by Lynne Hugo
A tall paunchy man in a white muscle shirt, cutoffs, and bare feet flung the door open while walking back into the house. “Cal?” Eddie said to the retreating back.
“Yeah. You from the agency? Old people’re in there.” He gestured toward the kitchen, turned into the living room, and sprawled on the couch to fixate on the television.
Eddie hedged from where he stood, half in the room, half in the entryway. He could hear Louetta’s and Hack’s voices. Cal was channel surfing, and all the voices blurred in a collage of sound. It was hotter inside, too hot already. “I’m … Eddie. Uh … did the agency call?”
Cal kept his gaze on the TV. “Woke up the house. Threw the old people into a dither, wanted me to go get Jewel. Askin’ why, why, why.”
“So ’m I,” Eddie said, trying to stare him down, which was ineffective since he had only the back of Cal’s head at which to aim.
“Your wife’s a goddamn fruitcake.” Cal said, looking over his shoulder at Eddie, his tone angry. “Ya wanna argue the point, look at that haircut.”
Eddie was silent for a moment. He pretty much agreed, but Cal looked like he belonged in an asylum himself, what with that missing tooth and wild unshaven face. Eddie remembered he hadn’t shaved either, but at least his hair wasn’t long enough to be a girl’s, all scraggly down around his neck.
“Cal?” Louetta was calling from the kitchen. “Cal! You up? Come here and get down our pills.”
“In a minute,” Cal called back.
Eddie went into the kitchen. “Hey, Louetta. What do you need? I’ll get it.”
“Hey, Eddie.” Louetta hardly glanced in his direction, as if his being around or pitching in were white-bread ordinary. She was rattled. “I need the pills outta the middle cabinet there.” The kitchen table was covered with half-gallon containers of milk and orange juice, used spoons, open cereal boxes, bowls with the remnants of cold cereal. A banana peel languished next to empty juice glasses.
“Sure. Hey, looks like you’re doing pretty well here. Good for you.” She was still in her nightclothes, and Eddie kept his eyes averted as much as he could because it was a light summer gown. He didn’t know if she needed help to get dressed, but wasn’t about to offer. Her breasts looked like cantaloupes. He never should have come.
“Took us forty-five minutes to get this much out, and Hack fell off the stool. Just barely caught himself, grabbed the counter edge.” She pointed darkly to a child’s red step stool now shoved under one of the kitchen chairs. “Medicine’s on the top shelf in that middle cabinet, all the different bottles. Jewel’s gotta come. I never got my bath yesterday, her father neither.”
“Cal wouldn’t help you? Uh, with breakfast, I mean?”
“Cal’s still in the bed. Where’s Jewel? County said they’d be sending someone else, that Jewel couldn’t come any more. That’s wrong.” She brushed at her face where tears had welled over. “I don’t want anyone else.”
Eddie didn’t take that on, just got down the pills and put them on the table. “Do you know which of these to take when?”
“Jewel knows,” Hack said. He’d been sitting quiet as cotton at the kitchen table just taking in the talk, neither speaking nor spoken to. “Puts ’em in different cups for me and Lou and lays ’em out for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed.” Hack was dressed, his shirt buttoned wrong, but dressed nonetheless in old khaki pants and a long-sleeved green striped shirt.
“You don’t know?” Eddie said, panic fraying the edge of his voice. He started picking up the bottles and reading the directions, sorting as he did Louetta’s on one side, Hack’s on the other. “Where are the cups? How does she do it? Cal!”
Cal had no idea. Finally, between the three sighted people arguing about directions and one blind man who thought he knew the pills by feel, they created grab bags for Louetta and Hack in four cups each. Eddie doubted anything was right because they kept confusing themselves and each other, and there were so many medicines. He wanted to get the hell out before the old people started taking stuff and keeling over.
