Only two of her pots had cracked; the others needed to be cleaned, but some splotches of red and umber showed through the soot, and coal black spots here and there. Empty plastic laundry basket on her hip, Janet stood where their yards met, her grass longer. Silas had told Benjamin it shaded itself that way, staying greener, but Abbi saw no difference in color, both lawns a dull yellow-gray. “Can I see them?”
she asked.
“Sure.”
Janet stepped gently over into Patil territory. “They’re, uh, interesting.”
Abbi chuckled. “You don’t like them.”
“I didn’t say that. I guess I just prefer pretty things. Not that these aren’t nice. I just—”
“Janet, it’s fine. They’re supposed to be primitive looking. And they’re certainly not pretty.” Abbi kicked some broken shards back into the pit. “Look, I’m sorry I got all snippy yesterday.”
“No, I need to apologize,” Janet said. “For talebearing about the Savoie boy’s mother.”
“You don’t owe me anything. If you feel like you should apologize, apologize to him.”
“I should. I will. If I see him. But you’re here now, and I don’t want you to think I’m some gossip, or something. I just was concerned about the baby. Can I . . . can I speak plainly for a moment?”
Abbi shrugged. “Uh, sure.”
“I think, maybe, because of the type of person you are, you can be too trusting.”
“I don’t get you.”
Janet brushed the soot from her hands. “You’re one of those ‘God is love’ people. But there’s more to Him than just love. And some people just are no good. I’m not saying Matt isn’t. By all accounts, he’s a smart, smart kid. He’s actually in A.J.’s class now, skipped a grade just this year. And I hear he’s already been accepted to USD. Got a full ride. Maybe you know that, maybe not. But still. That doesn’t always mean much. And you have a baby now. You need to think about her, first of all.”
“I do. And I trust Matt, or I would never leave her with him.”
“Well, okay. And, seriously, if you need help with Silvia, just knock. You know I’m home most of the day.”
“I will,” Abbi said, and she watched Janet cross back into her own yard. Though, to Abbi, it seemed like another world.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
School started in a little more than two weeks, so his aunt piled Matthew and the girls into her car—Lacie between Heather and Jaylyn in the front, sharing a seat belt with her sister, the rest of them in the back—and drove to Pierre. Before heading over to the Wal-Mart, she pulled around the McDonald’s drive-thru, ordered one super-sized Coke, six small fries, and a ten-piece chicken nuggets. Then she parked, pulled a hair from Jaylyn’s head.
“Ouch,” she said, slapping Heather’s hand. “Why couldn’t you use Lacie this time?”
“The girl at the window was blond. From a bottle. Stay here.”
Heather came back minutes later carrying two boxes of chicken nuggets, tossed one over her shoulder to Skye. “Eat up. And don’t ask for anything else until we get home.”
They continued on to the department store, passing his mother’s apartment complex. Matthew stared out the window, at the opposite side of the road.
Lacie twisted her neck around. “Matty, doesn’t your mom—?”
Heather smacked her in the back of the head, and the little girl sunk back down behind the seat.
His aunt went into Pierre at least once a month. She never asked if he wanted to visit his mother; she just threw it out there—“I’m heading north for some shopping. Anyone need anything?”—and waited to see if he answered. He had gone almost every month in the beginning. And then he got tired of showing up and Melissa being there drunk, or high, or not being there at all. It wasn’t that he saw more as he got older—she didn’t do anything she hadn’t done when he lived with her—he just saw deeper. And he hadn’t wanted to deal with it anymore.
The little girls needed gym sneakers, so Heather took them to the shoe department. Jaylyn and Skye disappeared to look at clothes. Matthew wandered up and down the school supply aisles. He picked up three notebooks, leaving fingerprints on the shiny covers. A package of pencils, some folders. He’d have to get a couple pairs of jeans, and socks. There wouldn’t be money left for anything else.
Even if it was his money.
