Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids)

by James, Rosalind

  The three of them sat silent for a moment, listening to her feet on the stairs, the soft thud of her bedroom door shutting.

  “Alec . . .” Rae said. “She’s trying. That wasn’t too helpful.”

  “She needs to grow up,” he said in frustration.

  “It sounds to me,” Rae said, “like that’s exactly what she’s trying to do.”

  “Now I’ve got both of you mad at me,” Alec said. “Double trouble. Come on.” He stood and held out a hand to help her up. “Time to head back to your grandma’s. You can yell at me in the car all the way home.”

  “I should get a room.” Joe tried once more. “You should stay here. This isn’t right.”

  “Nah,” Alec said. “Rae would be the one in trouble then. And me too, for stealing her away from her grandma. Can’t have that. Besides, I have a special fondness for that mobile home. It has a definite spot in my heart. Enjoy that twin bed, though.”

  Joe could see the elbow heading right into Alec’s ribs as Rae laughed reluctantly. She said her goodnights and the two of them headed out the front door, leaving Joe in sole possession of the Kincaid living room. Even though he was not even close to being a Kincaid.

  Family Ties

  His fifteenth Kincaid Christmas. Fifteen. It was a big number. A significant number.

  That first time, he’d been more than reluctant. Because he’d known what to expect, and it was the one thing he couldn’t handle. Rejection he could take. He knew all about rejection. But he couldn’t stand to be pitied.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got lots to do, already made my plans, and it’s your family, not mine,” he’d said without looking up from his Multivariable Calculus textbook or lifting his mechanical pencil from the notebook where he was working through a final problem at the desk on his side of their Stanford dorm room. His other books lined up on the shelf above, his bed neatly made, the aged blue cotton sleeping bag with its plaid lining stretched over the white sheet and flat pillow, because he felt more comfortable when things were neat. And Alec’s side looking like a hurricane had struck.

  “My mom about killed me when she found out you’d stayed here alone at Thanksgiving,” Alec argued, lying on his bed and tossing a bright yellow hacky sack lazily into the air, grabbing it with a sure brown hand before flicking it up again. “Come home with me, or my life isn’t going to be worth living. You don’t know my mother. She’d probably haul ass down here herself and pull you up to Chico by your ear. And anyway, it’s just too damn depressing to contemplate. Microwaved frozen turkey dinner in the dorm room. Merry Christmas to you.”

  “It’s just a day,” Joe said. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Alec paused with the squishy ball in his hand, gave his roommate a quick, searching glance. “Do me a favor,” he said at last. “Come with me. I want you to meet them.”

  And he got his way, because Alec always got his way. What would it be like, Joe wondered as he gave in, as he’d wondered so many times since the day they’d met, to be born under that lucky star? To be that good-looking, that magnetic? To have everything come so easy, always? To have it all?

  Joe had assumed at first, seeing the look of him, that Alec was rich, like so many of their classmates. He looked rich. And Joe knew that he himself had looked anything but, the first time he’d knocked at the door of the room.

  He’d arrived late, had had to make his way through sidewalks crowded with little knots of parents saying tearful farewells to their beloved progeny before getting back into their shiny late-model sedans and SUVs and driving off to their leafy suburbs, or maybe their townhouses. Wherever people like that lived.

  Whereas he . . . Fourteen hours on Greyhound, riding the dog through the dark, silent hours, watching the merciless summer sunrise glow into morning, brighten towards afternoon while he was carried ever farther north and west across a flat brown landscape, across passes that had turned to suburban green, then to urban sprawl, until the pneumatic doors hissed open and the big silver bus spat him out in San Jose. Then the walking and waiting for the city bus that would get him closer, until, finally, he’d swung up the steps into one of Stanford’s own personal shuttles, looked out the wide window as it rolled onto a campus of perfectly groomed squares of perfectly green grass, tall, neat palms, white stucco buildings roofed with red tile. Nothing striking a false note, nothing out of place. Except him.

