Wild Roses (25 page)

"What?" She sounded like she was afraid and
trying not to be. "Nothing is that bad."

"Oh yes, it is." I sobbed, just let out these
heaves of helplessness. Mom held me.

"I'm here, okay? Whatever it is. Are you
pregnant?"

"Holy shit, Mom. No," I said through my crying.
I swear, for parents it's always about sex and drugs. "I haven't been arrested
for trafficking marijuana, either."

"Okay, Cass, I'm sorry. You know, what am I
supposed to think?"

I curled up tight inside that blanket. The
glass of the snow globe was cold, and I blew on it to warm it up.

"Should I call Ian's mom?"

"Oh, God, no," I said. "Please don't do
that."

Mom sighed. I peeked at her, and saw her just
sitting with her chin pointed to the ceiling. She looked so tired. Thin, too.
She looked like she was losing too much weight.

"Ian broke his wrist. It was my
fault."

"Oh, my God," she said.

"It was my fault."

"Oh, my God," she said again.

"I know."

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"What happened?"

I told her the story. She put her arms around
me. I could feel her hot breath through the quilt. "Oh, Cassie."

"I'm so sorry."

"You didn't cause it."

"That's not what Dino will think."

"That may be true, but it's not what I
think."

I came out of the quilt, just a little. She
brushed my hair away from my face. She bent down to kiss my forehead. "I'll
always be here for you," she said. But she didn't need to say it. Right then, it
was something I knew.

It started like a storm, low rumbling and then
louder and louder still until the windows actually rattled and there was a crash
of something being broken.

I told you she would ruin this! Did I not tell
you she had to stay away from him?

And then my mother's voice, too low to be
heard, the rhythms of calm explanation.

My God. It is over for him! I could have helped
him. Things could have been different for him than they were for me. How can I
help him now? How?

I heard my mother then, clearly. His situation
is different than yours, my mother said. He's a boy with options. It's not the
same. You are not the same person.

I could have made things turn out differently.
Look what you people have done. You've wrecked him. You want to ruin
me.

His voice was gaining emotion; my mother's
turned pleading.

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This is not about you. This is not about what
happened in your life.

I am stuck here in this nothing city because of
you.

Calm down, my mother said. She was trying not
to get angry. She was saying those words to herself as much as him, I could tell
that, too. You made a choice to be here, my mother said. As much as I
did.

You are all the same. You and that bastard
Tiero. You want to see that I am a failure. You want to see me fall.

I am not doing this, my mother said more
loudly. J am not talking to you about any of these things. And I will not accept
this kind of behavior.

Where are you going? He was shouting now. I
wondered what I should do. If I should do something. It felt bad; I knew this
was bad. Should I leave? Call someone?

I'm just going out for a while. So that you can
calm down.

Fine! Leave! Run away, you coward.

I heard her coming up the stairs then. She
called for me to come with her, and I did. As we went out the door, we heard the
shatter from his office. He had slammed the door so hard that the print above
his desk had come crashing to the floor, along with a paperweight and a coffee
cup that it brought down with it. I made a strange little list in my head as I
buckled my seat belt in Mom's car, as she turned the key with a shaking hand.
All of the things that Dino had shattered. A wineglass. William Tiero's picture.
The painting of Wild Roses. Our lives.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I spent a few days at my dad's house. That's
where my mother drove us, to drop me off there. They had some conversation at
the door, after she had told me to stay in the car. It was another one of those
moments when I would have killed to hear what was said, but I also would have
done anything not to hear it, ever. I was having a lot of those times lately,
where what I wanted and what I didn't want were the same thing. I tried without
success to keep Mom from going back home. She could stay with Alice, I
suggested. Or we could go to a motel somewhere, the two of us, like the time she
and I stayed at the Travel Lodge before Dino moved in, when we'd lost power.
Yikes-- unintentional double meaning, two points for me. The time we lost
electricity. Losing power to Dino came later. One of the things that had
apparently been discussed

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during the porch powwow was my punishment for
the Ian caper. Apparently, I could not be disciplined for ruining his life and
his mother's life and their chance to save their financial future, but they
could make me pay for skipping school. They decided that my absence would go
unexcused, which meant that I had to stay after school one day for a
detention.

Zebe made fun of me all day after I told her I
had to go. I told her I skipped school because I was just sick of being there,
but that was all. I couldn't talk about it any more than I already had. It was
one of those things that hurt so much that you needed to keep it safely
contained in its little box in your gut, because who knew what might happen if
it got out. I could see the awfulness spreading like some noxious gas in a
sci-fi movie, poisoning a large city. Or at least, eating up my insides more
than it had already. Ian's mother, Janet, had answered the phone when I had
tried to call Ian to see how he was. Hi, Janet, it's Cassie, I had said. For a
moment there was silence. And then, Cassie? Please don't call here. There's been
enough damage done already. Then there was a click. A click and then
silence.

I paid my dues in detention, sat amongst the
coats that reeked of cigarettes and the notebooks with the Led Zeppelin stickers
on them, and tried not to feel like I was a nerdy tourist in a Hawaiian shirt
who had mistakenly wandered into the wrong part of town. The whole thing was
pointless, because my real punishment was happening every moment, missing Ian,
being away from him, feeling as if I'd ruined him. I'd gone ahead and loved
him,

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and it destroyed him. At least, that's how I
felt. I understood that they didn't want me around anymore, but it made life
seem black-and-white, flat and one-dimensional. I craved the oxygen and color
Ian brought. He had changed life, and now it just couldn't change back
again.

