by Ren Benton
“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one paying the mortgage on someone else’s house.”
Tally didn’t know what her mother had done with the money she sent — drank it, probably — but at least Casa Castle was paid for. She had so far dissuaded her father from using it to borrow money they couldn’t repay to put a Band-Aid on the cash flow problems stemming from massive medical debt and funeral expenses.
Toothpaste wasn’t worth losing the house to the bank.
But why disillusion the only person who thought she was contributing something useful to the household instead of mooching off her disabled father? “On the bright side, they’ll have a spare room for you to crash in when the bank forecloses on you because you can’t keep up with your own mortgage.”
“If that’s what passes for a bright side these days, no wonder business is booming at the bar.”
They weren’t trying hard enough to brighten the dark side, or at least exploit it. “If we had this pity party in front of a live studio audience and a celebrity shrink, we’d get a spa day or something as a parting gift.”
Julie dropped her voice an octave and adopted a southern drawl. “Thanks for sharing your pathetic stories so the rest of America can feel superior to someone. Here’s a coupon to get your nails painted. Now fuck off back to Hicksville.”
The impression was so accurate, if not for the full head of blonde hair, Tally would have mistaken her for a televised huckster. “How is it nobody in this town ever ended up on a talk show?”
“Not for lack of material, but who wants to come back and face the firing squad after you badmouth everybody you know on national TV?”
“I wish someone would. I’m ready to pass my pariah crown to the next generation of loser.”
Julie leaned against the counter, fingers drumming on the edge. “The first time I heard you were a stripper, I thought it was a joke, but even if it was true, it would be cool because it’s one of the billion things you could never do here. Anything that can’t happen in Westard is an epic adventure.”
So thought those who had never ventured far from home. In the same sense that going for a three-hour cruise and getting stranded on a deserted island for three years was an adventure, Tally supposed it was true. Yes, there were more opportunities to take your clothes off for money and everybody you knew didn’t hear about it if you bought a box of condoms, but it was also scary to be separated from everything you’d ever known, and when you hadn’t known people for years and there wasn’t a network of spies to verify or refute their claims, it was a lot easier for them to lie about trivialities like other women and prison records.
Adventure wasn’t for the faint of heart, and Tally had never been brave. If not for her mother, she never would have left the security of home. “I didn’t think I was a bitch about leaving, but as much as I’ve had my face rubbed in coming back, I must have been really obnoxious. Dad and Stella were the only two happy to see me.”
“Everybody says they’re getting out, and everybody is obnoxious about it. Hardly anybody leaves. We talk about the few who do like they’re legendary and live vicariously through them.”
Like the time a guy in an FBI jacket bought a Snickers and a burrito from Max Kringle, who had a glamorous career as a convenience store clerk across the state line, and people went on about it for days like he was the star of CSI: Kwikie Mart and they couldn’t wait for the next episode.
“You were one of those legends. We were proud of you for being scandalous enough to talk about, as long as you were out there. Your crime was coming back.”
Her crime was failing to make something of herself. Coming back to be reminded daily of that failure was her sentence. “If I’d known how much it meant to all of you, I would have tried harder to be a more successful stripper.”
“All you had to succeed at was escaping. If the smartest and bravest and most talented of us can’t cut it out in the real world, what hope is there for the rest of us? What do I tell my kids, who I love dearly but are solidly average? ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Angie. Even the stars in Westard crash back to earth.’”
Why hold up the one bad example as a limitation? Ben would be a good role model for any kid. Hell, even Max Kringle would be better than Tally. “You tell Angie she can be whatever she wants to be, wherever she wants to be it.”
“Insert scathing remark about childless people dispensing parenting advice here.” Julie toed open the lid on the trash can and disposed of the pepper guts and onion peel.
“If you want her to follow in my Lucite-heeled footsteps, by all means, take parenting advice from my mother.” Make her entire existence about you so she doesn’t know how to do anything other than what you want, she’s paralyzed without you shoving her because she has no motivation of her own beyond keeping you from getting angry, and she’s emotionally defective. She’ll be clocking in some drunk frat boy’s face before you know it.
The timer dinged. Julie clapped her hands. “That was four, by my count. If I’d set the bar higher, we could have made it to hair pulling before the bell.”
“You are watching way too much fake reality TV.”
Julie pulled the pizzas from the oven. “Hey, White Trash Weekends on TLC make me feel dignified and sophisticated. You should try it sometime.”
Tally worked weekends, and even if she didn’t, the satellite had been the first expense trimmed from the budget. In clear weather, they could pick up three channels with the antenna, and My Big Fat Catfight with No Panties On wasn’t on any of them, much to no one’s dismay. She’d have to persevere with a lack of dignity and sophistication.
She pulled a tub of cookie dough from the refrigerator. “Take this, too. Golf ball-sized blobs. Three-fifty degrees. Ten or eleven minutes.” She shrugged at Julie’s blank stare. “For the kids.”
“Is there zucchini in them?”
“I can hide all kinds of veg in cake. Cookies are required to be one hundred percent unhealthy.”
