Shattered Castles 1 : Castles on the Sand

by E. M. Tippetts

  Kirsten looks to the wall and I wonder if I spoke out of turn. Well, I know I spoke out of turn, but I wonder if she'll undermine me by just storming out.

  I take another deep breath. “The state is also willing to help you if you are humble enough to ask. But if you keep acting like a bully, you'll lose it all. Completely. What's the point of having all this if you've got no one to share it with? If your daughters don't even call and you never know your grandchildren?”

  Mr. Beale's jaw is set, and his face is turning a deep shade of red. He's about to explode with fury.

  Behind me, I hear Alex shift his weight. I turn to see him pulling something out of his back pocket, but I grasp his hand to stop him and feel the rectangle shape of what I know is a metal business card holder between his fingers. “No,” I mouth. When he doesn't stop trying to open it I say in a low voice, “I know what you're trying to do, but this isn't your fight.”

  “It isn't yours either,” he whispers.

  “I'm way closer to this than your grandfather ever was. But thank you.”

  “I think it's time you left,” says Mr. Beale. And that's that. My last charge into the proverbial fortress has ended with me smacking into a stone wall. So much for thinking that the words of the Christian God would have any effect. It was stupid of me to even try. Desperate, really.

  Alex tries to pry his business card holder out of my hand. I take it from him and hug it to my chest, confident that he won't reach there. We've only been dating for a few hours, after all. I need to find a way to retreat without looking like an idiot. My mind comes up blank there.

  “Let's go,” I say to Kirsten. “Sorry I-”

  “Kirsten, wait,” says Mrs. Beale. She steps into the room. I gather that she's eavesdropped from the dining room. “Wait, honey, don't go.”

  “Mom.” She shakes her head.

  “Honey, please... would you ever dream of forgiving us? Or... me? I'm sorry, all right? So sorry.” Tears glisten in her eyes. “Please don't leave.”

  “Arlene,” snaps Mr. Beale.

  “Yeah, of course I would,” says Kirsten. “If you acted like you even wanted me around. And Dad, lay off already.”

  “I agree,” says Mrs. Beale. “Greg, go ahead and finish dinner by yourself if that's how you want to be.” She picks her way across the torn up floor and holds her arms out to Kirsten, tears running down her cheeks.

  As the two women hug, Mr. Beale's face turns a deeper shade of purple.

  “Wow,” I say, “you really don't like to lose, do you?”

  Alex hooks his arm around my waist. “Let's go.”

  “The last person who picked on me regretted it every time,” I say as he hauls me towards the door. “You should ask her about it, if you ever bother to talk to her. Name's Kailie.”

  Mrs. Beale takes Kirsten's toddler into her arms and coos at her.

  “Good night, everyone,” says Alex.

  “Yeah, and you're welcome.” I let him force march me out the door. “See you around. I think you lost your majority on the Municipal Council. Try to shut the library down now, huh?”

  Alex pulls the door shut, cutting me off. “Seriously, Madison. You don't take any prisoners, do you?” The sun is now down and the horizon over the ocean is awash with dusky light.

  “I was being nice.”

  “Yeah, okay, you win. You did the nicest thing possible and totally showed him up. I won't ever doubt you again.”

  I hold up his business card case in the dim glow of the porch light. On it are engraved the initials, “AWK”. “Better than threatening to revoke his lease or whatever you were going to do, huh, Alexander Wilkstone Katsumoto?”

  He takes the case back and chuckles. We start to walk towards Ridge Road.

  “Listen,” I say, “about my rent-”

  “That wasn't me, really. I mean... the Board asked me if you and your mom were part of the community, and...”

  “And?” I say.

  “And I said I thought it'd be bad to lose you. They decided this months ago, you know, before you and I even started to hang out much. They sent your mom a letter to ask her about her financial situation, but she never responded-”

  “Except with checks that bounced.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don't really know details.”

