19. Chapter 19 Liam
Two days after Christmas and the holiday was wearing off.
We'd been living inside a bubble. The dinner, the gifts, the pie, the three of us in the small house like the rest of the world had agreed to leave us alone. But the rest of the world hadn't agreed to anything. It was just December, and December was almost over.
We were lying in bed. Morning light coming through the window.
Alex was on his back staring at the popcorn ceiling, and I was on my side facing him with my hand on his stomach, and I could feel his brain going.
The rhythm of his breathing was wrong. Too even.
Too controlled. The way Alex breathes when he's running numbers in his head and doesn't want anyone to know.
And I had my own math. Jerry expected me at nine. Every morning, nine o'clock, coveralls and a heat gun, and I hadn't told Alex the truth about it.
"Hey," I said. My thumb moved across his ribs. "How are you doing with everything?"
He didn't answer right away. His jaw worked.
"I don't know," he said.
"Talk to me."
"The bursar email said January fifteenth.
That's two weeks. If I don't figure out tuition by January fifteenth, I can't register for spring.
No registration, no enrollment. No enrollment, no rowing.
" He was talking to the ceiling, not to me.
Listing. "The trust is frozen. My checking account is zero. "
"Alex."
"The phone plan is his. That'll go off soon. Everything I thought was mine is actually his, and he just let me use it for twenty years."
He rubbed his face with both hands. Pressed his palms into his eyes.
"I don't know what I'm going to do, Liam."
I pulled him closer. His head came to my chest, and I held him there and his body was tense against mine, vibrating with the math he couldn't stop doing.
Eight fifteen. I could feel the clock without looking at it. Jerry didn't care about excuses.
"We'll figure it out," I said.
"That's not a plan."
"I know it's not a plan. And sometimes you don't need a plan. It's just one step at a time."
"So… what's first he turned to me." His blue eyes wanting an answer.
"Okay," I said. "I need to tell you something."
He lifted his head.
"I've been working at Jerry's. Not helping out. Working. Full time. Every day this month. Eight hours, eighty bucks a day, cash."
He looked at me.
"That's where I've been going when I texted you about errands."
He was quiet for a second. Then he put his head back on my chest.
"I figured," he said.
"You figured?"
"Liam. I know you well enough by now that you do what you need to get by."
"You're not surprised?"
"No."
I felt something loosen in my shoulders. He'd known. He'd been waiting. And it hadn't changed anything. I was seriously wrong about everything.
"I've gotta go in today," I said. "Jerry's expecting me at nine."
Alex sat up. Looked at the window like nine o'clock was a physical thing approaching from outside.
"Every day?"
"Every day. That's the deal." I sat up beside him. "But here's what I'm thinking. Jerry could probably use you too. He's got work. Boats to check, engines to drain, a whole lot of shrink-wrap that needs patching after every storm. He pays cash. Eighty a day."
Alex looked at me.
"Eighty dollars a day."
"Yeah."
"Liam. My tuition is forty thousand dollars a year. Eighty dollars a day doesn't fix that."
"I know it doesn't fix that."
"So, what's the point?"
"The point is, it's money. Real money that you earned. It's not a trust fund and it's not a plan for the spring, but it's cash in your pocket and something to do other than lie here worrying. "
He looked out the window.
"I don't know, man. How is me working at a marina going to—"
"I don't know either." I was already standing, pulling a shirt off the back of the chair. "I'm not pretending this fixes everything. I'm trying my best here, Alex."
He looked at me. The frustration on his face softened into something else.
"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. You're right."
"It's the first step."
"First step.." He nodded slowly. "Okay. Yeah. It's a start."
I leaned over and kissed his temple. He closed his eyes and leaned into it.
"Get dressed," I said. "We're making lunch."
The kitchen was cold at the edges and warm at the stove. My mom was at the hospital. We had the house to ourselves, and I had twenty minutes before we needed to be out the door.
"Have you ever made a sandwich?" I said, pulling the bread out of the cabinet.
"I've eaten sandwiches."
"That's not what I asked."