“I shouldn’t feed them to my babies, then.”
“Not if you love them.”
Julie accepted the tub and placed it in the bottom of the laundry basket. “Remember whenever we had boy trouble or flunked a test, Stella would give us freebies?”
“Consolation cookies.” Tally had nothing to do with boys and never failed a test, but she got a cookie every time Stella looked at her face. No amount of stage smiling could convince that woman everything was peachy.
She’d done five hundred jumping jacks before bed for every one of those cookies.
Her mother had never understood how she could be so fat.
Contraband cookies and macaroni, mommy dearest. That’s how I’m so fat you can see the lumps where you broke my ribs.
But not all mothers deprived their children out of spite. “Console at your motherly discretion. Freeze the rest for another bad day.”
“Or I can eat the dough in the car on the way home and let them have this gorgeous, nutritious pizza instead.” The pizza in question slid into a box.
“Sounds like responsible parenting to this childless person.”
The pizza joined the cookie dough. Julie balanced the basket on her hip and headed for the door. “Tally?”
“Yeah?”
“Your dad and Stella weren’t the only ones. I’m glad you’re back.” She pulled the door open. “Even if I’m sorry you’re back.”
She was gone before Tally’s throat loosened up enough to whisper, “I missed you, too, Jules.”
She put the twenty back in the cash drawer. One did not walk past money — twice — if one had any intention of accepting it. It was a lot for a self-made pizza and four dozen unbaked cookies, but it was also a lot for a basket of zucchini.
She folded her awkwardly shaped pizza into a box and wiped the counter again. She’d come in early tomorrow and scour properly before she started baking. She had just enough energy left tonight to drive home and crawl into bed.
As soon as she parked in the driveway,
a car pulled in behind her, headlights sweeping the front of the house and casting a monster shadow of the truck on the garage door.
Ben got out of the car and strode toward her, tension reducing his generous mouth into a miserly line.
He looked in need of a consolation cookie and a lip-softening kiss.
He halted three steps from her, hands jammed in his front pockets, practically vibrating with some dark, barely contained emotion. “Want to go for a drive?”
Her head, forgetting she wanted to be home and done with the day, nodded. She hadn’t worn her good underwear in vain, after all. “Have you eaten?”
His mouth thinned further, and he shook his head.
He’d have to settle for consolation ugly pizza. She’d compensate for the lack of sugar with more kissing. “Give me a minute.”
She took a couple slices of pizza in to her father and grabbed a handful of paper towels and a pair of sodas from the fridge.
She dropped a kiss on her dad’s cheek on the way out. “Don’t wait up.”
“Be careful.”
Too late, Daddy. Way too late.
Chapter 19
Returning with the flat, square box, Tally slid into the passenger seat and flashed Ben a glimpse of a deformed pizza. The lid snapping shut lobbed a warm waft of garlic, yeast, and cheese-grease aroma that he intercepted with his face. “Would you think less of me if I eat and drive?”
She passed him a slice. “More than one and I’m taking away your keys.”
“Fair enough.” He bit off the point and accepted the inevitability of losing his driving privileges. Between eating nothing since the cookies and the hope a sufficient volume of mozzarella would strangle his frustration with his mother, he would not be enjoying responsibly.
He reversed out of the driveway one-handed. “How was your day?”
Once the car was in the road, she shifted into drive for him so he could handle the steering wheel and his pizza. “Two dinners in a row I didn’t have to cook. I won’t complain.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was thinking I’d have to kiss whoever was responsible for this pizza.”
“Jed Bartlett. You be careful. He keeps Viagra in his pocket for just such an eventuality, and apparently neither of you is responsible enough to carry condoms.”
He wouldn’t complain about how that oversight had turned out, either, but there was always room for improvement. “I have seen the error of my unprepared ways.”
“Have you now?” In the space of three words, her voice dropped into the alone-at-last range and weakened the structural integrity of his spine, which threatened to collapse in her direction. “Would you consider kissing the person responsible for delivering the pizza?”
“I have considered little else for the past forty-eight hours.” If he had a free hand, he would reach for hers and put his mouth on it right now. Smearing pizza grease on her would give him a good excuse to polish her with his tongue, solving the dilemma of where to begin.
Oblivious to his designs on her extremity, she popped the tab on one of the Pepsis, took a sip, and slotted it in one of the Buick’s umpteen cupholders. “What else did you do with yourself today, when you weren’t engaged in this deep contemplation?”
He forcibly exhaled. So much for taking his mind off that subject. “I offended my mother.”
“You should have asked me for pointers.” Judging by her tone of voice, they were no longer alone. “It wouldn’t have taken all day.”
He ran down that fork in the road the instant she moved the barricade. “What is her problem with you?”
The next bite of pizza left a string of cheese clinging to his chin. She wiped it away with a paper towel, since his hands were otherwise occupied. “You first.”
Why had he imagined she would give up information that easily? At least first implied she would go second. “Her gas gauge is broken. If she loses track of her mileage, she gets stranded, as was the case this afternoon. I thought I’d get it fixed for her. So she can be safe.”
