“I know, Dad. But what does that have to do with Nic? He didn’t cause any of that.”
Dad clears his throat, looks over at my little brother; abruptly stands and flicks on the television, shoving in a DVD. Em looks at him uncertainly for a moment, but then he curls up in Dad’s big recliner, cuddles Hideout against his cheek, soaks in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Any day can be Christmas for Emory. Dad sits back at the table, leaning toward me to say quietly, “I bust my butt all the time and every dollar that comes in flows back out like I’ve got a hole in my pocket. I don’t play the numbers, I don’t smoke or spend it at the bar. I’m careful with the cash, Gwen. And it still doesn’t matter a damn.”
“So cutting Nic loose will help?”
“You know I won’t do that. Gimme a break. I look out for what’s mine. Like I do with Em. Even if the kid is nothing like me.”
The words hover in the air.
Dad shovels another forkful of food into his mouth.
I feel sick.
Emory has Dad’s brown eyes. He has his crooked big toe. Dad’s smile, though he uses it much more often. Anyone, anyone, would look at them and know they were father and son. But Dad left. He doesn’t see the day-to-day. He doesn’t see Em tilt his head against Grandpa Ben’s shoulder, huskily singing Gershwin lyrics as they watch another Fred-and-Ginger movie. He doesn’t see Emory hurry to the refrigerator to pick out Mom’s bagged lunch when he sees her pulling on her sneakers in the morning. He doesn’t see Emory carefully align his fingers to respond to Nic’s high fives, his face glowing with big-boy worship. He hears how hard it is for Em to talk, the draggy slowness in his voice. He sees that his face is sometimes blank of everything, and even we who love him best can only guess what’s happening inside. He sees everything that makes him different and nothing that makes him Emory. I feel sick, yeah, but I also feel sorry, so sorry for my father.
“My family . . . we’re not the Brady Bunch, but everyone’s always been all there, if you get what I’m saying.”
I think I may throw up. “Emory’s all there.”
“C’mon, Gwen. Your aunt Gules is a nutcase, but she’s not . . .” He’s been sitting straight but now seems to deflate a little. “Not like your brother. No one we know is like your brother. I just don’t know how the hell this happened.”
“Do you know how many things have to go right to make a perfect baby, Dad?” I hold out my hands, settle each finger into the next, slotting them both together. “It all has to—”
His hand closes on mine, rough from work, freckled from the sun. “No, I don’t. I don’t know that sort of thing. I don’t want you to know either, for Chrissake. Just stay away from all that. I only know your brother is never going to get better. There’s always going to be something. Ben’s getting on. Your mother takes crap care of herself. Every time I turn around Nic is working on his body or out messing around with Vivien. With plans to light out for God knows how many years after that. That leaves you and me, pal.”
“Everybody helps with Em,” I say—although lately it’s mostly been Grandpa and me—and my voice is choky, hardly recognizable. “What’s different now?”
“Castle’s. I gotta start doing breakfasts. Put in more outside tables. All costs money. I don’t have extra.”
My knuckles are white around my fork. “Nic’s extra? Or would that be Emory?” I look over at my little brother, his hair sticking up in front because there’s a bit of syrup in it, kicking his foot in time to “We’re a Couple of Misfits.”
Dad scrapes back his chair, shifts over to stroke the back of my brother’s neck. Em tips his neck back, leans his head against Dad’s open palm.
Dad stares at me over his shoulder. “No, he’s not extra. Screw my life.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I am a huge cliché.
I am a teenage girl at the mall.
I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits.
I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits even though she has a perfectly good one from last year that fits fine.
Worst of all, I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits even though she has a perfectly good one from last year that fits fine and hating how she looks in every single one.
It doesn’t help that I am also a teenage girl who baked two batches of sugar cookies and a pan of congo bars last night as a chaser for dinner with Dad. I’m trying not to think about how few leftovers there were this morning. Nic must have scarfed some when he got in late, right?
Aren’t these stores supposed to want to make us look good? Then what’s up with the cheapo overhead lighting that highlights every single flaw and creates a few extras for good measure?
