Authors: Swati Avasthi
“Hungry?” I say. “Come on.”
We go to the kitchen, and he stands, not knowing where anything is, while I hit the fridge. On the door, I see our white board. Scribbled in blue ink:
10:00 Get stuff for party12:00 Cake ready, pick up at 1:002:00 Season turkey, boil potatoes …
I show it to Christian.
“She won’t be back till two,” he says.
On the microwave, the clock reads 10:15.
I say, “Well … Now what?”
We knock on the door to the Costacoses’ mini-brownstone. Through the green stained-glass window, I see a shape moving toward us. I glance at Christian, who is less than three inches from the door. I’m hanging back behind the welcome mat.
A short, white-haired man opens the door, and Christian throws his arms around him. He slowly embraces Christian and then closes his eyes.
“John,” Christian says when he has disentangled himself. “This is my brother, Jace.”
John steps forward and shakes my hand. “Good to see you both after so many years.” He turns and screams, “Effie!”
I take a step back while he shouts to her in Greek. The only word I catch is the untranslated “Christian.”
A rotund little woman comes barreling to the door and engulfs Christian. He laughs and kisses her cheek. They walk inside, heading through the house. I follow behind them and hesitate at the kitchen entrance. Christian sits down at the table while Effie disappears into the fridge and pulls out a platter of dolmades and three kabobs.
“What can I make you? What can I get you? Are leftovers okay? Everything in the fridge is for tomorrow’s dinner, but leftovers feels a little, well …,” she says.
“Leftovers are perfect.”
“Really? Do you like Greek food?” she asks me. “Come in, come in. Sit down.”
Christian looks around the kitchen, beaming. I haven’t seen him beam once in the almost three months I’ve been in Albuquerque. This, I see, is the gap between the brother I knew and the brother I know.
“You’ve redone the curtains,” he says.
Effie walks over to Christian and puts a hand under his chin, looking at his face like a mother checking for dirt.
“I’m all right. I’m good.”
“Fair enough,” she says, and I know where that phrase came from.
She starts dishing out yellow rice onto Christian’s plate, her head turned toward him. They’ve enveloped him within seconds and have not asked one question. I can see why he’s so at home here.
John pulls up a chair. “Should I call Paul and Henry to come over for dinner? How long can you stay?”
Effie practically bounces. “Oh, wouldn’t it be fabulous to have a real family dinner, all of us together?”
“We can’t stay long.” Christian glances at me.
She comes over to me, grabs my sleeve, and tugs me over the threshold onto the linoleum floor. “Jace, it’s so good to see you. Come in, tell me what you’d like.”
I ease my sleeve from her grasp. “I’m fine. I’m actually not going to stay.”
Christian’s head twists toward me, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I have someone I should see, too.”
After a few protestations, Christian says he’ll walk me to the door, as if this is his house.
I remind him that Dad gets off the bench at four-thirty and is usually home at five-thirty. So we agree on one-thirty to go back to the house. When I put my hand on the doorknob, he says, “Stay. I want you to meet them.”
“Nah, you’ve got a whole thing going on here.”
“You’re not going to be in the way.”
“It’s not a fifth-wheel thing. I really do owe someone a visit.”
He looks at the stairwell. The couch. The ceiling. He doesn’t ask. I can see it on his face—he’s here in this house, with people who never asked him anything; how can he ask me who I need to see, and why? It’s a pay-it-forward attitude that, I now see, I’ve been taking advantage of.
He looks down, and I scurry out the door before he changes his mind and decides to press me.
chapter 27
l
auren’s red Celica is in the driveway
, parked across both spots, blocking the garage. Her mother must be on a bender. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, debauchery in prime time.
Their maid answers the door and lets me in without question. She tells me that Lauren is upstairs.
