My Life Next Door

  “Why?” Folding her arms, Alice settles herself firmly against the door.

  “I have something I have to—say to him.” My voice is hoarse. I clear my throat. Tim moves a little closer, either in support or to peer down Alice’s bikini.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s all been said,” she says flatly. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”

  The part of me used to doing what I’m told, toeing the line, my mother’s daughter, runs down the driveway in tears. But the rest of me, the real me, doesn’t budge. I can’t go back where I came from. That Samantha’s gone.

  “I need to see him, Alice. Is he here?”

  She shakes her head. Since Mr. Garrett’s accident, she hasn’t kept up with her constant hair transformations, and now it’s wavy brown with blond highlights growing out badly. “I don’t see any reason to let you know where he is. Leave him be.”

  “It’s important, Alice,” Tim cuts in, evidently regaining focus.

  After fixing him with a withering stare, she turns back to me. “Look, we don’t have time or space for your dramas, Samantha. I’d started to think you were different, not just another private school princess, but looks like that’s exactly what you are. My brother doesn’t need that.”

  “What your brother doesn’t need is you fighting his battles.” I wish I were taller and could intimidate her by looming imposingly, but Alice and I are the same height. All the better for her to shoot her death-ray glare straight into my eyes.

  “Yeah, well, he’s my brother, so his battles are my battles,” Alice says.

  “Whoa, you two.” Tim moves into our midst, towering over both of us. “I can’t believe I’m actually breaking up a fight between two hot babes, but this is fucked up. Jase needs to hear what Samantha has to say, Alice. Put away your bullwhip.”

  Alice ignores him. “Look, I know you want to do that whole make-yourself-feel-better routine, la-la-la, you never meant to hurt him and you’d like to stay friends and all that garbage. But let’s just skip all that. Go. You’re done here.”

  “Sailor Supergirl!” says a happy voice, and there’s George, pushing his nose into the mesh of the screen. “I had an Eskimo pie for breakfast today. Do you know that it’s not really made by Eskimos? Or”—his voice drops—“out of Eskimos. Did you know that Eskimos make their ice cream out of seal fat? That’s kinda yuck.”

  I bend down, away from Alice. “George—is Jase home?”

  “He’s in his room. Want me to take you there? Or go get him?” His face is so alight and alive seeing me, no reproach for my disappearing act. George of the forgiving heart. I wonder what the Garretts—Jase—told him—told anyone—about me. As I watch, though, his expression clouds over. “You don’t think they make the ice cream out of baby seals, do you? Those little white fluffy ones?”

  Alice pushes herself more firmly against the door. “George, Samantha was just leaving. Don’t bother Jase.”

  “They would never make ice cream out of baby seals,” I tell George. “They only make ice cream out of…” I have no idea how to finish this sentence.

  “Terminally ill seals,” Tim intervenes. “Suicidal seals.”

  George looks understandably confused.

  “Seals who want to be ice cream,” Alice tells him briskly. “They volunteer. There’s a lottery. It’s an honor.”

  He nods, digesting this. We’re all watching his face to see if this explanation flew. Then I hear a voice behind him say, “Sam?”

  His hair’s sticking out in all directions, shower-damp. The smudges beneath his eyes are deeper and his jaw sharper.

  “Hey, dude,” Tim says. “Just bringing your girl by, admiring your bodyguard, all that. But,” he says, backing down the steps, “goin’ now. Catch you later. Feel free to call anytime to set up that mud-wrestling match, Alice.”

  Alice reluctantly moves aside as Jase pushes open the screen door, then shrugs, heading back into the house.

  Jase steps out, face expressionless.

  “So,” he says. “Why’re you here?”

  George returns to the screen. “Do you think it has flavors? The ice cream? Like chocolate chip seal or seal with strawberry swirl?”

  “Buddy,” Jase tells him. “We’ll check it out later, okay?”

  George backs off.

  “Do you have the Bug? Or the motorcycle?” I ask.

  “I can get the Bug,” he says. “Joel’s got the cycle at work.” He turns back to the door and shouts, “Al, I’m taking the car.”

