Everything to Me

by Teresa Hill

  “Back then, did you think he was good enough for Dana’s mom?” I ask.

  “God, no. I didn’t think any man was good enough for my daughters. That’s the way a father thinks.”

  I really want to ask how much worse I probably look to Dana’s dad than he did to Sam back then. There are probably degrees of not good enough. I’d probably come down way on the wrong side of that scale.

  Before I can ask, Sam says, “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

  Sam’s a character. Most guys who own their own construction company don’t do the physical work of construction themselves. They hire subcontractors to do it for them and spend their days with a clipboard and a phone, going from job site to job site, supervising the work everybody else does for them.

  Not Sam. I asked him once why he doesn’t hire a bunch of subs, and he sounded disgusted, said he was a man, and he liked to work. He does, but he’s also picky as hell about how the work is done. Historical restorations are like an art form to him, and he’s really good at it.

  But today – in fact, a lot of the time lately, I guess since Grace’s husband died last February – we’ve been doing a lot of salvage jobs. Not anything Sam needs to do himself. He could go through a place, mark what he wants us to save and have other people do it. But here he is.

  Having a salvage job today is perfect for me, to help me burn off some of the anger boiling inside of me. I’m grateful to be here, where I can lose myself in the exhausting work of tearing apart a house in the late July heat.

  * * *

  Dana

  I didn’t sleep well last night. I was too mad, still am as I wake up.

  Mad at myself, because I said I wouldn’t go to that party and make a fool of myself again over Peter, and that’s exactly what I did. I kept pushing until I got too close to him and made him mad.

  Not that it’s unusual — girls getting too close. I see them touching guys, hanging onto guys’ shoulders, leaning into them breast-first, climbing onto their laps, just walking up to guys and kissing them.

  It’s not like I did any of that to Peter.

  Well, except for the hands part.

  I never get to touch him anymore. Not that we ever really did anything except that one, crazy kiss outside the hospital after Mom and Lizzie were in that accident last spring. But Peter and I did hang out together, laugh, talk, sit close together. Hands brushed against hands, against shoulders, backs, faces. We hugged sometimes.

  I cherished every moment, didn’t know how much it meant to me until it was gone. Sometimes I ache to touch him.

  Which makes me think about Andie. Him touching her, and how long that’s been going on, how far it’s gone.

  He sounded surprised when I asked him about liking her, and I don’t know what to make of that. Would he look me in the eye and lie? I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure of anything these days when it comes to him.

  I hear that ticking clock inside my head again. Once I leave for college, we might end up in the same place for summers and holidays, but even that’s not guaranteed.

  Assuming I even have that long, that he isn’t thinking about taking off now. That’s what it sounded like last night, even if that doesn’t make any sense.

  I think again about the money. What’s he going to do with the money? Is it about his mother? No one’s said a thing about her being here or bugging him or Aunt Julie.

  I remember her, kind of, from when they lived down the street from my grandparents. When I say I met Peter when I was twelve, that’s not the whole story. I knew who he was before that. I’d see him around at times, but he was really quiet and tended to keep to himself. We didn’t become friends, and then so much more than friends, until we were in eighth grade.

  When we were younger, it seemed to me like his mother was hardly around, and when she was, she was loud and angry, and I guess drunk, although I didn’t really understand that at the time. I’m not sure I’d recognize her if she walked right up to me.

  Sometimes I wish she would. I’m furious at the idea of anyone being cruel to Peter. I don’t know what she did, exactly. He won’t talk about it except in the vaguest of ways, but I know it was bad. I never thought I’d physically attack someone, but I think I could do it to her, for hurting Peter. I know I’d want to.

  Still in bed, I’m trying to talk myself into getting up when my phone rings, and it’s Uncle Zach. I touch the screen to answer and give him a sleepy, “Hi.”

  “You sound like you’re still in bed,” he says.

  “Maybe.”

  “You wouldn’t have been out late last night, at a party, would you? Where a certain fight took place?”

  “You already know about that?”

  “Your father called me after they picked Peter up for work. I’d already left this morning before he got out of bed.”

  “So, have you talked to Peter about it yet?”

  “No. I thought I’d start with you because he’s always so eager to explain things to me.”

  I can hear the frustration in my uncle’s voice. He tries really hard with Peter. I know he does. He says Julie’s a pushover with Peter because she feels so guilty about running away from home when she was eighteen and Peter was six, leaving Peter behind with their crappy parents. I hope it doesn’t run in the family, the running-away thing.

  Anyway, Julie’s the good cop in their house, and Zach is stuck being the bad guy. He doesn’t complain about it. I think he’d do anything for Julie, and to him, part of taking care of her is taking care of Peter. But Peter doesn’t make it easy for anyone to get close to him, to be a part of his life.

  “Come on, Dana. Help me understand what I’m getting into here,” Zach says. “Do you know what happened?”

  “I didn’t see it start,” I say. “I hadn’t even gotten into the backyard where the party was when people started yelling about the fight.”

  “But you know what happened,” Zach says. He’s not asking a question.