As I climb the steps, I hear music pulsing from her room. The song switches from Eminem to U2, and I know she’s listening to a mix I gave her. Through a crack in the door, I can see her. She is reading a magazine, lying on her stomach, her knees bent. Her calves curve up toward the ceiling, and her glitter-green polished toes tap the air in time with the music.
I feel something brush my leg. Kali is curling around my jeans. She meows at me. I pick her up and push the door all the way open. Lauren sees me and freezes, her finger paused in her magazine, her toes stopped. She looks exactly the same.
Kali twitches to get down. I gently toss her onto the bed next to Lauren, and she goes padding by, her paws sinking into the comforter.
Lauren’s room is the most familiar thing I’ve seen since I’ve come back. I recognize the maple furniture that rests against the rose-colored walls, the white picture rail that runs from door to window to door with a prayer stenciled in black over it:
GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE; THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN; AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
.
I’ve been here so many times, showing up like this without warning after I watched a beating or took one. I’d just stand in her doorway, raw and wrecked, with a well-practiced smile, covering up. She’d always open the door for me, even between the times we were dating. She’d take me to bed. Now I want to stay here, in this familiar room, with familiar her.
Lauren stands up and slinks over to me. She pulls me inside, closes the door behind me and leans toward me. I’m not sure who kisses whom, but when her lips press against mine, I am right back. I pull her hard toward me, and she leaps, wrapping her legs around me. I fold my arms under her butt, and she dives in for another kiss.
Everything slips away. I put my tongue inside her mouth.
She yanks on my neck, and I carry her over to the bed. I lay her down, and her hair splays across the pillow. She scoots down and peels the hair off her neck so I can kiss it, but when I see the curve of her throat, my memory intrudes.
Her larynx pressing against my palm
.
“Lauren.” I pull back. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“All right.”
She grabs my hand and drags me down next to her. She arranges me around her. I lie with her on her single bed; we are curled into one smooth shape. After a while, I feel her breathing change under my arm. Inhale, and hold, and then breaking. I pull her tighter, and she hangs on.
She pushes up again and turns to me so I can see her face. No makeup today, just plain Lauren. My thumb wipes her cheek, and we sit up.
“You asked me to come. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
She reaches up and puts her finger to my lips to shush me. God help me, I want to take her wrist and kiss the spot between the two blue veins running up her arm.
“What you did that night”—she touches her cheek and then her neck—“I’m okay now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
She pauses, as if thinking about whether to tell me something. Finally she says, “I know about your dad.”
I put my hands on my knees and lean into my thighs. I breathe. She knew all along. She knew that I would take beating after beating without defending myself, without manning up. I look at her.
“How did you find out?” I say.
“You remember that time you broke your nose?”
“God, that was over a year ago,” I say.
“You told everyone it was in your soccer league, but I watched that game. No one threw an elbow.”
I drop my face into my hands, and she leans her forehead on my shoulder and then plants a few quick kisses. I should have guessed she’d know. She was like that, picking up on little cues. Unless …
“Did Edward know? Did everyone?” I ask.
“He’s so clueless. I wanted to tell him so I could explain, but I—”
“No explanation, Lauren,” I say to my lap, my palms pushing against my eyelids. “No excuses. Get that, okay? Please, get that.”
She pushes my hands out from under my head, and I jolt upright.
“It makes a difference. It does. Damn it. It means that … it wasn’t my fault,” she says.
“It
wasn’t
your fault.”
“It means that I wasn’t, that I’m not stupid to want to be with you still.”
“I didn’t know that I could do that …,” I swallow and then say it. “I didn’t know I could hit you. You really didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Except seduce your best friend,” she says.
I take a breath; I don’t know how to untangle that night for her. I can barely untangle it for myself.
“Listen, when you issued that warrant, I was really impressed. I’m sorry about my dad.”
“About your dad?” She shoves my shoulder. “What about what you did?”
“Lauren, I am … so … so sorry. What I did to you, that was unforgivable.”
“But I do forgive you, Jace.”
She reaches for me, and I spring up off the bed.
