House Broken (11 page)

ELLA

S
he was in such deep shit. The poetry slam lasted way longer than it was supposed to; then she got lost trying to find 101 North. She'd brought her friend Megan along as her personal GPS device, but it turned out not even the combination of Megan's iPhone, the Google map Ella had printed out, and the Jurassic-era unrefoldable map from the car could deal with the massive construction detour. Didn't help that she was nervous as hell driving in San Francisco. One-way streets, crazy-ass drivers, and way too many pedestrians. The only bad thing that didn't happen was taking one of the peds out. Of course she wasn't exactly home yet.

Then there was that little issue in the parking garage. Who would put a ginormous pole right next to a parking space too small for a smart car, much less her dad's Toyota truck? Megan
wanted to get out and direct her, but she'd parked so close to the wall the door wouldn't open. Luckily, it was more of a scrape than a crunch. An extended scrape. But that could have happened anywhere. And this particular scrape most certainly did not happen in San Francisco.

Forget the driving-related disasters, though. The slam was awesome. Must have been a hundred people there. When her turn came around, she was so nervous she was sure no words would make it out of her mouth. Her first line squeaked out as if she was on helium, and she almost ran off the stage. But then she spotted Megan grinning at her like an idiot, and after that, well, it just flowed. Her last line, the one inspired by the wordstorm, got her some applause. That's right. Applause. So cutting out all those pieces of paper and staying up late agonizing over words and rhythm and ideas, and dealing with the whole SAT practice crap had all been worth it. Ella didn't make it into the next round of the slam—she didn't expect to—but a bunch of people came up to her afterward and told her how cool her poem was. Someone even said it was chill. Her poem was chill. Oh yeah.

She had Megan text Prince Charlie that she'd be late—using Ella's phone because, technically, her permit didn't allow her to drive anyone under twenty-five who wasn't in her family. “Technically,” because everyone broke that rule—not that her mom would care about that excuse. The Prince was pissed about waiting and threatened to rat on her to their mom, which would have officially made the day a champion-level fuckup (not counting the slam). But Ella got Megan to text him back that she'd make it up to him if he could not freak just this once. He must've been okay with it because her mom hadn't sent the FBI out to track her down yet.

By the time she found the right road, dropped off Megan, and
got to the field, the Prince had been cooling his heels for an hour. His face was all pissy, but when she pulled up to the curb, it changed to shocked.

“Holy shit! What happened to the truck?”

That obvious? Not good. “Oh, the little scratch? It'll come off.”

He laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“It's not my fault someone hit me while I was parked.”

He threw his stuff in the rear, got in, and slammed the door. “How come you're so late?”

“The prep class ran late.”

“An hour?”

“Not quite. There was traffic.”

“It's like two miles away.” He reached for a piece of paper on the dashboard. “What's this?”

Ella moved to snatch it from him, but he was too quick. “Give it to me.”

“Sutter Street garage? That's in the city! You drove to the city?”

Her stomach tightened. “Must be from a meeting Dad had.”

“It's dated today, you liar. What were you doing there?”

She sighed. Game over. “The poetry slam. It was so cool.” She looked him in the eye. “You won't tell, will you?”

“I don't know. What's it worth to you?”

Why couldn't he ever act without some sort of payback? This time it didn't matter, though, because she had the goods on him.

“How about this? You keep quiet about my trip to the city and I'll keep quiet about your porno enterprise.”

The Prince barely skipped a beat. “That? It's history. Besides, where's your evidence?” He waved the parking slip. “I've got this.”

“You think Mom and Dad wouldn't believe me? You want to take that chance?”

“Maybe not. Maybe I'll let it go this time. But you owe me.”

Little prick. “Thanks.”

“Are you gonna drive now? I'm ready for some barbecue.” He slouched down and put his stinky feet on the dash.

She put the truck in gear and pulled away.

The Prince said, “You coming to the Battle of the Bands on Tuesday, Smella?”

“Everyone goes. You have your songs picked out?” Every band did one cover and one original. The originals were always less like music and more like stand-up comedy.

“Yup. We're going with ‘Rock on You.' But the other one is a surprise.”

“An air of mystery . . .”

“Yup. I'm not singing that one. A girl is.”

“Spencer and Pierce agreed?”

“I can be very persuasive.”

No shit. “Who's the girl?”

“Rosa Contreras. You know the one that works at the vet with Mom. She's got mad pipes. And she's totally hot.”

Ella had to admit the girl was cute.

The Prince put on this big-time announcer voice. “It's gonna be the performance of a lifetime.”

She laughed. Their relationship was twisted, but it worked for them.

• • •

They rolled into the party, excuses ready to go, but no one paid any attention to them. Uncle Ivan, Aunt Leigh, the Accountants, and the rest of the gang were all gathered around Juliana. She was pretty freaked-out, telling everyone Adolf had gone all Cujo on
Jon without an H, and attacked her dad, too. When Ella heard that, she was ready to freak out herself, but it turned out her dad wasn't hurt badly. But Jon without an H almost became Jon without an Arm. He had a couple dozen stitches in his arm and shoulder. Juliana must've changed her shirt, but there were spatters of blood on the seat of her shorts.

