8. Tilly
EIGHT
Tilly
Paint Layers: A conservator scrapes a small square down through every color a room has ever been and reads the layers like sediment. What sits at the bottom is almost never the color anyone assumed was under there.
Trey pulls up to the curb, and I'm opening the door before he can put it in park. I desperately need some quiet time before my meeting and this lunch has already gone longer than I would have liked.
I hop out once he's in park.
"Thanks again." I hang on the open door a second. "I mean it. You gave up half your day and drove an hour for a car that was already running by the time you got there. I wish you would at least let me pay for your gas."
"You already fed me." He grins, easy about it, no bite anywhere in his voice. "A po'boy covers a lot of ground."
"I don't think it's enough, but I do appreciate it."
"Til, it's fine. Fresh air, decent sandwich, good company." He taps the wheel. "Not a bad time."
I shut the door and step back onto the grass. He waves two fingers off the brim of his cap and swings the truck around. The engine noise stretches thin down the street, then fades until there's nothing left but a lawn mower going somewhere two houses over.
The quiet drops down all at once. Rhodes's truck isn't in the driveway.
I climb the porch steps, pulling out my keys as I walk to the front door and let myself in.
The house takes the sound of the door and swallows it.
The hook where Rhodes keeps his gym bag is hanging empty, and the whole place is somehow bigger without him folded into his recliner in the living room.
There's no SportsCenter blaring from the TV.
I drop my bag by the door. It hits the floor with a thunk, and my shoulders finally quit holding themselves up the way they've been since this morning.
I need water. I fill the glass I cleaned this morning and left in the drying rack, drinking half of it standing there. The cold of it startles against my teeth. I walk into the den and peer out of the front window.
My Land Cruiser sits there, front tires square on the pavement, fixed, waiting like nothing happened.
I set the glass down.
Here's the thing I couldn't say out there without sounding unhinged. I skipped lab for this. I made a plan, called and scheduled with Trey, who said if he couldn't fix it, he would at least know where to go from here. That was mine. My problem, my phone call, my time.
Rhodes managed something in my life without talking to me. He saw my car that wouldn't start, decided I hadn't dealt with it, and then took it upon himself. He erased the whole plan before I ever got to run it. That's the part that sits behind my eyes and aches.
I stare at my fixed car through the glass, and there's no one left to argue with about it.
My phone is warm in my hand before I decide to pick it up. The screen sits dark, and my own face floats there in the black, mouth pulled tight, hair coming loose from this morning's braid. I look like someone spoiling for a fight with no one to fight.
My thumb moves on its own to the contacts, the M's, because that's where she lived, right there under my thumb my whole life. Mama.
The name is still in my phone.
The last thread is still there too, a photo I sent her of the growing coastline where we added mud and planted marsh grass that took. Just below it is the last text she ever sent to me.
Proud of you.
She typed it from a hospital bed, and she never once made it about the bed. She answered every message I ever sent, right up until she couldn't hold the phone.
She'd have gotten it, both halves at once, in about four seconds flat. She'd have laughed at me for being mad that a man, who's basically my brother, fixed my car without asking, in a tank top, looking unfairly sexy doing it, no less.
Then, before I could feel dumb about it, she'd have gone quiet and said, but you had it handled, baby, and he took that from you. She held both things without dropping either. Nobody else does that.
The ache comes up fast, that specific one. I press the heel of my hand against my eye, once, hard, and breathe through it. Two tears get out, and I let them, before I shut it down.
I call Libba.
"Hey." Her voice comes through light and airy, and something in my chest loosens knowing she's on the other end of the line. "You're a busy woman."
"I know. Sorry I missed you twice. Tuesdays are usually my busy days, and today piled it on extra."
"Is everything okay?"
I know she doesn't mean it like the rest of my family when she asks, but I also know she can't help but worry when it sounds like I'm overwhelmed. Everyone always thinks I'll slide backwards when the going gets rough. It's why I'm living with Rhodes Stone, no less.
"Nothing's wrong. Just had some car issues, and I've been hitching rides for the last week."
"Tilly! A week? What's going on? Why is it still not fixed? I told you that you shouldn't be driving that old car. Let Grandbank buy you a reliable one. He said he would."
