He’d seen her undressed. He’d held her, kissed her, imagined himself nailing her. She was so freaking gorgeous.
And yet . . .
It was Becky who drew his attention. Becky, all sharp lines and angles, her thoughts as sleekly engineered as her body. Becky, slamming the gear stick through its paces, charging down the Pike in her mother’s rattle-trap car. Becky confronting Florie, not snarky like Elyse, but blunt and logical.
Becky, ultimately defeated.
He wanted to ask her why Florie’s attachment to some Christian sect annoyed her so much. So the girl was stationed on a street corner, selling angel dolls. So she’d veered off onto her own eccentric path. Let her go. Good-bye, good luck, good riddance.
He couldn’t ask Becky why she cared so deeply about Florie, at least not right now. She was falling apart. Becky Zinn, the MIT genius, the girl who’d pulled him from the edge of the roof, was falling apart. Falling apart to the point that she didn’t want to drive. And Elyse didn’t know how to use a clutch.
Becky continued to stare at him, her eyes beseeching. He’d depended so much on her, and now she was looking to him for help. How could he possibly help her? He was the basket case of this relationship, not her. How could he be her hero?
“I haven’t driven in years,” he said.
“It’s like riding a bicycle,” she said. “Once you know how, you never forget.”
It was nothing like riding a bicycle, but he took a certain odd pleasure in seeing Becky resort to illogic. “Well,” he said, “this car is such an old wreck, I don’t see how I can do much damage to it. You—” he glanced over his shoulder to include Elyse “—I can do damage to.”
“We trust you,” Elyse gushed.
If they trusted him, they were fools. He glimpsed Becky’s face, her eyes squinting against the afternoon sun glaring through the windshield, her forehead creased, but her lips twisted in a wry grin that told him trust wasn’t exactly the word she’d use to describe how she felt about him. That made him smile.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
Cold air rushed into the car as he and Becky opened their doors. They passed each other at the front bumper without allowing their gazes to meet. He slid behind the wheel, took a long breath, and tried to ignore the panic that shivered up his spine. Adjusting the seat and the mirrors for his height bought him a few minutes—not enough time to develop any confidence.
Elyse remained where she was, now seated behind Becky rather than him. He decided he liked her better behind him, even though that proximity might tempt her to touch his hair again. When she was behind him, he couldn’t feel the heat of her stare on his cheek, his chin. She could see his face now, at least a little of it. He felt exposed.
Another long breath. He twisted the ignition key. The steering wheel hummed against his palms; the pedals vibrated against the soles of his shoes.
Shit. What was he doing?
He was helping Becky, that was what.
One final deep breath, which he let out slowly, through his nose. Phil had brought a yoga instructor to the AA meeting a week ago, and the woman had talked about chest breathing and abdominal breathing and flattening your hands against your diaphragm so you could feel your lungs pumping in and out. He’d thought it had seemed like a crock at the time, but now the deep breaths calmed him and blew away some of the cobwebs in the corner of his brain where everything he knew about driving was stored.
His feet played the pedals, his left foot rising off the clutch as his right foot descended on the gas. The car lurched a couple of times before crunching off the gravel shoulder and back onto the road.
Don’t let anyone cross the street in front of me.
Don’t let anyone chase a ball.
Don’t let me kill anyone.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected: that Becky, or more likely Elyse, would be stupid enough to try to engage him in a conversation while he drove. That they’d watch him with hawk-like vigilance, just waiting for him to make a mistake. That they’d cheer him on, encouraging him, telling him he was doing a fantastic job navigating down this straight, flat stretch of asphalt, diligently remaining on the right side of the double-yellow line.
Instead, they ignored him. “So what’s going on?” Elyse asked Becky. “You never get headaches. You’re never tense.”
“I’m tense a lot,” Becky told her. “I just hide it well.”
“Don’t tell me Florie got to you. She’s a jerk, Beck. You know that. A second-rate twit.”
Becky sat rigidly in the seat Mark had occupied until two minutes ago, her hands clenched in her lap, her face forward. “She’s our sister.”
“I’ve already got a sister,” Elyse said. “I don’t need another one.”
“You’ve got another one. Another two. Me and Florie. I know she’s a twit. Sometimes Katie is a twit, too. There’s no law that says you always love your sister. But you become sisters because fate throws you together, and you share experiences together, and you can never undo what you’ve shared. That’s what makes us sisters. And Mark is our brother.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a part of this happy little family. Becky, Elyse, Florie, and April had all been friends. Sisters, if you were into all that sisterhood-type nomenclature. He’d been a part of it only because he’d brought horror and pain into their sisterhood. He hadn’t shared the experience. He’d caused it—an experience none of them could possibly have wished for. Well, maybe Florie had wished for it—that was what she’d implied, what had set Becky off—but Becky and Elyse sure hadn’t.
Elyse had her own concerns: “If he’s my brother, does that mean I can’t sleep with him?”
Her question sent another slice of dread the length of his spine, and he was strangely grateful that the dread was due to Elyse rather than driving.
“You know what they say,” Elyse continued, and he felt his spine relax a little. “You can’t pick your family. You can choose your friends. Florie was never really a friend.”
