Far From the Tree

  Grace took it, holding it for a minute. “It’s been, like, a really long time since I smoked.” She had an odd smile on her face, and Joaquin couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad. “Oh, well, whatever.”

  “Never mind,” Joaquin said automatically, then felt pleased when both his sisters smiled at him. “So is anyone going to tell me why we’re here?” he asked. “Or do I have to guess?”

  “Ooh, guess, guess!” Maya said.

  “Maya, stop,” Grace said, passing the joint back to her. “Wow, that’s strong.”

  “Yeah, Claire doesn’t—didn’t—mess around.”

  “Are we here because you broke up with Claire?” Joaquin asked. If they were going to make him dig for the information, then that was fine. He had asked tougher questions before. “Is that it?” Personally, all he had wanted to do was die after he had broken up with Birdie. He couldn’t imagine hosting a pity party about it. Maybe girls were different that way, huddling together like penguins instead of just staying under the covers and watching Netflix all day.

  Maya laughed, short and sharp. “You know what? I actually forgot for a minute that Claire and I broke up. That’s how terrible yesterday was.”

  Joaquin waited for more explanation. When none was forthcoming, he sighed. “So what else happened yesterday?”

  Maya took the joint back from Grace. “You tell him,” she said, gesturing to Joaquin. “I bet you’ll tell the story so much better.”

  “What the hell happened yesterday?” he said. “And why aren’t any of your parents here?” Joaquin had always imagined Maya’s and Grace’s parents following them around like ducklings, caring for them, cleaning up after them, holding out an eternal net so that they would never fall, never get hurt. “Did you overthrow them or something?”

  Maya started to giggle, then laugh, but Grace just looked somber, and Joaquin suspected that he had either said the most perfect thing or the most terrible thing.

  When Maya started to cry, he realized it was the latter.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, just as Grace moved to put her arm around her. Maya was still holding the joint, its smoke rising up in a long, smooth line before curling up at the top, and when Grace moved, her arm cut through the smoke, sending it scattering. “Oh, shit, Maya,” Joaquin said. “I’m sorry. I was only kidding.”

  “Stop, it’s fine,” she said, but she was still sniffling. Joaquin was new to having siblings, but he was pretty sure that making your little sister cry was at the top of the Do Not Do This Ever list.

  “Just tell him,” Grace said, her voice quiet even as she pressed her cheek against Maya’s hair.

  Maya took a deep breath, then took another hit off the joint. “So,” she said, her voice ragged with both tears and smoke. “Maybe you already knew this, but my mom’s a pretty big alcoholic?”

  Joaquin felt his spine straighten up like the line of smoke in front of him. He had spent time with an alcoholic foster parent once. It hadn’t been great. If anyone had hurt Maya like that, Joaquin was pretty sure that he would have to do something about it.

  Judging from Grace’s face, she felt the same way.

  “Anyway, she’s not really dealing with the divorce that well?” Maya continued. Her voice kept going up on the end of her sentences, like she was asking if the things she was saying were really true. Joaquin could understand that. “And she’s been drinking a lot this week, even for her? And then last night, Lauren and I”—Maya gestured in the general direction of where Lauren had left—“went out to dinner and when we got back, my mom was . . . she was on the floor. She fell and hit her head. There was a lot of blood. There’s probably a lot of blood still. We might need to hire someone to clean that up. It looks like a crime scene in there. Do you ever watch those shows on TV, the ones about murderers where they re-create the crime scene?”

  “My.” Grace reached over and put her hand on Maya’s knee. “We got it.”

  Maya nodded. “Anyway, yeah. She had to stay in the hospital overnight because she had a concussion.”

  “Where’s your dad?” Joaquin asked. “Is he with her?”

  “Nope. He’s in New Orleans. Well, actually, he’s probably flying home right now from New Orleans. Grace’s parents called him last night.”

  “And does he know about . . . you know . . . ?”

  “The drinking?” Maya said, and Joaquin nodded. “Well, he does now, I guess. I don’t think he knew how bad it was. But he knows now.”