Tally studied the box in her lap. “And she got mad at you for making it rain like a rapper at a strip club.”
A glance at the blank white surface of the box revealed nothing to him. “If cardboard can be used to divine irrational behavior, I have a lot of questions for it.”
“It’s not irrational. It’s embarrassing to have someone pay for things you can’t afford.”
Like Tally couldn’t afford pills for her dad.
If he’d known she felt that way before he filled her refrigerator with groceries... he would have done it anyway. She deserved a decent meal, dammit. What was there to be embarrassed about? The problem sounded like an overabundance of pride. “I have the money. If I can’t use it to take care of the people I love, what am I supposed to spend it on?”
“Lap dances?”
“I’d sleep well at night knowing my mother was in danger of running out of gas in the back of beyond as long as I had a good eyeful of glitter-covered breasts to ease my mind.” His ulcer quietly vowed to prove him wrong. “What if it happened during a trip to the store instead of at the school? Dodgy cell phone service. No Good Samaritan traffic. Heatstroke. Coyotes. Opportunistic assholes.”
“You think none of this has crossed her mind? Pretty sure it’s mandatory for all women to meditate on their vulnerability at least once a day. She probably does it every time she gets in her car.”
Hence his frustration. “But that source of anxiety can be eliminated. The gauge can be fixed. I’d buy her a new car if she’d let me.”
“Insurance would be higher.”
How the hell had she come up with that? “That’s exactly what she said.”
“And you offered to pay for that, too, and then she said something about you missing a payment.”
He might have to reconsider his skepticism regarding telepathy. “Admit it. She was wearing a wire.”
“She’s used to taking care of herself. She doesn’t expect anybody to be as motivated as she is to stay on top of everything.”
She’d rather struggle than trust him to take care of her. “She expects me to let her down, you mean.”
“Accidents happen. You get busy at work and forget to make a payment until the day before it’s due, but that day is a Sunday, when the bank is closed, so the payment doesn’t post until Monday, and during the twenty-four hours the policy has lapsed, she gets in a fender bender as an uninsured motorist and is screwed. All of which can be avoided if she takes care of her own bills. If she drops the ball, at least she doesn’t have to be angry with anyone but herself.”
Maybe his disconnect came from inability to perceive the doom coiled to spring at any given moment. With the exception of relationships, his life progressed in a disaster-free fashion. When balls were dropped, there was always some warning before they hit the ground — such as scheduled You owe us money in five days email reminders. “I’ve never missed a payment for anything.”
“First time for everything, and how awful would you feel if it affected your mom?”
“So in this hypothetical series of catastrophic events wherein my mother gets in a car accident, has no insurance, gets sued, goes to prison, and, I presume, is forced to prostitute herself to the guards in exchange for cigarettes, which she doesn’t smoke but uses to pay her cellmate to protect her from a rival gang—”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“—the important thing is that I feel good about myself because it’s not my fault. That’s the rationale for refusing a safe car and free insurance?”
“The rationale is she said no.”
She said no. Those three words had the ring of finality. No left no room for debate or compromise. No was a ruling.
“You can keep pushing like you know better than she does and really piss her off, or you can accept her answer and be there when she decides she needs help.”
She didn’t know his mother like he did. “That will never happen.”
“She’s a sm
art lady. She’ll ask for help when she needs it.” She tore at a corner of the box with her fingernail. “Pick something else to worry about.”
What was worth worrying about if his mom and Tally were off limits?
His big, dopey grin slipped back into position, feeling nothing like worry. “Babies.”
She patted his thigh, and several muscles jumped to attention. “Used properly, condoms are ninety-nine percent effective in preventing pregnancy.”
His grin grew three sizes. Tally was touching him, Tally was talking to him, and Will and Liz were having a baby. “Will and Liz are having a baby.”
“Your best friend and his wife you’re not in love with?”
His head bobbed.
“You’re grinning like you were involved in the project, sport.”
“We’re very close.”
When he first learned the news, his optimism overflowed, but it broke around one ugly outcrop of stark fucking terror and boiled uneasily for a stretch before smoothing out again. He couldn’t let that lapse show at the time. He’d had a superstitious imperative to cancel out his mother’s immediate descent into gloom, and he couldn’t express anything but excitement when talking to Will, who already had a full supply of worry.
Tally didn’t have a personal stake in the outcome. She brought no energy to the situation he’d feel obliged to balance. He could tell her the truth.
His voice hushed as if speaking about a curse. “They got pregnant three years ago and lost the baby.”
She rested her hand on his shoulder, a small, warm weight anchoring him in the present place and time, more comforting than any trite condolence. In this case, silence was preferable to empty words.
He swallowed against the constriction in his throat. “There was no explanation. Both of them had a ton of tests. They’re perfectly healthy, no bad genes, no toxic habits, no reason they shouldn’t have had a healthy baby. The verdict was ‘it just wasn’t meant to be.’”
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder, a gentle reminder of where he was. “Have they been trying since then?”
