Chapter 25
Time passes even more slowly as I wait for Al to return to his RV in the driveway.
Dee and Ella come home, and all four of them end up playing what sounds like a rousing game of Go Fish.
Ella explains the rules to Al again and again, and he never seems to learn them.
Al asks Ella if she’s ever seen a pee-ah-no.
“A what?” she asks.
“A piano,” I say from the hall upstairs, where they can’t hear me.
I am pressed against the wall like I’m in a spy thriller.
Like I maybe have a tiny dagger in my sock.
I think of my hunting knife, which now lives on a shelf in my closet.
Would I really have stabbed Joel with it? Was that really my plan?
“A what?” everyone says downstairs, still confused.
Al tries again.
Finally they figure it out.
“Of course!” Ella sounds happy to have superior knowledge to an adult. “That’s one right there!”
“Mother of the sky!” shouts Al in his raspy voice. “That is one of them? Why didn’t you tell me, Carol Dunlap? It was right here in the room with us the whole time!”
What follows is some very unskilled attempts at plunking out a tune. I’m the only one who can play at all.
“Not exactly like the music before,” Al says, kindly, I think.
“Let’s get Tempest,” says Mom, and I shrink back farther against the wall, banging my elbow. “She can do that one song. . . .”
“Ouch,” I whisper.
“No, Mom,” says Dee quickly. “Let her rest.”
Dee brings Ella upstairs to bed. I retreat to my room. I hear something beeping in the kitchen.
“Can we do it again?” Al asks.
The microwave hums to life. It beeps.
“Burning like fire!” Al exclaims. Then, “Ooh, ooh, this is much better, even, than fish!”
I have the strong sense that Mom is introducing him to Hot Pockets. Sure enough, moments later she is referring to mozzarella cheese with an exaggerated, pretentious Italian accent, coming very close to dropping the final a. I hear him earnestly try to say it the same way.
Dee pokes her head into my room. “Are you okay? Ella’s still awake, but I wanted to check on you since I’m probably going to fall asleep if I have to lie there with her much longer. Big day for her, she’s doing her crash and burn.”
I know it well: Ella often gets sad and stressed at bedtime after a long day, and she lies in bed listing all her fears, which are many, and all the things she thinks she might have messed up that day, week, or year.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I just don’t really want to deal with . . . whatever is going on down there.”
“He’s actually kinda nice,” says Dee. “He’s basically from another planet. Mom is showing him her dumb phone games. She’s been pretty down since Barry.”
I stare at her. I’d completely forgotten about Barry.
“Mommy!” Ella cry-commands.
“You sure you’re okay?” Dee asks.
“Yes! Go!” I smile.
“Sheesh, I’m going.” She rolls her eyes.
Mom and Al stay up a long time. I hear the TV, waves of delighted laughter.
I hear the sound effects of one of the dumb phone games—bubbly blurps and a few overexcited whistles.
I hear them talking. What could they be talking about for so long?
Maybe Dick Face. Maybe she’s just explaining modern plumbing to him.
At last, she walks him to the door, I hear them saying good night, and the door closes behind him.
It might be the first time Mom hasn’t slept with a man on the first date.
I do push-ups in the dark like I’m one of those jacked prisoners in a cell. I have never been able to do a single push-up. Not that I’ve tried more than once. Now they seem obvious, the motion satisfyingly short, precise.
Mom comes up the stairs, goes into her room.
I do sit-ups. Not as fun, but they occupy the time. Actually, my stomach hurts.
Everything is still and silent.
Finally!
Down the stairs I go, out the door, through the garden, past the looming shadow of the RV where a pain demon slumbers in our driveway.
It’s misty and eerie outside; the glowing lanterns on that one redbud tree look like they might mark the entrance to the realm of the fairies.
The sidewalk in front of the more expensive houses looks naked, blown too clean, and leaves sift inexorably down, working to hide it again.
I knock on Joel’s door. The porch light is off, but the light in the entryway is on.
“Please leave me alone,” he says, right on the other side of the door. I can tell he’s been waiting for me. It’s a potent, vibrating little nub of a thought: both of us lurking in the dark for hours, waiting for this moment.
“Come outside,” I say. “I want to talk.”
“We talked.”
“We aren’t done talking.”
“I told you what will happen. You can send me your father’s address.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t know where he is.”
“Tempest, I don’t want to play games.”
“No games. Come outside.”
He opens the door and looks away from me, radiant in the sudden golden light from inside.
He’s in a gray collegiate shirt and sweats, exceptionally sexy, his curls aglow, limned—is that a halo?
I clench my teeth. I prefer him rumpled, sleepy, distracted.
Maybe because he is easier prey then? Does it matter?
“Let’s sit.” I settle on the top step, pat the bricks next to me. I’m in my cozy sweater-jacket with the Southwestern designs and a knit hat that Dee bought for herself and then decided was too boring.
He lets the door close behind him, shutting us in the big dark together, and sits down reluctantly beside me. I feel the gravitational tug of him as though I will tilt, am already tilting, toward him.
He looks out into the silent street, the lowering sky with its thick web of uneasy clouds, his neighbor’s still-shaggy dawn redwood tree leaning in.
“You seem stressed,” I say.
He makes a sarcastic sound, a soft snort of disbelief. “What is this?”
“Just an observation.”
“You like your prey happy and oblivious?” he guesses. So we’re both thinking of him as prey then. “Better high?”
I shrug. “I don’t really notice a difference. I feel amazing either way.”
“Great.” He starts to get up. I put my hand on his arm. He stops.
“Nope. We’re still talking.”
His whole body is tensed, anticipatory. He rubs his forehead.
“Why do you think I’m still alive, Joel?” His name sounds intimate to me as I say it. Possessive. I feel like he thinks so, too, from the way he cringes slightly. Or maybe he’s just surprised that I’m asking. He shakes his head.
“I don’t know.” He sounds brusque. “Maybe I’m not strong enough.”
“But you’re not sick.”
“Maybe I am.”
A seed of fear twinges at my center. A seed that might germinate, grow into something tall and complex.
“I don’t think you are,” I say. “I can’t kill you. I’m not sure why.”
He glances toward me, not at my face.
“We might as well be honest.” I keep my voice casual. I’m better and better at doing that. “Might as well compare notes.”
His eyebrows lift. “Might as well not.”
I reach out, touch his jaw, turn his face gently. “Look at me.” He resists for only a few seconds. Then he looks. It’s erotic, the simplicity of it. Just my fingertips on his face, my complete control over him.
Complete control, like I saw Dick Face exercise.
It’s time to see exactly how like my father I can be.