  Joe Hartman, owner of nothing. Dressed in old Wranglers and a faded gray T-shirt that he’d outgrown but couldn’t afford to replace, a little grimy and a lot sweaty from the long, hot journey across the Mojave Desert, the pack containing his precious, aged laptop on his back. Carrying the green Hefty bag that held the rest of his worldly possessions over his shoulder like a scruffy, low-rent Santa Claus, walking into a dorm room that was nicer than anyplace he’d ever lived, and meeting a roommate who looked like he’d just stepped out of GQ.

  He hadn’t had high hopes. But it hadn’t been a disaster after all, because Alec was all right. A full-ride scholarship student, just like Joe. And just as broke, no more able to get a Coke from the machine or go along for a late-night pizza run than Joe was, which had formed a bond all the stronger for being unspoken.

  And just as good at programming. That was the main thing. Every bit as good, speaking the language of computers, the language Joe knew. Alec didn’t work as hard as Joe did, maybe, but that was because he didn’t have to. Alec was smarter, no doubt about it, better prepared, too. And he didn’t have as much riding on this.

  So not a bad roommate, all in all. But Christmas, that was something else. Christmas was families, and traditions, and knowing you had a place to go, a place where they were counting on you to be there. All the things Joe didn’t have. So he didn’t want to go. He didn’t need reminding.

  But he did go. Of course he went, because he’d never met anyone more persuasive than Alec in his life. He rode home with Alec, with a girl Alec knew from Chico who had a car, because Alec knew everybody. With Joe’s same green Hefty bag tossed in the trunk.

  “Taking your laundry home to get washed?” she’d laughed. “Me too.”

  He hadn’t corrected her, had just climbed into the back and let Alec get in front for the four-hour drive, had let Alec fill the car with easy chat, laughing and joking and looking forward to his Christmas with nothing but happy anticipation, while Joe relapsed into his customary silence. When in doubt, shut up.

  The girl, Kathleen, slowed to 35, then 25 as the rural highway gradually changed to city outskirts and then to a city proper. A neat, tidy city, if a sleepy one, the streets all but deserted in the winter dark.

  “Winter break,” Alec said over his shoulder to Joe. “Usually, it’d be getting rowdy by this time of night, but the students are gone.”

  Not many people, but lots of trees, the ones in the town square strung with tiny white lights. Kathleen kept driving at Alec’s direction, through the town center and a couple miles beyond, pulled to the curb on a block of small houses mostly decorated for Christmas, colored lights or dripping icicles outlining rooflines and windows, reindeer made of lights nodding in front yards, Santa Claus driving his sleigh across rooftops. Like some kind of documentary on Christmas in America, lacking only the snow.

  “The ancestral pile, old boy,” Alec said. “Someday she’ll be mine, don’t you know.” He laughed, full of the ebullient spirit of coming home. “If I’m the next minister at Bidwell Presbyterian, that is. And unfortunately, we can rule that right out.”

  Joe picked up his backpack, opened the door and swung out, grimacing at the stiffness of long legs stuffed into the back seat of a compact for too many hours, shivered in the sudden cold. He slid his pack onto his back and shoved his hands under his armpits, stamped a couple times as he waited for Kathleen to open the trunk.

  “Supposed to get down below freezing at night, the next few days,” Alec said as he pulled his duffel bag from the trunk and Joe picked up his Hefty bag.

  Joe shrugged. He’d been cold
before.

  “Thanks for the ride, Kathleen,” Alec went on, slamming the trunk shut again. “We still on to go back on the thirtieth? I could drive, if you want.”

  “I did not drive that badly,” she protested. “And it’s my car.”

  “But just think of the nice rest you could have,” Alec coaxed. “Sit back, relax, and get delivered to your destination. How upscale would that be?”

  “Not too upscale sitting by the side of the freeway with some cop shining his flashlight in the window to write you a ticket,” she tossed back. “I know you. You can talk and keep me awake, and I’ll drive.”

  “Slowly,” Alec pointed out.

  “Safely. Legally.”

  Alec laughed, reached out, and gave her a hug. Alec always hugged girls, and he always got away with it. “Thanks again. It was awesome. Talk to you soon. Merry Christmas.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Joe added. He didn’t hug her. Joe didn’t hug. And she didn’t look disappointed.

