Dirty Love (38 page)

“Me too.”

“No, I mean
see
you.”

“Me too, Hollis.” She loved using his name while she was looking at him. It was like sealing an important envelope and dropping it into a mailbox. But it was late and she hadn’t even ironed her work clothes yet, and when she told him she had to go he looked a little surprised and hurt. Later, folding linen napkins at the restaurant, Devon wished she hadn’t talked about work right after he told her he needed to see her. She
did
want to see him, too. She did.

Francis’s front door is unlocked. Devon lets herself in, then turns the deadbolt and thinks of her father as she does it, sees his drunk, mean smile before he laid into her. Francis’s living room feels so small to her, his kitchen too. On the table under the light are two empty mugs, a plate of crumpled teabags beside two spoons. At first it’s like seeing something impossible, a tiger in your bathtub, a fish swimming in your bed. Francis’s bedroom door is open an inch, and there’s the urge to step in there and wake him up and ask him if he really sat down and drank tea with Charlie fucking Brandt? But it’s clear he did, and now her belly lifts and twists because please tell me my father did not tell Uncle Francis anything about me. Please tell me they talked about any fucking thing else.

Her heart beats the taste of old coffee up into her mouth, and she hits the switch of the overhead light. The dark hallway feels short and narrow. A dull glow comes from under her closed door. Uncle Francis? Is he in her
room
? She pushes the door open and steps inside, but her room looks as she left it, her bed unmade, her shorts and T-shirt she tossed on the floor under the ironing board because she had to dress fast for work. She doesn’t remember leaving the bathroom light on. It would be so wrong if her uncle was in there, but he’s not. The shower curtain is open, and her mascara, eyeliner, and blush lie on the lid of the toilet tank, her toothbrush and toothpaste behind the faucet on the sink. She lets out a long, shaky breath and wants to Skype Hollis right now, see if he’s up like he usually is, and she’s stepping toward the door to close it when she sees her laptop. It’s not closed on her pillow where she left it. It’s on the edge of the bed and it’s open, its screen dark and facing her, facing her and the room and her open door like a big text that’s just come in and must be opened; it must be opened right now.

It was summer and Devon was eight or nine. They were all at the beach, her mother and father, her Uncle Tony and Aunt Veronica and their three kids, Devon’s cousins. The grownups were sitting or lying on a blanket on the sand, talking and laughing, and Devon’s mother looked pretty in a maroon bathing suit with a skirt over her hips. Her father and Uncle Tony were drinking from cans of beer. There was a dune behind them and Devon was running up it in the hot sand, her feet burning, the sun in her eyes, and she couldn’t see the top but there was tall grass there where she and her cousins were going to hide, and just as she got to the ridge, there came Steve’s mean voice, “Not you, Devon.” Then his hands pushing against her bare shoulders and she was falling backwards, rolling down that hot dune where she almost hit her head on a piece of wood. There was Steve’s laughter in the air, grown-up voices talking as if nothing had just happened to her, the waves smashing and sucking back. She would have to start all over again. But why? So Steve could do it to her again and again?

Her face took up the whole screen and Devon had tapped buttons so hard and fast the image froze and she slammed her laptop shut and flipped it across the mattress. Her father. Her fucking asshole piece-of-shit mean father. His only message to her. His only thought about her now. His two hands pushing her shoulders and watching her fall, and did he even think about how hard she’d been climbing? And did he show this to Uncle
Francis
? The thought was like a coat hanger being pulled through her guts, Francis seeing her do that.
Did
he? Did her father fucking
show
him that?

But why else would he leave it on her screen like that? Facing her door like that? It was a message from both of them. A warning. A punishment.

But not Francis.
Please
. Not her great-uncle who before anyone else had always, always looked at her with kindness, his eyes full of love and respect. With him, she never felt small, only big, only that, and that’s why she’d called
him
in the middle of the night last March. Because she knew he would not make her feel worse than she already did. Because she knew he would help her just by being Uncle Francis.

But she can’t even look at him now. How can she wake up tomorrow and walk out into that kitchen and see him? His stooped shoulders, his glasses hanging around his neck. The real smile he always has ready for her? She can’t. She won’t.

