Harder (Caroline and West)

by Robin York

  The window sinks away, and shame crawls over me. It leaves slimy trails up and down my arms, hollows my stomach, snatches at my breath.

  It’s always like this with him.

  When I first met Dr. Tomlinson, back before I graduated high school, we were friends. Maybe I’m fooling myself to remember it that way, but that was how it felt. Like we had things in common, stuff to talk about, ideas we would kick back and forth as we worked our way through eighteen holes in sync. Fucking simpatico.

  Then he introduced me to Rita.

  I can’t look at him anymore. It takes a monumental effort just to meet his eyes. Every time, I’m waiting for him to say it.

  You fucked my wife.

  “I wasn’t sure where else to catch you,” he says. “Your phone’s disconnected?”

  “I changed to a different carrier.”

  “You’re supposed to be able to keep your same number these days, even when you switch.”

  “Yeah, there was a mix-up.”

  He’s not dumb enough to believe this, but he’s too polite to say. “Do you have twenty minutes?”

  “I’ve got to pick up my sister.”

  My paycheck deposit showed up yesterday, and I promised I’d take her to buy a few things for school. She grew out of all her leggings and stuff from last year.

  “I was hoping to talk to you about that scholarship.”

  This isn’t the day, then. The you-fucked-my-wife day.

  As the realization hits me, so does my disappointment.

  I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop with Dr. T for six fucking years, and it’s getting so I want it to. I want to be accused by him, attacked by him, fucking blamed by this man for every wrong thing I’ve done.

  I’m a villain. I deserve venom. A kick in the ribs. Disgust.

  He claps a hand on my shoulder, and I flinch.

  “I know you’ve had a hard year. I understand why you felt you had to leave Putnam, but it seems to me you’ve got an opportunity here to turn things around.”

  The shame. Jesus, the shame, crawling all over me. I’d do almost anything to get out of my body right now, get away. Part of why I left Silt in the first place was so I’d never have to sit across a table from Dr. T, listening to him ramble on about my best interests while Rita slid her bare toes up my leg.

  “I’ve really got to go,” I say.

  “I’ll ride along.”

  He walks over to the passenger side and lets himself into the truck, just like that – a reminder of how easy it used to be with him. Walking the course together, shooting the shit on his back deck with the view out over the green and the sun sinking down into the ocean.

  I liked him.

  I thought if I worked hard enough, put Silt far enough behind me, I could be Dr. T – trousers and four-hundred-dollar shoes and a white shirt he doesn’t have to worry about staining because his Mexican housemaid drops off his dry cleaning and picks it back up wrapped in plastic every Tuesday.

  I wonder if everybody else’s dreams begin to look like dumb fucking nonsense after a dose of reality, or if it’s just mine.

  He buckles his seat belt. I back onto the highway.

  “I talked to someone in the financial aid office about your case last week,” he says.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that.”

  “I know you turned me down, but I keep hoping you’ll change your mind. You have so much potential. You remind me of the way I was at your age, and I can’t stand to see you throw it away. I keep thinking there’s got to be a way I can do this for you.”

  “You’ve done more than enough already. And I’m sorry about that tuition that got wasted spring semester. I’m gonna see about paying that back to you.”

  “You don’t have to pay it back.”

  “I want to.”

  He turns in the seat, fixes me with that sharp gaze of his. “West, I’ve been trying to see this whole situation from your perspective. I know taking money was always hard for you. I’ve said more than once that the way I see it, money’s a neutral thing, not good or bad. But if I can use what I have to help someone like you, that’s not neutral, it’s overwhelmingly positive. I understand it’s hard for you to see it that way, okay? That’s the reason I’ve hoped that this scholarship might be something you could accept. Because it’s not me, not my money. This is a Putnam scholarship. They’re only going to give it to you because you deserve it.”

  I don’t deserve anything.

  “All you have to do is fill out some paperwork, and the scholarship is yours. The college tells me they already have records showing you’re a student of exceptional merit.”

  Exceptional merit. I’d laugh if the phrase didn’t make my throat tighten.

  I licked your wife’s cunt. Up against this truck. While Caroline watched.

  “It could be good for your sister, too,” he says. “I heard she’s living with you now. You could take her along. Give her a fresh start.”

  I watch the white line on the highway, willing my mind to go blank.

  I can’t think about what he said, because when I start thinking about shit like whether I could take Frankie and leave, just go, I pore over every angle of it. I work through every possible way it could go down, and then I shut them off, one after another.

  I don’t have to reach for impossibilities because they’re all right there in front of me – the impossibility of tearing Frankie away from everything she knows.

  The impossibility of juggling work and child care and classes all at the same time.

  The impossibility of taking one more favor from a man I’ve screwed over in every conceivable way.

  I can’t tell myself I deserve to, not when I can conjure up the smell of Rita Tomlinson’s perfume and the blank white horror in Caroline’s expression.

  Wanting things makes me miserable.

  Wanting things makes me look at trees and guardrails when I’m driving, makes me ponder whether I should buy a bottle of whiskey and take it out to Bo’s, drink it in the driveway until I’m ready to unlock his gun cabinet, load up his .48, and put an end to this.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “You can,” Dr. T insists.

