by Sonja Yoerg
Megan pointed at a light blue triangular case at her feet, like she didn’t know whether picking up stuff belonging to The Absolute Fucking Traitor was good form or not. “What’s this?”
Ella shrugged and picked it up. It was weirdly heavy. She turned it over, then laid it flat in one hand and unzipped it.
Megan leaned over to see. “What the . . . ?”
Ella nearly dropped it. She couldn’t fucking believe it. Why did Charlie have this? She looked at Megan in case maybe she knew. Nope.
She’d never held a gun before. The closest she’d been to one was standing near a policeman. Of course, the policeman’s gun wasn’t pale blue.
A senior whose name she didn’t know was a few yards away, kicking at Charlie’s stuff. “What’s up with all this?”
She shut the case. She was holding a weapon on school property. Holy crap! Was it loaded? How could she tell? Okay, okay, assume it’s loaded. Assume the worst. Because that’s today.
Megan said, “It was an accident.” She glanced at Ella. “We were just going to pick it up.”
Frozen to the spot, Ella nodded and her friend started shoving stuff into the backpack. The senior went to his car.
Her hands shaking, she slowly zipped up the gun case. Then she didn’t know what to do with it. Tears stung in her nose and she bit her lip so she wouldn’t whimper like a freaking baby.
“Megan,” she said softly, “can you do something with this?”
Megan looked at her as if she wasn’t sure any friendship, even theirs, should include weapons handling. But then she held open the backpack. “Let’s put it back in here.”
She slid it in carefully and Megan zipped the backpack closed and put it in the truck. They both stared at it like it might jump at them, or explode. Ella pulled her phone from her pocket. Her sweaty fingers slid across the screen as she dialed.
“Mom? Yeah, it’s me. What? No, I’m okay.” Tears clogged her throat. “Maybe not so okay.” Now her nose was running and she really couldn’t help the fact that she was coming unglued. Totally unglued. “Can you come get me? Please? I’m so sorry. I’m really, really sorry. There’s a bad mess and it’s my fault. Can you please come get me? Please?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
GENEVA
Geneva struggled to stay under the speed limit as she drove the ten miles to the high school. On the way, she called Tom on the hands-free, and told him about Ella’s phone call.
“And you have no idea what’s going on?”
“None. I’ll bring her home as soon as I can.”
She found her sitting in the truck with Megan, her head resting on the steering wheel, her back shaking with each sob. When Geneva opened the door, Ella threw her arms around her neck. Geneva cupped Ella’s head as she had done when she was a baby.
“Can you tell me what’s happening?”
“I just want to go home.”
“Okay. But do you need a doctor? Megan, are you all right?”
The girl nodded.
Ella straightened and looked at her mother. “Let’s go home. Let’s get Charlie and go home.”
In her panic, Geneva had forgotten about Charlie. And an aspect of her daughter’s tone bothered her. “Does this have to do with Charlie in some way?”
Megan gave Ella a furtive glance. Ella said, “Yes,” and began to cry again.
• • •
Tom was waiting when they pulled into the drive. As they got out of the car, he gave Geneva a questioning look over the top of Ella’s head. She shrugged and shook her head. Tom took Ella’s backpack from her and put his arm around her shoulders. Charlie was already at the door, scowling.
“Charlie, how’d the Battle go?”
“How should I know? Mom made me leave before they announced the winner.”
They went inside and Charlie headed toward the den.
Ella said, “Don’t let him take his backpack in there!”
Tom asked, “Why not?”
“I’ll tell you everything in a minute! Just don’t!”
“Charlie, let’s sit down now.”
He didn’t turn around. “I’ll be there in a minute!”
Geneva exchanged glances with Tom. “Charles, leave it now!”
He dropped his backpack in the middle of the room and threw himself on the couch. “Does it have to be a family emergency every time Ella has PMS?”
“Shut up!” Ella said.
“Okay, you two,” Tom said and sat down next to Geneva. “Ella, maybe you could start at the beginning.”
She slid her hands between her knees and stared at the coffee table. “I’m not sure where the beginning is.”
“Great,” said Charlie.
Geneva put a hand on his arm and gave him a stern look.
Ella exhaled loudly. “Okay, so there’s a lot of stuff going on you guys don’t know about.”
Geneva glanced at her son, whose expression had changed from annoyed to worried.
Tom said, “For example . . .”
“For example, the truck. It didn’t happen in a parking lot.”
“It didn’t?”
“No. It was in a parking garage. I hit a pole.”
Geneva said, “Well, that’s not very serious. Of course we would’ve preferred if you’d been honest with us. Where was this parking garage?”
“Um . . . In the city?”
“San Francisco?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You drove to San Francisco after your SAT class?”
Charlie snorted.
“No, Mom.” She pulled the cuffs of her sweatshirt over her hands, and addressed the coffee table. “I didn’t go to the class at all.”
“What? Ella . . .”