Cliché #5: I am a teenage girl with body issues.
Which get worse in bathing suits. (#6)
And I’m doing this for a boy. (#7)
Well, not because he asked or anything. Not that he had time to do anything but blush after I blurted, “Were you wearing anything under there?” and then did a bat-out-of-hell from his apartment. But Spence must have passed on the reason for my epically awkward visit to the Field House, because this morning Grandpa Ben came in from his early morning walk.
“I met the young yard boy getting to work. He had trouble starting the mower, so I showed him the tricks. He said he would tutor Emory in the swimming today at three.”
Did he say anything else? Did he mention me? Did he . . . Yes, right, absolutely. He lined up the tutoring, then said, “By the way, Mr. Cruz, I think you should know that I have reason to suspect your granddaughter was picturing me naked.”
I’ve got a perfectly adequate bathing suit but it’s a one-piece and black and bears a distinct resemblance to Mrs. E.’s beachwear. I suspect dressing exactly like an octogenarian is a fashion don’t when you’re seventeen. On the beach. With a gorgeous boy.
Who’s simply giving swimming lessons to your brother.
Out of the goodness of his heart.
I wheedled the use of Dad’s truck out of him, saying I needed it to take Emory to speech. Though, really, it was more that I felt he owed me one after last night’s bleak lecture, stark as black-and-white headlines on a newspaper. Your brother = your future. No amount of sugar, butter, and flour can quite get the taste of that out of my mouth. Then Grandpa wanted to come along because there’s almost always a few yard sales happening on Saturdays in Maplecrest.
Which brings me to the non-clichéd part of all this.
“Guinevere! Your brother has lost his patience with this store and I am losing it with him. Have you gotten what you need?”
Yes, my grandfather is right outside the changing rooms. Also . . . my little brother.
“Not yet!” I call.
I can hear Grandpa move away, trying to dicker down the price of a cast-iron frying pan. “You cannot mean to charge so much for this. It’s brand-new. It hasn’t been seasoned yet. It will take years of cooking in it and wiping down with the olive oil to be worth the price you are asking.”
Then I hear him calling, alarmed, for Emory, who I know must be doing his I’m-bored-in-this-store routine, hiding in the center of those circular racks of clothes until Grandpa spots his feet.
I’ve tried on four tankinis. I think I read once in one of Vivien’s magazines that, like, ninety percent of the guys on the planet hate tankinis. Which can’t be right. I mean, I’m certain men herding goats in Shimanovsk don’t care one way or another. And if they include the men who want every part of a woman except her eyes covered, that’s unfairly skewing the percentages and—
I reexamine the pile. No, and no, and Jesus God, let me forget how that one looked.
“Almost done,” I call feebly.
Forget it. I’ll just wear the black one-piece. It’s not like it’s a date. I mean, he told me about it through my grandfather.
I wonder how long it took him to stop blushing. When I left, throwing some excuse about Fabio over my shoulder, I heard him come out from his bedroom
and Spence ask, “What happened to your face?”
Outside there’s a commotion and a “You can’t come in here!” and Grandpa Ben saying “Acalme-se,” and thrusting this bikini in through the side of the curtain.
A bikini.
Vivien wears bikinis. Viv even wears string bikinis. She looks great in them because she has exactly that sort of body . . . all lanky and coltish and boyish-but-not. She says she doesn’t look good because she hasn’t got enough on top, but she has to know she pretty much does, or she would stick to What the Well-Dressed Senior Citizen Will Wear, like me.
“Apenas experimente, querida,” Grandpa calls. “Just try it.”
I don’t know if it’s because of the color, which is this mossy green, which sounds nasty, but spring moss, brighter than olive, but still deep and rich. Or because I can hear the saleswoman outside getting more and more agitated and I’m afraid she’s about to call security. Or because . . . well, I don’t know why, but I try it on.
It’s not a string bikini. It’s not an itsy-bitsy bikini. It’s sort of retro, but not in a really obvious way.