  “No. I can’t. I just fucking can’t.”

  After that, he’s quiet. Too quiet.

  His hands are folded in his lap, his gaze on the middle distance. It takes him another mile to speak. “I had another question I wanted to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s about Rita.”

  My arms are made of lead. My foot’s a block on the gas pedal.

  “I noticed at the funeral,” he says, “and after the funeral when I tried to speak with her… but I’m not being honest if I say it’s the first time I wondered.” He pauses. Flashes me a quick, uncomfortable smile. “I’m concerned she might be somewhat obsessed, I guess. With you.”

  Obsessed with me.

  Is that what you call it?

  “She talks about you a lot. We talk about you, of course, in the usual way, but since you’ve been back in town, her interest seems like… too much.”

  He wipes his hand over his mouth.

  “I know this is an awkward question, but has she behaved in any way that’s inappropriate? That might cause concern?”

  He wants me to reassure him.

  He’s scared, because he’s figured something out, but he won’t let himself see the real shape of it. He doesn’t want to add one and one and get two, so he’s looking at me to tell him, Hey, no worries, it’s three. Look. I’ll show you the math.

  I flip the signal and turn the wheel. The truck bounces into the middle school parking lot.

  “No,” I say. “Nothing to be concerned about.” And then I manage a smile. It takes everything I’ve got to make it look real, but I give it everything, because I don’t want Dr. Tomlinson to know what his wife is like.

  It’s bad enough that I do.

  “Nothing at all.”

  Scrutinizing my expression,
he brightens. “Oh. Okay. Good. Well, look, if you’ll do me a favor and let me know if there’s anything I should be concerned about, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Will do.”

  I slow. Brake. Put the truck in Park.

  School kids are streaming from the building, running, laughing. I see my sister come out the door alone with her head down, hair hanging in her face.

  She doesn’t look like a kid. Not when I see these other ones. She’s different from them, marked, like there’s a line around her.

  New clothes will help.

  Maybe we can see about getting her hair cut.

  “And just to go back to the scholarship for a minute,” he says. “Promise me you’ll at least think about it. The semester’s already rolling, but the person I talked to said it won’t be too late if you hustle out there.”

  I open the door. Hop out of the truck.

  “West.”

  “Sure. I’ll think about it.”

  I say it just to shut him up.

  When Frankie arrives, I make the introductions, load her into the back, drop him off at the lot, and keep going, toward the strip where Ross’s is.

  “Who was that guy?” she asks.

  “I used to caddy for him.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “He wants me to go back to Putnam.”

  She’s quiet for a while, looking out the window. “Caroline’s at Putnam.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Where would I go if you did that?”

  “I told him no, Franks.”

  “But if you did.”

  “You’d go with me.”

  “Without Mom?”

  “Without Mom.”

  “Isn’t that against the law? Like, since she’s my mom?”

  “I could take you if she says it’s okay.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s all she’s got to say on the subject. Oh.

  She tries on jeans. I get angry and then angrier until I’m incapable of producing any response to her fashion show that satisfies her. She gets pissed at me for not being excited, and I guess that’s fair, because I’m pissed at her for saying Oh.

  I’m pissed at myself for wanting her to say something different.

  Want is a bottomless black hole, sucking at me. Tentacles of faith and hope and trust, wisdom, good judgment, principles, pride – everything I don’t have – pulling me down.

  I can’t. I fucking can’t.

  I pick up a bottle of whiskey on the way home.

  Ten minutes after Frankie goes to bed, I pour myself a glass.

  “Hey, Joan.” I grab the bag with my lunch out of the fridge. “What’s up?”

  “Are you at work?”

  “No, I’m on my way in.”

  I pull the apartment door closed most of the way with my foot, dangle lunch from a few fingers so I can use the rest to snag the knob and operate the key in the lock.

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “I’m never late.”

  I hear her exhale. Blowing smoke out on the porch. “No, I don’t guess you are.”

  Stepping up into the truck, I glance at the glove box, but I leave the pack where it is. I’m trying to cut back. Caroline wants me to quit.

  Again and again, I come back to Caroline.

  Come back to her accusations. Come back to the sight of her in her funeral dress and muddy feet, shoveling dirt.

  I come back to Caroline’s laugh, Caroline’s mouth, Caroline’s body naked against mine.

  I come in my hand in the shower, inside her, inside my own memories.

  It’s almost a month since she left Silt, and I need to quit Caroline worse than I need to quit smoking.

  “So listen,” Joan says. “Your uncle Jack is talking to a lawyer.”

  He put my name down on the paperwork at the hospital, told them I’d pay for breaking his nose. Some fucking nerve. “I’m gonna pay the bill.”

  “This isn’t about what you did to his face – it’s about your dad. The ambulance-chaser Jack’s hooked up with thinks he can make a case against Bo. Emotional distress or whatever – like what what’s-her-name’s family got against OJ.”

  A civil trial, she means. Since the authorities aren’t pursuing a criminal case, my uncle’s going to take justice into his own hands. “What kind of case has Jack got? He’s a deadbeat alcoholic dickbag. What’s he going to say, Dad’s death made him more of one?”

