”

  “She did?” I gasped.

  “Until I stole him, she did. And there you are,” he said, his voice getting even colder. “There you are, acting like no one should go out for one night while you’re having affairs with the men you work with.”

  “I don’t do that! I didn’t have an affair with my coworker. I only had the—it was emotional,” I said, b
ut he was right. What I’d done, letting myself get attached to a married man that way, was inexcusable. “Why are you talking like this to me?”

  “Pharisees,” he repeated. His voice slurred some over the word. “Everyone looks good on the outside, but the inside’s all rotten.”

  I got into my car but I was crying hard enough that it was tough to drive the highways back to my apartment in Chattanooga. And then, when I arrived there, my roommates weren’t doing much better. Kayleigh was a mess because she’d gotten in trouble with her mother—Cassidy had mentioned something after church about the man from Atlanta, and now my two cousins were having a screaming fit of a fight in our living room. At least that meant that they wouldn’t see my swollen, red face, because with skin as pale as mine, there was no hiding the tears.

  Not the next morning, either, even though I applied every anti-swelling gel and cream that the three of us possessed until the area under my eyes got a little numb and I could hardly feel my fingers smearing on the foundation and concealer. Cassidy immediately noticed something wrong as I got into her car, late, for our carpool to Chattanooga’s Southside to our jobs. I was headed to the Law Offices of Gary Andonov (my boss that I did not have an affair with) and she had to go run the reception desk for a design and décor business. And she wasn’t having an affair with her boss, either.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told my cousin. “Please?” Cass left me alone.

  But it started again when I got to my desk. “Everything ok, Aria?” my friend Eimear asked me when I sat down. She scooted her chair back to peer around the fabric wall between our cubicles. “You look…”

  I didn’t wait for her to tell me it was bad, but immediately pulled my emergency beauty bag from beneath my desk. “Swollen? Ruddy? Frizzy?” I questioned her. I dug through the products to find something to fix myself.

  “Sad,” she told me. “You look sad.”

  “I’m not!” I put on my pageant smile so I wouldn’t feel that way and I wouldn’t be telling a lie. “Let’s make it a great day!”

  “Um, ok, sure,” she agreed. “I made an appointment with the bridal place on Front Street in Hixson. Would you be able to come with me to look at dresses?”

  I started to cry again, but this time it was from relief that she was dress-shopping. “Of course! I’d love to!” I hugged her and wrecked the makeup job I’d done that morning.

  The hours dragged on until my phone sounded the noon alarm I’d set to make sure that I was awake each day for lunch. My word! That morning had lasted forever. “It’s my turn to get the food,” I reminded Eimear. “I’ll grab something for Gary to have when he comes back after his meeting.”

  But I was not, under any circumstances, buying myself a cookie. With the fighting between my sisters the day before and with seeing some of the other guests at the gathering after church, I’d had a breakdown. That included two slices of coffee cake, a brownie bite, and a large helping of my memaw’s pimento cheese, and that stuff added a few inches to my hips if I only looked at it.

  I went out to the parking lot where it was damp and cold since it was nearly December. We’d already had the family argument about who was hosting Thanksgiving next week, so it was almost time for the Christmas battle. I sighed, and my mood felt just like the dirty puddle I stepped in by mistake.

  The window of a black car rolled down and I heard my name. “Aria. Hold on.”

  “Cain?” I stopped but the rain started, and I held my hands over my hair. “What are you doing here?”

  “I missed you at your apartment this morning. Your cousin Kayleigh said to tell you hello.”

  I was never going to hear the end of it from her. “Did she tell you where I worked?”

  He nodded. “And when you take lunch. Can I drive you somewhere? You’re getting rained on. Get in.”

  I did, mostly because his car was dry. A different car from the rental, I noticed, and I also noticed how nice it was. “I’m getting drips on the leather.”

  “I don’t care.” He pulled away from the curb.

  “I have to pick up food for my coworkers. They’re only friends and nothing more,” I pointed out.

  “I know that, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought that subject up and I’m sorry I came home drunk. You’re nothing like what I said.”

  “A Pharisee.” I’d read about them in my Bible the night before to refresh my memory.

  “No, you’re not that, not at all. I was embarrassed to be with my aunt in that condition and I was an asshole to you because I knew you’d notice. Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “You have to forgive people.”

  “Do you?”

  “If they’re truly sorry, and I think you are,” I answered.