He stood at the counter in my sweatpants and the crew-neck and his hair was still a mess from bed, and he looked at the bread and the peanut butter and the jar of grape jelly like they were components of something he'd need instructions for.
"You've really never made a PB&J," I said.
"We had a housekeeper."
"You had a housekeeper who made your sandwiches."
"She didn't make sandwiches."
"That's the second saddest thing you've ever said to me, after the snowball fight thing." I put two plates on the counter, grabbed a roll of plastic wrap from the drawer, and handed him a butter knife. "Okay. Here's what we're doing. Two sandwiches each. Bread on the plate. Two slices."
He put two slices on his plate, carefully, aligned.
"Now. Peanut butter." I opened the jar. Crunchy. Always crunchy. "This is where it gets personal."
"Personal."
"There are two schools of thought." I scooped a knife-load and spread it across one slice. "School one: peanut butter on one slice, jelly on the other. You press them together and the jelly stays on top, sits on top of the peanut butter. Clean layers."
"That sounds correct."
"School two." I scooped peanut butter onto the second slice. "Peanut butter on both slices. Jelly in the middle. The peanut butter acts as a seal. The jelly doesn't soak through the bread. It stays in the center."
"Why would the jelly soaking through the bread be a problem?"
"Soggy bread is nasty, Alex."
"I don't mind soggy bread."
I put the knife down and looked at him.
"I genuinely don't."
"This relationship is being tested right now."
He laughed. I loved that laugh. I reached over and wiped a smear of peanut butter off his knuckle with my thumb and put it in my mouth, and he watched me do it with his lips parted.
"Focus," I said. "Sandwiches."
"I'm focused."
"You're staring at my mouth."
"I'm focused on your mouth."
I grabbed his hip and pulled him closer for a second, kissed the corner of his jaw, then turned him back toward his plate. "Sandwich first. Mouth later."
He made his sandwich the wrong way. One slice peanut butter, one slice jelly, pressed together, jelly soaking directly into the bread.
I made mine the right way. Double peanut butter, jelly sealed in the center.
I wrapped both sets in plastic wrap and put them in a paper bag with two water bottles from the fridge.
"This is good," he said, eating the corner he'd cut off before I wrapped them.
"This is a sandwich. You can make this every day for the rest of your life for about two dollars"
"Two dollars."
"Welcome to my tax bracket."
He smiled.
"Let's go," I said.
***
The marina in December looked the same as it had every other morning.
Boats in white rows, the lot empty, the shop with its one lit window.
But walking through the gate with Alex beside me was different.
I'd spent the entire month keeping this place separate from him, and now he was here, in borrowed boots, looking at the rows of wrapped hulls.
"This is bigger than I remember," he said.
"Hundred and twelve boats in storage. Plus the wet slips on the south dock, but those are empty now."
The shop was warm and small and smelled like it always smelled — diesel, old wood, a coffee maker that had never been cleaned. Jerry's chart of the lake on the wall. His desk was covered in invoices. Radio going low. The space heater making its ticking sound.
Jerry was at the bench working on a carburetor when we came in. He looked up. Looked at Alex. Looked at me. Back at Alex.
"Who're you?" He asked.
"Alex Harrington," Alex said.
Jerry laughed. "Of course." He set the carburetor down and wiped his hands on a rag. "What brings you back?"
"Jerry," I said. "Alex is looking for some work. Just a few days a week. Whatever you've got."
Jerry leaned back in his chair. Pushed the glasses up on his nose. "I don't know, Liam. December's winding down. I've got you through the month, but I'm not sure I've got enough for two."
"Come on, Jerry. There's always something. The Grady-White's impeller is still seized. The whole back row needs a second pass on the wraps after that wind last week. We could do a deep clean on the shop, the fuel system, all the dock hardware. There's plenty."
"Plenty if I'm paying for it."
"Two, maybe three days a week. Rest of the winter. You said yourself I'm the only kid worth a damn. Now you've got two."
Jerry looked at Alex. Gave him the over-the-glasses look, the one where he was reading you and deciding whether to say what he was thinking.
"Why do you even want to work, son? Your family's got that place on the Point. Christmas lights on it like an airport."
