Текст книги "The Girl On The Half Shell"
Автор книги: Susan Ward
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
Chapter Seventeen
Alan carries me into the farmhouse. He sets me on the bed. He undresses me. He eases me down beneath the covers and tucks me in.
We say nothing, as I watch him move around the room. For some reason, he wants the harshness of incandescent light out of the room, because he takes a Coleman lantern, puts it on a table and then sets it ablaze.
He undresses in the warm glow, and the sight of him naked and perfect and at ease with himself takes my breath away. I love to look at Alan. But tonight it is not a sexual thing, because the fucking in the car I think has left us both depleted.
What’s in the room is a quiet, a closeness without touching, and love.
He settles on the bed, fluffing up his pillow against the foot rest, and reclines with an easy grace so we are lying side by side, facing each other. It is an arrangement of our bodies that silently conveys talk to me.
I lower my gaze. I finger the pattern of the quilt. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what he knows, but I know he feels it. It’s in me, he feels it, he is unafraid of it, and I am unafraid of it with Alan.
I crawl down to the foot of the bed, and he surrounds me with his body, and the feel of him is warm and safe.
I start to cry, I don’t want to, but the tears are not something I can hold back. “What I want, Alan, is to talk about my brother.”
* * *
When I am done telling Alan all the things that haunt me, even the things I remember that I didn’t share with Linda, I stare up at Alan and cover his mouth with my hand. I don’t want him to say anything. He held me while I cried. Through some parts he cried with me, and in the end I told him everything. I held back not a single part, and that is enough for one day.
I stare up at him. “Can I ask you something?”
Alan laughs. He runs a hand through his hair. “Really, Chrissie? You’re worried about asking me something after all that? You can ask me anything, baby. You should know that by now.”
I laugh. It does seem silly to worry. “How long can we stay at The Farm?”
He takes me in his arms and rolls until I am on him. “As long as you want.”
“It’s just, everyone leaves tomorrow. I don’t want to leave just yet.”
“Then we won’t leave.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday.”
“So?”
“Rene comes back to New York. I want Rene here. I want to stay at The Farm and have Rene here.”
Alan frowns, that “Rene not my favorite girl” expression.
“That’s no big deal. I’ll drive into the village early tomorrow. Call Colin. Arrange to bring her here.”
I curl into his chest. I feel much better. I’ve given more parts of me to Alan and it feels so very right. I trace the ink on his stomach. “I think The Farm will be good for Rene.”
* * *
The next morning, we leave early for the village. Alan doesn’t have a car at The Farm so we take the rust bucket Jeep and that’s OK with me. All the dysfunctional will be gone, except for the Rowans, when we return from calling Colin and making the arrangements for bringing Rene upstate.
I sit beside Alan, fighting with my hair as we whiz down the narrow country lane. He is a maniac when he drives. There is something about him always on the edge, even in his quiet moments, a certain sense that he silently rages against living and that he isn’t fully at peace within himself.
I smile and I watch him and I say nothing. There is no radio in the rust bucket. He starts to hum quietly. I don’t think he realizes it, or what the artful lines of his face betray. He is thinking of his own regrets today. My heart squeezes and twists. When does the pain of our mistakes leave us? Maybe never. Maybe that is life, living with the pain of our mistakes.
I stare out the window. Tears prickle my eyes. I’ve lived with my mistake for ten years and the pain hasn’t left me yet. Perhaps Alan can feel it today. Perhaps that is why he’s thinking of Molly. Perhaps that is why we are together when we really don’t make sense in any way.
I lean into him across the center console and lay my head against his shoulder. It is in this comfortable quiet when we make the most sense to me. This beautiful guy, gifted and brilliant, too often lost inside himself. Just like me, his not so beautiful, gifted or brilliant girlfriend. Too often lost inside myself. Simultaneously opposite from and totally right with one another.
