Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  This was not terror. I pushed back against him. I felt his back flex under my hands, and I wanted my hands under his shirt.

  The door banged open. I jerked away, and John moved, too, but much more slowly than I did. Tamara and Taylor stood in the doorway, a bottle of something clear between them. They had red Solo cups in their hand.

  “At least you had your clothes on,” said Taylor, his arm around Tamara, squeezing. I could see her pale-blue bra strap, too tight, cutting into her skin.

  I felt my face heat up, and the blush embarrassed me as much as being wrapped around John. And cutting through the embarrassment, I thought, Taylor Boatwright is making out with Tamara in front of everyone? He is so going to regret it tomorrow.

  Taylor held out the bottle. “Want some?”

  “I put it in Seven-Up,” Tamara said, looking at me, her face round and pretty and needing to please. “You’ll want to mix it with something.”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know,” said John, his hand still on my thigh where everyone could see it, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  What if something happened? What if someone noticed?

  “Rachel?” he prompted.

  “What?” I asked.

  He scooted me closer to him, his arm lifting from my leg and settling around my shoulders, and I had seen endless boys do this with endless girls, and I had wanted it. More than I wanted the kissing. I relaxed against him, and I thought about what I wanted.

  “I will if you will,” he said. “One shot each?”

  Tamara giggled. She was propped against Taylor, unsteady. John ran his hand down my bare arm, and goose bumps rose all the way to my wrists. The pleasure of that touch knocked the fear out of me.

  The purses were scattered across the floor, like they’d hailed down from the cottage-cheese ceiling. I thought of Lucia, her feet hitting the sidewalk, crushing pinecones, never a pause. I thought of the ducks in Oak Park, startled, as she called out to strangers. Never afraid of anything.

  “Yes or no?” said Taylor, and his voice was slurred.

  “It’s up to you,” John said.

  He nudged me, jarring me loose, and that was a good thing. Taylor held out the bottle, and John reached for it. I put my hand above the waistband of his jeans and felt the muscles of his back stretching, and I could do anything I wanted.

  II.

  I wasn’t an idiot.

  I settled behind my steering wheel, letting my head fall back against the headrest. Eventually the overhead light went off, and I was left in the almost-dark and the almost-quiet: I could still hear the stereo playing inside Tina’s house.

  I had never been so happy to shut myself inside my hideous old-lady car. It had been smelling inexplicably of bananas, but now the familiar, sickly sweet smell was almost welcome. The pattern of my seats reminded me of ice cream sandwiches, and I ran my finger over the shallow holes. I did not want to drink whatever was in that bottle, and I did not want to get naked with John, at least not in the middle of an empty bedroom surrounded by purses and jean jackets. Really, if he wanted to get naked with me, he could at least ask me on a date, and why hadn’t he done that anyway?

  I could do anything I wanted. I had no one to ask me where I was going or what I was doing, and I didn’t want to waste that time drinking awful liquor or trying to decipher John Henderson. So I’d left.

  I was going to Lucia’s. Maybe she would be asleep, and maybe she would be watching TV or reading a book, and maybe I would tap on the window and she would wave me inside and she would be so glad to see me.

  I didn’t think that would happen. It was nearly midnight.

  Still. I had not looked into her den in months. I could at least look. That would be enough. And if Lucia were sitting there on the sofa, it would be a sign, wouldn’t it?

  The streets were nearly empty, and it must have rained earlier because the roads were black and shining wet. I had never driven this late at night, and the city looked different with the houses dark, the shadows dense, and the streetlights reflecting off the pavement. I’d found a new world hidden behind the old one, like Narnia inside the wardrobe.

  By the time I reached Lucia’s street, I was assessing logistics. More than once she’d heard my car door slam, and she’d spotted me through the front window before I made it up the driveway. I didn’t want to give her a warning tonight—I wanted to be the one deciding what to do. I parked several houses down from hers at a rose-brick ranch where every window was dark. My winter coat spent most of its time wadded up in my backseat, but I didn’t want to face Lucia with my cleavage on display, so I grabbed the coat and buttoned it over my halter top.

  The air was cold and electric as I eased the car door shut. I didn’t rush. If anyone was looking, I didn’t want them to see a suspicious girl running down the sidewalk. I moved slowly enough that I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. The stars were bright overhead, and the street was completely silent. Even the leaves on the trees were still.

  I was two houses away from Lucia’s when headlights flared along the pavement, and at the same time I heard music thumping. I glanced behind me, and I could see the headlights coming toward me fast. I couldn’t make out anything about the car, but the music was so loud—“Elvira”?—that the windows must have been rolled down. The car veered into the other lane, and quickly corrected, but that swerve left me nervous. Who was out at this time of night, playing loud country music and drifting into the wrong lane?

  The headlights came closer.

  They’ll drive by, I told myself. They’ll drive by. And yet I thought of a few months earlier, when Tina had been bringing me back to my dad’s after we’d gone to a late movie—Dad never gave me a curfew—and some guys in a pickup truck started honking. They pulled up next to us and shouted through the window, but we didn’t want to know what they were saying. Tina sped up, and the truck dropped behind us, riding our bumper all the way down the Southern Bypass to Dad’s house, even pulling into the driveway behind us. We ran to the front door, praying it was unlocked, which it was. The truck backed into the road and sped away, but Tina and I kept wondering—What if we hadn’t gotten inside? What then?

