Love in Many Languages

by Jamie Bennett

  I cleared my throat. “Hey.”

  Everyone looked in my direction. Fox winced, looked like he was going to puke, and closed his eyes briefly. “My God, Ione! I didn’t even recognize you at first,” he said.

  Cooper growled, literally, like a bear or something. Tanner started yelling again, telling Fox to get his skinny ass out of Hamtramck before they took him out in their trunk instead.

  “Hey!” I said again, and they stopped. “Fox, why are you here?”

  “I left some stuff locked up in the basement. I forgot to take it with me.” He stared at his shoes.

  I held the door open wider. “You can come get it out.”

  He gave the Hughes brothers a wide berth and followed me inside. “How have you been?” I asked him. “We haven’t seen each other in a while. I was surprised when you moved out.” I wanted him to look at me, to talk to me.

  He was giving me a wide berth also. “I had…it was time…I wanted to be on my own.”

  “Where are you living now?”

  “In Ferndale with a woman I met. I’ll just grab my stuff.” He ran down the stairs to the basement, where I knew he’d stored things locked in the little room where my grandma had kept her canned food.

  “Where’d he go?” Cooper said from the front door. He stood, arms crossed, glowering.

  “He’s downstairs. Why are you two so angry at him? I thought you were going to—” I stopped when Fox came back up the stairs, carrying an old toaster, his ski poles, and a box that I knew held some Halloween costumes.

  “Is that all yours?” Cooper asked him loudly. “Take a look, Ione, and make sure he’s not stealing from you.”

  “None of it’s mine,” I said, not understanding. “What are you talking about, Cooper? Fox, that toaster broke years ago. Why don’t you just get a new one?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have enough money, now that he has to pay rent. Get out of here, you fucking weasel.”

  “Cooper!” I exclaimed. “Fox, hang on a second. I want to talk to you.”

  He turned to look at me, and visibly shuttered. “Ione, I can’t even…your face. It’s just horrific.” Cooper made the angry sound again and started coming for him. Quick as lighting, Fox ran past him, off through the door. I heard a car squeal its tires in the street.

  “Don’t listen to him. There’s nothing horrific…it doesn’t matter what he thinks,” Cooper said in his normal voice.

  I sat down on the chair. “I never thought of him that way. I knew he was thoughtless, but that was cruel.” I sighed. “I guess it was understandable. He’s very used to the old me.”

  “Screw him,” Cooper snarled, angry again. “Better for you to never see him. If he does come back, I want you to call me, and I’ll take care of him.”

  Who was this guy? I had never heard him talk like this. “Why are you so mad at Fox? Why is he scared of you?”

  Cooper’s lip curled in disgust. “He’s not as scared as he should be.”

  “Cooper!” I said again.

  “If you had heard him…he came to the hospital and I didn’t like how he behaved. I don’t think he should be here, insulting you. We have work to do.” He turned and went out faster than Fox had, leaving me gawking.

  ∞

  I fell asleep again, because I seemed to spend most of my days doing that. When I woke up, the light outside had faded, and I didn’t hear any noises of dropping tools or fighting. I made my way over to the window to look in the back yard and gawked again. They had cleared the entire thing, all the dead plants, weeds, and debris. They had trimmed back the overgrown bushes that were still alive, raked up the dead grass, and stacked up what was left of the shed. It was amazing.

  I swung open the back door and met a wave of heat that made me step back. On the porch there was a pile of rusty tools that I could recognize, even in their dilapidated state, as my grandpa’s. I sat down on the porch next to them and picked up the note on top. Cooper’s precise handwriting said, “Tanner mentioned you were looking for these. No car under there, though. We finished up most of the back. We’ll be back tomorrow for the second coat of paint. Cooper.”

  I folded the note carefully and held it while I walked down and looked around the yard. It was amazing. It looked almost like—no, it didn’t look like it had when my grandma and grandpa had been alive, but I could see that it could. I could put rose bushes back where she’d had them, before I had let them die through negligence and neglect. I could rebuild the shed. I could replant the garden where we had grown the cucumbers we used to make pickles, the purple cabbages, the tomatoes, and fresh herbs.

