by Carrie Mac
He was pushing Claire away, just like he had done before. Just like he’d done with my mom, using the woman at the coffee shop to ruin it permanently.
Maybe he was hardwired to fuck up his family. His families. Every time a new baby—or two—came along, he fell apart. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be a part of a family at all. My heart constricted at the idea. He couldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t.
“It’s a very good painting.” Mr. Heidelman peered at it, hands locked behind his back. “Beautiful detail. Skillful brushstrokes.” He glanced at the date in the corner. “Fourteen years ago. Your new work must be very, very good.”
“Yeah, it’s not bad.”
“He’s being modest,” Claire said. “If he was willing to sign with a gallery, he’d be very successful.”
“No galleries.” My dad shook his head. “I like doing my own thing.” He sniffed. “So, can I help get you settled at all? Need anything? Pictures hung? Furniture arranged?”
“No, but thank you.” Mr. Heidelman laughed. “I am very tired. I am going to make a cup of tea and then take myself straight to bed. Everything else can wait.”
—
Once Mr. Heidelman was gone, Claire ordered the pizza. While we waited, Corbin and Owen staged a battle between the kings, but Corbin wasn’t really into it. He kept glancing up at Dad. Corbin let King Percival win too soon, and then he got up and took a running leap at Dad, tackling him. Dad rolled onto the floor and they started wrestling again. At first Corbin was laughing, but then he was yelping in pain.
“Ouch, Daddy!” He scuttled away.
“Aw, it wasn’t that hard.” Dad yanked him back by his good arm, and his cast clunked against the table leg. He was being too harsh. Too rough. Even for Corbin.
“It was so.” He pulled away again, back up to Claire, who folded her arms around him.
“Are you okay, baby?”
Breathless and sweaty, Corbin nodded.
Owen and I sat on the couch. All of us stared at Dad.
“Billy?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I hope so.”
“Lighten up, people.” Dad rolled his eyes. “Come on, Corbin. I’ll go easy on you.”
“Mom?” Corbin said quietly.
“He’s had enough.” Claire pressed her head to Owen’s, her eyes on Dad.
“Corbin can speak for himself,” Dad said.
But Corbin didn’t say anything.
“We were just playing.” Dad sat back on his knees. He was panting too. His cheeks were red. He pushed his hair off his forehead. “What?” He met Claire’s gaze and held it.
“That was too rough,” Claire said.
“We’re talking about Corbin, here, right? I had the right twin. It’s not that hard to tell them apart.”
Owen made a little noise. I put my arm across his shoulder.
“That was uncalled for, Billy.”
Owen trembled for a moment, trying not to cry, but then he couldn’t help it and he started to sob. I hugged him while Claire glared at Dad.
“So I’m the bad guy. Okay. Sure.” Instead of apologizing, Dad jumped up and headed for the door. “I can be the bad guy.” He spun his keys on a finger, and they flew right off, hitting the wall. “Someone has to. And it’s never going to be you, Claire. Right? You’re the good one. The perfect parent.” He picked up his keys, smashed a baseball cap onto his head, and opened the door, where the pizza delivery guy was just about to knock. “Great. Pizza’s here!” He took the two boxes and threw some money at the man, and then he tossed the boxes behind him like Frisbees. One of the boxes opened, and a pizza slid onto the living-room carpet. He slammed out the door, leaving the four of us staring at the mess.
The marriage between Claire and Billy Glover died today under suspicious circumstances. Not much is known at this time, but resuscitation is unlikely. The marriage leaves behind a confused wife, three bewildered children, and a fourth blessedly oblivious one on the way. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that Billy get himself some goddamn help.
When I’d said goodbye at the bus station in Seattle, I’d told my mom I’d tell her everything. I’ll email you every day, I said. You’ll know everything.
