He climbed down the muddy embankment to the crosses and used his jacket’s cuff to wipe the dirty snow off the wood. Wind whipped across his face, stinging his eyes. He straightened the cross on the right, which was leaning awkwardly into the shoulder of the other one, and felt a pang in his gut.
Billy had called back right after he and Elsbeth got into bed. She’d been acting weird all night. First the fancy dinner. Cheesecake and
wine,
for Christ’s sake. She was trying too hard. Being too sweet. When the phone rang, she’d been kissing his neck and rubbing his leg over and over with her hand. It didn’t feel sincere, though; it felt like she was trying to get something from him. Something she wouldn’t name. He felt like that a lot lately: like there was some secret he was supposed to figure out, but she wasn’t giving him any clues. And so instead of arousing him, her gentle strokes had just made his jumpy nerves feel even more agitated.
“I’ve got to get this,” he’d said, looking at Billy’s name on the screen. He waited for him to leave a message, and then took the phone out into the living room, leaving Elsbeth in their bed.
Billy’s voice hadn’t changed since he was a teenager, since he left town and never came back. There was a lot of background noise. It sounded like a subway station: hollow, a loudspeaker voice reverberating. Billy waited a moment and then cleared his throat. “If the money’s for you,” he said. “I’ll send it. If it’s for Dad, he can go to hell.”
And while it killed him to lie to his brother, it almost killed him more to let Billy think he couldn’t provide for his own family. He’d texted a quick note back.
500 should take care of it. Pay u back next month.
Now Kurt climbed back up the embankment and looked down at the crosses. He’d bring out some flowers soon maybe, after El’s lilacs started to bloom. Get some of those cemetery vases that you can spear into the ground. That would be nice.
By the time he got back to the house, his legs seemed pacified. Ready to let him rest. He quietly opened the bedroom door and peeled off his clothes. He pulled the sheets back gently and climbed in next to Elsbeth, wrapping his arm around her, breathing the smell of her clean skin. She was sleeping deeply now. He envied her this. The way sleep could consume her. Even on nights when they’d fought, when Trevor had them both on edge, she’d been able to lose herself in sleep. To slip easily into her own private peace. Gracy was the same way. Even as a baby, she’d always been a good sleeper. A
good sleeper,
as if sleep were a skill instead of something necessary to survive.
On nights that his restless legs propelled him out of bed and into the darkness, he knew that sleep would elude him. Because even if his legs relented, his mind kept reeling. And so he held her, her body responding to his even in sleep, and concentrated on her breathing, on the steady thump, thump of her heart, as he waited for morning to come.
O
n Saturday morning, Trevor refused to eat breakfast. He did this sometimes, as if to punish Elsbeth. He didn’t want to go to Pop’s, and while she could hardly blame him, if he didn’t eat, he’d be starving later, which would only make things worse.
“I don’t like this wasting food,” she said, scraping the food off his plate into the trash can and then thinking, too late, that she should have saved it, sent it with him for lunch.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
She looked at him, but he wouldn’t return her gaze. She wished she could brush the white shock of hair out of his eyes, touch his chin,
make
him look at her. But she worried he’d only swat her hand away.
“Listen, I know you don’t want to go, but your dad needs your help,” she said, turning back to the counter. She knew that Trevor respected Kurt. That Kurt and he shared some sort of bond that eluded her.
At that Trevor silently stood up, grabbed the camera his teacher gave him, and walked out the front door. She watched him through the window as he climbed over the tailgate into the back of the truck, looking through the camera at the sky.
Kurt came in and sat down at the table. “Thanks,” he said when she handed him his plate.
She sat down across from him and picked up her coffee, which had grown cold. “You need me to come with you today?”
“I’ve got Trev. You don’t need to worry about it.”
And truthfully, she was relieved that he hadn’t accepted her offer. Like Trevor, she’d rather go just about anywhere than Pop’s house on a Saturday morning. But she also knew that everything with Pop was wearing Kurt down. She’d suggested a few times that he talk to Jude about moving into an assisted-living place. If anyone could convince Jude to move out of that dump, it would be Kurt. But Pop was stubborn and proud. Like father, like son.
