My Life Next Door

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  What I’m imagining is true cannot possibly, cannot possibly, be the truth, so I hold on to Jase and try to pour all my love and any strength I have into him, through my lips and my arms and my body. I push away that whisper of “Shore Road” and Mom saying “Oh my God” and Clay’s steady voice and that awful thump. I fold them up, pack them away, wrap them in bubble wrap and duct tape.

  We’ve been urgent together, in a hurry to feel all we can feel, but never like this, never so frantic. He’s pulling at my shirt and I’m gliding my palms up his smooth sides, feeling his muscles twitch with tension and response, his lips warm on my throat, my fingers in his hair, a little desperate and somehow a relief, some sense of the strength of life in this still night.

  Afterward, Jase ducks his head, bending it heavily against my shoulder, breathing hard. We say nothing for a while.

  Then, “Do I need to apologize?” he asks. “I don’t know what that…I don’t know why I…It helped, but…”

  I slide my fingers slowly to his lips. “No, don’t. Don’t. It helped me too.”

  We stay there for a long time, our heartbeats edging gradually back to normal, sweat drying on our skin, our breaths intermingling. Finally, without words, we climb into Jase’s bed. He urges my head to his chest gently, warm hand against my neck. In no time, his breathing evens out, but I lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

  Mom. What did you do?

  Chapter Forty

  “Jase. Honey? Jase.” Mrs. Garrett’s voice is loud outside the hushed room. She rattles the doorknob slightly, but he’d locked it, so it doesn’t open. He springs up, at the door in a flash, his tall body silhouetted against the light, unlocking, but then opening it as little as possible.

  “Is Dad…What’s happening?” His voice cracks.

  “He’s stable. They did an emergency procedure—drilled something called a burr hole to relieve pressure in his skull. Alice says that’s standard. I just came home to change clothes and pump for Patsy. Joel’s there. We really can’t tell much until he wakes up.” Her voice is strong but full of tears. “Sure you can take care of the store today?”

  “I’m on it, Mom.”

  “Alice is going to stay with me, to interpret the medical-ese. Joel has to go to work, but he’ll be back tonight. Can you get Tim to help you out? I know it’s not his day, but—” Moving out into the hall, he bends to hug her. I always think of Mrs. Garrett as tall. With a shock, I realize she’s as small as me against her lanky son.

  “It’ll be fine. We’ll work it out. Tim already said he’d open up. Tell Dad…tell Dad I love him. Bring something to read to him. The Perfect Storm book? He’s been wanting to read that one forever. It’s in his truck.”

  “Samantha? Can you stay with the kids?” Mrs. Garrett calls.

  Even in the dim light, I see him flush. “Sam was just…” He trails off. Poor Jase. What can he say? Dropping by? Helping me feed the animals?

  “It’s okay,” she says quickly. “Can you stay, Sam?”

  “I’ll be here,” I call.

  The day passes in a blur. I do the things I do when babysitting for the Garretts, but they don’t work the way they’re supposed to. I’ve never had Patsy for more than a few hours, and it’s a toss-up which she hates more—the bottle or me. Mrs. Garrett calls in at ten, apologizing: She can’t come home to nurse her and there’s some breast milk in the freezer. Patsy won’t have any of that. She bats the bottle away, wailing. By two in the afternoon, she’s a red-faced, sobbing, sweaty mess. I know from the note of hysteria in her cry how tired she is, but she won’t nap. When I put her in the crib she throws all the stuffed animals out of it in a clear protest. George doesn’t leave my side. He recites facts to me in a hushed, tense tone, clutching my arm to make sure I pay attention, crying easily. Harry systematically works his way through the things he’s not supposed to do, hitting George and Duff, throwing an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet “to see what happens,” taking a tube of cookie dough out of the refrigerator and starting to eat it with his fingers. By the time Jase comes in at five, I’m inches away from lying down on the rug next to Patsy and drumming my heels too. But I’m glad I’m busy because it almost…not quite, but almost…shuts down the line of thoughts that run through my mind like a news crawl at the bottom of a TV screen. This can’t have anything to do with Mom. It can’t. There’s no way.

