Closer Home (7 page)

I swallow hard. My mouth is full of sawdust. “Not Ricken. Me.”

Our eyes stay locked for a long moment. I wait for a rush of hatred or tears of grief, but after what seems to me an eternity, she shrugs slightly and goes back to her packing.

“Cool,” she says.

“Ariel, I’m not sure you understand. That’s all she left you—one million and money for college. I don’t know what she was thinking. I’ll deed it all over to you as soon as it’s clear—”

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to have to worry about all that money. You have no idea what you’ve just stepped into.”

I feel like I’m free-falling without a safety net. This is not at all what I’d expected from Ariel. For a few seconds I’m relieved that she doesn’t seem hurt, but that gives way to the old, heavy weight of responsibility. Ariel’s room is light and airy, but all at once it feels way too small. I close my eyes and imagine I’m back home in my little rented house, with the maple out the window and the fresh air flowing in. Last week I was complaining about being broke. Now I want nothing more than to ditch all of this money and the strings attached to it and go back to my old life.

“I’m going to go find my dad,” Ariel says in a low voice.

My eyes fly open.

“Why?” I know it’s a stupid question before it leaves my lips, but I seem to have no control over my own tongue.

“Are you serious?” She adds socks and a pair of jeans to her suitcase.

“Okay. I totally get why. But how, then? Where are you even going to start? Far as I know, she never told anybody who he was.”

Ariel picks up the diary, dropping it into my lap. “Everybody she had sex with the year before I was born, all detailed there. Nobody could ever accuse her of being a prude.”

The diary seems to burn into my skin. I shiver, the rest of me cold in comparison. “So she mentions a few names . . .”

“Six. Six names over the course of a month. And she had no love for any of them, either. Not so much as a good strong crush.”

“She was sixteen. She was your mother. You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

Ariel whirls on me, hands on hips. “She set herself a challenge to see how many guys she could bag over the summer. That’s where I came from. How do you think that feels?”

“Sucks.” I’m wishing I had a drink. A very stiff one. “I’m not sure knowing which guy it was will make you feel any better.”

Ariel shrugs. “I want to find out about the other side of me.”

“Callie didn’t want anybody to know.”

“But why?”

“She didn’t want to share you with anybody. We tried to get her to tell us so she could get child support. But she wouldn’t do it. Said she figured you were better off without a dad.”

“Why would she even think that?”

“Your grandpa was an alcoholic. He said some things . . .”

He wasn’t the only one who said things. I said plenty. And the thing about words is that once they’re spoken, you can’t ever really call them back.

It’s been two months since Callie had her baby, and the added expense has swamped our precarious finances. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a calculator and a stack of bills, trying to make two and two add up to five. Callie’s fixing a bottle for Ariel. You’d think the baby was starving to death from the sounds of her, instead of chubby and pink and obviously thriving.

“Here, let me hold her.” I need a break anyway. My head aches and my right eye has developed a twitch.

She hands me the baby and I snuggle her against my heart, pressing my cheek against her downy head and making the soothing little noises I didn’t know I was capable of before Callie brought Ariel home.

“Almost out,” Callie says, shaking the formula can. “We’ll need more tomorrow.”

All of my softness fades away. “I thought WIC paid for formula.”

“Not enough to make it through the whole month. I called and asked for more. They said I should remember it’s a supplemental program, not a free ride.” Her voice takes on a sarcastic edge over the last words.

She tests a little formula on her wrist for temperature and reaches out her arms for Ariel.

My body has gone cold. “There’s no money, Callie. What about food stamps?”

“All gone. You’ll have to let one of the other bills ride this month.” She takes Ariel from me and sticks the nipple into her mouth. The wailing stops at once, replaced by contented little gulping noises. Callie’s face goes all dreamy. She looks almost like a different person when she’s holding the baby. More like those pictures of Madonna and child, less like a willful teenager.

I watch them, feeling cold and helpless and lost. I’ve already moved money around as much as I dare. The mortgage is covered. I’ve paid half the electric bill and skipped the phone. There are enough groceries in the cupboard to eke out basic meals until my next payday. We’ve got a stash of diapers that Callie got free with a coupon.

But that’s it. I’ve started working days at McDonald’s and teaching all my music lessons in the evenings. Mom’s in the hospital with the worst bout of depression she’s ever had, which is saying something. There are going to be medical bills. Dad hit a point a few months ago where his drinking carried over from something he did after work to needing a couple of shots in the morning, and the whole functional alcoholic thing went out the window. Showed up to work one morning so drunk his boss couldn’t help but notice, and that was the end of his job. He hasn’t been fully sober since, far as I can tell. Callie applied for welfare, but I make too much money for her to qualify for more than a few dollars in food stamps, at least as long as she lives with us. Dale and I don’t really talk these days, and I can’t ask him for help, not with this.

“There isn’t anything else,” I say. “Money only stretches so far.”

“We have to have formula.”

“Obviously. So maybe you should get a job.”

She sighs. “We’ve been through this. With the sort of job I’d get, we’d pay more for day care than I’d bring in.”

This is true. I’m the one who crunched the numbers to figure it out. But something’s gotta give, and I’ve got nothing left.

“Time to tell me who the father is.” I hold up a hand to shush her before she even gets started. “Yeah, I know. You want to raise her yourself and all that. But we need some help here, Callie. He could at least be buying formula.”

