Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  That had been an act of celebration. Shelby wasn’t sure if Mom understood that at the time, she’d probably done it out of survival. Out of a need to be busy, to try to make right something very wrong. But Shelby had planted those roses with joy.

  The back door of the house opened and Cathy stepped out onto the porch. She crossed her arms over her mountainous chest and frowned. The universal sign that it had not been a good day.

  Right. Here we go. I can’t sit in the car forever.

  She popped open her door. “How was your day, Cathy?” she asked needlessly.

  “You don’t pay me enough for this, Shelby,” Cathy yelled, no doubt to be heard over the wind and perhaps just to yell. A day requiring never-ending patience with Mom sometimes needed to end with a little yelling off the back porch.

  “What happened?” She crossed the gravel to the cracked cement steps. Another thing that needed to be fixed.

  Cathy had control over her eyebrows in a way that could baffle and amaze. And wither. And when they arched like that, Shelby withered.

  “I’m not a nurse. And that’s what you need. I’m a cleaning lady you pay to stick around to make sure she’s not burning the place down.”

  “And she hasn’t. You’ve done a great job.”

  Cathy came down the steps and flipped her long black braids over her shoulder. Once, Shelby got in the way of those braids and they’d smacked her face and stung, but not nearly as much as the pity in Cathy’s face at the moment. “Honey, I was happy to help out. But you need a nurse. A real one. Not a babysitter. She’s confused, angry. Secretive. I’m trying not to get offended every time she calls me ‘girl,’ because I know she doesn’t mean it, but …” She shrugged. “You don’t pay me enough for this.”

  “I could pay you more.”

  “It wouldn’t be enough.” Cathy’s eyebrows melted back down to their regular place and her big brown eyes were sympathetic. “My sister’s been telling you about Glen Home.”

  “I’m not putting her in a nursing home. We’re not there yet.” Cathy’s eyebrows were telling her she was wrong and Shelby bristled. Cathy’s sister Deena was a nurse who had a lot of experience in geriatric care, and she said Glen Home was a nice place. But it was still a nursing home. And she and her mother had made a promise to each other—they stuck together. “We’re not,” she reiterated, and Cathy threw up her hands.

  “You’re more stubborn than your mother. And I don’t think that’s good for either of you.”

  Stubbornness was really all they had going for them, so she’d stick with it.

  “Is she awake?” Shelby asked. Mom had started taking a nap in the afternoon. Passing out between cleaning closets and searching for photographs long ago thrown out. She woke up around dinner refueled for her midnight campaigns of pudding making and searching for the keys to the garage.

  The online support chat rooms called it sundowning. And Mom had started doing it about a year ago. That was about the last time Shelby had a full night’s sleep.

  “Been asleep for a half hour. I made you some squash soup; it’s on the stove.”

  Cathy grabbed her big quilted bag with the knitting needles sticking out of the top and endless little bags of grapes and cut-up carrots because she was always on a diet. “I’ll give you two weeks.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “What did you think I was talking about?”

  “I thought you were complaining. Asking for a raise.”

  “I’m quitting, honey. Two weeks. You need someone like Deena now, not me.”

  If Shelby were the kind of person to just melt into the ground, like the Wicked Witch of the West under that water, she’d do it. Right now. But Mom had raised her to be made of sterner stuff.

  “Thank you, Cathy.” There seemed to be more she could say, but she didn’t really know how. So, she repeated herself. “Thank you.”

  Cathy got in the little sports car that Shelby envied with all her heart, and Shelby watched her drive away until the plumes of dust kicked up by her leaving vanished.

  Inside the house it was quiet and still. Dim late afternoon sunlight filtered through the rose curtains of the living room, and the hallway and kitchen all seemed to glow pink. It hid the shabbiness of the house, the fact that it needed massive renovation and a serious cleaning behind its rosy blush.