“You mind if I take Gracy to the salon, then? Get our tootsies painted?” she asked, stroking his leg with her bare foot under the kitchen table.
He grabbed her calf and pulled her foot onto his lap.
“I love you, El,” he said.
She wriggled her foot until it was pushing into the soft lump at his crotch. She felt him stiffen, and she smiled. “Love you too, baby.”
After Kurt and Trevor took off for Jude’s house, Elsbeth took Gracy to Babette’s to get them both pedicures. It was a freebie that came with working at Babette’s Beauty Boutique, one of the few (if tiny) perks. And Gracy loved it. She’d spend all day choosing from the rows and rows of colors.
Elsbeth had been working at Babette’s since she graduated from cosmetology school, almost thirteen years now. She worked five mornings a week and every other weekend. Twig shared the chair, working the afternoons and the weekends Elsbeth was off. They left notes for each other sometimes, silly scribbles on sticky notes they stuck to the mirror. Elsbeth learned about most things going on in Twig’s life through these scratched missives. It would be nice if they could work at the same time, she thought. But so many things with Twig were like this: Elsbeth always feeling left out, a part of her life but still, somehow, on the edge of it.
She and Twig met at beauty school, and without Twig, she probably would never have finished and gotten her license. The first three months were the worst; the smell of shampoo alone was enough to send her running to the bathroom; perm solutions and hairspray were almost more than she could stand. (She wondered sometimes if maybe all those chemicals were partly to blame for Trevor’s problems. When she was pregnant with Gracy, she didn’t do anything but cut hair. No coloring, no bleaching, no nails.) Twig was her savior back then, holding her hair back as she threw up into the sink. Bringing her ice cubes to suck on. Thankfully, by her second trimester, all those noxious smells became tolerable. And by the time she got her certificate, Trevor was already born.
In school, she and Twig had studied together and practiced on each other, but it was clear from early on that Twig was a better stylist than Elsbeth, though she’d never admit it. She was an
artist,
truly, while Elsbeth was merely competent. Twig got the wealthier clients, the younger clients. All of the teenagers. She was famous for her upsweeps: May and June with their proms and weddings made Twig enough money to spend most of her time off in July and August traveling. She was always running off to Old Orchard Beach or down to Atlantic City to visit her sister. Elsbeth, however, relied on the faithful ladies from Plum’s Retirement Community who got bused into Two Rivers every week. And, to be honest, she really didn’t mind. They always wanted the same thing: cut and curl, the occasional color. It was easy work, and there wasn’t nearly as much at stake. Elsbeth was also a good listener, and mostly the ladies just wanted to talk.
Back in the day, Babette’s used to be a barber shop, and it still had the swirly barber pole out front, though it didn’t work anymore. Elsbeth thought Babette might do well to renovate a little, but she wasn’t really in any position to speak up. The place was caught in a serious time warp, but Babette and most of the customers (especially the retirees) didn’t seem to mind.
Behind reception, there were black and white photos from the ’50s and ’60s hanging crooked on the walls. Elsbeth’s favorite was the one of the original owner, standing with his little girl by the barber pole. Betsy Parker, that was her name. In the picture, she’s sucking on an Orange Crush, and both her knees are skinned. Elsbeth always thought the girl looked a little bit like herself: long legs, black hair, restless eyes. Babette said that she’d gone off to college but then had to come home when her father got sick and couldn’t run the shop anymore. Like Elsbeth, she also got pregnant when she was still just a girl. Then one night there was a terrible thunderstorm, and she got in a car crash up at The Heights. She died just as her baby was born. It was the saddest story Elsbeth had ever heard. She looked at Betsy Parker’s picture at least once a day and felt her throat grow thick.
The salon was small, only five chairs and a couple of nail tables, though they had a tanning bed in the back as well. It was on the same street as the bank and the post office. Across the street was a used bookstore with a bowling alley in the basement. Elsbeth liked to browse through the used copies of
Vogue
and
Condé Nast
during her lunch breaks.
