Good Girls (21 page)

Rebecca shook her head, lifted Eddie and kissed his forehead before settling him on her shoulder. “It's been a really crazy twenty-four hours.”

“Not good enough,” Jess snapped.

“What?”

Nudging Rebecca aside with her hip, Jess started out the door, but she was still talking. Commanding, actually. “When I get back, you're staying. So any other plans you've got, move 'em.”

“Um,” Rebecca said, bouncing Eddie in her arms. “Okay.” In truth, now that she thought about it, Jess was not like Amanda at all.

She was even sadder …

“Good girl. Tell Jumping Jack Flashypants he's going to have to wait.”

“Oh. Hey, Jess, I meant to tell you about that, I didn't ask Jack to ask you to—”

“That third spaghetti plate on the counter is for him. Tell him to eat something healthy, you can tell he eats too much crap just by looking at him. What?”

“Huh?”

“Stop staring. What are you thinking?” Abruptly—almost shyly—Jess smiled.

Just as quickly, she gulped the smile down. For a long moment, she stood frozen, her mouth a hard line, the tendons in her neck tight. Then she darted forward and kissed Rebecca on the cheek.

Before Rebecca could respond, Jess was down the steps, moving fast toward the sidewalk, still talking.

And also shuddering? Was
she
crying, now?

“Benny's meds, Rebecca. Make him take them, okay?”

This time, the ceiling actually thumped, as though a whole family of squirrels had dropped out of the evergreen outside and through a hole in the rotting roof.

“You're not hearing that?” Rebecca called.

“It's Benny.”

“What, he's dancing, now? On his half-healed broken ankles? Seriously, Jess, could we have this checked? Or get an exterminator? Eddie's going to wind up picking up mouse-poop or…”

At the edge of the tiny yard, Jess turned. Apparently, she wasn't crying, after all. Not with tears, anyway.

“We,” she said, softly.

Rebecca had no idea what to make of that. But she realized, in horror, that she'd done it again: hurt someone else she cared about, somehow.

“I mean, I could take care of it for you. Call somebody, or something. Will you let me call somebody?”

“Kiss your sweet, ridiculous guy for me,” said Jess. When Rebecca kissed Eddie, she added, “Oh, yeah, him, too.”

Which meant she'd meant Jack?
Rebecca blushed.

“Take Eddie up to Benny when you bring Benny his dinner. They're so good for each other.”

“Okay. Although Benny barely talks to me.” In Rebecca's pocket, her phone buzzed.
Jack,
she thought.
Or maybe Joel?
Still bouncing Eddie, she fumbled for it.

“He's had a really bad time, hon. And he's in pain. Trust me. As for the rest … Rebecca, are you listening?”

That tone was unmistakable, was the Amanda-tone, and stopped Rebecca grappling with her phone. She looked at Jess, who nodded toward the house's second story.

“As for the rest. You leave it be.” Then she was out the gate, down the block, heading straight across Campus Ave into the woods, along the lane toward Halfmoon House.

Maybe to clean up the mess Rebecca had left there?

That was a pathetic, hopeless hope, Rebecca knew. Although if anyone could possibly do that, it would be Jess. Her phone pulsed again. She glanced down into the ID window and saw Kaylene's name yet again. With a sigh, she glanced toward the kitchen and saw the three plates laid at the edge of the counter, in the spot where Jess apparently ate whatever meals she ate, just standing there, alone.

Settling onto the sprung, rust-spotted couch, which was the only place to sit in the entire downstairs other than the floor, Rebecca rested Eddie on her hip and answered her phone.

“Aren't you at the Women's Shelter?” she said, before Kaylene could even speak. “Don't you have work?”

“Rebecca, finally, where have you
been
? I've been calling and calling, there's something I have to tell you and—”

“I got kicked out of Halfmoon House,” Rebecca blurted, and Kaylene gave one of her Kaylene-squeaks and went quiet. She really was the most satisfying person Rebecca had ever met to surprise, mostly because she was still—and always—so ready to
be
surprised. “Actually, that's a little melodramatic. But … Kaylene, I said something so stupid. It just came out. Amanda was trashing Joel, again, as usual, for daring to make us all happy. And he was just standing there, and he looked so pathetic, and she can be so mean. And I couldn't stand it.”