It can be a hopeful thing to find the other perfect half of yourself, someone who gets you, someone to love and be loved by. I never expected the other perfect half of me to be Alan Manzone. He’s such a weirdo, but then I’m strange too.
Alan stops singing in mid-verse and looks at me. “Why are you laughing?”
I make a face. “Sometimes I just think funny thoughts. Where are we going?”
“To use a phone.”
“But this doesn’t look like the same way we went to the redneck bar.”
“Back roads, Chrissie. Less traffic. Less people.”
His eyes flash a smile toward me, but his mouth has a slightly apparent grim line. Oh, Alan, what is worrying you today?
I sigh. Do I even want to know what is worrying him today? Nope, I don’t want to know. We feel good today. Really good.
He pulls into a motel parking lot. The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins. I start to laugh.
“You did say you wanted to bounce a bed in a hotel named after a Disney movie,” he murmurs, his voice very sexy.
“How did you remember that bit of stupidity, with everything that’s gone on since we got here?”
“I remember everything you say. Always.”
The look in his eyes makes me shiver. I smile and hug him, trying to contain my dopey happiness over this.
I watch him climb from the Jeep and go into the lobby. In a moment he’s back, room key in hand, grinning.
He drives around to a cabin on the far side of the facility.
“Quite an adventure to use a phone,” I whisper.
The cabins look lovely, utterly tranquil, but really tacky. Alan lifts me from the Jeep to carry me, and we are kissing all the way down the short tree-lined path to our door. It is almost like a meadow here, with fresh spring grass and newly blooming wildflowers. Suddenly I imagine lying with Alan in the grass and gazing up at the trees, and seeing the deep, black sky full of stars at night. I wonder what it would be like to make love outdoors. The thought of running away with Alan and getting lost in some rural idyll is very tantalizing, yet it makes me feel sad and a touch homesick, and even a touch lost again.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
I look up to find Alan studying me, key in hand, almost into the lock.
I shake my head. I smile. “Not a thing.”
“Good. I have plans for you.” He opens the door and points at the bed. “But now you have to sit. Behave. I’ve got to make my calls first.”
I nod, flush, feeling his touch without contact, as I drop in a heavy bounce on the bed. Alan reaches for the phone. He really is going to make the calls first. He sinks on the edge of the bed, takes a slip of paper from his pocket, and begins to dial away, as I try to focus on the room.
The lamp makes me laugh. A Snow White figurine base. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Wicked Witch sheets beneath the heavy burgundy bedspread.
The first call is to Rene. His tone is surprisingly cordial as he explains in that imperative guy way that she needs to pack and be ready when Colin arrives to collect her. He hangs up.
I expected the call to be longer. I expected the Spanish Inquisition of questions out of Rene. But for some reason, the questions didn’t come, and for some indefinable reason Rene is just rolling with this when Rene never just rolls with anything.
Second call is to Colin. I watch Alan’s hand move up and down his thigh as he barks rapid orders to Colin. My breathing spikes as I try to catch the words and ignore my spiking body. He touches himself and I want him to touch me. I stare at those long, tanned fingers. Now would be a really good time, Alan. Touch me. Please touch me now.
Another call. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s so frustrating how quickly he can make me hot without trying. So frustrating that he can concentrate on his conversation when I can hardly concentrate on anything but him when he’s near.
I glance at him and then I roll on my side until my face is near his back. I’m done behaving. I pull up his shirt. I make small kisses up his spine until I reach that tattoo across his shoulder blade. I use it as a road map for my traveling lips and tongue. I let my fingers dance from his side to his stomach and then lower, lower—ah, sharp inhale of breath. He stops my hand and looks over his shoulder. He gazes at me darkly. It makes me feel so hot when he looks at me like that.
He continues talking as I ease up on my knees to kiss the pulse in his neck. I kiss his shoulder, then the other shoulder. I can hear the voice on the other end of the phone. It sounds male and professional. His lawyers perhaps. I should stop this. This is an important call.