In it, I don’t look like Vivien in her bikinis. I don’t look like one of those swimsuit models posing knee deep in the Caribbean with this shocked expression like, “Hey, who put all this water here?” I don’t look “nice.” I look, in fact, like The Other Woman in one of Grandpa Ben’s movies. The one who saunters into the room to the low wail of an alto saxophone. I look like a Bad Girl.
For the first time, that seems like a Good Thing.
Of course, that was hours ago and I left my courage in the dressing room of T.J.Maxx.
I bought the bikini.
But here I am on the beach wearing a long T-shirt of Mom’s (Mom’s! At least I’ve bumped down a generation or two, but still!) while Cass gives Emory his first lesson.
And basically ignores me completely.
Which is fine. He’s here for Em.
He gave me this nod when we first got to the beach and I slid Emory off my back.
A nod.
A nod is sort of like acknowledging that there’s someone present with a pulse. It’s the next best thing to nothing at all. Boys do not nod at girls they have any feelings for.
Wait—
Do I even want Cass to have feelings for me? Please, come on. How can I possibly . . . after everything?
He’s here for Em.
I nod back. So there, Cass. I see your impersonal greeting and return it. Just don’t check my pulse.
Because . . . because even though I should be used to Cass on the island and Cass in the water, and his sooty eyelashes and curling smile and his dimples and his body . . .
Jesus God.
I close my eyes for a second. Take a deep breath.
Cass squats down next to my brother. “So, Emory. You like cars?”
Never good with direct questions, Em simply seems confused. He looks up at me for clarification. Cass bends and reaches into the backpack by his foot, pulls out a handful of Matchbox cars and extends his palm.
“Cars,” Em says happily, stroking the hood of one with a careful finger
Cass hands him one. “The rest are going to be diving into the water, since it’s such a warm day. So what I’m going to need you to do is come on in and find them.”
My brother’s forehead crinkles and his eyes flick to mine. I nod. Cass reaches for his hand. “Here, I’ll show you.” Em cheerfully lets go of my fingers and glides his hand into Cass’s.
“What are you doing?” I ask nervously. I have this vision of Cass throwing the cars off the pier and directing Emory to dive in after them.
“Just getting him used to me, and the water,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s okay. This is what I did at camp. I know this.” Em looks skinny and pale next to his wide shoulder, tanned skin.
I follow him, unsure. Am I supposed to hang back and let Cass do his thing, or look out for Emory? In the end, habit triumphs and I stick close.
There are only a few people on the beach, some of the Hoblitzell family, people I don’t know who must be renters. As usual, I can see a few eyes flick to Emory and then skip away with that something’s not right with him expression. It doesn’t happen often . . . he’s a little boy and people are mostly kind. But the saleslady at T.J.’s yesterday kept talking to me or Grandpa when Emory was touching stuff. “Get him to understand that he’s not allowed to do that.” I wanted to slap her.
At the tideline, Cass halts and Em echoes him, digging his toes into the wet sand. For about five minutes, Cass does nothing, just lets the waves wash over their feet. Then he reaches forward, placing one of the cars a little way out in the water. “Can you get down now on all fours and reach this?” All his attention is on the little boy, as though he’s forgotten I’m there. It reminds me of the way he is at swim meets, turned inward, concentrating completely on the task at hand.
Maybe that’s it. It’s not weird between us. He’s concentrating.
Which is what I want. It’s not as though I’d like Cass focused on me while Em sinks below the waves. Exactly the way I did with him.
For forty-five minutes the game continues. Each car is a little farther out in the water. Cass lies on his stomach. “Can you do like me?”
Emory obeys without question or hesitation. I’m worrying because the slight waves are slapping closer to his face and Em hates that—always yells when we scrub his face in the bathtub.
“Okay now. Last rescue. You do it one-handed. You hold your nose like this to keep the water out and reach far. If you get a little wet, just squeeze your nose tighter and keep reaching. But you have to close your eyes while I put out the last thing.”
