Watch Over Me

by Christa Parrish

  But Skye stayed small and round and awkward, as Jaylyn grew up and thinned out and only had use for her sister when she needed to borrow a couple of bucks for nail polish, or wanted someone to lie to Heather for her. And as they grew apart, Skye didn’t seek out Matthew as much as she fell in with him, both of them alone together at the apartment in the evenings, or stuck watching the little girls. They shared small frustrations, an occasional secret, and Matthew dragged her to church a time or two.

  He didn’t know her, though. So much of what happened around him was lost in the silences, intentionally or not. But he saw her disappearing. He never dared approach her about it. They weren’t that close, and he spent so much energy surviving that when he finally had a moment to consider Skye, he didn’t want to deal with another problem.

  He wouldn’t blame himself for Silvia, for the circumstances that put her here, in the back of Abbi’s Volvo. And, no, maybe it wasn’t his responsibility to save Skye from herself, or Jaylyn, or his aunt, or the slurry of low expectations. But he should have done something. If he had, he might not be in this predicament—deciding if two families will be torn apart, wondering if secrets like this ever lose their teeth.

  He leaned toward not telling. He thought he could keep it to himself, a sin of omission, a lie for the greater good—like Rahab, who’d been counted righteous for her deception, or the midwives in Egypt.

  How could he think Skye would be better off if everyone knew what she’d done? And what would happen to Silvia? Would the Patils be allowed to keep her, or would she end up in some other foster home? As her grandmother, would his aunt get custody of her?

  God forbid.

  They crossed the bridge into Pierre and turned toward the park on the river, right past his mother’s apartment. He saw her window, a grinning paper jack-o’-lantern taped in it, two black bat cutouts on either side. He stared up at it until Abbi opened his door.

  “Unbuckle Silvia, will you?”

  He did, and she wiggled the baby into the sling she wore. Ellie took his hand as they followed Abbi to a woman with green hair and rings in her cheek and eyebrows. He wouldn’t call what she had in her ears piercings; they looked more like something in National Geographic— round, quarter-sized discs in the center of each earlobe.

  “Genelise,” Abbi said, “This is Matthew, and Ellie.”

  “Glad you could come,” the woman said, offering her tattooed hand to them. “Feel free to mingle, or whatever.”

  “Where’s Neal?”

  “Uh . . .” Genelise spun around. “There. With Greg.”

  “Come on. I want you to meet someone,” Abbi said. She tapped the shoulder of a man in loose jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, his hair clipped short. “Neal, this is the guy I was telling you about. Matthew, my sanity-keeper.”

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Neal said. And signed. He wore bright sapphire hearing aids behind his ears.

  It’s nice to meet you, Matthew signed back. Then, remembering Ellie at his side, he pulled out his pad and translated.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Ellie said. She tugged on his belt loop. “I’m going to go over there and . . . find something to do.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Abbi said, and they wandered away together, to a picnic table under a wood pavilion where people sat, eating.

  Abbi said you don’t get a chance to sign too often. Neal’s mouth moved with his fingers. Matthew had no idea if sounds were coming out, too.

  Is it that obvious? Matthew signed back.

  No. You’re fine. Come meet my wife, but don’t laugh. She’s an awful signer. She’s not deaf. She just loves me.

  So Neal introduced him to Constance, an almost-bursting pregnant woman about Abbi’s age, with sleek black bangs and almond eyes. She made a few clumsy attempts to sign to him before Neal took pity and told her that Matthew read lips. “I blame it all on these fingers, Matt,” she said. “How could anyone move swollen, preggo fingers like this?”

  When are you due?

  “Yesterday,” she said.

  He and Neal talked some more about nothing in particular, but the conversation was soothing in the motions and the understanding that went along with them. Not only the literal meaning of the signs but beneath that—a common struggle, a kinship. Matthew didn’t know this man’s story, didn’t need to. They shared something, and for those thirty minutes he was unfettered. No pen and paper. Only his words, straight from his head to his hands.

