Chapter 26
— Chapter 26 —
I get stuck behind a school bus on my way back to work. It’s packed with afternoon kindergarteners who have no interest in disembarking with any semblance of efficiency. I’m a ball of nerves and rage, running late. It is absolute torture to sit in Step’s car, unmoving. After three stops, I bail, take the long way around, and up on the hill, I can see Charlie and Steena’s plantation-style McMansion: the flagship of Charlie’s first development. A living billboard for his business.
They were close to done with the house the day Aubrey turned six months old. Steena and Charlie had gone out to dinner that night to celebrate half a year of parenthood. When they came back to the pool house, smelling like red wine and cigarettes, Steena begged me to stay and put Aubrey to bed. “I have to pump and dump,” she said, slurring her words.
Aubrey was already asleep, her head on my shoulder.
“I’ve got it,” I told Steena. “Don’t worry.”
“I only had two glasses. But it’s the first time I’ve even had one since…” Steena stared off, combing through her memories. “I don’t know. Amsterdam? It felt like I’ve never had a drink before.” She placed her hand on Aubrey’s back and looked at me, panicked. “I’m not a bad mom, right?”
“No,” I said, feeling dumbly proud that my sister was looking to me for reassurance, even though I knew my presence was my only qualification. No one asks a fifteen-year-old for parenting advice in earnest. “Of course you’re not a bad mom.”
I was glad she’d agreed to go to dinner. She’d been sullen and quiet for weeks, and although she had a momentary collapse when the dress she wanted to wear still didn’t fit, getting ready to go out seemed to boost her spirits. Even tipsy and tired she was brighter than she had been since Aubrey was born.
Steena fell asleep pumping, so after I put Aubrey down, I helped her to bed too.
“Freya,” she mumbled when I tucked her in. “You’re such a good sister.” She grabbed my hand. “You’re so good.”
I sat next to her on the bed until her grip loosened as she drifted off to sleep.
It was probably past midnight by the time I got in the car with Charlie to go home. He liked to take the long way, to see the house up on the hill. They’d finished wiring the week before, and the architectural lights made it look like a movie set. But that night, the house was lit from inside too.
“Shit,” Charlie said as we drove by. “The contractor left the lights on. Mind if we stop?” He grinned. “I’m still a little weirded out going up there at night by myself.”
One of the things I loved about Charlie was the way he admitted his fears and quirks to me. Babbo and Uncle Angelo were pure bravado, desperate to appear infallible at all costs. Step was overwhelmed by the world and mournfully fallible in every direction. But Charlie was a completely competent person who admitted to being scared in empty houses. Sometimes, when he drove me home, he’d tell me about his struggles with hurt feelings, impatience, depression. He made me feel like there was hope for me—a path to a successful life that didn’t require fearless perfection.
Charlie drove us up the winding private road, past the other houses in the development. They were all newly framed, without their skins, like a procession of skeletons flanking the path. I wouldn’t have wanted to be alone on that hill so late at night either. But with Charlie, I felt safe. And I liked the feeling that we were together on a side mission again, like our summer ice cream runs.
“Come on in!” he said proudly as he unlocked the door. “You haven’t seen the place since we got walls, have you?”
Our footsteps echoed through the bare house as we walked around shutting off lights. Charlie showed me where the stove and kitchen island would go and let me see the stone facing for the fireplace and the wood paneling that was about to be installed in his home office. Next to Aubrey’s new playroom was a guest suite with its own full bath already framed out.
“We keep calling this Freya’s room,” Charlie said, winking. “If we already lived here, I wouldn’t have to drive you home late at night. You could just crash with us.” He reached into a box on the floor and placed a tile in my hand. It was pale blue and not completely level, which I knew from watching Steena choose materials meant it was handmade and more expensive. “Steena says you like blue.” Charlie held his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell her I showed you. She probably wants to do a big reveal.”
“I won’t,” I said solemnly, trying not to cry.
Upstairs, he showed me the window seat in Aubrey’s room.
