Fixing Lia

by Jamie Bennett

  “Uh…” I thought. “A lot. I started when I was sixteen so that’s six years. Le Feu was my longest stretch. I kept moving on when the money looked better somewhere else.” I stamped my feet. “I’m sure this is fascinating for you both, but can we really get going? I’m freezing.” The rain of the last few days had stopped and the temperature had gone way, way down.

  “One thing. Come into the garage.” Connor started walking toward a set of six big doors.

  “Which one?” Jared muttered to me, and grinned. It was our first joke, kind of like we had a secret together. I stopped myself from freaking out in excitement over his two little words.

  The garage door on the left noiselessly rolled up. I saw a bumper with a lot of dents, and a partially peeled-off sticker that used to say “Lamb’s Academy LAX.” Then I saw some rusted blue metal, and old white letters spelling out “FORD.” I turned to Connor. “That’s your truck. That’s your old truck.”

  “You recognize it,” he smiled at me. “Yep, it is my old truck. It’s pretty beat-up, but it still runs.”

  “I thought you said it was up north. How did it get here?”

  “My brother drove it down rather than taking the team bus yesterday. He got a ride the rest of the way to Toledo with my parents,” Connor said.

  “You’re going to drive your truck again?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying?” I thought that was a very, very good idea.

  “No, you’re going to, if you want it. You can’t tool around the city with stuff tied onto the roof of your little car, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you do need a few more doors in your house. For example, if anyone wants some privacy while in the bathroom.”

  “I do,” Jared said promptly. “I definitely want a door there.”

  Connor laughed. “Perfect. Your sister will find one on a curb somewhere and put it in her truck.”

  “You’re loaning it to me?” I asked, still confused.

  “You need it, right? If you’re going to do construction, you need it. Sure, call it a loan.” He threw a set of keys and instinctively, I caught them. “Nothing’s going to happen to this truck if you park it on the street at your apartment, but I thought you could leave it in the driveway of your house. It would make the place look more lived-in, too.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Really, Lia!” My brother rolled his eyes. “What do you say?”

  That was how our mom had reminded us. Had Jared remembered that? “Thank you, Connor,” I told him. “Thank you so much.”

  He nodded, seeming satisfied. “You’re welcome. Let’s get on our way to Ohio because I want some cookies. We can work out the truck delivery when we get back.”

  Connor drove, and I left my car in the second to last garage, only a little afraid that someone was going to see it and have it disposed of. For a while, I sat in pretty stunned silence about the truck loan as they discussed the computer game that Jared was obsessed with, Blazer. He had gotten Connor to try it, too. “I don’t get the alabaster monkey thing,” Connor told him. “It has levitating powers?”

  “Oh, that’s pretty advanced. I can explain it, but it’s going to take you a while to get to that level. How much time do you have to devote to this game? Could you take a day or two off work or something?” Jared asked him, and Connor and I smiled at each other. Now it was like he and I had a secret. After a while Jared put on his headphones so the music over the car speakers didn’t annoy him. Even though he liked Connor, he had his limits.

  We turned onto Woodward Avenue. “You’re quiet today,” Connor mentioned.

  “I still can’t believe you got your truck for me,” I said.

  “You can thank my brother, because he was the one who drove it here. Actually, he was happy to do it. He’s been having a little crisis of confidence lately and he didn’t want to spend five hours on a bus getting an earful from his coaches.” Connor went on to explain things about passing yards, and a new receiver, and a lot of other stuff about football that pretty much went directly through my ears and got left on the shoulder of I-75.

  He glanced over and noticed my blank stare. “You’re a real football afficionado,” he noted, laughing. “Are you going to fall asleep if I talk more about his completion percentage?”

  “No, I’m very interested. I’m excited to see your brother play,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.

  “Sure you are.” Connor laughed again. “Besides your burning interest in football, what else? You asked me what I like to do. What are your free hours filled with besides building your fantasy team for next year?”

  Fantasy team? I left that alone. “My free time,” I repeated, and thought. “I’m mostly at work or working on the house. Before, at the restaurants, I always tried to get a lot of extra shifts, a lot of hours. I got my GED. I spent so much time filing papers to try to get Jared, filling out forms, making appointments, going to court dates, that kind of thing. I read a lot of laws and statutes to help my case.” I looked in the back, but my brother was avidly watching his screen. “I fought for a long time just to try to get visitation. They wouldn’t let me see him.”

  “Why? You keep saying that, and I can’t imagine anyone trying to keep a brother and sister apart.”

  “They’re bad people,” I said with conviction. “They wanted to erase everything that had come before in Jared’s life so they could be his only real parents.” I remembered Jill Samotny crying on the street the day before, as I drove away and left her standing in the freezing rain. “Jill, his foster mom, made a big speech at the last hearing about not being able to have kids and how Jared was her own son. Talk about fantasy.” I felt my anger rise. “But that meant that I couldn’t be around because I couldn’t really exist, right? Jared couldn’t have a sister or actual parents. The only time they ever wanted to acknowledge us was over bad stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  I shook my head. “Lies,” I said, but bit my lip. “I mean, not total lies, but she took things and made them sound terrible. Like, for example, my dad had drunk a few beers on the day when they were in the accident.” I looked at Connor to gauge his reaction but he was watching the road.