He followed his brother-in-law back into the living room while Hack and Louetta were swallowing their first rounds of capsules and tablets. “Jewel told me how you got Carley high yesterday. I oughta knock the crap outta you. In fact, I oughta kill you myself and more reason than yesterday. Carley’s got a bad problem, and Jewel’s been tryin’ to get her straight. It’s a miracle she didn’t put a bullet right between your eyes. Wouldn’t have missed, either.” Eddie jabbed between his own eyes with his forefinger to illustrate.
Cal gave a short mirthless laugh as he resumed his position on the couch and took a cigarette from the box on the table. He tamped the tobacco down by tapping the filter several times on the table, then lit it, double dragging and exhaling before he spoke. A scar on the thumb web of his smoking hand was a sickly white gash. “Yeah. Some problem, that Carley.”
Eddie sat down in Hack’s chair and lit one of his own. “Look, I don’t give a shit about you, but I feel bad about Hack and Lou. Jewel’s seriously not coming. Leastwise not for a while. You’re gonna have to take care of them till something gets worked out. Louetta throws the agency people out twenty minutes after they get here.” An exaggeration. Some had lasted into the second day.
Cal snorted. “Like hell. I dunno what to do with them. Nadine can move in the basement, bring her brats with her. You seen that dump she’s in now? About to get thrown out anyway.”
Eddie hadn’t, but he’d briefly seen where Carley lived with Roland, and it turned his stomach. Nadine’s must be something like that, he assumed. “Look, man, you obviously don’t know Nadine. Been here, done that. A fuckin’ fiasco. Those kids destroyed the house, Nadine fed them what Meals on Wheels brought for the old people and didn’t cook or clean, help with clothes, and, worse, didn’t get your parents their pills. That’s when your father had the heart attack. No blood pressure pills, no pills at all, the house full of commotion, and she was stealing his money. Selling stuff outta the house, too. Stupid stuff like lamps and chairs. Jewel had to give them stuff from the apartment she used to have. Hell, no food in the house. When your mother called nine-one-one, they got inside the house, and next thing you know someone called the welfare people on Nadine, and she lost the kids. Went through rehab the second time. Fat lotta good that did, as you might have noticed.” He was pleased to see that Cal looked taken aback, the smirk off his face as he flicked an ash.
“When did he have a heart attack?”
“Four years ago last month.”
“Nobody told me.”
It was Eddie’s turn to snort. “Nobody knew where you were.” You asshole, he wanted to add.
Cal spoke after going quiet for a minute. “Jewel, she’ll show up. She’s big talk, no action. She’ll show up. The horses.”
Eddie shook his head. “Man, I’m tellin’ you, I’d a said the same thing a month ago. But she’s snapped. I’m tellin’ you. It’s not happenin’.”
“Shit,” Cal said, running both hands over his low forehead and through his rumpled hair.
“Now you’re catching on.”
Carley’s sitting on the closed toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom, and I’m bent over to change the dressing on her hand when Chassie tries to sneak past me to her room. “He already knows you didn’t come home last night,” I call into the hallway after her. She answers with a violent door slam. “Charming,” I mutter.
“Want me to trash her ass for you?” Carley says, a brief truce. Although I’ve helped her change into an oversized T-shirt and run a warm washcloth over her face, waterproof makeup still circles her eyes after the small battle with it that I lost when she pulled away. She looks like a girl gang member who could take Chassie with no sweat.
“Yes.”
“I’d be happy to, but, oops, somebody shot my punching hand when I was unarmed.”
“God, Carley, how long are you going to keep this up?” I’m applying the antibiotic ointment, sickened by the blood seeping
from the stitches in Carley’s hand, the small tail of black thread at both ends, a railroad track going nowhere. “What do you want me to say? You make it sound like I saw Virgin Carla in the stable instead of Carley fucking her own sorry-ass uncle. Unless … did he force you?” I ask because I must, because I blame Cal, even knowing the truth: I heard her laughing. We stare at each other, and she lowers her eyes first. Tears start down my face, and I back up, leaving her hand on the sink counter like an exposed object.
When I pick her hand back up to work on it again, she yanks it away, wincing from the pressure the movement creates. “I can take care of it myself,” she says, meaning, Don’t touch me.
