At her funeral, Barry wore a tie and sunglasses. He never took them off, not in the church or at Aunt Helen’s house afterward. He sat by himself on a bench in Aunt Helen’s backyard, and every time someone moved closer to him, Barry would stand up and wander even farther away.
“Let me try,” Betsi had told my parents. I had watched as she approached Barry, and I waited for him to shift locations again, but he stayed still, even when she sat down next to him. She held her cigarette pack in her hands and a book of matches, and leaned in closer to Barry to whisper words I couldn’t hear. Whatever she said made him smile, then laugh, even if it was just for a minute. Then Betsi struck one of the matches, blew it out, and lit another one. She kept doing this until there were no matches left, and then she pulled out another book from her pocket and handed it to Barry.
“Do-over.” It was the only word I could make out as she squeezed the matchbook into his palm, holding on to his hand as she led him back toward the house.
“Thank you,” Uncle Tim had mouthed to her from across the room.
She was the only person I saw Barry speak to the entire day.
Everyone had arrived after the service at Aunt Helen’s bearing food, cold fried chicken and deli trays and spaghetti casserole. There was also a yellow sheet cake on the table, frosted in sugary white with purple and green flowers, but without a declaration. No “Happy” this or “Congratulations” that, and there were no presents stacked and waiting to be unwrapped. Family and friends milled about the house, with some spilling out onto the back porch to smoke and talk about the cancer and how quickly it had come, and that poor boy and his father, and wasn’t it just a beautiful service, and had they tried the cake yet because it was quite good, and who wanted coffee.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” Barry announces after he’s lead us to victory in the Pick-Up Sticks game.
Kristen’s eyes get wide, and she says, “You can’t have coffee. That’s a grown-up drink.” Again with the rules.
Barry laughs. “What do you think I am, a kid? I’m going to be a senior, you know.” Kristen looks like she’s going to run and tell, because I guess that’s what you do when you’re ten and all concerned about the rules, but Barry just smiles and pushes himself off the carpet and heads toward the kitchen. Kristen bites her lip and begins to put the game away while John and Mark fight over the television remote, so I’m the only one left. We haven’t seen Betsi since she went upstairs. I know she’s not on the porch with the parents, because they’re telling stories and laughing loudly and I don’t hear Betsi’s laugh.
I walk past the kitchen on my way to find her. Barry is standing in front of the refrigerator. The glow of the interior fridge light and a little bit of the moon from outside cut across his face, showing me who it is. I wonder if he’s looking for milk for his coffee. He still has his swim trunks on and his red hooded football sweatshirt withCAVALIERS and the number 26 on the back. I think about how I will go to the games in the fall with my friends Hannah and Jill and Karen. The older girls sitting in the bleachers with us will squeal about how cute Barry is and try to guess who he will ask to homecoming and even prom. As soon as he makes a touchdown, I’ll point him out on the field and tell my friends just loud enough for everyone around us to hear, “Yeah, that’s my cousin,” as if it’s no big deal. And even though I’ll be a freshman and he’ll be a senior, Barry will invite me and my friends to Telly’s for burgers after the game. We’ll order salted fries and peanut-fudge sundaes and coffee, of course, and I’ll take mine with milk the way Barry does, and one of his friends will say something like “Man, you two reallyare related.” Everyone will laugh, and I won’t have a curfew because I’m out with family, and when we finally leave at midnight after the restaurant closes, Barry and his friends will give us all a ride home in Uncle Tim’s maroon truck that can seat six but we will pile in eight. He’ll drop me off last among the girls, get out of the driver’s seat to let me out, and hug me goodbye even though his friends are all watching from the truck. The windows will be down, and as I’m walking up to my front door, I’ll hear them say, “Your cousin Presley sure is cool.”
Barry looks up from the refrigerator and sees me standing in the doorway and says, “You lost?”
“I, uh…I’m looking for Betsi.”
“Well,” he says, looking into the fridge and then back at me, “she’s not in here!” He’s laughing again.
“Oh, I didn’t mean in here. I meant, you know, somewhere in the house.” Shut up, shut up, shut up.