  “They were going to see you at school, right? So this was during the day,” he remarked.

  “Yes, but it wasn’t as if…” I stopped and sighed. “My dad’s blood alcohol was a little high. He definitely liked to drink some, but he wasn’t the reason for what happened. The Samotnys acted like he was a horrible person or something, but really, they got in the accident because a woman was late to work and she thought she could make a yellow light. Isn’t that dumb? She was worried about being a few minutes late, so two people died, and two other lives got ruined.”

  Connor shook his head. “That’s terrible.”

  “Doesn’t it make everything seem so meaningless? Or irrational, or senseless.” It was true about his life, too. I looked across the car. “What if you hadn’t stopped that night? Do you ever think about that?”

  “Do you mean if I hadn’t stopped at the party store?” He nodded slowly, eyes on the road. “I have thought about that. Like, if I hadn’t spent ten extra minutes talking to the electrician about where we were going to place the light switches in the kitchen in the house in Brush Park. That was why I was a little late coming home, that and other equally dumb reasons. I wouldn’t have been in the parking lot when the white car pulled up. I already would have been gone.”

  “If I hadn’t had your cigarettes ready for you so you had to wait longer when you came in, that’s what I think about. Or if I hadn’t stocked the display, and if I’d had to go get them from the back. Or what if there had been another customer ahead of you in line? We would have locked the door and pulled down the security gate and been fine.” I pictured the two of us safely hidden in the party store that didn’t even exist anymore. Instead, Connor had been shot and then everything in his life had been upended, and I then had been hurt, too. I remembered the recovery, when I had stil
l obsessed over it all. “Afterwards, I used to lie in the bed there, wishing I could change it,” I told him. “I thought of every detail that I could have done differently.”

  “It wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine. Things just happen,” Connor said. “Like you said, life can seem senseless at times.” He glanced over at me. “What do you mean about the bed?”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “You said you used to be ‘in the bed there’ wishing you could change what happened. What bed, where?”

  I shook my head. “My bed. You know, just my bed.” I wanted to have fun today, not get into that. I never wanted to, and especially not with Connor. “Did I tell you that this will be my first real football game?”

  “Really, your first? I’ve watched Teddy play so many times I bet I could predict every move he makes. I’ll try it today and we’ll see.”

  “Amy said he was the only person out of your snooty high school ever to succeed in sports.”

  That made Connor crack up. “Yes, that entire statement is accurate. Well, no, I think in the early nineteen hundreds, one of our grads played at Wimbledon, so maybe there are two.”

  “That’s really impressive.”

  “Nobody likes a smart ass,” he told me, but he laughed again. “Teddy was the best player to ever come out of our school, for sure, but do you know how many kids play high school football in the United States? And that number gets winnowed down to how many spaces there are on college teams, and then just a tiny percentage of them make it to the pros, stay there, and turn it into a somewhat long-term career. Teddy’s been bouncing around at the junior-pro level for a long time, now. My parents are working on him to give it up.”

  “Why?”

  “They want him to settle down into a different job. Something with longevity and not as much risk. The real problem is that they think he’s goofing off and refusing to grow up. They don’t understand how much he loves it. He’s serious about football and he really wants to make it to the pros.”

  “Isn’t that what they did with you? They thought your job remodeling houses wasn’t good enough, right?”

  “No.” He seemed annoyed. “It’s different.”

  “How? When I knew you before, you were doing something you loved, really enjoying it. You said your parents wanted you to quit after the shooting. They thought that Whitaker Enterprises would be more of a long-term career, just like what they want for your brother.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t really understand that.”

  “What’s there to understand?” Connor still sounded irritated. “Our parents want what’s best for us.”

  “I guess I mean that I don’t have much experience with that. I always made my own mistakes. There was no one in my life trying to control them.” Or help me through them, either. After my parents, no one had really cared very much about what I did. I thought again. “You’re lucky to have them love you like that,” I told him. No matter what I thought of his mom, I did feel that way. She had acted out of love for her son.

  We drove several miles down I-75 before he answered. “They do want what’s best for us, but you’re right about the control. It chafes. My mom, especially, can be somewhat overwhelming with her need to guide us. They’re not bad people, though. You’ll see when you meet them.”

  Did his mother guide, or grip with an iron fist? I remembered her perfume when she leaned over me, cloying and suffocating. “I did meet your parents. At least, I ran into them when you were in the hospital. I don’t know if they’ll remember me.”

  “You know them already? They didn’t mention that when I told them that you guys were coming today.”

  “Maybe I didn’t make much of an impression. I mostly hung out in the halls and waiting rooms.” I hesitated. “Your family didn’t want anyone there.”

  “Well, that’s the control thing again, right? She wasn’t letting anyone come, not my friends, not even my girlfriend.”

  “You’re seeing someone?” Then Amy’s husband was a damn liar.