  “Maya called me last night,” Grace said “And we—my parents and I, I mean—met everyone at the hospital.”

  “Lauren and I rode in the ambulance,” Maya said. “Lots of sirens, lots of lights. You’d think it’d be loud inside the ambulance, but it wasn’t. The movies lied.”

  Joaquin watched Maya raise the joint to her mouth again, then set it down without taking another hit. He felt like he was watching a little kid drive a car, her legs too short to reach the pedals, her eyes too low to see over the steering wheel. “So when does she get to come home?” he asked.

  “She’s not,” Maya said, her voice clipped. “At least, not yet. She’s going to rehab. My dad found a place in Palm Springs and he’s going to take her out there tonight, once she gets released. Oh, and yeah, my girlfriend and I broke up yesterday. So I’ve got that going for me. I should probably wrap Lauren in Bubble Wrap or something, because people are dropping like flies all around me.” She gestured to both Grace and Joaquin with the hand that was holding the joint. “Definitely look both ways before crossing the street, you two. I’m bad luck.”

  “You’re not bad luck,” Joaquin snapped, and both girls looked up at him in surprise. “Don’t say things like that. Shitty things are just happening around you. It’s not your fault.”

  Maya suddenly looked very woebegone. (Joaquin had read that word in a book once and had never forgotten it. It made him think of Dickensian orphans, old widows, puppies abandoned in the rain.) “No, I’m pretty sure it’s me,” she said, wiping at her eyes again. “In fact, I’m one hundred percent sure that the breakup with Claire was my fault. I pushed her away.”

  “Well, is it permanent?” Joaquin asked. “Can you apologize?”

  “Nope,” Maya said.

  “That’s not true,” Grace told her.

  Maya started to cry again.

  Joaquin and Grace looked at each other once more; then Joaquin moved over until he could put his arm around Maya’s waist. He knew what it felt like to cry alone. It felt terrible, like you were the only person alive in the world. He didn’t want that for Maya.

  “What if she doesn’t stay in rehab?” Maya sobbed. “What if she thinks she’s okay and signs herself out and then hits her head again?”

  “She’s going to stay,” Grace soothed. “Your dad will make her stay.”

  “She might not,” Joaquin said, and ignored the angry glance that Grace shot him. “I mean, it’s true, right? She might not.”

  “The rain cloud to Grace’s sunshine,” Maya sniffled. “You’re a good team.”

  Joaquin hadn’t thought of anyone being on his team before, not since Birdie. He wondered if Maya was right. “Look,” he said. “You can’t control what your mom does. But you can control what you do.”

  Maya wiped her eyes on the back of her arm before looking at him. “Do you . . . go to therapy, Joaq?”

  Joaquin startled a little. “I . . . Yeah, I do. Mark and Linda pay for it, but yeah.”

  “I’ve been trying to keep her sober—well, less drunk,” Maya said. “She has wine hidden all over the house. Lauren and I were trying to keep track of that.”

  “Does your dad know about that part?” Grace asked. “Maybe you should tell him.”

  “How could he not know?” Maya said. “And if he does, he obviously doesn’t care. I mean, he just left us here with her. He found a place and moved out last week. He’s going to move back in now while my mom’s gone, but . . . yeah.” She tossed the joint into the pool, where it quickly burned out and th
en floated on the blue water. “Everything is so fucking fucked up. My mom’s a drunk and my ex-girlfriend hates me.”

  “Well, my ex-girlfriend hates me, too,” Joaquin admitted, and both of his sisters’ heads swiveled toward him, their eyes wide. “If it’s any consolation.”

  “You had a girlfriend?” Grace asked.

  “Why’d you break up?” Maya asked.

  “How long were you together?”

  “What was her name?”

  “Did you break up with her or did she break up with you?”

  “I broke up with her,” Joaquin said. “And her name was Elizabeth but everybody calls her Birdie.”

  “Birdie.” Maya looked unimpressed. “Is she twee? Does she buy things on Etsy?”

  Joaquin had no idea what Etsy was. “It was her grandmother’s name,” he explained. “What does twee mean?”