  I walked slowly inside and looked at the kitchen. I could get a little table like the one we’d had against the wall, and buy new curtains like the ones that had gotten torn down (and maybe burned, if I was remembering correctly). I could see myself at the stove, even, wearing an apron and mixing up brine for the pickles I would make from the cukes in the garden. I wandered into the dining room, replacing in my mind the bed with a table, imagining a couch and little coffee table with magazines in the living room. I ran my hand over the scuffed surface of the sewing table. I could fix this, too. I could fix everything.

  First I sent a message to Cooper. “Thank you, thank you! You’ve done enough. You don’t have to come back tomorrow.”

  He wrote his answer right away: “We’ll be there as soon as I can pry Tanner out of bed.” Then he added, “Do you have the alarm on?”

  I checked again, and wrote back that I did, and he said he would see me early. Then I thought I should make a list of all the furniture I wanted to buy, the plants, everything that needed to be done to return my house to how it had been, before. I looked immediately for my date book to write it in.

  My heart started to beat very hard. I thought back to the last time I had seen it, on the floor of my studio. All the contents of my purse had been dumped out there, thrown everywhere, and a big boot ground down into things. Corrie had been saying, “No, stop, don’t,” but the thick, dirty sole just kept crushing down. I was breathing hard now, too, remembering, and when the doorbell rang, I choked on a breath.

  I jerked open the door hard, hurting my ribs, when I saw who it was. “I’m sorry about the argument in the yard earlier, and the tires squealing. My old roommate, my former friend came over and he caused a little commotion, but he won’t be back,” I told Sania.

  “I didn’t come about that.” She held up a little glass jar. “This is an ointment made with plants and herbs that we used back in our country. For bruising and swelling.”

  “For me? You brought it for me?”

  She nodded and held it out to me, and I took it. “I, uh, I also wanted to tell you, what I said before didn’t come out right. It sounded like I was blaming you for being hurt. That wasn’t what I meant. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you for coming over to say that.” I took a deep breath. “You can tell the neighbors that they don’t have to worry, it wasn’t a stranger. It was actually my friend’s boyfriend who did it. He was angry at me because I was trying to help her and he wanted to rob me, too. So it wasn’t someone who I allowed into the house, but I might have. I probably would have let him in and I wouldn’t have known at all what terrible things he could do. I let anyone in, and anyone could have done something awful.”

  “It’s better to be careful,” Sania agreed. “Safer.”

  “I’m sorry, Sania,” I told her. “I’m very sorry for how things were before here, with the noise and the people. I know how much you hated it.”

  “Thank you.” She paused. “I was very hard on you about it, too. I said some…nasty things. I’m sorry we didn’t get along as neighbors before and I hope we can now. It’s been difficult for me, adjusting to life here.” She looked down at her hands.

  “I didn’t make it easier for you. I know you didn’t like how I had my house, but it’s going to be different now.”

  “I appreciate that. I will try to relax, too.” She looked up and we both smiled a lit
tle.

  “Thank you for the salve. I’ll use it now.”

  “And if you run out, tell me, because I'll bring more,” she said.

  When she left, I did smear myself with the ointment, up and down my left arm, on my stomach and ribs, my legs, and finally, my face. I felt carefully, passing my fingers over my features. Then I stood naked in front of the air conditioner to let it dry, letting the cool air and whatever was in the salve soothe away the itchiness of my whole body. When Augusta peeked through the window to see if I was awake, she kind of got the shock of her life.

  “Why are you standing there, naked and greasy?” she yelled through the door.

  “Hang on.” I pulled on my paint-splattered shirt and some underwear and let her in. “My neighbor dropped off some medicine and I was trying it out.” I held out my arm. “Do you think it worked?”

  Augusta squinted at the discolored skin. “You definitely look less swollen than you did when I saw you yesterday. I’m positive.” She had been using her normal voice when she yelled, but now she returned to sounding very perky.