  “I am. I’m truly sorry, and I didn’t mean what I said.”

  I nodded, because I did believe him. “It hurt my feelings, that was why I was crying so much.” He frowned, but nodded slowly. “I don’t care if you drink with your old friends who you used to get in trouble with,” I told him, but then—oh, I realized that I did. “No, I do care. Please don’t get in trouble again.”

  “I won’t. I’m not going to. I felt like an idiot with them last night because I’m not like them, not anymore. I kept up with their rounds at the bar because I was trying to fit back in. I don’t know why I thought I should, except that I was afraid I’d turned into everything that we all used to hate.” He looked down at his hands on the steering wheel. “I guess I have.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t dropping back into that old life. “I don’t think you should hate anyone, and I’m so glad you’ve changed, even if you think it’s a bad thing. Those guys are fifteen years down the road and probably doing exactly what they did back then, causing problems and making neighbors think they’re the devil.”

  “I think they’re doing the exact same things.” He braked for a light and sighed. “This is one of the reasons I didn’t want to come back here, back home. I don’t fit in and I guess that I don’t want to.”

  “Couldn’t you make new friends?” I suggested. “Nicer ones, who don’t go get drunk on a Sunday night?”

  “Friends who don’t leave their aunts who have cancer, and don’t make nice women cry? You looked at me and it was exactly the same as when you were a little girl. It was like your heart was broken.”

  “My heart’s not broken,” I said, shaking my head. “You just made me sad that you have a low opinion of me. I probably shouldn’t have told you about the emotional affair.”

  “Let’s not call it that. In fact, let’s not talk about that again. Is this restaurant all right for your coworkers, the ones who are only your friends?” He pulled in to park as I nodded, and he came inside with me to order. It was a large step up from the sandwich place we usually went to.

  “That’s all for you? Another salad?” Cain asked after I ordered for myself.

  “It was a big day for me yesterday at my sister Amory’s house,” I explained. “My sisters were fighting and dragging me into it, and there were other things, too. When I get upset, I eat. I’m trying to do better today to make up for it.”

  “What, the McCourts have family drama? I didn’t know your relatives got into it like that. I used to listen to your parties and to all you kids playing and I thought it was…I don’t know, ideal, somehow.”

  I felt my eyes widen. “Are you kidding? There’s constant drama! My sisters are always in competition and my mama feeds into it because she likes my oldest sister best. There’s a pageant this weekend, that’s what’s causing problems right now,” I explained. “That’s why my sisters are in a fight even though they say that they have a million other reasons to be mad at each other. My nieces are competing in the same age category and it’s just like when we were kids and Bree and Mory went head-to-head. It was cutthroat.”

  “A beauty pageant? For kids?” Cain asked, and I nodded. “Did you do them?”

  “It’s hard to imagine, isn�
�t it? But yes, I did for a while. Aubree really enjoyed them, because they gave her a lot of confidence, and Amory kept it up because Bree wanted her to quit, but I never liked to compete. Mama let me stop after a few years when it was obvious that it wasn’t working. I never won anything except when I was a baby, Tiniest Miss Best Smile Marion County. We used to travel for the competitions a little.”

  Cain looked at me, really looked hard. “I don’t understand that.”

  “What? The pageant system? Or why we went to Marion County? It’s very close. And we weren’t breaking the rules because it was open to non-residents.”

  “No, not those things. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have won all the time,” he told me, just as my number got called at the counter. He went to get the food for me, and I stayed back, smiling. Not a pageant smile, a real one.

  Chapter 4

  It was pouring when we went outside and we ran to the car, me with my arms over my breasts because my bra wasn’t up to holding back the bounce that I was getting. I was wet anyway when we got there and the curl I’d worked into my hair that morning with my iron was definitely gone, letting the natural wave come in. I twisted it into a knot behind my head to contain it.

  “This is a nice car,” I said. “You really don’t mind water getting on it?”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  I brushed at the seat anyway. Buying this car seemed like a clue that he’d be visiting more. “You can drive this whenever you come home to Tennessee,” I pointed out.

  “My Aunt Liddy will be able to drive it,” Cain said, which didn’t give me much hint of his future plans. “It’s higher so she can get in and out easier. I’m having a ramp built in the front of the house and some modifications to the bathroom too. The pink tile will stay, since she likes it so much,” he added, and glanced over at me. I nodded, satisfied.

  “She told me that you want to bring her to San Francisco for treatment there,” I said.