Ella could tell Juliana wanted to keep talking about it, but Granny Novak tried to change the subject because she didn't want Granpa's birthday spoiled. Not even a rabid-dog attack had clinched that. Plus it was a Novak rule that Novaks weren't to blame if someone else could take the fall. Was Adolf a Novak? Ella was pretty sure he was. At least compared to Jon without an H.

Juliana said, “Aldo was probably upset because Jon was on the bed. He thinks it's his.”

Upset? Upset usually doesn't equal stitches.

“And Geneva let Aldo out of the garage. Nothing would have happened if she hadn't let him out.”

Granny Novak was determined to move on. “So is everyone coming here from the hospital? It's nearly four o'clock. And what about Geneva and her mother? They weren't hurt. There's no reason they can't come. We've got so much food.”

Juliana shrugged her shoulders. “I haven't heard.”

The Prince piped up. “I'm guessing we won't see Jon.”

The Accountants laughed, but Granny sent them a look that cut them off at the knees.

• • •

Ella texted her dad to make sure he was okay and found out they were on their way. The boys headed outside to circle around the barbecue like lions at a kill. She went, too, because it was either
that or listen to Juliana, whom she decided was certifiable. Actually made her mom seem totally rational in comparison. No wonder she had trouble in the boyfriend department. Jon without an H would be reactivating his Match.com account if he had any sense at all.

Granny and Granpa Novak had a cool backyard, set up for fun and games. In addition to the largest barbecue known to humanity and lots of places to sit and eat, there was a bocce ball court, a grassy place for badminton or volleyball or whatever, and a swing hanging from an oak tree. Whether there was a specific occasion or not, the outside refrigerator always had drinks and snacks. Party Central.

The boys were up to their elbows in a Doritos bag, talking about the dog attack and all the extremely cool and brave things they'd have done if they were there. Jackie Chan Animal Control. Ella dug around in the fridge for a drink and heard Spencer tell the Prince the amplifier had arrived at Rango's house. The Prince told him to shut up.

“Why? It's so cool you bought it!”

Ella peeked around the side of the fridge. The Prince socked Spencer on the arm; then Pierce hit him, too.

She straightened up, popped the top of the soda can, and cleared her throat. “What's this about an amplifier?”

Spencer rubbed his arm. “Sorry. I forgot it was a secret.”

“I can't believe I'm related to you,” Pierce said.

For once the Prince didn't have a snappy comeback and looked at her sheepishly. She winked at him. Gotcha, big boy. Why he bought the amplifier was obvious. It was his ticket into the band. That's the problem with flashing your wad at guys like the Accountants. They know how to up the ante. How the Prince
managed to buy the amp was a bit trickier. She didn't know how much something like that cost, but it had to be more than what a stack of sticky porno mags would bring in. And she suspected he'd already bought other stuff with the money, like those video games he said belonged to a friend. Plus she'd seen him at school last week with an iPhone. He'd been bugging their parents about getting one since Apple fell off the tree, but they'd been 100 percent sure he didn't need one. Of course, when she asked him about the iPhone, he said it was someone else's. But she wasn't drinking that Kool-Aid.

The big sister in her said she should tell her parents before Charlie got into trouble he couldn't charm his way out of. But this wasn't the time to play the big sister. This was the time to stay cool. Because however he was lining his pockets, she was onto him, and he knew it. Her excursion into the city would stay their little secret. Not only that, her sources informed her Marcus would be at a party later at the house of a sketchy senior. Her mom would never approve, so she planned to sneak out. It was going to be so much simpler now that the Prince was in her pocket.

HELEN

H
elen knew the exact moment she became a woman. It wasn't when Eustace married her, that was certain, though her sympathy for her sixteen-year-old self was considerable. She didn't become a woman on her honeymoon, either, as much as that week opened her eyes to a host of things—good and bad—she'd only weakly imagined: the way money made everything smoother, how the ocean pushed against the shoulder of the beach, the sweet listlessness of her first oyster, and how a man lying on top of her felt twice as heavy as he ought.

Neither did bearing and suckling children make her a woman—not in her heart. When she was pregnant, women she met, even ones she didn't know from Adam, felt obliged to give her advice. Must've been because she resembled a child herself,
one hiding a prizewinning watermelon under her shirtfront. They told her the pain of bringing a child into the world would change her forever, but it didn't. It was only pain. And like most things, good or bad, it didn't last forever. The birthing didn't make her a woman and neither did her babies. They were more like siblings to her. Sometimes when she walked them in the night, her feet dragging as if the rug was a pool of molasses, she got befuddled and thought they belonged to her mama. The babies seemed as confused as she was about why God had placed all of them on this earth, leaving them to cope through long days that shone too bright and through nights that stretched too dark. Helen wished someone would hold her and sing to her until the questions answered themselves or disappeared.

