Tuesday wasn’t quite as bad. He still couldn’t work but it was my first day to watch Cassidy and that, at least, gave him something to do. The three of us played Monopoly and took turns squirting each other with the garden hose, then he and Cassidy made up poems about farting while I made lunch. She goaded him into eating his carrot sticks by calling him a chicken. Afterwards the two of them picked some Queen Anne’s lace from the back field and I put the blossoms into three separate vases that were filled with food coloring and water while they watched The Little Mermaid. By the time Laura came to get Cass, the flowers were just starting to turn color. Blue and red and yellow.

   Wednesday morning he still couldn’t pick up a hammer but he went to work anyway, so frustrated with himself that he spent the morning yelling at his workers. Swearing at them, barking orders left and right, as if they hadn’t done just fine without him for two days. That pissed him off even more, the knowledge that they hadn’t needed him to be there, and he started in on them again, so badly that they all threatened to quit. So he apologized for acting like an asshole and then he came home, because he was afraid that they really would quit if he didn’t. Even though there weren’t many jobs available locally. Even though they really needed the work. They’d quit anyway. And it would be all his fault.

   And then: Thursday. His hand was a little bit better, and so was his temper, and when he left for work he was actually smiling. At eight-forty Laura dropped Cassidy off, and they were both smiling, too. But at nine-thirty Rachel’s car pulled in the driveway; and when she walked into my kitchen she wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were flashing with the same desperation I’d seen in Brian’s all week long. She slammed the door behind her and said, “Tess, I gotta talk to you about something.”

   Then she saw Cassidy, sitting across from me at the kitchen table, surrounded by construction paper and crayons. There were one hundred and twenty colors inside the crayon box now. Looking inside it was just like looking into heaven itself.

   “Oh. Never mind. I’ll see you later.”

   “No, Rach. Wait.”

   I jumped out of my chair and pulled on her arm. I couldn’t let her leave. I knew where she’d go if she did. She’d run to Tim so she could lose herself in sex and in a haze. I knew. I’d been there. And even though the Something I’d been hiding from wasn’t the same thing as hers, the distraction itself was. The only difference was that the sex had come from safer sources and so had the haze. It was the kind that dropped you into a beautiful world full of rainbows and music and gods. And it hadn’t come from a needle.

   Even if hers didn’t either I knew that, if she wasn’t careful, pretty soon it would. Tim was a shrewd businessman. He’d ruined the lives of a sixteen year old boy and his mother, just so he could rid himself of his only competition; done it without even blinking. And, like a shrewd businessman, he wasn’t going to be satisfied with letting the new clients he’d roped in settle for the cheapest haze available. Not even the clients he was fucking.

   “Just stay here and hang out with us.”

   Cassidy nodded. “You can color with us.”

   “Yeah, right.”

   Cassidy sniffed. “What? It’s wicked fun.”

   Rachel looked at Cassidy and then at the picture she was drawing. Blinked a few times. Then she smiled--it wasn’t a real one, but at least it was something--and sat down beside her. I sat down, too, and she watched the two of us for a few minutes before grabbing a piece of dark blue paper for herself.

   “So, Miss Dyer. What’s the assignment for today?”

   Cassidy explained the way it worked. “Tess doesn’t give assignments. She says you should draw what you’re feeling inside of you, because that’s how you make the best kind of picture.”

   Rachel laughed. “What are you, Tess, a fucking psychiatrist?”

   “Shut up.”

   “No, she’s not,” Cassidy said. She hadn’t even flinched at Rachel’s language. That irritated me just a little, because she was always very quick to correct even my slightest lapse. “Tess is a granola.”

   I dug out my old standby, Burnt Sienna. “Who told you I’m a granola?”

   “It’s what my dad told Grammy last night.” Cassidy examined her landscape--a coastal scene complete with a lighthouse and a spouting whale--and added two more v shaped birds to her sky. “Last night she told my parents that they shouldn’t let you watch me anymore because you’re a hippie.”

   Rachel snickered. I stopped coloring my tree trunk, folded my hands on the table and tried to hide my own amusement. “Do you know what a hippie is?”