“But I don’t want you to forgive me, okay? You don’t get to forgive me. If you do … Lauren, it gets so ugly. I don’t know what my father said to you about love and second chances—”
“He said that forgiveness is how you get to go on loving someone after they’ve done something you hate.”
“You can’t listen to him, all right? Consider the source. He’s fucked up,” I say.
“Sure, but so what? He has a point.”
Kali hops back on the bed, and Lauren takes her in her lap. She draws her fingers down Kali’s back.
“I’m tired of this, Jace. I just want to go back; I want us to be us again. I’m tired of feeling like I
should
hate you. If I don’t get to forgive you, then I get stuck.” Her voice goes cold and iron. “I. Won’t. Get. Stuck.”
“I’m not trying to … We can’t go back.”
She acts as if I haven’t spoken. “I mean, look at my parents, your parents. They can’t really walk away, they can’t really forgive each other. They’re stuck. Well, not me.” She yanks on my hand and pulls me down so that I’m kneeling before her. She cups my face, and I feel her palms, hot against my cheeks. “I forgive you, Jace. Whether you want it or not. And if you don’t forgive yourself, then you can run halfway across the world, but you’ll still be stuck on that street outside Starbucks.”
My throat clenches tight, and I swallow again. I pull away from her and stand back up.
Isn’t it too convenient just to forgive yourself, let yourself off the hook? What will keep me from doing it again, then?
“Jace, I love you.” She looks up at me and waits for my response, but I don’t say it back to her. Finally she asks, “Don’t you, too?”
“I don’t love how screwed up we got. That night outside Starbucks, that’s not love. It’s way darker than that, like obsession.”
“I like the sound of that. Like you can’t live without me.”
“No, it sounds like addiction.” I’m talking like Mirriam now. Great.
She reaches for me again, but I step back. The word
addiction
is still going through my brain when I find a way in.
“You always said that the difference between you and your mom was that none of your addictions were bad for you. Well, this one—me—is. Hate me, don’t hate me. Forgive me, don’t forgive me. But don’t let me back in, don’t ask me back in.”
I start to walk away. She grabs my wrist, and her fingers squeeze and release, squeeze and release.
“Jace,” she says, her voice small again, “I should be the one breaking us up. Don’t you think?”
Please
.
She stands up and cocks her arm back. I see it coming; I could block it, but Lauren is nothing if not proud. And it’s easy to take one more if it means that Lauren can be Lauren again. I let her slap me, and my skin burns. It’s been so good to be blow-free for over two months. I grit my teeth as the immediate pain passes.
“We’re even. Now get out.” Her voice is thin, and I wish I believed that it was shaking in fury.
I wish for so many things as I walk down the steps: that we had never met, that I had not taken her back after she screwed other guys, but most of all, I wish she was right—that her slap made us even.
Bastard evermore.
chapter 28
i
spend the rest of the morning
at my haunts. I stop at my old school, running the snow-covered soccer fields, my sneakers leaving my last footprints. I pass Edward’s house, consider stopping and explaining, but what could I say? I could lie, sure. Easy enough. I could let him take a swing at me, too. But our friendship ended the night he decided that sleeping with Lauren was a good idea. The rest is just dragging out what’s done.
I do end up with my longed-for pizza, but it tastes thick in my mouth and sits heavily in my stomach. Maybe I’m just nervous about what’s to come.
When I drive back to the Costacoses’, Effie comes out on the stoop. She tells me Christian called the house and my mom had gotten back early. They just dropped him off.
I race over to my house and screech into the driveway. As I enter, I hear a man’s voice, loud and pissed off. I freeze before I recognize it as Christian’s.
“Do you have any idea what he’s been doing since you promised him, you
promised
him you’d come at Thanksgiving, Mom? He’s been making turkeys. I swear, if I have to eat another bird, I’m going to gag on it. You can’t do this to him.”
