Authors: Lauren Gilley
“Yes, ma’am.” He refused to make eye contact for fear of being turned to stone. Up at the breakfast bar, Mike and Jo were watching him with the sort of horror bystanders reserved for traffic accidents. “That
would
be the way to do it.”
Jo made a move like she intended to come to his defense. He shook his head.
Save yourself
.
“Were you not using contraception?” she asked and Tam thought he might choke on his own spit. “Although, truly, abstinence is the most fool proof method - ”
“Rose.” Randy’s voice had never been more welcome as he worked his way through the rest of the kitchen crowd and propped his hands on the back of a chair. “This ain’t 1945. Abstinence is dead.”
“Well, clearly it is to you, Randall.” Gram puffed up like a little white mushroom. “I suppose since you had to have five children you think they all need to have five too. Get them started early, I guess.”
“Poor you – so many grandchildren.” He stared at her, dead-faced in a way that was amusingly similar to Jordan, until she huffed to her feet and left them, mumbling under her breath that “Joanna was doomed” or some such. Randy fell into the chair across from Tam when she was gone. “She only hated Beth having five children ‘cause they were mine,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s no pleasing that woman.”
Tam shrugged. “She likes Dylan.”
“Dylan’s a bitch.”
Tam grinned. “I’m just glad you said it instead of me.”
**
How could she not have told him? Jordan felt…nothing. Seeing Kyle had flipped the overload switch in his brain and rerouted all power somewhere safer. Later – it might be hours or minutes – his rage would come boiling back to the surface; but for now, he was numb, taking in each disturbing detail of this gothic familial tableau with passive silence.
Their dinner was Boston Market takeout warmed in the microwave and served on expensive floral china. The mother downed a handful of pills that looked like candy with a glass of merlot and alternated between staring at her food and staring at him, eyes something out of a Stephen King novel. The dining room was flanked by bay windows that poured watery gray light across the table, giving the whole nightmarish event the air of a dream sequence.
“Hey, Ellie,” Kyle said, voice like a bomb landing amidst the quiet patter of cutlery on china. “Are you still trying to have kids?”
Ellie’s fork clattered down against the edge of her plate. The face she turned to him was stricken.
The mother gasped. “Oh, heavens no! No, Ellie! I know you need to have children soon, but not like this. Not…not just to hurt me!”
“Kids?” Jordan heard himself ask. He felt like he’d been the one to down a fistful of anti-anxiety meds.
“I’m not trying to have kids!” Ellie said in a desperate voice he didn’t recognize.
The sister rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, don’t lie. You totally are. You only have, like, a few childbearing years, or whatever the doctor said. And now you’re like, gonna have ‘em with your prof just to give Mom a heart attack? Way to go, El.”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“
What
did she tell you?” the mother demanded of Jordan. Her hands were curled up, knuckles sharp bony points, her French nails poised in front of her mouth like she might resort to chewing them. Her thin, lined face had gone ashen. “Did she tell you that she needs to have babies? Because she does. But, Noelle” - her eyes darted, wild, rolling gray marbles barely contained inside her head - “you need to have them with the
proper
man.”
“Mom,” Ellie hissed. “Do not do this to me! Please! He doesn’t know anything about any of that, he - ”
A flash went off: Kyle’s iPhone. He grinned as he lowered it. “Just wanted a pic of the happy couple.” He laughed, red eyes crinkling up to glazed slits.
A picture that would be physical, irrefutable proof that Jordan was, in fact, having an affair with a student.
Before he finished thinking it, he was pushing his chair back and on his feet. A fast explosion of voices sounded behind him as he turned his back on the whole fucked up lot of the Graysons, but he ignored them, heading for the front door at the fastest walk he dared. Every step shook off more and more of the numbness, and by the time he reached his Jeep, the gray, harsh scrape of the wind pulling at his hair, he didn’t have words to express how furious he was. He’d have to find a way, though, because Ellie’s heels were rapping down the driveway behind him.
“Jordan!” The clear sound of tears in her voice ratcheted his temper up another notch. “Jordan, wait, please, I’m - ”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” came ripping up out of his throat, a full-fledged snarl as he hit the front of his car and whirled on her. Ellie pulled to a sudden, startled halt, tripped, caught her balance with arms outstretched.
Her eyes were wild – not too unlike her mother’s had been – chest heaving with the deep breaths that rocked her. “Jordie, please.”
He would rather she called him
asshole
than that – he couldn’t take
Jordie
after what had just happened. “What
the fuck
was that in there?” He stabbed a finger up toward the house. “I’m your pervert coach
having babies
with you and that little motherfucker Kyle is
taking pictures of it
? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Kyle…Kyle’s just an idiot,” she stammered. “Don’t listen to anything - ”
All patience and grace had abandoned him. “Just an idiot? You didn’t think I ought to know your ex-boyfriend
who’s trying to get me fired
would be at family fucking Thanksgiving?”
“Get you fired?” The wind snatched a ribbon of hair across her face and she swiped it away, eyes glittering with unshed tears. “What are you talking about?”