“Carley, I didn’t mean to hurt you. By what I said. Or your hand. Neither one. I just can’t stand to have you accusing me.” I’m speaking very softly now, and I put my hand on her shoulder and rub it gently. She pulls back but not convincingly, not enough to break our contact. From where I’m standing it’s easy to take a step in so that my body is close enough to gather her to me, her head just below my breast. She holds herself stiffly, not relenting yet not fighting either.
“What the fuck is this dog doing in my bed? He’s on my pillow!” Chassie shouts. “Who let him in here?” A yelp from Copper, followed by a thud.
Carley sits up straight. “Don’t you touch him,” she shouts, rising, the girl gang thing looking altogether possible again. I block her with my body. Frustrated to boiling at the lost moment of possibility, I shout down the hall, “Chassie, don’t you ever use that language to me again. Get in your room, shut your door, and stay in there until your father comes home. And I don’t care if that’s next Tuesday.” Then I bend over and call in a high whispery voice, slapping my thigh lightly, “Copper, come, boy, come good boy.”
“With pleasure,” Chassie shouts, and her door slams a second time, Copper skidding out first, obviously with unnecessary help.
“What’s the matter, Mom? Forget your gun? I thought you shot whores. That whore even hurt your dog. Why’s she special?” As if on cue, Copper noses his way into the bathroom, panting, and squeezes behind me. He goes to Carley as if for protection, putting his paws up on her lap. What he wants is to be picked up and petted, but the ridiculous, infuriating thing about it is that he’s my dog, and she doesn’t do a damn thing for him. Carley awkwardly scoops him up with her good hand and arm, my little beagle’s hind legs scrabbling for purchase on her thigh. I take a deep breath, exhale, and then take another in. In and out I breathe, silent, furious, ashamed, in and out into this terrible black hole between us, until I can pick up the ointment again.
When Eddie finally shows up, I’m alone in the kitchen with a cup of coffee. It feels like a whole day has passed, though the sun hasn’t made it into the kitchen yet. It’s going to be hot again. I rub my face and eyes. Eddie comes in through the garage and gives me a questioning look.
“Yeah, she’s upstairs. I told her to stay in her room until you got home. She’s fine. Flipped out about Copper being on her bed again—I guess you left her door open when you were checking to see if she was home—and swore at me. She threw him off pretty hard. The best defense is a good offense.”
“She wouldn’t mean to hurt him.”
“No, of course, Chassie is perfect. And wherever she spent last night, whatever she did, it was doubtless entirely Frank’s fault. Where were you?”
Eddie’s face gets red. “What? Did she say she was with Frank?”
“That wasn’t my point.”
“Jesus,” Eddie mutters and lumbers to the cabinet for a mug. He pours some coffee and looks out the window over the sink without drinking any. I can’t tell if he’s inspecting the birdfeeder that hangs over the patio or if I’ve just pushed his Chassie button too hard. His T-shirt stinks, and he hasn’t shaved.
“So where’s the druggie daughter of Annie Oakley?” he says, still studying the landscape, letting his bitter tone tell me it was the Chassie button.
I start to go back at him but stop and close my mouth. Then I start over. “Let’s not do this Eddie. Let’s just … not.”
He turns just his upper body. “I don’t want her here.” He’s holding the coffee mug in front of his chest, and his cheeks are like red chrysanthemums, his neck blotchy, too.
“Chassie?”
“Carley! I do not want Carley here. Look, I mean, we’ve got to think about Rocky.”
“Well, Carley is staying.” An idea comes to me, and I butter my voice to sell it. “Listen to me, Eddie. I’ll put her in rehab. In day treatment. The problem with Nadine’s treatment was that she was there twenty-four seven, with hardcore junkies under court order who’d been through it twelve times. She just made a bunch of new contacts. The groups and the classes and the therapy were good.”
He snorts, shaking his head, back to staring out the window. “Sure. You gonna pack a little lunchbox and braid her hair, too? Just put her on the school bus? How you gonna make her go?”
