Chapter 32
— Chapter 32 —
“What was Shray writing to you?” Aubrey asks after he goes home. She’s standing at the kitchen sink washing our soup bowls while I lean against the counter, waiting to dry them. The dishwasher started leaking and we haven’t figured out how to fix it yet.
It doesn’t surprise me that Aubrey noticed Shray scrawling notes in the grout. She’s always been good at keeping track of everything going on around her.
I don’t want to betray his faith in me, but I need Aubrey’s trust. “He told me that he stopped Carter from following you into the bathroom yesterday.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t seem surprised.
“I don’t think Shray wanted to keep it a secret so much as he didn’t want to scare you.”
Aubrey’s eyes well up. “Shray cares about me the same way I care about him. I never had friends like that before.”
“He really does care about you. And he seemed pretty worried. Is Carter harassing you?”
She scrubs the last bowl. “It’s fine. I talked to him at lunch today. We’re fine now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just a stupid misunderstanding,” Aubrey says, handing me the bowl to dry. “He thought I said something about him I didn’t say. It’s so dumb. I don’t even want to talk about it.” She takes a deep breath and nods. “Really. It’s fine.” She is not convincing, but I don’t know how hard I can push before she won’t talk to me at all.
“Tell me if that changes, alright?” I feel like someone playing a mom in an after school special. “I need you to let me know if it’s a problem.”
“What are you going to do?” Aubrey’s tone is teenage-snotty. She seems to catch herself and looks at me like she doesn’t know how to back out of it.
Steena always used to explode at me if I said the wrong thing or used the wrong tone. I’m sure Aubrey has experienced that. I don’t want her to be afraid to say anything to me. So I slip into the high-pitched British lady voice that always made her laugh when she was little. “Are you doubting me?”
Aubrey grins, then pretends she’s holding an invisible teacup, pinky in the air. “ Indubitably! ” she says, which was one of her favorite fancy words. She liked to watch British sitcoms on PBS to get better at “tea talk.” Sometimes we spent entire afternoons having conversations like this. And she remembers.
“Well, I’ve been known to throw grown men out of bars,” I say, taking a sip from my imaginary tea. “So, I can most certainly… follow this Carter chap down a dark alley and… hurt his feelings.”
“Dark alleys in Somers? Have you lost your head! ” There’s a heaviness to Aubrey’s laugh, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the situation with Carter, or if she feels the same sad twist I do when memories of our good times together well up. It could be both, or neither.
“Perhaps I’ll utilize an empty cul-de-sac!” I say, taking my voice even higher. Maybe our only way out of the sadness is to make new memories.
“ Right-o, ” she says. “ Tut, tut. If that scalawag troubles me again, I’ll advise him to steer clear of cul-de-sacs, lest my aunt bombard him with insults.”
“To start,” I say. “What kind of barmy name is Carter? He sounds like a wanker from the get-go.”
“That is quite true.” Aubrey clinks her imaginary teacup to mine, making a little tch sound with her mouth.
After she goes to bed, I head down to Step’s workbench and sort through a shoebox of odds and ends. I screw two eyehooks into the backs of each of our wood triangles and twist wire between them. In the living room, I hang our art on nails that used to hold framed school photos of me and Steena, the Olan Mills family portrait we had taken at church when I was four, and a photo from my parents’ wedding ceremony with Steena in a frilly pink flower girl dress standing between them, holding my mother’s hand. None of us looked happy in any of those pictures. In their absence, I place Aubrey’s star at the center, colors bright, silver and gold swirling through her galaxy. Mine and Shray’s are on either side. I wired them so the center of our pieces are displayed at their best direction, which sets the points of each triangle at random angles, making art of the blank space too. When I step back, I don’t just see what we’ve made; our whole afternoon together plays like a beautiful movie in my mind.
Later, as I’m starting to drift off, Aubrey comes into the den and sits on the end of the couch.
“Aunt Frey,” she says, her voice so small. “I don’t even know what to call it.” I scootch over and she lies next to me, her head resting on my arm. “With Carter.”
“What happened?” I ask, squinting in the dark to try to see her face.
“I didn’t want it to happen, but I didn’t tell him to stop because I was scared he wouldn’t and that would be worse. But Kelly told him I said he raped me, even though I didn’t say that. I just told her I didn’t want to and he didn’t care. I don’t know what to call that.”
“I’m so sorry, Aubs.” I hug her close. “I’ve never figured out what to call that either.”
“You know what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“My brain keeps playing the whole thing over when I don’t want it to. Does that ever stop?”
Mine hasn’t. The replay of what I can remember is still too constant and clear, but I’m not going to tell Aubrey that. “I bet Bee knows how to make those thoughts stop,” I say, hoping it’s true. I ran out of money for therapy long before I ever worked up the nerve to put words to what happened.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Aubrey says, and I feel her tears on my sleeve.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, ” I say, and hold her tight while she tells me everything.