by Cora Brent
Crap, I didn’t want to start anything. I just wanted to take my girlfriend out for a decent dinner and hopefully fool around for a while later on.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just not healthy to obsess about whatever might happen in the future. Not everything can be controlled.”
She bristled. “So why even try, right?” Her voice was rising with every word and her fists were clenched. “Just blissfully disregard everyone else and do whatever you want. Why not? What do you care who gets clobbered by your selfishness?”
I was getting annoyed but couldn’t help feeling like I was missing something vital. “Erin, what the hell are you talking about? Is this about the accident last week? Yeah, I did a shitty, stupid, selfish thing. I regret it. But I’m kind of shaking my head over the idea that you were so terribly hurt.”
She exhaled. She chewed her thumbnail and looked away. “Never mind,” she finally said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t talking about you anyway.”
“Oh. Who were you talking about?”
“Never mind that either.” She took my hand again. “Let’s just have a nice night.”
A brittle politeness ensued. It followed us throughout dinner. Every moment was more awkward than the last. We weren’t fighting, not exactly. It was kind of like being on a first date with someone you weren’t yet sure you liked. As soon as the thought occurred to me I rejected it guiltily. This wasn’t some random girl. This was Erin. My Erin. We’d known each other since we were toddlers. We were in love.
She picked at her food. She smiled whenever I made a small joke although I could tell the difference between a true Erin smile and a pretend Erin smile. It wasn’t all her fault. I couldn’t relax. Everything that came out of my mouth felt forced. It was just an off night all around.
We held hands on the walk home through the soft twilight and didn’t talk much. The temperature still hovered around a hundred degrees even though the sun was on its way down. I remember reading once about Emblem’s early residents and how they would set their beds outside along Main Street during the summer nights when it was just too damn hot to sleep indoors. They would wrap themselves in wet sheets, wave good night to their neighbors and try to get comfortable for at least a few hours until the sunrise made it impossible.
I was still thinking about this when Erin squeezed my hand and rested her cheek on my shoulder. I stopped walking, took her soft face in my hands and kissed her deeply. She melted against me, slipping her arms around my shoulders and letting my tongue slide into her mouth. I knew exactly how she liked to be kissed. Soft and tender to start, teasing the passion to a crescendo. She starting kissing more hungrily and I heard the moan in the back of my throat as I pulled her against me, wanting her, needing her.
HONK!
HONKHONKHONKHONK!!
Asshole Stone and his asshole date were paused at the corner stop sign and leaning on the horn so much it sounded like an air raid. Stone was driving a beat up black Civic that I assumed belong to Kasey Kean, who giggled in the seat beside him.
My brother leaned out the window and waved. “Sorry about that. Carry on, kids.”
Then he slammed on the accelerator and burned rubber toward Main Street, daring Emblem’s law enforcement to notice.
“Stone’s with Kasey now?” Erin asked with a frown.
“Uh, yeah. I guess.” I still felt a little off balance catching a glimpse of Kasey. Maybe I should have told Erin what happened at the pool last week, but if I said anything now she would wonder why I hadn’t said anything in the first place.
“What about Courtney?”
“Stone isn’t known for monogamy.”
Erin sighed. “I know.”
Even after they’d sped out of sight the intimate moment was hopelessly broken. We went back to holding hands and being quiet until we reached Erin’s door.
“You know,” I said. “It’s not quite eight o’clock. I think my mom’s working late at the pharmacy and I doubt Stone will show up anytime soon. You could come over for a while.”
Erin glanced over at my house. She seemed to be thinking about it but then suddenly shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m not feeling so hot so I think I’m just going to go to bed.”
I raised a suggestive eyebrow. “You could lie down in my bed for a little while. I’ll just sit on the other side of the room and watch you sleep, kind of like that vampire creep all the girls go wild over.”
She smiled over that. “Tempting.” She kissed my cheek. “Another time.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“Of course. Thanks for dinner.” Her hand was on the knob and she was starting to walk through the door so there wasn’t any reason for me to stick around.
