by Theresa Weir
She left, then returned with a wet rag and wiped down the table, reaching and bending and showing a lot of boob. Which he’d already seen, and which belonged to his half sister. Sick bastard. He swallowed and opened the menu. “So, what sucks the most?”
“Probably the heuvos rancheros.” She pointed with the chewed end of her pen. “And the vegetarian burritos. They suck too.”
He pulled the piece of typing paper from his back pocket and smoothed it out on the table.
She made an irritated sound and snatched it away. “Pour your own damn coffee. It’s over there.”
The bell above the door rang as she stepped into the entryway and replaced the notice on the bulletin board. Then she came back to stand next to him. “Listen, penis boy.”
“What did you call me?” He must have misheard.
“I don’t need your help,” she said. “I don’t need anybody’s help.”
“I’ll move out of the house. You can have it to yourself.”
“What are you doing? You don’t know me. I don’t know you.”
“I’m not trying to control your life.” He clasped his hands together, and, elbows on the table, he leaned forward, all to prove his sincerity. But he already knew the wall she had around her was probably unclimbable. At least by him. “I’m not trying to be controlling,” he repeated, lowering his voice although he doubted anybody would overhear because the noise of dishes and talking was deafening. “I’m just saying you don’t need to look for a place to live. You have a place to live. That’s all.”
She made a waving motion with her hand, then pulled out her pad. “What do you want to eat?”
He ordered the burrito.
“Are you a vegetarian? It also comes with chicken.”
“I’m a vegetarian. Most of the time.”
“What are you going to do with all of that ham in the refrigerator?”
“You want it?”
“I’m a vegetarian too. All the time.”
He laughed, and in so doing he coaxed a reluctant smile from her before she spun away and shouted his order to the cook. He wondered if, under normal conditions, before her father died and before she’d been left out of the will, she’d smiled that smile a lot.
She was working a waitress job. She was looking for a place to live. And the first semester of classes had just started. This wasn’t going to be easy for her. Somehow he had to make this right. Somehow he had to fix this.
The food sucked as much as she promised, which meant it was delicious, one of the best burritos he’d ever had and he knew he’d be coming back, Molly or no Molly. Before he left, he grabbed a napkin and wrote down his cell number, along with a note.
Call me if you need help moving. I have a van. Signed, Ian. He left the napkin tucked under his plate.
Chapter 12
I got a couple of calls about roommates and went to check them out. One was a houseful of cigarette-smoking druggies. I’m okay with smoking as long as people do it outside, but the house—or pad, let’s just call it a pad—was littered with overflowing ashtrays and cans and plates, all full of cigarette butts. Under and over and in between that was the nauseating smell of cat spray. Not piss, but that burn-your-eyes smell that went along with unneutered male cats that liked to back up and raise their tails to walls and couches and legs.
In fact, one of the cats backed up to me while I was standing there trying to act interested in the place as the stoner showed me around. I felt something weird through my tights, looked down to see a cat tail quivering in the air and a stream of whatever hitting my calf. I screamed and jumped and the cat took off, skidding around a corner.
“Yeeaah,” I said, dragging out the word as I squished up my face, then kind of grimaced in an I’m-sorry expression. “I don’t think this is right for me. I’m allergic to cats.” Lie, but better than having to tell the stoner dude that I didn’t really want to wallow in their filth.
The next place was the opposite. Two earnest girls with shiny faces who immediately launched into how they had to kick out their last roommate because she played music all night and didn’t do her chores. One of the girls pointed to the chore wheel on the refrigerator.
“Yeeaah,” I said with elaborate sorrow and a grimace. “I don’t think this is going to work for me. You have a great place, but it’s a little farther from my work than I thought it would be. I’m really looking for something closer.”
Their faces fell and I felt bad.
“But I’m sure you’ll find somebody. Such a nice space.” And it was. All sunny and clean and happy. Too happy. Of course I didn’t have to hang out with them, but when you’re dealing with dark crap it’s hard to face such cheerful faces on a daily basis. It’s like the contrast would just make me feel worse, make me feel more of a freak.
They stood at the door and watched me pedal away, and I’ll bet they wanted to tell me I should be wearing a helmet. Dad always told me that too. He’d even gotten me one that was probably buried somewhere in the house.
Most of the time I thought about my father the monster, but occasionally childhood memories came rushing back. My dad, removing the training wheels from my bike and running behind me, holding the seat as I pedaled down the sidewalk, screaming for him not to let go.
What if I erased the monster memories and just clung to the good ones? No, that couldn’t be done. I couldn’t forget who he was. I couldn’t allow death to turn him into something he wasn’t. My little trip down memory lane had been triggered by my visit to the shiny, happy girls. See, bad already. I’d been there a few minutes and I was already trying to rewrite my own history and make my father the hero of my story.
Fuck that shit.
Back at the duplex, Taylor and Rose were already moving out, and the space was beginning to sound empty. Rose’s plants were gone, and her cat, Barney, was nowhere to be seen, his litter box no longer in the bathroom.
I went to my room, closed the door, and pulled out the napkin I’d tucked away yesterday, after Ian stopped by the café. Today was Sunday. I had classes Monday. Needed to be out of the duplex by Wednesday.