Em’s eyelashes flutter shut, his fingers pinching his nose. Cass drops something into the water about ten inches out and smack, a wave slaps right across my brother’s lowered face. I jump up from where I’d been sitting, wait for the howl of outrage and terror. But all I see is a flash of red and blue clutched tightly in Emory’s hand, held aloft triumphantly, and the smile on his face.
“Way to go, buddy. You saved Superman.” Cass straightens up, then raises his hand for a high five. Em knows those from Nic, so he presses his hand against Cass’s, then scrambles over to me, waving his treasure.
It’s one of those plastic Superman action figures with a red cape and the blue tights, a little worn, some of the paint scraped off the manly square features. But Em doesn’t care. He carefully traces the S on the chest, his lips parted in awe, as though this is a miniaturized live version of his hero.
“How ’bout another try in a few days? Maybe we could do this twice a week. It’s better if the gap between lessons isn’t too big,” Cass tells me, putting an elbow behind his head and stretching, like he’s getting the kinks out.
Em has extended Superman’s arms and is flying him through the air, his face lit with joy.
“That’d be great! Fantastic.”
I sound way too enthusiastic. “I mean . . . Fine. It would be fine. Emory would like that.”
It’s all about Emory, after all.
Silence.
More silence.
Cass bends down and starts carefully restoring the Matchbox cars to his backpack, drying them first with the (yes, pinkish) towel around his neck
“Okay then,” I say. “I should get him home. He’s probably tired.”
Cass makes one of those noises like “Mmmph.”
“Thanks for the lesson, Cass.”
“No problem.”
“?”
“—”
“It’s really hot today.”
“Yep.” Sound of bag zipping.
“How was the water?”
“Ask Emory.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Subjective question,” Cass says, standing up, one-shouldering the backpack, and finally venturing beyond monosyllables. “Mom and Jake are like me. We can swim in anything, no matter how cold. Bill and my dad are wimps. They wait till, like, the beginning of Ju
ne.” He says this last with complete disgust.
“No Polar Bear Plunges for them, huh?”
Ack, shouldn’t have mentioned that. But . . . jackpot. Eye contact. Completely untranslatable eye contact, but hey.
I do the elbow-behind-head stretch thing he did earlier. Two can play at the “I-just-need-to stretch-my-muscles” game. But Cass is not looking at me, plowing his foot through the sand.
Emory pulls on the bottom of my shirt. “Cookieth,” he suggests. “Cookie. Then Dora Explora. Then bath. Then story. More story. Pooh Song. Then bed.”
Guess I’ve got my itinerary laid out for me.
Nic’s hardly been home one single evening since school let out. Mom’s picked up an office building in town that she cleans two nights a week. Grandpa Ben has the bingo and Mass and the St. Anthony of Padua Social Club.
I take off my shirt.
Cass doesn’t fall over like Danny Zuko when Sandy appears in head-to-toe spandex at the end of Grease. Thank God, right, because I’ve always hated that scene. Great message: When all else fails, show some skin and reduce the boys to slobbering, quivering messes.
He doesn’t even seem to notice. Just stands there, very still, jaw clenched, looking out at the water.
Okay, I didn’t want it to be all about my body or even mostly about my body, but hello.
I shake my hair over my face. “Okay, Em, let’s hit the road.” I bend down to let him clamber onto my back and perform his trademark chokehold on my trachea. Which is handy because it means I don’t have to say an additional “good-bye and thank you” to Indifferent Boy. Or wonder why my throat hurts.
Emory’s mesmerized by Peter Pan. I’m wondering what’s up with Tinker Bell and her jealousy issues. It’s not like anything was ever going to work out between them. She’s three inches tall and he’s committed to never hitting puberty.
Speaking of never, why is there never anything to eat in our house except Nic’s Whey Protein Isolate Dietary Supplement powder (“Guaranteed to Bulk You Up”), Mom’s freezer-burned Stouffer’s lasagna, Grandpa’s fish, shellfish, linguica, and pile of farmer’s market vegetables, and Em’s favorite foods—ketchup, Cap’n Crunch, eggs, frozen French fries, bananas, pasta, more ketchup?