I lie back on the pillows, finding it nearly impossible to behave. What’s up with that? There is something carefree and wild in me today that is new. Perhaps it is the calm after the storm of last night and the silliness of where we are. I’m probably the first girl ever to have dragged Alan someplace like The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins.
I make a face, Alan catches it, and I cover it quickly with a smile. I fiddle with my shoelaces and then pull them off. My toes begin to poke at his ear. His warm fingers wrap around my ankle and I make a pout, thinking he’s about to push my foot away, but he starts to kiss each toe, a gentle touch of lips, a tantalizing suck. Oh my. Desire, thick and pulsing, dances through my flesh. Jeez, he’s only kissing my feet. I close my eyes and surrender to the feeling, the touch of his lips on my arch, the feel of his tongue on my ankle.
“Get your clothes off now,” he breathes and abruptly lifts me off the bed.
Oh shit, the call ended. I’m not exactly sure where he’s going with this, but I undress anyway because Alan is naked and completely hard, and I am totally hot for whatever.
“Don’t play with me, Chrissie, unless you are ready to play.” He hoists me up and turns me on the bed pulling me back until my knees are on the edge.
He kisses my back and then that “wrong” spot, before he hovers at the right spot and then moves to kiss the back of my thighs.
He grabs my hips and fills me so quickly. He is touching me and the feeling of being completely filled makes my body burn and swallow him greedily. I groan and invert my back. The tilt allows him to penetrate more deeply. Slowly, he withdraws and then sinks into me. The tempo builds, harder and faster.
I see the mirror above the desk. He is watching us in it. I watch him watching us and it makes my blood scorch through my veins. The rhythm is quick and intense, and I revel in it, watching him, watching us, watching him watch me watch. And it is all there, in his face, in the reflecting mirror—his passion, his love, his pain and his beauty—and it is us I see, very right even in everything so very messed up about us both.
Quick, rough, and right. We come apart, together, and I explode around him in a chorus of squeaks and high-pitched whimpers.
Alan collapses on the bed, taking me with him until my head is cradled against his chest and we are both struggling to breathe.
He turns his head to look at me. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
I smile. “How long do we have the room?”
“Until tomorrow.”
“I didn’t think they would rent rooms by the hour at a motel named after a Disney movie.”
“Actually, they do.”
I lift up my face to look at him. “Really?”
He nods. I laugh.
“They couldn’t break a hundred and that’s all Linda had,” Alan says, lightly tracing my arm with his fingertips.
I start to laugh harder. “I forgot you don’t carry cash. Why didn’t you just charge it?”
He sighs, raking a hand through his hair, and he smiles. It should be a completely comforting kind of smile; it is relaxed, happy and slightly understated. I find it not comforting at all. I tense.
“The last thing you need, Chrissie, is for anyone to know we stayed here by the hour.”
* * *
I lie naked, sprawled over Alan’s chest, and we’ve been kissing and touching quietly for hours. I think the sex only ended because I feel drained, or else he would be working toward it again in this quiet after our passion. Alan’s sexual energy never wanes. All parts of Alan always rage simultaneously within him and never sleep.
Alan trails his fingers up and down my back. “So, did bouncing a bed in a motel named after a Disney movie work for you?”
I nod. I don’t want to talk. I just want to lie in this comfortable calm I feel in us both. I lay my cheek against his damp chest and can see through the window it’s late afternoon.
“We should get dressed. We should go,” he says. He kisses me, and then turns until we are spooning and I am wrapped in the warmth of his body. “Rene is probably almost to The Farm. Do you want to call Jack before we leave?”
Why did he mention Jack? I don’t want to let anything from the real world in yet.
“No. I don’t want to talk to him until we are face to face. I don’t want to risk accidentally starting anything while I’m on the phone. That wouldn’t be right.”
“Do you want me there when you talk to Jack?”