I pulled out my cell and called the number on the napkin.
“I can be over in thirty minutes,” he said.
“It’s just until I find a place,” I told him. “And I don’t have much here.”
I gave him the address, and he was there in less than thirty minutes.
A dresser, stereo, boxes of albums, two lamps, framed pictures I’d picked up at thrift stores. That was pretty much it. The bed was staying.
“No Nirvana?” he asked, perusing the space.
“No.”
The dresser was big, with an oval mirror. Using a screwdriver, I crouched down and began to dismantle the frame that held the glass. Ian squeezed between the dresser and the wall to steady the frame, waiting for me to free it. He raised his arms and his blue T-shirt shifted, exposing a waistband of jeans that were faded and worn, and a brown leather belt that was scratched and a little curled. I saw the hard, smooth contours of his stomach, and when I looked higher, beyond the expanse of shirt, I saw the bulge of biceps. He wasn’t as puny as I thought. And of course my mind went back to the one vivid memory I had of him, and I felt myself go weak with the remembering because it was tactile as well as visual.
The screwdriver slipped and I jabbed myself. “Damn.” It came out all breathless and annoyed.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Just like I told the barista yesterday and just like I would tell the barista next week and the week after that.
While I found myself lusting over him I thought, Ick, how sick. But then I remembered he wasn’t really my brother, and maybe I should come clean on that. But, no. If I suddenly said, Hey, I’m not really your sister, then he’d think it was an invitation, which it would be. But if we were going to be sharing the same house it was best to keep my distance. Couldn’t imagine how awful that would be to have sex with him, then wake up in the same house. Plu
s have sex with him in that house. No. Couldn’t happen.
“Your face is red,” he observed.
“I’m having a hot flash.”
The mirror and frame were unscrewed, and he lifted them up and away. “So you’re in menopause?”
“I’m older than I look.”
On the way out the door he stopped. “How old are you? Really.”
“Twenty-two.” I checked the wound on my hand. Barely more than a scrape. “You?”
“Twenty-five.”
“An old fart.”
“Yup.”
Out the door he went, then I heard his feet thundering down the steps.
Rose and Taylor weren’t home, and I was hoping we’d get out of there before they returned for another load. Since I hadn’t told Rose about Ian, I wasn’t sure how to explain the whole mess in a few sentences, and I didn’t want to. It would take a girls’ night of drinking, and even then it would never make sense.
He’s your what? And you two did what? And he was left everything but five hundred bucks? And you’re moving in with him? Into your father’s house?
Maybe it wouldn’t take a night of drinking. That pretty much summed it up.
In Ian’s van I felt myself unraveling as we headed to my father’s house. I never thought I’d live there again. I’d promised myself I’d never live there again, but for some reason the addition of Ian made it not seem as bad. It took away some of my father’s taint, and even though his stuff would still be everywhere I could already feel a shift in the air before we arrived.
The cloud wasn’t as dark. And I knew I should hate Ian. I kept telling myself I should hate him, but I couldn’t hate him. In the few times I’d been around him I’d experienced this sense of…I don’t know. Safe. Which was weird when I thought about how he was the one responsible for pulling everything out from under me.
I should have hated him for the house. Why? Because he was my father’s flesh-and-blood relative. Unlike me.
We pulled up in front of the green and burgundy bungalow, parking behind a Dumpster with rolls of beige carpet poking out. At first I couldn’t place the carpet even though it looked familiar. Then I realized it had come from the house. So weird, something so familiar that I’d thought belonged to a stranger.
Inside, most of the furniture had been removed and a lot of what hadn’t been tossed into the Dumpster was sitting on the porch.
“Sorry,” Ian said when he saw me looking around the space, my eyes big, mouth hanging open. “I didn’t think you’d be coming over here this soon. Look, I can bring the furniture back inside. I can put the carpet back down.”
He misread me.
The house already felt different, and I could sense the promise of what it would be like once it was done. And I wanted in on it. I wanted to be a part of it. If there was any dismay on my face it was because I wanted in on the purge. I wished I’d been there to help him rip up the carpet. I wished I’d been there to carry out furniture and toss it into the Dumpster, hearing it crash and break.
God, this was perfect. This was exactly what I needed.
“Don’t do anything else,” I told him. “Nothing.”
“Okay. I won’t. I was bored and I started seeing this stuff I wanted to do. But I’ll stop. I’ll put it all back.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I want to do it. I want to gut this place.” I started walking around. “Pull down this paneling. Strip this wallpaper that’s been here since I was a baby. Maybe even refinish the floors.”
Now I was in the kitchen, looking at the nasty cupboards that had turned orange over the years. “We could sand those down and paint them white. I’ll help pay for it.” I didn’t know how, but this was something I wanted to do. Something I needed to do.
“So you don’t care?” He looked baffled. And who wouldn’t? He didn’t understand my need to erase the past. Who could possibly understand that? “Paint everything,” I said. “All the rooms. Top to bottom.” Paint could cover up a lot of ghosts.
“I’m cool with that.”
I ran my hand across the fake wood countertop. “I’ve seen counters you can make out of poured cement. They look awesome.”