   “Yep. Grammy said it’s someone who hates America and smokes mar…mara…”

   “Pot,” Rachel offered. I kicked her under the table.

   “Oh, thanks. She said hippies hate America and they smoke pot and they’re very dirty and they have sex with lots of people.”

   “Ah.”

   “So,” she continued, folding her hands together like mine, “I told her that you’re not a hippie. You don’t hate America because you sing the Star Spangled Banner with me when we watch Red Sox games on Sundays. Even though you have a really bad singing voice.”

   “Thanks.”

   “And you don’t smoke pot--”

   Rachel snickered again and I kicked her again. I wasn’t about to be condemned, by her of all people, for something I hadn’t done in a long time.

   “--and you take a shower every day and your house is always clean, even cleaner than Grammy’s house. And you only have sex with Brian.”

   “Oh my God...”

   “So that’s when Daddy said, ‘Tess isn’t a hippie. She might be a granola, but she’s not a hippie.’ Then he told Grammy that she should mind her own damn business, and that I am his daughter and he could ask anyone to babysit me that he wanted to.”

   Rachel gave a brief nod of approval. “Go Jeff!”

   It was fascinating, really, how much I had learned about the Burkes in brief time I’d been watching Cassidy. In addition to Jeff’s mother in law woes, I now knew that he didn’t load the dishwasher properly, that Laura wasn’t a natural redhead after all and that she had recently caught him watching the ‘naked lady station’ by using the channel callback on the remote control. I knew that Cassidy would report on my goings on just as faithfully, so instead of voicing my whole hearted agreement with Rachel’s sentiments, I merely smiled.

   “So,” Cassidy said, “are you?”

   “Am I what?”

   “A granola, silly.”

   I laughed. “Sort of. I don’t know. No, not really. They don’t let you in the Granola Club if you dye your hair.”

   She nodded, taking my joke at face value, and I picked up Jungle Green to begin work on my leaves. She watched me for a few minutes. “How come your picture looks better than mine?”

   “She’s older than you, Cass,” Rachel said. “That’s why. Besides, yours is really good.”

   She smiled. “Do you like it?”

   Rachel nodded.

   “What about you, Tess? What do you think I’m feeling today?”

   “I think you’re feeling cheerful. Your sun is very happy.”

   “How do you know that? I didn’t even put a smiley face on him.”

   “You didn’t have to. Look at the way you mixed in the orange with your yellow...see? Those swirly lines?” She nodded. “They’re all curving up, just like a smile.”

   She leaned in closer, gazed at her picture with new eyes. Looked at it for a long time. Then she said, “That’s not orange. It’s Atomic Tangerine.”

   It was the best crayon name I’d ever heard.

   She put on a few finishing touches and surveyed her picture. Rachel gave it a brief once over and said, “Don’t forget to sign it. That’s what all artists do.”

   Cassidy did so and slid it across the table to Rachel. “That’s for your fridge.”

   “Thanks.” She finished her own drawing--a minimalist effort; three stick figures with no faces, drawn in white crayon against the dark blue construction paper--signed it and gave it to Cassidy.

   She spent the rest of the day with us. She admired the colored Queen Anne’s lace that I’d hung up to dry, so Cassidy took her out into the back field and they picked some more together. I put the blossoms in three separate vases with food coloring and water. This time I mixed the colors together for purple and green and orange. When we sat down for lunch Rachel ate her celery sticks, but only after she ran downstairs to get Brian’s ranch dressing to dip them in. I spent the rest of the afternoon weeding the garden while the two of them squirted each other with the hose. And by the time Laura came to get Cassidy, Rachel’s smiles were real.

   Once Laura’s car was safely away Rachel and I climbed the fourteen stairs to my apartment. I washed my hands while she traded her wet clothes for some of mine--a t-shirt that fit her and a pair of sweatpants that were about four inches too short--then we sat on the couch.

   “So, Brian really beat the shit outta my dad.”

   She sounded both angry and worried. I wasn’t sure which of the emotions was directed at Brian and which was directed at her dad. “How bad is he?”

   “Well, his nose is broken. He’s got a lot of bruises and cuts, too. Really bad ones.”

   I nodded. At least Brian hadn’t killed him.