  I sighed. “Maybe it worked, some.”

  She held up the big bag she had been carrying. “I brought you dinner. Indian food.”

  “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. I was going to order something. Or eat leftovers—my whole kitchen is full from everything you guys have been bringing.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Augusta said in her normal voice again. I wanted her to keep using it. “I don’t think you’ve been eating unless someone is here with you. You look much too thin. Let’s put this onto a plate and you can eat it, in front of me, so I can see.” She looked around. “Still just one chair, I notice.” She pulled it over next to my bed and I sat on the mattress to have dinner.

  “I’m planning on getting more furniture. Look.” I showed her the pictures on my phone of some of the things I was planning to buy, or had already ordered.

  She flipped from image to image. “It’s funny, I wouldn’t have thought that this was your style. I thought more of swings in the living room and tie-dyed curtains.” She frowned at the square, avocado-colored couch. “This all looks very dated. But really nice,” she quickly added in her everything’s-sunshine voice.

  “I like this furniture. I don’t want it to be fancy and modern or anything.” I looked at the picture of the coffee table, which was very, very close to what had been in the house before, and felt a wave of nostalgia and longing. “I’m going to fix it back up, and make it just right.”

  “Speaking of, did you hire someone to paint your house? It looks very, uh, white outside.”

  “I started to paint it, but Cooper came by and he and his brother finished it up.”

  “Really?” she asked incredulously. “They painted your house for you?”

  I nodded. “Cooper said he had been talking to you. About me?”

  She nodded back. “He’s been checking in a lot. He came to the hospital, too.”

  “Why did you tell him to stop visiting me?”

  Augusta looked kind of astonished. “You said you were school friends. That he didn’t like you, maybe not even as a friend. I didn’t think you’d want him around when you were healing and recovering. I thought you could get in touch with him when you felt up to it.” She tilted her head. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t right.”

  “It’s ok. I needed to tell him thank you. He was the one who found me.”

  She leaned down and started doing something with her purse.

  “Augusta? Are you crying?”

  “No, not at all.” She pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “Allergies.” Then she sighed. “I get a little, overwhelmed, I guess, when I think about that night.” She cleared her throat. “Cooper had my number because I had been talking to him about the deal with the Ohio manufacturing plant, so he called me from the emergency room. He said someone had hurt you and he had found you. I could tell by his voice,” she said, but stopped for a moment before she continued. “I called Karis but I beat her to the hospital. Cooper was there covered in your blood.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They didn’t know, Ione, if they would be able to save you. That was what the EMTs had told him. At first they thought you had a brain injury. We sat for hours, not knowing.” She was crying hard, almost sobbing.

  I had never seen Augusta cry, or even look anything less than unflappable. I put the plate of Indian food on the bedside table and hugged her.

  She hugged me back, gently. “Ione, don’t you ever wear a bra?” She laughed a little, then she sniffed me. “Good Lord, now I’m greasy, too. What’s in that stuff you have smeared all over you?”

  “I’m not sure. But it made me stop itching, so I’m happy to be greasy and smelly.”

  Augusta peered at me. “You really do look less swollen, a lot less bruised.” She was back to being cheerful.

  “I’m glad you told me that, Augusta. I’m glad you were there for me and I’m glad we’re friends.”

  Her eyes filled right back up. “Me too.” She hugged me again. “Now,” she said briskly, “eat, and show me more furniture. I’m not going home until Shane has put Phoebe to bed, and it may be a while. She has decided that sleep is for the weak.”

  “Next time you come, will you bring her?”

  “Only if you promise to wear the proper foundational undergarments,” she told me seriously. “Yes, of course I will! Now, eat.”

  The next morning I heard the roar of a motorcycle, the crunch of car tires, then the familiar clang of metal ladder on concrete pathway. Then the arguing.