I was halfway across her front yard when she called me back.
“Conway! I love you!”
My heart jumped. “I love you too.”
Since I didn’t feel like messing with the front door lock I hopped through my unlocked bedroom window, feeling rather cheerful. Erin and I were due for the standard bumps and bruises that all other relationships endured. That’s all. We were Conway and Erin. We would be fine.
My bedroom was messy and smelled like feet. It was probably a good thing Erin hadn’t taken me up on my offer to hang out. Whistling a Beatles song I’d heard in the diner earlier, I headed to the empty living room and sprawled on the ratty sofa. I didn’t realize I was tired until my eyelids closed. From there I slipped easily into oblivion and didn’t know anything else until some basic instinct jolted me awake. I knew right away I wasn’t alone in the room, even before she said a word.
“Piece of fucking garbage,” my mother slurred as she slumped in the armchair five feet away. She’d probably topped off her workday with a visit to the Dirty Cactus and put away a few shots. She did that sometimes but she didn’t often get shit-faced enough to chatter nonsense.
I sat up, my neck cramped from an awkward sleeping pose.
“Hey ma,” I greeted her, rubbing my sore muscles.
“Just like him,” she answered and even though it was dark I could see her shaking her head from side to side, the ends of her frosted hair catching the light of the street lamps outside.
The same instinct that jarred me out of my nap told me to just get up and leave the room. It argued that nothing was going to happen here that I’d want to remember later.
“You’re just like him!” She stood up, swaying, howling at the ceiling. “Just like that asshole. I see it every time I look at you.” A desperate sob escaped her and she sank down to the floor, legs splayed, hands crossed over her stomach. I leaned down and took her arm, trying to help her back up but she twisted away from me.
“Mom,” I said firmly, snapping my fingers to get her attention as I hunkered down at her side. She only cried.
“I tried,” she babbled, rocking back and forth, gulping between heaving sobs. “I thought if I just raised you decent that the bad blood wouldn’t matter. Elijah said it didn’t matter, said you were still his blood in a way even if not directly. He forgave every shitty thing I ever did and loved you both anyway. Loved you even though I told him from the beginning where you came from.”
“Mom.” My head felt strange. My throat felt dry. I wanted her to stop talking. I wanted to jump up and run out the door and never hear whatever jumble of words were coming.
“Chrome,” she said in a moan and covered her eyes. “Him I loved. Always loved him. I let him use me how he wanted because it was as close as I could get. But he was barely a father to the kid he had and didn’t want any more. I thought when he saw Stone he would change his mind but he didn’t.” She curled tighter into a ball and whimpered like a little girl. “I didn’t want to start up with Benton. I understood what Benton was. Mean and violent to the core. Only reason I let that fucker in was because everybody knew how the Gentry boys were, always competing for the same attention. I thought lying down with Benton would give me Chrome back.” Her voice caught on something that was both a sob and a hiccup and d
ropped to a whisper. “Instead all it gave me was you.”
She raised her head then. I couldn’t see her eyes. Her face was a yawning hole in the darkness. All these years. All the rumors and the gossip and the sad guilt of being raised by a man who tried to shield us from all of it.
They might be lies. But lies don’t usually happen on dirty living room floors under the shelter of darkness. No, that’s when the truth shakes loose.
Chrome Gentry.
Benton Gentry.
Two brothers who were legends in their prime. Chrome was Deck’s father, dead at least a half dozen years now. Traffic accident or something. Benton was alive though, still somewhere out there in the barren wilderness of outer Emblem. I’d see him now and again, lurching around Main Street with a pot belly and a mean attitude, such a foul-tempered waste of a man that his own sons didn’t even talk to him.
His sons. The triplets. My half brothers.
And, if alcohol was really a truth serum and Tracy Gentry had just made the confession of a lifetime, then Stone was Deck’s half brother.
