The Favor

by Megan Hart

  Janelle took a drink of her own tea. “Everything you can think of.”

  Nan talked for half an hour before the tea was finished and her voice gave out. She told Janelle stories of her life as a child, growing up right there in St. Marys. Of her brothers and sisters. Her aunts and uncles. She spoke in warm and glowing terms of her mother, but didn’t weep for her again.

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “I’ve so many. Some are in albums. Some in boxes. So many pictures, so many years,” Nan said. “We can look at them. If you’re sure you want to.”

  Janelle squeezed Nan’s hand. “Of course I do. I want to know about my family. I feel like there’s so much I don’t know. I guess I want to...I don’t know. Feel like I’m a part of it.”

  “Oh, honey,” Nan said, squeezing in return. “No matter where you were, or how long you were gone, you’ve always been a part of it. Don’t you know that?”

  Janelle was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, Nan.”

  “For what?”

  “For never coming back until now.”

  Nan squeezed her fingers again. “You had your reasons.”

  “No.” Janelle shook her head. “You were there for me when I needed someone. You let me come and live here with you, you put up with me. You saved me, Nan. And I just up and left. Never came back, not even to visit. You asked me to, and I just never did.”

  “That’s sometimes what children do, honey.” Nan sighed. “They grow up and go away. You had to find your own path, Janelle. You think I didn’t always know that about you? You had so much of your daddy in you that way—”

  “No!” Janelle cried, and pushed away from the table. “No, don’t say that. I’m not like my dad. I’m nothing like him.”

  The silence after her outburst was too loud.

  “I b’lieve I’ll have a little more tea,” Nan said mildly, and held out her cup for Janelle to fill.

  SIXTEEN

  WATCHING ANDY AND Bennett together at the table, Janelle felt a stab of something wistful. Andy was in his thirties, but still acted much younger. He reminded her of how he’d been as a teen, before everything had changed. He was...happy.

  “See, you need to carry this over.” Andy scribbled something on Bennett’s paper. “Your teacher wants to see your work, so you have to show it. Like this.”

  Andy was so good with her son. The times Janelle had tried to help Bennett with his math, she’d struggled along with him. He’d been cranky. She’d lost her patience. Now she just stayed out of the way, making dinner in the kitchen while Nan napped or read or watched TV.

  From the kitchen doorway she said, “You staying for dinner? I’m making chicken potpie.”

  Andy looked pleased, then concerned. “I dunno. I should make sure my dad’s got something for his dinner. And if Gabe comes home and I’m not there and I haven’t told him where I’m going to be...he gets mad.”

  “Your dad could come. Gabe, too. I made plenty.” Too much, actually, having misjudged the recipe and doubled it by accident.

  Andy laughed. “Oh. My dad won’t come over here.”

  “My food’s not good enough for him,” sniffed Nan from her place on the couch.

  Andy looked embarrassed. “He always used to eat whatever you sent over, Mrs. Decker. I remember that.”

  “Back in the days when I cooked.” Nan twisted to look around the pillows she used to prop herself up. “But he got mad one day about the bushes in the back, never took anything I sent over again.”

  Andy looked even more uncomfortable. “He’s...grumpy.”

  His fingers curled around the pencil, but not all the way. He had to force them. He did that now, not meeting Janelle’s gaze.

  “Don’t worry about it, Andy. If you want to stay, you can. If you need to get home for your dad, that’s okay, too.” Janelle didn’t want him feeling bad about it. She already knew Mr. Tierney was a curmudgeon. “You can call Gabe, tell him you’re staying. See if he wants to come over.”

  “Okay. I’ll text him. He probably won’t,” Andy cautioned.

  “Oh, ho ho, I bet he will,” Nan said, but then went quiet when Janelle gave her a look.

  “Hey, Andy,” Bennett said, as he watched Andy struggle with the cell phone. “What happened to your head, anyway?”

  Andy’s fingers crept slowly to his forehead, then along the white part in his hair, probing gently. “I got shot.”

  “Ouch,” Bennett said. “Did it hurt?”

