9. Rhodes
NINE
Rhodes
Sistering: When a floor joist begins to fail, it is not pulled out. A sound joist is bolted alongside it so the two carry the weight together, and the old one stays exactly where it is, still doing what it can.
Coop calls while I'm still chopping the onion, so I put him on speaker and prop the phone against the flour canister.
"Talk fast. I've got a knife in my hand."
"Two questions and I'll let you go." He's walking somewhere, wind in it. "Is she eating?"
"Is she eating? Jesus, Cooper. Do you think she's incapable of living? Yes, she's eating. And she's a better cook than me."
"That's her." The smile comes into his voice and then goes back out of it. "Second question. Is she going?"
He doesn't say to what because he doesn't have to.
"Every Tuesday," I tell him. "She takes herself without telling me about it, and I don't ask her about it. As far as I know, she has not missed one. But then again, I'm not a micromanager like you are."
The breath he lets out is the sound of a man setting down something he's been carrying up a flight of stairs.
"Easy, tiger. You know me better than that. I just need to ask, okay?"
"Happy to answer. But just saying, she's a lot tougher than y'all give her credit for."
"I know she is," he says. "Thank you, brother."
"Anything for you."
"I don't know what I'd do without you." He says it fast, the way a man agrees with something he's working on believing. "Alright. Go cook. I gotta run."
And as quickly as he was here giving me the third degree about his adult sister, he's gone. I'm grateful to be able to report that all is well.
The onion goes translucent in the pan as I push it around with the wooden spoon. I turn from the stove, setting the spoon on the holder, and wipe the cutting board while it cooks.
The andouille's already sliced and the rice is measured out. The sink is half empty because I clean as I go, the way Vin taught me before I understood I was being taught anything. I rinse the knife, wipe the board, run warm water over my hands.
The sausage hits the pan and hisses.
Tallulah's at the far end of the table with her laptop and a stack of books, a highlighter in her teeth.
She's turned herself sideways in the chair, one shoulder toward me, the screen angled away.
I don't think she's hiding, necessarily, but she's built a little wall out of her own posture and settled in behind it.
I came in to start dinner, finally deciding I don't have to make myself invisible when she's in a room. If she wants to move, so be it. She was here first, but this is my kitchen.
"You need any of this counter?" I nod at the stretch by the toaster. "I can keep my mess on this side."
"I'm fine."
She turns a page. The highlighter squeaks.
I stir, add the rice, let it toast, watch the grains go from white to a faint gold at the edges. The kitchen smells like pepper and browned meat, and I could set a clock by how good this usually makes an evening feel.
"Careful," I say. "Keep sitting that still and I'll dust you and put you on a shelf."
She says nothing, expelling a short breath through her nose that might be a laugh in a better mood. She writes something in the margin of her book.
I add the stock and the lid, turn it down, and stand there with the spoon in my hand watching steam come up around the edges.
I don't do this part. My move is to leave it alone and let it burn down on its own, or crack a joke over the top of it until nobody remembers there was a hole underneath.
But this dynamic between us shouldn't be like this. We've always been friends. Sure, we're two years apart, and I was always closer to her brother, but we have known each other our entire lives. Her moving in with me for a few months shouldn't have created animosity.
I set the spoon down on the rest. My mouth's gone dry, which is stupid because it's one question, but it doesn't want to come. Turning off the burner, I wipe my hands on the towel over my shoulder.
"Tallulah."
She looks up.
I meet her eyes across the room. "How do we do this so I quit stepping on you? I miss my friend."
Her spine straightens. The highlighter comes out of her mouth and lands on the table.
"Don't."
"Don't what?”
"Don't do the calm voice." She flips a page she isn't looking at, then flips it back. "You think you're being subtle, but you're not. I know damn well what this is."
I pick up the plate I rinsed an hour ago and rinse it again. The water over my knuckles feels good and saves me from standing here like a deer in headlights.
"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. You know exactly what this is? I'll tell you what it is from my side. It's two friends rooming for a semester. That's it. If I'm wrong, please enlighten me."
"Everybody in my life does this." Her jaw is tight.