  “Well, your secret is safe with me. Thank you for offering to blow your cover, but your dad obviously worked hard for you to be able to be just another kid at school. Just, be honest with me?”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you weren't supporting the money sink that is my subdivision, you'd make more than enough money to look after your mother-”

  “No, don't even go there. Look, the Foundation isn't mine. The money isn't mine. It was set up, by my grandfather, as you guessed, and it's its own thing now. I just get to know what they do and they ask me sometimes what I think. As for my mother...” He takes my hand, interlacing our fingers. “Your solution is the best one. You know? I'm close to being able to get guardianship of her. It helps that I've got a job at a group home now and I aced the job interview. I'm thinking of getting my GED, going to junior college, and maybe go on to get a bachelors. Maybe even nursing school.”

  “GED?”

  He shakes his head. “I'm not gonna graduate. You must've known that. Come on. I'm so far behind on credits I'm probably a sophomore or something. School's been like daycare for me. I haven't turned in homework ever, I don't think.” He looks down at his shoes.

  I let go of his hand and slip my arm around his waist. We're at Wilkstone Road now, the road that Alex always calls “Main Street.” It must be weird to have a street named after your family. That plus the fact that he never had to ask me for my address were clues I should have picked up on earlier. The light is green so we cross on over. Once on the other side, he catches me under the chin with his finger and leans down for a kiss, which leads to another kiss and another until a pair of headlights washes over us and a car turns the corner and pulls over.

  “Please,” comes my brother's voice from the driver's side window. “Please do not tell me you've decided he's a misunderstood, tortured soul and you've fallen madly in love with him.”

  “John,” I say, “this is-”

  “Alex, obviously,” says John. “Nice jacket, Madison.”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “I was afraid of that.” He gets out of the car and comes over. I can see in the reflected glow of the headlights, before they wink out and the engine stills altogether, that my brother is exhausted. Dark circles and deep lines make it look like he pulled at least one all nighter, and I suspect he did. “I'm her older brother,” he says to Alex. “There are two more where I came from. You hurt my sister and I swear, I will kill you.”

  Alex hunches his shoulders slightly and nods. “Yeah, okay. Sounds fair.”

  John holds out his hand and Alex shakes it.

  “So what are you doing here?” I ask John. “Not that I'm not happy to see you, but-”

  “I started packing after your phone call last night, got in the car, drove until somewhere in Nevada that I do not remember right now, where I stopped and called around until I found a place to rent, and then I kept on driving. Got here as fast as I could.”

  “Thanks. You didn't have to.”

  “I love you.”

  “Love you too. So you got a place to rent? Where?”

  “Two streets over from you. Two bedroom, rent is cheap. My Etsy store alone can cover it. When I called the Foundation that rents out those houses, they said that all I needed was to have a job here or another connection to the town, and guess what? You count. So I'm making you an offer. Want to come live with me? Our parents were real bad at the whole family thing, your best friend who shouldn't even be your friend is in the hospital, maybe foster care. I get here and see you're dating the senior class... um... loner who plays with fire-”

  “Psycho,” Alex corrects him.

  “-as you wish. Maybe you should try doing the whole li
ve with family who loves you thing, and see if you like it?”

  “You're moving here?”

  “Only if you want me to, but yes, totally a genuine offer.”

  “What about your school?”

  “My school can wait. Yours can't. I'm old enough to put some of the rest of my life on hold. You've still got to finish out the basics.”

  “Definitely finish high school,” says Alex.

  “Madison, I love you, and I had a lot of fun my senior year in high school. If there's anything I can do to help step down all the other drama in your life, I will so do it, if you let me try. I may screw some stuff up. I know you're not used to having rules and you and I will have to find a way to meet in the middle there. I will totally set a curfew and lover-boy here better respect it. I know the religion thing might get tricky sometimes, but, like I said, genuine offer.”

  I don't know what to say.

  “Anyway, I'm gonna go crash. The Liangs are putting me up tonight. I'll talk to you tomorrow, when I'm coherent. And you-” he points to Alex “-make sure she gets home safe and that everything's okay.”

  Alex nods.