“It wasn’t Shanae who ratted us out,” he snapped. “It was Kyle.”
She gasped. “How - ”
“You didn’t think I’d run into him at the gym sometime? You didn’t think I had a right to fucking know - ”
“Stop cussing at me!” she yelled, so suddenly and with such force that he took a step back from her. “I’m trying to explain to you that I didn’t orchestrate any of that and you’re screaming at me!”
Jordan felt his skin straining over his skull, felt frustration and fear and hot-blooded anger running through all the capillaries in his brain. “Why is he here?” He didn’t shout, but could feel the ice in his voice.
“He’s with my sister.”
“And you didn’t tell me that, because, why, you wanted me to get jumped? Or because you and little sis swap him back and forth still?”
Her jaw quivered, lips pressing together until they went white under her lipstick. “Did you really just ask me that?” Her voice was a taut, low cello note of fury.
“You’re trying to have kids?” he pressed on. “’I’m on the pill,’” he mimicked. “Are you?”
“You’ve seen me take it,” she said through her teeth. “You know I wouldn’t - ”
“I know?” he asked, incredulous. “What
I know
is that I just learned about fifteen things you never told me. What I know” - his voice was getting harder, hotter, louder again –“is that I’m gonna lose my goddamn job because your boyfriend has it out for me.”
He saw her stiffen. “He
is not
my boyfriend.” Her voice shook, a high vibrato quiver. “And you and I both acknowledged that being together would endanger your job. If you’d told me - ”
“If
I’d
told
you
?” he growled. “If I’d told you, what, that I didn’t wanna get railroaded by your crazy-ass family in there? Or that I didn’t wanna get caught up in some bullshit teenage love triangle?” It wasn’t enough – in the feral, wounded part of his brain that was doing his thinking, he saw her shaking and on the edge of tears and he didn’t just want to defend himself…he wanted to hurt her. He wanted her to feel scraped-clean inside like he did now. “Props to you for playing the good girl, sweetheart. You make the perfect damsel in distress. I hope it was more fun for you than it was for me.”
He was staring at the house across the street and all the premature Christmas garland pinned up around the front stoop, his jaw feeling dislocated from the rest of his head before he realized she’d slapped him. Slapped him
hard
.
Her expression, when he worked his head back around on his neck, was an unreadable tangle, her lashes dripping tears. She cradled her right hand in her left palm, the skin red where it had made contact with his cheek. She shook until he thought she might just break apart into a thousand tiny pieces and fall like pebbles onto the asphalt.
“How dare you.” Her voice was strangled. “How…how
dare you
.”
“Easy,” he said, and put his back to her. Climbed into his Jeep and cranked it. She sat down hard on the curb, still holding her hand, as he put it in reverse and backed away from her. He turned around in the neighbor’s drive and she slipped away in his rearview mirror, her hair streaming behind her, a dark banner in the wind.
31
Then
T
he house was a hideous shade of teal that was garish even at night, its trim brown, its porch dripping long tails of crepe streamers. It was a rental property, its yard unkempt, red Solo cups sprouting out of the grass like shiny toadstool caps. Of the five ratty Hondas in the drive, two had Pizza Hut lamps suction cupped to their roofs. There were no drapes in the windows and the lights were on, an unending, swaying crowd of college students parading through the house for all the neighbors to see. The sound system inside was blasting Rick Ross, the bass rattling Jo’s teeth inside her head with each step she took up the walk.
“Jordie, Jordie,” Tam said behind her. “I’m embarrassed for you, dude.”
“Even more embarrassed when he sees us,” she sighed, pulling to a halt at the base of the tilting, peeling wooden staircase that led up to the split-level’s door. The crepe streamers were orange and blue and already damp with dew, shredding where they lay against the sharp corners of the railings. She glanced over her shoulder at Tam; he was picking something out of his back teeth with a thumbnail, watching the house with the sort of flat disinterest someone much older would have worn. He wasn’t in school, but she knew that had nothing to do with how unimpressive he found the whole frat boy party scene. “I don’t really know what kind of shape he’s gonna be in,” she warned.
Tam shrugged, wiped his thumb on the leg of his jeans. He wasn’t Mike-sized, but his shoulders were bigger than they used to be; he was twenty-one, all grown up and not so scrawny anymore. “I’ll drag him out if I have to.” And tonight, in his leather jacket, his dark hair black spikes standing up against the night sky, he looked like he could.
The door was unlocked and he let her go in first, pressed up against her back as they pushed through bodies, two fingers hooked through her back belt loop. The music was a physical entity that picked the house up off its foundation and shook it. Hard. It smelled like pot smoke, stale bread and vomit; there were too many dancing, shrieking, fist-pumping humans pressed together in too small a space. Jo could feel panic rising - she couldn’t see floor or walls or furniture, only people. Twice she thought she would have slipped down under all the feet and been trampled if Tam hadn’t been holding onto her.
Jordan was in the kitchen, standing on the table, completely drunk off his ass.