Althea and Oliver (32 page)

“You don't have a job?” asks Oliver, surprised.

“Most of us don't. Not real ones. We pick up cash here and there.”

“How do y'all get by?”

“Off the fat of the land, that's how,” she says, and a key rattles in the door.

• • •

Althea's favorite mug is drying in the rack on the kitchen counter, the same mug Matilda handed her the first morning.
THERE IS NOTHING EITHER GOOD O
R BAD, BUT THINKING M
AKES IT SO.
There's half an inch of burnt coffee at the bottom of the pot; she takes it, starts a fresh one. The only official rule of the house may be not to burn it down, but Althea's learned some other courtesies. Take off your shoes in the front hallway. If you finish what's in the coffeepot or the rice cooker, replenish it. If the trash stinks, take it outside, don't wait for Matilda to do it.

She brings her coffee and the cordless phone to the front steps. Matilda's lucky quarter is still glued to the sidewalk. A sharp wind blows across the street, hard and cold, stinging the back of her neck, biting at her fingers as she dials.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Althea. How's it going out there? You getting ready to come home?”

She can almost see him, sitting at the kitchen table, the house silent except for the ticking of the old grandfather clock, maybe the heat coming up through the pipes. “You know, it's a lot better than I thought it would be.”

“You're not just saying that?”

Althea can hear everyone in the backyard, throwing snowballs and insulting one another. She takes a swig of her coffee and then a deep breath. “Dad, I'm not in New Mexico.”

“Pardon?”

“I'm not in New Mexico. I never went to New Mexico. I'm in New York City.”

“With Alice?” Garth asks, confused.

“No. Not with Alice. I came here alone.”

“Oh. To see Oliver?”

“Yeah.” She presses her ear closer to the receiver and plugs the other ear with a finger, trying to block out all the noise in Brooklyn and anticipate his reaction.

Garth pauses, presumably to collect himself. When he speaks, his voice is oddly tight, his words clipped. “Althea, I don't even know what to say. Did it really seem more reasonable for you to concoct an elaborate cover story about going to see your mother than to just tell me you wanted to visit your best friend in the hospital? And you left over a month ago—what have you been doing this whole time? Have you been living in your car, in a shelter somewhere?”

Althea has a harder time staying calm; her words come tumbling out in a rush. “Oliver was already asleep when I got here, but I found a place to stay with these kids in Brooklyn and I sort of, like, fit right in. I made friends with them. It's not a shelter. It's a real house, with a cat, and a kitchen, and a coffeemaker.”

His chair scrapes against the floor as he stands up; he's on the move, she can tell, probably pacing across the kitchen. “Althea, I don't give a good goddamn about whether you have access to fresh coffee. I want to know when you're going to get in your car and come home.”

She reaches for a lock of hair to gnaw on before she remembers Matilda cut it off. “It's going to be a while, I think.”

“What are you talking about?” Exasperation is creeping into his voice. “You've already been there for a month. You can't just stay there, waiting for Oliver to wake up.”

“He's already awake. He's here with me now.”

“He's not at the hospital? Does Nicky know where he is?”

“He talked to her yesterday.”

He pauses, trying to process this. “I don't understand. If you went up there to see Oliver, and you've seen him, then why aren't you coming home?”

“Look, Dad, I know you were probably hoping that I would finish high school and go to college, and I don't know, maybe eventually I will,” she says, trying to sound reasonable, like she's thought this all out and it's totally logical. “But right now I just want to stay in the place where I seem to do the least damage. You said I'm almost eighteen and I could decide for myself.”

“I was talking about North Carolina or New Mexico,” Garth says, not yelling but as close as he's come to it in a long, long time. “Staying in New York City with a bunch of strangers was not an option.”

“Alice is more of a stranger to me than anyone,” Althea snaps. “She's just DNA and a voice I hear every six months on the other end of the telephone. What has she ever done to make you think I'd be better off with her?”

