This makes me think. All this time I've made fun of Evil Incarnate for being anorexic. I never thought that she might die from it.
If she weren't evil, I would apologize to her. But she'll just have to settle for a cease-fire.
"So," Mom begins, weaving her fingers under her chin. "Dad's coming over tonight."
My stomach drops and I have to catch my breath. "Why?"
"He owes us that much, don't you think?"
"He owes us more," I tell her, but I swallow hard. After everything that's happened, I don't want to see him.
"You don't have to be there if you don't want to. Ann and you could go to the movies."
This is tempting, but slinking away seems a pretty cowardly thing to do. I should be there. This is my family, and it's important. "No. I'll come home."
She nods, and I can see she's even prouder of me.
Mom and I agree to meet at home at six o'clock, and I head toward the front of the hospital to start my long walk home. I'm following the yellow arrows, deep in thought, so I don't even see him before I turn the corner and ram right into him. "Mallory!"
"Oh. Hi," he mumbles. His hand goes up to the red patch on his neck. The skin still looks a little raw, but I can see there's no more infection. Now that his skin is better, I can notice his nose is straight and narrow, and his lips are full and even. Mallory is going to be a good-looking guy soon, and for a moment I wish again that I could want him. But even knowing how handsome he'll probably be, I still don't want him the way I want Gusty. I can't imagine wanting anyone else that way. "What are you doing here?" he asks, his eyes hooded and wary.
"My mom works here," I say, glad I don't have to admit I followed him.
"Oh." He tucks his hand into the pocket of his white jeans and waits for me to say something.
There's only one thing to say. "Mallory, I'm sorry," I tell him. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
His eyes skirt over me, unsure. He bites the corner of his lip. "What happened to your clothes?"
I look down at the blue T-shirt and jeans I'm wearing. "I didn't have the energy."
"Well, you shouldn't dress just like everyone else. It's not you."
"I know." We stand there dumbly, each of us looking over the other's shoulder. Part of me wants to run away, but I know if I do we'll never be right again. It's now or never. "Mallory, Gusty and I have unfinished business. It's been that way since long before I met you."
"Eva told me." He nods abstractly.
"She's really sick, isn't she?"
"In a way you and I can't imagine." His brown eyes light on the floor.
I look at him while I try to get my courage up. He seems worried and burdened, but he no longer seems angry at me. He shifts his weight as though he wants to leave, so I finally make myself say it. "Our friendship means a lot to me."
He blinks at me. He makes no move to speak.
"Mallory, I just hope you can forgive me someday."
It seems to take a lot of effort, but he forces the corners of his mouth to turn upward. "I hope so, too," he says before he walks away.
I can only watch him go.
SHALLOW
Mom and I sit on either end of the sofa, waiting. It's seven-thirty and Dad still hasn't shown up. Mom glances at her watch and shakes her head angrily. "If that bastard—" she starts, but stops when she hears an engine outside. We hear the slam of one car door, and then another. We both stand to face the door, waiting for Dad to come in, but the doorbell rings instead. Mom pauses, as if she's surprised, like I am, that Dad wouldn't just walk in the way he used to. "Come in," she calls. As the door swings open, I pray under my breath that Dad doesn't have Rhonda with him.
He doesn't. Aunt Ann is standing next to him holding a pet carrier. She's brought Minnie Mouse home. She smiles sheepishly at me as I take the carrier away from her. I look inside at Minnie, who seems thoroughly freaked out, and take her back to my bedroom. Aunt Ann follows me, whispering, "Your mom looks good. How's she taking all this?"
"I don't know," I say coldly.
I go into my bedroom and think about closing the door on Aunt Ann's face, but that's too cruel even for me. She kicks her way through the dirty laundry on my floor. I kneel on the carpet to let Minnie out of her carrier. Quietly Aunt Ann closes the door behind us. I keep my back to her as I carefully pull Minnie out and hold her to me. I can feel the vibration of her purring against my throat, and I bury my face in her fur. She smells faintly of Aunt Ann's lemongrass perfume.