"Daddy calls to ask about the beds and then asks how I'm sleeping.
Libba texts me at ten to see if I'm home.
Coop packed me up like luggage and dropped me here because he couldn't stand to leave for Spain unless somebody was watching the exits. " She taps the table once, hard.
"You've got me wrong, Tallulah."
"I'm not stupid, Rhodes. Coop said it to my face. You two talked and decided this without even letting me know the conversation was happening."
I set the plate in the rack harder than I mean to, and it clacks against the one beside it.
I don't tell her she's wrong about Coop, because she isn't, and she knows she isn't. I don't tell her she's overreacting, because I've watched fifteen people I love reach for her at once, and I'd throw punches too.
I dry my hands on the towel and look at her.
"Listen."
Her eyes cut to mine. She's got the next thing loaded. I can see it sitting behind her teeth.
"When, in all the years you've known me, have I ever been a man who manages anybody? Think carefully. This includes managing myself."
The kitchen goes quiet, and the steam from the rice ticking under the lid is the only sound.
She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
I watch it happen on her face, the way you watch a wave lose its shape before it reaches the sand.
She's got the whole speech built, every plank of it nailed down, and it was built for her father and her brother and every hand that's ever closed around her arm.
She aimed it at me because I'm the one standing in the room.
Nobody has ever accused me of running anything, least of all another person's life. And I know she knows that.
Her mouth closes. She looks down at the highlighter on the table like she's not sure how it got there.
"That's not," she starts, but doesn't finish it.
I don't push. I've got her on the one honest thing I have, and pressing it would just hand her a reason to build the wall back. So I turn to the stove and lift the lid, letting the steam roll up between us.
She's quiet a second, working the highlighter cap on and off with her thumb. When she looks up again, the sharpness has burned down to something steadier.
"You'd do anything for Coop."
I stir the rice once and set the spoon on the rest. There's no point dodging her assertion.
"I'd do a lot for Coop," I say. "That's true. Not going to pretend it isn't."
"So."
"So how does that translate to me somehow becoming whatever it is you're accusing me of?" I lean back against the counter and cross my arms.
"Be honest. What did he ask of you? Don't bullshit me, Rhodes."
"He literally said that he didn't want you to live alone. That's it. He didn't ask me to do anything, including opening my spare bedroom. I offered because I have one and you needed a place until the fall. That’s it."
"That's not it."
"I don't know what else I can say to you, Tallulah, besides that's it." I hold her eyes. "Being around isn't the same thing as running your life. I don't want to decide where you go. I don't care who you have lunch with or whether you can change your own starter, which, clearly, you had covered."
A corner of her mouth moves at that. She studies me, letting it sink in, and I can see some of the fight drain out of her.
She comes over beside me to reach the faucet. Her arm slides along mine at the wrist. She doesn't pull back, and I don’t move. I stand there with my hips squared at the cabinet doors, scrubbing a pot that's been clean for a minute.
Her forearm is wet from the tap. When it brushes against mine, my whole arm goes stupid from the elbow down.
"I noticed you got rid of the beer,” she says, snapping me out of it.
The shelf on the door is empty. Bare wire where the bottles used to stand.
I see what she's doing. Instead of arguing with me anymore, she's pointing out the signs that I'm doing what she's accusing me of. She should be a prosecutor.
"Yeah." Easy. I pick up the towel and dry my already dry hands. "I moved them to my belly."
I leave out that after I finished them, I never bought more, or that I stood in the beer aisle last weekend and picked up a six-pack of an IPA, and then put it back.
I get there before her mouth does.
"Turns out I drink like a college kid when nobody's counting," I say, and toss the towel back over my shoulder. "So, who's watching who, huh?"
The corners of her eyes crease. She lets me have it, screws the cap on her water, and doesn't say the thing.
I lift the lid off the pot. The steam rolls up, and the rice has gone soft, the top darkening where the andouille cooked down. I transfer it to a large bowl, put the pot in the sink to soak, and open the cabinet.
"You eating? Made enough jambalaya for a boat crew."
A second passes. "It does smell really good."
"It's better than good." I set my bowl on the counter and grab a serving spoon. "Help yourself. Or don't, whatever."
