by Jenny Han
“So that’s it, then?” Jeremiah said.
Conrad didn’t answer him right away. Then he looked up and said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Well, great job taking care of all this, Con.”
“I’ve been handling this on my own,” Conrad snapped. “It’s not like I had any help from you.”
“Well, maybe if you’d told me about it—”
Conrad cut him off. “You’d have done what?”
“I would have talked to Dad.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Conrad could not have sounded more disdainful.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that you’re so busy being up his ass, you can’t see him for who he is.”
Jeremiah didn’t say anything right away, and I was really afraid of where this was heading. Conrad was looking for a fight and the last thing we needed was for the two of them to start wrestling on the kitchen floor, breaking things and each other. This time, my mother wasn’t here to stop them. There was just me, and that was hardly anything.
And then Jeremiah said, “He’s our father.” His voice was measured, even, and I let out a tiny breath of relief. There wouldn’t be any fight, because Jeremiah wouldn’t let it happen. I admired him for that.
But Conrad just shook his head in disgust. “He’s a dirtbag.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer? What kind of man does that? I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me sick, playing the martyr now, the grieving widower. But where was he when Mom needed him, huh, Jere?”
“I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”
The room went silent, and it felt to me like the air was almost crackling. The way Conrad flinched, the way Jeremiah sucked in his breath right after he said it. He wanted to take it back, I could tell, and he was about to, when Conrad said, conversationally, “That’s a low blow.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said.
Conrad shrugged, brushing him off like it didn’t matter either way.
And then Jeremiah said, “Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to hold on to all the shitty stuff that’s ever happened to you?”
“Because I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they really are.” He said it in a way that made me wonder who he was really talking about.
Jeremiah bristled. He looked at me and then back at Conrad and said, “You’re just jealous. Admit it.”
“Jealous?”
“You’re jealous that Dad and I have an actual relationship now. It’s not just all about you anymore, and that kills you.”
Conrad actually laughed. It was a bitter, terrible sound. “That’s such BS.” He turned to me. “Belly, are you hearing this? Jeremiah thinks I’m jealous.”
Jeremiah looked at me, like, Be on my side, and I knew that if I did, he’d forgive me for not telling him about the house. I hated Conrad for putting me in the middle, for making me choose. I didn’t know whose side I was on. They were both right and they were both wrong.
I guess I took too long to answer, because Jeremiah stopped looking at me and said, “You’re an asshole, Conrad. You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are.” And then he walked out. The front door slammed behind him.
I felt like I should go after him. I felt like I had just let him down when he needed me most.
Then Conrad said to me, “Am I an asshole, Belly?” He popped open another beer and he was trying to sound so indifferent, but his hand was shaking.
“Yeah,” I said. “You really are.”
I walked over to the window and I watched Jeremiah getting into his car. It was too late to follow him; he was already pulling out of the driveway. Even though he was pissed, he had his seat belt on.
“He’ll be back,” Conrad said.
I hesitated and then I said, “You shouldn’t have said that stuff.”
“Maybe not.”
“You shouldn’t have asked me to keep it a secret from him.”
Conrad shrugged like he was already over it, but then he looked back toward the window and I knew he was worried. He threw me a beer and I caught it. I popped the top off and took a long drink. It hardly even tasted bad. Maybe I was getting used to it. I smacked my lips loudly.
He watched me, and there was a funny look on his face. “So you like beer now, huh?”
I shrugged. “It’s all right,” I said, and I felt very grown-up. But then I added, “I still like Cherry Coke better though.”
He almost smiled when he said, “Same old Belly. I bet if we cut your body open, white sugar would come pouring out of you.”
“That’s me,” I said. “Sugar and spice and everything nice.”
Conrad said, “I don’t know about that.”
And then we were both quiet. I took another sip of beer and set it down next to Conrad. “I think you really hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”
He shrugged. “He needed a reality check.”
“You didn’t have to do it like that.”
“I think you’re the one who hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. If I asked him what he meant by that, he’d tell me. And I didn’t want him to. So I drank my beer and said, “What now?”
Conrad didn’t let me off the hook that easy. He said, “What now with you and Jeremiah or with you and me?”
He was teasing me and I hated him for it. I could feel my cheeks burning as I said, “What now with this house, was what I meant.”
He leaned back against the counter. “There’s nothing to do, really. I mean, I could get a lawyer. I’m eighteen now. I could try and stall. But I doubt it would do anything. My dad’s stubborn. And he’s greedy.”
Hesitantly, I said, “I don’t know that he’s doing it out of—out of greed, Conrad.”
Conrad’s face sort of closed off. “Trust me. He is.”
I couldn’t help but ask, “What about summer school?”
“I couldn’t care less about school right now.”
“But—”
“Just leave it, Belly.” Then he walked out of the kitchen, opened the sliding door, and went outside.