“What did you
say
? You mouthed off to
Amanda
?”

“I told Joel he should leave her.”

“You …
what
?”

“And she heard.”

There was a long silence, broken only by Eddie's gurgling and tugging at Rebecca's hair. Rebecca had been on too many fraught phone calls—was too well trained in the art of fraught phone calls, and was also too much her weirdo, intuitive self—not to recognize panic on the other end of the line when she heard it. Or, in this case, sensed it, since she wasn't actually hearing anything.

But what did
Kaylene
have to panic about?
“Hey, Kaylene. What's—”

“Did we all drop acid last night, Rebecca? Together? And someone forgot to tell me?”

That should have been funny. But there was something new in Kaylene's tone—a sourness, a sadness—and it alarmed Rebecca as much as anything else in this whole, insane day. “Kaylene, what the hell? What's wr—?”

“Have you talked to Jack?”

Rebecca groaned, and Eddie squawked. She tickled his stomach as she talked. “He was waiting for me on Campus Ave when I fled Halfmoon House. He—”

“What did he say? Rebecca, you have to tell me. Because it was really weird, and—”

Again, Rebecca had to fight down alarm, quiet herself. “He said you were kissing him.”

“Yeah. That's completely accurate.
I
was kissing
him.
And I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry.”

“Huh?”

“
Huh?
What do you mean,
huh
? Rebecca, please, this is hard. I don't even know what…”

Kaylene's voice trailed off, leaving Rebecca staring straight ahead at the empty walls. For the first time in the three years they'd known each other, and for no reason she could pinpoint, Rebecca wanted to hang up on Kaylene. In her lap, Eddie had balled his fists in her shirt and was pulling himself to his feet. Cocking the phone against her ear, Rebecca took hold of his hips, tickled him there, felt as much as saw the grin burst out on his face. She lifted him, held him in the air, and looked right into his eyes.

“Rebecca? Did he tell you the rest? Because as bad as I feel about what I did, because I know you two—”

“There is no
us two,
Kaylene. Not yet. You didn't do anything to me. Except be honest with me, and be my friend.” She kept her eyes on Eddie's, tilted him one way, the other. Making him happy, sometimes, was as easy as pushing the stomach on one of those Tickle Me Elmo dolls. And there was his laugh, loud and unabashed as birdsong. So comforting.

“Okay,” Kaylene said, after a shorter pause than Rebecca somehow expected. “You're … amazing, Rebecca. You're a really good friend. And that's why you have to listen, right now. Are you listening? I'm at work, I only have another minute.”

“I'm right here,” she murmured, tilting Eddie, bringing him to her shoulder, tapping his back, keeping her focus at least a little bit there to keep from focusing too hard on Kaylene's voice. Because what was coming out of the phone barely sounded like Kaylene at all.

“Okay, look. I was drunk, so was he, so it's possible I have this wrong, okay? As a matter of fact, I don't even … Rebecca, there was this guy.”

“The one who came out of the woods?”

“Wow. Wait. So he did tell you?”

“He told me a guy came out of the woods. He wanted me to know that you were okay.”

Abruptly, Kaylene snorted.
Or sobbed?

“Kaylene?”

“Shit. Oh, shit. He
is
a coward. I knew it.”

“Hey.”

“Just … hang on, okay?”

Rebecca set Eddie on the floor with his back against the couch, then joined him down there, rolled his ball to him. Eddie gurgled and pushed it back in her general direction. Kaylene stayed gone a long time. Then she was back.

“Okay. Listen. First of all, the kissing really was nothing, okay? It was all me. My fault. We got wasted at Starkey's last night, and we stayed out too long.”

Rebecca's skin itched, and her heart hurt, and even though she had slept better last night than she had in months, twitchy dreams and all, she just wanted to drop her head back onto the couch's lone cushion and close her eyes.

But Kaylene made that new sound again: snorting or sobbing. And whatever that represented—
hurt? confusion? betrayal?—
Rebecca wasn't sure she could take more of it right that second. Her eyes drifted toward the chipped side table next to the couch where Jess kept her bills stacked and categorized in a cheap wire organizer. The table had one drawer, and for once, Jess had left it half-open. Pinning the phone against her jaw, Rebecca reached into the drawer and drew out the single framed photograph in there.