I rush to the archway and see Mom. Her hair is in two braids that hang beside her ears, like a schoolgirl’s—some-thing she does before a full day of working on the house. She is wearing blue jeans and a sweater that my dad gave her for Christmas last year. Her cheek is so swollen it looks like she’s sucking on a Gobstopper. He never hits her in the face; he knows better. And now she’ll have to explain it away at a party, no less. It is getting worse; it’s getting worse because of me.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“Jace!” My mother comes up to me and hugs me.
I’m seven again and looking to Christian for clues. He shakes his head at me, and I don’t return my mother’s hug, but I do get a waft of her strawberry shampoo. I want to bury my face into her shoulder.
“Oh, honey. You look so different. Your hair.”
I pull on an end of it. It is looking pretty weird these days, with the blond growing back in and the black starting to fade.
“Let me have a good look at you.”
“Mom,” I say, taking her by the shoulders. “You have to come with us.”
“I’m sorry that I said Thanksgiving, but I can’t come out now. I e-mailed you yesterday, but you must have left by then. Aren’t you sweet to drive all the way—”
“Mom, you have to come with us.”
“It’s just that your father is giving a party. All his colleagues will be here, and he’d be so embarrassed if I—”
“I don’t care about his colleagues. You have to come with us.”
She pulls away from me.
“Jace.” Her face starts to slide into that look of pleading that she gives my father before he hits her. “Please don’t ask me for things I can’t give you.”
“That you can’t give me?” I can feel the anger igniting. I need to go for a run. I need to hear my heart and nothing else. “What am I supposed to ask you for? Am I supposed to say, ‘it’s okay that you’re wrecking your life’? Am I supposed to say, ‘thanks for choosing that bastard over me’? ‘I’m grateful that you’re fucking me up’? Things you can give me? What have you ever given me?”
My mom reaches for me, but I step back.
“This is my problem, Jace. Let me solve it.”
“But you don’t solve it, and so we get stuck in this circle of hell with you. Do you even get what Christian has been through? He’s lucky he didn’t lose Mirriam because of that silence that you taught him. You practically stitched his mouth shut. Do you get that Lauren is sitting in her room right now, wanting to take me back? How did I manage to school her into this hit-sorry-forgive cycle so fast? Do you think she deserves that? It’s not just your problem.”
She is crying now, and I barely care. I can’t stand it in here anymore. One more second, one more breath of oxygen, and I know where I’ll go with it.
I spin on my toe and bolt out the back door. I breathe the November air and try to listen for my pulse like I do when I run, listen for my breath. I put two fingers on the inside of my wrist and feel the fast bumping of my blood.
I lift my chin up to the sky. I did it. I walked away when I wanted to belt her; I chose to come out here instead. I want to believe I’ve passed some sort of test, that I won’t turn into my father, but I know better. I know that I won’t have to make that choice just once.
The door swings open, and my mom and Christian come out.
Christian is saying, “Mom, let him get his breath. Just give him a minute.”
I turn around and look her in the face.
She glances at Professor Coe’s house. “Come inside. It’s freezing out here.”
Right. That’s what you’re worried about
.
I walk back into the kitchen, and its warmth smothers me. Christian stops beside me, and we face her together. He rests a hand on the counter and gestures to me to finish.
“He will kill you. Can’t you see that it is getting worse? You have a party, and he’s hitting you in the face? You have to come with me,” I say.
She clutches her hands together. Her thumb rubs the scar on her palm. “And what happens if I try to leave, Jace? He found Christian in New York; he can find me. And if I’m with you, then he’ll find you, too. I’m safer here.”
“We’ll protect you,” I say.
She shakes her head, and I see it on her face: she doesn’t believe we can. Why should she? We’ve never stopped him from hitting her. We’ve never really protected her. All we’ve done is delay it now and again.
“Jace, I’m sorry, so sorry, but I can’t leave him. I can’t see my life without him; I can’t even imagine it anymore.”