“I just am. I have to. I will.”
There is a long silence, and I think maybe it’s over, at least temporarily. Eddie really cared about Carley once, and maybe I have bought some time. “You need a shower,” I say, careful to keep my tone kind. “I can make you and Rocky some breakfast if you want to get him up. Chassie, too, after you talk to her.” I don’t add that I’ve already fed Carley. No need to bring her up again now.
This bear of a man faces me finally, leaning his heft against the counter. Even though his neck and cheeks are still flushed, for a few seconds I see how fatigue is carving hollows around his dark eyes, and I am sorry and tender.
“I was at your parents’ house,” he says.
“What? Why would you go there?”
“Somebody had to tell them you weren’t coming. Nobody from the county was there. I got your parents’ pills for them. Your father already fell off a stool trying to get the pills down. If you’re not going to show up, maybe you shouldn’t put their pills where only a giraffe can reach them.”
Anger freeze-dries the softness I felt for him. “Dammit, Eddie, you knew I called the agency. Why’d you have to go over there?”
“I didn’t want your brother showing up here looking for you. Which he said your mother asked him to do, just like I thought. And for your information, nobody had gone out to help them. So it’s a damn good thing I did go.” And he does his annoying palms up thing, as if to say, See? Case closed.
I mimic him with a mirror of his gesture and leave the room, heading upstairs to check on Carley, where I will be unwelcome, leaving him to cope with Chassie, Rocky, and his unfed self. We are divided into two camps now, separate families under one roof, something I never wanted, never foresaw.
Of course, Carley’s door is locked, as Chassie’s is, I assume. What I need around here are a few more teenagers. Fortunately, Rocky is pushing thirteen, and in case there’s a shortage of nasty tempers and insanity, his should ripen any day now. Actually, I want Chassie’s locked, preferably from the outside, so I’m really not complaining about the fact, only the insolence of it.
Carla is a different matter. “Carley,” I say quietly, my lips to the crack of the door as I knock. “I need to come in, honey.”
“What for?” On the other side, she’s surly, but at least she answered.
“I have to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
“I also need to give you your antibiotic.”
“Put it under the door. I have water in here.”
“No, honey, that’s not sanitary.”
“Put it in an envelope.”
“Carley, open the door.”
“What do you want?”
“Just open the door, please.” There’s humiliation in begging to have a door opened by a child in your own house. I feel my temper heating. “Look, Carley, I need to give you your pill and I need to talk to you. Open the door now or I’ll get the screwdriver and open it myself.”
I hear a drawer close and something else bang, and a moment later Ca
rley unlatches the door but doesn’t open it. By the time I enter, she’s returned to the bed and sat down. “What?” she says.
The room looks disheveled, as if it’s been carelessly searched. Even though Carley didn’t grow up here, I always wanted her to feel she had a place, and she picked the lavender paint and the white woodwork in this room that Eddie calls the guest room and I call Carley’s room. The white lampshade is tilted, a couple of the bureau drawers are open an inch or two, the blinds askew. Even the prints on the wall are off-kilter. “Looking for something?” I say. “If you need to borrow anything, just ask me. I’ve probably got one.”
“I need my pills,” she says. “All of them.”
“It’s only time for your antibiotic. Well, really, not even that for twenty more minutes.”
“I’m going back home, so I’ll need all of them. And my painkillers, too.”
“Carley, you are home.”
“Home to Roland.”
I consciously try to keep my voice even and fail miserably. “So that stinking addict can get right into your Percocet? Nice street value on those. Or can you trade up? Or are you wanting to double or triple up because you’re in withdrawal? No way. The only thing Roland wants you for is sex and the groceries I bring you. What you want him for is a mystery. He’s a loser and he’s done nothing but drag you into the gutter with him.”
“You can’t tell me who to love. It’s my life and I’m …”
Now my finger juts at her chest. “Listen to me, little girl. You are not going back there. You … are … going … into … rehab.”