  I thought of my mother. Anyone could be out at this time of night, she’d told me in my roller-skating days. You could be kidnapped or crammed in a van or who knows what. It had been the things she wouldn’t name that scared her.

  As the light from the headlights spread across the street, I lunged behind a Jeep parked in the closest driveway. Hunching over, I balanced on the balls of my feet and told myself no one ever had to know that I’d thrown myself to the ground just because of a car coming down the street. Or maybe they would know: maybe tomorrow I’d tell everyone about how I’d been such a baby, terrified of headlights and a few giddy-up-a-oom-poppa-oom-poppa-mow-mows, and it would be hilarious, this picture of myself.

  I couldn’t see anything but the Jeep, the dark glass of the taillights and the grimy rubber of the bumper. I could see light, though, spilling under the car.

  The car had slowed down, and I knew they’d seen me. The music shut off.

  I heard their voices. Boys. They were still in the car, and one of them was laughing. I waited for a door to open. I waited for them to get out. I waited for them to come for me. My breath caught, and I choked on nothing but air.

  “I thought she—” one of them said.

  “Did you—”

  I couldn’t make out all the words. It was worse because I could only imagine how to fill in the gaps.

  More laughing.

  I peeked around the bumper. The car was stopped in the middle of the road. Surely they would pull over and park. I was no more than ten steps away, so easy to find, and it was foolish to stay here, practically trapped between the Jeep and the garage door.

  I could run. If they were going to come for me, I should run, an
d I should scream, and someone would help me. Lucia and Evan would help me, even. But the boys were still in the car, and once I moved, they might catch me before anyone could come, or too, they might drive off and I would be running and screaming through people’s front yards for no reason and everyone would throw open their doors and see me, and that was a whole different kind of fear.

  I did nothing.

  I kept my head down, and my thighs started to tremble. Maybe the boys suspected I’d gone inside the house. Maybe they’d seen my shadow, but they’d thought I was a fox or a deer or something else worth spotting, and now they were sitting there, harmless, hoping for a flash of yellow eyes in the dark. A thousand things were possible, and some of them were terrible and some of them were fine, but all I could do was wait and keep quiet. Was this how my mother felt every single day?

  The music came back, full volume. One of the Oak Ridge Boys singing about how his heart was on fire.

  The engine revved, and the driver hit the gas hard enough that the tires squealed. Then the driveway went dark again, and they were gone.

  I stayed where I was for a little while. Breathing. When I stood, I watched the road. They had probably been my age, I told myself. The worst they would have done was to make some comment about my butt. They’d have asked if I wanted to go for a ride and they’d have hooted at me when I said no.

  That’s what would have happened.

  The streets were empty again. I was steps away from Lucia’s. Now the idea of peering through the glass and seeing her there, sunk into the couch, seemed so necessary that I was sure I would find that exact scene. I would tell her what happened, and she would bring me a ginger ale.

  I didn’t get to the window. I didn’t get to the carport. I only got as far as the edge of the yard, which is when I saw the for sale sign.

  I stared at it for longer than I should have, as if there could be some explanation other than that Lucia and Evan were going to move. The sign said for sale, not sold, but there wasn’t much difference. She was leaving. She would leave and I would have no idea where she was going, and she would be gone.

  Lucia was not longing for me to knock on her door. She was, actually, arranging it so I would never knock on her door again.

  Lucia

  I.

  As usual during the first rounds of March Madness, every chair and stool in Rhonda’s was filled. Glass bowls of peanuts and pretzels lined the bar. The lights were low and the smoke was heavy. The TV screens flashed above the liquor shelves, reflecting off the gloss of the bar. It was a massive slab of blond and dark wood, which conveniently matched beer and pretzels almost exactly.

  “Settle down,” said Evan, raising his palms to the television. “Still plenty of time.”

  Lucia didn’t agree. It was looking like Ohio State was going to crash and burn in the first round, and James Madison was miraculously going to head to the Sweet Sixteen.

  “They need bigger TVs,” Evan said. “You can’t hear worth a damn in here. Yes! Did you see that? Did you see it?”

  Clark Kellogg had hit a shot, but it was surely too little, too late. Neither he nor the other guy—Campbell—showed any signs of getting hot, and it was the fourth quarter.

  “I did,” Lucia said. “I’m sitting right here next to you. And you can never hear anything in Rhonda’s.”

  Evan was doing that thing he did with his palms, rubbing them against the bar, back and forth. Lucia supposed he found it soothing, but she had seen the rags that the bartender used to wipe down the wood, and she hoped Evan didn’t intend to put his hands on her next.

  She looked down at her napkin, where she had sketched out various squares and words and diagonal lines. None of it meant anything, but sometimes a pencil in her hand helped her think. Sometimes a crowded bar helped her think. You could never tell. Sara Conway was sure that her husband was having an affair, and she didn’t seem like the hallucinatory type. But the bank statement and credit card records didn’t show any of the usual red flags. No large sums of money being withdrawn. No secret credit card or unexplained trips for two.