  I can’t quite hear Alice’s response, but I’m betting all the words have four letters.

  “So, where are we going?” he asks, once we get into the car.

  I wish I knew.

  “McGuire Park,” I suggest.

  Jase flinches. “Not full of happy memories right now, Sam.”

  “I know,” I say, putting my hand on his knee. “But I want to be private. We can walk out to the lighthouse or something if you want. I just need to be alone with you.” Jase looks at my hand. I remove it.

  “Let’s do McGuire then. The Secret Hideaway is a safe bet.” His voice is level, emotionless. He reverses the car, hitting the gas harder than he usually does, turning down Main Street.

  It’s silent between us, the kind of awkward silence that never used to happen. The well-trained (Mom’s daughter) part of me wants to fill it with babble: So, lovely weather lately, I’m fine, thank you, and you? Great! How about them Sox?

  But I don’t. I just stare at my hands on my lap, stealing glances at his impassive profile from time to time.

  He reaches out automatically to help me as we jump from stone to stone to the tilted rock in the river. The clasp of that warm strong hand is so familiar, so safe, that when he lets go as we reach the rock, my own feels incomplete.

  “So…” he says, sitting down, wrapping his arms around his legs, and looking, not at me, but out at the water.

  There may be proper words for this situation. A tactful way to lead up. A convincing explanation. But I don’t know them. All that comes out is the unvarnished, awful truth.

  “It was my mother who hit your father. She was driving the car.”

  Jase’s head snaps around, eyes wide. I watch the color leach from his face under his tan. His lips part, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “I was there. Asleep in the backseat. I didn’t see it. I wasn’t sure what had happened. For days. I didn’t realize.” I meet his eyes, waiting to see astonishment turn to scorn, scorn to contempt, telling myself I’ll survive. But he just keeps staring at me. I wonder if he’s gone into shock and I should repeat it. I remember him giving me a Hershey’s bar after that ride with Tim because Alice said chocolate was good for shock. I wish I had some. I wait for him to say something, anything, but he just looks as though I’ve punched him in the gut and he can’t breathe.

  “Clay was there too,” I add uselessly. “He was the one who told her to drive away, not that it matters, because she did it, but—”

  “Did they even stop?” Jase’s voice rises, harsh. “And make sure he was breathing? Tell him help was coming? Anything?”

  I try to pull a full breath of air into my lungs, but can’t seem to manage. “They didn’t. Mom backed up and drove away. Clay called 911 from a pay phone nearby.”

  “He was all alone there in the rain, Samantha.”

  I nod, trying to swallow the barbed wire caught in my throat. “If I had known, if I’d realized,” I say, “I would have gotten out of the car. I would have. But I was asleep when it happened, they just backed away—it happened so fast.”

  He straightens up, turning to stare out at the water. Then says something in a voice so low, the river breeze carries the words away. I move next to him. I want to touch him, to bridge this gap like that, but he’s stiff and still, a force field around him, holding me back

  “When did you know?” he asks, in that same low tone.

  “I had a feeling when you talked about Shore Road, but—”

>   “That was the next day,” Jase interrupts, loud now. “The next day when the surgeons were drilling holes in Dad’s skull and the police were still acting like they were going to figure this all out.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he walks away from me, away from the flat part of the rock to the jagged side that slopes into the water.

  I follow, touch his shoulder. “But I didn’t really know. Let myself know. Not until I heard Clay and Mom talking a week later.”

  Jase doesn’t turn toward me, still looking out at the river. But he doesn’t jerk away either.

  “That’s when you decided it was a good time to break up?” No emotion in his always expressive voice.

  “That’s when I knew I couldn’t face you. And Clay had threatened to rescind all these contracts Mom’s campaign has with your dad’s store, and I…”

  He swallows, absorbing this. Then his eyes flick to mine. “This is a lot. To take in.”

  I nod.

  “I haven’t been able to get that picture out of my head. Dad lying there in the rain. He landed face-first, did you know that? The car bumped him and threw him through the air. Ten feet, probably. He was in a puddle when the EMTs got there. A few more minutes and he would have drowned.”