Conversation over.
chapter twenty-six
JEREMIAH
My whole life I’ve looked up to Conrad. He’s always been smarter, faster—just better. The thing is, I never really begrudged him that. He was just Conrad. He couldn’t help being good at things. He couldn’t help that he never lost in Uno or races or grades. Maybe part of me needed that, someone to look up to. My big brother, the guy who couldn’t lose.
But there was this time, when I was thirteen. We were wrestling around in the living room, had been for half an hour. My dad was always trying to get us to wrestle. He’d been on the wrestling team in college, and he liked teaching us new techniques. We were wrestling, and my mom was in the kitchen, cooking bacon-wrapped scallops because we were having people over that night and they were my dad’s favorite.
“Lock him in, Con,” my dad was saying.
We were really getting into it. We’d already knocked over one of my mom’s silver candlesticks. Conrad was breathing hard; he’d expected to beat me easily. But I was getting good; I wasn’t giving up. He had my head locked under his arm and then I locked his knee and we were both on the ground. I could feel something shift; I almost had him. I was going to win. My dad was gonna be so proud.
When I had him pinned, my dad said, “Connie, I told you to keep your knees bent.”
I looked up at my dad, and I saw the look on his face. He had that look he got sometimes when Conrad wasn’t doing something right, all tight around the eyes and irritated. He never looked at me like that.
He didn’t say, “Good job, Jere.” He just started criticizing Conrad, telling him all t
he things he could’ve done better. And Conrad took it. He was nodding, his face red, sweat pouring down his forehead. Then he nodded at me and said, in a way that I knew he really meant it, “Good job, Jere.”
That’s when my dad chimed in and said, “Yeah, good job, Jere.”
All of a sudden, I wanted to cry. I didn’t want to beat Conrad ever again. It wasn’t worth it.
After all that stuff back at the house, I got in my car and I just started driving. I didn’t know where I was going and part of me didn’t even want to go back. Part of me wanted to leave Conrad to deal with this shitstorm by himself, the way he’d wanted it in the first place. Let Belly deal with him. Let them have at it. I drove for half an hour.
But even as I was doing it, I knew that, eventually, I would turn back around. I couldn’t just leave. That was Con’s style, not mine. And it was low, what I said about him not being there for our mom. It wasn’t like he knew she was gonna die. He was at college. It wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t the one who was there when everything got bad again. It all happened so fast. He couldn’t have known. If he had known, he would have stayed home. I know he would have.
Our dad was never gonna win a Father of the Year award. He was flawed, that was for sure. But when it counted, there at the end, he came home. He said all the right things. He made our mom happy. Conrad just couldn’t see it. He didn’t want to.
I didn’t go back to the house right away.
First I stopped at the pizza place. It was dinnertime, and there wasn’t any food at the house. A kid I knew, Mikey, was working the register. I ordered a large pizza with everything, and then I asked him if Ron was out on a delivery. Mikey said yeah, that Ron would be back soon, that I should wait.
Ron lived in Cousins year-round. He went to community college during the day and he delivered pizzas at night. He was an okay guy. He’d been buying underage kids beer for as long as I could remember. If you gave him a twenty, he’d hook you up.
All I knew was, if this was gonna be our last night, we couldn’t go out like this.
When I got back to the house, Conrad was sitting on the front porch. I knew he was waiting for me; I knew he felt bad for what he’d said. I honked the horn, stuck my head out the window, and yelled, “Come help me with this stuff.”
He came down to the car, checked out the cases of beer and the bag of liquor, and said, “Ron?”
“Yup.” I hoisted up two cases of beer and handed them over. “We’re having a party.”
chapter twenty-seven
After the fight, after Mr. Fisher left, I went up to my room and stayed there. I didn’t want to be around when Jeremiah got back, in case he and Conrad went for a second round. Unlike Steven and me, those two hardly ever fought. In all the time I’d known them, I’d only seen them do it, like, three times. Jeremiah looked up to Conrad and Conrad looked out for Jeremiah. It was as simple as that.
I started looking around in the drawers and closet to see if there was anything of mine left there. My mom was pretty strict about us taking all our stuff every time we left, but you never knew. I figured I might as well make sure. Mr. Fisher would probably just tell the movers to throw all the junk out.
In the bottom of the desk drawer I found an old composition notebook from my Harriet the Spy days. It was colored in pink and green and yellow highlighter. I’d followed the boys around for days, taking notes in it until I drove Steven crazy and he told Mom on me.
I’d written:
June 28. Caught Jeremiah dancing in the mirror when he thought no one was watching. Too bad I was!
June 30. Conrad ate all the blue Popsicles again even though he’s not supposed to. But I didn’t tell.
July 1. Steven kicked me for no reason.
And on and on. I’d gotten sick of it by mid-July and quit. I had been such a little tagalong then. Eight-year-old me would have loved to have been included in this last adventure, would have loved the fact that I got to hang out with the boys while Steven had to stay at home.
I found a few other things, junk like a half-used pot of cherry lip gloss, a couple of dusty hair bands. On the shelf, there were my old Judy Blumes and then my V. C. Andrews books hidden behind them. I figured I’d just leave all that stuff behind.