He knew part of the reason—the biggest reason, probably— Heather took him in after his mother went to jail was the stipend. Nearly five hundred extra dollars a month. She used it for the household, for his cousins. For her own things. Occasionally for him. He tried not to mind. If he needed something else, he’d buy it himself. He could always find an odd job here and there. Plus, his babysitting for Abbi Patil, and the yard work. He hoped she’d keep him on, after the argument with her husband. Matthew had already saved close to two hundred dollars, thanks to her. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be able to afford his trip to Buffalo.
There was a tap on his shoulder. Matthew turned.
“I thought that was you,” Ellie said.
He gave one wave of his hand, low, near his hip. A cool wave, he hoped.
“School shopping?”
He nodded.
“Me, too. You still taking calculus?”
Another nod.
“Me, too.” She wore her brown hair swept back in two braids.
Not the Pippi Longstocking kind that hung freely and fluttered as she moved. She wove them flat against her head, the ends running down her back in two shiny zippers. Her skin was more freckled than not, clusters of umber dots packed so close that her face looked like it was covered with pennies. She was everything a girl-next-door should be— cute, but not beautiful, sweet, smart. He looked close at her upper lip. He didn’t see hair, just more freckles. “It should be fun. Gosh, that’s lame to say. I sound like a complete nerd. Not a geek.”
Matthew laughed, shook his head.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you in class, then.”
And then Skye came down the isle. “Ellie, hey.”
Please, don’t say anything.
Skye smiled like the Cheshire cat. “We’re going to a movie at the Grove tonight. Want to come?”
“You’re going, Matt?” Ellie asked.
He hesitated a moment, then nodded.
“I’ll have to check with my mom.”
“Well, if you can come, just meet us there,” Skye said. “At seven.”
“Sure, okay. Thanks,” Ellie said. “Well, bye.” She looked over her shoulder once before turning the corner.
Matthew slapped Skye with the back of his hand.
“What?” she asked.
He hit her again, grinning.
“Yeah, well, you’re paying.”
He wore his collared shirt, combed his hair. He noticed he should get it cut before school began, but wouldn’t. He was used to wearing it long, from when he wore hearing aids and grew his hair over his ears to hide them. Now he felt naked without its covering.
On the way out the door, Matthew stopped, an idea sparking as he looked at Skye in a pretty black blouse and orange flip-flops. She turned and told him to hurry. He raised one finger and, pulling his pad from his pocket, scrawled a note on his way back into the apartment, and gave it to Sienna.
“No way,” she said. “Uh-uh.”
Just call him and ask.
“Skye will strangle me.”
I’ll buy you those jeans Aunt Heather wouldn’t get you today.
“Oh, fine.” She dug the phone from between the couch cushions. “He won’t come.”
Yes he will.
Heather let Skye drive the car. They got there early and waited, and Ellie pulled to the curb in her mother’s minivan. She had taken the braids from her hair; one silken ponytail hung over the front of her shoulder. She twisted the end around her finger.
Matthew tried not to smile too much.
The movie theater, in the adjacent county, had only one screen.
He paid
for all of them to see the Disney action movie, bought popcorn, too, and soda. And Sour Patch Kids for Skye. A bottle of water for him.
Go in and find seats. I’ll be there in a minute, he wrote. And he counted to thirty in the restroom before sneaking back out to wait for Jared by the theater door. He checked his watch.
“What are you doing out here?” Skye asked, tugging on his sleeve. “The previews are over and your dream girl is waiting. Come on.”
In the theater, he positioned himself between the girls in the nearly full theater with the tub of greasy popcorn on his lap so they could both reach it. He couldn’t eat it—too much salt. He focused little attention on the movie. Should he try to put his arm around Ellie? Hold her hand? In the end, he sat there, hugging the cardboard container, nervously jiggling his legs and sliding his feet over the floor. At one point, Skye punched him in the knee.