“Yeah, I know what you meant.” He finds the milk and places the carton on the counter next to his old Boy Scouts mug. “I think she went upstairs.”
I nod and scurry out, heading toward Betsi’s room. Barry is bunking up with Peter, John is sleeping in the same room as Mark, and I’m stuck with Kristen, but Betsi got her own room, and we were told not to ask why or complain. The door is slightly open and she’s got a candle burning next to her bed, a peach votive sitting in a beach shell. The window is half open, with just enough space to crawl through to the overhang, and Betsi is sitting outside on the roof smoking a cigarette in her nylon shorts and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt. She makes a “shhh” motion over her lips and waves for me to sit down next to her. We’re right above the parents, but the noise has simmered back down, and it’s more difficult to make out their voices.
“I think they’ve been talking about me,” Betsi whispers, and sort of giggles. “But I can’t tell for sure. They might be talking about what time everyone is leaving in the morning.” Most of us live on the east side of the state, a good five hours from the cottage, and I know we’ll leave last because Dad likes to “close up the house,” which means I won’t be home in time to call Hannah. Betsi hands me her cigarette, but I shake my head.
“Good girl,” she says, and takes another drag.
Just before I was born, Betsi convinced Mom to let her name me. Betsi said she had rights because she was Mom’s only sister, never mind Dad’s siblings. Later, Betsi told me she had pretty much decided on naming me Betsi too, but then Elvis died, and that was when, as Mom puts it, all hell broke loose. Betsi just loved Elvis, I mean really loved him, more than I love raspberry slushes and vanilla-peanut-butter Häagen-Dazs, more than I love Chris Carroll, even more than Mom loves Dad. She says she believed he was on the verge of a big comeback, and she’d saved money from her summer job at the Dairy Queen to buy tickets for a concert, but then he died on the toilet on August 16, 1977, exactly one month before I was born. Mom says Betsi wept for days, and the days turned into weeks, and even when a month had passed and Mom was starting her labor, Betsi was still red-eyed and teary and sad. Mom felt so bad she made good on her promise, so Betsi decided I should keep his memory alive, and that’s why she named me Presley.
After Betsi’s breakdown, Dad worried she might carry on Elvis’s spirit in his other children, a son named The King, or worse yet, a daughter named Priscilla. “It’s bad enough I’ve already got one tainted by her obsessions,” he said, and even though I was only two, I knew he was talking about me, and my name, and what it all meant. So Dad put himself in charge, and when my brother was born, he chose the name Peter, which has absolutely nothing to do with Elvis, Priscilla, or Lisa Marie.
“Why are you sneaking a smoke up here?” I ask Betsi as she stubs her cigarette out on the bottom of her tennis shoe.
She shrugs. “Eh, you know how they are,” she says. “I don’t want anyone to see and start worrying or something. I’m fine.”
Here’s the thing. I’ve been told this is “family business,” which is just another way of saying a “secret,” but Betsi was “sick.” That’s what Mom and Dad said. Betsi was “sick” and had to go away to this “special hospital where they make you better,” and this weekend is the first time any of us have seen her since she went there. With all the cryptic speak, at first I didn’t understand exactly what was wrong with Betsi and I panicked, asking Mom if she was sick like Aunt Marie. Mom sai
d, “No, no, no,” and sighed. She said sometimes people get sad or mad and do things that are bad for their body, like eat too much or drink too much. Mom said this was more like the drink-too-much kind, and Betsi had to go to this place where she learned how to control that. Why Mom didn’t just come out and say Betsi had a drinking problem, I don’t know. I guess my family has a tendency to choose the words they think sound the best versus just telling it like it is.
