Pieces

by G. Benson

  On those days, Carmen got up and slid out of bed, Ollie rolling into the warmth left behind and not even waking up. She had another hour before she had to get up for school. Carmen would pad down the hallway, and Ollie’s dad would be there already, a coffee on the counter waiting for her.

  The custody process was long underway. Their hearing date was for a month from now. Mattie was nervous every time they saw each other. Mostly, though, he asked when she’d have a place. He knew she needed one.

  She applied for apartments everywhere. Ollie helped her fill out the applications online, or she dropped some off at the realtor’s office in person; so many of them wouldn’t even consider her because she hadn’t been in her current job for more than six months. Some, she was sure, passed her over for her age. There were fifteen rejections before one day, on their way back from a meeting with Maria, Ollie’s dad pulled into a street she didn’t recognize.

  It took Carmen a second to realize they weren’t going the right way. “Uh…”

  “I just want to show you something.”

  They pulled up to an apartment block, neatly kept, old, if you stared enough to notice. They were outside the city, but not by far. A park was across the road, a big green space.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The apartment we—I own.”

  Carmen blinked at it, then looked at him. “But—”

  “Carmen. Just come have a look at it.”

  He got out without waiting for her, leaving her no choice but to jump out and hurry after him. She buried her hands in her jacket pockets, the air outside cool. Before she knew it, she was following him through the door and up three flights of stairs. She kept trying to think of things to say, of protests, of, well, anything, but she found herself empty of words, no matter how much she fished around for them.

  They paused outside a dark wooden door, and Carmen finally found something to say. “I can’t ask this of you.”

  “You’re not.” He winked at her as he slid the key home. He pushed the door open.

  They stepped straight into the living room, a kitchen on their right, in effect, all one big room. Light filled the space, furniture dotted around. A soft looking sofa lined one wall, a coffee table in front of it as well as a squishy-looking armchair with a floral pattern that had to be from the seventies. The kitchen was small, with an island bench separating it from the living room. Everything smelled lemony, as if it had been recently cleaned.

  “It’s got most of what you need. No television, as you can see. The kitchen has the basics.”

  Carmen found herself lost for words again. She followed him down a hall that started opposite the entrance door, between the kitchen and living room.

  “There’s one bathroom. The shower’s nice and big.” He opened the door.

  She’d forgotten that having your own shower was a normalcy. Using Ollie’s was like a treat, and she’d gotten used to the public ones around the city that were usually cold. Two more doors led to two small bedrooms, one with a double bed and the other with a single. Everything was painted in a clean white. The apartment was neat, simple.

  It would be perfect.

  She couldn’t accept more from this man. He’d done so much for her already. He was too kind, too good.

  Carmen followed him back down to the living room. They stood next to the kitchen bench, and he pulled out some papers from his pockets, neatly folded. Carmen felt the opposite of that. She was messy, spread out, as if life were jerking at her from all angles.

  “This is a twelve-month lease. It’ll be official. I can put it in tomorrow.”

  “I… I can’t afford this. I can’t ask you to do this. It’s too much.”

  His expression stayed open, and he cocked his head to look at her in a way that was just so Ollie that Carmen’s breath caught. He didn’t even appear exasperated with her, though she had the feeling he wanted to be.

  “The rent will be low, to start, like we talked about months ago. If you really want to, as you get more settled, we can increase it. But it’s not necessary for me. At all. I don’t mean to say that to, uh, ‘rub it in,’ as Ollie would say.”

  He was looking at her gently, his eyes big and soft like Ollie’s, only dark brown. He was looking at her like she might run away, and Carmen wasn’t all that sure she wouldn’t.

  “I’m telling you so you understand that for me, the money isn’t necessary to worry about, and the rent isn’t all that less than what we were charging before. We always kept it low. Ollie’s mom liked to rent it to people who normally had a harder time getting places—single parents, younger people at college.” His voice was low, a rumble. “You do so much alone. And I know you always have. But you don’t have to do it all that way.”

  He was so sincere. The lease was on the island, and he was holding a pen out to her. For a minute, she stared at it. She bit the inside of her cheek, unsure.

  “You and Mattie deserve a chance, Carmen.”

  What had Jia said? She should take it.

  She reached out for the pen.

  The trial seemed to be forever away, even as school flew by. Soon December came around—cold, bitingly so. Ollie had never been more relieved that Carmen had finally accepted her dad’s offer. The place had heating, even if most of the time when Ollie went around, Carmen had it turned off while wearing three pullovers instead. Christmas decorations were starting to appear in the streets, and right before the trial date, Carmen had Mattie over for his first stay.

  Leaving them to their night together, Ollie went to Sara’s. Before she could even knock on the door, Sara had opened it and grabbed her hand. Ollie was tugged outside and onto the trampoline. Their breath puffed out over them as they lay there, wrapped in their winter coats and a pile of sleeping bags, and the sky was a frozen stillness above, the stars like ice chips.