Oh jeez, that’s a lot to process. The thought of having Alan with me when I’m with Jack is very weird and unsettling. It’s one thing to be with Alan and another to try to picture Jack in the mix.
It was a sweet and kind offer, but just too strange to consider today. Still, I don’t want to hurt Alan’s feelings.
“I think that would be a little hard to do. I go home Sunday and you are out on the road the week after. And this is my shit, Alan. Something I need to take care of on my own.”
Alan eases back until he is staring directly into my eyes. “I can be there if you want me there, Chrissie.”
“I know. I just don’t see how.”
“Since you’re not going home, Chrissie, we can have Jack fly here before we leave on the road. Solution.”
I tense. It is not the first time he’s said I’m not going home, but it’s not really something we’ve talked about and I can’t tell if he is serious, just being kind, or what exactly he’s suggesting.
I pull out of his arms, pull on his shirt, and then sit on my knees staring down at him. “I’m going home, Alan. I have to finish school and go to college. I can’t just drop everything and run off with some guy.”
“I’m not just ‘some guy.’ I’m the guy you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.”
My heart does a somersault.
Alan’s intense black eyes lock on me. “Why do you have to go back? What difference is finishing school going to make? It is the trap of ordinary people and you are not ordinary. What happened to just being, and being happy, or was that all just bullshit?”
My cheeks grow hot and my body goes cold. “I can’t stay, Alan.”
“Why?”
“It’s not how I’m made and you don’t really want me to stay, so why don’t we just leave it alone.”
Shit! Peaceful Alan evaporates before my eyes, replaced by angry Alan. “Don’t ever tell me how I feel. Don’t ever tell me what I want. You don’t even know what you want.”
Alan climbs from the bed and pulls on his jeans.
“You are not going back to Santa Barbara, Chrissie.”
He continues to dress, and when he’s got everything on except his shirt, he holds out his hand to me. “Give me my shirt. Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”
Petulantly, I shrug out of it and toss it at him.
I pull on my panties, bra, and top and realize that my hands are shaking. I feel so sick and disoriented. I don’t want to go back to Santa Barbara. I have to. The thought of going home turns me into a cold, nervous wreck. But I can’t stay, even if every part of me wants to. I can’t stay.
I can feel him watching me. “Rene is probably at The Farm. We need to go.”
I nod and climb from the bed. I make clumsy work of trying to pull on my jeans.
“Fuck, Chrissie. Don’t cry.”
I shake my head. “I hate it when you’re mean. You can be so mean.”
“You’re not going back to Santa Barbara, Chrissie. There is no point in arguing about it. So why don’t we just go back to The Farm and be good to each other.”
Truce. He is calling a truce and I let him help me with my clothes, but my limbs feel suddenly weak and too heavy. Alan thinks he’s gotten his way. Discussion over. He believes I am staying. But I can’t. And I don’t know how I’m ever going to leave him.
* * *
When we get back to The Farm, all the dysfunctional are gone except the Rowans.
I am just climbing from the rust bucket Jeep when the front door swings open. Rene and Linda spring onto the porch together. Jeez, they are both in too short shorts and tank tops, with some kind of cocktail in hand.
Rene darts down to the driveway and flings her arms around me. We are hugging. We are laughing. God, how I’ve missed her. We’ve been through so much together. There is a part of me that will never make sense without Rene.
“I’m so glad to see you, Chrissie. The wedding was a nightmare. Thirty-seven was a nightmare. I don’t know how I got through it without going postal, and mother is, of course being mom, and I don’t know what to do about that. And jeez, what’s up with this farm? Why are we in the middle of nowhere? What the hell are we supposed to do here…?”
* * *
Since Bianca is gone, there is no chore list, and Alan and Len are in the kitchen making dinner.
Rene and I are curled on the downstairs sofa drinking what I think are Mai Tais, but I can’t tell for certain. I don’t really like it. Too sweet. Maybe rum? I’ve never liked rum. Rene guzzles hers with enthusiasm.