  Jase looks so drained, and I pull myself together, ask how sales went, if he’s heard more from the hospital.

  “More nothing,” he says, unlacing one sneaker and tossing it into the mudroom. “He’s stable. There’s no change. I don’t even know what stable’s supposed to mean. He’s been hit by a car and had a hole drilled in his skull. ‘Stable’ is what you say when everything is the same. But nothing’s the same here.” He throws his second sneaker hard against the wall, leaving a black smudge. The noise startles Patsy in my arms and she starts wailing again.

  Jase looks at her, then reaches out his arms, cuddles her in, his tan skin stark against her soft pale arms. “I’m guessing your day sucked too, Sam.”

  “Not the same way.” Patsy grabs a fistful of his T-shirt and tries to put it in her mouth.

  “Poor baby,” Jase says softly into Patsy’s neck.

  Alice comes home soon after this, bringing pizza and more no news wrapped in medical jargon. “They had to do the burr hole to relieve intracranial pressure, Jase. Swelling of the brain is always a concern when there’s a head injury, and it seems as though he landed right on his head. But patients usually recover from that with no long-term sequelae—consequences—as long as there isn’t additional trauma we don’t know about yet.”

  Jase shakes his head, biting his lip and turning away as the younger kids tumble into the kitchen, lured by the smell of pizza and the sound of older people who can make sense of everything.

  “I biked out to Shore Road this afternoon,” Duff offers, “looking for clues. Nothin’.”

  “This isn’t CSI, Duff.” Alice’s voice is sharper than the wheel she’s using to slice pizza.

  “It’s a mystery, though. Someone hit Dad and just drove away. I thought maybe I’d see skid marks and we could ID the tires. Or broken bits of plastic from a headlight or something. Then maybe we could match it to a certain type of car and—”

  “Get nowhere,” Alice says. “Whoever hit Dad is long gone.”

  “Most hit-and-run drivers are never identified,” admits Duff. “I read that online too.”

  I shut my eyes as a shameful wave of relief rolls through me.

  Jase walks over to the screen door, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Jesus. How could someone do that? What kind of a person would? Hit someone—hit another human being with their car and just keep on going?”

  I feel sick. “Maybe they didn’t know they’d hit someone?”

  “Impossible.” His voice is harder, tougher than I’ve ever heard it. “When you’re driving, you know when you hit a rough patch of gravel, an old piece of tire, a fast-food container, a dead squirrel. No way could you hit a one-hundred-and-seventy-pound man and not notice.”

  “Maybe the person who hit him was the person he was meeting up with,” Duff speculates “Maybe Dad is involved in some top secret business and—”

  “Duff. This is not Spy Kids. This is real life. Our life.” Alice shoves a paper plate violently toward her younger brother.

  Duff’s face flushes, tears flooding his eyes. He swallows, looking down at his slice. “I’m just trying to help.”

  Jase moves behind him, squeezing his shoulder. “We know. Thanks, Duffy. We know.”

  The little kids dig in, their appetites intact, despite everything.

  “Maybe Dad’s in the mob,” Duff speculates a little while later, eyes dry now, mouth full. “And he was about to blow the whistle on the whole thing and—”

  “Shut the heck up, Duff! Daddy’s not in the mob! He’s not even Italian!” Andy shouts.

  “There’s a Chinese mob and a—”
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  “Knock it off! You’re just being stupid and annoying on purpose.” Now Andy bursts into tears.

  “Guys,” Jase begins.

  “Be. Quiet. Now,” Alice says in a flat voice so deadly, everyone freezes.

  George puts his head down on the table, covering his ears. Patsy points an accusing finger at Alice and says, “Butt!” Duff sticks his tongue out at Andy, who glares back at him. My Garretts are in chaos.

  There’s a long silence, broken by sobs from George.

  “I want Daddy,” he howls. “I don’t like you, Alice. You’re a big meanie. I want Mommy and Daddy. We need to get Daddy out of the hostible. He’s not safe there. He could get an air bubble in his IV. He could get bad medicine. He could get a mean nurse who is a murderer.”

  “Buddy.” Jase scoops George up. “That’s not gonna happen.”