  “We haven’t done this in months.” Ollie’s lips were cold, almost numb. She licked them, enjoying how it made them tingle in the air.

  “I missed it.” Sara’s arm was under her head.

  “Me too.” Ollie was along her side, sharing their body heat. Their nest was warm, but the air bit at her cheeks. The contrast made her think of icy white and blue slashed through with something brighter. Orange, maybe. She’d pull out her supplies when she went home, the image bubbling in the back of her mind, itching to be put to paper with soft lines. She’d use pastels, maybe. Or oils. Perhaps she’d paint the two of them under the sky, try to capture the deathly silence around them in the winter air. “Have you heard back from your early admissions?” she asked.

  “Mm.” Sara kept staring at the sky.

  “And?” She turned her head and watched her.

  “I got accepted to all of them. It’s not a big deal.”

  It was. But Sara hated if you made it one. Though it had always been a given; she could have skipped this year and gone straight to college if she’d wanted. Most people would have jumped at the chance to skip some of these years. Not Sara, though. And the more Ollie had seen of Carmen, of the warehouse, the more she’d talked to Sara, the more she’d started to understand why.

  They’d already missed so much. She wasn’t in a rush.

  “Well, congratulations.” An ache in Ollie’s chest matched her heartbeat at the thought of Sara going away to one of the Ivy Leagues, scholarship in hand and big things ahead. Not that she didn’t want that for Sara. She wanted nothing for Sara but all of that, especially after everything. But not seeing her every day? That was going to suck.

  “Thanks.”

  “Which one are you thinking about?”

  “Harvard, maybe. They have the best science streams.”

  “Wow. Harvard.”

  “I know, right?” And Sara laughed like she couldn’t believe it.

  “What about Rae?�
��

  The smile faded a little, the stars overhead still reflected in the wide pupils of Sara’s eyes. “I don’t know. It’s months away.”

  Now that Sara and Rae were together, Ollie couldn’t imagine them apart. They fit, somehow. An understanding seemed to exist between them Ollie would almost be jealous of if she didn’t know her best friend would always be her best friend, girlfriends or boyfriends or partners notwithstanding.

  “Okay.”

  “What about you and Carmen?”

  Her heart skipped over, and something caught in her throat just at the mention. “What about us?”

  “What if she gets Mattie?”

  Ollie’s ears were tingling now, they were so cold. “What if she does?”

  “That’s, I don’t know…serious. You’re eighteen. You might be at college. Or working, or whatever you’re doing. How are you two going to make it work?”

  Ollie rolled her head back so she was looking straight up at the sky again. The stillness was broken now. A plane flew overhead, its lights blinking green and red like the holiday lights in the houses, in her own house.

  Last Christmas, she and her father had just ignored the entire thing. Ollie had cried the entire day in her bed, then had left her dad alone and gone to Sara’s. This year, they’d pulled out the tree and put the ornaments up. Carmen had come over later and helped them finish up. When Ollie had gotten red-eyed, her dad had wrapped an arm around her and they’d stared at the tree. Before the silence had become too much, her dad had told her a story about the time her mom had fallen asleep without putting out the presents and had woken up just before Ollie and panicked before fixing it in such a rush that Ollie had stumbled out just as she’d stuffed the last present into the sack from Santa.

  “I don’t know how we’ll make it work,” she told Sara. “We know it’s complicated. But people make long-distance work. We can make it work in the same city.”

  “You know…you know she won’t have much time?”

  Something in Ollie’s chest rose up to bite at that, feeling patronized. Before the words slipped out, though, she took a breath and swallowed them down. This was Sara. She wouldn’t mean it like that. “I know.”

  “Okay.”

  And Sara didn’t ask for more, but words were spilling up, all the things Ollie had thought about. “I do know it. I mean, I think I do.” She blinked and could feel Sara’s eyes on her, heard her turn her head to watch her. “When we first started, like really started, after I met her again at the bar, we rarely saw each other. She had no phone, either, or Internet. Sometimes a few weeks would go by. But it just… It didn’t matter? Because she’s Carmen. And with everything going on, after Mom died, she was the only thing that really made me feel better. And I think I did the same for her.” She took a deep breath, wanting to measure the next words carefully. “And this time, we both know what’s happening. I know she has Mattie. I know her situation. She knows I’ll have school. And I still want to be there. I think I want to be there even more. She wouldn’t be Carmen if she wasn’t doing this.”

  “That’s really gross and sweet.”

  Ollie laughed, the feeling loosening the heaviness, and looked at Sara. “Shut up.”

  “Well, it was.”

  “Oh, like you and Rae aren’t gross.”

  “Totally different.”

  “Not even. We both know she’ll be eagerly awaiting you when you go away for college.”

  Sara’s grin grew, even as she rolled her eyes. “No, she won’t.”

  “She so will. She’ll show up at the airport in her beaten leather jacket and act all unaffected and like she accidentally came, when she’d been planning it since you told her your arrival time.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “No.”