Aunt Ann plops down onto my bed and waits until I look at her. "Kristi, I know you're mad at me, and I don't blame you."
"Why would I be mad at you?" I say into Minnie's fur.
"Don't be coy." Her fuzzy hair is hanging wispy in her eyes. She tucks a strand behind her ear, gathering courage. "I didn't tell you about Rhonda because I thought your father should be the one."
"How long have you known about her?"
"A while." Her eyes drop to the floor. "I kept thinking it wouldn't last between them and that he'd come back and you'd never have to find out. I was trying to protect you."
"You were trying to protect him."
"I was trying to protect you both."
"I feel like I'm at the center of a conspiracy," I spit at her. Minnie pulls away and strides toward the closet to look for her litter box. I watch her go because I no longer want to look at Aunt Ann.
"Maybe I should have told you, Kristi. I didn't know what to do." She leans back on my mattress. The covers are bunched up underneath the small of her back. It can't be very comfortable, but she doesn't seem to notice.
She's quiet a long time. I catch myself trying to read her thoughts, but all I get is a deep, long wave of terrible disappointment. Besides, I'm probably not psychic. I have to stop doing that.
Finally she takes a breath. "You know, I've idolized your father for a long time. He was all the things I could never be. Brilliant. Good-looking. Confident." She laughs. "He was four years younger than me, but I was the one following him around, wanting to hang out with him and his friends. Isn't that pathetic?" She glances down at me, but I don't give her anything. My face is carefully neutral. "It's a sad thing when your hero turns out to be—" She considers the words, but I can feel her back away from them. She's trying to protect me again.
"It's not your fault, Aunt Ann," I finally say. "Dad's just the way he is, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"I know." She half smiles and looks toward the door. We both pause to listen to the murmur of Mom's and Dad's voices. It's an ancient sound from my childhood, and as it washes over me I'm flooded with grief and longing for the days before Dad left, when I was innocent and things were simple. As I feel the first tears fall, I lean my head onto my knees. Aunt Ann's hand rests on my shoulder, and she sits with me in the darkness, waiting for Mom and Dad to finish their talk.
It's a long time before we hear a knock on the door. Dad pokes his head into the room and says in a flimsy, cheerful voice, "It's dark in here!" He turns on the light and smiles down at us.
Aunt Ann pops up and simply walks out the door, holding her purse to her side. As she passes by Dad she gives him a cool stare, but he pretends not to notice and smiles at me again. "So, I see your housekeeping skills remain the same." He gestures toward the laundry strewn all over the floor.
"What did you and Mom talk about?"
He sits on the bed and slaps his hands on his knees. "How would you like to come to Africa for a visit?" He shoots a diluted smile in my direction. He's trying to act cheerful and confident, but I sense a deep rift inside of him. He knows that what he's doing is terribly selfish and he doesn't want to face that. "Rhonda and I fly out on Saturday. We'd like you to come see us, maybe even for Christmas break?"
"I'll think about it," I tell him, but at the moment a cozy Christmas, just the three of us, sounds about as much fun as dysentery. "You're leaving Saturday?"
"I have to get back." He blinks sadly at me.
Something in me shuts
down, and I turn away from him to look at Minnie. She is lying in her old spot in my half-open sock drawer, crinkling her yellow eyes at me, purring. I look at her, begging for help because I don't know how to have this conversation. I want to make Dad understand how badly he has hurt me, but I know that's impossible because Dad is too shallow to understand a deep hurt.
I look at the wrinkles around his eyes. His skin is tanned, but the center of each wrinkle is white. I guess the sun never reaches the creases in his skin. "Do you remember that jewelry box?" I ask him.
He stares at me, totally blank.
"The one you made for me?"
He gasps. "Oh yes! I'd completely forgotten about that!" He glances over the top of my dresser, looking for it. "Do you use it?"