The lights flickered on as soon as the credits began. Matthew stood and stretched, kicked the popcorn on the floor under the seat in front of him as they waited to leave. Shuffling up the aisle, Skye stopped; Matthew crashed against her back and saw Jared in the back row. She turned and glared at him. He shrugged.
Ellie squeezed ahead of them and gave Jared a quick hug and a sweet, bright smile. She spoke to him; he said something back, eyes drifting toward Skye, snapping back to Ellie’s face.
Skye dragged Matthew into the lobby. “I’m gonna kill you,” she said, and then raked her fingertips down her face, shook her head. She snagged Matthew’s notebook from his pocket and tossed it at him. “Just ask her to get something to eat.”
Ellie and Jared came out of the theater and he scribbled, Are you hungry? Want to grab a burger? hungry? Want to “Sure, okay,” she said.
You, too? He showed the pad to Jared.
“I think I’ll get home,” he said. “Unless Skye wants something.”
“I’m not hungry,” Skye said. “You can give Matty a ride home, right, Ellie?”
“I guess.”
“See you at home, then.” She finally looked at Jared. Swallowed. “Good luck out there at DSU.”
“Thanks,” Jared said.
“Yeah, well, you worked hard for it.” And Skye left with a twitch of the shoulder and a little wave.
Sorry, man.
“What the heck, right? I’ll see you guys.”
After Jared left, Matthew took out his pad again. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. If you’re tired, or something. I can hitch.
“Oh, no. I’m good. Unless you’re tired, or something.”
He shook his head.
They jogged across the street to the Burger King. He opened the door for her, touched her on the back as she slipped inside, and they ordered at the counter; Ellie a coffee and a slice of apple pie, Matthew just the pie. She pulled a few bills from her back pocket, but he nudged her arm away, shook his head.
“You sure?” she asked, and he handed a ten to the cashier. They sat in a two-seater booth by the window.
Ellie tore open her plastic-wrapped package of flatware and played with it, standing the knife up inside the tines of the fork, then the spoon. Then she stacked the plastic creamer containers one atop the other, seven tall. She tried to add another and the tower fell.
I don’t bite, he wrote, and pushed the pad across to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing one of the containers. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what to say.”
Say anything.
“Anything.”
Very funny. He took a bite of the pie. You can just ask me.
She smiled, hid half her face behind one hand and tilted her head. “I’m a moron.”
No.
“Okay, then. What happened? To your hearing, I mean.”
Alport syndrome.
“What’s that?”
Some genetic thing. It’s rare. Causes kidney failure. Sometimes deafness. I got both.
“Is that why you leave school early sometimes?”
Dialysis three times a week.
“I’m sorry.”
It’s not your fault.
She curled the end of her ponytail around her finger. “Is it hard?”
What part?
“Any of it.”
This part. The communication. His inability to say everything he had pent up inside. It was easier before he moved to Temple, when he lived with his mother in Sioux Falls and had daily interaction with others who used sign language—a few hard-of-hearing classmates, teachers, volunteers at the after-school center. And there were those who grew up with him, who had grown accustomed to his odd vowels and scrambled syllables, and understood him. When he came to Temple, the kids teased him about his deaf accent, and he stopped talking; now he had to concentrate so much to remember tongue angle and lip position, he didn’t bother trying. And he didn’t know anyone who signed, except the speech therapist that came to the school once a month, and Mrs. Healen at church, who remembered maybe a hundred words from her college days, and tended to improvise others, more charades than ASL.
He put his pen to his pad, lifted it again. Then he decided to be honest.
It’s hard to fit everything I want to say on a scrap of paper.
She drove him home, and they both looked at each other and then away, not knowing how to end their night. Matthew finally wrote, I’ll save you a seat in math, ripped the page from his pad and gave it to Ellie.
“You won’t have to. I hear there’s only four of us.”
Three. Jennifer Metternich bailed.