  Again, I want to just run. There’s nothing to say and no way to fix anything.

  “He doesn’t remember anything about that,” Jase continues. “Only noticing it looked like rain and then fade to black until the hospital. But I keep thinking he must have realized at the time. That he was alone and hurt and there was nobody there who cared.” He wrenches his body toward mine. “You would have stayed with him?”

  They say you never know what you’d do in a hypothetical situation. We’d all like to think we’d be one of the people who gave up their lifejackets and waved a stoic good-bye from the slanting deck of the Titanic, someone who jumped in front of a bullet for a stranger, or turned and raced back up the stairs of one of the Towers, in search of someone who needed help rather than our own security. But you just don’t know for sure if, when things fall apart, you’ll think Safety first or if safety will be the last thing on your mind.

  I look into Jase’s eyes and tell the only truth I have. “I don’t know. I didn’t have that choice. But I know what’s happening now. And I’m choosing to stay with you.”

  It’s not clear who reaches for whom. Doesn’t matter. I have Jase in my arms and mine hold him tight. I’ve done so much crying that there are no tears. Jase’s shoulders shake but gradually still. No words for a long time.

  Which is fine, because even the most important ones—I love you. I’m sorry. Forgive me? I’m here—are only stand-ins for what you can say better without talking at all.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The drive back to the Garretts’ is as silent as the drive to the park was, but a whole different kind of silence. Jase’s free hand intertwines in mine when he doesn’t need to shift gears, and I lean across the space between our seats to rest my head on his shoulder.

  We’re pulling into the driveway next to the van when he asks, “What now, Sam?”

  Telling him was the hardest part. But not the end of the hard parts. Facing Alice. Mrs. Garrett. My mom.

  “I only got as far as you.”

  Jase nods, biting his bottom lip, shifting the clutch into park.

  His jaw tightens and he looks down at his hands. “How do you want to do this? Are you going to come in with me?”

  “I think I have to tell Mom. That you know. She’s going to be—” I scrub my hands over my face. “Well, I have no idea what she’s going to be. Or do. Clay either. But I’ve got to tell her.”

  “Look, I’m gonna take some time to think. How to say it. Whether I start with Mom or…I don’t know. I’ll have my cell. If anything happens, if you need me, call, okay?”

  “Okay.” I begin climbing out of the car, but Jase catches hold of my hand, stopping me.

  “I’m not sure what to think,” he says. “You knew this. From the start. I mean, how could you not have?”

  Kind of a crucial question.

  “How could you not have realized that something terrible had happened?” Jase asks.

  “I was asleep,” I answer. “Longer than I should have been.”

  I know Mom’s home when I get there because her navy blue sandals are outside the door, her Prada purse slung on the lowboy in the hallway, but she’s not in the kitchen or living room. So I head upstairs, to her suite, feeling this sense of trespassing, even though I’m in my own home.

  She must be deciding what to wear to some new event, and indecisively, because there are piles of clothes tossed on the bed…a rainbow of florals, soft pastels, and rich ocean colors, starkly contrasted by her power-suit whites and navies.

  The shower’s running.

  Mom’s bathroom’s huge. She’s renovated it a bunch of times over the years. Each time it’s gotten bigger, more luxurious. It’s fully carpeted with a couch and a sunken bathtub, towel warmers and a glass shower with seven nozzles spraying from every direction. It’s all done in a color my mother calls oyster, which looks like gray to me. She’s got a vanity and a little upholstered bench set up in the corner, with a parade of perfumes and lotions, glass bottles, squat jars, and miles of makeup. When I crack the door open, the room’s filled with clouds of steam, so thick I can barely see. “Mom?” I call.

  She gives a little shriek. “Don’t do that, Samantha. Don’t walk in when someone’s taking a shower! Haven’t you seen Psycho?”

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “I’m exfoliating.”

  “When you’re done. But soon.”

  The shower squeaks off abruptly. “Can you hand me a towel? And my robe?”