  People left the park, some with a few cans of vegetables in their arms, others with a grocery sack of clothing. Matthew helped clean up the food and loaded the extras into the back of Genelise’s Prius. The woman hugged Abbi and said, “I’ll call you,” and then gave both Matthew and Ellie a quick squeeze.

  “So,” Abbi said, “is there anything you want to do while we’re here? Shopping? I can tolerate the mall, but please don’t say Wal-Mart.”

  Kmart?

  “Don’t be smart,” Abbi said, giving him an elbow in the ribs.

  “He doesn’t know how to be anything else,” Ellie said.

  Matthew looked across the street, at the bluish-grayish apartments. The two saddest colors, together in one place. He didn’t quite know what he would get out of a visit. Maybe he wanted his mother to know he was all right without her—despite her. Wanted her to see it with her own eyes. Maybe he wanted to rub it in. He didn’t let himself think about it too long.

  “So, the mall?” Abbi asked.

  “Sounds good to me,” Ellie said.

  I’d like to see my mother. If that’s okay.

  They looked at him, at each other, and Abbi finally said, “Yeah, sure. Of course. Does she live far from here?”

  Over there, he wrote, pointing.

  “In those buildings?” Abbi asked.

  He nodded, and walked across the street. Ellie suddenly came up next to him and slipped her hand into his. He stopped, looking up at the jack-o’-lantern’s black triangle eyes. Can you guys wait here? I want to see if she’s even around.

  Ellie squished his hand.

  Matthew jogged to the back of the apartment complex and jammed his thumb against each of the eight white plastic buzzers beside the entrance, pulling on the door until it opened. He climbed the steps and paused in front of his mother’s apartment, his knuckles against the cool metal.

  And he knocked.

  Melissa opened the door in stretchy jeans and a tight, black T-shirt dotted with lint. “What are you doing here?”

  I was in town.

  “Yeah, right.”

  I was. With friends. I thought I’d stop in.

  “And say hey? Have a nice little tea party? What?”

  He shrugged.

  “Where are they? These friends of yours.”

  Matthew squeezed past his mother, his back scraping against the molding, and twisted the thin stick hanging next to the vertical blinds. He spread the metal slats, leaving fingerprints in the thick dust, and pointed. That’s Abbi Patil. I babysit for her, and mow her lawn.

  She raked her hand through her hair, an orangey blond on the bottom, dark brown at the roots, and flapped the loose strands off her fingers. “Who’s the other one?”

  Ellie. My girlfriend.

  “She pregnant? Is that why you’re here?”

  No.

  “I was pregnant with you at your age.”

  I know.

  “You think you’re smarter than that, don’t you?”

  He shrugged again. So did she. “Bring them up.”

  Matthew banged on the window. Abbi and Ellie looked up, and he motioned for them to come, met them at the downstairs door. When they got back to his mother’s apartment, Melissa had changed into a different black shirt, this one tighter with a deep V-neck, and pointy black shoes. She’d had boots with toes like that when he lived with her—her witch’s shoes, he called them. She called them her going-out boots. Out, without him. They could be the same pair.

  “I got Coke. And diet root beer,” Melissa sai
d. “Root beer used to be Matt’s favorite. He’d eat it on his Cocoa Krispies. Bet he didn’t tell you that.”

  “No,” Ellie said, nestling into his side. “Not yet anyway.”

  “I bet he didn’t.” His mother grabbed a couple of glasses from the draining tray. “Anyway, there’s water, too. What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have water,” Ellie said.

  “Me, too,” Abbi added. And Matthew nodded.

  “Suit yourselves,” Melissa said. She filled the glasses from the tap and handed them around. “Well, sit.”

  Matthew sat on the futon with Ellie on one side and Abbi on the other. His mother came in from the kitchen after disappearing for a moment, sat on the cracked leather chair. She sipped her drink. It looked like cola, but Matthew doubted it. He wrote, I have to move. I can’t see, and dragged a chair over from the dining table, positioned it so he was one corner of a trapezium. He was always on the corners. He held his glass between his knees, condensation seeping through his jeans.

  “So, what brings you all out this way?” Melissa asked.

