Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

  Dad’s hands were in his coat pockets, and it seemed to take everything he had to hold himself back from me. “I wanted her to come, but she...” He shook his head. “I needed to talk about it, to be able to talk about what happened—about losing my son.” His eyes were wet, but he laughed a little. “Sometimes I want to talk about the stupid stuff he did and how—” the laugher turned hoarse as suddenly as it had appeared “—I wish he was still here to do more. I need to talk about being angry at God for taking him from me and being grateful that He gave him to me for all the years that He did. I know your mom needs that, too, and I wish...” His voice caught, and we both knew he couldn’t say more.

  My chin quivered before I could stop it, but when Dad took a step toward me, I retreated farther into the hall.

  At Greg’s grave, he’d been asking Mom to come here with him. I knew it without him having to tell me. She’d said no. And he was standing in front of me, silently asking me the same question.

  I didn’t know what to do, and ultimately Dad didn’t make me decide. He went back inside and took one of the two empty seats beside Jeremy, and I stood in the hallway.

  I listened to them talk, the tear-filled stories they told and the watery laughter that hit me in the gut.

  Jeremy didn’t say anything, but Dad told a story about Greg, one that I’d never heard, about him peeing in our cat box once during a thunderstorm because Mom was taking a shower in the only working bathroom. Greg had been so impressed with himself for thinking of that solution that he’d bragged to Dad about it, not realizing that the cats would—and did—pee everywhere but in the cat box after that.

  Dad and Jeremy and I laughed, but I knew Mom wouldn’t have. She’d have cried, because she still held her grief so tight that none of her memories—or ours—made her happy.

  * * *

  Back at Dad’s apartment, Jeremy didn’t dead-arm me when I said it was time we headed home. Instead, he gave me a small smile and nod.

  I didn’t hug Dad, but I said one word. Without any prompting or threat of physical pain from my brother.

  “Bye.”

  Jolene

  I texted Adam a picture of my license along with a message for him to suck it, and he texted back a picture of his middle finger. I wonder what he would have sent if I’d taken a picture of my Lexus? Not that I had the option anymore. I got to drive it only that one day. It was gone by the time I woke up Wednesday morning and learned that Mom’s lawyers had made Dad take it back.

  If Dad wondered why I’d never sent a thank-you note, it never got back to me.

  Adam texted back with a picture of a bike and the word Jealous?

  A smile I didn’t know I had in me crept onto my face. I hadn’t heard from Adam in a few days—long, empty days. I’d tried texting him after he was due back from his grandparents, but his mom had responded and explained that Adam was grounded until Thursday. Perfect Adam got in trouble? I was so curious about what he’d done that I almost asked her. But I liked thinking that his mom liked me, or liked a photographic version of me. I didn’t want to wreck that by coming off as nosy and rude, even though I was nosy and rude.

  But he was finally texting me back.

  Adam:

  I can’t believe I had to wait this long to see your license.

  Jolene:

  And I’m dying to know what you did to get grounded for three days. Chew with your mouth open? Forget to say thank you? Get less than 105 percent on an extra credit assignment?

  Jolene:

  Hey, was it a self-inflicted

  grounding? I’m betting it was.

  Adam:

  I got into a fistfight with my brother while he was driving to my grandparents’ house and we crashed my mom’s car.

  Jolene:

  You tore the tag off a mattress, didn’t you?

  Adam:

  You think I’m kidding?

  Jolene:

  I know you’re kidding.

  Adam sent a picture of a car with the back smashed in.

  Jolene:

  !!!!!!!!!!

  Adam:

  ......

  Jolene:

  Who are you? You’re not hurt, right? Your mom and brother?

  Adam:

  We’re fine.

  Adam:

  We don’t have the money to fix her car right away so we’re all sharing Jeremy’s, but I’ll tell you everything when I see you tomorrow. It’s too much for text.

  I ran into my bathroom and blasted my hairdryer in my face while letting my jaw go slack. You couldn’t see the hairdryer in the picture I snapped with my phone, it looked like I was so stunned my hair was literally blown back. I sent the picture.

  Adam:

  I missed you this week.

  I missed him, too. Too much.

  Jolene:

  Get this: I got a car for my birthday.

  Adam:

  No way.

  Jolene:

  Yep, and my mom let me keep it for about twelve hours before her lawyers motioned to have a forensic accountant go through my dad’s finances to find the money he spent on it.

  Adam:

  I want you to be kidding.

  Jolene:

  But you know I’m not.

  Adam:

  At least tell me you got to drive it first.

  My thumbs hovered over my phone. I wanted to break out in hives thinking about the hours I’d wasted sitting outside my dad’s apartment. I knew what Adam would say—or text—if I told him the truth. It’d be my name followed by a single period. Pity was the last thing I wanted, especially since the night had turned out okay hanging out with Guy, or more specific, hanging out with Guy’s movie collection. But it wasn’t like I could tell Adam one thing without the other.

  Jolene:

  I starred in a shot-for-shot remake

  of Easy Rider, but in a Lexus instead of on a motorcycle.

  Adam:

  Is that a road trip movie?