That night Dad was cooking meatballs, rolling
them around in the pan over the heat. He was wearing one of Nannie's old aprons
that had a parade of smiling fruit on it. She sat on one of the kitchen chairs,
arranging her collection of salt and pepper shakers that Dad had kept on the
windowsill.

"I just can't believe the stoners are still
listening to Zeppelin," he said, after I told him my story.

"They were hoodlums in my day," Nannie said.
"If I missed a day of school, your grandpa would have beaten me silly," she said
to my father. "Kids these days."

"Oh, he would not have," my father said to the
meatballs. "He was the biggest softie. He never lifted a hand to
you."

"Maybe not," she said.

"And from what they told me, they couldn't keep
you in school if they tied you to the flag pole." "Top of my class," she said.
"You barely graduated."

"Maybe not," she said. She took a pair of chefs
with holes in the tops of their hats and paired them up with two glass Dutch
girls.

"Anyway, I've done my time," I said.

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"Let that be a lesson to you," my father said.
"Though who am I to talk? I missed a college Spanish final and nearly flunked
the course because your mother and I were having an argument on the front lawn
of the foreign-language building. All that upset, and years later I can't even
remember how to ask where the bathroom is."

"Quisiera el polio." I'd like to have the
chicken, is what it really means.

"See? That's why we had you."

"Top of my class in Spanish," Nannie said, and
we both ignored her.

"You failed a final. You didn't wreck someone's
future and their family's life."

"It wasn't your fault. Did you try to call Ian
again? Get the dishes out, these are done."

"I'm afraid to call. After what his mom said? I
went by his house, just to apologize if nothing else, but no one was there. He
must hate me. I keep thinking he'll try to call, but Mom says he hasn't. God,
it's just killing me." It was a relief, at least, to finally be able to talk to
Dad about Ian. I went to the cupboard, took out three plates and lined them up
on the counter for Dad to dish out the steaming food.

"Why your mother is still in that house I do
not understand," he said.

"I don't know, Dad. Dino's concert is coming up
in only a few weeks. She thinks things will be okay then."

"Things were never okay. Things will never be
okay. I don't care if he has the most triumphant concert in the history of
concerts. She fell in love with an image."

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"Well, she knows what he's like
now."

"He's a lunatic. A bastard lunatic
liar."

"Just like my father," Nannie said.

"Your father was a saint," Dad said to
her.

"He was a sweetie," she said. "Such a
softie."

"Anyway, if there is one more incident like
that, I'm filing for sole custody and getting a restraining order."

"Make your feelings known, Dad. Jeez, come on.
I'm a little old for a custody arrangement."

"It's my right as a father. I won't have you in
that mess. She's not using her brain, and you're the one getting hurt. I won't
stand for it."

"I don't want things to get worse, Dad. Can we
not make this about your rights? Can it be about my needs? You and attorneys and
all that crap again ... no."

"Maybe there's another way to get that man out
of your life," he said.

"Mafioso hit man," I said. "As much as the idea
appeals to me ..."

"Nah, prison food is supposed to be terrible.
Something else is . . . happening. Something that may change the way your mother
sees things. Grab some forks."

"What do you mean?" Okay, I'm sorry. I had
brief Child of Divorce Reunion Fantasy Number Twelve Thousand. A meeting of the
minds and hearts that occurred on the front porch step. Flash to Mom packing her
bags. Flash to her lighting Dino's compositions on fire, which was maybe getting
a little carried away on my part. It's a tad embarrassing to admit. The child of
divorced parents

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is supposed to be over these things when you
reach the age of eight. "Is this about you and Mom?"

"God, no. Nothing like that. Just, I'm doing
what I can to reveal the bigger picture. I don't know if it's the right time to
tell you. Things are upsetting enough for you right now with that
wacko."

"Is this my recipe?" Nannie said when Dad
placed the plate in front of her. She couldn't cook to save her life. Her
favorite used to be creamed corn, which, I can say with some authority, looks
like what a chicken might barf up. Nightmare flashback.

"I hate it when you do that, Dad. You drop
these little hints of knowing and then, bam, clam up," I said.

"It's not very mature of me," he agreed. He sat
down. "I try to do the right thing, but sometimes the wrong thing gets the
better of me. The human condition."

"If you know something that has to do with my
life, I'd appreciate you sharing it with me," I said.

He cut a piece of meatball, studied it a while.
"It doesn't have to do with you. Just, I'm sorry, okay? I wish I could solve
this mess, but there's only one person who can do that for you. And she's on a
high wire without a net."

"Yeah, and you know she's not exactly the
athletic type," I said.

"She's actually an excellent athlete," my
father said. "Thank you very much," Nannie said.

Dad and I stayed up late and watched an old Die
Hard movie on what must have been a conservative station,

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because they'd eliminated any hint of swearing.
Bombs would be dropping all over and Bruce Willis would face his enemy and say
something like, You rascals! Of course, the voice that appeared at those times
sounded nothing like his, and his lips were forming different words. Our
favorite was when he barely escaped being killed by a landing airplane, and he
stood up and remarked, Holy shoot!

I got ready for bed. I knew I shouldn't do it,
but I tried to call Ian. I only let it ring twice before I hung up. I was
missing a connection with him so much, that it helped just dialing that number.
Maybe he'd hear the ring and know it was me. Maybe at least he'd know how much I
cared. I tried to call Mom, too, but there was no answer.