"You never finished it. It doesn't close right."
His lips part as he remembers, and suddenly he stands up. "I can fix that. Where is it?" He is filled with sudden purpose, as if fixing my jewelry box would definitively prove his worth as a father and a human being.
"It's in the garage." I barely finish the sentence before he's off, racing toward the garage, every step filled with take-charge authority. Dad is here! He's going to fix his little girl's jewelry box if it takes him all night!
I follow him down the hallway, past Mom and Aunt Ann, who are sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of tequila between them. They're both bleary and watch us curiously as we trudge out to the garage. I turn on the light and point at Dad's workbench. "It's right where you left it," I tell him.
"Where?" I follow his blank stare.
It's gone.
Dad and I look at the rectangle left in the dust where the jewelry box had sat for so long. "What happened to it?" Dad asks me.
I know exactly what happened. I feel sick, and I have to sit down on the step behind me. "Someone must have taken it." I swallow hard. Why would Gusty do this?
Dad sits down next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulder. He looks just like his old confident self, but now that he's touching me, I can feel that deep down he knows how much he's let me down. "I'll make you another one, Kristi," he whispers. But he knows how empty this is, how little it helps.
I can't stop the tears from falling. Dad wraps his other arm around me and buries his face in my ponytail. We sit together like that long enough for his tears to soak all the way through my hair.
After Dad and Aunt Ann leave, I find Mom sitting in the backyard working her way through the bottle of tequila and a pack of cigarettes. For the first time since I've known her, she seems very small, like she needs protection.
Looking at her like this, I think I know what it was about Mom that Dad didn't like. She doesn't seem to need anyone. She's strong, and I resented her because a lot of the time, even if I wouldn't admit it, I felt very weak compared to her. But looking at her now, shaky and wasted, I know that she needed my dad a lot, and now he's run away with some other woman.
She still has me, though.
"Mom. You okay?"
She turns her head toward me and smiles with one side of her face. "No. How are you?"
"Ready for a shot of tequila and a smoke." I'm kidding, but she actually pushes the bottle toward me, though she puts her hand over the cigarettes.
I take a small swig and immediately want to spit it out. "Jesus. It's like jet fuel!"
"That's why the Indians called it firewater." She chuckles. The breeze picks up, swirling her wild hair around her head. She looks like a Greek goddess.
"Mom, I'm sorry about Dad."
"Don't you be sorry. Let him be sorry."
"He really is a jerk for cheating on you, isn't he?"
She takes in a deep breath. "Oh, I don't know. He changed. He wanted something else. Someone else. What I can't forgive is the way he left you."
"I'll be okay."
"I know you will be. You're your mother's daughter." She slides her eyes over to me and grins.
I watch her face in the moonlight. Her skin looks delicate and frail. There are lines around her mouth and circles under her eyes. For a second I pretend I'm looking into my future, seeing myself at her age, and I decide that would be okay. I wouldn't mind ending up like my mom.
Except I'd want a smaller ass.
I remember what Gusty said, about how I judge other people, and I realize that I did this most of all to Mom.
"Hey, old lady."
"Hmm."
"I'm sorry I hid Minnie from you," I say, kind of as a primer, because the rest of what I want to say is really going to hurt coming out. "And I'm sorry I've been such a bitch for the past two years."
She looks at me quizzically and laughs. "Can I get that on tape?"
"No. Sorry. You had one shot at it. That's it."
She turns away, a relaxed smile on her mouth. I made her happy for a change, and that makes me feel nice and warm inside. Or maybe it's the tequila.
GUSTY
We're all standing in a big circle waiting for Brian to start Processing. It's Friday, the end of the worst week of my life, and I can hardly wait to go home. Brian swings his bell and it clangs through the noise of the crowd. Slowly the room trickles into silence. "Well, we've had quite a week! Does anyone have any announcements?" He turns in a slow circle, waiting for someone to speak up. When his eyes meet mine, he pauses and raises his eyebrows.