  Still. It was possible that she hadn’t gotten the angle quite right yet.

  The couple sitting next to her stood, the wooden legs of the chairs squawking. The woman bent down for her purse, and her elbow caught Lucia in the thigh.

  The woman apologized profusely, and Lucia resituated her own purse in her lap. She felt the distinctive weight of the pistol shift, so different than the heft of her wallet and checkbook. She watched Evan’s hand slide across the pretzel-spattered wood, reaching for her drink.

  “Not your usual,” he said, taking a swallow.

  “I know,” she said. “For some reason I wanted something sweet. Diet Coke and rum sounded good.”

  “It’s not Diet Coke,” he said, turning back to the screen. Or maybe he’d never turned away from it. “It’s regular.”

  “What?” she said. “No, it’s not. I ordered Diet.”

  His head bobbed slightly in time with a dribble down the court.

  “Well,” he said, “the bartender must’ve heard you wrong, because he poured you regular. I watched him. You were drawing on your napkin.”

  She tested her drink, letting it roll around her mouth. She tasted rum and melted ice and who knew which kind of Coke it was?

  “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

  At the end of the bar, three large men and one large woman in matching Tennessee T-shirts screamed in harmony.

  “I thought you must have ordered it,” Evan said.

  “I never order regular Coke,” she said.

  He watched the screen.

  She tried to end it there. She had learned one of the great lessons of marriage during their first month. Her parents had come for dinner, and she was cooking and setting the table. All that was needed was for someone to ask them if they’d like tea or water when they walked through the door, and Evan hadn’t done it. So she’d had to stop simultaneously stirring pasta and slicing tomatoes and buttering the garlic bread, and she had fixed the drinks while he sat chatting on the sofa as if he were a guest, too, and she was so angry she could hardly unclench her hands from the tea glasses. She didn’t turn on him then only because her parents were in the room, and by the time they left, she wasn’t angry anymore. The next morning she told him, “Do you know how I was running around cooking and you were sitting there with my parents? It would have been really helpful if you’d offered them drinks.” And he’d said, “Oh. Sure. I can see that. I’ll start doing drinks when people come over.”

  She’d told herself, ah, this was good to know. Wait until the anger passes. Don’t attack.

  “Evan,” she said now, “I have never ordered a regular Coca-Cola in the whole time you’ve known me. Not once. I only like Diet.”

  “I figured that’s what you wanted this time.”

  “I have never ordered one,” she said again.

  He did not seem to realize what he had revealed. Was it possible that—all these years—he had paid so little attention? She had always felt so sure that no one had ever known her as deeply and as well as he had, but could that be true if he had these sorts of gaps? Had he never bothered to know her at all?

  It would make these past months make so much more sense.

  “It’s just a Coke, Lucia,” he said. “Order another drink.”

  She shoved her drink away. It sloshed over the sides, and she blotted at the spill with her napkin.

  Another missed shot by Ohio State. The far corner of the bar groaned, bottles slamming against wood. On screen, the Buckeyes trudged back down the court, clearly knowing it was over.

  “Campbell needs to get his head in the game,” said the play-by-play guy. “Right now James Madison just wants it more.”

  Lucia hated that kind of stupid talk. As if a player’s main flaw was a lack of desire. As
if simple wanting made a thing happen. She imagined Campbell wanted to win this game desperately. She imagined he was thinking about nothing but making his shots, and yet the shots weren’t falling, and sometimes you had days like that, and thank God in real life announcers didn’t follow you around rendering judgment.

  Evan rubbed his palms against the bar.

  She wanted to get her head in the game. She wanted to feel what she used to feel.

  II.

  It was one of the first jolts of true spring, a spike to seventy degrees when the winter coats were still hanging by the door. The weather wouldn’t last, but it was the sort of tease that made Alabama a good place to be in March.

  Lucia stretched her legs, her toes touching the grass. She could feel the wrought-iron pattern of the chair embossed on the backs of her thighs, but she didn’t mind it. She listened to the leaves gossip.

  “We could go out,” said Paula, slicking more baby oil on her smooth brown arms. Evan’s sister had the skin Lucia had always wanted. “Seriously, you don’t have to cook.”

  “It’s all done,” Lucia answered. “Just finger foods. Nothing fancy. Watson’s fine with cheese and crackers, right? Apple slices?”

  “He eats anything,” Paula said. “Except blueberries. And onions.”

  “No pretzels,” said Watson.

  The three-year-old looked up from his place in the grass, where he had been hunting a grasshopper. He laid a hand on his mother’s knee, then let it trail down her oil-slick calf.

  “You’re wet,” he said accusingly.

  “I don’t like pretzels, either,” Lucia told him.

  “They smell like gym floor,” Watson said.

  He turned back to his bug, sand-colored hair falling over his face. Soon enough he jerked, toppling backward, catching himself on his elbows. He’d had the same reaction every other time the grasshopper hopped. He hunched over again, his face low to the ground. The grasshopper would probably blind him next time.