  Andy took his hand away and shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  “I bet it did.”

  “Bennett,” Janelle murmured. “Maybe Andy doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  From the couch came the low mutter of Nan’s snoring. Andy glanced toward her with a smile, then gave Janelle a slightly bigger one. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

  To Bennett, he said, “We were fooling around with guns, and there was an accident. My brother shot me.”

  Bennett frowned. “Why were you fooling around with guns?”

  Andy looked at a loss for couple seconds and turned to Janelle for help. She shifted her weight from her good foot to her bad, then back again, trying to think of an answer. “People around here like to hunt, Bennett. So lots of guys, and girls, too, have guns.”

  “Guns aren’t toys,” Bennett said firmly.

  Score one for her parenting skills. “Yes, that’s right.”

  The obvious statement that Andy and his brothers had been reckless and foolish, and that their behavior had led to Andy’s injury, remained unspoken. At least by her. Andy, however, leaned forward to make sure Bennett looked him in the face.

  “Guns aren’t unsafe, Benny. People are.”

  “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people?” Janelle said.

  “Well, that’s true,” Andy replied.

  Janelle frowned. “It’s also true that they’re not toys.”

  “I know that.” Andy shrugged, then looked at her. “You know what’s more dangerous? Not knowing how to handle a gun at all. That’s how accidents happen.”

  To Bennett he said, “My brother could teach you how to handle a gun. You want to learn?”

  The boy lit up, already turning to her with hope all over his face. So much for her maternal lessons sinking in and making a mark. Janelle shook her head and noted his disappointment.

  “I’m sure you can both think of a very good reason why I wouldn’t trust Gabe with a gun around my son.”

  Andy laughed and shook his head in turn. “He’s probably the best person in the whole world to teach Bennett how to be safe with a gun, Janelle.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because,” Andy said, now serious, “he already shot one person by accident. He’ll never do that again.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Then

  MIKE’S USELESS WITH a hammer, but Andy’s pretty good about pounding nails in straight and also about taking directions. Mike always wants to have a plan, a written diagram or something; he’s nervous about the way things fit together and whether it’s safe. Andy doesn’t care about that. He just likes using the tools.

  Even though he’s using his brothers for labor, this is still Gabe’s place. No question about it. Andy and Mike don’t come out here without him, and not just because they can’t drive and he has a car. They could lay claim to the patch of ground as much as he does, even the cabin, since they’ve put in a share of the work. But they don’t.

  This is Gabe’s place.

  “You’re going to kill yourself.” Mikey points toward the loft, where Andy has climbed to add on to the flooring. “It’s not even attached right!”

  Looking up, Gabe watches his brother grin, teasing his twin on purpose as he balances on a two-by-four that will eventually form the support for a new section of floor, expanding the loft. Andy holds out his arms, stands on one foot, pretends to teeter while Mikey shouts. Gabe laughs, though of course, the truth is that if Andy fell off the beam, he’d definitely b
reak something, and it’s a long, bumpy ride back to town.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Gabe says. “Finish that up. We need to get back before the old man does.”

  That sobers Andy right up, his smile disappearing. He frowns and eases back onto the loft flooring. He hefts the hammer in his hand, then looks down to the main floor, where Gabe and Mike have been cutting lengths of wood. A few minutes later he climbs down the rickety ladder and tosses the hammer into the toolbox.

  “Let’s go.”

  “We don’t have to just yet...” They have a good couple of hours even if the old man doesn’t stop off someplace after work, which he probably will. Gabe shouldn’t have said anything. He’d wanted his brother to stop fooling around, not get freaked out.

  “Let’s go,” Andy says again.

  Gabe turns back to the board he was sawing. “We have time.”

  “I have homework and stuff. Mikey, too. C’mon. Let’s go, Gabe.”

  Andy is dancing, eyes glittery with anxiety, and Gabe knows there’s no way he’ll get any more work out of his brother like this. Out of either of them, because what one feels, the other ends up feeling, too. Not like in that story, what was it...The Corsican Brothers. Gabe saw the Cheech and Chong version, hilarious as hell. Those twins felt the physical pain of each other, but it’s not like that with his brothers. More like they feed off one another, get each other revved up or calmed down.

