Fix You (5 page)

             
Typical tomboy Jo thought she could bulldoze her way through situations; always ready to slap labels on people and call names. She was still such a child when it came to understanding some of the intricacies of adult relationships and the emotional trappings that came with them. Two weeks before, Jess would have dismissed her with a wave.

             
But tonight, the name-calling and label-slapping were exactly what she wanted. What she needed.

             
Jess smiled as best she could. “I have no idea how messy this process is going to get,” she admitted. “If we split assets, we’ll have to sell the house. He’ll be paying alimony and child support, but I’ll need to get a job, I…” It was overwhelming to think about. She didn’t have a binder with labeled tabs to put her divorce in.

             
“We’re here,” Jo assured. “Whatever you need. You don’t have to do this all by yourself.”

             
Jess intended to reach across the table for her sister’s hand, but she plucked up her wine glass instead.

4

             
“
I
think you’ll get to sleep in Uncle Walt’s old room. Won’t that be cool?”

             
Tyler slid down low in his seat, sneakers thumping as he braced them against the glove box. She should have told him to put them down, but she didn’t. “I want to sleep in
my room
.”

             
A soothing platitude about a new family and a new little boy enjoying his room died on her tongue. “I know,” she sighed instead as she piloted the Tahoe up into her parents’ drive. “But we’re going to have to make do for a little while.”

             
“But I don’t
want to
.”

             
“Tyler, please, just…don’t make this any harder, okay?”

             
He didn’t agree, instead popped his door the moment the SUV came to a halt and flung himself out, trudging across the driveway toward the backyard with his head down, miserable and sulking.

             
“Jesus,” Jess said, and didn’t know if it was a prayer or a curse.

             
It was a Saturday and the morning had been the last Saturday she would wake with sunlight filtering in through her drapes as she woke in her own bed. A month since she’d reached into her husband’s coat pocket and pulled out a pair of panties, the house was for sale, the furniture divided and stowed away at Public Storage, and she was coming home to live with Mom and Dad. And sister and brother-in-law. And niece. It was like some fucked up episode of
Full House
she wished she wasn’t tumbling headlong into.

             
By the time she’d walked around and lifted the rear hatch at the back of the Tahoe, her dad and Tam had come out to the drive from the garage.

             
“Jessie Mae,” Randy greeted and she cringed to herself as she started pulling out luggage. He came up beside her and pulled her into a sideways, crushing hug even though she continued to reach for bags. “You make the drive okay?”

             
“Yep,” she said through her teeth.
Seeing as how I’m here, duh.

             
Tam scooped up her overstuffed Louis Vuitton duffle and slung it over his shoulder. “Your mom’s got the rooms all set up,” he offered. “Is this yours or Tyler’s?”

             
“Mine.”

             
Randy released her, blood flow restored as he did so, and reached for the big rolling suitcase. “We’re glad you’re home, sweetheart.”

             
Good. At least someone was.

             
Inside, it still smelled like breakfast: sausage and something sweet. Jo was at the sink, hand-washing the non-stick skillet. Willa was sitting on the floor with a set of wooden blocks and a sippy cup.

             
“Hey,” Jo greeted. “I think Mom’s up leaving mints on your pillow or some shit. She’s excited.”

             
“Hotel Walker.” She dropped her purse in an empty chair at the table. “And they say you can’t go home.”

             
“Some of us don’t even leave it,” Jo said with a smile that told her how bitchy she sounded.

             
“Sorry.”

             
“We moved Will’s crib into our room, so Dad and Tam took the bags up to Jordie’s old room.”

             
Jess nodded. Her eyes moved over the room with an attention to detail she hadn’t exercised in years. It was the same room in which she’d worked on all her elementary and middle and high school projects. The room where all their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were cooked. The art on the fridge now belonged to Chase, Logan, Tyler, and even the aimless scribbles of Willa and Evan. But the room…The linoleum floors, laminate counters, patterned wallpaper, and ceramic birds were the same as they’d always been. The kids had all grown up and moved on, but this place hadn’t been touched by time. It was as reassuring as it was depressing: some things withstood while some things fell apart.

             
The staircase buckling and groaning was a sound that reached all the way back to the kitchen. A moment later, Tam appeared in the threshold, still looking weird with his new short hair.

             
“Hey, thanks,” Jess offered as he headed out through the garage after the rest of her bags.

             
He gave her a two-fingered wave as he left.

             
“It’s not that I’m not appreciative,” Jess said when he was gone, and Jo threw her a
sure
look over her shoulder as she started loading the dishwasher. “I am,” Jess insisted. “But…”

             
“I get it,” Jo said. “You had your own household and now…” She shrugged. “I may not have been there, but I do get it.”

             
“I know.”

             
Life had become awkward. Even if she soldiered on, she’d lost her home – her base by which she judged everything – and even stable family relationships felt out of sync. Jessica couldn’t look at herself the same way anymore – how could her siblings and parents? It had probably started in her imagination, but now she was testy, and everyone was reacting to her. She hated it.

             
“What are you guys doing today?” she made a stab at conversation.

             
Jo finished with the dishes and toweled off her hands, propped a hip against the counter. “Tam needs some new pants for work. We splurged on the one suit before his interview, but now he’s gotta have a ‘wardrobe.’ Poor baby, he hates it,” she sighed. “So we’re gonna head to the dreaded mall. Take Will and make a whole family outing of it.”

             
Jess cringed inwardly to realize that she hadn’t asked one time about Tam’s big news. “How’s he liking the new job?”