  “Peter said he didn’t start it. That’s all he told me. I’m not sure if this part is true, but I heard … it was about a girl.”

  I can almost feel Zach wincing at that, feel his surprise. He’s probably thinking what I did, that it’s been so long since Peter was in this kind of trouble, and it’s over a girl?

  “Is he seeing someone?” Zach asks.

  “Not that I knew about,” I admit.

  “Peter told your dad that he was defending someone.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. He didn’t exactly open up to me about the whole thing.” Still, defending someone? Defending Andie? From Tripp? What does that even mean?

  I think I’ve seen Andie hanging out with Tripp, but she’s not the kind of girl he’d claim as a girlfriend. Tripp’s parents have money, and he’s really popular and particular about the girls he dates. Andie’s not pretty or polished enough, not popular enough for him, I suspect. She’d be more of a girl-on-the-side. One he’d sneak around with secretly if she’d make out with him or have sex with him.

  I don’t mean anything bad about Andie. I’m saying Tripp is a jerk and treats girls like crap, and Andie’s a little insecure, a little sad. I can imagine her thinking that’s the only way she could get a guy like Tripp. Which makes me mad for her sake, because I think girls are fooling themselves if they think sex is the way to get a guy and keep him. There’s always another girl who’ll come along, one who’s a bit prettier or sexier, or just someone different who will have sex with them, too. Girls are really shitty to each other that way, thinking a guy like that is worth screwing over another girl, metaphorically speaking.

  Some guys are even worse, and I’ve heard Tripp’s one. He’s happy to sneak around and have sex with a girl, while acting like he doesn’t even know her name in public.

  “So,” Zach says, “you really don’t know what happened or why?”

  “No. Sorry, I don’t.

  “Okay. Thanks—”

  “Zach, wait. Has something happened with Peter’s mother
?”

  He goes quiet for a moment. “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “He ... He said some things. Not about the fight. About ... other things. The only times I’ve seen him that ... ” I want to say quick-tempered, but that would make Zach think Peter probably started the fight. “Anxious, like he was last night, have been times when something was going on with his mother.”

  I don’t like spilling his secrets, but I’m worried. Especially about the money and what it meant the last time Peter mentioned it.

  “As far as I know,” Zach says, “she’s still living near Cleveland, and he and Julie haven’t heard from her lately. I know Julie hasn’t. She would have told me. I’m not sure Peter would have. What did he say exactly?

  “Nothing about her. I asked him if something was going on with her, because of how ... off he seemed.”

  “Was he drunk? Or high on something?”

  “No! Nothing like that.”

  “Sorry, I had to ask,” he says. “Dana, if something is going on with him, something serious that Julie and I need to know about, you’d tell me, right?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to figure out what he meant when ... ” I sigh and decide to back up. “Remember last spring when his mother was getting out of prison and the cops brought him home after that poker game? And the guys he was playing with told the cop he might have taken twenty-five hundred dollars from them in the past year or so?”

  “Yes.” Zach sounds really worried now.

  “He was worried his mother might get custody of him, that he’d have to live with her. He said he would never let that happen. A month or so later, he mentioned running away, and I figured out that’s what the money was for. He was saving in case he had to run, because he promised himself he’d never live with her again. I asked him about it, and he didn’t deny it.”

  “He was thinking about running away? You should have told me, Dana.”

  “I wouldn’t have let him go without telling you, and I made him promise not to go without talking to me first.”

  “Okay.” Zach groans. His tone of voice says he’s not happy I kept that from him. “So, what does that have to do with what’s going on now?”

  “Last night, he didn’t actually say it — he caught himself in time, but I swear he was about to bring up having some money saved. We were talking about how upset you and Julie would be about him fighting. He said he’ll be eighteen soon, that he won’t have a legal guardian anymore and social services won’t have a say in where he lives.”

  “Right. So why would he need to run away?”

  “Exactly. It doesn’t make any sense, but it still made me think of last spring. I brought it up again — him running away — but he denied even thinking about it. So, what’s the money for?”

  “Tell me exactly what he said,” Zach says.

  “He talked about turning eighteen, no legal guardian, no more social services, and then he said he’d be okay either way, because ... and then he clammed up, but I swear, he was going to say because he has some money saved.”

  “What does ‘either way’ mean? If Julie and I come down too hard on him about fighting, he’ll go live by himself, because he’ll be eighteen and he can, because he has money?”

  “No. It wasn’t like that,” I say. “He seemed worried, distracted, even mad afterward that he’d said anything. It sounded like the money is ... a safety net. A back-up plan.”

  “In case his mother comes back? But even if she does, he said it. He’ll be eighteen. She can’t make him do anything. So, what’s he worried about?”

  I shake my head. “I couldn’t figure out anything that made sense.”

  “He can’t think Julie and I would kick him out, could he? Because he got into a fight?” Zach’s quiet for a long time, and then words burst out of him. “Jesus, it’s been four years! He’s been with me and Julie for almost four years, and he still doesn’t trust us?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “We went through this when his mother got out before. I thought we made it clear that he didn’t have to worry about her. If it came down to a court case over custody, we’d fight for him and win.”