I've never made any kind of announcement before, but almost without thinking about it, I step into the center of the circle and clear my throat. Brian is giving me a chance to redeem myself. I may as well take it, but I'm not going to say what he expects me to. "There are some people here I've hurt. And I want to say I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. It's hard to be left behind, and I've been left behind by a lot of people who were important to me." I look at Hildie, whose face has turned bright red. "I just want to say I'm going to try to be nicer. But in the meantime, there's one person here who has something of mine, and I'd like it back."
At this, Gusty lifts his face and looks at me. There's a long yarn of sadness stretched between us. I wish I could pull it toward me to bring Gusty closer, but making the announcement took everything out of me, so I simply walk back to join the circle around Brian. A few other people make announcements, but I don't listen to them. Finally, everyone joins hands like we do every Friday afternoon, and we sing our school song. The lyrics are based on a poem by John Keats, and for the first time I really hear the words:
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire...
After Processing is over I look for Gusty, but I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see Jacob Flax standing next to me. "Hey, Kristi." He still seems mad at me, but not as mad as before.
"Hi, Jacob."
The corners of his mouth are turned down. He looks like a textbook definition of the word forlorn. Suddenly I'm overcome with an impulse, and I wrap my arms around him and hold on tight. He is stiff at first and I can sense he's a little stunned, but after a second he wraps his arms around me, too. Now that I'm close to him, I can tell he's wearing cologne. "You smell good," I tell him.
"Thanks," he says, but he steps away from me quickly.
"I haven't been a very good friend, have I?"
His eyes widen. "Are you kidding? You've been great!"
"Really?"
"You're like the only person who's always been honest with me!"
I look into his eyes to make sure he isn't just saying this to make me feel better, but he seems perfectly sincere. "You know what, Jacob? You're pretty much my best friend." I am surprised to hear myself say this, but I find it's really true.
He smiles, but there's sadness in the way he ducks his head. "So are you and Gusty an item or something?"
"Maybe," I say gently. "I hope so."
He wraps his arms around his middle. "I guess I have to work on my detection skills."
"You're not the only one.
" I walk out the front door into the cool autumn air, and Jacob follows. Now that I know he's gay, I feel so much more relaxed around him. I'm even comfortable enough to say: "For some reason I actually used to think that you thought about my boobs a lot. Can you believe that?"
Jacob stops stock-still. His face turns chalky. His pale eyes fasten on me, and his mouth pops open in astonishment.
"What? Don't tell me that you actually did picture my boobs!"
"No! Of course not! I'm gay!" Suddenly he's running down the school steps so fast, it's a wonder he doesn't generate a sonic boom.
"Hey!" I grab hold of his arm and force him to slow down. "Why are you running away?"
"I'm not!"
"Jacob, did you used to picture my naked boobies?" I can't hide my smirk.
"No!" Now he's breathing so hard that droplets of spit escape from between his lips.
"Obviously you are lying, Jacob."
He tries to assume a deadpan expression, but he can't do it, so finally he gives up. "You don't understand, Kristi! It's Felix Mathers's fault!"
"Felix? That weird dude?"
"When we walked to school together, anytime he saw you he'd say something disgusting to me about your boobs. He's obsessed!" Jacob looks so revolted that any second he might actually physically crawl out of his skin.
"Calm down, Jacob. I believe you."
"He said so much stuff about you that it got into my head! Any time I saw you I'd remember his sick fantasies. It drove me crazy!"
"It's okay, Jacob."
"You better stay away from Felix Mathers, Kristi. He is a very troubled boy."
"I will, Jacob."
He's so freaked out that it actually makes him look kind of manly, because he's staring hard and he's breathing in a really aggressive way. "Why do you have to be so psychic?!" he demands of me.
I shake my head, bewildered. "I was starting to think I wasn't!"
"Really?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, come on. Reading minds? It's kind of kid stuff, isn't it?"