Chapter 5 #2
“How long have you known?”
“Since Diego texted me and said you left the meet before finals because you had to go home to get to work at Roy’s.”
Damn that man. I took back what I thought about him and his awesomeness. “Yes, I’m working there. Diego knows because he goes there a lot. A lot,” I repeated significantly. Two could play at the snitch game. Now Diego and I were even.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tara asked me. “I could have helped you at night sometimes with Charlie and Cassie.”
“Tara, you do enough for me! It’s only three nights a week. And you’re always talking to me about getting a job in research, going back to school…I guess I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“You’re my friend,” Tara said. “I’m only disappointed that you felt you had to hide things from me. Of course I don’t want you working in a place like that. I’m worried about your safety.”
I felt exactly like when Loretta caught me going to the “library.” I hung my head. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m talking to you like you’re Darby,” Tara huffed, then grinned at me. “What’s life like on the seedy side of town, anyway?”
“Gross,” I said. “You should see my ‘uniform.’”
“How bad is it?”
“Imagine if Hooters and Day-Glo had a baby. That would be the shirt that Roy picked out.”
She started laughing. “That’s so you! Short shorts, too?”
“Roy hasn’t thought about that yet. Please don’t give him any ideas.”
She laughed again, then got serious. “Are you ok working there? I’ve only been in once and it was all alchies and hos.”
“Yep, just me, the alchies and the hos. No, really, it’s fine.”
Tara pressed her lips together. “You need the money that much?”
“Yes,” I said. There was no need to elaborate.
She nodded. “Fucking Mike.”
Exactly.
Tara stayed with Charlie when I left. They were eating pizza that she had bought and Cassie came down to watch some DVDs that Tara and Charlie rented in town.
Tara was a good friend, and it made me feel even worse about not telling her that I worked at the tavern.
She texted me later that Charlie fell asleep with the toothbrush in his hand, sitting on the toilet lid.
She sent a picture next, and I burst out laughing.
“What’re you looking at?” Roy demanded. I showed him my phone.
“That’s Cassie’s boy?”
I looked at him curiously. “How do you know Cassie?”
“She used to come in here.”
“I can’t picture Cassie in here. No offense!” I added quickly.
“Used to come looking for her husband. I heard she’s sick,” Roy said.
When I had come in to apply for the job, I hadn’t said why I needed it, just that I needed it badly. I wondered who had told Roy about her illness.
“Yeah, she is,” I told him. “Cancer.”
“How bad is it?”
I had been telling myself that she would be fine for a long time. I took a breath. “It’s bad,” I admitted to Roy. “Pretty bad.”
“I haven’t seen Mike in a while.”
“He’s gone. I don’t know where.” No one had directly asked me about Mike, but I was sure there had been an interesting whisper campaign around town.
Roy made a noise like a snort and a cough combined. “Had to throw him out of here a few times.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded somnolently. “Time to get back to work, sugar,” he said. “You got customers.” Our magical bonding moment was over.
Tara hung out with us on Sunday too, chatting with Cassie (well, sometimes fighting with Cassie), helping me with some laundry, and watching Charlie so I could make a drive to Costco (using Mike’s membership card, so at least he was still good for something).
Costco was something of a refuge for me.
I wandered down every aisle, trying every sample, looking at books, considering which small appliances I would need in my dream kitchen, pricing out booze and huge pieces of fancy cheese for if I ever had a party, and studying the jewelry to separate the “ok, I would wear that” from the tacky.
It was physically difficult for me to hand the cash to the checker when I got to the front of the line. “Miss?” he asked me, giving the bills a tug.
“Sorry,” I told him, forcing my fingers to relinquish the cash.
The whole time I shopped, Tara had kept up a steady stream of texts to me of second-hand information from Diego about the meet, so I didn’t look at my phone when I heard it ding in the parking lot until I was buckled into the Bronco.
Then my stomach did a little flip. Not Tara.
Luke I was driving to the airport and heard someone singing The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Me Huh??
A picture of Danny Bob popped up on my screen, and I burst out laughing.
Luke This guy was in the back seat. Is Charlie doing ok without him?
I sent him the picture of Charlie asleep on the toilet lid.
Luke I’ll take that as a yes. It was fun to hang out with you.
Me You, too. I’ll drive with you anytime, you and your heated seats ;)
Luke See you soon.
A warm feeling spread across my chest, and when I glanced in the rearview mirror before putting the car in reverse, I saw there was a huge, goofy smile plastered from one side of my face to the other. See you soon, he’d said.
∞
Charlie was in the back yard with a stack of wood from the garage when I drove in. When I yelled to ask what he was up to, he answered briefly, “Fort,” then went back to work. When he put his mind to a project, it was hard to pull him off it.
As I was putting away my Costco purchases (an enormous block of cheddar, bread for three weeks, a barrel of laundry detergent) I heard laughter from Cassie’s bedroom.
I walked to the bottom of the stairs. Cassie had laughed differently when Mike was around—it sounded like a gentle wheeze.
Heh-heh-heh. Her ladylike laugh. But this was the all-out belly laugh that I remembered from my childhood, the one that made our dad call her “donkey.” It made me smile, too.
It had been a long time since I’d heard it—a shot of guilt pierced my amusement when I realized that I hadn’t heard that sound from Cassie since I’d come home. Cancer. Not a lot that was amusing.