“Hey, girlies!” Twig said as Elsbeth ushered Gracy through the heavy front door, the bells jingling like Christmas. Twig was like a ray of sunshine in bright yellow capri pants and a tight orange tank top. Her shiny blond hair was spun up into a high ponytail. “I thought you were going shopping today,” she said as she combed out her customer’s curls.
Elsbeth sighed. “Trevor got in trouble again. Kurt’s making him do time at Jude’s.”
“Jesus, El. What did he do now?”
Elsbeth shook her head. She shouldn’t gossip about her own son. Sometimes she felt like she wasn’t even talking about her own family when she told Twig about Jude, about Trevor. When she complained about Kurt. Then it would hit her, this was her
family,
the people she was supposed to love more than anybody else in the whole world, and she’d feel bad. “Same old stuff. Getting in fights. I think the new principal has it out for him.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Twig said. As she spun her client around to look in the mirror, Twig whispered to Elsbeth, “You look like you could use some time in the tanning bed.”
“What about Gracy?”
“I’ll take care of Gracy. You go on,” Twig said. “Treat yourself. Nobody’s in there.”
“You sure?” Elsbeth asked, feeling swollen with gratitude.
“Princess Grace will get the full spa treatment.” Twig winked. “Mani, pedi, and how about a shampoo and blow-dry, Gracy?”
Gracy smiled, a big gap-toothed smile, and squeezed Elsbeth’s hand. “My favorite color is sparkly purple. Can I get sparkly purple? But pink on my toes. I only like pink on my toes.”
“Absolutely,” Twig said and lifted her up into her chair. “Now, I’m going to need to know which Disney princess you like the best.”
“I like Sleepy Beauty.”
“Me too! Why is she
your
favorite?”
Gracy’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Because her hair’s the swirliest.”
Elsbeth hugged Twig. “I
love
you,” she said, practically running to grab the key to the tanning room.
Elsbeth stripped down to her bra and underwear and studied herself in the full-length mirror before affixing the goggles and climbing into the tanning bed. She tried to imagine herself in that Victoria’s Secret bathing suit. She turned from side to side; she could use a tan. God, she was the color of milk. Glancing to make sure the door was locked, she slipped out of her panties and bra and climbed naked into the bed. And as she closed herself into that coffin of sun, she shut her eyes and dreamed of the beach. Of flamingos and oranges and Disney.
A
s they pulled up the long gravel driveway, Trevor peered through the camera’s viewfinder at his grandfather’s house. It was the same kind of house as theirs, just a shoe box with windows. But while theirs was freshly painted, with window boxes and bright blue shutters, his grandfather’s house looked like a cardboard box that had been dragged through the mud and stepped on. The front porch was full of garbage bags and old furniture. The shutters hung like droopy eyelids, and the yard was littered with trash and broken-down cars. Trevor rolled down the window and clicked three photos of the house.
“Where’d you get that?” his father asked.
“School,” he said. “From my art teacher.”
“Well, you best return it,” he said.
“She gave it to me.”
His father looked at him suspiciously.
They both got out of the truck and made their way up the cracked walkway to the front steps. There were a million dandelions gone to seed springing up from the dead grass. Trevor used to make wishes on those. Used to blow them into the wind, hoping. Something about that sea of weeds, all those unwished-for wishes made him feel bad for Pop.
The last time he was here was the day after Christmas. His mom had baked a ham, studded with cloves and sticky with marmalade glaze, Pop’s favorite, which she asked Trevor to carry. It was wrapped up in tin foil, hot in his hands. They had presents too, in green and red paper, and Gracy had made Pop a sparkly Christmas ornament at school. But inside Pop didn’t even have a tree, and there hadn’t been any room to sit down. After about fifteen minutes, when Trevor felt like he couldn’t breathe, his mother, thank God, said she wasn’t feeling well, and they’d left. The glitter from Gracy’s ornament made a sparkly path from the door all the way back to the car. He could see some of it still there, like tiny shards of glass. Like fallen stars.