  “Nothing,” Grace said. “Why’d you break up with her?”

  Joaquin laughed a little, then watched as the joint started to sink to the bottom of the pool. “It’s stupid.”

  “No, it’s not,” Maya said. It was the softest Joaquin had ever heard her sound. “You obviously still like her.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked her.

  “You’re blushing,” both girls said, and Joaquin realized that they were right.

  Goddamnit.

  “Fine,” he said. “Since we’re all doing deep confessions right now, I broke up with her because I wasn’t good enough for her.”

  “She said that?” Grace gasped.

  “I’ll punch her right in her stupid bird face,” Maya growled.

  “No, no, she didn’t . . . oh God.” Joaquin raised up his hands. “I figured that out on my own. She has a lot of dreams and goals and stuff. She should get to have them.”

  Joaquin watched as the girls’ faces went from furious to perplexed. “Wait,” Maya said after a few seconds of silence. “Did you think that you weren’t good enough for her?”

  “Oh, Joaquin,” Grace sighed.

  Joaquin was getting used to the way people seemed to be disappointed in him all the time. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You two, you grew up with families. You’ve probably lived in this house since you were born, right? Right?” he said again when Maya didn’t respond, and she reluctantly nodded. “Okay, the same with Birdie. That wall of pictures on the staircase? She has that, too. And I don’t have that. I have nothing like that. It’s like . . .” Joaquin tried to remember what Ana had said to him once. “There’s no foundation for the house. And you need a foundation if you want to build anything that lasts.” That wasn’t exactly what Ana had said, but that’s how Joaquin had heard it.

  Maya just looked at him. “Are you kidding me?” she said. “My foundation is basically crumbling right now. My mom’s going to rehab, my parents are getting a divorce. Just because you don’t have some perfect TV family doesn’t mean you’re not a good person, Joaquin.”

  That’s when Joaquin knew that he would never tell Grace and Maya what had really happened: why he had left the Buchanans, why he really wasn’t a good person. Instead, he said, “It’s hard to explain. You wouldn’t understand. Birdie, she had all these baby pictures.”

  Grace sat up straight, her mouth in a hard line. “You don’t have any baby pictures,” she said quietly.

  She looked so sad all of a sudden, and Joaquin wanted to take the sadness away. He was so tired of making the people around him sad when he all he wanted to do was keep them safe. “No. And you have to buy school pictures, those packages that they sell.” Joaquin shrugged. “Birdie had all these photos. Someone had saved them for her. I saw those and I thought . . .” Joaquin’s voice trailed off as he remembered how the photos had made his stomach feel like it was collapsing in on itself. “We would never be equal. She would always have more than me. Always need more than me. She needs someone who understands things like she does.”

  “Joaquin.” Maya put her hand on his arm. “I think you’re a fucking idiot.”

  Grace covered her eyes with her hand. “Maya,” she sighed.

  Maya just kept her hand on his arm. “No, I mean it,” she said, and Joaquin didn’t know if she was just super upset or super high, but the earnestness on her face made him smile a little. “Did you see those pictures on the stairway when you came in? Really see them?”

  Joaquin nodded. “Pretty intense.”

  Maya’s eyes were starting to well up again. She was definitely high. “I mean, my parents read all these books about adoption, and adopted kids, and how to accept and love your adopted child, but I’ve never seen them read a single book about their biological kid, you know? They don’t read books about Lauren. Just me. Because I’m different. I’m work.

  “So I’m just saying, maybe don’t break up with Birdie just because you think you can’t give her things. Maybe that’s not what she even wants from you, you know? Maybe she just wants you. Pictures are the past, that’s all. Maybe you’re her future.”

  Joaquin could feel that same shaky feeling that he had gotten when he’d broken up with Birdie, watching her face crumble and knowing that it was, as Maya had said earlier about her own breakup, 100 percent his fault. “Okay,” he said after a minute. “So what about you and Claire, then?”

  Maya rolled her eyes. “Nice segue.”

  “No, I’m serious,” Joaquin said. “You should call her.”

  “She probably deleted my phone number.”