  “Night, Madison. Love you.”

  I step forward and give him a big, bear hug, which he returns with a happy chuckle. Then, once he’s back in his car and pulling away, even though I know it's petty of me, I turn around and resume kissing Alex, who laughs and doesn't protest.

  We decide to all descend on Mom en masse, so that she won't zone us out. Lance and Logan are still a little bleary eyed from the drive out from Utah and our family meeting that went late into the night.

  “I can't do the dramatic reunion thing,” was what Lance said. “I don't want to get into whether Mom feels like she needs to forgive us or if we need to forgive her. I hate drama.”

  “But we need to help her,” was what John said. “She's totally adrift right now, and we can help her.”

  “I suggest we just show up,” was what I said. “Don't bother with the forgiveness talks. Just walk in like we belong there and that way we let her know that we do. We aren't going to leave her alone. She just has to deal with us.”

  “Can we do that?” Logan had asked.

  “Don't see why not,” was John's conclusion. “I just sprang Madison on you guys and you seem cool with it.” He hadn’t told them about finding me until this past week.

  “We’ll beat him up later,” Lance had promised me with a wink.

  And so today, here we are. Mom comes in the back door as all of us siblings file into the kitchen. She stares, blinks, and stares some more.

  “Mom,” says John. “It's past time we dealt with this.” He holds up his camera. “I'm going to take pictures of your pottery.”

  “Hey, Mom,” says Lance.

  “'Sup, Mom,” says Logan. He sets up his laptop on the kitchen table and boots it up.

  Mom stares at us as if we're all ghosts. My brothers quickly spread a dropcloth over the kitchen table, rig up some lights, and John heads out to the shed as if he knows where he's going and returns with a pot. “These are amazing,” he says. “This glaze effect? You have to show me how you did it. I'm a sculptor, by the way.”

  “Painter,” says Lance, raising one hand.

  “Quilter,” says Logan. Then, when we all turn to look at him, he says, “Okay, not really. So fine. I'm the one with no artistic talent. Everyone stare. Yeah, that's right. I'm the freak.”

  “I'm not artistic,” I say.

  “Yeah, that's right. It's two against two... not counting Mom, not that you don't count, Mom.” He pulls out a notebook and together we start marking up the page with numbers. He showed me how to make a business plan last night after our sibling conference. As we work out prices and costs of materials, I can hear Mrs. Beale screaming, “All real math is story problems!!” in my memory. But I get what she was saying now. Math isn't an arbitrary set of symbols designed to torture students. For Logan, it's a magical system; his equations are like incantations that force the world into a sort of order that allows him to make a company profitable or enable a household to both buy more of what it wants and not go into debt. It's incredible.

  Mom's gaze darts from one face to another. When she looks at me, our gazes lock. I take a chance and smile, and after a moment's hesitation, Mom smiles back. It's the first time in a long time.

  Alex shows up a couple of hours later, while John is still deep into photographing pottery. Logan and I sit on the floor of the living room, sheets of paper spread out all around us. Alex's hair is short now, but he's not used to it yet. He still jerks his head like he's flipping it out of his eyes. At the sight of me, he grins and kneels down to see what we're doing.

  “So you’re the psycho,” says Logan. “You hurt my sister and you are dead. D-E-A-D.”

  A kiss on my forehead from Alex communicates that I'm worth the risk. “How's your mom?” I ask.

  “Coming home in a week.”

  At that I look up, numbers forgotten. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  I throw my arms around him. “That is awesome!”

  Mom wanders into the room, looking like a baffled spectator to all the activity. Me hugging Alex gets an extra long look, even though she knows he and I are together. The whole town knows.

  “Okay, we taking a lunch break soon?” asks Lance.

  “I say, deep fried burritos from The Shack,” says John.

  “See, that's not right,” I say. “You aren't supposed to be able to get those until after midnight. Carson totally messed that up.”

  “Good thing,” says John, “since you aren't allowed out after midnight.”