“Because she likes looking at birds so much,” he said, and I was overjoyed that he noticed and planned something for his daughter.
Walking into the extra bedroom next door, grinning, he said, “You gotta help me out here, little sister. For your nephew, maybe? Someday? If we can talk Steena into going through the whole baby thing again.”
I nodded, but I knew I wasn’t going to help him. Steena had too many dark days after Aubrey was born, and she didn’t need pressure to go through that all over again.
In the master bedroom there were two walk-in closets with a bathroom between them. The floor was already tiled with white marble. By the window, waiting to be installed, was a cast iron bathtub with gold feet like lion paws.
“This is my surprise for Steena,” Charlie told me. “She’s wanted a tub like this since she was a little girl.”
“She’ll love it,” I said, certain she would, even though I’d never heard her wish for one.
He pointed toward the window. “It’ll go right there.”
I walked over. The sky was clear enough to see stars.
“Do you know what any of them are?” he asked.
“That’s Cassiopeia.” I pointed to each of the five brightest stars in the constellation.
Charlie stood behind me, scrunching down to rest his chin on my shoulder, trying to match my view. I felt warm and a little fuzzy, like I used to when Steena braided my hair. I traced the stars with my finger again to show him the outline. “See the W ?” Charlie’s breath tickled my neck and I felt my face turning red. I hoped he couldn’t tell. “Some people say those are the points of Cassiopeia’s crown, but the myth is that Poseidon tied her to a chair and cast her into the sky. So it’s like she’s sideways and those stars are at the bends of her body.”
Charlie chuckled, straightening up. “See, I knew you’d know stars. I have to learn. That seems like the kind of thing dads are supposed know.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. Step taught me to find Orion, the Big and Little Dippers, and Cassiopeia, and I found it comforting to spot familiar patterns in the great big sky.
“You’ll have to teach me,” Charlie said. “Alright?”
When I turned to look at him, he leaned over and pressed his lips against mine. I wasn’t immediately shocked, because I grew up kissing my Italian relatives on the mouth—my mother, grandparents, sister, even gross Uncle Angelo, whose breath stunk of beer and cigars. It was a practice Step found revolting, and as a toddler when I’d run up to kiss him, he’d turn his head, barely allowing me to graze his cheek. Step’s avoidance of affection was another way he didn’t fit in my mother’s family, and I had to prove I wasn’t like him. I convinced myself that the twisting feeling in my stomach and panicked need to sneak away and wipe my mouth were simply part of Sunday dinner—a toll I owed for belonging to people. So, I’d kissed Charlie before, in a room full of my relatives—in front of my sister—and never thought anything of it. I gave him a quick peck when he dropped me off at my parents’ house after babysitting, same as I would with Uncle Angelo if he gave me a ride somewhere, always with Nonna’s voice echoing in my head. Be a good girl. Give your uncle a kiss .
Be a good girl, Freya , I thought when Charlie kissed me. But then he pushed his palm against the back of my head, slipped his tongue through my closed lips. I felt like I could see inside our mouths, all pink and wet, tonsils and teeth, his body invading mine. My brain overloaded until I could only feel Charlie kissing me, as if I were no longer anything but lips and tongue.
“Oh god,” he said, pulling away, patting my shoulders with both hands like he was holding distance. He lowered his head, forcing me to meet his eyes. He smiled, so I smiled back, dumbfounded. “What are we even doing?” He sounded amused, as if this was something I had recklessly done, and it made me worry that I had. He dropped his hands and walked out of the bathroom. “You’re killing me, little sister,” he called, voice echoing through the empty bedroom.
We didn’t talk about it on the drive home. Charlie fiddled with the radio, muttering things about the contractor needing to get better about turning lights off at night. I started to wonder if the kiss had happened at all.
When he dropped me off, I got out of the car without saying anything and without leaning over to kiss him goodbye. So later, in bed trying to sleep, staring at Cassiopeia through my bedroom window, I was equally twisted by what Charlie had done and my own rude behavior. Be a good girl, Freya, I thought, over and over until the sky slowly brightened and the stars disappeared.