  I unhook her apricot silk robe from the door, where, I cannot help but notice, a navy blue man’s robe also hangs. She reaches out around the shower door and clutches at the silk.

  Once the robe is knotted neatly around her waist and the plush oyster-colored towel wraps her hair like a turban, she sits down at the vanity, reaching for her skin cream.

  “I’ve been considering a little Restylane between the eyebrows,” she says. “Not enough to look ‘done,’ just to take away that little crinkle here.” She indicates a nonexistent wrinkle, then pulls her forehead taut with both hands. “I think it would be a smart career move, because lines in your forehead make it seem like you’re fretting. My constituents shouldn’t think I’m concerned about anything—that would undermine their confidence, don’t you think?” She smiles at me, my mother with her convoluted logic and her towel crown.

  I have chosen the Road of No Small Talk. “Jase knows.”

  She pales beneath her face cream, then her brows snap together. “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  Mom springs up from the upholstered bench so quickly, she knocks it over. “Samantha…why?”

  “I had to, Mom.”

  She paces across the room, walks back. And for the first time, I do notice the lines across her forehead, the long grooves parenthesizing her mouth. “We had this conversation, agreed that for the good of all, we would put this behind us.”

  “That was the conversation you had with Clay, Mom. Not the one with me.”

  She stops, eyes shooting sparks. “You gave me your word.”

  “I never did. You just didn’t hear what I really said.”

  Mom deflates onto the bench, shoulders slumped, then looks up at me, eyes wide and beseeching. “I’ll lose Clay too. If there’s a scandal, when there’s a scandal, and I have to resign—he won’t stick around. Clay Tucker plays for the winning team. That’s who he is.”

  How could Mom even want to be with a man she knew that about? If trouble comes, babe, I’m outta here. I’m glad I don’t know my father. Sad, but true. If he and Clay are how my mother thinks men are, I can only pity her.

  Tears glisten in her eyes. Knee-jerk, tired guilt kicks in, but doesn’t coil in my stomach the way saying nothing did.

  Mo
m pivots back to the mirror, propping her elbows on the counter and staring at her reflection. “I need time to myself, Samantha.”

  I put my hand on the door handle. “Mom?”

  “What now?”

  “Can you look at me?”

  She meets my eyes in the mirror. “Why?”

  “Face-to-face.”

  With a gusty sigh, Mom turns around on the bench. “Yes?”

  “Tell me to my face that you think I did the wrong thing. You look at me and say that. If that’s what you really believe.”

  Unlike my own eyes, flecked with gold and maybe green too, Mom’s are an undiluted blue. She meets my gaze, holds it for a beat, then looks away.

  “I didn’t tell anyone yet,” Jase says when I open the window to him early that evening, the sun hanging low in the sky.

  Worn out from talking with Mom, I’m simply glad I don’t have to confess anything to anyone else or deal with anyone’s reactions to anything.

  But that selfish thought only lingers for a moment. “Why not?”

  “Mom came home and went up to take a nap. She’d stayed all night last night because they had to intubate my dad because of this infection thing. I thought I’d let her sleep. But I did think about what to do next. Seems to me the talking stick is the way to go.”

  “The what?”

  “The talking stick. It’s this piece of driftwood Joel found and Alice painted when we were really little. Mom had this friend back then—with these insane kids—I mean ‘climbing the curtains and swinging from the rafters’ insane. The friend, Laurie, kinda had no idea how to handle them, so she used to follow the boys around shouting, ‘This is will be a topic next time we use the talking stick.’ I guess they had family meetings and whoever was holding the stick got to talk about something that was ‘affecting the family as a whole.’ Mom and Dad used to sort of laugh about it, but then they noticed whenever we all tried to discuss something as a family, everyone spoke at once and nobody heard anyone else. So we made a talking stick of our own. We still bring it out when there’s some big decision to be made or news to be told.” He laughs, looking down at his feet. “Duff once said in show-and-tell that ‘every time Dad brings out the big stick, Mommy’s having a baby.’ They had to have a teacher conference about that one.”