“So, what’s up, Chrissie?” Rene whispers. “You’ve hardly said a word. Is it all the tabloid shit? You know Eliza is going to die when she sees it. Was Jack really pissed?”
Her questions and comments roll off me. I have so little time left with Alan. I won’t let anything—not the world, Rene, not Alan and not me—ruin it.
I let my eyes widen at her in that back off way. “I’m happy. Leave it alone.”
Rene frowns. I laugh. She is staring at me like she doesn’t know what to make of me.
* * *
Our last six days at The Farm whisper away in a comfortable quiet. There is much we do not talk about, the shit is beneath the carpet whether you talk about it or not. You can love whether you talk about it or not.
I’ve learned so very much about life so quickly from Alan.
After I pack up my things, I look at the old style bedroom, wanting to memorize every part of this space.
I brush at my tears and make my way down the creaking stairs. Out on the porch, I find that everyone is packed up and the Rowans are just waiting to say goodbye to me before they go.
Len drops a kiss on my head before Linda pulls me into her arms in an exuberant hug. “I love you. See ya soon.”
“See ya soon, Linda.”
It is so hard to hold back the tears, since she thinks I’m going on tour with them. I am really afraid I might never see her again. In a short span of time, she became an important piece of my history.
I wave at Rene as she climbs into the Town Car with Colin. She is going back to Jack’s to wait for me. Alan helps me into Jack’s old, scarred leather jacket. We are going back to the city on the motorcycle. I don’t know why. It looks like it might rain, but Alan said it won’t, so I am going downstate the way I got here, sitting behind Alan and letting the world pass us by.
Chapter Eighteen
Something pulls me from sleep. Alan’s bedroom is dark and I am alone. Where is Alan? Then I hear the sound of raised voices in the apartment. I reach for Alan’s t-shirt and pull on a pair of panties.
I freeze at the terrace doors. Oh god! Jack is here and they are arguing.
“You have the nerve to pull my daughter into your fucked up life and you think it’s going to be OK?”
Alan’s face is calm, emotionless, but I can see how angry and hurt he is.
“You’ve got it wrong, Jack. I’m willing to explain if you’re willing to listen.”
Jack’s expression is intense and harshly dismissive. “What can you possibly say that will change anything you’ve done? In three weeks you have made a complete nightmare of my daughter’s life. Will it undo dragging her through the rag sheets? Whatever you think you can say or do isn’t going to change any of the shit you’ve done.”
“I appreciate—”
Jack cuts him off. “I was you. You can’t bullshit someone who has been where you are.”
I step out onto the patio. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I scream at the top of my voice.
Jack points a finger at me. He’s never done that before. I’ve never seen my dad so angry. “Go pack your things. Be ready to go when I am finished here.”
I twist away from the hand that tries to take hold of me. “No!”
“No?!”
“Whether I go home is my decision and it has nothing to do with you.”
Jack stares. “I’m done discussing this. Pack your things. We’re going back to the apartment. We are flying home tomorrow.”
“You are a little late, Jack. I’m eighteen. I don’t have to go anywhere with you,” the very angry girl inside me screams.
“Yes you do, Chrissie. We are leaving.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live as if everything is normal because it’s not.”
In frustration, I push the hair back from my face, and then I hear a sudden silence that sounds loud in my ears. Before I can react, Jack grabs my arm and drags me near a light.
The color drains from Jack’s face. “What is this? Chrissie, what happened to you?”
I forgot my Tiffany bracelet in Linda Rowan’s car. I shake my arm out of my father’s grasp. “It’s nothing. It’s old. I’ve had it since I was thirteen.”
He looks confused, dismayed, disoriented. “I don’t understand.” He sinks weakly on the edge of a table and I can see that he’s not sure what he’s seeing or perhaps he’s just trying to lie to himself. “I don’t understand. How did that happen? How could you injure yourself badly enough to do that without me knowing?”