“Yes, she was. April liked her.”
“So . . . what? We inherited her when April died?”
“Exactly,” Becky said. His peripheral vision caught a motion in her lap, her fingers flexing slightly. “We inherited her, and we squandered our inheritance. We didn’t take good care of it.”
“Fuck Florie,” Elyse said airily. “Really, Beck. Forget her. We didn’t squander her. We just handed her over to Jesus. He’ll take good care of her. Him and her wonderful husband, if such a person even exists.”
Becky sighed. Just as Mark could sense Elyse’s constant, heated attention, he could sense Becky’s stress. He didn’t understand it. Elyse was right; Florie was a head case, or a good Christian, or maybe both, but she was not Becky’s responsibility. Or her sister.
Becky was right, too: driving was like riding a bicycle. The motions felt natural to him. He found himself flicking his eyes toward the side-view mirrors, downshifting into a turn, easing up as a car flew past heading west. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the Pike, but by the time they reached the entrance ramp, maybe he would be. For now, the only moment of panic he’d suffered had come when a pedestrian, a chubby young teenager, swaggered along the shoulder of the road. Don’t have a tennis ball, Mark had thought, hoping the kid would receive his message via mental telepathy. Hoping that if he did have a tennis ball—though why anyone would be walking down the shoulder of a county road carrying a tennis ball in December was beyond Mark—he’d tuck it into a pocket of his baggy, drooping jeans, preventing even the possibility that it might bounce into the street.
Heart drumming, fingers icy on the steering wheel, he braked to a near halt as they drew close to the boy, who scowled into the car as if he suspected its passengers of checking him out. He had a piggish face—broad cheeks, flat nose, soft, rounded chin—and, as far as
Mark could tell, no tennis ball. He accelerated. The kid flipped him the bird.
Mark didn’t care. The kid was still alive. His hands relaxed slightly, his pulse slowed, and he allowed himself another deep yoga breath.
“She just . . . it’s like she slammed a door in our face,” Becky said. “Not just our face. She slammed a door on everything that’s not a part of her little angel Christian world. What kind of good Christian doesn’t visit her parents for Christmas? What kind of good Christian marries a guy she hardly knows? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m not a good Christian, so I don’t know the answers.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t a good Christian in this car,” Elyse said. “Arranged marriages are nothing new, though, and they happen in lots of denominations. In Florie’s case, she probably wouldn’t have landed a husband any other way. Not that I’m saying landing a husband is all that important, at least right now. We’re young. The last thing I want is a husband. If I had a husband, I’d have to bring him to Paris with me, and there would go all my plans to have des aventures sexuelles with gorgeous French strangers.”
Becky closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Mark wished he could give her something for her headache. He supposed that by driving he was giving her something. A hell of a lot, considering how he felt about driving.
He realized he hadn’t had a headache since the week he’d quit drinking. That first week, he’d often felt as if someone was operating a pile driver inside his skull, right behind his eyeballs. Once or twice he’d experienced the sort of pain that might be caused by having a vise clamped onto his temples, twisting tighter and tighter. And then one morning, he’d awakened and realized he hadn’t had a headache in days. Nor had he puked. Pretty amazing.
He wondered about Becky’s headache, though. Florie could probably give anyone a headache. Those creepy dolls could give a person a headache. Elyse’s cheerful babbling in the backseat, gliding between French and English, would have given him a headache if he was still vulnerable to that particular ailment.
But Becky? Just because her friend was an imbecile? A good Christian one, for sure, but was that enough reason to be so still and pale, eyes remaining closed, hands remaining clasped—not a prayer clasp but with fingers twisted pretzel-like around one another, reminding him of his grandmother’s arthritic knuckles.
He wanted to ask her what was really bugging her. But he was afraid to talk. Moving his mouth might distract him from his driving, and—oh, shit—they were nearing the entrance ramp onto the Pike. Should he dare to accelerate? Should he risk changing lanes, passing slower cars? He used to feel free driving, those two and a half blissful years he’d had his license before the accident. He used to love rolling down the windows, blasting music on the stereo, singing along and drumming his hands on the steering wheel in accompaniment.
Not only hadn’t he driven a car in five years; he also hadn’t sung.
He wasn’t about to start now. If Becky didn’t already have a headache, his rendition of Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” would sure as hell give her one.
He coasted through the toll booth, letting the transponder register the payment, then pressed a little harder on the gas. He shifted gears, pressed harder again, glimpsed the speedometer, shuddered, and pressed harder. He could do this. He could hit sixty-five.
He was sober. Anything was possible.
ELYSE GAVE him directions to her house—he knew the general neighborhood, but not the specific street names. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to go to my mother’s or my father’s,” she said blithely as he pulled to the curb in front of a house she pointed out to him. He must have looked confused, because she clarified. “This is my mother’s house. That—” she pointed to the house across the street “—is my father’s house.”
“That’s . . . convenient,” he said, although what he was really thinking was that it was bizarre.