  On the seventeenth of December, Carmen woke up in her apartment, warm and in a bed she still couldn’t believe was so comfortable. For hours, she’d lain awake the night before, unsure if she’d fall asleep at all. When she finally had, she’d dreamed about walking through door after door after door, the handles cold in her palm as she turned them, always confronted by another one to turn.

  It had been frustrating.

  Blinking at the ceiling, she rolled over, receiving a face full of curly hair. She slid her hand over Ollie’s warm, soft stomach. The light was only creeping in, shadows still coating everything. Outside would be overcast and gray. When Carmen gently moved her fingers, Ollie mumbled. She did it again, and Ollie groaned, rolling over onto her stomach and burying her face into the pillow.

  “Morning.”

  “No.” It was muffled, but the word was difficult to misunderstand.

  Carmen chuckled. “Well, it is.”

  Ollie turned, her hair wild with friction from the pillows and Carmen’s hands the night before. “But it’s not good.”

  “To be fair—” Carmen slid closer “—I never said it was.”

  “Oh. True.” Ollie was still struggling to open her eyes. They lay close to each other, the room lightening around them. “Oh!” This time, she sounded much more awake, and Carmen pulled back, blinking. “It’s trial day.”

  “It is.”

  They lay on the same pillow, eyes half-open. Ollie licked her lips slightly. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Carmen took a deep breath. With the unsettling feeling in her throat, it was like everything that had taken residence there was creeping up on her. “It will be.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “You have school.”

  “Don’t care. Dad’s coming too, and he’s told the school I’ll be out.”

  It would be easy to protest again, to act like she didn’t need Ollie there. But the idea of Ollie sitting in the back, of her silent support, and of Ollie’s dad there too, overwhelmed her before it could be anything more than a vague thought. She didn’t know when it had happened, but she wanted them around, their help, even if it was just them being present.

  Carmen nuzzled her face into Ollie’s neck, glad when Ollie’s arms slid around her and pulled her in tighter. Her stomach was a hive, churning over and over again. She’d never really understood the idea of having butterflies in her stomach, but now it made sense. Her mouth was dry, her heart beating just a touch too fast.

  “It’s going to be okay, Carmen.”

  She hummed as an answer, and they didn’t move for another hour. Everything stilled around them, and Carmen wished she could stay there and fall into the calm and never have to make her way back out, out into a world full of adults and decisions so big that they felt as if they could take over everything.

  Mattie needed her, and Carmen needed to get it together so she could be there for him.

  And by this evening, she’d know: Mattie, or no Mattie.

  There were people who sketched court cases for a living. Ollie had never understood that. Why would you want to use your art for that? So many other things existed that you could do, so many avenues you could go down.

  But seated in that room, she could kind of understand it.

  The room held an atmosphere.

  It could be interesting to sit at the back like she was now and capture the defendant’s face. Her fingers twitched in her lap, hidden under the warm coat she clutched there. Next to her, her father didn’t seem to notice anything. She could put down on paper whatever she found in that person’s face. In the victim’s face. But wouldn’t that be too subjective?

  It was what she wanted to do now, anyway.

  If only she had her sketchbook.

  She’d trace the lines she could see in the profile of Carmen’s face, the furrow she knew would be between her brows as she swallowed and glanced behind her at the door Mattie was behind with his caseworker. He wasn’t allowed to liste
n in on the entire hearing. It seemed strange to Ollie that the boy who carried an entire lifetime in his eyes couldn’t witness a decision that would change his life forever.

  Maria sat next to Carmen, whispering words Ollie hoped were of comfort. She wouldn’t draw Maria in the picture, just Carmen, small and drowning in a room too overwhelming for her.

  The room she’d draw in simple, bold lines. Bold to emphasize the intimidating feeling that had settled over Ollie’s skin as they’d walked in. Simple, with no shading, to bring the viewers’ eyes to Carmen, hunched and diminutive at the giant desk she sat behind.

  The guard who stood next to a back door made Ollie jump as his voice boomed. “All rise for the honorable Judge Falkowitz.”

  Her father urged her up, and she stood next to him, sharing his heat.

  Judge Falkowitz had a pale face with bushy eyebrows that made Ollie think of furry caterpillars. He strode in, his black robe swishing, billowing almost, behind him. He sat behind his bench, barely risen from the ground, but just enough to give him an air of being the most important thing in the room. He didn’t look mean or kind, just neutral, which made him more intimidating than if he had appeared nasty.

  Ollie would sketch him from the perspective of looking up at him, surrounded by his looming, heavy wooden table, his face seeming too far away to even catch his features.

  When he sat, everyone else sat, and Ollie followed her father down to their seats.

  It was strange to sit and watch them talk about Carmen in formal terms. She was “Miss García,” and Mattie was often referred to as the “ward of the state” or “Matthew,” which was also strange. She wanted to stand and say that he was so much more than that. He was cheekiness and flashing smiles and a thrum under his skin that told of frustration. He was fluid movements and confidence in a fight, calculating looks, and a wit that made Ollie laugh.