But she didn’t know everything, because it was so much harder to tell her than I’d thought it would be. She hardly knew anything. Sure, I told her about Mrs. Patel. I told her about Dad. But not really. I didn’t tell her that I was the one who found Mrs. Patel, and how I thought I was the one who killed her. I didn’t tell her that Dad’s drinking was getting worse, and how he was messing everything up. I told her about my date, but not how I ruined it. And she had no idea that I was planning to get on a bus and go to Dan’s. After what happened with the pizza, I emailed him. He said I could come. I told him it was just for a visit. I told him that I was so depressed and lonely that only a piece of his red velvet cake would make it all better. But I was planning to stay.
Who would stop me from leaving? Who would actually stop me? Dad and the boys wouldn’t have a clue. Claire was too busy barely holding everything together. She’d probably be relieved to have one less person to worry about.
Mrs. Patel would’ve cared. Now, now, Maeve, she’d have said. Come. Sit. Think this through. I’ll put on the kettle. You deal the cards.
But I couldn’t leave. Not until I knew that Claire would be okay.
Two days after Dad’s pizza fit and a week after falling flat on my face, figuratively and almost literally—the scrapes on my knees had finally healed—I was in the park checking the bus times while the boys played. There was a bus at five a.m. and a bus at seven p.m., the same as every other day since I’d started checking. It was comforting to see the times in their little boxes on the schedule grid. As soon as I could, I’d get on one of those buses and cross the border and get off in Seattle and call Dan to come get me.
I put my phone away and opened my sketchbook. I scanned the park to find someone to draw. A man sitting against a tree, reading a book, sunglasses perched on his head. Sneakers kicked off, socks stuffed inside, his jeans rolled up, bony white feet pointed at the sun. A long nose and bushy eyebrows. Ears that stuck out. And then someone was standing in front of me, blocking the light.
“Hey.”
Salix.
Books scattered on the sidewalk. Oranges rolling into the road. Django Reinhardt. Everybody watching. So much embarrassment that it was coming off the pavement in hot waves.
Salix pointed up the grassy hill, to where a man was playing the trumpet. “Is that the dying goose?”
“Look, about the other day. I’m really sorry.”
“It sounds like it.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t text you back.”
“That was rude.”
“It was, and I—”
“Why, though?” She put up a hand and shook her head. “No, I can guess. You were upset. You were embarrassed. You didn’t know what to say.”
“All those things.”
“All those things that I don’t mind. All those things that don’t matter. I mean, I’m sorry that I upset you—”
“It wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything you said.”
“How was I supposed to know that? You never texted me back after. You just figured you’d let me be worried about you? You just figured that I wouldn’t care? You just figured you had somewhere else to be? Somewhere better?” Salix paused. “Help me out here.”
“I’m sorry.”
Salix put her hands in her pockets. Then she took them out. She looked away for a moment, up at the trumpet player, and then back at me. “You’re okay, though?”
“Now.” I lifted a knee. “I did end up falling. Just over there.”
Salix crouched beside me and touched the yellow bruise that circled the scrape. “Ouch.”
Her fingers felt soft and warm. My breath quickened. “Wh-wh-what are you doing in the park?”
“You texted me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Salix pulled out her phone and showed me. A text, from about twenty minutes ago. The one I had composed a week before and had never sent. In all my fiddling to find the bus times and text Claire that yes, I’d pick up bread and milk, I’d somehow sent the text that I’d never deleted. Maeve Glover, technical genius.
“Right,” I said. “The trumpet guy.”
“The trumpet guy.” Salix sat beside me.
“You don’t have your violin with you.”
“Nope.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute or two, and then Salix reached into her pack and pulled out a little waxy bag. I knew what it was right away.
“The cookie.”
“The cookie.” Salix offered it to me. “It might be a bit stale.”
I held the cookie in my lap.
“So.” Salix bumped my shoulder with hers. “If I said that I’d be back in ten minutes, would you still be here?”
I nodded.
“You won’t run away?”
“I’m watching my brothers. They’re in the playground.” I pointed.