  “How do you know?” George asks fiercely, his legs dangling. “D’you promise?”

  Jase shuts his eyes, rubs one hand on George’s little pointy-sharp shoulder blade. “Promise.”

  But I can see that George doesn’t believe him.

  Worn out, Patsy falls asleep in her high chair, her rosy cheek drooping into a smear of tomato sauce. George and Harry watch a very unlikely movie about a bunch of baby dinosaurs having adventures in the tropics. Alice heads back to the ICU. I call Mom to tell her I won’t be home for dinner. She answers from some loud place with lots of laughter in the background. “That’s okay, sweetheart, I’m at a meet-and-greet at the Tidewater anyway. So many more people showed up than we expected. It’s a huge success!”

  Her voice is even and cheerful, no tension there at all. It must be a coincidence, has to be, that bump in the night and Mr. Garrett. There can’t be any connection. If I brought it up, I’d sound crazy.

  She raised us to be conscientious. The worst thing Tracy and I could do was lie: “What you did was wrong, but lying about it made it a hundred times worse” was a speech so familiar, we could have set it to music.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Dishes clatter and crash when I call in to Breakfast Ahoy to quit, the next day. I can hear Ernesto swearing about the unusually big morning rush as I tell Felipe that I won’t be coming back in. He’s incredulous. Yeah, I know, it’s completely unlike me to quit without notice. Much less at the height of the summer season. But the Garretts need me.

  “No creo que se pueda volver y recuperar su trabajo,” Felipe snaps, moved to his native Spanish before he translates. “Don’t think you can come marching back in and get your job back, missy. You go out now, and you go out for keeps.”

  I suppress a stab of sorrow. The relentless pace and energy of Breakfast Ahoy have been an antidote to the long stretches of stillness and tedium at the B&T. But I can’t escape the B&T—Mom would hear about that right away.

  Jase protests, but I ignore him.

  “Getting rid of that uniform? Long overdue,” I tell him. More importantly, quitting Breakfast Ahoy frees up three mornings of my week.

  “I hate that this changes your life too.”

  But nothing like the way things are changing for the Garretts. Mrs. Garrett practically lives at the hospital. She comes home to feed Patsy, snatch a few hours of sleep, and have long, ominous-sounding conversations on the phone with the hospital billing department. Alice, Joel, and Jase trade off spending nights with their dad. George wets his bed constantly and Patsy hates the bottle with a mighty passion. Harry starts swearing more often than Tim, and Andy spends all her time on Facebook and reading, rereading Twilight again and again.

  The night air in my room is warm and close, suffocating, and I wake, gasping for cool air and water. I head downstairs toward to the kitchen, stopping when I hear Mom. “It doesn’t feel right, Clay.”

  “We’ve gone over this. How many glasses of wine had you had?”

  Her voice is high and shaky. “Three—four, maybe? I don’t know. Not all of them, anyway, just a few sips here and there.”

  “Over the legal limit, Grace. This would end your career. Do you understand? No one knows. It’s done. Move on.”

  “Clay, I—”

  “Look at what’s at stake here. You can do more good to more people if you get reelected. This was a blip—a misstep. Everybody in public life has ’em. You’re luckier than most—yours wasn’t public.”

  Mom’s ringtone sounds. “It’s Malcolm from the office,” she says. “I’d better take it.”

  “Hold on,” Clay says. “Listen to yourself, sugar. Listen. Your first thought is for your duty. Right in the middle of a personal crisis. You really want to deprive people of that dedication? Think about it. Is that the right thing to do?”

  I hear the tap of Mom’s heels moving into her office, and I start to edge back up the stairs.

  “Samantha,” Clay says quietly. “I know you’re there.”

  I freeze. He can’t know. The stairs are carpeted, I’m barefoot.

  “You’re reflected in the hall mirror.”

  “I was just…thirsty and I…”

  “Heard all that,” Clay concludes.

  “I didn’t…” My voice trails off.

  He comes around the corner of the stairs, leaning against the stairway wall, arms folded, a casual stance, but there’s something unnaturally still about him.