“So everything you said about snowshoeing and red chiles—”

“I'm sorry, Dad. There was no showshoeing. I'm sorry I had to lie—”

“You didn't have to lie. You
chose
to lie. Over and over again, for a month. What would possess you to—Althea, are you on drugs?”

“Not even a little,” she says, trying to be reassuring. “I promise. No drugs. I barely even eat meat anymore.”

“So I'm supposed to believe you're living some kind of ascetic existence in New York City?” Garth asks sarcastically. “What, did you meet a boy up there?”

“Why does it have to be about a boy? Give me a little credit.”

“What about Oliver?”

“I can't gush blood over him forever, Dad. If I stay here, I have a chance.”

“A chance to what?”

“To get over him. If I go back to living four houses down from him, I'll be done for.”

“So it
is
about a boy.”

She takes a deep breath, because she's still figuring it out herself. “It's not that simple. It's not just because of Oliver. And it's not because of you, if that's what you're worried about, or anything you did. You didn't do anything.” The words hang there uncomfortably. In the most literal sense, they're true. Garth
hadn't
done anything, which was part of the problem.

“I know that this hasn't been an easy few months for you,” he says. “Maybe this seems like a good idea now—a change of scenery, some new faces. Some kind of adventure. But have you thought about what you're going to do for money? What kind of job you're going to get without even a high school diploma? How well do you know these people you're staying with? You might think you're doing some brave, exciting thing, but there's a difference, you know, between courage and stupidity.”

“You said you wanted me out of the basement, remember?”

“You know damn well this isn't what I meant. And don't pretend like this phone call is about asking me for my permission to stay in New York, wherever you are. We both know that's not what you're doing.” There's a loud bang on the other end of the phone—a cabinet slamming shut, it sounds like. Garth going for the scotch, no doubt.

“You're right, it's not,” she admits. “Are you mad?”

“When have you ever seen me mad?” he asks.

“There was that time with the Jell-O,” she reminds him.

Garth pauses for a moment. “I made a grown man cry last week.”

“You did what?” Althea asks, confused. She reaches for her mug, but the coffee inside has gone cold.

“I suppose he was more of a man-child,” Garth continues. “A senior. I caught him plagiarizing his final paper. He came to see me in my office and I made him cry. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't even fail him. I was disappointed and understanding and I gave him a chance to rewrite the paper for a lower mark. The nicer I was, the harder he cried. By the time I was finished, he felt three times worse than he ever would have if I'd shouted. I don't go in much for all the drama, Althea. I leave it to the Greeks. But what am I supposed to do now? Call the police? Go up there and drag you back by your hair?”

She considers telling him that she cut off all her hair, that there wouldn't be much for him to grab hold of, but it doesn't seem like the right time for jokes.

“I can finish high school here, or get a GED. There're a million art schools in New York.”

“You can come home to North Carolina and finish school at Laney. If you want to be in New York so badly, you can be back there by the fall.”

Althea takes a stab at speaking Garth's language. “It's the Cortés thing, Dad. When you hit the shore, burn the ships. There's no going back.”

“I can't believe you lied to me. For weeks.” Despite his protests that he is not mad at all, Althea can hear the anger in his voice. Not just anger; something worse. A painful dejection running underneath his words, threatening to surface. “I was going to take you to the ruins of Tenochtitlán. I made appointments with colleagues down there, planned for two weeks of research. If I cancel now—”

“There's no reason for you to cancel. I want you to go. It'll be better if you go alone, anyway. You'll get more done without me there. Oliver's going home tomorrow. You ask him when he gets there. Ask him if I'm doing okay here, if I'm better than okay, if I'm happier than he's seen me in years. Ask him if I'm safe. Ask him if this is the right place for me. He'll tell you.”

“What if we went someplace besides Mexico?” he asks, suddenly quiet and entreating. “I can cancel the trip, and we can go to Crete. Or anywhere. Anywhere you want.”