For a long time she stands in her room and does nothing. The ceiling feels too low, the walls close. She stares at her upside-down laptop on the other side of her mattress. She walks over and opens it and avoids the screen and taps buttons till it goes dark. She closes it. Bobby Connors. If he hadn’t been there, Trina might not have posted what she did, sending it to everyone, including Amanda Salvi who showed her boyfriend, Charlie Brandt.

Big, sweet Bobby just like everyone else. No,
worse
.

Devon had called Bobby from the house phone. He’d had to cover his own phone and tell someone to shut up so he could hear.
Yeah,
he said,
Luke says it’s at his house. We’re just getting out of practice. Want us to come pick you up?

Us.

It was late on a Saturday morning, warm for March, but there were still patches of snow on the ground, the sun shining on the bare branches, and it almost made her feel better when Bobby’s Sentra pulled up in front of her house. Saturday was her father’s sleep-it-off morning. Walking by his Lexus in the driveway, Amanda Salvi’s naked picture newly branded into Devon’s brain, she felt like kicking a dent in it. She’d almost thrown her father’s phone across the room, but instead she left it on the kitchen island where she’d picked it up, left the picture of Amanda on it, too. Her mother was out shopping and if she found it when she came home, well then she fucking found it.

And there they were. Bobby behind the wheel, Luke in the front, Davey Price in the back. She didn’t know him well, but he reached across the backseat and opened the door for her. She climbed into the thump of gangsta rap and the smells of shampoo and Axe and Luke’s wintergreen gum. Bobby drove off before she’d barely pulled the door shut, and all three boys’ hair were wet and Bobby had a Red Sox cap on sideways. She noticed he’d shaved his chin strap. He looked younger but more handsome.

“How’s it goin’, Dev?” Davey was pouring beer from a can into a Dunkin’ Donuts cup, handing it to her. It wasn’t even noon yet, but Davey had one of his own between his legs and she took it.

“Bobby, where’s Trina?”

“Yeah,
Bobby
,” Luke said from the front. “Where’s your little
wifey
today?”

“Fuck you, McDonough.” Bobby sipped from his own Dunkin’s cup. Luke was laughing and Bobby turned up the music, a kid yelling he’s gonna kill anything movin’. Davey’s cup touched hers. She glanced at him and he smiled, his eyebrows raised as if he’d just told a joke and now was the time to laugh. He drank from his beer and so she did, too. It was cold and didn’t taste bad. She was a little hungover from the night before. She remembered her cheek against Luke’s shoulder. His arm had been around her, his hand heavy but sweet on her hip, like maybe he loved her once and didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. He’d had three more girlfriends after her, and she’d had what she’d had. They were ancient news.

She drank from her beer. She had to squint at the sun shining through the windows. Bobby gunned his Sentra onto the highway and he was bopping his head to a new song now, the rap about the boy who kills his girlfriend for getting pregnant, and Devon wanted him to switch to something different. Davey Price was talking to her. She turned to him and had to raise her voice.
“What?”

“You runnin’ track this season?”

She shook her head. That had ended sophomore year when she’d started smoking Merits because she liked how it killed her appetite and how good it felt when she was drinking. Thinking this made her want one, but she’d left them in her coat from last night. Davey was wearing tight corduroys. She could see how thick his legs were. He and Bobby lifted weights together in the off-season and Davey was bigger and he looked good in shorts beside a pool, but something was wrong with his face. His chin was too short and his eyes were close together. It made him look stupid and unlucky and a little mean. He cracked open a vodka nip, poured half into his cup, then dumped the rest into hers.

“What the fuck, Davey.”