  “A friend of mine, her church gives out food in the park,” Abbi said. “We came up to help.” She spread a flannel receiving blanket on the floor, and after changing Silvia’s diaper, laid her on it. Everyone watched as Silvia rolled from her back to her side, her arm stuck under her body. She whimpered until Abbi scooted her over all the way, and then she lifted up on her arms, a baby push-up.

  “Cute,” Melissa said. “Your first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Matt said he watches her.”

  “I need a sitter, and he needs to make some money for a school trip. It works out for both of us.”

  “School trip? Where you going?” Melissa asked.

  “New York City,” Abbi said. “Right, Matt?”

  He glanced at Ellie and slowly bobbed his head up and down once. She wrapped the end of her braid around her finger.

  “You going, too?” Melissa asked Ellie.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  We should head out. We told Aunt Heather we would be home by now. He hopped up, showed the notepad around.

  Abbi gathered the baby’s things, and Ellie picked up Silvia. Matthew opened the door, the hallway air as stale and depressed as the air in the apartment. He stood in the intersection of his past and his present, his life a Venn diagram, the blue circle and the red circle overlapping purple in his mother’s living room. Set A and set B. This visit wasn’t the good idea he had hoped it would be. He hadn’t moved very far beyond his childhood, not when confronted with the root beer and the breakfast cereal, and his mother trying to take an interest in his life.

  He slapped the doorframe.

  “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Savoie,” Ellie said. “I hope we can, maybe, you know, see you again.”

  “You know where I am,” Melissa said.

  Matthew walked down the stairs, and then ran, slipping near the bottom and jamming his wrists as he caught himself. He slammed into the metal bar across the glass door and, once outside, bent over—his hands on his knees, his head down. He sucked down the autumn sky, tasted the leaves, the decomposing earth.

  Then a hand warmed his back. Ellie’s hand, and he spun around and squashed her in his arms. Abbi was there, too, shaking him gently. Ellie pulled away, turned him around. His mother waited there. “This is for you,” she said, handing him a square of lined paper. “Since you’re heading that way, anyway.”

  He unfolded the paper. His father’s phone number.

  And then Melissa went one way, and the rest of them went the other, and they drove home in silence.

  Abbi dropped Ellie off first; Matthew didn’t move from the back seat, and Abbi slowed, coasting to a stop at the side of the road. She looked at him over her seat. “There isn’t a class trip, is there?”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s going on, Matt?”

  I need a kidney transplant. I was hoping my father might be a match.

  “Is that what you need the money for?”

  Yes. I want to go talk to him. In person.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me and Ben?”

  What could you do?

  “Well, we could pay for you to go see him, for one. You don’t have to be watching Silvia and mowing lawns.”

  I like watching Silvia.

  “That’s not the point.”

  Abbi, this is something I want to do on my own.

  She flattened her lips together. “Haven’t you been on your own long enough?”

  And then she dropped him at the apartment, and he found Sienna in front of the television, and Skye in her bedroom, both Heather and Jaylyn gone, and Lacie eating Cheetos, her fingers and face smeared orange.

  “Matty, I’m starved. Skye won’t make me anything to eat.”

  So Matthew made grilled cheese sandwiches and warmed two cans of tomato soup. He washed a load of laundry, packed the lunches for the next day, and put Lacie and Sienna in the shower.

  When Heather came in with Whip, he and the little girls were on the couch watching a movie, subtitles on, microwave popcorn on their laps.

  “Where’s Skye?” Heather asked.

  “In her room,” Sienna said. “Where else?”

  “And Jaylyn?”

  Sienna shrugged. “She went out with Leo,” Lacie said. “Even when you said not to. I told her you said not to.”

  “Go to bed, both of you.”

  “It’s early,” Sienna said.

  “I don’t care. Whip and I want the TV.”

  I’ll tuck you in.

  “I don’t need to be tucked in,” Sienna said.

  “I do. I do,” said Lacie. “Carry me.”

  “Matt, you take Jaylyn’s bed,” Heather said. “She’s not here. She’ll get the couch.”