Alex was quiet for a second. I watched his jaw work. And then he said it.
"My dad kicked me out. Before Christmas. I don't have anything right now. No money. Nothing. I'm staying with Liam and his mom."
Jerry's face changed, and he nodded.
He stood up and went to the shelf at the far corner of the room and pulled out a pair of coveralls and threw them to Alex. "Eighty a day. You break it, you fix it. You fix it wrong, Liam fixes it."
"Thank you, Jerry."
"Don't thank me. Show up on time and do the work." He paused. "And for the record, you worked pretty good for summer rich."
We suited up. Alex in coveralls that were too short in the legs. Me in the ones with my name on them. We looked at each other in the cold light of the shop, and he gave me the grin, and for a second we were back at the start of it, except this time we both knew what we were.
We worked all afternoon. Side by side in the lot, twenty feet apart, tools going, the radio through the shop window.
He took the battery shelving. I took a wrap patch on the pontoon.
The rhythm of it was right in a way I hadn't expected.
Two people doing a job in the cold. Not needing to talk about it.
At noon, we sat at a work bench and ate the sandwiches. His was already soggy. Mine was perfect.
"Told you," I said.
"It still tastes the same."
"It does not taste the same. Texture matters."
"You're a sandwich snob."
"I'm a sandwich realist." I knocked my boot against his. "How's the battery shelving?"
"Disgusting. There's corrosion on everything."
"That's the job."
"I know that's the job." He took another bite. Chewed. Looked out at the rows of wrapped boats. "This is the first useful thing I've done in a month."
I didn't say anything. Just ate my sandwich and let him have that.
At four o'clock the light was fading. We sat in the shop with the space heater between us, warming our hands on coffee from the pot that had never been cleaned.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Go."
"Your cousin, James."
Alex set his cup down.
"He went through the same thing, right? Your family cut him off."
"Six years ago."
"Have you ever talked to him? Since it happened?"
"No." He looked at the floor. "Nobody has."
"But you're cut off now too."
"I know."
"So maybe he'd want to hear from you."
Alex shook his head. "I can't just call him out of nowhere after six years, Liam. I never reached out. Not once. I just let them turn him into a—" He stopped. "I let them erase him. And I went along with it."
"You were a kid."
"I was old enough to know better."
"Maybe. But you're not a kid now. And you're sitting in the same spot he was sitting in six years ago, and I bet he remembers what that felt like."
Alex picked up his cup and put it down again without drinking.
"What if he's angry?"
"He might be."
"What if he doesn't want to talk to me?"
"Then he'll tell you that, and you'll know. But what if he does? What if he's been waiting six years for someone in your family to call?"
Alex was quiet. The space heater ticked. Jerry's radio played something country through the wall.
"He's the only person in the world who knows what this feels like," I said. "From the inside. Not from watching it happen to someone else. From inside it."
He looked at me. His eyes were tired, and his coveralls had grease on the chest and he was sitting in a marina shop holding a coffee cup with both hands, and he looked nothing like a Harrington and everything like a person who needed to hear one voice that understood.
"I'll think about it," he said.
"Tomorrow."
"Liam."
"Call him, Alex. What's the worst that happens?"
"He tells me to go to hell."
"He won't."
He held the cup. Steam rising between us.
"Okay," he said. "Tomorrow."
We kept busy for the rest of the day, sharing small moments here and there when Jerry wasn't around.
It was nice. Nice just to know that he was okay, and he was here with me.
I knew he wasn't really okay, but at least he had something.
And that something was me, and now this job.
It wasn't a lot, but it's what I survived on — he'd have to get used to it.
Jerry paid us at the door, two folds of twenties counted out of the cash drawer with a licked thumb. Alex put his in his pocket. I put mine in mine.
"Same time, day after tomorrow?" Jerry said.
"Same time," Alex said.
We walked home along the lake road in the dark. Both of us smelling like diesel. Cash in our pockets. The south-shore lights low along the water.
I reached for his hand. He took it. Our fingers laced together in the cold, and we walked the rest of the way like that.