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I cross my arms over myself, ashamed of the way he looks at me now. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. It’s better not to rock the boat, not to make trouble. I still have two years before I graduate from high school. Two years to save every penny I make so I can get the hell away from here once I have my diploma. Why am I suddenly confiding in Wes?
“Look at me.” Wes coaxes my chin so that I have no choice but to follow the command. “You’re beautiful. Please tell me you know that.”
I don’t answer because I don’t care. Whether or not I’m beautiful isn’t a question I wrestle with. I’m not like Sienna or those other girls. Even Daisy fusses over her outfits and hair in a way that makes her seem foreign to me. I’m in my own head most of the time, caught in the same kind of purgatory as my mother.
And she’s gone, so now what?Now I just keep on going. The thought leaves me feeling so empty, so isolated. My body shakes with the force of my sobs. He leans in and holds me close to his chest. His hands rub up and down my back slowly, soothing me as he whispers words I can’t make out.
I turn and lean into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. At first he grips me tighter, pressing me into him, but a moment later he drops his arms and stands abruptly. I look up, the loss of his warmth like a blast of ice cold air. Wes walks to my window and presses his palms against the pane. He hangs his head, shaking it slowly from side to side.
“Wes?”
He looks at me with a pained smile before turning to leave my room. “You get to sleep. I’ll get rid of these idiots.”
I want to stop Wes, to warn him, but I don’t. The last time I asked Christian to turn the music down during one of his parties it didn’t go well. He grabbed me, and with one hand spanning the length of my jaw, he walked me in reverse, forcing me back into my room. I tripped over one of my books when he pushed me inside, so startled that I didn’t put my hands out to break my own fall. I had a lump on the back of my head for a week afterwards.
Wes peeks his head in a moment later. “Get up and lock the door behind me.”
I do as I’m told. My heart is beating faster, anticipating conflict. The music goes off. I hear people talking in hushed tones with a little laughter mixed in. No yelling. The front door opens and closes a few times and then the house is silent. I lie awake for some time, waiting for the fallout that never happens.
After my first trip outside to give Rudy his buttered roll and hot chocolate, I stay indoors. I take my breaks at a corner booth in the back, so tired that I rest my head against the table. Marley, the den mother of our diner crew, asks if I need her to cover my tables. I could go home early, take the next day off if I want.
I don’t want to go home.
Christian was awake when I came out of my room ready to leave for work this morning. He looked up at me, pausing as he cleared the counter of plastic cups and beer cans. His hair was messy and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked out the front window and said, “You leave this early? It’s still dark outside.”
“Um, yeah, the diner opens at six.”
“It’s not safe, you driving over to that side of town in the dark. I’m just saying, you could make extra money working with me and Dad.”
“It’s fine.” What was with the small talk, the sudden concern for my welfare? “I’m not working there, not working with Liza. I like the diner.”
He looked back down at the black trash bag nodding his head. I stood there waiting, thinking he might need me or something. He was grieving too, I reminded myself, and for a brief moment he seemed, I don’t know, remorseful maybe.
I startled when his head whipped back in the direction of the hallway. “Get dressed and get out,” he ordered the girl who’d suddenly materialized in his bedroom doorway. Her eyes were wide, her face smeared with last night’s eye makeup. She was shifting her weight from one foot to another, wearing nothing but my brother’s shirt. Clearly she had to pee. When she looked towards the bathroom door, he raised his voice. “I said I want you gone.”
As she scurried back into his room to get her things, Christian looked to me, challenging me to say something. I wanted to tell him he was being an asshole, that was obvious, but I also just wanted to ask him why he was so angry all the time. I felt sympathy for him in that moment, which made next to no sense.
On the drive to work, I tried and failed to conjure up an image of a happy child, a loving brother. I don’t remember the person Wes described to me. But his words ring true. My mother’s stroke, although I hardly remember the actual event, changed everything and every one of us. Home was suddenly a very sad and lonely place to be once she went to stay in the hospital. I knew it couldn’t have been easy on my brother. He saw it through the eyes of a teenager, so he saw more than I did. And then a few years later, whatever happiness remained was tied to his big dreams. Those were taken from him too.
A paper tablecloth, a giant tray of sandwiches wrapped in colored cellophane, paper plates, unopened soda bottles, a cake and a platter of cookies. Maybe it’s the memory of that night that keeps me from turning my back on my brother, no matter how hateful he can be.
The accident left my brother with a shattered leg, his all but guaranteed football scholarship shot to hell. I was only eleven and started staying after school most days, the tension in our home too much to take. I’d hear my father giving false, cheery updates to the college coaches recruiting Christian, only to hear him slam a palm into the wall once the calls disconnected. After the surgery, physical therapists came and went, Christian and my father dismissing every one that contradicted their mandate that Christian be back on the field before playoffs. My brother hurled a water glass at one, barely missing the man’s head before it smashed against his bedroom door. That therapist’s crime was telling Christian he should focus on going to college, not on playing college football.
Everything was set for a party, like we were expecting a crowd, but there were only four of us in the living room. Three really—I was hiding in a nook off to the side, silently taking in the awkward scene.
Christian was showered and dressed in clean sweats, even wearing his regular sneakers. He wanted Coach to believe that it was all good, that he was just fine, that he was ready to get back out there and lead the team to the state championship.
No one ate. Christian barked at me right before Coach knocked on the door, ordering me to remove his crutches from the room, so he couldn’t get up to make himself a plate even if he wanted to. But both Christian and my father were too busy to eat anyway. Too busy with the effort of plastering on their winning smiles, with making small talk, with putting a positive spin on Christian’s recovery.
I almost felt bad for Coach. It was clear from his expression that he knew the score, knew he had to focus his energy on the other boys who still had a shot at being recruited. He was only humoring my father with this visit. He begged off when they both gestured for him to dig in, my father making a show of slicing open the cellophane even as Coach made excuses, something about having to take his daughter to Girl Scouts. My father didn’t let up, making two plates and forcing one into Coach’s hands.
I watched my father take a big bite of his own sandwich, forcing himself to chew something that probably tasted like battery acid at that point.
Christian works for my father now. He dresses in cheap suits and sells cars to people who can’t afford them, offering credit with terms no sane person would ever accept. Knowing Christian, he lives for that part of the job, for that exact moment when he knows he’s succeeded at putting some sucker between a rock and a hard place. I’m sure he enjoys repossessing vehicles twice as much as he enjoys selling them.
He’s not a happy man, that’s plain to see. Without football, he had no need or desire to attend college—that’s what he tells everyone anyway. He likes to present himself to the world as Christian Mason, independently wealthy heir to an automobile dealership dynasty. As if. In truth, he had no aptitude for college, barely eked his way through high school. And our family business, while it doesn’t lose money as far as I know, isn’t exactly going to set either one of us up on Park Avenue.
Nowadays I try to avoid him in the mornings, leaving for school half an hour before I need to. He stomps around, cussing under his breath in a general state of dissatisfaction. Then Christian stands in front of the large mirror that hangs over the couch in our living room, yanking on the end of his tie as he works to make the knot. At twenty-two his middle has already gone soft, a small bit of fat pushing over the waistband of the pants he insists on buying. He needs a bigger size, but I’d sooner take up residence in a lion’s den than suggest it.