“Let me tell it! I drove to the city for the poetry slam. And because I was worried about getting lost, Megan came with me. And the parking space was really tight and I hit the pole. Then there was construction, and we got lost on the detour, so I was really late picking up Charlie. But you didn’t notice because you were at the hospital with Jon and Dad.” Exhausted by the confession, she dropped her head onto her arms.
“Wow,” Tom said.
“Wow, indeed.” Geneva felt a small surge of gratitude that all that had been damaged was the truck, then returned to the reality that there was more of the story left to be told. “But what does that have to do with today?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said. “Ella’s just freaking out over a song we did.” He got up. “Can I go now?”
Ella jumped up and pointed at him. “You’re not going anywhere! You think I’m telling them everything because you’re a conniving thief who doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s feelings? I’m not. I’m telling them everything because you’re too stupid to know how you’re fucking up your life!”
Geneva quickly glanced at Tom and saw her fear mirrored in his face. “Both of you sit down. Please. Ella’s told us about the car. Charles, do you want to tell us anything?”
“Like what?”
Ella said, “Like where you got the money to buy an iPhone and new video games and a huge freaking amplifier!”
“What?” said Tom. “Charlie, how . . .”
The sound of Helen’s walker clanking loudly in the hallway silenced him. She came around the corner, gripping the walker tightly and swaying a little. “This is a very loud discussion.”
“Sorry, Helen. If you want to go back to your room, we’ll keep it down.”
“I think Nana should stay,” Ella said.
“I agree.” Geneva pointed to the empty chair next to Tom and watched her mother maneuver unsteadily into place. She saw Tom’s puzzled look. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you—Dublin told me last night—but my mother has had some unusual charges on her credit card. I thought it was probably fraud.”
Helen
said, “Oh, is that what the commotion is about? Can’t I buy my grandson a few things without causing a stir?”
“An eight-hundred-dollar amplifier?”
“Well, I didn’t know about that.” She turned to Charlie. “Really! You might have asked.”
He shrugged. “You said anything I wanted.”
“That’s true. I did.”
Geneva said to her mother, “I don’t suppose Charlie did anything in return for your generosity?”
“I can’t imagine what.”
Tom turned to Geneva. “Where are you going with this?”
“I know my mother.”
Ella nodded. “I think Charlie’s been buying booze from that place on First Street.”
“No, I haven’t.” He looked at his sister uncertainly. “And anyway, how could I do that? It’s not like I’m twenty-one.”
“I saw you. Not buying booze, but you gave money to that homeless guy.”
“That’s not a crime. That’s charity.”
Geneva said, “What homeless guy? What is going on here?”
Charlie waved it away. “Don’t listen to her, Mom. She’s crazy.”
Ella crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not very smart, Charlie. You’re forcing me to tell them everything.”
Tom and Geneva said, “There’s more?”
“Nobody likes a tattletale,” Helen said, wagging her finger at her granddaughter.
Ella sighed. “Charlie gave money to Pierce and Spencer to let him in the band. He got the money from buying porno magazines at the liquor store and renting them to boys at school. Disgusting, right?”
Tom’s face darkened as he stared at his son.
“Renting them?” Geneva asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Ella said.
“Prove it,” Charlie said.
“Spencer told me.”
“The guy’s an idiot.”
“Smarter than you, apparently.”
Geneva put up her hand. “Let me guess the next part. Mom, you asked Charlie to buy liquor for you at the store through this same man. You hid it in plain sight in the iced tea in the fridge. In return, Charlie got access to your credit card. Is that about right?” She glared at her mother, but she would not meet her gaze.
Tom leaned forward. “Helen, you actually used my son this way?”
She pursed her lips and nodded at Ella. “It’s her word against his, isn’t it?”
“Plus the credit card statement.”
“Which only says I’m guilty of favoritism.”
Geneva said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mom! How about some honesty!”
Helen raised an eyebrow as if considering the suggestion, then returned to appearing somewhat bored.
Geneva asked Charlie, “Do you still have nothing to say?” He lowered his chin and turned his palms up in resignation. Tom shook his head and his jaw muscles contracted into a hard lump. Part of her was dying to ask him to find the silver lining to this cloud, but the pain on his face moved her. If he was guilty of naïveté, so was she. He must be thinking the same thing she was: How had all this transpired under their watch?
She studied her mother, and noticed her blue eyes were glassy. As she weighed the likelihood of getting a straight answer to a direct question about whether she had been drinking today, Ella shifted in her seat and spoke.
“Yeah, honesty. About that. So, you know how the bands had to do an original song? Charlie actually went into my room and dug through my stuff and stole one of my very private poems.”
Geneva wasn’t sure who the person sitting in the chair across from her was, but he seemed less and less like her son. At that moment he would not look at her.
“And then he takes this poem, which, as long as we’re being honest, was about a boy I had a crush on, and gets Rosa to sing it to the whole school, so that every freaking person knows everything about my entire private life!” She threw herself against the chair back, pulled her knees to her chest, dropped her head and sobbed.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Geneva said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I guess that was a pretty sucky thing to do,” Charlie said. “But it was a really good song. I kinda thought she’d enjoy the fame.”