  Gabe looks around the cabin, thinking about everything it could be and all the things it wasn’t. It was a mistake to bring them out here. His brothers make things complicated; they always do. All he wanted was to finish framing out the next section of the loft. He’d left them plenty of time, and now it wouldn’t get done.

  “Come on.” Andy’s freaking out, which in turn made Mikey start to dance as if he’s going to wet his pants.

  As it turns out, it doesn’t much matter, because the old man is already home by the time they get there, and has been there long enough to get himself worked into a real snit. He’s opened the fridge and tossed out everything inside into a huge, sloppy mess on the kitchen floor. He opened all the cupboards and left them ajar. He dumped the trash can on its side. He sits smoking in the middle of it all, with his feet on the kitchen table and acting as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, when they come into the house.

  “Nice of you to stop by,” their dad says in that deceptively calm voice he uses just before he lets his temper fly. He draws in a long drag from the cigarette and flicks ash, not caring where it lands. “Bunch of little shits. I thought I told you to have dinner ready for me early tonight, ’cause I’m going out.”

  Mikey’s the one who starts pacing and apologizing. He’s the peacemaker. Andy says nothing, just goes to the closet to get a garbage bag and start picking up the trash. Gabe stares at the mess while anger uncoils in his gut.

  “Why’d you do this?” He gestures at the chaos. “You could’ve made yourself a sandwich or something. It wasn’t a big deal. Why’d you have to go and trash the place just because you didn’t get your Hamburger Helper on time?”

  The old man’s up and on his feet before Gabe can do more than take a step or two back. His fists are twisted tight in the front of Gabe’s shirt. His breath is terrible, not just from smoke or beer, but the stink of teeth left to rot. Gabe turns his face, not caring if his father thinks it’s because he’s afraid.

  He’s not scared of his father. He could pound the old man into a pulp if he wanted to, and the time is coming when that might happen. But it wouldn’t change him. Gabe once watched his dad go head-to-head with a guy twice his size who beat the shit out of him because the old man just kept swinging and wouldn’t stay down until he was knocked unconscious. When he came to, the first words out of his mouth had been cursing the other guy. Fighting his dad won’t make anything better, so Gabe just waits until the old man let him go.

  “Sorry, Dad. Sorry,” Mikey says over and over as he gets on the floor to help Andy clean up the ruined and wasted food.

  Andy says nothing, just works as fast as he can. The old man kicks at a plastic container of leftover meat loaf so that it goes rolling, spilling the contents. He shoots Gabe a glare.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” Gabe doesn’t move, though his fingers curl into fists. Just because he isn’t going to punch the old man right in the mouth doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to.

  “I’m going out,” their father says, “and this shit hole better be in tip-top shape when I get back, or you’ll be sorry.”

  They’re already sorry, that’s for sure. But he can make them sorrier and probably will no matter what happens with the cleanup. Gabe stays where he is until the old man pushes past him. He waits until the front door slams before he moves, and then he kicks at the kitchen chair, which skids across the floor.

  “Don’t,” Mikey says. “Just help us.”

  “It could be worse,” Andy says in a low voice. “He could’ve pissed all over it. It could’ve been our pillows, like that one time.”

  It could be worse. It can always be worse, and all three of them knew how bad it could really be. It doesn’t make Gabe feel any better about this mess, about his brothers on their hands and knees scraping up splattered pork-n-beans and spilled milk because their dad had a stick up his ass about his dinner being late.

  The mess is too much. Gabe can’t deal with it. He wants to punch a wall. He wants to kick something harder than he kicked the chair. He wants to break something, and the closest thing is a glass jar, which he hefts in his hand and smashes onto the table without thinking.

  “Gabe, cut it out! Stop it!” Mikey shoves him back a step. “You’re just making it worse!”

  Andy says nothing, his eyes shadowed. He stuffs the trash bag steadily. He barely looks up when his brothers shout, though when Gabe’s fist rises he does stop what he’s doing to stand.