  The house without Cathy would have been a disaster zone. Last year, Shelby had never known what she was walking into when she came home from work, but now that Cathy spent a few hours here every day, the chaos was organized into stacks. A thousand little stacks all over the house.

  On the kitchen counter there was a pile of photographs. In a glance she realized they were all of her. An infant buried in pink blankets, a child in her Sunday best. A painfully awkward and serious adolescent at Bible camp.

  A furious teenager in acid wash and a Shaker sweater, hiding all her anger behind good grades and Student Council.

  Bored, she shoved the pictures away.

  Identity projects didn’t work in retrospect.

  Not for her.

  * * *

  “I’m sick of hamburgers,” Casey said as he took his plate to the sink.

  “Doesn’t seem to slow you down any.” Ty sat back with his milk and shoved his plate over to Casey so he could take it to the sink, too.

  “I’m hungry. It would just be nice to eat something besides hamburger.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, man, you’re the adult.” The plate clattered into the sink and Casey got ready to huff off to his room to slam the door, which was how a lot of conversations between them ended. It had been radio silence since leaving the school. Once they got home Casey had gone to his room and Ty had gone to the garage, to stare at the carburetor in pieces on his workbench and try to think of what to say to his kid.

  He still didn’t know what to say, but he knew he had to say something.

  “We need to talk about school.”

  Casey gave it his entire repertoire. Eye-rolling and sighing, then a giant slouch against the counter, as if every single vertebra had just given up, all at the same time.

  “If you get in trouble again, you’re going to get suspended.”

  “So?”

  “So. You can’t.”

  “That school is lame, Ty. Everyone here is a hick.” Ty put up his hand, but Casey kept going. “They’re rednecks. They are. And I don’t know why we had to come out here.”

  “Because you needed a fresh start, Casey. You … your mom, you burned every bridge you had in Memphis. Don’t you get that?”

  Casey’s silence said it all. He rubbed his thumb along the grout around the sink.

  “You’re beginning to burn those bridges here,” Ty said.

  “Mr. Root is a dick.”

  “That’s it. We’re getting a swear jar.”

  Ty tended to agree about Mr. Root, but if he said that to Casey it would be like giving the kid permission to be even more disrespectful and they needed Mr. Root, they needed that school, they needed to make all those things work.

  “He is!” Casey protested. “He took one look at me and hated me.”

  “He doesn’t—”

  “Yeah, he does.”

  “Then give him a reason not to!”

  Ty rolled his shoulders against the hard-backed chair. He’d rented this house unseen and furnished, and it looked like a house in a catalog. A fussy one. The white table and chairs had that fake worn-in look. The couches looked comfortable but weren’t. The refrigerator door was built to look like the cabinets. Who the hell wanted that? A camouflage fridge.

  Every single part of his life was unrecognizable. It was disorienting. He didn’t know whose life this was.

  “Don’t you want to be more than the kid who always gets in trouble?” he asked.

  Casey stared out the window over the sink toward the backyard, which looked at this point, in his total neglect of it, more like an overgrown field.

  “That
dog’s back,” Casey said.

  “Casey?”

  “That skinny stray. He’s back in the garbage.”

  There were a ton of strays out here. People dropped dogs along this highway like they were black bags of trash. “I’ll handle him.”

  “He looks hungry.”

  “Casey!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t … don’t you have anything to say?”

  Casey looked back over at him and smiled, but it was mean. Calculating. A chilling smile on an eleven-year-old.

  Ty tried so hard to give Vanessa the benefit of the doubt and he did his best not to bad-mouth her in front of Casey, but when he smiled like that—like he was small and vicious, and just looking for someone to hurt—he was the spitting image of Vanessa. “Mom always said that about you. You were the guy in trouble.”

  Vanessa had told Casey more lies than truth about Ty, but this particular thing was plenty true. There was nothing that Casey had done or was contemplating doing that Ty had not already done and been kicked out of school for. But again, he didn’t know how to tell that to his kid without making it sound like permission.

