Gem & Dixie

by Sara Zarr

  And he thought he could turn up, and put his arms around me and say, Gem, baby, and come into our house with some grand plan, filling the place up with food and making it nice. Maybe some part of me had fallen for it for a minute. Maybe a little more. But I didn’t care what he said or how he looked into my eyes or how he bought us all that food, cooked us dinner like a dad on TV. I knew in my gut it was bad news, and I knew in my gut I didn’t want to be in that apartment with him.

  You don’t have to.

  I argued with Mr. Bergstrom in my head. That it wasn’t so simple, especially with people around you—especially your family—saying you do have to or assuming you will.

  “I bet you didn’t know I could cook like this.”

  Dad, across from me, put a huge slab of meat loaf on my plate, next to a pile of green beans and a scoop of macaroni and cheese. The beans were from a can and the mac and cheese from a box, so really he’d only made meat loaf. Which didn’t seem like that hard a dish.

  But I’d had worse. Okay, I’d had much worse. It all tasted good and even though I’d already eaten half a jar of peanuts I cleared my plate in minutes, partly because I liked food and also to stuff down the dread of what would happen when Mom got home. All it would take for me to not be there when it all went down was walking out the door. But my feet were lead and I hated them.

  Dad said, “I was telling Dix earlier I got a job here in Seattle.”

  “Already?” I asked. How long had he been in town?

  “Well, I as good as got it. Nothing big, just working the door at Roddy’s. All I gotta do is meet the manager. It doesn’t pay a lot but it’s not about money anyway. It’s about networking.” He helped himself to more meat loaf. “A lot of the connections I had aren’t around anymore. Roddy’s is the shit now. The Velvet’s gone downhill, everyone says.”

  I took more food. It was surreal, the way he talked and talked as if it were normal for him to be here, and the way I sat there and listened.

  “It’s a stepping stone. Filling in the gap. Which I don’t even really need to do.” He pointed his fork at the food. “I provided, right?”

  I didn’t want to hear any more about his big plans and how great he was, so I said I’d do the dishes. Dad went to use the bathroom and Dixie turned on the TV and unpacked her homework. I stood in front of the sink and watched it fill with hot water, making mandarin-orange-scented steam from the new dish soap we’d gotten.

  I visualized myself walking to the door, going down the stairs, out the front gate. That part I could imagine; it was what would happen after that I couldn’t picture. Would it be enough to go to the park and have my cigarette and make it to tomorrow? That’s how I’d been living—day to day to day. I washed plates and imagined leaving and not coming back. Then I shook my head at myself, the impossibility of it. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what most girls who ran away ended up doing for money unless they had some kind of help.

  While I did dishes, Dad talked his head off about Roddy’s and wandered around the apartment. He’d use that job to learn everything he could about running a club now, what had changed since he’d last been in Seattle. “Bunch of hipsters these days,” I heard him saying as he came back into the living room. “Not as many rockers, not as many punks, is what people say. But I know they’re out there. You don’t listen to any of that twee hipster shit do you, Dix?”

  She said no.

  “What are you listening to? Play me something you like. Where’s the stereo?”

  “We don’t have one anymore,” I called.

  “I listen on my phone,” Dixie said.

  Mom had also sold off their CD collection when she needed some cash. The main noise in the apartment now was the TV.

  I finished cleaning and went back out into the living room. They were on the couch together, Dad pointing to something in Dixie’s homework as if he was actually helping. The apartment still smelled like meat loaf. It was all cozy, the way Dad wanted it to look for Mom. My stomach had gone into knots—with worry and also because I’d eaten way too much. I broke into a cold sweat and rushed to the bathroom, where I bent over the toilet until everything came out. I sat on the floor with my head resting on the toilet seat.

  It would be a good time to cry. I couldn’t. I didn’t. Not then and not generally. If I wasn’t going to leave, there was nothing to do but hide and wait. I brushed my teeth, then went back out and announced, “I’m going to bed.”