“
Hey
, we’ve been doin’ sprints since six this morning. Downtime, baby.” He smiled and drank, and for a while she just sat there holding her cup, the bare trees whipping by off the side of the highway, Bobby tapping two fingers against the wheel while the singer sang about slashing Cindy’s throat and stuffing her in his trunk, the bass thumping fast as a panicky heart. Devon just wanted to get her phone and go back home and call Sick. She was going to borrow her mother’s car later, and the two of them were going to drive to the mall to see a movie about the future when only children were left alive. Sick loved any story about a time that wasn’t now, even if it was sad. She should have just taken her father’s car to get her iEverything. He wouldn’t be up for another hour, at least, then he’d start his day in the kitchen in his open robe mixing himself a glass of beer and V8. Like just the few sips of beer she’d taken were helping her. Already she didn’t feel so dry and rusty, her thoughts jagged, her tongue dull. Each sip made her feel oiled and a little lighter, and the vodka made it taste better, and anyway she didn’t want to be anywhere near her father’s car, smelling his smell in it, putting her hands on the wheel he put his own stinky fucking fingers on.

Bobby took the exit ramp too fast. Devon leaned into Davey and spilled a splash onto his knee, his shoulder smelling like wool and Axe and boy.

“
Connors
, we’re fuckin’ losin’ our drinks back here, dude. Ease
up
.” He swatted at the wet spot on his corduroys and smiled at her like he knew she couldn’t help herself. There was a story about him sophomore year. Something about an accident when he was a kid, a friend of his who got really hurt and his parents blamed Davey. Something about a bow and arrow and the other boy’s spleen. Something bad.

Davey tapped her cup and drank. She sipped from hers. They were passing big houses set back in the trees. In the bare woods there was more snow on the ground, but up near the houses there was brown grass and hedges, no dead leaves or pine needles anywhere. The bass was thumping so fast it was almost one long note, then it was quiet and still and the singer was rapping softly about watching his car sink into the river, his baby and their baby inside. Bobby drained his cup just before he turned into Luke’s driveway. There were tall pine trees on both sides, Luke’s white house rising up ahead like good news. His father’s silver Mercedes was parked in one bay of the open garage, and Devon drank down her vodka beer to hide her cup. She said: “Luke, can I have a piece of gum?”

“I’m out, Dev.”

Then they were all leaving Bobby’s car and walking quietly into the open garage past Luke’s father’s car, Luke moving by Bobby to unlock the door into the rec room. It always looked different during the day. Like seeing a movie star with no makeup. The wide-screen TV was off, and so was the fish light over the ping-pong table covered now with neat piles of folded laundry. Out the sliding glass doors the lawn was brown, and the boathouse looked small and damp and dark.

Bobby sat in front of the wide-screen with Davey, the controls already in their hands as
Call of Duty
flared up on the screen, grays and greens and then soldiers running and shooting at each other. Luke handed her a hard lemonade and a nip.

“I don’t want to party, Luke. Can I just have my phone, please?”

“It’s upstairs. What’s your rush?” He grabbed the stereo’s remote and then a song was playing from freshman year, that blond country singer who whaled on her cheating boyfriend’s car with a baseball bat. Luke looked a way she’d only seen him once or twice, and that was after they’d gone swimming in his pool. Instead of the sideways flow he kept across his forehead, his hair was combed back wet. It made his face look bigger and like a grown man’s, like his father who was probably upstairs writing checks for bills or something, and Devon didn’t like how Luke was smiling at her, as if they were still together and she was special to him because of what she could do, though she’d never told him he was her first.

He drank down half his hard lemonade, poured the nip in, and handed it to her. “Here, Dev.”

“Go get my phone, Luke. I have to go.”

“Why? You got plans?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“What, with that Sick kid? C’mon, Dev, you can do better than that.”

The country singer was hitting her angry-happy notes and there was machine-gun fire from the couch, and Devon just wanted some fucking quiet. “Go get my phone, Luke.”

Then she was walking across the brown grass down to the water. The ground felt soft under her, her legs hard and jerky, and she knew she was a little drunk, thinking of Amanda Salvi’s ass and tits and smiling face. Devon had met her at a party once. She was the older sister of one of Rick Battastini’s friends, this loud chick who laughed too much and worked in a law office, and is that how she met Devon’s father? Through their work somehow? And why would she want
him
? Did he spend money on her? Did he promise her things the way they all do? Though what boy had ever promised anything to Devon Brandt? She noticed the hard lemonade bottle was in her hand, and she drank from it and stared out at Whittier Lake through the trees. Way on the other side were tiny houses she knew were as big as this one because only rich people lived on this lake, men taking what they want and leaving the scraps to the rest.