   “I warned him not to come over here but he didn’t listen to me. Brian was already bitchy, ‘cause he was at my place looking to start some shit earlier that day.”

   I smothered a grin. Looking to start some shit. She wanted to talk about Tim, too. But I could only tackle one thing at a time. “You’ve been in touch with your dad for awhile, haven’t you?”

   That surprised her. “Well...yeah. He called me about a month ago, but Saturday was the first time I actually saw him. Well, since he left us, I mean. Then he came in to see me at work again Monday night.”

   “How’s that going?”

   She shrugged. “I dunno, Tess. Just ‘cause he’s not drinking anymore he thinks everything’s just fine. Like he never walked out on me. Like he can fucking walk right back in and be The Dad. He wants to take me out to supper and see where I live and he wants to know what I’m doing and who I’m hanging out with. I mean, he didn’t raise me. He didn’t do shit. Even before he took off he wasn’t around. And now he thinks he has the right to ask me about my life, give me advice about it? What the fuck does he know about anything? Why should that loser get to come back now and tell me what to do when Brian already did the hard part?”

   Brian’s words, all of them, even if they were coming out of Rachel’s mouth. Not that it didn’t make them true.

   “What kind of advice is he trying to give you?”

   “It doesn’t matter. I know I’m fucked up--”

   “You’re not fucked up, Rach.”

   “--but I don’t need him telling me what to do. If anyone has the right to tell me what to do it’s Brian, and I don’t even let him do it.” She pulled down on the pant legs, trying to make them cover her ankles. It wasn’t going to happen. She shook her head and continued. “He did the best he could, you know. ‘Cause he was just a kid, too.”

   “I know.”

   “And he missed out on a lot of stuff because of me.”

   “If he missed out it’s not your fault. It’s your father’s.”

   “Well, whatever. He still missed out. He quit school and he broke up with his girlfriend and he stopped hanging out with his friends…except for Jeff, of course. And then when my dad took off Brian never did anything. The only time he ever left the house without me was go to work. He didn’t get a chance to do all the normal things guys are supposed to do because he was stuck with me.”

   “He doesn’t think he was stuck with you. He did it because he loves you, Rach.”

   She rolled her eyes and looked at her hands, embarrassed. And it occurred to me that, quick as he always was to say it to me, I’d never heard Brian tell Rachel he loved her. Or vice versa. It probably didn’t mean anything, though. I couldn’t remember ever having said it to Dave.

   “Besides, you missed out on a lot, too.”

   “I guess. But it’s not the same thing.”

   “Yes it is. Your dad should’ve made your supper and tucked you in and helped you with algebra and…all the other stuff that dads are supposed to do for you. Brian had it rough. It sucks that he had to give up his childhood. He had to grow up way too early. But you did, too.”

   She hoisted her legs up onto the couch and hugged them tightly against her chest. “So you think I should tell my dad to get lost?”

   “I can’t tell you what to do, Rach. I mean...I wasn’t here for all that, and I don’t even know your father. I think you’re right that he can’t just waltz back into your life like nothing happened. But it seems to me like the easy thing for him to do right now would be to stay away, and he’s not. If you want him to get lost and leave well enough alone, that’s fine. But if you do want to get to know him, or whatever, it doesn’t mean you’re being disloyal to your brother.”

   She rested her chin on her knees and stared at the wall. At Kineo. I took a quick glance at my watch. I had to leave for work in a little while, but before I could I had to open up the other can of worms.

   “So, what’s up with Tim?”

   “Not much. I’m just...hanging out with him. That’s all.”

   I nodded. Cleared my throat. “Why?”

   She shrugged. I wasn’t sure how far to push it with her. I could probably get away with saying more than Brian would be able to, so I ventured:

   “You’re...not doing any--”

   “Nothing I wasn’t doing before.”

   “Yeah. That’s comforting.”

   “If it makes you feel any better I’m afraid of needles.”

   I looked at her closely, at her eyes. They weren’t easy to read like Brian’s were, but I had to know if she was telling me the truth and I did my best to find it there. Finally I gave it up and asked her outright, “You’re not just bullshitting me, are you?”