  Dad looked up. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “She does this all the time,” Dixie said, glaring. “When she doesn’t want to deal with shit, she just goes to bed.”

  “I’m tired,” I repeated.

  “You can lie down on the floor in here and doze,” Dad said. “Let’s all be together when your mom walks in. United front.” He threw a pillow from the couch onto the floor and pointed.

  I felt my knees bend and I hated how he could do this to me in the few short hours since getting here. Make me do what I knew I didn’t want to. Make me complicit.

  I lay down with my back to them and looked at the TV.

  8.

  I WOKE up with Dixie’s toes digging into my ribs and the sound of Mom’s key in the door. Dad hissed, “Get up onto the couch, Gem.” Before I could even move, he took a handful of my shirt and pulled me backward and up. He was strong and it scared me. When the door cracked open, the three of us were lined up on the couch, Dad right between me and Dixie. He kept his arm behind me, his fingers tucked into the waist of my jeans so if I tried to get up he could pull me back down.

  Mom’s face said everything. First shock, then confusion morphing into astonishment. For a second, I think, Dad thought it had worked. He must have misread her disorientation as some kind of elation at seeing us together, a family. He loosened his grip on me and smiled. But I knew better. We were screwed.

  Mom threw her keys across the room. She’d probably aimed at him but the keys caught me on the shoulder. “What the fuck,” she said.

  I stood to move away from him. “He showed up at school.”

  It was like she didn’t hear me. She pointed at Dixie. “What did I tell you?”

  Dixie sprang up. Mom put her hand out, stopping her from getting too close.

  “You said you wouldn’t stop me from seeing him,” Dixie said, pleading.

  “I said keep your distance.”

  Dad, confused, looked at Dixie. “You told her?” Dixie’s face had gone red; now Mom and Dad were both mad at her and she was going to cry. “Dix? I asked if you told her.”

  “Leave her alone, Russ,” Mom said.

  Tears spilled onto Dixie’s cheeks and, despite everything, I felt bad for her. Dad got up, too, and took a few steps.

  “Don’t come near me,” Mom said. “Asshole.”

  “Oh, I’m an asshole, right. I forgot. You’re great and I’m an asshole.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Go look in the fridge, Adri. Go look in the cupboards.”

  I watched her. I wished she wasn’t wearing such a short skirt. I wished she wasn’t wearing such a low top. I wished she didn’t have so many tattoos and such heavy eyeliner.

  But she’s here. That’s what I told myself that moment, like I had a lot of other times when I needed to believe that in itself could be enough.

  “So, what, you bought some food?” Mom said. “What happens when that’s gone? Where’s the four hundred dollars a month you’re supposed to be sending me? Where’s that?”

  “Here, Dree. Look.” He pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and held it out.

  Mom laughed. “Sure. Okay.” She let her purse fall to the floor and kicked off her boots. She ignored Dad’s outstretched hand and went to the kitchen. “Chocolate cake,” she said. “Fancy.”

  “Thanks a lot, Dix,” Dad said. “I thought you had my back.”

  Dixie stared at the floor. My impulse was to let her suffer—maybe the truth about who Dad was would sink in. But I was more on her side than his. “It
wouldn’t matter if Dixie told or not,” I said to him. “Mom doesn’t want you here. That’s not Dixie’s fault.”

  She glanced up at me and brushed a tear away.

  “That’s not the point,” Dad said. “Trust is the point.”

  Trust. That word again, and him of all people using it.

  Dixie went to him and tugged his arm. “Mom found the letter in the mail before I did. That’s the only reason.”

  “She opened it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Genius, Russ,” Mom called from the kitchen where she was opening and closing cupboards. “You want to keep some secret from me and you mail it right to my house.”

  “You didn’t have to tell her what it said,” Dad told Dixie. He wasn’t angry like raging or anything, that wasn’t his style. More trying to make her feel bad, because he knew it worked. He said, quietly and with a glance toward Mom, “I just have to know if I can trust you. It’s important.”

