Chapter 6
Lucy
My thousand-dollar car loves to pull left, so the whole drive to my mom’s house I’m correcting right just to keep the car straight.
It’s an art. I have the radio low and the sun behind me.
Groceries fill the passenger seat — granola bars, cereal, milk, Camdend, lunch meat, string cheese.
I can’t fully trust that my mom used the money I sent her for the right things.
The first thing I notice when I pull up is the overgrown lawn.
Then the gutters. They’re full of leaves from the two trees on the property line.
Then the recycling and trash bins are both still at the curb.
I roll the bins back to the side of the house and find a bag of trash sitting where they’re supposed to go.
I stare at it for a second and wonder if Bear is going to be okay later in life.
He’s too young to be starting these bad habits. I throw it in the can.
I grab the groceries and walk inside the house. The living room is dim, curtains drawn, TV on low. Bear is on the couch in his hoodie and sweatpants, playing something on his Switch.
“Hey, Bear.”
He barely looks up. “Mom’s in her room.”
I set the groceries on the kitchen counter and stop Camdenthing from my nose. The house smells like rotten food. The sink tells me why. Five cereal bowls in a row with rotting milk in each. The stove has two oily pans. The trash is overflowing.
“Bear,” I call out, still holding my Camdenth.
He doesn’t look up. “Yeah.”
I stare at the bowls, wondering how old they are. “What have you been eating other than cereal?”
“Just cereal.”
I put the milk, cheese, Camdend, and lunch meat in the fridge.
The smell of rotten eggs hits me like a freight train.
I hold my Camdenth again. I shut the door and decide to deal with it after the dishes.
I do the dishes. I wipe the counters and the table.
I gather laundry from the bathroom and walk it to the washer.
My mom’s chihuahua starts barking from somewhere down the hall, and I realize the urine smell in the bathroom isn’t just from humans.
I close my eyes for a second, taking a deep Camdenth. Then I switch the laundry and walk back to the couch.
“Bear, did you eat dinner?”
“Yeah.”
I lean over the back of the couch. “Cereal doesn’t count.”
“Cereal counts. Mom said it does. So did Tyr.”
I pause. “Tire?”
He scoffs. “Tyr. He’s in the bedroom with Mom.”
I look down the hall. “What? She has a guy over?”
“He’s been over a lot. She said not to tell you.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides. “It’s been a secret?”
He nods.
I walk down the hall and knock on her bedroom door.
Nothing. I knock again. I look at the bathroom door.
It’s closed now. I was just in there, so seeing the door shut now makes me uneasy.
This bathroom has two doors, and one of them goes through my mother’s bedroom.
When I push the bathroom door, I only get half a foot before something stops it.
That something is a thigh. A bare, very white, very large thigh belonging to a large, blonde-haired man sitting on the toilet.
“Sorry!” I yelp and yank the door shut.
Bear looks at me over the back of the couch. “Mom is going to be so pissed you didn’t knock.”
I half-run back to the couch. “How long has he been here?”
He shrugs. “She said he’s moving in.”
“What?”
“Lucy, baby.” The hallway door opens behind me, and my mom’s voice comes out of her room in a fake tone. She has different levels of voices she uses around certain people. This tone means she’s trying to be kind
I turn around. She’s smiling. She’s actually smiling. I haven’t seen her smile like that since I was a kid.
“Hi, Mom.” I almost feel speechless right now. I’m not sure what’s happening.
“This is actually perfect,” she says, leaning against her doorframe. “I was hoping you’d stop by today.”
“I come every Wednesday,” I say as a reminder.
The chihuahua named Audi comes flying out of the bedroom and skids to a stop near my feet. I’m allergic to dogs, so I extend a leg as a polite no thank you and he detours back to my mother. He knows I won’t pet him.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she says, walking towards me. “Don’t laugh at his name.”
“Why would I laugh at his name?”
She beams. “His name is Tyr.”
“Tire?” I question.
Bear says without looking up, “Told you.”
“Mom. Like — tires on a car?” I raise a brow. She can’t be serious.
She throws her head back and laughs. It’s a real laugh.
Her hair is straightened and falls behind her shoulders.
She has makeup on. She’s wearing a white tank top and the kind of linen pants the entire internet has been wearing for two years.
She looks good. She looks healthy. I can’t remember the last time I thought either of those things about my mother, and I just saw her last week.
“Tyr,” she calls. “Come out here.”
A man comes out of the bedroom. He’s tall, broad, and his blonde hair falls forward. He’s in jeans and a white shirt. He’s not as old as my mom. He extends a hand and then thinks better of it and runs it through his hair instead.
“Hi. Sorry about the bathroom. I would have locked it if I’d known you were here.”