  I resist the urge to kiss Alex just to annoy my brother. That's not really fair to Alex. “You coming, Mom?”

  She blinks. “To lunch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mom, we'll get your Etsy store set up when we get back,” says John. “We all should take a break.”

  “Well... okay.” She sounds meek, lost.

  John puts his arm around her shoulders and together, we head out.

  Pelican Bluffs is a very different place once spring arrives. Wilkstone is swarming with tourists and there's even traffic backed up. People wearing sandals and sun hats stroll around and there's a line of cars waiting to fuel up at Jacksons.

  Sea birds scream in the sky, including the pelicans that give the town its name. Some of these you can even see waddling around bluffside. Gray whales are migrating up the coast now, and every now and then some stop to play and the whole town can see them breaching and sending up mist from their blowholes.

  The Shack is so crowded that half of us snag a table while the others get the burritos deep fried. They return with a big basket of corn chips, salsa, little tubs of guacamole and sour cream. I do not want to guess how many calories are on this table right now.

  I'm just biting into my burrito when Kailie walks past, her steps slowing at the sight of me. “Hey,” I call out. “How are you?” She’s only answered my phone calls with short texts. I get the impression she’s still reeling from the dramatic changes in her life.

  She comes over, the scars on her wrists concealed under cuff bracelets.

  “Hey, Kailie,” says Alex. “You back home now?”

  “Just for a visit today.”

  “You want to join us?” I ask.

  She looks at me and Alex, and I wonder if she'd get over her crush on him if she knew he’d been baptized. He doesn't seem to care that I'm not part of his religion, but Kailie's not so tolerant.

  “I'm gonna eat with my folks,” she says.

  “Okay, some other time then,” I reply.

  She nods and continues down the street.

  Alex and John give me their usual, dubious looks, as if to say, “Why are you friends with her, again? She's not even nice to you.”

  But as she crosses Wilkstone and glances back at me, I feel bad for her. She’s clearly so lonely.

  It’s hard for me to turn back to the table and not look
at anyone else. My gaze meets Mom's, and she smiles. It's a melancholy smile, one that says that she knows what it's like to be alone, feeling as if she hasn't got a friend in the world. Dare I hope that she's telling me she's grateful for what I do? Dare I believe that at this table there's one person who gets me? I smile back and bite deep into the fried tortilla crust.

  Like the characters in this book, Jared Lyman and I knew each other since pre-school. His passing, needless to say, was a tragedy, but I'd rather focus on how he lived, not the unfortunate fact that he has since died.

  Our first real conversation was when we were in our mid-twenties. I was home for a short spell between law school and starting my first job, and had recently joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jared had been a lifelong member, and at a church event (I don't even remember specifically what it was), he and I tried to explain to his wife, Emily, that we'd known each other nearly all our lives but had never had a conversation. We plumbed the depths of our memories, trying to recall if we'd ever even exchanged hellos, and came up blank.

  Such is the town of White Rock, New Mexico, population 7,000. Jared and I went to the same elementary school, middle school, and high school; he was one grade above me. We had memberships to the same swimming pool (Canyon Vista, from which it is not actually possible to see White Rock Canyon), and spent our summers there. Either of us could recognize the other on sight, and if you'd asked me about him, I'd have been able to tell you that he was a nice guy from a warm and generous family, but no, I couldn't recall ever talking to them or even waving at them in passing. We passed each other all the time. It wasn't noteworthy.

  Emily, for her part, didn't laugh at us too hard. Once Jared and I did talk to each other, it became a regular occurrence, and because he'd known me nearly all my life, he wasn't put off by incidents such as the time he walked into a Wendy's and found me and my husband, Trevor, in our Sunday best, trying to saw through the plastic ties on a brand new DeWalt cordless drill with a set of car keys. He came to sit with us, rather than slipping back out and going to the restaurant next door. (The story behind that story is disappointingly dull. We'd just been at a church meeting and I'd bought a drill for Trevor beforehand while running errands. That moment was just one of those moments that makes you stop and think about how you come across.)