I didn’t remember Betsi being sad or mad, I just remember she always had a glass of red wine in her hand and seemed to fall asleep at family gatherings if she came alone, or she’d show up really late, talking very fast, with lots of different guys. Bo was a car salesman who had two kids and an ex-wife he called The Fish. Then there was Roger, who had tattoos of skulls and snakes and drove up to our house with Betsi on the back of his motorcycle, neither of them wearing helmets. The last one was Eddie, who had big hard arms and talked mostly about the Detroit Lions and drank his beer from cans, popping off the tabs in some sort of special way, and then handing them to Betsi and saying, “That’s for later,” and wink. No one liked Eddie very much. I could tell that from the way Mom talked through her teeth to him and Dad always found some sort of garage project to escape to when they’d stop by. Eddie wasn’t very cute and he seemed way too old, and I couldn’t figure out why Betsi hung out with him because I was certain she was very pretty. This was back when her hair was still long, and whenever she’d take me to the mall, guys would always end up following us around or make up stupid reasons to come talk to her, like asking her where did she get that shirt or did she have the time.
Anyway, Eddie was the last one, at the beginning of summer, and I’m still not sure what happened with him, but it must have been serious, because Betsi showed up at our house really late one weeknight. Dad didn’t have summers off like we do, and he had to go to work early. I think it was a Tuesday, and when I heard all the noise downstairs, first our doorbell ringing again and again and again, then the heavy footsteps on our stairs, then the voices, I tried to come down too, but Mom snapped at me to go back to bed and I knew she meant it. Before I turned around, I saw Betsi with Mom on the couch while Dad paced in front of the two of them. Betsi was crying and holding her arm, and even though I was only there for a few seconds, I could see some sort of bluish marks because she was wearing a tank top and Mom had flipped the light on in the living room. Betsi was sort of talking, but her words were all slurred like when you’re crying really hard and nothing comes out right. Before I closed my bedroom door, I heard Dad say, “That’s it, Betsi. You’re going to get some help. You’re just as bad as he is, and being around that asshole has made it worse. You’ve got to stop.” Hearing my dad say “asshole” made my stomach hurt, because he doesn’t swear unless something is very, very wrong.
The next morning Betsi was nowhere to be found and it was as though it had never happened, except Mom made a lot of muffled phone calls. Before Peter and I were allowed to go to the park pool, she sat us down and explained about the “family business” and that we probably wouldn’t see Betsi until the reunion at the cottage but that everything was absolutely fine. Then she gave us five extra dollars to spend at the pool concession stand and sent us on our way.
Betsi taps out another cigarette and shoves the pack down the front of her shirt into the strap of her bikini. She pulls a lighter out of her pocket and gets a flame on the first try. The exhale floats over her head as she lies down on her back, stretching her arms above her head and her legs out, pointing her flip-flopped toes. I lie down next to her, staring up at the sky that seems different from the one at home, because out here there are so many stars I never get to see. Just then one streaks across the sky, and I say, “Did you see—” and Betsi says, “Yeah. Wow,” and I love that we both saw it at the same time, just the two of us.
Betsi says, “I’m going to go home with you guys for a little while. Did your mom tell you that?” Mom did tell us that, me and Peter, just a few days ago, but she also told us to not make a big deal out of anything to Betsi and to “give her a break.” I’m not sure what qualifies as a big deal, so I just say, “Hmm,” and dig into my pocket for my cherry lip balm. Betsi reaches out her hand and I pass the tube to her when I’m done. She rubs it slowly on her lips, still looking up at the sky, and says, “You know what I missed most when I was at the clinic? My music. That’s the first thing I did when I left. Got in my Jeep and popped in one of my Elvis tapes and just sat there and turned it up real loud and listened before I even left the parking lot.” She takes another drag, the smoke dancing slowly from her lips. “One of these days, we’re going to Graceland, Presley. You and I.” She places the lip balm in my palm, and I pull off the cap like I’m going to put more on too, but I just smell the top, cherry and wax and her nicotine, and wonder if people named after the King are allowed into Graceland for free.
Chapter2
The First Day of School
Most firefighters smoke.This is what I learn after the first day of school, not in class but standing in front of our house just before midnight. I guess it makes sense when I think about what they’re around all day, like if I worked at the Magdalena bakery, I’d probably eat a lot of lemon poppy-seed cake and caramel bars. None of the firefighters smoke in our house, but as soon as they get outside, and as long as they’re not unraveling hoses, the soft crumpled foil packs come out from the pockets of their long, heavy tan coats. They use matchbooks instead of lighters and take quick puffs to bring the cigarettes down to filters in just a matter of minutes. Maybe it’s because they never know when they’ll have to drop everything and go. When they’re finished, the firefighters toss the butts in the street, extinguishing them with their black boots, but then pick them up to dispose of elsewhere. They never leave any evidence behind.