“Mom, please.”
I grab her wrist and start to pull, but Christian puts his hand on mine, gently. I turn and look. He shakes his head, and I let go.
“Jace, it’s not going to work. If we drag her out, she’ll just come back. She has to walk out on her own or we’re putting her in more danger when she returns,” Christian says.
“Your dad will be home soon. The courts close early today,” she says.
“Jace,” Christian says, his voice high with panic. “No chances.”
He puts his hand on my arm, and I shake him off, my eyes still on my mom.
“Screw that. Go back to the Costacoses’, okay? I know you didn’t sign on for this.”
He doesn’t move. “You and I … We’re walking out that door together. I will not leave you here again.”
“Christian, please go,” I say. “If he sees you … I can’t watch that again.”
“You won’t have to,” he says.
Beside me, I hear a long, metallic sliding sound, like a shovel going into dirt. I turn, and Christian has a knife in his hand. His elbows aren’t at his sides. His mouth isn’t in a tight line. He’s relaxed, ready.
My mother lets out a gasp.
I close my eyes.
Christian in an orange jumpsuit standing before the court, begging for mercy, but refusing to admit regret; Christian sentenced for murder one in a death-penalty state for my own stubbornness
.
I close my hand over his on the knife handle and guide it to the counter. He releases it and looks at me.
“Let’s go,” I say. “We’ve done all we’re going to do.”
I look at my mom with her braids still up, with her face still pleading. I can’t manage to say good-bye because I know this is the last time I will see her.
We walk through the house, and Christian has to take my elbow to lead me since I can’t see anything clearly. By the time we get outside, I am bawling, chopped-breath sobs. Christian takes the keys from me and guides me to the passenger side.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” he says, “but we’ve gotta go.”
I watch my house as we pull away.
I’m a mess through Illinois. Christian keeps his hand on my shoulder when he’s not shifting or fishing out tissues. By the time we hit the Missouri border, I’ve dried up and all that’s left is that hiccupping-after-sobbing thing that I haven’t done since I was like nine. I’m leaning my head back, my eyes closed, but I can feel Christian glancing over at me every couple of minutes.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“Sure?”
“Well, I’ll be okay. I’m sure.” I open my eyes and look over at him. “How about you?”
His elbows are in, hands gripping the steering wheel; he looks worse than he did on our way out here. “I’m … uh … I don’t know.”
“What’s going on?” I say.
Christian pulls the car over. I wait, but he doesn’t move. He slowly turns to me. He puts his hand out as if to shake mine.
“I’m Christian Marshall,” he says. “When I was seventeen, I ran away from an abusive home and left my little brother behind to take what I couldn’t manage. I don’t know who that turned you into. So why don’t you tell me?”
I knock Christian’s hand away and try to smile at this strange sort of joke that I’m not getting.
“Who’s Lauren?”
I pull my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them, and rest my sneakers on the seat. “She’s a girl I used to date,” I say.
“Why did you break up?”
My instinct, to lie, to speak in half-truths and talk about her infidelity, is tempered by my memory of him standing in our kitchen with a knife because he refused to leave me behind again.
“We broke up because I punched her in the face, pushed her against a brick wall, and then started to strangle her.”
Christian’s face stays exactly the same. Not a muscle twitches. He swivels his head, puts the car in gear, and pulls back onto the road.
I watch the trees on the side of the highway rushing past the car window. We pass a blue billboard that promises McDonald’s, Burger King, and lodgings at the next exit. We pass a green billboard that gives us distance: St. Louis 253 miles. We pass the Burger King exit. We pass a Texaco gas station sign floating like a bubble above us.
“Christian,” I say. “I’m sorry for what I did, for lying to you about it, for everything.”
He nods, but he doesn’t look at me.
We pass a mile marker and go under a bridge. When we flash back to sunlight, his face does not change; his eyes don’t even blink.
“Say something,” I say, finally.
“I want you out of the house.”