My hand's already reaching for a second bowl before I catch it. I put the bowl back on the shelf. That's the whole thing we just went ten rounds over. So I close the cabinet without getting one down for her.
"I'm eating on the back deck." I tip my head at the door. "Got a fire going on the porch, if you want to join. No hard feelings if not."
I fill a glass with ice and then water at the purified jug, leave the pot to soak, and take my supper and my water out through the French doors before she can work out whether that was an invitation or me telling her where I'll be.
I don't wait in the doorway or look back to see what she does with it, closing the door and sitting down by the fire.
The fire's burned down to the good part, low and orange in the brick box I had added when I renovated the summer before my Freshman year. I set the bowl on my knee and eat and watch it work, the heat coming off it in a small circle and the February cold leaning in on everything past the edge of it.
The door opens behind me, Tallulah coming out with a bowl in hand. She doesn't say a word about coming out, and I don't comment, either.
We eat without talking much, the fire ticking, the bugs keeping up their racket in the grass past the rail. When her bowl's empty, she sets it on the side table beside her chair and pulls her legs up under her. Her chin rests on her knee as she stares into the fire.
"Mama would've hated how you handled that," she says.
I look over.
"The whole thing in there with that calm voice." A ghost of a smile. "She'd have told you to say the mean part out loud so we could get to the end faster. She never let anybody circle."
"No," I say. "She didn't."
"She'd have had it out of both of us in about ninety seconds."
I turn the glass in my hand. "There was this one time I remember I had gotten in trouble with your dad for something I did with Cooper.
I can't remember now what it was, but I remember how she handled me at dinner that night.
She asked me why I was so quiet, and before I could figure out an answer, she put another piece of chicken on my plate and told me to stop being polite and eat.
" The ice in my glass sweats against my palm. "I was, what, eight or nine, I think."
"That was my mama, for you."
"I know it now. Didn't appreciate it then.
Your house already had a full table, and she just kept setting places like the number didn't matter.
Never once made me feel like I wasn't part of your family.
" The corner of my mouth goes up. "Woman fed me like she was scared nobody at my house would remember to. "
Tallulah laughs.
“She ordered me around like I was one of hers, too. "Take the trash out. Get your shoes off the good rug. Call your daddy and tell him you're staying for supper,” I say in a high-pitched voice.
I let that last one sit a second. She used to hand it to me, same as the rest, like there was somebody at my house waiting on that call, and there really wasn't. She knew it better than anybody. I've always wondered if she did it on purpose, so I'd feel like a kid who was expected home.
I turn the glass in my hand and look at the yard a second before I trust my voice.
"She was something," I say.
Tallulah doesn't try to smooth it over. She lost the same woman and doesn't need me to explain why the empty chair still catches me sideways. "She certainly was."
For once I don't have to translate it into a joke to make it fit in the room.
We sit there, the fire crackling in the silence, and the lack of words in the moment isn't something either of us is guarding against.
The pot's still soaking when I go back in, so I roll up my sleeves and get after it.
The rice cooked down onto the bottom in a hard skin, and it takes a scrubber and some patience to make a dent in it.
I work it in circles, water running warm, when Tallulah comes in and puts the leftover jambalaya in a container in the fridge.
Once she finishes putting everything else around me away, she packs up her stuff at the table into her backpack.
The living room lamp's the only real light going, and it throws everything gold.
For the first time since she hauled her boxes through my door, the house doesn't feel split down a line I have to walk carefully around.
I open the drawer for the good spatula to finish scraping the stubborn stuff stuck on the bottom. It's not in the good spatula spot. Neither is anything else.
"Where'd the spatula go?”
"Second drawer." She doesn't look up. "By the stove. Where a person would actually use it."
"It lived by the sink for two years."
"And you had to walk across the kitchen dripping every time you flipped an egg." She zips up her bag and tosses it over her shoulder. "You're welcome."
The kitchen's gone quiet behind me once she disappears down the hall. It's a different quiet than this morning. Nothing between us got fixed tonight, not really, but for the first time since she moved in, I'm not braced for the next round.