  Jolene:

  Wow.

  Adam:

  So I should probably stop admitting that I haven’t heard of half the

  movies you talk about?

  Jolene:

  Probably. Want to hang out?

  Adam:

  Don’t we always?

  Jolene:

  I mean today.

  It was already Thursday, so there was only one more day until we’d be at the apartment together, but those stretches between seeing him were feeling longer and longer to me lately.

  Adam:

  Did the picture of my bike not come through? I could leave now and still not get there before the weekend.

  Jolene:

  I could take my mom’s car.

  Adam:

  Do you mean take or borrow?

  Jolene:

  Well, I plan to hot-wire it, so...

  Adam:

  I want to believe you know how to do that so you can teach me.

  Jolene:

  Haven’t you gotten in enough

  trouble lately?

  Adam:

  But now I’ve developed a taste for it. Seriously, do you know how?

  Jolene:

  I lived a life of crime before I met you. I’ll never fully leave that part of me behind.

  Adam:

  So your dad’s a mob boss?

  Jolene:

  Yes, and I’m a mob princess. They

  call me Jolene the spleen remover.

  Adam:

  That’s terrible.

  Jolene:

  The only other thing I could think of is Mean Jolene.

  Adam:

  Those are both terrible.

  Jolene:

  Now you see why I had to leave the life.
So, am I hot-wiring my mom’s car?

  Adam:

  I can’t tonight. I’ve got this thing with my mom.

  Jolene:

  What kind of thing?

  Adam:

  Just a thing.

  Jolene:

  An embarrassing thing?

  Jolene:

  Are you still there?

  Adam:

  It’s a puzzle.

  Jolene:

  ?

  Adam:

  We’re putting together a puzzle.

  Jolene:

  ??

  Adam:

  She likes puzzles.

  Jolene:

  You’re such a nerd. It’s sweet

  though. Mom and I are going to go get her stomach pumped tonight anyway, so we both have plans.

  Adam:

  I really don’t like it when you joke about stuff like that.

  I typed out You think I’m kidding? but I deleted it before sending. Mom and I had done that before, but not in a long time. She’d actually been drinking less since she and Tom broke up. I didn’t know if he’d realized that his grand plans to become a kept man were never gonna happen, or if she decided to learn her own lesson and find someone more capable of getting her what she wanted. Whatever that was.

  Jolene:

  Sorry. Bad joke.

  Adam:

  What are you going to do?

  Jolene:

  Something wild. I may do TWO puzzles. Mwahaha!

  Adam:

  What would my mob name be?

  Jolene:

  ...

  Adam:

  You can’t think of a single one?

  Jolene:

  I’m trying to think of one that includes puzzles.

  Adam resent the picture of his middle finger.

  TENTH WEEKEND

  January 29–31

  Jolene

  Adam didn’t show up.

  I always got to the apartment before him, thanks to the militant insistence of Dad’s lawyer, and I’d been there for thirty minutes already. Apart from when he and Jeremy got a flat tire—and he’d texted me to say he was running late that time—he’d never been this late.

  I chewed on my nails and peered through the glass door in the lobby. It was new, as was the frame, and it didn’t shake like it was going shatter during a snowstorm anymore. Glancing down, I took in the fact that the old, disgusting carpet was gone, too, replaced by long rectangular tiles laid in a herringbone pattern leading directly to the stairs. Adam’s dad had been busy. All the baseboards and molding were new, too. Everywhere I looked, things were shiny and fresh. Except for the out-of-order sign on the elevator. It was nice to know Adam’s dad couldn’t fix everything.

  As my gaze traveled around the lobby and I thought about the steadily increasing improvements that were being made throughout the building, a strangling panic began to wrap itself around me.

  I pushed open the glass door and, when I was outside, I turned to look at the building, feeling that panic constrict from my belly to my chest. Stains were gone, broken windows replaced, and the loose stones had been secured with new mortar. The concrete steps leading up to the entrance had even been repoured. It wasn’t all perfect—like the broken elevator inside, there were still signs of the decades of neglect the building had endured, but I almost couldn’t see them.

  Adam’s dad had done so much since moving in. I was sure the building owner was thrilled with the progress, but how thrilled would he be to keep letting Adam’s dad stay rent-free in a building that no longer needed to be restored? What then? Adam told me his family didn’t have a ton of money, not enough to pay for an apartment in the city and the mortgage on a house in the country. They wouldn’t stay.

  Adam would leave.

  I spun away from the building, trying to draw air into lungs that had been squeezed shut.

  Why couldn’t Adam’s dad slow down? Take his time? Why couldn’t he take up drinking like my mom had following her divorce?

  The pressure bore down tight around my head and coiled through my temples. He hadn’t done that because Adam’s parents weren’t mine. There were no Shellys or Toms or teams of frothing lawyers. There were no hastily scrawled notes waiting to greet Adam and Jeremy when they showed up here, and there was an actual person hurrying down porch steps to hug and welcome them back when they came home.

  Sorrow separated his family, not loathing, and if Adam’s dad ever figured out how to fix the kind of broken that his family was... With a shudder that was more a convulsion, I realized that, for all I knew, he already had.