  Gabe doesn’t want to hit Mikey, not really, and not because it would end up two against one. He doesn’t want to hit him because he’s not mad at him. At either of them. And yet he is...for a million reasons so twisted and complicated he’ll never untangle them. Instead of hitting Mikey, Gabe stalks upstairs to turn his music up loud, leaving them to the mess.

  Night’s fallen. It’s dark in his room. He turns the stereo up way past what the old man allows, but screw it, he’s out, and the louder the music is, the less Gabe has to think about anything. He just wants to block out everything but the pounding beat of drums, the scream of guitars, the wail of vocals.

  The window across from his lights up.

  He shouldn’t look, he shouldn’t watch her; it’s creepy and makes him a perv. But he can’t help himself when Janelle starts to dance. She moves to the beat of a song he can’t hear, but it must be a lot like the one he’s listening to because her body moves in time to his music.

  She wears an oversize T-shirt that hits her midthigh, a flash of baby-blue panties beneath it. She grinds her hips and puts her arms above her head. She wiggles and shimmies. She runs her hands up and down her body as she tosses her head.

  He’s mesmerized and hypnotized. He’s paralyzed. His mouth hangs open as he stares, knowing he should stop, hoping she can’t see him. Maybe hoping she can.

  Janelle dances closer to the window, shaking her ass back and forth as if it’s her damn job. It’s a sexy dance and yet there’s something about it that makes him think she’s being silly, too. Having fun. Like it would be different if she had an audience, if she knew he was standing there with his pants getting tight in the crotch and that dull throb starting in his balls.

  When she blows a kiss, Gabe steps back. She doesn’t look through the window, doesn’t acknowledge him, but...she had to see him. Right? She did, didn’t she?

  The thought’s enough to send him back, all the way across the room and then down the stairs. Outside, where he pulls out a cigarette he stole from the old man’s drawer, and lights it with shaking hands. His brothers are still cleaning th
e kitchen, both of them working together like the team they’ve always been. Gabe the outsider, his heart pounding and palms sweating, his dick still half-hard.

  That’s when the back door at the Decker place opens and Janelle skips out. She has jeans on, at least, and she acts so surprised to see him that Gabe knows she’s putting it on. She leans against the door frame, looking him over.

  “Hey,” she says. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  She smiles the way she always has, but somehow it sits differently on her face now that she’s older. She could always tease him into doing anything—bubbles, a tin-can telephone, sneaking Popsicles behind Mrs. Moser’s back. How could he ever have thought that would change? If anything, it’s worse, because now she’s grown a decent set of boobs and her ass is so fine...so damn fine.

  Janelle tips her chin at him. “Smoking’s bad for you.”

  Gabe says nothing, not even when she hops and skips across the narrow alley onto his porch, where she holds out a hand for a cigarette. He doesn’t have an extra on him and can’t find a way to make his mouth work to say so. He offers his instead.

  She takes it like an expert, eyes squinting shut against the smoke for a second before she hands it back to him. He can’t smoke it now. Her mouth was on it. He’ll taste her. It’s enough to make his hands shake again.

  “You wanna hear a joke?” Her eyebrows go up.

  “Uh...sure.”

  Janelle grins. “Okay, so this guy goes to the doctor, right? And he says ‘Doc, I got this problem. One day I wake up, I’m a teepee. The next day I wake up, I’m a wigwam. Teepee, wigwam, teepee, wigwam...it’s crazy. What do I do?’ So the doctor says ‘No problem, I can tell you what’s wrong.’”

  Gabe waits, but she just grins. “What’s the punch line?”

  Janelle laughs, leaning closer. She smells good, something flowery that makes his skin flush hot. “‘No problem,’ the doc says. ‘You’re just two tents!’”

  She bursts into a gale of hilarity funnier than the joke. Watching her laugh, her head tipping back, the way her throat works...Gabe starts laughing, too. They laugh together, harder and harder, until she’s wiping tears and he thinks he might puke from the pressure in his gut.