  “You can,” Dixie said. She’d stopped crying.

  “Good, because we should be in this together. The club and everything, I want your help.” He smiled at me. “Yours, too, if you want.” The smile didn’t fool me into thinking it made any difference to him whether he had my help or not.

  Mom came back over, her phone in her hand. “I hate to interrupt your epic ideas about ‘the club,’ but you need to leave before I call the cops.”

  “Adri,” he said, “take this money, okay? I’ll leave. Take this money and I’ll get you more. I’ll pay all of the support back.”

  She smiled a fuck-you kind of smile. “No thanks.”

  “Mom,” I said. That would be a lot. Even the amount in his hand was a few hundred, maybe more.

  He extended his hand to me. “Gem. You take it.”

  I reached for it and Mom grabbed my arm. “Don’t.”

  “Mom, it’s—”

  “Trust me, Gem, that money didn’t come from anywhere good.” She pointed at Dixie. “You’re not taking it, either. If you do, I’ll find it and burn it. I’m serious.”

  Dad shook his head and said to Dixie, “Your mom is still so . . . Shouldn’t surprise me.” He put the money back in his pocket. “Guess that’s my cue to leave.”

  “You’re catching on.” Mom went to the door and held it open for him. He walked right through without saying good-bye to Dixie or me. Something about him seemed different as he left, as if he was older than he’d been when he’d gotten there, or maybe just defeated.

  As soon as the door closed, Mom looked from Dixie to me and said, “So. You just let him right into our house. You ate his food.”

  “He—”

  “Like that whole conversation we had never happened.” She gestured with her head toward Dixie but kept her eyes on me. “I know she has no backbone when it comes to him, but I expected different from you. You’re going to help me clean the kitchen.”

  “I cleaned it already.”

  She breathed out a short laugh. “That’s not how I mean. Dixie, go to bed.”

  Dixie opened her mouth, closed it, and stomped off to our room.

  “Come on,” Mom said to me.

  I followed her. She pulled a roll of garbage bags out from under the sink and handed me one. “Hold this open for me. We’ll start with what’s in the fridge.”

  That’s when I understood what she’d meant by “clean the kitchen.”

  “Mom,” I said, trying not to let panic creep into my voice. “Let’s just keep it. He owes us.”

  “You don’t get it.” She threw the cheese and the sandwich meat into the bag. The bread. The apples.

  I did get it. How him turning up and buying food and trying to give us handfuls of cash was only a different way of lying to us. Whatever his intention, it wasn’t real and it wasn’t love. But the food, the money, those were real and we needed them. In that moment, though, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t explain that I did understand but also that we should still keep everything. I couldn’t, and I shouldn’t have had to.

  She scraped the leftover macaroni and cheese out of the pot, the meat loaf out of the pan. I stood there with the garbage bag trying to think of ways to talk her out of it that wouldn’t make her mad. Like, Why don’t we go ahead and save the canned food for an emergency? Or, Maybe you’ll change your mind in the morning. She should sleep on it, I could say.

  But it was all garbage to her and she wouldn’t stop until we were back to nothing.

  She filled the bag until it was too heavy to hold. “Get me another one,” she said. I didn’t move. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll get it myself.” First, though, she took the full bag and opened the back door. I heard it slide down the chute and crash into the big garbage can at the bottom.

  I found some words. “You don’t have to eat any of it, Mom. I’ll . . . I’ll take it to a food bank or something tomorrow, okay? We could give it to Mrs. Wu, leave it outside her door.” I could fit a lot of cans under my bed.

  Another bag went down the chute.

  I held the roll of garbage bags away from her, hoping to salvage what was left.

  I can still see exactly how she looked, small and frail and afraid. The way she blinked with something like surprise as she looked around the kitchen, probably already regretting throwing the food away. Sometimes, when I remember it, I add a moment, in my imagination, where I step toward her and put my arms around her and tell her I’m sorry and I wish everything was different.