Ella ignored him. “The poem is only part of why I’m so upset.”
“Oh, Christ,” Tom said.
The hair stood up on the back of Geneva’s neck.
“So, I run to the truck to get away from the song, and Megan follows me. Charlie’s backpack is inside and I’m so furious with him that I throw it out. Only it isn’t zipped up, so all his stuff flies everywhere.”
Charlie started to get up.
“Sit down now!” Tom shouted.
“Dad,” Ella said. “Can you get his backpack? I don’t want to go near it.”
“Ella, you are such a loser. Dad, I can explain. I wasn’t going to do anything with it.”
“With what?” Geneva watched Tom carry the backpack to the couch and pull out a book and a couple of notebooks.
“What am I looking for? Oh, wait.” He lifted out the gun case.
Helen said, “So that’s where it went!”
“I can’t believe this.” Tom unzipped it and Geneva gasped.
Ella said, “That’s yours, Nana?! It scared the living crap out of me.”
Geneva’s eyes were locked on the gun. “Mom, tell me it’s not loaded.”
“Of course it’s loaded. It’s about as useful as tits on a boar otherwise.”
Tom glared at his son. “Talk. Now.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Well, it was pretty much an accident. See, I wanted to order something using Nana’s credit card, like she said I could—”
Ella interrupted. “What now? A Maserati?”
“—and I lost the piece of paper where I’d written the number. So I thought that instead of bugging Nana about it, I’d just look in her purse.”
Helen clucked her tongue. “You need to learn to respect people’s privacy, young man!”
“Okay, okay. But I saw this case in there and opened it to see what it was.”
“And how is it, Charles,” Geneva said, “that you decided the right place for it was in your backpack?”
He shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “I just wanted to show it to my friends. A baby blue grandma gun! I didn’t know there was such a thing. I wasn’t going to use it or anything. And I had no idea it was loaded! If I knew that I never would have borrowed it. That would have been really dumb.”
Tom zipped up the case.
“What are we going to do with it?” Geneva asked.
Helen stuck out her hand. “Well, return it to its rightful owner!”
“I don’t think so,” Tom said.
“I’ll unload it, if it makes you feel better.”
“You shouldn’t handle a loaded gun when you’ve been drinking,” Geneva said.
“I have not . . .”
“Save it. And right now, I’d appreciate it if you would go to your room before I say or do something I’ll regret.”
Helen appealed to Tom with a doleful look, but he stared her down, so she sighed heavily, hoisted herself to standing, and clanked down the hall.
“I’m really sorry, you guys,” Charlie said. “I guess things got carried away.”
Ella was curled in a ball with her arms around her knees. Her face was splotched from crying and her bangs were stuck to her forehead. Except for her gray clothing, she could have been five years old. Geneva pushed against the tears clouding her vision. If she hadn’t allowed her mother to come here, none of this would have happened.
Tom picked up the gun case from the coffee table. “I’m going to run this down to the police station for safekeeping.”
Geneva nodded and told Charlie to get busy on his
homework. “Ella, I’m going to get a drink. Do you want anything?”
“Sure. Whatever. Just not iced tea.”
• • •
Geneva preheated the oven for the frozen pizzas, then joined Tom in the backyard. She descended the stairs to the lawn, feeling off-balance and blurry, as though she had skipped a night’s sleep. And a lost thought was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t marshal the energy to ferret it out. If only she could take a weeklong vacation by herself, she might succeed in sorting everything out. But that wasn’t on the menu. She’d have to settle for a phone call to Dublin after dinner. Maybe he could figure out how her life had spun out of control.
She took a chair next to Tom. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but my mother’s more of a loose cannon than I anticipated.”
“Yeah, the gun was a shock, but I don’t think we can blame her for everything.”
“No, you’re right. I think we have to accept that we are terrible parents.”
Tom gave a short laugh.
“I’m not joking, Tom. We were a couple of lucky breaks away from having a kid with a rap sheet. And we haven’t even broached the subject of smoking dope.”
“I know. But they’re still good kids. Good kids make mistakes, too.”
She turned in her chair to face him. “I hope you’re not thinking of going easy on Charlie. Because I’m not. Good kid or bad kid, serious mistakes call for serious consequences.”
“If we come down on him like a ton of bricks, it might get worse instead of better.”
“And if we close our eyes and sing a lullaby, maybe it will all go away.”
“No need to get sarcastic, Geneva.”
“It’s either sarcasm or righteous indignation. Take your pick.”
“What? So because you wanted to bankrupt your mother rather than help her out, and because you had some sort of women’s intuition about what Charlie was up to, I’m to blame for all this?” He threw his arms wide and stared at her, incredulous.
“No, Tom, I’m not blaming you for this. But after being scolded for so long for worrying too much, you shouldn’t be surprised I’m angry. I’m angry at my mother, at the kids, and at myself. And, damn it, Tom, I’m angry at you.”