  “No, not anymore. At the time I was pretty serious about a woman from college, but it didn’t work out. She’s married to someone else and they live in Chicago, but I ran into her not too long ago when she came to visit her family over the holidays.”

  “A pretty blonde?”

  “Yes. How did you know that?” he asked me curiously.

  “You let me look at your pictures.” He had kept the one of that woman, so maybe he was still regretful about their breakup. “What happened with you two?”

  “We were both pretty young to be so serious,” Connor told me.

  “My age. You were my age.” It never felt that young to me.

  “Exactly. Way too early to settle down with someone, right?” He looked over at me, waiting for my agreement.

  “I’m not settling down, not ever. Except with Jared,” I modified, hitching my thumb at the back.

  My brother took off his headphones briefly. “What are you saying about me?” he asked.

  “I’m saying that I’m sticking with you permanently. Until you’re eighteen, you’re stuck with me, too.”

  “Whatever.” He put the headphones back on.

  At least Jared hadn’t started crying about me being in his life. I turned back to Connor. “So that was it? It didn’t work out with blondie because you were too young?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, that and the accid—when I got shot, my recovery was hard. Afterwards, I wasn’t at my best for a long time. I wasn’t the same guy who I had been before and she was too young to deal with it.”

  “Too immature,” I noted.

  “Maybe we both were,” he agreed. “I was angry at times, bitter at others. I took it out on her, probably. I was scared and unsettled, and she had a hard time dealing with that.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t want him to be scared.

  “I’m different now. Not the same guy as before it happened,” he repeated.

  “How are you different now? What changed about you?” I asked him.

  Connor didn’t answer immediately. “I lost some optimism, I think. I lost a little faith in people. I had led a very charmed life and most things had come very easily to me. My recovery was very humbling, which I probably needed. It made me more thoughtful and more appreciative, too.”

  “Not all bad,” I said.

  “No, not all bad.”

  But I still wished none of it had ever happened, and I was willing to bet the old truck that Connor felt the same way.

  It wasn’t a very long drive to the football game. “Here,” Connor said, and popped his shiny trunk before we walked to the field from the dirt parking lot. “Take some blankets and cushions for the bleachers.” He loaded up Jared and handed me a thermos. “You take the hot chocolate.”

  “You came prepared,” I said.

  “I told you that I’ve seen my brother play many, many times. As much as I can, I’ll get there, and these devo league games are a lot of frozen bleachers and dealing with the weather.” He looked up at the sky. “It looks like snow now, doesn’t it? Did you happen to see the forecast?”

  “Let’s go!” Jared urged. “I want to see Nico Williams.” When he had taken off his headphones in the car to ask how much further and also to announce that he was hungry and the cookies hadn’t been enough, he and Connor had started talking about that Williams guy, a new receiver for the Junior Woodsmen. He was somebody famous from the big league who had gotten demoted and stuck on the team.

  “Go on ahead,” Connor told him, and handed him a printed ticket. “Find us some good seats.” He glanced again at the leaden sky, and called, “Look for some under the overhang!”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. He was frowning more as we got closer to the entrance.

  “That receiver we were talking about, Williams. Teddy is so nervous to play with him that he throws up before every practice. There’s some kind of pissing match going on between Williams and the coach and Teddy wasn’t supposed to pass to h
im in their last game, but he tried one anyway and it was a terrible throw. He almost got the guy really injured. Teddy’s nerves are shot.” A funny look passed over Connor’s face. “He was hoping that having family here would calm him down, but an hour in the car with my mom yesterday couldn’t have helped. I told him to pretend they had team meetings and a mandatory dinner to get some breathing room.”

  They had to make up lies to get away from her? I wanted to see his parents at this game less and less. Feathery flakes of snow started to fall as we went through the ticket booth and I was glad for all the blankets and gear that Connor was carrying. I was certainly doing my part with the one, single thermos.

  “Lia!” Jared called when he saw us, and he waved like he wanted me to come sit with him. I would have run across hot coals to get to him after that. At the same time, I heard another voice speak, a voice I hadn’t heard since seven years before, when she told me to remove myself from the hospital premises or she would have the police called to do it for me. And she had motioned to the hospital security guard to help get me on my way.

  “Connor, finally,” she said. “We thought you had been in an accident on the way down.”

  “We stopped for food a few times,” he answered, and bent to kiss his mother’s cheek. She looked much as I remembered her: beautiful, a lot like Connor with the same hazel eyes and classic features, the same glossy, brown hair. But hers was perfectly straight, and even though it was windy with the light snow, it looked totally unruffled. And while she was as beautiful as her son was handsome, it was different, because she looked so cold. Not from the temperature; she looked frozen from the inside.

  She turned the hazel eyes to me. “This must be your friend from work.”

  I glanced up at him as he answered, “Yes. This is Lia. Lia, this is my mom, Margaux, and my dad, Blaine.”

  Who was I supposed to be, now? “Hello,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Blaine echoed, but Margaux just looked at me.

  “Lia,” she repeated. “And you work in what capacity at Whitaker Enterprises?” Her voice was just as austere as her features.