I also learn that firefighters like to tell you the good news first. “The good news is, the entire house didn’t burn down” and “The good news is, there were alarms installed to warn you.” It’s the fire chief who makes these statements to Mom and Dad, a man named Meyer, according to the tag on his coat, with gray temples and a matching thick mustache. I guess it’s his turn to smoke as I watch him strike the match by folding the cover back with his wide, callused hands and dirty fingernails. He offers his pack to Mom and Dad, who shake their heads, and the chief nods, his cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth as he gives them the alternative. “Detectors are crucial. Without them, it could’ve been a lot worse.”
Below me, the pavement is still damp from a late-evening shower, the humid air swimming underneath the glow of the streetlights. None of us have shoes on, and because of this, Mom tells us to stay on the grass, but she and Dad are both pacing on the sidewalk and too busy and distracted to notice if we’re following their orders. There are a lot of emergency vehicles for what seems like a false alarm—the fire truck, two police cars, even an ambulance that’s pulling away after determining that no one was seriously hurt. The sirens are all silent but the lights are still on, circling swashes of blue and red dancing across the white panels of our house. Peter is on the grass underneath a tree, with his book and a flashlight he managed to grab from his nightstand before we fled, reading as though he’s still in bed and leaning against his headboard.
Betsi is perched on the curb, her knees tucked underneath her chin, wearing forest-green boxers and a matching tank top. The officers have been clustering around her since they got here, asking if she’d like some coffee from a silver thermos or a smoke, which she accepts from a burly firefighter named Fisher. Mom and Dad are still talking to the chief while Betsi rocks on the curb, puffing on the donated cigarette and flicking it after each drag, which is odd, because usually she’ll let it grow a bit, like a fingernail. From the outside, the house looks exactly the same, except for all the trucks and cruisers and siren lights.
“How is it?” Dad asks the chief.
“Not bad. Not bad at all,” he says, wiping a tiny smudge off his brow. By now mo
st of the neighbors who were gathered on their front stoops underneath their porch lights have retreated to the safety of their homes. “Mostly it’s just smoke damage to the den on the first floor. Looks like it started in there, near the window.” The chief catches my eye as I peek from behind Dad’s shoulder. “You mind if I talk to you privately?” he says, motioning my parents toward the street with his metal hat.
“Of course,” Dad answers, and he and Mom follow the chief to a spot too far away for me to hear what’s being said. I stay on the grass like I’m supposed to, but as close to the sidewalk as possible, watching Mom and Dad nod repeatedly at the chief ’s words. Then Dad shakes the chief ’s hand and turns around, his eyes scanning the front yard for his target. It’s as if Mom can sense what’s coming, because she’s on Dad’s heels as soon as he finds it and storms over. She follows him like a little dog, yapping “No” and “Don’t” and “Just don’t.” Dad ignores her as he reaches Betsi, yanking the cigarette out of her hand. He tosses it into the street and lifts her up by her elbow, his voice low but sharp, serious. “You see what you’ve done? You see what could have happened?”
Betsi shakes herself loose from Dad’s grip with a “Don’t touch me!” so shrill it startles the cluster of officers who are gathering up their things. Her breathing flutters, but as she backs away from Dad, her voice returns strong, her words anchored. “It started in my room. That doesn’t mean it was my fault. I wasn’t smoking in the house. I do not smoke in your fucking house.”
“Betsi!” Mom scolds, shooting a look of embarrassment at the officers, as though she’s invited them over for lemonade or a barbecue or Christmas dinner. Dad’s hands are on his hips and he’s shaking his head slowly, as if he’s trying to work a kink out of his neck. Mom wedges herself between them ever so slightly, her eyes darting back and forth like she can’t make up her mind.
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 2