  “Tanner, Jesus H. Christ. Why are you trying to carry the ladder along with…”

  I lay in bed and smiled. It made me happy to hear them, because fighting was communicating, maybe not the most positively, but it still counted. I got dressed fast today, carefully brushing my hair around where the staples had come out, smearing a little ointment on my arm before I did. And one by one, I carried out coffee in the new cups Karis had brought over, because she took her coffee pretty seriously and the Mason jars weren’t cutting it for her.

  “Good morning,” I called, and they both said it back and came right over, sniffing.

  “You don’t drink coffee,” Cooper told his brother, and took both cups from me.

  Tanner yawned hugely. “I need it,” he said huskily, so I offered him mine, but after one sip he gave it back, pursing his lips like I’d given him poison.

  It made me laugh. “Late night?” I asked him.

  “Date night,” Cooper explained, and Tanner told him to shut up, they were just friends.

  “Friends until two AM, well past his curfew,” Cooper said.

  “Have you guys talked about birth control? I used to lead the condom class at my community college. Hang on, I think I have a banana,” I said, and started back inside.

  “No, Ione! No thanks,” Tanner practically shouted. He went quickly to start painting.

  “I meant that about the condoms,” I said seriously to Cooper.

  He drained the first cup of coffee. “He’s good. We had a long talk.”

  “Are you blushing? The human body is so amazing! I’ve done a lot of study of anatomy.”

  “Yes, I remember your earlier remarks about penises. I’ll get the ladder set up,” he said over his shoulder. I laughed again.

  I went inside, but a moment later, I came back out. I brought the chair, which Cooper immediately took from me, and set up in the shade of the maple tree in my front yard. I sat and we talked—well, I talked, and they insulted each other, mostly about Tanner’s various transgressions and the stick Cooper had up his butt, according to his brother, with multiple historical examples.

  “What was Tanner like as a baby?” I asked, trying to find some pleasant memories.

  Cooper stopped cutting in paint for a moment. “He was so tiny.” He smiled suddenly. “I’m thinking about the day he was born,” he explained. “I remember it so well, going to the hospital to see him. He was like a little w
orm. Like a white grub, really.”

  Well, I had tried.

  “Mom said you used to get up with me.” By mistake Tanner rolled paint on a window. “Shit.”

  Cooper nodded at his brother and passed him a rag. “She had a relapse when you were about, I guess, four or five months old. Dad and I took turns with you. By that point, you looked less worm-like, and more human. There were a lot of late nights, because you refused to sleep nocturnally. I used to read to you. Mostly Tolkien.”

  “Of course, Tolkien,” Tanner said. “He loves those books,” he explained to me.

  “They’re classics of modern literature,” Cooper said. “And when you were a baby, you loved them too. I did a good job taking care of you, grub.” He reached out and messed up his brother’s long hair and they both grinned at each other, then went back to painting.

  I moved the chair as time passed, following the shade, but after a while I went into the house to get a blanket off the bed and I stretched out on it on the ground, still watching and talking to them. Then my eyes felt heavy so I let them drift closed, listening to them go on about baseball, about their dad, about nothing. They weren’t fighting anymore, just talking.

  I woke up when I heard the motorcycle rev. I thought that sleepily that if I was really going back to work tomorrow, I was going to have to cut out on the napping. I turned my head a little on the pillow and yawned.

  Pillow? I opened my eyes and looked sideways at the soft cotton beneath my face.

  “You looked uncomfortable, so I gave you my shirt to sleep on,” Cooper called. “Also, I got hot.”

  I blinked wearily and sat up. He walked across the yard. Was he…

  “What do you think? Looks good, right?” he asked me.

  “Yes. Yes, really good,” I told him sincerely.

  “I don’t we’ll need to do any touch-ups. The last coat covered all the blue.”

  “Oh, you mean the house?” I tore my eyes away from his chest, tan and muscle-y and very aesthetically pleasing, to look at the completed paint job. It did look very nice, also. “It’s just the way I remember it. Thank you.” I returned to staring at his chest. Between working all hours and taking care of everyone, how did he have time to hit the gym so much?