   “No I’m not. I used to scream my head off whenever Dr. Stephens gave me a shot. You can ask Brian if you don’t believe me.”

   And this is how that conversation would begin:

   She knew it, too. Knew I’d never actually ask. And so I had to take her word for it, which wasn’t made of the stuff that inspired confidence. But, since we’d gone so far, I decided to push it a little farther by switching to another uncomfortable topic.

   “You’re using rubbers with this idiot, right?”

   She blushed, then sputtered wordlessly for a few moments and even though I was honestly concerned about her it didn’t stop me from making a mental tally.

   Home: 1. Visitors: 2.

   “I’m…I’ve been on the pill since I was fifteen.”

   Just like me. My birthday present from my mother that year was a trip to the doctor for the prescription because, I know you’re going to need these. It’s just a matter of time. For once, she was right.

   “So…Brian let you--”

   “Of course not. Laura had that talk with me right after Cassidy was born. I was only, like, twelve or so and I probably knew more about sex than Brian did.” She snorted, then, apparently remembering that she felt bad that he’d missed out on all the normal guy things, stopped. “Anyway, she told me that I should wait until after high school before I fuck anyone--”

   I raised an eyebrow, so she amended her statement.

   “She said I should wait until I was an adult to have sex--”

   I nodded my approval. The idea that Laura would say fuck seemed almost sacrilegious.

   “--but she also said that if it looked like I was gonna do it anyway, then I should go talk to her first and she’d take me to Family Planning. So that’s what I did.”

   Fifteen. She’d lost her virginity a year earlier than I had. I wanted to go back in time to four years ago, back to the day before she’d let it happen. Take her aside and tell her not to do it. Tell her that Laura was right; tell her to wait. Tell her to wait for someone special, someone who loved her, at least a little. But then if I had that power I’d probably go back and tell me that, too.

   “Okay. But you’re fucking a guy who’s probably fucking other girls, too, and God only knows what they’re into. Don’t you think a little more protection would be a wise thing?”

   “Tess…”

   “Rachel…”

   But she was spared any more of my lecture by a sound the two of us would have recognized anywhere. The windows were open and we could hear Brian’s truck long before he even pulled onto the road. I wanted to get a few more words of caution in. To tell her, again, to stay away from Tim. But I knew enough about the stupidity and stubbornness of nineteen-year-old girls when well meaning adults tell them what to do, so I didn’t. I just said:

   “Rach. If you ever get into any trouble or…if you need anything--and I mean anything--then please come talk to me. Okay?”

   “Whatever.”

   Brian burst through the door. Rachel looked up and hollered, “Hey you scumbag. How’s it goin’?”

   He cuffed her playfully on the head. “Show some respect to your elders, shithead.” He gave me a kiss and said, “Hey, babe, it’s hotter’n hell and I think I left my denim shorts up here.”

   “Check my middle drawer.”

   “Okay. Thanks.”

   He went into my room to change. As soon as the door closed behind him I whispered, “I meant it Rachel. You--”

   “Okay, okay. I get it.”

   When Brian emerged again he was holding Rachel’s wet clothes. He tossed them at her. “You need to learn to take of your stuff.”

   I looked past him, onto my bedroom floor. His dirty work clothes were lying in a heap in front of the bed. I grinned, but said nothing. Instead I asked Rachel if she wanted a plastic bag to bring her clothes home in so she wouldn’t get her car all wet. She nodded and followed me to the living room closet.

   “Holy shit, Tess. What’s all this?”

   The closet was filled with all the boxes I’d moved in with--broken down and stacked neatly on the floor--and almost five months worth of plastic grocery bags, stashed inside a garbage bag that was hanging on a hook.

   I shrugged. “You never know when you might need a box or a bag.”

   Rachel grabbed the bag of wet clothes then examined Brian’s hand. It was still a little swollen, but the bruises were better; faded yellow instead of dark purple. Then she said, “You fucking idiot. At least you didn’t break any fingers.”

   I smiled softly, because that meant the worry had been for Brian, the anger for her father; which is just how it should have been. And it meant that she was alright after all. Or at least that she would be. Just a matter of time.

Chapter 16

Chapter 18

Table of Contents

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