“That might be a bit out of my area of expertise. In fact, all of this will be new to me.”
“You’ve never painted before?”
“I’ve helped friends a few times, but they pretty much put the roller in my hand.”
“I painted my bedroom once, but I want to do it again. A different color. It’ll be fun.”
“What about school? This sounds like a major project.”
“I don’t know.” All I wanted to do was work on the house.
“Maybe go tomorrow. Give it a week or so. They usually allow a few weeks to drop if you decide it’s too much right now.”
“Good idea.”
We spent the next hour carrying in my things, depositing most of it in a corner of the living room. Then, exhausted, I went to bed. My old room. My old bed. Creepy, but also comforting. And so odd to think that the man boy was just down the hall. The man boy who thought he was my brother.
Chapter 13
Ian heard a car pull up, followed by footsteps and a knock at the front door. He turned on the porch light and answered the knock to find a girl with flaming red hair standing there, arms and chest covered with tattoos.
“Hi,” she said, a puzzled look on her face. “Is Molly here?”
“Yeah, but she’s asleep.”
“Oh.” More thought. “Is she staying here?”
“Yeah, she moved back today.”
“I’m Rose. Her roommate. Well, I was her roommate until today.” She held out her hand, he took it, and they shook. She had a grip like a wrestler. “And you are…?” she asked.
“She didn’t tell you?”
Rose shook her head.
“I’m her brother.” At her shocked reaction, he corrected. “Stepbrother. Half brother. We had the same father.”
Rose looked even more puzzled. “How’s that possible?” He could see she was trying to figure it out. “I didn’t think Molly ever looked for her real parents.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m adopted too so we talked about that stuff. I’m trying to find my mom, but Molly said she was okay with not looking for her birthmother.”
“Molly’s adopted?” Jesus. Now things made a little more sense. And why the professor’s will was even more disturbing than ever.
“Yeah. So Mr. Young’s your birthfather?”
“Yeah, he left my mother when I was a baby.”
“Wow. So what are you doing here? I don’t get it. And why have I never heard of you?”
“I think you’d better talk to Molly about that.” He already worried that he’d said too much. And why did he feel this sense of euphoria to know that he and Molly weren’t blood relatives? And why had she kept that from him? Then he thought about how she was always calling him brother, rubbing in what had happened. Tormenting him.
“Can you wake her up so I can talk to her?”
“She was pretty exhausted. I think maybe you should wait until tomorrow.”
“How do I know you’re not some wacko who’s holding her captive? Or worse?”
“Wanna come in?”
“Yeah, I do.” She didn’t even wait for him to step back; she just pushed her way inside. “Wow,” she whispered when she saw the mess.
She knew where she was going and took the stairs, moving on her tiptoes, looking back down at him so he could see she was being quiet. He followed.
On the second floor she turned the knob, opened the door, and stuck her head inside Molly’s room. Satisfied, she closed it, gave Ian a nod, then tiptoed back downstairs.
“Not a psychopath,” Ian said.
“You never know. I mean, the good-looking ones are sometimes the craziest,” Rose said. “I used to date this guy—” She stopped and waved her hand in the air. “You don’t want to hear about that. Let’s just say he was insane.
”
“You must be a good friend,” Ian said.
Rose got a strange look on her face and shook her head. “I just kicked her out right after her dad died. What kind of friend does that? I suck. I’m a self-absorbed asshole, that’s what I am.”
He should invite her to have a drink or something, but he just wanted her to leave so he could think about this new information.
“Okay,” she said, seeming to pick up on his anti-social mindset. “Tell Molly I stopped by.”
“Will do.”
She left and he closed the door and turned off the porch light.
Not his sister.
Chapter 14
Every moment I wasn’t in school or studying or at Mean Waitress we worked on the house. My bedroom was first. The purple walls became a pale, serene blue, and the dark trim was painted a shiny white. We ripped up the carpet but held off sanding the floors. The Kurt Cobain poster went back up, but everything else was put on Craigslist or in the Dumpster.
On Saturday, a week after I moved back, we were painting the living room walls a pale lemon. The floor was covered with plastic drop clothes, and Ian and I were both in paint-splattered clothes. I wore a black tank top and jeans that were ripped in several places. My hair was wrapped in a pink bandana. Ian wore jeans that threatened to fall off his hips, and a faded T-shirt with holes in it. Both of us barefoot. It was a warm fall day. Windows were open and the radio was tuned to Radio K, the college station.
I climbed down the stepladder, poured more paint into the aluminum pan, picked up a brush, and re-climbed the ladder to finish off the edges. My heart felt light.
I was in the middle of darkness, and my heart felt light. Like some dog sticking its head out the window. Just happy in the moment. Music and open windows and the smell of paint and the solid and weird feel of the wooden ladder against the arches of my bare feet.
I glanced over at Ian. When he reached high with the roller, his shirt exposed his flat stomach. I’d been able to admire that stomach a lot the past several days.
It was like we were married and this was our first house. I thought it would be weird, shopping for paint with a total stranger, but he had a way of making me feel comfortable. He just kind of gave off this calm, together vibe.