“I’ll be right back.” And then she was walking away, across the grassy hill. I put my hand over the bruise on my knee. Salix’s fingers there, and her shoulder pressing against mine. This wasn’t the plan. I was going home. As soon as I knew that Claire and the boys would be okay. When would that be? When she kicked Dad out? When he got himself together? After the baby came? I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that I wanted to leave. That was my focus. Get on one of those buses and cross the border and go home with Dan: a dark drive through the forest and then my house in the woods and the garden all in a tangle. My dad’s mess, my mom and Raymond in Haiti, even the cookie in my lap—none of it added up. Salix was supposed to be out of the equation. But here she was, coming down the path with a tray of plastic cups. She headed to the playground first and offered drinks to the boys, who took them happily and chatted with her, even though they hardly knew her. I’d have to talk to them about that. It was far more likely that they’d be abducted by someone they knew than a stranger.
She headed my way, and at the last minute I realized that she was watching me watching her.
“Iced mocha, part two.” She sat beside me and handed me a cup. “I got chocolate milk for the boys. In case you were wondering.”
I’d been too nervous to wonder. The noise of the playground got louder all of a sudden; the children’s colorful T-shirts and shorts were little pops of light bouncing and flashing. I wanted to look at Salix. I wanted to look at her up close. Study the line of her jaw, the curve of her lips. But I couldn’t look at her like that. I found Corbin instead and watched him on the swing, holding on to one chain with his hand, his cast hooked around the other, pumping higher and higher.
“Hey.” I did look at her then, but I tried not to stare. Salix took the cookie back. “Let’s give this to the birds.”
“Good idea.”
Salix broke off a little bit at a time and sprinkled it at our feet. Starlings fluttered down nearby and hopped skittishly toward the crumbs.
“Tell me about the funeral.”
“What?”
“That’s what you were going to tell me about before I scared you off.”
“You didn’t scare me off.” I didn’t want to tell her about the funeral. I didn’t want to think about Mrs. Patel.
“Okay, forget the funeral.” Salix chewed on her straw. “Tell me what three things you’d take with you if your house was burning down, not including people or pets.”
That was her changing the subject? To house fires? Really?
“Did you know that over three thousand people die in house fires every year? That’s just in the States. And that’s not including firefighters.”
“I’d take my violin, and my computer—because it has all the pictures of my family,” Salix said. “And my earphones.”
“That works out to be about one every hundred and seventy minutes.”
“One what?”
“One person, dead.” I knew that I should be saying something else—I should be telling her those three things—but my brain took over and brought up the statistics instead. “Every hundred and seventy minutes. I think it’s actually one hundred sixty-nine minutes.”
“And if you narrowly escaped being one of the dead people, what would you take?”
I pressed my lips tight, biting them shut. A ticker tape of facts ran through my brain: Stay close to the floor. More Americans die in house fires each year than in all natural disasters combined. Change smoke-alarm batteries twice a year. I would not say anything at all until I could be sure that I would not recite even just one more statistic about house fires or charred bodies or arson or smoke inhalation or the best way to survive a house fire. Three things—think about those three things.
When I decided, I said them over and over in my head before I said them out loud. Just so that I wouldn’t end up telling her instead that most house fires start in the kitchen.
“My sketchbook and pencils—that counts as one. My computer—same about the photos—and the painting of me and my dad.”
“Show me.”
“The painting?”
“Your sketchbook.” Salix put a hand out, as if I would just give it to her.
“No,” I said. “I don’t do that. I mean, I don’t show people. I never do.”
“I played my violin for you.”
“You play your violin for a lot of people.”
“Show me.”
I put my pencils into my case and zipped it shut. I placed my sketchbook in my lap, and my hands flat on top of it, pressing it down, as if it might drift over to Salix despite everything.
“Okay,” Salix said. “You’re a tough audience.”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “But not today.”
Salix grinned.
“What?” I said.