“Great. Now I’m the only girl.”
You shouldn’t be such a high achiever.
She laughed, and again he heard Woody Woodpecker in his head. “Me? You’re the one graduating a year early.”
Maybe.
“What do you mean, maybe?”
He shrugged. I don’t know. Just, we’ll see.
Ellie turned quiet; her cheeks fell, and she stared at her fingers, twisting the corner of the paper she held. Matthew guessed she thought he meant his illness. He didn’t.
He meant Lacie.
He was a fixer. A caretaker. As a child, he had made certain to tuck a pillow under his mother’s head and cover her with an afghan when he found her on the floor, passed out from too much coke. By the time he turned ten, he could sometimes shimmy her up onto the bed, or couch, depending on how far he needed to drag her. His first thoughts were always of her—when he joggled his key in the door, wondering if she’d be home or if he’d have to make his own supper of toast and peanut butter; when he woke in the morning, looking to see if she had bothered to wash his laundry the night before, or if he’d have to go another day without clean underpants.
And now those concerns fell on Lacie. Born only weeks after he came to live with his aunt, she was more a sister than a cousin, sometimes more a daughter for all the time he spent caring for her. He didn’t want to leave her behind, alone, to witness the river of men flowing through the apartment, the constant cussing and bickering. He needed to believe there was more for her than all that; maybe, somehow his presence gave her more than that.
It’s late.
“Okay.”
Come by next week, if you want.
“You, too. You know where I live, right?”
I can find it.
“I work for my dad during the day, but at the house. And I can take a break whenever I want. So, anytime. And bring your swimsuit. We have a pool.”
He couldn’t imagine swimming in front of her, letting her see his too-big head bobbing around on his twiggy neck and narrow shoulders. But he nodded and smiled an ill-fitting half smile before stepping out of the minivan and back into the real world.
Skye wasn’t waiting for him; he’d expected her on the couch, ready to scratch out his eyes, or something equally estrogen-laced. The next morning, though, after he dressed, he stood outside the bathroom until Skye finally opened the door, and held his notebook up in front of him, for protection, I’M SORRY wr
itten in huge, dark letters over the entire page.
“You don’t have a clue, Matty,” she said.
You hate me.
“No.” She reached up and shoved him in the head. “You can, I don’t know, go to church and beg forgiveness or something.”
Want to come? There’s time for you to get ready.
“Buildings like that collapse on people like me.”
Oh, stop.
“Well, just in case. I don’t need any more surprises, do I?” And she closed her bedroom door behind her.
Chapter NINETEEN
When his parents came, he and his father left the women at the house and headed to the Badlands. It was their place, had been since Benjamin was a child, when he and Harish would go hiking there, first the small mounds on the side of the road, with the well-worn paths, then some higher peaks, and finally up and down the deep, craggy fissures carved by moisture and time. The prototypical scientist, Harish documented the erosion of the rocks, the changes in landscape, photographing the same areas of the terrain at least twice a year. Sometimes more. He’d then gather his pictures together and pore over them with magnifying glasses, engineer’s scale, and grease pencils, marking and turning and documenting. “Benjamin, this is the overlook ten years ago, and here it is today. Do you see?”
“Yes, Baba.”
“Fascinating.”
The Badlands saved them as Harish slowly allowed himself to accept that his son wouldn’t be following in his scientific footsteps. And Benjamin understood his decision grieved his father almost as deeply as if he had rejected Harish’s faith in Christ.
The summer before he began college, the two of them went together into the buttes and spires for three days, came out covered in a chalky white dust. They didn’t talk about anything outside the scope of their camping trip, but somewhere during that time they both came to an unspoken truce, neither one willing to lose the other over a career choice.
The forty-minute drive ended when Harish paid for the pass permit and parked at the side of the road near a collection of striated mounds, red and brown and yellow stripes banded around each butte. Sandstone, volcanic ash, and paleosols.
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