At her feet, Eddie began to squawk, yanking at the ankles of her pants. He threw the ball across the room. In the kitchen, the stove-timer beeped and went on beeping. Near her ear, hovering like a gnat, Kaylene was talking again. And upstairs, Benny—sounding gravelly, growly, much more agitated than usual—shouted, “Jesus, Rebecca, are you here? Is anyone down there?”

And yet, for just a moment more, Rebecca stared at the photograph: two teenage girls in summer twilight, emerging fully clothed in jeans and tank tops out of the ocean, onto dark, cigarette-strewn sand. The one on the right glowed red-blond in the last of the sun, had her outside arm flung wide and a horizon line for a smile. The other had eyes the exact bottomless blue-black of the darkening sky around and above them, and her wet, black hair streamed behind. She was hip-checking her friend but also holding her hand, both of them rumpled and laughing, as though they'd just poured out of a car after a long drive and not even bothered shedding or changing clothes. Or else they'd just emerged from the sea on new and unsteady legs, like mermaids.

“God, Rebecca,
please
!” Benny shouted, and Eddie squealed and started to sob. Rebecca laid the picture on the couch, kept the phone pinned between her shoulder and jaw, scooped the baby into her arms, and stood.

“Kaylene, I'm so sorry, I've got to call you back. I've got to go.”

“Rebecca, are you fucking kidding? I'm at work. And I've been trying to get you all—”

“I'll call you back. As soon as I can. I'm sorry. I promise.”

“Rebecca, WAIT. One second. Are you there?”

She was moving toward the kitchen to shut off the timer, had already bounced Eddie back to relative peacefulness. She'd meant to hang up, but hadn't. “I'm here,” she said.

“Just … tell Jack we love him, okay? That I still do. That whatever the hell that was last night…”

“What? Kaylene, I swear I'll call you as soon as I can. I love you.” She dropped Eddie into his high chair and grabbed the phone and hit End.

What the hell?
she thought, moving automatically to remove the sauce from the heat, switch off the alarm and then the stovetop. The old electric burner rings sparked, flared redder, then went dark.

Where was Jack, anyway? When would he come? What hadn't he said, that Kaylene was about to? Nothing, surely, that could unsettle either one of them more than the things he'd already said.

Like,
I'm too into you …

She was plating spaghetti, letting everything churn in her head: Jack, and Kaylene's voice just now, and Amanda's icy reprimand—or kiss-off—and Joel's slumped back as he vanished into the woods; the woods themselves; that black Sierra near the abandoned trailers; the photograph she'd just found in Jess's drawer; the total absence of chairs in this house, because, as Jess had put it when Rebecca asked, “It's just me, right now. When there's someone down here to sit with again, I'll sit.”

And under it all, that voice, last night's caller's voice, whispering over the drums of her ears like air from a fan he'd set blowing inside her:

I'll come see you.

I can see you.

Knocking. Someone was knocking.

Almost dropping the dripping colander in the sink, Rebecca turned. She touched Eddie's hand as he stretched for her, murmured, “Hold on, baby, I'm right here,” and hurried back into the living room. “Jack,” she was calling, hand already stretching for the front door, when she stopped. Held still.

Nothing. There had been a knock or at least a noise, she was sure of it. But now there was silence, or almost silence, just 
…
the ghost of a song? The reverberations of a single chord, as though heard from the window of a passing car?

Or maybe
actually
heard from the window of a passing car? Certainly, there was no one on the porch. She knew that even before she opened the door and checked.

I hate this house,
Rebecca realized, staring around at the barren living room, the scraped walls with their smoke stains. Her second realization hit harder, and disturbed her even more.
I love Jess. Poor Jess.

As in, loved her in the same way she had loved Amanda, once? Maybe even more? Because in all of three weeks, Jess had given Rebecca a stronger inkling of what being someone's daughter might be like than either Amanda or Joel had allowed themselves or her? Or because making Rebecca feel that way only seemed to make Jess sadder?