  “Probably not. You think I should get back together with Birdie? Well, then, I think you should get back together with Claire.”

  “It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” Grace pointed out. “You should at least tell her about what happened last night.”

  Maya’s lower lip was wobbling a bit. “She said that I shut her out and don’t tell her things because I think that if I tell her the truth about things, she’ll leave me.”

  Joaquin let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Fuuuuuck,” he said, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and laughing to himself. “Did we inherit the same dysfunction or something?”

  Maya was giggling now, too, even through her tears. “Why don’t you call Claire and I’ll call Birdie?” she said. “We’d probably have better luck.”

  Joaquin smiled. He knew that he would never call Birdie again, but it was a nice thought just the same. Sometimes people broke too hard and you could never put them back together the same way. Birdie would never fit back in his life the way she used to, and it would only make him feel worse if she tried and failed.

  “What about you, Gracie?” Maya said. “Why’d you break up with your boyfriend? Since we’re doing group therapy right now, ’fess up.”

  But Grace’s eyes were lost in a way that Joaquin recognized from a few foster kids, the ones who had been transferred so many times that they were rudderless, adrift in the storm. She blinked, though, and it disappeared. “Long story,” she said, then started to get to her feet. “I’m hungry. Do you have food?”

  Maya and Joaquin watched as she started to walk away. Then Maya pulled her feet out of the water and followed her in. “C’mon, Joaquin,” she said. “Maybe we can draw mustaches on the family photos.”

  He laughed at the idea. What a luxury to be able to do that. “Be right there,” he said as the girls disappeared indoors. Once they were gone, he grabbed the pool skimmer and ran it across the bottom of the pool, catching the joint in its net before tossing it out over the fence and then following the girls inside.

  “Hey,” Joaquin said. “Do you have a minute?”

  Both Mark and Linda looked up. “Yeah, buddy,” Mark said. His hands were in the soapy sink water, rinsing off the last of the dishes while Linda bagged up the trash for Joaquin to take outside. “What’s up?”

  Joaquin leaned against the doorjamb, knocking his knuckles against it as if for luck. “I just wanted to talk to you about, um, the adoption thing?”

  He watched as Mark’s jaw tightened,
as Linda’s eyes grew hopeful. “Yeah, I was just thinking. About it. And um, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t do it.”

  The light in Linda’s eyes disappeared so fast that Joaquin could have sworn someone blew out the flame behind them. “It’s not that I don’t— I really, really like living here.”

  “We really like you living here, too, Joaquin,” Linda said. “That will never change, you know that.”

  Joaquin did know that. His brain knew it 100 percent. It was the rest of him that had trouble sorting through it. “I just think that things are really good right now? And maybe we shouldn’t mess with it?” His voice had started doing the same uptick that Maya’s had done earlier that day, a question instead of a statement.

  Linda was chewing on her lower lip, but Mark just nodded. “Absolutely, bud,” he said. “We always want you to feel comfortable here. Whatever you want, that’s what we want, too.”

  Joaquin felt the load lift off his heart. He even smiled a little. “Cool,” he said. “Great. Thanks. And, I mean, I do really appreciate it. I’m not lying.”

  “You’re not a liar, Joaquin,” Linda said, her voice tight. “We’ve never thought that.”

  “Cool,” Joaquin said again, because he didn’t know what else to say. “I’m gonna take the trash out, then. Is this everything?”

  He had almost made his getaway through the back door when Mark’s voice stopped him. “Joaq?” he said, and Joaquin turned to see Mark standing next to Linda, his arm around her shoulders, his knuckles tight and white.

  “Yeah?”

  “The Buchanans. Joaquin, we would never . . . we would never do what they did. You know that, right? We love you. You’re ours, no matter what.”

  Joaquin forced himself to nod. “Yeah, totally,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He stood next to the trash cans for a minute longer than necessary, trying to get his heartbeat back under control. You control what you do, he had told Maya earlier that day, and he knew he was right. He loved Mark and Linda too much to let them adopt him, so if the decision was his to make, Joaquin would make it.

  It was, he reminded himself as he went back inside, the right thing to do.