Alan’s eyes are a strange mix of fury and sympathy. “You don’t know your daughter at all. Your daughter did that to herself with candle wax. She burns herself,” Alan yells, unleashing truth into the room in a voice loud enough to shake the New York Skyline.
“I don’t understand. Why would you do that, Chrissie? Why?” Jack is shaking and horrified, and he moves to take me into his arms, but I back away to the safety of Alan.
“Because you hate me,” I scream.
Everything about Jack freezes all at once. “I don’t hate you. How can you say that?”
“You never talk to me. You avoid me. You left me in school for eight fucking years just so you didn’t have to see me. Why, Daddy? Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t avoid you. And we talk all the time.”
“When was the last time you ever noticed anything about me? I’m a pretty messed up girl. Did you even notice, Jack? Three weeks with Alan and he knows every messed up part of my fucked up life. Eighteen years with you and you know nothing. You don’t want to know me and you sure as hell don’t want me close to you.”
“You’ve lost me, Chrissie.”
“I lost you ten years ago.”
Jack steps toward me, close, but doesn’t touch me. He is despondent. “I don’t know why you are so angry, but whatever you think I’ve done wrong it’s not because I don’t love you.”
“Then why do you avoid me?”
“I don’t.”
“You left me in that school for eight fucking years. You made me someone else’s problem just so you didn’t have to be near me.”
Jack’s eyes are frantic and desperate. “No. Never. I didn’t know that’s how you felt, but you’ve got it wrong, Chrissie. All wrong. I’m here, baby girl. And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.”
Uncertainty fills my head. “I don’t think I have it wrong. I think you blame me and you hate me for it.”
Jack rakes a desperate hand through his hair. “I don’t hate you. I don’t understand what you are talking about. Blame you for what? What could I possibly blame you for?”
I stare at him and the little girl in me starts to shake and hurt. “You stopped being my dad when Sammy died. We dropped him in the ground and never spoke of it, and we really haven’t spoken since.”
I feel it. All the words bubbling up. I can’t stop this.
“I am so tired of hating you,” I sob.
Jack is crying. I’ve made him cry. It should please me, please me that he might hurt even in a small way, as I do, but it makes my internal mess even messier.
I sink against the terrace wall. Alan crosses the patio and eases down behind me, a barrier between me and the cold concrete. His warm arms are rocking me, his lips are in my hair, and I am back in that night. I can’t stop it.
“It’s going to be OK, Chrissie. Just talk, baby. Jack is listening. Your father is listening.”
The words bubble up. I can’t stop them and I am back in that night again.
* * *
It is late. Maria lets me stay up late. I think she likes to keep me near her. She is always watching and she is always close. She doesn’t play with me very well, but I like that she stays close.
We are in the kitchen and I am watching her wash the foil she used to cover my meal last night. Why does she do that? Why does she wash the foil and add it to the giant ball beneath the sink? I hate that she saves my food and gives it to me a second day. The bowls of cereal are the worst. The charms get soggy in the milk. I don’t want to eat it, but Maria expects me to, so I force down the soggy charms and she smiles.
I like Maria. I don’t understand what she says, but I like her. She is thin, dark haired, and gentle like Mommy. I don’t know what it is about her face, but she has that look that Mommy had before Mommy left. Sammy calls it haunted. No, I think Maria is just sad, so I do as she tells me, pointing and talking to me in fast words I don’t understand, so she will smile and look less sad.
The foil ball is very large. When is it finished? What do we do with it when it’s finished? I smile. Maria smiles. The foil is put away for another day.
I hear the front door open. The voices. I know the sound. Sammy. I spring from the counter before Maria can stop me and race down the hall.
I know Maria is right behind me, but I am faster. I am into Sammy’s arms before she can stop me. I laugh as I’m tossed into the air and then lowered for a kiss from my brother.