My mother had started crying harder. Her beige work skirt had ridden up over her thighs and I could see enough to be embarrassed as hell, even as I was still reeling over the things she’s just said.
“Come on, Mom,” I said, gently trying to lift her. I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t hurt and angry for having all this shit dumped in my lap. But she was my mother and she was terrible in some ways yet I still felt sorry for her. At least some mysteries had been answered, like why she’d always preferred Stone and why she seemed more bitter with each passing year as she was slowly poisoned inside by the burden of secrets.
Instead of accepting my help she slapped me away. “No!” she shouted with flailing arms that knocked over a blue hobnail vase that long ago had been a gift from some dead Gentry relation. “You’ll never touch me again!” she screamed.
“I’m trying to help you,” I explained as I dodged sharp fingernails.
“Don’t want you. DON’T WANT YOU! NEVER FUCKING WANTED YOU!”
I backed away as she crawled toward the hallway on all fours. She’d stopped screaming but the low, grief-stricken moaning was worse. It carried words. I heard, “Elijah” and I heard “Sorry”.
Time passed as I crouched there in the darkness. There was no more moaning and crying, only the sound of thick snoring from somewhere down the hall. She might not remember any of this tomorrow. I would remember it forever. I would also need to tell my brother.
Suddenly, desperately, I needed Stone. I needed his mix of cocky arrogance and affection to sort through this mess.
I needed Erin too. I needed to hold her in my arms and hear that I can be loved, that I’m more than just the unwanted reminder of a terrible man.
There was no telling where Stone was at this hour but he would be home eventually. And Erin would be asleep next door right now. If I crawled under her window and rapped on the glass for long enough she would wake up. I just wanted to look at her. Just for a minute. And I wanted her to look at me with that special light that lived only in her eyes. Then maybe I’d be able to sleep tonight.
As I stepped out the front door I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes but the hell with it. I wouldn’t be going far. Anyway, the less noise I made the better, since I wasn’t sure what kind of hours Mr. Rielo kept.
I crept along the side of the house, pausing when I heard a small animal or reptile scamper away with alarm. There were no lights on at my house but Erin’s window was open and her light was on. If it hadn’t been I wouldn’t have seen them.
They were sitting side by side on the ground underneath the open window. They weren’t kissing. They weren’t touching. They were just sitting there, my brother and my girlfriend. There was a hot wind blowing in the wrong direction so I couldn’t hear their words. I could only hear the muted blend of their voices, so deep in conversation with one another that they had no reason to look up and notice that someone stood nearby, just watching them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ERIN
We’d ended the night with “I love you” and somehow I was still unhappy.
There had been a few tense moments during the evening but Conway had done his best to be sweet. I found myself staring at him over dinner, memorizing small details like the cute furrow between his eyebrows as he scraped the mustard from his hamburger and the hint of a dimple that only ever appeared on his left cheek. I loved everything about him.
I was still watching him walk slowly back to his house when I started wishing I’d said yes to him. I wished I’d gone back to his bedroom and burrowed against his body while confessing the things I never dared to talk about.
Things I hardly dared to even think about.
Things like how when a woman who had battled her own mind for her entire life stuck her head in an oven and turned on the gas it wasn’t an ‘accident’.
Things like the origin of the faint scars in private places on my own body.
Things like my terror that I’ll lose myself in the same abyss of depression that swallowed my mother.
Instead I just walked tiredly through my front door and dropped my purse on the couch. Unfortunately, my dad happened to be napping there. My ten pound support system of tampons, cosmetics, pens and books hit him in the head.
“Ow,” he complained, sitting heavily upright and rubbing his skull.
“Sorry,” I said, leaning over to haul away the offending handbag. “You weren’t waiting up for me were you?”
My father yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Never. Why would a father be waiting up for his teenage daughter to walk through the door?” He took note of the time. “It’s early.”
“Yeah. I was tired.” I looked around, noticing that the house was unusually quiet. “Where are the girls?”