  Adam had texted me about the grief group his dad had taken them to when he and Jeremy visited on Wednesday. Not on a weekend. Not when they had to. They were starting to talk, first Adam and Jeremy, then Adam and their dad... How much longer before his mom was in that picture, too? How much longer before the thing that had divided them brought them back together?

  I wanted to be a better person, one who could be happy for Adam as I looked ahead to a time when the broken pieces of his life would mend, but I wasn’t a better person. I was me, and I was afraid of losing the one thing I had left.

  Already he wasn’t here when he was supposed to be, and there wasn’t a blizzard raging outside that I could blame.

  I checked the time on my phone, hope freeing all my limbs when I saw an unread text from him from nearly an hour before.

  Adam:

  My mom dropped us off early since we only have Jeremy’s car right now. Come to my apartment when you get here.

  Adam’s dad opened the door to his apartment when I knocked. He wore the same friendly expression Adam defaulted to. “Jolene, hi.”

  I hadn’t seen his dad since that day he’d found Adam and me playing cards, so I was thrown that he remembered my name.

  I shifted my feet and felt the urge to lower my gaze. “Um, yeah, hi.” I wanted to make fun of myself for the awkwardness controlling my voice and body. “Is Adam here?”

  Behind his dad, Adam peeked his head out from his room and the moment he saw me, he smiled. Butterflies filled my stomach and I took a step back. He was the only person who unsettled me like that. “Hey. I was just coming to get you.” Then his face fell and he looked first to his brother, who widened his eyes significantly in return, and then his dad. “I mean, I was going to make sure you got here okay, but then, I, um... I’m going to grab something to eat with...” He eyed his brother and dad again.

  Oh.

  Right.

  The butterflies fled, a slick nausea flooded my stomach in their absence.

  It was too fast. Too soon.

  I needed to turn around and leave before I did something that’d be worse than getting sick.

  “Oh yeah. Sure. That’s fine. I’ll catch you later.” And then, somehow, I was turning and stepping into the hall with no earthly idea where to go. The thought of hiding in my room all weekend made me feel so alone that my eyes stung. Where had I gone before Adam?

  “Why don’t you come with us?”

  I froze.

  The invitation wasn’t shocking in and of itself. It was the person who’d made it.

  Adam’s dad.

  Somehow that made my eyes sting more. I rapidly blinked the sensation away before turning to face them.

  “What?” Jeremy’s reaction was the one I’d been expecting. He stared at his dad looking somewhat put out. I’d also been prepared for the shocked way Adam’s mouth fell open. But their dad... I knew he’d invited me only to try to get Adam to thaw toward him, but I couldn’t understand why he was looking at me. Worse, the smile on his face, the one that was nearly identical to Adam’s a moment before, was focused directly on me without so much as a glance at the audience he had to have been playing for.

  “Sure. You gotta eat
, right? I know a good cheesesteak place around the corner. And I like to try to get to know the people who are important to my sons.”

  I blinked. “I—”

  “See, Dad,” Jeremy said. “She’s not hungry.”

  I really didn’t like Adam’s brother, but I was grateful for his presence and general turdness that day. It was familiar and normal, and I clung to it.

  “If you mean Sonny’s, I’m in.”

  Jeremy groaned and his dad laughed. Adam still hadn’t closed his mouth.

  Jeremy brushed past all of us, checking his brother in the shoulder. They exchanged a look that seemed to communicate volumes. “Whatever. Whoever is going, let’s go.”

  We all went.

  “How uncomfortable should I expect this to be?” I asked Adam as we trailed behind in the hallway. “Jeremy’s always been super subtle, but I have picked up on the fact that he might not love having me around.”

  Instead of laughing like I’d wanted, Adam locked his jaw. “If he pulls any more of that tonight, I’ll shove his cheesesteak down his throat.”

  I clasped my hands under my chin. “My hero.” Then I pulled a face and shoved Adam ahead of me.

  Halfway down, we ran into Guy. I smiled, getting ready to introduce him and Adam even if that meant giving Adam a massively abridged version of the events surrounding how I’d met Guy. But then Guy did something weird—or, maybe not weird, just unexpected. He completely ignored me.

  My smile slipped, making me feel embarrassed that it had ever been there at all.

  “Hey, Paul. How’s it going?” Guy said to Adam’s dad.

  “Good. Just heading out to dinner. You haven’t met my sons. This is Jeremy and Adam. And this is Adam’s friend Jolene. Everyone, this is Guy from across the hall. Adam, Guy is the film critic I was telling you about.”

  Adam brightened. “That’s so cool. Jolene is really into movies, too.” He glanced at me as if expecting me to take over the conversation, but before I could say anything, Guy gave us each a dismissive nod, acted like he’d never met me before, and turned back to Adam’s dad. “Hey, did I hear you’re getting the elevator fixed this month?”

  They went on like that for several minutes, having a totally normal conversation about totally normal things. There wasn’t a single thing wrong with what they said, but each word jostled nauseatingly in my stomach.