“You’re Tire?” I ask.
He laughs — loud and surprised. “T-Y-R. It’s on my birth certificate if you want to check it out.”
I blink.
“I told you she’d make fun of your name,” my mom says, walking past me into the kitchen. “Let’s see what my maid service brought us this week.”
Tyr puts his hands up. “Teenagers are scary.”
I scoff. “I’m in my twenties.”
“Watch out, world,” my mom mocks, laughing.
What the hell has he done to my mom? I can’t even find my Camdenth as I follow them into the kitchen. I watch the two of them and tilt my head.
“So, uh, how did you two meet?” I’m dying to know why it was a secret, but I’ll get to that question later.
They look at each other and laugh. Her eyes gleam in a way I have never seen. “She’s going to love this one.”
“My god,” I mutter. “Don’t tell me you found him at a gas station.”
Tyr laughs, pointing at me. “She’s funny.”
My mom widens her eyes at me like that’s supposed to be a secret. The last guy she dated, she met him at a gas station with me in the car. He thought I was her sister.
“No, Lucy. We met on a dating app.”
I stare at her. “You’re back on those things?”
“Not anymore. I found the one.”
I gape.
Tyr pulls her under his arm, catches my eye, and lets her go. “Lucy. I love your mom.”
She blushes.
I say, “But you guys just met.”
He shrugs. “When you know, you know.”
My mom leans into his side. “Don’t mind her. She’s a math genius, knows nothing about chemistry.”
I think I gag. “Mom.”
She laughs into his chest.
Discomfort has a chokehold on me, so I turn around and walk to the couch.
“Bear. How long has this been happening?” I whisper.
He shrugs at the Switch. “Ah — you made me lose.” He sets the Switch down. “I need help with my math homework.”
“Yeah. Come on.”
His room smells like dog and boy. I go straight to the window and crank it open.
“You need to clean your room, Louis. It smells bad.” Louis is my brother’s real name, and I abuse it when I’m being serious with him.
He smiles. “Only if you start paying me.”
I look at him. “I paid for your field trip.”
He shrugs. “That was for the field trip. I want cash.”
I roll my eyes. “What in the world do you need cash for?”
He flops on his unmade bed. “I just need it.” He digs in his backpack and hands me a wrinkled worksheet. Fractions. Adding with different denominators. He’s scribbled numbers that make no sense on paper. He’s not bad at math, he just doesn’t care.
“Okay. What do you do first?” I ask, pointing at question one.
“Find the common bottom number.”
I nod. “Lowest common denominator.”
He rolls his eyes. “Lowest. Common. Bottom. Number.” He fidgets with his hands.
“Whatever, Bear, do the problem.”
He does the problem. He gets it right. He pretends to think harder about the next one than he needs to.
“That one’s much easier,” I say to him.
He scoffs. “Because you’re a math genius.”
I shake my head. “Not literally. That’s just something mom says. I just worked hard to understand it, and I swear it’s easy once you get it. Numbers never change.”
He stares at the paper, ignoring me and continuing the problem. He pauses partway through the third one. “Do you think Mom’s going to marry Tyr?”
I look at him, heart racing. “What? I don’t know, Bear. If she did, it would be a while from now.”
He thinks about that for a second. Then he goes back to the worksheet. “He’s been here a lot.”
“How long have you been keeping this a secret?”
“I don’t know.”
He works through the problem. A minute later, without looking up, “Mom said Tyr is a Norse god.”
“A Norse god?” I ask.
He nods. “I looked it up. He’s the god of war.”
“Wow, well, I hope he doesn’t live up to his name.”
He smirks. “I like him.”
My stomach folds in. “That’s…good.”
He gets the fourth problem on his own, and I pretend not to notice. I close the notebook when he’s done. I push his hair off his forehead.
“I will be back next week. Keep your room clean, and maybe I’ll give you some cash.”
He smiles as I walk out of his room.
My mom is sitting at the table with a wine glass in her hand. Tyr is at the counter making sandwiches with the lunch meat I just bought. He’s using her good knife. There’s mayo on the cutting board.
“You’re the best, Lucy. Louis is happy he gets to go on that field trip.”
So she did get the Venmo. “Yeah.”
She points across from her. “Sit. Have a sandwich.”
I look at Tyr. “I have to drive back.”
She doesn’t argue. “Okay, baby.”
Tyr holds up half a sandwich. “I make a great sandwich.”
“No, thanks. It was nice meeting you, Tyr.”
I gather my keys and hug my mom. She smells like a perfume I don’t recognize. She squeezes me harder than she has in years.
“Drive safe, baby.”
“I will.”
I walk past the couch on the way to the door. Bear pauses his game.
“Drive safe.”