She listens with her eyes closed, concentrating on the soothing timbre of his voice, the Georgia accent that makes her think of white-gloved debutantes and simpler times. Althea sees herself as rebellious, but realizes now how unaccustomed she is to openly defying her father; she's used to doing what she wants because he doesn't pay attention, not because she battles him and wins. She feels like she does after too much coffee on an empty stomach, or a couple of Oliver's pills—sweaty, queasy, weirdly euphoric. Maybe he's right. Maybe it won't work, and she'll go home and get the biggest “I told you so” of her life. But for now, in this moment, there's no room for doubt. “I don't want to go anywhere,” she says finally. “I want to stay here and explore the New World.”

The softness in his voice disappears. “Cortés was an asshole, you know. The man was not a role model. He was a greedy megalomaniac, and you're a teenage girl coping with her first romantic disappointment. This matter isn't settled, so if I were you, I wouldn't set fire to the Camry just yet. You've bought yourself a couple of weeks, but this conversation isn't over.”

Althea considers this. Maybe by the time Garth gets back from Mexico, he'll be so engrossed in his book and the new semester that she can put him off a while longer. She'll be eighteen in June—six months away, but still, if she tries hard enough, maybe she can run out the clock on him. He's a formidable adversary, but she's played enough Risk; she knows how to wage a war of attrition. “Can I take a rain check on Crete?”

“I should have locked you in that basement when I had the chance,” he says, and she's pretty sure he means it.

“No matter how miserable I was in Wilmington, I would have never gone to stay with Alice,” she says, as if that will bring him any solace. “I'd never switch teams in the final inning like that.”

“Am I supposed to find your loyalty touching?” he says. This is the tone he used with the student plagiarist, Althea's sure of it: gentle but icy. It's his confidence that makes him scary, how certain he is that his words will find their mark. “Considering how much you loathe your mother, you've got more in common with her than I ever imagined.”

She opens her mouth to respond with something equally cruel, and then stops. They've hurt each other enough for one day, so all she says is, “Happy New Year, Dad.”

“Good-bye, Althea.”

She disconnects. In the backyard there is a crash, the clatter of hundreds of empty beer cans as the Natural Iceberg collapses, and then a united, devastated shout of grief.

• • •

Oliver tries not to stare at Althea while they peel potatoes in the living room. It's her neck in particular that interests him. He never realized how long it was before.

Althea flicks her peeler nimbly, and potato skins fall into the bucket. Oliver can't match her pace. There's a pink scar on her wrist he hasn't seen before; he runs his finger along the puckered line. “That's new,” he says.

“It was no big deal.” She shrugs, without offering to elaborate. Just last night he finally saw her naked; he had uncovered whatever might remain of her body's secrets. But a new one has sprung up already and he hates it, this little piece of her story that she doesn't want to share.

“Tell me about the lithium,” she says.

“The lithium?”

“Right before he went back up to the clinic, Will told you to tell me about the lithium. So go ahead.”

He repeats what the doctor said, about how the medication might help and the possible side effects.

“And you don't know what to do?”

“Yeah.”

“Flip a coin,” Althea says.

He shakes his head. “I'm sorry I told you.”

“Let me see if I understand. The doctor told you he could help so you ran away from the hospital. Are you sure you actually want to get better?”

“It's not much help, is it? Right now, I'm not sick. Right now, I'm sitting here peeling potatoes and I feel fine. I'll be fine until I'm not, and then I'll be asleep and I'll be someone else until it's over and I'm me again. But if I try it, I might feel like someone else all the time. I could be the guy with the facial tic hanging out at the 7-Eleven trying to find enough change on the ground to buy myself a Snickers bar. What if I start walking differently? What if I don't talk the same?”

She keeps peeling without meeting his eyes. “You're thinking that maybe the KLS isn't so bad, because at least you know what to expect. Sort of. You're thinking maybe you can just sack up and stick it out. Except you already tried that. You didn't come all the way to New York because it wasn't so bad—you came because it was. You're thinking that you're fine when you're in between like this, but you aren't fine, you're terrified. All the time. You're worried that the medication might change you. Do you think the last year hasn't?”