  “We’re not talking about me,” he said, and Casey looked away. The “bullshit” he was thinking, though, was loud and clear.

  “This is a new school, Casey; no one knows you here. No one knows anything you’ve done. You get to be someone totally different—”

  “I’m not different!” he cried. “I’m me.”

  “I know, but there’s more to you than what Mr. Root thinks. Isn’t there?”

  More to you than this troublemaking, sullen kid you’re showing me. Please. Please. Let there be more.

  “Come on, Ty, that picture was just a joke—”

  “I’m not laughing!” He turned on Casey. “Don’t you get that? I’m not laughing.”

  Casey had these big blue eyes. His Svenson grandparents’ genes showing up. But those blue eyes, sometimes they seemed like they hid deep waters and dark, scary fish, while other times they were as shallow as a puddle. This was one of those puddle times, and Ty worried that he was never going to understand this kid. Or maybe … maybe Casey was just too far gone to reach. The foster mother that Casey had been placed with had told Ty that the most important years for a kid’s development were between the ages of birth and six—that’s when they learned how to live in this world.

  If that was true, maybe the kid was screwed. Vanessa’s influence was just too imprinted.

  But then he remembered Casey in the garage four months ago. Dirty. Skinny. Scared and angry.

  “I think you’re my dad.”

  That kid wasn’t too far gone. That kid was brave and tough and smart. Ty would bet his life on that kid if only he could find him again.

  “Jesus Christ, Casey. Isn’t this hard enough for us without you pulling this shit?”

  Casey looked at him for a long time and Ty held his breath, wondering if maybe they were really going to talk. And if they were, what would he say? He wasn’t too proud to admit that he was terrified of the prospect.

  “Can I go to my room?” Casey asked.

  “Yeah,” Ty answered, embarrassed to be so relieved.

  It was dark and cold when Ty crossed the street to Shelby’s house. Every light was on in the white farmhouse, but he passed it as she’d instructed, and was surprised to see behind it a series of dark buildings. A big barn and two smaller outbuildings.

  It reminded him of Nana and Pop’s place in the country outside of Ellicott City. And how, when he was thirteen and forced to live there, it had seemed like the worst place on the planet.

  Why did so many of the great things—the best things—disguise themselves at first, he wondered. Or why was he always so blind to their goodness?

  His breath steamed in the cold air, and the grass covered in frost crunched under his boots. There was a musical bass line thudding through the crystalline night, coming from the largest of the buildings. He grabbed the big iron handle and pulled open the heavy door. It was like opening the door to some kind of kid wonderland. Wires crisscrossed the ceiling with dozens of pictures clipped to them. Christmas lights surrounded bulletin boards covered in more pictures. Giant tissue-paper flowers blanketed one whole wall; next to that wall were two couches and a lamp. There were some of those pottery wheels in the corner and a bunch of easels facing a table with a wilting bouquet of flowers on it.

  On one of the three low circular tables was a chandelier in pieces.

  Art Barn indeed.

  Jack White was playing not so quietly in the background. And the heavy, dirty guitar riffs were a total surprise.

  I want love to change my friends to enemies.

  He’d had that kind of love and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to recommend it.

  “Hello!” he yelled over the music.

  “Hey!” Her voice came from down the hallway to the left. “Just a second.”

  The music was turned down and Shelby walked out of the shadows into the glitter-and-construction-paper palace she’d created.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, right away, because it needed to be said. “I’m sorry for calling you names the other night. It was crappy of me.”

  She stopped next to the table with the chandelier and put down a small stack of folders.

  “Thank you.” Her pink lips curved into a smile. She still wore her green sweater and the pink shirt underneath it, but instead of khaki pants she had on a pair of stretchy sweatpants and running shoes. Those pants showed off the long lines of her body. The strength in her legs. The muscle and meat of her.

  He sucked in a quick breath, stunned and embarrassed by his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I was ruder than I needed to be.”