"It is reliable. And Rhodes fixed it, so I'm good now."
"So what's the problem? I don't understand why you seem upset."
"I'm not upset, just tired. I said it's been a busy day, that's all."
Silence fills the line. It's a family joke that I talk in pieces and never complete the whole scene. She knows there's more to it.
"He didn't ask before he did it," I say finally.
"And?"
"I had a friend scheduled to come take care of it today, skipped my lab to do it on his schedule, and then we showed up to Rhodes under the car."
"Okay, Tilly, you're going to have to walk me through this. What in the world has you so tied up over this? Rhodes did you a favor and you've got your panties in a wad about it? What am I missing?"
"It's just, I had it handled, and he took it upon himself like I'm incapable of dealing with my own vehicle, and fixed it without asking me what I had planned for it.
Plus, it was embarrassing. I showed up with my friend, who took time away from his schedule, drove an hour to the city, only to not be needed. "
"Okay, no, that's annoying."
"Right. Exactly." I lean back against the counter.
"So this isn't friends-ending level, just irritating. I mean, he was doing it to be nice. Not everything someone does means they think you're incapable."
"I know, Libs, that's what makes it worse. I'm mad at myself for being mad at him—" I stop. The sentence runs out of road.
"Tilly." Her voice softens.
I don't answer.
"Is this really about the car today?"
The kitchen is quiet.
"I almost called Mama first," I say.
"Yeah." Her breath catches, just barely. "I figured. Me too, sometimes. I still reach for the phone when I need someone to talk some sense into me."
Neither of us fills the silence for a second. We just let it sit, both of us letting it breathe.
"He's not who I thought," I finally say. "Our families have been tangled up our entire lives, and I still had him filed as the Stone who never takes a thing seriously. I don't think I ever actually looked at him. And he's over here being the responsible one while I look like a hot mess."
"We've known him forever and never known him at all." A little tease creeps in gently. "Is it weird living with him?"
"I mean, not really." I think about seeing him in that towel and all sense leaving my brain. "Just different."
"Well, he's family. He just wants to take care of you, like we all want to do for each other. Don't read too much into it and go easy on the poor man."
"You're right. Love you, I gotta run. I'm getting so excited about Italy!"
"Me too. I went shopping for dresses. We're staying together in the same villa, right?"
"Yes, I think Cain put us together. I told him he could save money because we would be in each other's rooms anyway. He doesn't care about money, but said he would try to find a bigger one for us."
"It's going to be so much fun," she says.
I hook my keys off the wall as I head outside. "Oh, wait. Did Daddy say anything to you about Easter?"
"Easter?"
"I asked him about doing it out at Oak Moss. I think it would be the perfect place for us to be together for the first Easter after losing Mama. Don't you?"
There's a pause for half a beat, the kind nobody on earth would catch except the person who shared a womb with her.
That's twice now. My father did it on the phone last Friday, and my sister just did it in my ear. Neither one of them will finish a sentence about that property.
"Libba. Is something going on at Oak Moss?"
"Not that I know of."
She says it too fast, and we both hear it. But we both drop it because there’s no use in pushing it.
"He mentioned it," she says again. "I think he's leaning toward doing it at the house, though. Birdie's already talking about a ham and bringing in a large farm table for the yard."
"The house is depressing, Libs. I just feel like it will be so sad to be there without Mom."
"I know, I agree. I'll work on him."
"Make it happen. Okay, I really do have to go. I love you."
"Love you, too."
I grab my keys and my water bottle, and the cardigan I keep in the closet because that fellowship room runs cold no matter the season. My bag's still by the door where I dropped it. I dig the little chip out of the side pocket, run my thumb over the worn edge of it once, and put it back.
Outside, the afternoon has gone gold and soft. I climb into the Cruiser, slide the key in, and turn it. It starts, first try, and the engine drops into the low, even idle I've missed for a week. I sit with my hands on the wheel a second, then back out and go.
The drive is fifteen minutes across town, past the taquería with the hand-painted sign, past the tire shop, past the shotgun houses with their porches full of plants.
I roll the windows down and let the warm air push my hair around.