“Your Aunt Bonnie came by and took them to her place to spend a few nights there. She was disappointed you weren’t around.”
Bonnie was my dad’s older sister. She’d never married or had children and worked as the head nurse at the prison. Bonnie meant well and had always done whatever she could for us, especially after our mother died, but she had a stern, no nonsense kind of personality that was a little tough to take sometimes. Hanging out with Aunt Bonnie was like being subjected to a non-fun Mary Poppins.
“I’ll call her next week or something,” I said, feeling bad for having unfriendly Aunt Bonnie thoughts.
My father was staring at me in that parental way; half love and half anxiety.
“Sit down, Erin.”
I sat. I crossed my arms. I uncrossed them. “What’s up?”
My father’s knees popped and creaked when he leaned forward. He grimaced. “How are you and young Mr. Gentry getting along these days?”
“We’re good. Con’s going to apply to ASU next year.”
“Really?” His eyebrows shot up. “I would think an arrest record would interfere with college plans.”
“It was a mistake, Dad.”
“A mistake,” he muttered. “Erin, a mistake is forgetting to buy milk at the grocery store. Not committing grand theft auto, drag racing and destroying both public and private property.”
I couldn’t argue with him there. In truth I was having trouble with the idea that Con and I had reached something of a fork in the road. I wanted to go one way and something pulled him in the other direction. Adults who thought they were being helpful would just shrug and say that this was just part of growing up. They would say most girls did not get to live forever with the first boy they kissed.
“Erin?”
My father was peering down at me worriedly. It must be hard, I thought, to bring people into the world and watch them evolve into something completely separate from you.
“You okay?” he pressed.
“I’m fine, Dad,” I said, trying to keep the waver out of my voice.
He still stared at me. “Don’t feel guilty,” he finally said.
“About what?”
“Anyth
ing. Don’t feel guilty about making plans or leaving people behind.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I know it’s on your mind, worrying about what will happen to all of us when you go away to school. You can’t worry about that, honey. I’ll tell you something I learned a long time ago. It’s that none of us can stop the universe from spinning. All we can do is stand in the light for as long as the sun shines.”
I swallowed painfully. I was thinking of my mother. I had never had the guts to ask him why she did it. Instead I’d asked Aunt Bonnie. Her face had dropped into uncharacteristic grief as she pulled me awkwardly into her arms. She told me that my mother loved me and that she had fought a battle every day, a battle with herself. Then she lost one. And that was all there was.
A tear, unwelcome, squeezed its way out of my eye and fell down my cheek. “What happens when the light burns out?” I whispered.
My father kissed the top of my head. “That’s the thing,” he said. “Some lights never really go out.”
Before I headed off to bed I told my father not to fall asleep again on the couch. His back bothered him whenever he did. He waved me away with a yawn and told me I didn’t need to worry about him.
When Con had dropped me off I thought I was tired but now I was far too awake. I reached for my phone to call Roe but then remembered she was floating around somewhere in international waters with poor cell reception. So all I did was send her a picture of a brilliantly illustrated rainbow with a heart imbedded in the arch. She would receive it eventually.
I opened my window and gazed at the house next door. It was dark so either Con had gone to sleep or else he’d gone out again. There was a slight breeze blowing. Not a storm wind, just enough movement of air to ease the nighttime heat. I leaned out and breathed deeply as the soft wind lifted strands of my hair and played with the flyaway ends. Again I wished I had gone with Conway. The only peace I knew lived inside his arms.
When I took the old scissors from their hiding place it wasn’t because I was feeling the itch again. There was no relief in holding it, only a vague sense of disgust. I pushed the sleeve of my sweater up over my elbow and examined the damaged part of my arm. A week had passed since the last cut but that tender skin between wrist and elbow was slow to heal. I touched the tip of the blade to the scabbed red line. I wasn’t even trying to recall why it should feel good. I was just trying to understand how I could have ever thought it had.