  I didn’t do any of that, though. I stood still and mute while she bundled herself in her own arms, shivering from the draft the back door had let in, and said, “You have to understand, Gem. I used to love him so much. We were destiny, made for each other. I would have loved him forever. He fucked it up. I could have dealt with the drugs. Together we could have dealt with it. But he became this . . . liar. He wasn’t like that when I met him, he wasn’t.”

  Her voice got quieter and her arms dropped.

  “The women, Gem. I hope you never know what that feels like. It feels like shit,” she continued. “You wonder if anything was ever true. You wonder if you’re the stupidest woman who ever lived. It makes you crazy. It puts you on the floor tearing your hair out wondering if you could have done something. Like you’re the one who messed up when it’s them you should be blaming all along.”

  I remembered how it was sometimes when we were little, before he left for good, Mom in bed for days, clean and sober but wrecked by a broken heart and cursing him.

  And I understood being made to feel guilty for things that weren’t your fault.

  “Now he’s going to come back?” She squatted down to pick up a bag of salad that had fallen to the floor. “He thinks walking in here like fucking Santa Claus with presents and toys is going to make me look bad and him look good?”

  “It doesn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t make him look good.”

  “Dixie believes in that shit, Gem. She believes him.”

  “I don’t,” I assured her.

  She continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I can see in her face. She thinks he’s coming through.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re the one who let him in today. You’re older, Gem. You were supposed to keep an eye out for her.”

  My fault, was what she was saying.

  She straightened her skirt and wiped her fingers under her eyes to clear the streaked mascara there. I followed her to the living room. She dug in her purse and came up with some money. “It’s only ten bucks. But it’s enough for lunch for both of you tomorrow, right?”

  I nodded and took it. It wasn’t the time to say I’d gotten on the lunch program or explain again how Dixie always figured out her own way to pay for it.

  “I can take care of you.” Tears had returned to her voice. She held on to my arm like she needed more than anything in the world for me to believe what she’d just said.

  I didn’t, but I told her, “I know you can.”

  This look crossed her face and then she
wasn’t there. She’d gone somewhere else in her head. She let go of my arm and said, “I’m going to my room. I need to think. I need space. I need to . . . Just leave me alone in there. Okay? Let me disappear for a while.”

  Let me disappear.

  I knew what that meant.

  I was tired and empty. Tired of trying to stop her from her bad decisions. Empty of any love, any sympathy. She’d basically announced to me that she was going to use, and I didn’t feel anything.

  “Good night, Mom.”

  She brushed past me and I watched her go to her room. She got smaller and smaller. She shrank to nothing.

  9.

  DIXIE WAS sitting up on her bed, her face illuminated by the light of her phone, which she held in one hand, like she was waiting for it to do something. Tissues were piled around her. I wished I could cry like that, let it all out anytime I needed to. I pictured my own tears, the ones that never came out, turning into little pebbles and piling up inside me. I pictured them filling my fingertips and feet and stomach, weighing me down.

  I needed my Hacienda. I put on my jacket and felt for the pack, and slipped my feet into my shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Dixie asked quietly, and put her phone facedown on the bed.

  “Fire escape.”

  She sniffled. “Can I come?” Her voice was small.

  “There aren’t any lights in the alley.”

  “So?”

  “You used to be afraid of the dark.” Of the dark, of strange noises and shadows, of the hours we had alone together after school when Mom worked days and Dad was doing whatever and we were tired of the runaway game. That stuff scared me, too, but I pretended it didn’t, for her. I’d tell her: Draw a dinosaur for me. Draw a princess.

  “Every kid is afraid of the dark,” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  We climbed out. The metal grating was wet from when it had rained earlier. I reached back into the window and pulled my blanket off the bed for us to sit on. I touched the cigarettes in my pocket and knew that if I smoked now, the secret of it, the privacy, would be gone forever. The trade-off seemed worth it to show Dixie that I wasn’t exactly what she thought I was. To be the big sister again.