  He watched her taillights recede down the quiet street, the decorous blink of her turn signal before she hung a left and disappeared from sight. Then he forced his feet to move, followed Alec up a long driveway to the back of the house, into an unlocked rear door that led into a spacious linoleum-floored laundry room.

  Alec toed his black rubber-soled sneakers off, still holding his bag. “Mom likes shoes off,” he instructed.

  Joe set his Hefty bag down on top of a white washing machine and bent to unlace the yellow laces of his scuffed brown work boots as Alec waited. He pulled the boots off and set them at the end of a long, untidy line of footwear, tried to find an unobtrusive way to pull his left sock around to hide the hole that had formed over the second toe, then gave it up.

  Alec swung the inner door open, calling out as he entered a big, warm kitchen. Nothing fancy, nothing new, white tile countertops and worn pine cabinets.

  “I’m home!” he called out, and now a middle-aged woman was hurrying in. Middle height, still pretty and slim in jeans and a red sweater, brown hair in a tousled cut that curled into the nape of her neck, laugh lines around eyes that were the same vibrant blue as Alec’s. Laugh lines because she was laughing in delight, throwing her arms around her son, who had dropped his bag to lift her into a hug, whirl her around.

  “Miss me?” he asked her, setting her down at last.

  “You know I did, you wretch.” She pulled his face down to give his cheek a kiss. “Alyssa doesn’t give me quite enough trouble to make up for you being gone. And this must be Joe.” She held out a slim hand after a moment when Joe had feared that he was going to be hugged as well, and he shook it in relief.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Thanks for having me.”

  Her eyebrows rose a little, but she didn’t comment, just smiled at him. “You’re more than welcome. Your dad’s at the hospital, making a couple visits,” she told Alec. “He’ll be home soon. Have you two had dinner?”

  And it was like that. Joe dumped his bag and pack onto a trundle bed that Alec pulled out from underneath the twin bed in his small bedroom, which made it so there was just about no room at all in there, and ate hamburger-noodle casserole and green beans at a big oval table in a comfortable living-dining room, and listened to Alec’s mom—Mrs. Kincaid—catching her son up on the news, and asking him questions about his classes, about Stanford. Tossing the occasional question Joe’s way, but not pressing him, not like he’d feared.

  Alec’s dad came in in the middle of it, gave his wife a kiss, his son another big hug—they were the huggingest family Joe had ever seen—and shook Joe’s hand, echoed his wife’s welcome.

  He was a bear of a man, as tall as Joe, and even broader across the shoulders. Barrel-chested, thick-thighed, with massive hands, more like a construction worker than a Presbyterian minister. Black hair, a strong nose and cheekbones, a face to reckon with, kindness in its lines, but firmness, too. His dad was a quarter Cherokee, Alec had told Joe with some pride, and it showed.

  Mr. Kincaid was eating his own casserole, catching up with Alec, and Joe was having seconds that Mrs. Kincaid had urged on him and seeing that even the huge roasting pan of noodles, meat, and cheese wasn’t going to last long, when the back door slammed again, the kitchen door burst open a moment later, and a girl whirled through it like a sudden gust of wind, talking as she came, and the room was charged with electricity. And Joe was staring, his fork in midair, all the air sucked out of his lungs.

  “Alec!” She was on him, her pretty mouth stretched in a smile, and he was standing up, and, yes, hugging her, laughing in his turn.

  “I’m so tired!” she said, flopping into a dining chair next to her brother, picking up the spatula sticking out of the casserole pan and dishing up a healthy serving, grabbing the milk carton and pouring herself a glass. “Practice was brutal. Coach Saller thinks just because it’s Christmas, we’re going to get all fat and lazy, so she has to work us three times as hard now, or we’re going to lose in disgrace or something.”

  Everything she said seemed to be in italics, or have an exclamation point at the end. Darting glances flicked between Alec and Joe out of sparkling dark blue eyes extravagantly fringed with black lashes, the delicately curved, nearly black brows quirking as she smiled, lowering into a brief frown, her pretty face with its finely carved features in constant, vibrant motion, her energy more effective than any makeup could possibly have been, and Joe was a lost man.