The one thing I had to take was Junior Mint, my old stuffed polar bear, the one Conrad had won me that time at the boardwalk a million years ago. I couldn’t just let Junior Mint get thrown out like he was junk. He’d been special to me once upon a time.
I stayed upstairs for a while, just looking at my old stuff. I found one other thing worth keeping. A toy telescope. I remember the day my father bought it for me. It had been in one of the little antique stores along the boardwalk, and it was expensive but he said I should have it. There was a time when I was obsessed with stars and comets and constellations, and he thought I might grow up to be an astronomer. It turned out to be a phase, but it was fun while it lasted. I liked the way my father looked at me then, like I had taken after him, my father’s daughter.
He still looked at me that way sometimes—when I asked for Tabasco sauce at restaurants, when I turned the radio station to NPR without him having to ask. Tabasco sauce I liked, but NPR not as much. I did it because I knew it made him proud.
I was glad he was my dad and not Mr. Fisher. He never would have yelled or cussed at me, or gotten mad about spilled Kool-Aid. He wasn’t that kind of man. I’d never appreciated enough just what kind of man he was.
chapter twenty-eight
My father rarely came to the summer house, for a weekend in August maybe, but that was pretty much it. It never occurred to me to wonder why. There was this one weekend he and Mr. Fisher came up at the same time. As if they had so much in common, as if they were friends or something. They couldn’t be more different. Mr. Fisher liked to talk, talk, talk, and my dad only spoke if he had something to say. Mr. Fisher was always watching SportsCenter, while my dad rarely watched TV at all—and definitely not sports.
The parents were going to a fancy restaurant in Dyerstown. A band played there on Saturday nights and they had a little dance floor. It was strange to think of my parents dancing. I’d never seen them dance before, but I was sure Susannah and Mr. Fisher danced all the time. I’d seen them once, in the living room. I remembered how Conrad had blushed and turned away.
I was lying on my stomach, on Susannah’s bed, watching my mother and her get ready in the master bathroom.
Susannah had convinced my mother to wear a dress of hers; it was red and it had a deep V-neck. “What do you think, Beck?” my mother asked uncertainly. I could tell she felt funny about it. She usually wore pants.
“I think you look amazing. I think you should keep it. Red is so you, Laure.” Susannah was curling her lashes and opening her eyes wide in the mirror.
When they left, I would practice using the eyelash curler. My mother didn’t have one. I knew the contents of her makeup bag, one of those plastic green Clinique gift-with-purchase bags. It had a Burt’s Bees chapstick and an espresso eyeliner, a pink and green tube of Maybelline mascara, and a bottle of tinted sunscreen. Boring.
Susannah’s makeup case, though, was a treasure trove. It was a navy snakeskin case with a heavy gold clasp and her initials were engraved on it. Inside she had little eye pots and palettes and sable brushes and perfume samples. She never threw away anything. I liked to sort through it and organize everything in neat rows, according to color. Sometimes she gave me a lipstick or a sample eyeshadow, nothing too dark.
“Belly, you want me to do your eyes?” Susannah asked me.
I sat up. “Yeah!”
“Beck, please don’t give her hooker eyes again,” my mother said, running a comb through her wet hair.
Susannah made a face. “It’s called a smoky eye, Laure.”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s a smoky eye,” I piped up.
Susannah crooked her finger at me. “C’mere
, Belly.”
I scampered into the bathroom and propped myself up on the counter. I loved to sit on that counter with my legs dangling, listening in on everything like one of the girls.
She dipped a little brush into a pot of black eyeliner. “Close your eyes,” she said.
I obeyed, and Susannah dragged the brush along my lash line, expertly blending and smudging with the ball of her thumb. Then she swept shadow across my eyelids and I wriggled in my seat excitedly. I loved it when Susannah made me up; I couldn’t wait for the moment of unveiling.
“Are you and Mr. Fisher gonna dance tonight?” I asked.
Susannah laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Mom, will you and Dad?”
My mother laughed too. “I don’t know. Probably not. Your father doesn’t like to dance.”
“Dad’s boring,” I said, trying to twist around and get a peek at my new look. Gently, Susannah put her hands on my shoulders and sat me straight.
“He’s not boring,” my mother said. “He just has different interests. You like it when he teaches you the constellations, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“And he’s very patient, and he always listens to your stories,” my mother reminded me.
“True. But what does that have to do with being boring?”
“Not much, I suppose. But it has to do with being a good father, which I think he is.”
“He definitely is,” Susannah agreed, and she and my mother exchanged a look over my head. “Take a look at yourself.”
I swiveled around and looked in the mirror. My eyes were very smoky and gray and mysterious. I felt like I should be the one going out dancing.
“See, she doesn’t look like a hooker,” Susannah said triumphantly.
“She looks like she has a black eye,” my mother said.
“No, I don’t. I look mysterious. I look like a countess.” I hopped off the bathroom counter. “Thanks, Susannah.”