  I hate thinking that all these years have gone by, and Peter still doesn’t feel safe and know that he’ll always have a home with Zach and Julie. We take things like that seriously in my family. We take care of each other and help each other. You don’t ever have to be alone in our family, Peter’s and mine. He’s a part of us, him and Julie. How can he not know that?

  “That’s it. The eighteen thing,” Zach says. “He thinks we might not give a shit about him, because under the law, he’s considered an adult. We’ll have no legal obligation to do anything for him. He thinks Julie and I are only putting up with him, because we signed legal papers saying we would. Jesus, this kid ... I don’t think we’ll ever get through to him. I don’t think he’ll ever trust us.”

  I hope that’s not true, because it hurts so much to think about Peter feeling that way, hurting that way. He must feel so alone.

  Doesn’t he know? He’s never going to be alone as long as I’m alive. I’ll always be his friend, even if there’s never anything more between us. Even now, when he’s deliberately putting distance between us, I’m still his friend.

  He could call me ten years from now. Twenty. If he says he needs help, I’ll be there.

  It breaks my heart, thinking he doesn’t know that.

  * * *

  4

  Peter

  I work my ass off that day with Sam and Dana’s dad. Prying things apart, hauling stuff outside, climbing to every tall spot in that old house, trying to burn off some of the anger that’s so close to boiling over inside me.

  I’m mad at Dana for getting too close and seeing through me so easily that she even knew something’s going on with Mom. At Tripp for being the kind of asshole who hurts girls. At Andie for staying with a guy like him. At me for losing it and fighting Tripp. At Dana’s dad for giving me the look that said, Of course you’ve been fighting again, because he thinks that’s all I know how to do. At Sam because even though he’s usually on my side, he looked like I really disappointed him, and I hate doing that.

  So, basically, I’m mad at the whole world, all jacked-up with so much anger and energy I need to get rid of before I do another stupid thing. I try to make myself so tired I can shut off the whole mess swirling around inside my head and be ready for whatever I’m about to walk into with Zach and Julie tonight.

  Sam drops me off about five-fifteen, and I see both their cars in the driveway. It’s way too early for both of them to be home, but they are, and I know why.

  Time to have another little talk with the screwed-up kid.

  “Hey,” Sam says before I get out of the truck. “Good work today.”

  “Yeah. Somebody has to do all the heavy lifting you’re getting too old to handle,” I say, smarting off to him because he’s trying to be kind, despite the fact that I was pissed off and mostly shitty to him all day. It’s easier to give him a hard time than to just thank him for how good he is to me. I didn’t think I could ever count on an adult to have my back the way Sam has.

  Sam shrugs, grinning. “I’ve forgotten more about construction than you know, kid. Don’t forget that.”

  He knows what I’m doing. He always knows.

  “I’ll go inside and call your wife, and tell her I managed to keep you from hurting that decrepit old body of yours too much today. You know I’m her watchdog out there with you, right? She’ll probably have some of that old-man, sore-muscle crap that smells so bad waiting for you when you get home.”

  Sam nods. “Kid, that’s a perk, having a sweet woman waiting at home to rub my sore muscles. I’m always happy to have Rachel’s hands on me.”

  “That’s probably the best you can do, right? Lie there all feeble and tired while she rubs your poor old grandpa muscles?”

  Sam grins really big, like, No, kid, that is not the best I can do.

  Sam is no
t grandpa-like in any way physically. He’s really strong and tough from all the hard, physical work he does. I just like to give him shit sometimes. And he’s grinning even harder now than he was a minute ago.

  Damn. Really, I think? Way to go, Sam.

  “Kid, you have so much to learn about life,” he says. “Now, get in there and get it over with. It’s not going to be as bad as you think.”

  I nod, needing to hear that, and then watch him as he drives away. I’ve been dreading this all day.

  Inside, Zach and Julie are waiting for me at the dining room table, where Julie often spreads out the work she brings home with her. They don’t say anything at first, and neither do I. In the kitchen, I cup my hands under the faucet to catch some cold water, then bring it to my face. Quickly, I wipe away some of the sweat and grime with a paper towel, then fill up a giant glass with ice and water. It was hot today.

  Then I take a seat across from Zach and beside Julie and give them time to look over the cuts and bruises on my face.

  “Do you need stitches?” Julie finally asks. “Or a doctor for anything?”

  “No. It’s nothing—” I can feel Zach’s anger at that. “I’m not saying getting into a fight is nothing. The bruises and stuff are nothing. I’m okay.”

  Julie needs to know I have no injuries she can’t see, and I promise her I don’t.

  She and Zach both seem oddly calm.

  I never quite know how to handle that. It freaks me out a little, people who are calm when they’re mad. The way I grew up, mad means yelling, throwing things, hitting, being drunk or high on something, being dangerously unpredictable. It’s weird, I know, but calm and angry scares me more.

  “Go on. Say it,” I tell them.

  “Say what?” Zach asks.

  “Whatever you’re going to say.” I want this over. Now.

  Julie shakes her head. “We’re back to this? Fighting?”