  “Alyssa,” her mother said. “Slow down. Say hello to Joe, and then wash your hands before you eat.”

  “Hello, Joe,” she said, and popped up again, danced into the kitchen before Joe could even answer.

  He watched her go, because he couldn’t help it. Red sweats over long legs, a red-and-gold Chico High Basketball t-shirt that clung to her slim torso. Which had plenty of girl curves to it. Which he shouldn’t be noticing. But he couldn’t help it.

  “And that,” Alec said with a grin as they heard water start to run, “in case you had any doubts, is my little sister. That’s Alyssa.”

  She was in the room again, and the words were tumbling out again. “Do you remember Heather Monroe, Alec? She’s our point guard. You wouldn’t believe how fast she is! I wish you were going to be here to come to the game, so you could see. She’s gotten really pretty, too. You should see. Really.”

  That was the first night. The next morning, it got worse.

  He was sitting at the table again, eating pancakes and eggs served up by Alec’s mom and thinking he’d be happy to stay in this house forever, because she’d given him three eggs to start, and then just kept sliding more pancakes onto his plate and urging him to eat them. Butter and syrup, orange juice and black coffee, and the hole inside him that had so rarely been filled since he’d started to grow was filling, and he thought that if she kept this up, he wasn’t even going to be hungry until lunchtime.

  And then Alyssa walked through the door from the hallway into the living room. Wearing her pajamas. Which would have been bad enough, but her pajamas were a skimpy red T-shirt and low-slung flannel pants printed with candy canes.

  “Morning,” she said. She raised slim, strong arms over her head and stretched, her lithe body curving, her young girl’s breasts rising with the movement, proving to Joe beyond any shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The little shirt rode up and showed a couple inches of flat stomach, the devastating curve of her waist, the elongated oval of her belly button, the dangling tapes of the untied pajama pants. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and when she straightened up, reached back to pull off the elastic, and shook out the shiny hair that reached to her shoulder blades, he thought his head would actually explode.

  “Good morning,” Mrs. Kincaid said, coming to stand behind her husband at the head of the table and sliding three more pancakes from her spatula onto his plate, and Joe tore his gaze away fast, looked down at his breakfast. He could feel his face getting hot, and he didn’t dare look up.

  “Go put a robe on, Alyssa, please,
” he heard Mrs. Kincaid say.

  “I hate wearing a robe,” she complained. “I’m always hot.”

  Joe shoved himself closer to the table, reached for his orange juice in desperation.

  “Go,” her mother said firmly, and Joe looked up for just a moment to see her walking away, a sassy little flounce in her step, and then he could breathe again. For a while.

  There was yet more hugging later that morning when Alec’s twin Gabe arrived home from the University of Washington, where, Joe knew, he was attending on a football scholarship. At least Alec and Gabe didn’t hug, not beyond a grab at each others’ shoulders. Instead, Joe was amused to see, they had a special handshake. Well, they were twins. He guessed a secret handshake was part of the deal.

  It got rowdy and noisy after that, Alec and Alyssa both talking at the same time, Gabe interjecting, responding, and their mother laughing and enjoying it all, clearly so delighted to have her family together. It was exactly like some kind of sitcom family on TV, the kind Joe had always thought was made up.

  Alec’s hacky sack eventually made its appearance, and, inevitably, a challenge was laid down. Alec acquitted himself pretty well, but Gabe did better. And then Alyssa blew them both out of the water. She was quick, and she was fluid, and if she played basketball like that, Joe thought, she was probably pretty good.

  “Here, Joe,” she said. “See if you can do better.” She tossed the little crocheted ball to him, high, so he had to reach for it.

  He grabbed it out of the air, popped it back to her. “I’ll pass. Let’s see if you can beat your record.”

  She stared at where his gray T-shirt sleeve had ridden up at the movement. “You have a tattoo.”

  “Yeah.” He smoothed his sleeve back down over the ink.