             
Jo shrugged. “It’s work, you know? But apparently they love him down there. He’s so good with numbers and he’s so sweet – he was sweating buckets at his interview but I had no doubts.” Her smile was proud. “He’s doing well. And he’s working with Mike, so that makes it easier. And really,” her voice dropped a notch, “it’s good for him mentally. He’s always stressed about ‘not providing for us’ and that kind of shit.”

             
Jess’s smile was thin. “That’s good.”

             
“You wanna come with us?”

             
“No, thanks, I think I’ll…” What? Sit around her mother’s house all day? She didn’t know, but the prospect of being the third wheel with her happily married sister made her sick to her stomach.

             
“I better go find Tyler,” she said, getting to her feet. A sudden image of her child chasing a ball across the street made her hurry, upped her pulse as she moved to the back door. She opened it, and then stopped, worry fading, curiosity holding her in place as she spotted Tyler sitting on top of the picnic table next to Tam. The rest of her bags were on the bench, like Tam had set them aside because of some inquiry from Tyler that had pulled them both up onto the table. Jess cocked an ear and listened.

             
“…and Daddy was s’posed to take me, but he’s out of town - ” that’s what Jess had told him when he’d asked about going to the car show next weekend “ – and we came here and I dunno if he can find me here.”

             
Tam was silent a moment. His back was to Jess, but she saw his hand come up and scrub through his hair. His sneakered feet shifted on the table’s bench. “He can find you,” his voice was careful, “he’s probably just really busy right now, huh?”

             
“Yeah,” Tyler said glumly.

             
“It’s hard to move – you have to leave your old room and put all your stuff in boxes.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
Tam scratched at his hair again. “I bet your dad will take you to the car show.” He didn’t, like so many adults were wont to do, tell Tyler that Dylan would do anything, only that he thought he would. There was a difference; Jess didn’t believe in giving children for-sure statements when there was a chance they’d get hurt. She didn’t like to lie, even unwillingly. Tam had grown up his father’s punching bag; he understood wounded children better than any one of them ever would. “But if he can’t make it, I can take you.”

             
“You can?” Tyler’s head whipped in Tam’s direction. Jess saw a fleeting smile light across his face and realized it was the first she’d seen in weeks.

             
“Yeah. Dude, have you seen
my
car? You’re talking to a car guy.”

             
Jess hadn’t been part of the tumbling, wild dog pack that had been Mike, Jordan, Jo and Tam growing up, so she’d never been especially close to Tam. But as she let her head rest against the doorjamb, she kind of wanted to hug him.

**

              “There’s leftover alfredo bake in the fridge for lunch,” Beth said as she screwed the top onto her travel mug of coffee. “Jo showed you Willa’s food, right?”

             
Jess didn’t remind her mom that she’d been watching Willa since she was six weeks old. “Yes,” she said instead.

             
“Okay, then, well…” Beth dropped a granola bar in her purse, took up her coffee and then gave Jess one of her patented doubtful looks. “I guess I’m gonna go. Do you need anything? Will you be alright?”

             
Tyler was in the living room watching morning cartoons because school was out for the summer. Jo and Dad had left for work and once Mom was out the door, she was staring down the barrel of a long day entertaining her child, keeping Willa and shuffling around her parents’ house.

             
“We’ll be fine, Mom,” she said with a tight, false smile.

             
“If you’re sure - ”

             
“Mom, I’m getting divorced. I didn’t fall down a flight of steps and become a paraplegic. I can look after the kids and feed myself.”

             
Beth’s narrowed green eyes told her she was being a bitch, but stubbornness refused to allow her an apology. “Fine. Have a good
non-paraplegic
day.” Beth shut the door with a sharp
bang
on the way out that snapped Willa’s head around on her neck, a wooden block falling out of her hand.

             
Jess sighed and continued stowing the breakfast dishes in the washer.

             
The day passed in slow motion. Tyler was restless and sour, and resisted all of her attempts to divert his attention away from the insurmountable fact that their lives as they’d known them had come to an end. Tyler knew only his house, his parents, his six short years of life. He wasn’t adjusting well. Willa, at least, was her usual happy self, but she was busy, refusing to go down for a nap, chattery and bouncy and wanting to play. Around one o’clock, she finally fell asleep on the floor amid her zoo animals and Tyler became at least somewhat interested in a movie. Jess curled up in the corner of the sofa, feeling old and tired and stretched thin, and propped Jo’s laptop on her knees. Then she stared at a blank document for a long, stupid moment.

             
She’d put together a resume only once before in her life, and that had been in college. Going from graduate to stay-at-home wife and then mother wasn’t exactly the sort of thing she could brag about to a potential employer. How did she even spin that? Manager of the Beaumont family household? Yeah, that sounded
great
.

             
After God knew how many wasted minutes, she began typing, fleshing out her education and trying to somehow make her college Dairy Queen job sound impressive.

**

              “How’s the job search going?” Jo asked the next night at dinner.

             
Jess pushed her spaghetti around with her fork, silently wondering why her mother cooked so much pasta on a weekly basis. “It’s not going at all,” she admitted. “I applied for seven positions yesterday and I’ve already been turned down for four.”

             
“Already?” Randy asked. “They couldn’t ‘ve had a chance to even look at your resume that fast.”

             
“What resume? I’ve got four lines on a piece of paper and one of them is Dairy Queen.”

             
“That doesn’t matter,” Beth said, offhand. “Your grades were perfect in college.”

             
The kids’ presence at the table was all that kept her language in check. “Actually, it
does
matter. No one wants to hire a thirty-two-year-old with zero experience. I coulda gone to Harvard and I wouldn’t be any more attractive.”