There's nobody in the car but me, no one asking how I slept or how I'm feeling or whether I ate.
Just my own two hands and a road I know by heart.
Iglesia de Dios sits back from the street, white paint peeling at the corners. I park under the live oak and go in through the side door, down the half-flight of stairs to the fellowship room.
Cold air hits me first, the window unit rattling in the corner.
Then coffee, that scorched church-basement smell of a pot left on the warmer too long.
Folding chairs sit in a loose circle with low voices moving around it, and a card table holds foam cups and a plate of grocery-store cookies nobody will eat.
Ms. Dot and Helen both catch sight of me when I walk in the room. Ms. Dot smiles, and Helen lifts a hand to let me know where she's sitting and saved me a seat.
Ms. Dot crosses over and takes my hands between both of hers, warm and dry and papery, and she doesn't ask a single thing. She just holds on a second and lets go.
"Coffee's terrible tonight," she says. "Extra terrible."
"My favorite kind."
I take the seat Helen saved for me. The metal's cool through my jeans. I set my water bottle by my foot and pull the cardigan over my shoulders.
And something in me lets go, my jaw first, though I didn't know I'd been holding it. My shoulders come down, and I let my back curve into the chair.
Nobody in this room needs me to be fine. Nobody's doing the math on my glass. Ms. Dot isn't watching my hands. There's no Coop, no Libba, no Maybank name hanging over the folding chairs. Just people in a cold room, saying true things out loud.
Somebody starts, and I listen.
I miss my mother. It sits in my chest, and I let it sit there and don't call it anything. I'm carrying other things tonight, too. I'm still mad at Rhodes. I hate that there's something else mixed up in it now.
None of it needs solving tonight. For one hour, I just let it all be true.
The meeting lets out. The lot's gone that deep blue you only get for ten minutes before real dark. I squeeze Ms. Dot's hand goodbye and cross the parking lot to my truck under the live oak.
I put my key into the ignition, turn, and it starts on the first try as smoothly as it did the day I got it.
The road unrolls under my headlights. There’s nobody in the car but me, and that's exactly the problem. Because with nobody talking, the thing I've been shoving down since this morning comes right back up.
I saw him before I understood what he was doing.
That's the part. I came around the back of it, and there he was, flat on his back on the driveway, half under the Cruiser.
For one whole second, I hadn't caught up to the fact that he fixed my vehicle without asking.
For one second I just saw him with grease up one forearm and his shirt shoved up where he'd been reaching.
My eyes zeroed in on the strip of his stomach, that line of hip.
Competent. That's the word my brain grabbed, and it grabbed it fast, before I had permission to be mad.
My face goes warm, and I grip the wheel a little harder.
Oh, come on.
This is Rhodes. Coop's ridiculous friend, the unserious Stone, the one who's always just been there, on the edge of every crawfish boil and every Fourth of July, as part of the furniture.
I knew him when he had braces. I watched him lose a shirtless swim race to my brother and never once had a thought about it.
And now I live down the hall from him. I nearly walked into him in a towel last week, dripping, and had to study the floor before he got other ideas. I saw him filthy under my truck today, and apparently that was different.
I laugh at myself, one breath through my nose.
That's what I get for having eyes. Biology doesn't stop to ask whether a man is somebody I'm ever going to touch before it notices his stomach.
It doesn't mean a thing. It's information.
He's a good-looking man, and I'm a person who was standing there, and that's the end of it.
I turn up the radio, some old zydeco thing, accordion and washboard, and let it fill the car and push the rest of it out.
Rhodes's street is dark when I turn onto it.
His truck still isn't back. The fixed Cruiser rolls up the drive under my hands, quiet and working, and I sit a second with the engine ticking down.
I've got a reef write-up due and water temps to log and Josette wanting the eastern line sorted by Monday.
Real things, mine, waiting for me at the kitchen table in a house with nobody in it.
I had him filed, is the thing. Coop's ridiculous friend. Furniture. Easy. He doesn't fit in there anymore, and I can't find the shape to shove him back into. He still went around me today. He's also getting harder to wave off.
His repair sits in the driveway. He isn't even home.
Somehow he's still taking up room in it.