  “Watch your mouth. That’s my son you’re talking about.”

  “Sorry.”

  She sighs. “These guys only make their money if they win,” she says. “The lawyer must think it’s worth his time. I’m telling you because of Frankie.”

  “What about her?”

  But I have a sinking feeling I know exactly what.

  Frankie wakes up thrashing in the sheets, shouting. Sometimes “Daddy.” Sometimes “Bo.”

  Always, “Don’t!”

  I stand in the doorway of her room and say her name, Franks, Franks, Franks, until she stills because she’s heard me, and that’s usually when she starts to cry.

  I wish I knew if I was fucking her up.

  I sit in the living room after she’s asleep and think about how if Frankie ends up depressed, ends up cutting herself, ends up dead, ends up pregnant at fourteen – it’ll be because of me.

  Something I did or didn’t do, some sign I missed that it was my job to see.

  “They could make her testify if there’s a trial,” Joan says.

  “No fucking way. Even Jack isn’t that big of an asshole. He’s got to know I’d kill him for even trying it.”

  “I think that’s the idea. He’s got it in for you since the funeral.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “But if he gets at her —”

  “She was at a fucking sleepover!”

  Joan sucks at her cigarette so hard I can hear it. Exhales. “Day before the funeral, Frankie talked to Stephanie.”

  Jack’s wife. Shit.

  Shit.

  “Stephanie’s telling everybody Frankie was there at the trailer when Wyatt got shot. Frankie will get dragged into this thing if it happens – it’s not going to do any good to pretend she won’t.”

  She’s right. Fucking Leavitts – there’s a reason I stayed away from them so long, and the reason’s that it’s always like this. Drama after drama, fighting and feuding, arguing over money and sex and drugs and whatever the hell else they can think of. They feed on it. They love it.

  Jack’s going to put Frankie right in the goddamn middle of it.

  “Can’t you talk him out of this suit? Bo hasn’t got much money. Whatever went down in that trailer, I guarantee you Wyatt deserved it.”

  “When have I ever been able to talk a Leavitt man out of anything?”

  I laugh. Don’t mean to.

  I don’t have any control over myself.

  I don’t have control over anything.

  Six years ago, Frankie was too young to be hurt by this kind of Leavitt bullshit, but I wasn’t. I cut ties to the Leavitts because they wouldn’t take my side, wouldn’t protect me and my sister from my father.

  They won’t protect us from this, either. I have to.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I say.

  “Let me know when you decide what to do.”

  I disconnect and drop the phone on the seat next to me.

  The morning is cool, the sun bright over the mountains. The wind’s blowing through the cab of the truck, rattling the paper bag with my lunch in it.

  I’m young and healthy, alive. Free of my father. I should feel good.

  I should be able to find a way to feel good about the giant fucking palm smacking into my back, shoving me toward Iowa.

  Take your sister and go. That’s what Dr. T is trying to get me to do.

  That’s what Caroline said to me, in no uncertain terms.

  But all I can think, looking at the green on the hills, at the black ribbon of asphalt, at t
he blue sky, is this is one more fucking thing in my life I don’t get to decide about.

  I see Iowa in my mind’s eye. Summertime in Putnam. Green lawns and brick buildings, marigolds and window boxes, students everywhere.

  The hope spikes right into me, spikes my pulse, makes me breathe too shallow so I start to get dizzy and I have to pull over by the side of the road and slam my hand into the steering wheel and tell myself, No way, no way, no fucking way.

  I think, Take Frankie somewhere else.

  Mexico. Oklahoma.

  Anywhere would do – anywhere that’s far enough away from Jack and lawyers and courtrooms to keep her safe from all the traumatic assholery heading our way.

  We could live by a river in an adobe hut. I could learn to train horses. We could eat frijoles and tortillas and I’d be inside that fucking Cormac McCarthy novel I read in my first-year seminar, but it would be better than letting the hope back in.

  Before she left, Caroline told me, You have to find a way to get out from under it, knowing it’s never going away. You have to make your own life, because if you don’t, you just won’t get to have one at all, and that’s the worst fucking thing I can imagine.

  She says that to me over and over.

  She says it in my head every day, and every day I say the same thing back to her.

  The way I’ve lived – the life I’ve had – I can imagine worse things than you can.

  It’s not so bad to waste your life. It’s not so hard. What’s harder – what’s fucking impossible – is thinking you’ve got a future and then losing it.

  I don’t think I can survive it a second time.

  In the glove box, I locate my last pack of cigarettes and light one up. I smoke it fast, sucking in deep carcinogenic lungfuls, trying to get used to the fact that it doesn’t matter if I can stand to live in Putnam or not.

  I don’t have a decision to make.

  We’re going to Putnam, because there’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar education waiting for me there. A bachelor’s degree that means something. I’d be an idiot to turn it down when I can grab it and use it for Frankie.

  I burned my life in Putnam to the ground. I don’t want to wade among the ashes and pitch a tent over top of what’s left of it, but I will. I haven’t got a choice.