  He stood up, and Lacie jumped on his back, and he galloped to her bed, dropping her. She laughed, snuggled beneath the Barbie comforter and brushed her hair from her face. “Kiss, please.”

  He kissed her forehead. Sienna climbed onto the top bunk. He motioned to her, and she hung her head upside down over the edge of the mattress. He kissed her, too.

  Skye lay with her face toward the wall, earphones clamped over her head. Matthew changed into his pajamas in the bathroom, brushed his teeth. He took his medication. Back in the bedroom, he touched Skye’s shoulder, gave her a little shake. She didn’t respond, so he crawled into the bunk and read for a while, enjoying the extra room to stretch out.

  Finally Skye got up, left and came back. He took his pad from under the pillow but couldn’t find the pen. Skye bent over. When she stood back up she held the pen, gave it to him.

  He bit off the cap.

  She covered his hand with hers. “Just . . . turn off that lamp. I can’t sleep with it on.”

  He did, and the bunk beds rocked from Skye turning beneath him. She was torturing herself over Silvia. At least, he hoped that was the case. It would be a lot worse if she wasn’t.

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  Benjamin arrived home to children’s voices, shouting and giggling floating out from behind the house. He shut the truck’s door and carried the two grocery sacks to the backyard, where Matthew’s two younger cousins were chasing each other. “Hi, Deputy Patil,” Lacie said, racing over to him. “Miss Abbi said we can eat dinner here.”

  “You’re it,” Sienna said, slamming into Lacie’s back.

  “Not fair. I called time.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Nuh-huh. Did she, Deputy?” Sienna asked.

  “I’m staying out of this,” Benjamin said. “Where’s Matt?”

  “Inside with the baby,” Lacie told him. She slapped Sienna on the arm. “You’re it.”

  “Hey, we weren’t playing yet,” Sienna shouted, taking off after her sprinting sister.

  Matthew sat at the kitchen table, head in his books, Silvia asleep in the basket in front of him. He glanced up as Benj
amin closed the sliding door, raised his pencil.

  “What are you working on?”

  Matthew held up the book, finger inside it marking his page. AP Physics.

  “Fun, fun.”

  The boy chuckled. Hope you don’t mind the girls here.

  “Of course not.”

  My aunt doesn’t want them home alone anymore. Sienna nearly burned down the apartment trying to heat up a pizza.

  “They’re young to be by themselves.”

  I know. Sometimes my older cousins aren’t the best at being where they say they’ll be.

  And Benjamin saw how responsibility hunched Matthew’s shoulders, his burdens chasing him ’round in circles until he was so dizzy he couldn’t see he wasn’t these girls’ father. He was older than he should be, worrying about kidneys and children, and probably much more that Benjamin didn’t know about. He shook his head, remembering his biggest teenaged concerns—pimples and school dances, and his mother’s odd clothing.

  He watched the two little girls in the backyard—now playing campfire, roasting leaves over a cold pile of twigs—and tenderly picked up Silvia and bundled her into his chest. He couldn’t believe how much she’d grown over the past three and a half months. A smile spasmed at the corners of her mouth as she slept, and his heart with it.

  Benjamin knocked on the table. “Where’s Abbi?” he asked.

  Matthew pointed down the hall.

  She was showering, and Benjamin silently entered the steamy room, watching her shadow flicker behind the curtain. The water stopped running, and the towel hanging on the curtain rod disappeared into the tub before Abbi stepped onto the bath mat.

  “Oh, shoot,” she said when she saw him. She unwrapped the towel from her waist and hit him with it. “You scared me.”

  “Shhh. Don’t do that. You’ll wake the—”

  Silvia opened her eyes and cried. Benjamin bounced her, touching his nose to her own, saying “Boop” each time, until the baby calmed and reached for his face.

  “You’re a good dad,” Abbi said. She turned her head upside down and buffed her hair with the towel, her shins and thighs, first one leg, then the other. She straightened, and Benjamin pulled the hand towel from the holder on the wall, patted the drops of water from her back. “Thanks.”