“What are you doing still awake, baby girl.” He says it in a growl. He is only joking. I smile. Sammy looks good. I think he is well again. That’s what Jack calls it because he thinks I don’t understand about the drugs. He thinks I don’t know that Sammy has problems. But we are very close. My brother and me, even though he is ten years older. He talks to me and he lets me talk to him.
Sammy looks good tonight. I laugh. “Toss me again.”
Into the air. He catches me. His friends are in the living room, and quickly the tidy quiet has changed. The music is blaring. Vince has opened the bar. There is laughter, music, and people everywhere in the room.
I stare up at Sammy. “Where did you come from?”
Sammy laughs. “New York this time, squirt.” He makes a pouty face. “I’m here only one night, and then we’re off to San Francisco.”
I hate that he is leaving so soon. Everyone comes and goes except Maria and me. Even Mommy left, but I know that that was different.
The room is quickly filled with smoke. It burns my eyes and throat, and the music is too loud. It hurts my ears. I don’t like it. Sammy’s parties are not good. But Sammy’s parties bring him here so I don’t tell Jack.
Maria rushes across the room and tries to grab me away. I avoid her hands and hide behind my brother.
“Maria. Dame un abrazo y un beso. ¡Eres bella.”
I don’t know what Sammy said. Maria looks unhappy. Rapidly, she fires back. “Llamo Señor Jack. No se permite estar aquí cuando no está página. Las partes. No son buenos para la niña.”
Sammy pouts and he is tickling her and trying to hug her and trying to kiss her, and Maria is angry, but she is laughing and shaking her head.
“No esto no es bueno. Llamo Señor Jack,” Maria says in a frantic tone.
Sammy sinks on the arm of a couch. “No, Maria. No llame el Señor Jack”
I watch, hidden behind my brother, smiling. Whatever they are arguing about, Sammy is getting his way. But of course he would. Everyone loves Sammy.
Maria holds out her hand for me. “Niña. A la cama.”
I take Maria’s hand. I look at my brother. “Come later to say goodnight. Don’t leave without saying goodnight.”
He crosses his heart. He smiles at me. “Never, baby girl.”
We are almost to the door. I smile at Vince. He ignores me. To Maria he says, “Llama al Señor Jack. Y llamo la inmigración.”
I feel Maria shaking. The color is gone from her face and her fingers are so tight around mine that they hurt. She nods.
“Fuck, Vince! Why did you say that to her? She wasn’t going to call Jack.”
Maria stares at Sammy. She stares at Vince, and then she quickly pulls me down the hall to my bedroom. She has that look again, afraid and crying without tears. I see it in her eyes, but there are no tears on her cheeks as she tucks me into my bed.
I do not know what the strange look on her face means.
“Los amigos de su hermano. Son diablos.”
I don’t know what she said. I give her a hug. I watch as she closes the door. I listen to the party.
The minutes pass very slowly and I hate them. Sammy doesn’t come and he promised. Even though the house has quieted, his friends have left, Sammy hasn’t come as he promised.
I climb from bed and peek out my door. The hallway is dark. Maria has gone to bed. Good. I don’t like upsetting Maria. She would be upset that I am not in bed asleep.
I tiptoe down the hall. I am nearly to the living room, but I hear voices from the other part of the house. They are in Daddy’s bedroom. I follow the angry voices and I stop in the hallway, peeking in.
Sammy is arguing with Vince. Why are they fighting? I thought they were best friends like me and Rene. I never see Sammy without Vince.
Vince storms out of the room. He brushes past me without a word. I am pushed back into the wall. The front door slams. I look in the room. Sammy is sitting on the bed. He looks so sad. I don’t like when my brother is sad.
I tiptoe into the room. Sammy’s face snaps up.
“Baby girl, why aren’t you in bed?”
I run across the room. I hug my brother. He looks like he needs a hug. I can feel something strange in him. It feels like Sammy is crying, but I don’t see tears. He exhales slowly in a jerky way.