She and Tara were sitting cross-legged on the bed with a pile of yearbooks. “Oh my god,” Tara snorted. “How did she see the board through all that hair?” She pointed at a picture and they both convulsed.
“She ran against me as Homecoming Queen,” Cassie said. “Like, right. Please!”
Same old Cassie.
Tara pointed at a picture of herself. “Check it out. See my cheeks? So chubby. I was already pregnant with Darby and hiding it from my mom. Ugh, senior year was terrible, puking in the bathroom before pre-calculous every morning.”
“That sucks,” Cassie commented. “But at least Diego married you. Remember Amber?” She pointed out a girl who had driven all the way to Detroit to stay with her sister and get an abortion. In a small town, everyone knew your dirty secrets.
“You mean, at least I let him marry me,” Tara corrected her. “Best thing that ever happened to him.”
Tara was conceited, but correct. She and Darby were clearly the best things in Diego’s life and he loved them both like crazy. He acted like Tara hung the stars. Now I was sorry I had outed him as a Roy’s customer.
I picked up one of the books, this one from my year.
I flipped to my senior picture. We all wore the same strange off-shoulder top.
I held a rose and looked like I was giving it side-eye.
Not my best picture. Cassie and I looked at each other and laughed.
“Why were you afraid of the rose?” she asked me. I laughed again.
“Oh man, look at this one,” Tara sighed. “Those were the days.”
It was a shot of the football team after a win, all of them shirtless and running toward the camera to jump past the photographer into Lake Michigan. Luke was right at the front, a huge smile on his face. Oh, sweet Mary and the baby Jesus.
Cassie studied the picture dispassionately. “Yeah. He was definitely the best-looking guy there. Nice ass.” She ran her finger over the picture. “Him, him, him, and…” she thought for a minute. “Him, too.”
“No, you did not,” Tara said. “That’s Jacob Kaczmarek. He went to seminary! He’s a priest now!”
Cassie shrugged.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“We’re talking about the guys we did in high school.”
“What?” I squeaked.
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Emmy, you’re such a prude. Are you still saving yourself for marriage?”
“No!” I protested, immediately flaming red.
There had been that time in my freshman year dorm room in December after my boyfriend’s Organic Chem midterm.
I had helped him study and he thought he had aced it.
We celebrated with a five minute, painful and embarrassing trip to Sex Town.
Then he broke up with me over the semester break. Oh, the memories.
“You’re totally a virgin!” Tara gasped.
“No, I am not!” I protested. Experienced? Not so much.
“Whatever,” Cassie said, bored with my sex life. She turned a page to the hockey team picture. “Him, him again, him, him, and him.”
“Cass, that’s the coach!” I yelped. “His wife was my English teacher!”
“Yeah, he sucked, too,” she commented. “My senior year, one time and one time only.”
Wait a minute. “Senior year? You were with Luke then. You cheated on him?”
“It was high school,” she explained. “Everybody cheated.”
“Luke cheated on you, too?” Tara asked.
Cassie turned to her, offended. “Who would cheat on me?” she demanded.
MIKE, I wanted to scream. Mike had cheated on her while they were dating, while they were married, while she was pregnant with his freaking baby. Currently, as we spoke, Mike was probably cheating on her.
I was furiously angry. How could she have done that to him? “I can’t believe you, Cassie.”
“What?” She sounded genuinely confused.
“How could you cheat on Luke? How could you treat him like that?” I was actually sputtering in anger.
Tara lowered her eyebrows and made a small headshake at me.
“Why would you care, Emily?” Cassie asked. “What difference does it make to you?” She stared at me.
I took a deep breath to try calm down. “I’m just saying, it’s not very nice to have someone cheat on you. I was just thinking of his feelings.”
She laughed harshly. “What feelings? We got exactly what we wanted from each other. He was the hottest guy, I was the hottest girl. We looked great together. He had a credit card and took me everywhere. I let him do whatever he wanted. It was just high school.” My anger boiled and I opened my mouth.
Tara hit me on my leg and shook her head again. “It was a long time ago,” she commented.
But I wasn’t done. She was such a user! “I think that’s terrible. You should be ashamed of yourself! He’s an amazing person, and you treated him like crap!”
“You’re such a fucking goody-goody! He got exactly what he wanted and it wasn’t true love. Please, Emily! Did you think you were going to find your one and only in high school? No wonder you never had a date.” She laughed meanly.
“So you think you found true love with Mike? Or did you just marry him because you looked good together in pictures?”
Cassie was staring daggers at me. “Mike and I have something real. We do love each other, not that my virgin half-sister would understand.”
“Then where is he?”
Silence descended over the room. Tara stood up and gathered the yearbooks. “Emmy, come help me put these away.” She took me by the arm and tugged me out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Putting a hand on my back, she pushed me in the direction of the stairs.
“Where do I start?” she asked me when we got to the kitchen.
“I know. I know, ok? The one time she was happy and having fun, I messed it up. I practically told her I’m interested in Luke, which, despite the fact she apparently cheated on him, she will never forgive me for.
I questioned her sacred relationship with Mike.
I almost called her a slut. I was mean to my sister with cancer. Did I leave anything out?”
“No, you pretty much covered it,” she told me.
I looked out the window into the backyard. Charlie had an enormous axe raised over his head and looked to be aiming it at his foot. “Oh, holy Mary!”
As we prevented his near amputation, Tara let the subject drop.