“Not happening.”

I know to shut up. Anything I say at this point might as well be preached at a statue, but I can’t help myself.

“She needs a father. Not just for the money, either.”

“Lot of good that’s done us.”

“Dad wasn’t always like this, Callie. It’s Mom being sick and—”

“Just shut up, will you? I’m sick of you defending him. He can get off of his ass and help out. The money he spends on booze and smokes would more than pay for anything Ariel needs.”

She’s got her back to the door and doesn’t see Dad shuffle into the doorway and stop to listen. He looks like hell. Since he lost his job, he’s been shrinking. His clothes hang loose on his bony frame, as if they were made for a different man. His hair needs a wash and he hasn’t shaved in a week. Tomorrow I’ll have to bully him into the shower.

He sways a little, blinking, but he’s sober enough to register what Callie’s saying.

“I put a roof over your head,” he says. “Food on the table. You could have a little respect.”

My soul shrinks down small in my body, wanting to get away. I hate conflict, and there’s no way this isn’t going to turn into a big scene.

Callie rolls her eyes, snatching the bottle out of Ariel’s mouth and slamming it down onto the table. “Oh, please. Give me a break.”

Ariel starts wailing, wanting the rest of her bottle and scared by the shouting.

“Watch your tone. I don’t have to put up with this from you.”

“What are you going to do about it? Have another beer?” Shoving back her chair, Callie flounces across the kitchen and flings open the fridge, revealing a twelve-pack of Bud and a whole lot of nothing. She pulls out a can, pops it open, and holds it out. “Fridge is full of this shit, and there’s no formula for the baby. But here. Have a beer. You know it’s what you came in here for.”

“Callie—”

“Shut up, Lise. He’s a big man, he can speak for himself.”

Moisture glistens in my father’s eyes, and I find myself hoping, desperately, that he’ll say no, just this once. I want this to be a storybook world where he takes the can and dumps it down the sink. At least, I want him to be shamed enough to turn around and walk away, coming back for his beer when Callie is elsewhere.

But the beer draws him in, one step at a time. As he takes it from her hand, he says, “Nobody asked you to get pregnant. If you’re grown up enough to talk to me like that, you can go be someplace else.”

Callie’s face flushes. “Maybe you’re the one who should move out,” she shouts after his retreating back. He doesn’t answer. Tears streak down her face as she sinks back into her chair and picks up Ariel’s bottle. The baby settles almost at once, but the air in the kitchen feels supercharged and toxic.

“He didn’t mean it,” I say, watching the shell of my father shuffle away down the hallway, watching my sister’s tears fall. “He won’t even remember in the morning.”

“Which doesn’t change a thing,” she says.

I don’t know what to say and so I retreat to the facts. “Right. Nothing changes, him or the budget. Which means you need to collect child support. And for that, we need to know who Ariel’s father is.”

“I don’t know,” Callie whispers.

“What do you mean you don’t know? How can you not know who you had sex with?” A little tendril of fear curls through me. I think about date rape; maybe she was drugged or blacked out and somebody took advantage. But she squares her shoulders and gives me a defiant look.

“There was more than one guy, okay? And even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell. No kid needs this kind of shit.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Callie. Grow up, already!” All at once my emotions are too big to hold in another minute, and all of the anger and heartbreak and anxiety spill out in a flood. “Dad’s right. If you’re old enough to get down and dirty with that many guys, then you’re old enough to take care of yourself. I’m not the one who got herself pregnant, so don’t expect me to carry the weight of you and a baby.”

I feel something between us crack and shatter, but I don’t apologize.

Callie goes very still. When she looks up, her tears have dried and her jaw is set at full-on stubborn. “Fine. Don’t give us another thought.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.” She stands, Ariel sound asleep in her arms and oblivious to the storm.

“Where are you going?” Already my anger is evaporating into fear and loss.

“What does it matter to you?” Unlike my father, she seems to have grown taller as she walks away from me.

It’s only now, after Callie’s dead and it’s too late to talk about it, that I see this was the real break between us. She moved out before the week was over and lived on welfare until she landed a gig singing for a bar band in Seattle. After that we still talked now and then, about work and Ariel and the weather. There were visits. But we were always careful and polite, more like strangers than sisters. For the first time I let myself wonder if she would have stolen my song if I hadn’t said those things to her.

“I didn’t mean it,” I want to tell her now. “I only wanted to make you do the right thing, to find the father. Make him pay. I would have helped you for as long as you needed . . .”

But the time to set things right between us is gone, and now it’s Ariel who wants answers.

“Do you think . . . ,” I stop myself. Of course she thinks looking for her father is a good idea. She’s sixteen and the only family she’s got is me. “How are you going to find him? I mean, a name in the journal is one thing, but he could be anywhere by now.”

She drops another book in my lap. The Colville High yearbook, 1997–1998. “They’re all in there. Names, birth dates. I’ll google them.”

“Surely it can’t be so easy.”

“I found this.” She sets her laptop down in front of me.

“Oh my God, you have got to be kidding.”

I lean in to see the picture more clearly. Kelvin Marcus hasn’t aged well. The washboard abs are gone, replaced by an obvious paunch that isn’t disguised by a dark button-up shirt and suit jacket. Threads of gray run through thinning hair, and there are dark pouches under his dreamboat eyes.