“That means I’ll get to see you again.”
I grinned. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Salix beamed. “Let’s see. Other introductory stuff. My dad is a bus driver. My mom works at the grocery store. But before that they lived in a bus and sold crappy jewelry at folk festivals, until my sister was born. In the bus. Her name is Linden. After the tree. Salix means ‘willow.’ You get the picture. Linden is two years older than me. She’s at Juilliard now. She plays the cello. We used to busk in this park, actually. Up by the cenotaph. Pretty much right where the dying goose is.”
“Juilliard,” I said. “That’s impressive.”
“I’ll be going too. If I get in, that is.”
“You’ll get in.” I wasn’t thinking about house fires anymore. I was thinking about Salix’s parents, on a bus. Having a baby. Don’t go there, Maeve. Leave the babies alone. Step away from the potentially dead babies.
“It’s almost impossible to get in.”
“Your sister did.”
“So maybe that’s it for family luck.” Salix lifted her necklace, the same one she’d worn each time I’d seen her. Even that first time at the bus station. “Linden gave this to me for good luck. She wore it for her audition.”
“But it’s not luck,” I said. “It’s talent. Which you have lots of.”
“Maybe,” Salix said. “But it’d have to be a full scholarship, like Linden. I have a plan, though, for if I don’t get in.”
“Another school?”
“No. I’d just take off. Europe. Or Australia. Maybe Thailand.”
“Thailand? But what about earthquakes? What about tsunamis?”
“In Thailand?”
“Over two hundred thousand people died in that one in 2004.”
Salix emptied her drink and squinted at me. “You know, we have earthquakes here, too.”
“Or hepatitis,” I blundered on. “You can catch hepatitis from water. Or spa treatments. Tattoo parlors. Tourist sex.” I heard myself say it, even as I wished I would just shut up. Or have a normal conversation. Like a normal person. I
took a sip of my drink just to stop my verbal diarrhea.
“I’ll stick to bottled water,” Salix said with a laugh. “And I’ll be sure to avoid spa treatments and dodgy tattoo parlors. And tourist sex.”
“What if you meet some guy on the beach and he plays the guitar and he’s really nice and then he says, ‘Hey, let’s meet up in Bangkok.’ ” The words just came spilling out and spilling out and spilling out. “Only he tucks a brick of cocaine in your backpack and you get caught at the airport and then you get thrown into a jail in Thailand. And then what? It happens.”
Salix stared at me, dumbfounded.
“It happens,” I repeated. “It does.”
“It’d be a girl.”
“What?”
“On the beach. It’d be a girl.”
“Oh.”
“Where are you from?” Salix said.
As in what planet? As in who says shit like that? What kind of person goes on and on and on about shit that won’t happen and why it would happen and basically insinuating that Salix would be stupid enough to have whatever the hell “tourist sex” is or carry drugs across an international border, as if she wouldn’t notice a brick of cocaine in her backpack? As if.
“That is such a good question,” I said.
“Seriously,” Salix said. “You said your dad lives here. Where’s your mom again?”
“Haiti.”
“Your mom is in Haiti and you’re worried about me going to Thailand?”
“I worry about her, too,” I said. “Trust me.”
“Why is your mom in Haiti?”
So I told her how it all happened. I managed not to tell her about Raymond’s shriveled-up penis, or Mom and him in a parked car beside the bear-proof garbage cans, or the man who was questioned at the border, or Tim McLean, who’d had his head cut off by a madman on a Greyhound bus.
I told her about Dan instead, and the unicorn pajamas, and the FRIEND OF DOROTHY shirt, and even about Jessica. But I didn’t tell her about Ruthie, or how Dad was ruining everything, or how I was thinking about getting on a bus and going home, even though no one was there. That maybe I wanted to go home while my dad ruined his second marriage. I told her that the baby was kicking. I told her about Mr. Heidelman and the ice cream sandwiches and the moving truck full of instruments.