  “I didn’t come here by chance,” he tells me softly. He’s backlit by the kitchen light and I can’t quite make out his face. “I’d heard about your mother. Your mama…she’s good, Samantha. The party’s interested. She’s got the whole package. Looks, style, substance…she could be big. National. Easy.”

  “But—” I say. “She hit him, didn’t she?” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. He turns slightly and now I can see him better. I want so much for surprise or confusion to cross his face. But they aren’t there, just that focused, intent look, a little grimmer now.

  “An accident.”

  “Does that matter? Mr. Garrett’s still hurt. Badly. And they don’t have medical insurance and they’re already broke and—”

  “That’s sad,” Clay says. “Really. Good people struggle. Life’s not fair. But there are people who can change things, who are important. Your mother’s one of them. I know you’re close to those Garretts. But think about the big picture here, Samantha.”

  In my head I see Mr. Garrett patiently training Jase, coming up behind Mrs. Garrett in the kitchen, dropping a kiss on her shoulder, making me feel welcome, reaching out to Tim, scooping up the sleepy George, his face in the shifting light of the fireworks, solid and capable, clicking his pen and rubbing his eyes over accounts at the store. “They are the big picture.”

  “When you’re seventeen with your hormones in a riot, maybe.” He laughs softly. “I know that seems like the whole world now.”

  “It’s not about that,” I argue. “Mom did something wrong. You know it. I know it. Something that hurt someone seriously. And—”

  Clay sits down on the steps, tilts his head back against the wall, tolerant, almost amused. “Shouldn’t your first concern be for your own mother? You know how hard she works at this job. How much it means to her. Could you really live with yourself if you took that away?”

  His voice gets softer. “You and me and your mama. We’re the only three people in the whole world who know about this. You start talking, you tell that family and everyone will know. It’ll be in the papers, on the news—might even go national. You wouldn’t be the privileged princess in her perfect world anymore. You’d be the daughter of a criminal. How would that feel?”

  Bile burns the back of my throat. “I’m not a princess,” I say.

  “Of course you are,” Clay responds evenly. He waves his hand, indicating the big living room, elegant furnishings, expensive artwork. “You’ve always been one, so you think it’s normal. But everything you have—everything you are—comes from your mama. From her family money and her hard work. Fine way to pay her back.”

  “Couldn’t she just—explain—I mean—come for
ward and—”

  “You can’t talk your way out of leaving the scene of an accident you’ve caused, Samantha. Especially if you’re in public office. Not even Teddy Kennedy managed that, in case you haven’t heard. This would ruin your mother’s life. And yours. And, just to put it on a level you can understand, I don’t think it would do much for your romance either. I’m not sure your fella would really want to be dating the daughter of the woman who crippled his dad.”

  The words drop from Clay’s mouth so easily, and I picture trying to tell Jase what happened, how he’d look at me, remembering his face in the waiting room at the hospital, the lost expression in his eyes. He’d hate me. What kind of a person could do that? he’d asked. How can I possibly answer: “My own mother.”

  Clay’s calm face wavers through the tears that have rushed to my eyes. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cloth handkerchief and hands it to me.

  “This isn’t the end of the world,” he says gently. “Just one boy, one summer. But I’ll tell you something I’ve learned in my time, Samantha. Family is everything.”

  Leaving scene of accident: One of most serious felonies in the state of Connecticut. Up to ten years of prison time and 10,000 dollars fine. I stare at the information I’ve hunted for online until the stark black words mallet against my eyeballs.

  What would happen if Mom went to jail for a decade? Tracy’d have college, then she’d be off, somewhere…But where would I go? It’s not as if I can throw myself on the mercy of my father. Since he didn’t stick around for me to be born, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be thrilled to have me show up on his doorstep as a teenager.

  But Mr. Garrett…It was Jase’s night at the hospital tonight. He called me to say, “Dad’s awake, and that’s good, and he recognized us. But now he’s got something called ‘deep vein thrombosis’ and they can’t give him drugs for it because of the head thing. They don’t want bleeding into his brain. I listen to the medical jargon…don’t get why they don’t just say it in English. Maybe because it’s so damn scary.”