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“He’s out tonight?”
I got towels for us, then wrapped mine securely around my nearly naked body. Bowie rubbed himself off because his towel wouldn’t have fit around one of his thighs. “I don’t know what my dad is doing tonight,” I said. “I had a dinner planned and I tried to tempt him to stay but he told me that he had to go somewhere. When he starts being sneaky, I have to worry. I was going to drive around and look for him.”
“Or, you don’t have to,” he suggested. “Let him get home by himself, let him figure it all out.”
I stared. “Is that what you do with your mom? You just let her flail and get hurt?”
“One thing I remember very well was bottle collecting,” he told me. “I would walk through the house, picking around all the junk and the people sleeping in cots and the dogs and the cages, and I would collect empties so that when my mom woke up, they would be gone. After a while, I had to ask myself how I was helping her when I did that.”
“You weren’t just helping her, you were helping your brothers and your dad, too. How would two more little boys have felt to see all the empty bottles in the morning?” I knew exactly how it felt, except in my case, it had been cans. “I’m helping myself as well. If he gets arrested again, he’ll lose his license. I can’t get him to every work shift and we can’t afford to get rides for him, if they would even come all the way out here to pick him up. We’re not exactly rolling in money. My dad has to work or we’re not going to make it.”
“No,he’snot going to make it. You, with all your hustle? You would do fine.”
“Oh. You expect me just to leave him, just to drop him because he has a problem.” When Bowie didn’t respond, that was answer enough. “I can’t do that to someone I love. I won’t let him suffer if I can help. I can’t let go of people like that, like they’re nothing.” I stared at him, understanding that he might be capable of that behavior himself. It would have meant he wasn’t the person I’d thought he was.
He looked at me very steadily. “I’m going to go, but before I do, I’m going to nail that opening closed. I’m not leaving you alone with no door on your house. I’ll put a note on it to tell your father to head around to the back if—when he gets here. All right? And I’ll have someone over to fix it as early as I can get them.”
I noticed that now he hadn’t said that he would fix the door himself. “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s my responsibility to keep it up.”
“Lissa, I’m the one who broke the damn door.” I watched his hand clench again. “And I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t love your father. I just don’t like that you’re going to sit here worried and I don’t like the thought of you driving around all night trying to find him. Let him get himself home.”
“Thanks for coming over,” I said.
He looked at me again and then left, picking up the door and then leaning it back into the opening. A moment later, sounds of a hammer filled the quiet air. “I stuck a note on here,” Bowie announced from the other side.
“Thank you.”
Silence, but I didn’t think that he’d gone.
“Thank you for worrying about me,” I said through the wood panel. Since it was nearly hollow with rot, I was sure that he could hear me clearly. “I’m sorry I argued with you.”
“You can argue with me whenever you want. I’ll argue back,” he answered. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Me neither.”
Then I heard him laugh. “I had a feeling that you hadn’t.”
“If you wanted to come inside, I wouldn’t mind making dinner for us.”
There was another silence, but then Bowie appeared at the patio door. “Good, because I’m starving and all I have at my house is a few of cans of beans and peaches. And a watermelon that’s a very, very mushy.”
“You ate the rest of the hot dogs?”
“It’s been a long time since you were over,” he reminded me. “There were many meals in between then and now.”
His shorts dried off as I cooked, which was lucky because we certainly didn’t have anything he could have worn besides bed sheets. He watched me as I moved around the kitchen and he asked me a bunch of questions, just like he did when we had on “The Last Dancer.” I didn’t make the lasagna, which would have taken too long when I could tell that he was hungry. I could tell that from the way he kept bending over the pot on the stove to inhale and then would close his eyes and swallow.
The way he ate proved it. In not a lot of time, everything I’d cooked was gone. “When I come over to fix things tomorrow, I’m going to bring groceries, too. It’s not fair to eat you out of house and home,” he said as we washed the dishes. “I used to do that with my friends in high school. Their parents would see me coming up the driveway and they’d run to throw the locks and turn off the lights.”
He was back to saying that would come himself to replace my door. “I work at the NGS and I get a discount,” I reminded him as he did his extreme towel drying on the final pan.
“Well, then maybe I’ll just bring us some lunch. I usually sleep in the day after a game.”
He did look tired. “You should go home and rest,” I suggested, but he thought it would be a better idea to sit on my couch and hang out for a while. I realized that he was trying to keep me company so I wouldn’t worry alone, but after a while, his eyes were closing.
“Bowie.”
“Mmm.”