“It pisses my mother off that my father bought the house across the street from hers when they split. For that alone, I’m glad my father did it.” She unclipped her seatbelt and leaned forward, nestling between the two front seats. “They’re both morons, but any moron who can piss my mother off is a good moron in my book. So, Mark, I’ll see you soon. Beck—” she gave Becky’s shoulder a pat “—feel better. It’s just Florie, okay? Not worth getting strung out over.”
Becky nodded vaguely.
“I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
Elyse vanished from between the seats and shoved open the door. Mark watched her stroll up the front walk to the house she’d identified as her mother’s. It had a glittery silver wreath trimmed with faded red ribbon on the front door, a single, forlorn attempt at holiday festiveness. Mark’s gaze shifted from the door to Elyse’s nicely curved ass swaying with each step. A breeze caught her hair, causing it to ripple like a sheet of black silk.
He remembered the feel of her hair on his arm as they’d cuddled in bed. He remembered the way her tits had filled the cups of a sexy bra. She was utterly gorgeous. And sassy. And hot.
And he didn’t want to see her soon. Even sober, he didn’t want to.
He watched her unlock the front door, swing it open, step inside, and close it. The tinsel wreath fluttered for a moment, silver shreds catching the winter light and creating a sparkle that might have been pretty if the wreath weren’t so tacky. Then stillness, just the sound of him and Becky breathing, and a dim ticking beneath the hood as the Volvo’s engine cooled down.
“So,” he said. Should he drive back to his house and say good-bye? Should he abandon Becky when tension continued to radiate from her like an electrical field? He wasn’t used to her being this way. She was always the smart one, the sharp one, the sane one. The one who knew what she was doing, and why.
“I guess I should apologize,” she muttered. “I’m behaving like a bitch.”
“You’re not behaving like a bitch. You’re upset. Which is not like you.”
“It is like me,” she retorted. “It just doesn’t happen very often.”
“Why is it happening now? Florie isn’t worth it.”
“Yes she is.” Becky’s voice was firm, definitive, the solid sound he was used to. “You and Elyse act as if she’s just—I don’t know, some passing stranger. An extra in a movie who wanders into the frame for a minute and then wanders back out. But she’s not. She’s a part of this. A part of everything. And she’s just . . . given up.”
“What has she given up? She seems happy.”
“Selling knickknacks from a card table? Turning everything over to Jesus? Pick a question, any question. Her answer is Jesus. But what if that’s not the answer? She doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to think. Coming up with one simplistic answer means she never has to think again.”
“Can you blame her? Life is a lot easier that way.”
“If you think freezing on a street corner in Amherst and marrying a guy you don’t even know is easier.”
It sounded easier to him. Just like drinking had been easier. You select an answer, one single solution, and you stick with it. No choices, no debates, no dilemmas. You always know what to do.
He had assumed that Becky always knew what to do. She was so brilliant. He’d figured her mental superiority enabled her to make choices, resolve debates, vault over dilemmas. And she probably did—but it wasn’t easy. It took a lot out of her. Right now she looked weary and bitter, her eyes hard, her mouth set in a line so straight it could have been drawn on her face with a ruler.
“Want to go to the tree?” he asked. He didn’t know where that idea had come from, but he wanted to go to the tree. Maybe it would make her feel better.
“Okay.”
He started the car, played his feet on the pedals, and pulled away from the curb, pleased at how smoothly he was able to ease up on the clutch and let the engine engage. Like
riding a bike, he thought. Like coming back to what you’d always known. Like living sober after spending years inside the spongy cushion of inebriation. Hard at first, but after a while you got the hang of it.
“I don’t have anything with me,” she said, sounding more animated than she had since they’d left Amherst. “No candle or water—”
“Big deal,” he assured her. “We can pretend we have a candle.”
“I don’t know. I always do it with a candle.”
“We’ll use our imagination.” He steered around the corner, savoring the confidence he felt behind the wheel.
“Jesus isn’t under the tree,” Becky said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“Something Florie said. When we were all there at Thanksgiving. She said Jesus isn’t under the tree.”
“Of course not. He’s too busy hanging out with those horrible angel dolls,” Mark joked.
Becky almost smiled. At least he could imagine her almost-smile. If he could imagine a candle when there was no candle, he could imagine a smile when there was no smile. “I remember her saying that. I didn’t know anything about her at the time, but I remember her saying that.”
“You were drunk. We’d just bailed you out of the hospital.”
“But I remember that.” He turned another corner, heading toward the town center. “I remember the tree. I remember.” He felt a sharp pang low in his gut. “I remember the three of you trying to convince me the accident hadn’t been my fault.”
“It wasn’t. No more your fault than any of ours.”
“Florie would say it was Jesus’s fault. He’s her answer to everything.”
“Sometimes . . . ” Becky’s voice cracked, and she swallowed. “Sometimes I find myself wondering whether it was April’s fault. And then I hate myself for thinking that. She’s dead. How can it be her fault?”
“She ran out into the road.”
“Because she didn’t want to lose the ball. Because she was a good person. Because . . . ” Her voice cracked again, crumbled like stone disintegrating into sand. He glanced at her and saw tears rivering down her cheeks.
The April Tree Page 31