  “Sometimes rude is all I understand.” He tried to joke, not expecting her in any way to respond. She’d proven herself pretty impervious to his charms, which made her smile in response to his joke all the sweeter.

  “Isn’t Casey ever bothered by the noise?”

  “Once he’s asleep, nothing wakes him up. I’ve never seen someone sleep so hard.”

  “Well, I hope we can put all of that behind us in an effort to help Casey.”

  “Absolutely,” he said and clapped his hands together. “Happy to.” If only it were always so easy to put the worst of his actions behind him. He’d spent a good part of the last ten years running from his mistakes.

  “Have a seat.” She pointed to one of the low tables without the chandelier. “And we can talk.”

  “Are you an art teacher and an electrician?” he asked, looking down at the chandelier guts.

  “Sadly, no. I can’t figure it out.”

  He almost offered to look at it while they talked, because it would be great to have something to do with his hands, but he didn’t want to give her the impression that he wasn’t totally involved in the conversation.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked and he shook his head.

  They both settled into the hilariously small chairs. His knees came up nearly to his chin, and she smiled.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I think you get used to it.”

  “It’s fine,” he lied, hoping that in time it would be, because right now he felt stupid. “Hey, before we get started I’ve got to tell you, this place is awesome.”

  She glanced around, her face giving away none of her feelings. “You know, I’ve kind of stopped seeing it.”

  “I lived in St. Louis for a while,” he said. “And at first I couldn’t believe that arch—it was like every time I looked up it smacked me in the face with how freaking amazing it was. As wide as it was tall and all that. But then, after a while, you get used to it.”

  “Well, the Art Barn is no St. Louis arch.”

  “Don’t sell it short,” he said, looking at that flower wall. “It’s beautiful.”

  Her gaze touched his face, left, and came back and after a long moment, as if she wasn’t sure if he was lying or abou
t to trick her, she smiled. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and tried to shift on the miniature chair, but his butt was going numb.

  “I don’t have access to Casey’s school file,” she said. “So, perhaps you’d like to fill me in on some of the more pertinent issues he’s faced.”

  “Ahhh …” It wasn’t that he drew a blank; it was that he didn’t know where to start.

  “You’ve had some counseling?” she asked, giving him a toehold in the story.

  “A few months ago,” he said. “It was part of my getting custody.”

  “You are divorced?”

  “Is this relevant?”

  She blinked, her eyes suddenly wide. “You don’t think it is?”

  He hung his head. Christ, those eyes—they were like a judge and jury all in one. “Sorry, let me try again.” He shrugged off his coat and pulled the elastic from the ponytail at his neck. He gathered his hair back up and put the rubber band back in, pulling it tighter.

  “Okay. The story is, I didn’t know about Casey until four months ago, when he showed up on my doorstep in West Memphis and told me he thought I was his dad.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You didn’t know …”

  “About Casey?” He shook his head. “Nope. His mom, Vanessa, and I dated twelve years ago, back when I was pretty young and stupid. We broke up and I didn’t hear from her again. But about six months ago, Casey’d been put into the foster system because Vanessa had been convicted of possession with intent and sent to jail.”

  “Marijuana?”

  “Meth. She … she ran with a pretty bad crowd.”

  “Bad crowd” was putting it mildly. The Outlaws were the kind of motorcycle club the uninitiated thought about when they thought of motorcycle clubs. The kind of club that gave them all a bad name.

  Not every club was like Sons of Anarchy. Most of them, actually, weren’t.

  But Outlaws was. Meth. Guns. Prostitutes. They had dirty thumbs in all of it.

  “When she was sent to jail she still didn’t try to contact you?”

  He’d gotten over his anger at Vanessa, or at least he thought he had. But every once in a while, he found a vine of it that he hadn’t chopped down, or poisoned with forgiveness. That she would have her kid dragged into the foster system rather than contact him and ask for help was a pretty shitty thing for a mom to do to her kid.