Through ten years of marriage Helen held on to her childhood. Looking back, she appreciated what a monumental feat of ignorance that had been. Day in and day out, she held on to the notion that because she was married, she had love, and because she had love, she was lucky—even blessed. So many girls never drew the attention of a responsible, hardworking man from a good family. Heck, a lot of them never found anything better than one who didn't get drunk every single night. And despite Eustace's determination to have his own way, he never ignored her and he most certainly never laid a hand on her. He was, by and large, still the romantic swashbuckling pirate who had weakened her knees at sixteen. And, as a child of twenty-seven, Helen figured that meant she owed him plenty: her body, her loyalty, and a whole bucketful of gratitude.

But watching Eustace cozy up to the girl in the daisy-colored dress was the beginning of the end of that. Helen took her first step to becoming a woman when, instead of strutting over and
smacking him across the face, she went straight to the restroom and fixed up her lipstick. Her next step down that road came three minutes later when the waiter offered her a drink and she said, “Why, I think I will,” and whisked one off the tray. Soon as he left, she drank it straight down. And when Eustace came up to her some time later, snaked his arm around her waist and kissed her on the mouth right in front of those two from the ladies' club, she pushed him off like he was an overeager puppy and wiped her lipstick from his mouth with her thumb, shining her eyes up at him. That was when Helen Riley became a woman.

Only a fool would suppose her husband's fondness for the girl in the daisy-yellow dress was a singular event, and Helen was no fool—not now. As she had never to that day been successful at getting Eustace to do anything other than what he'd made up his mind to do already, she didn't even attempt to shift him directly. What would have been the use of that? He would have laughed at her. So she did what she could to remove temptation. Of course she kept herself pretty and youthful, and made herself available to him without complaint, leastways when she wasn't likely to get in the family way. If Louisa couldn't look after the children, Helen found an elderly woman or, failing that, chose one who'd taken a long dip in the ugly pond. If she caught a whiff of her husband's interest in a girl, she'd do her best to sour him on her, tactfully, of course. Didn't take a law degree to figure out he preferred them innocent, so she'd drop hints about the girl's reputation. And Eustace had his own reputation to look after, so if Helen could manage it, she'd insinuate that the girl's daddy had suspicions that a man of questionable character was sniffing around his precious baby. It was nearly a full-time job. The sad truth was the county
was chock-full of girls dumber than a sack of wet mice and standing in need of a prayer. She ought to know.

At the time, she thought of Eustace's taste for girls as an affliction—a hurtful one, and distasteful, too—but an affliction nevertheless. It didn't necessarily change everything between them. Helen was his wife and the mother of his four children, and no purring kitten in a daisy-yellow dress would ever change that.

• • •

Once the children moved out of diapers and could mind their manners, Eustace took more of an interest in them. Paris, being the eldest, snared his attention first, but Helen was certain that would have transpired no matter when she came into this world. For starters, she resembled Helen in every detail, right down to the mole on the second smallest toe of her right foot. The two of them couldn't walk down a street without receiving commentary on it. It was a strange species of admiration, as if the blue of Helen's eyes and the angle of her cheekbone had won a breeding challenge against Eustace's features. How was she supposed to take pride in what she had not had a hand in? Still, the girl was uncommonly pretty, so Helen was only too happy to absorb the compliments. She thought of it as partial compensation for the injury caused by her husband's tomcatting.

Paris was a compliant child, which made it easy for Eustace to take her places. She learned right off when she should speak and when she should rely on her own thoughts for entertainment. In comparison, Florence, younger by two years, appeared willful, but Helen knew that next to Paris, every child was. Florence's feelings might have been hurt because her daddy preferred Paris's
company, except she didn't care for being trapped in a booth while Eustace had lunch with his friends or sitting stock-still in a bass boat for hours on end. Stopping for an ice cream on the way back from a meeting or after a round of golf would have been right up Florence's alley, except Eustace didn't tolerate children who expected things, so he never told them ahead of time whether that day would be an ice cream day or not. If she wasn't sure to get a cone, Florence would rather stay home. Paris didn't mind either way.

Paris and Florence shared a room upstairs until Dublin arrived. The baby slept in a room between his parents and his sisters. Paris was a light sleeper and woke whenever her brother cried. And when he was hungry or wet, that boy was never shy to let the house, and half the neighborhood, know about it. Though she was not yet six years old, Paris asked if she could have the downstairs bedroom, at the rear of the house, designed for the live-in help. Helen wasn't partial to a midge of a girl sleeping so far from her parents—and so near to the back door—but in the end agreed with Eustace that one part of the house was as safe as the rest. Besides, he said, the room would get use sooner or later with more children on the way.

When Geneva was born a year after Dublin, the little ones stayed together in the nursery. No amount of commotion created by Dublin ever bothered Geneva. If he hollered, she'd sit up in her crib, looking for all the world like an owl baby, brown eyes wide and watchful. If he was making mischief—the normal state of affairs—she'd watch that, too, with a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Once Dublin started school, Helen and Eustace tried to shuffle things around, as a boy of that age ought not share a room with his sister. Dublin went down in the help's room, and
Paris moved in upstairs again with Florence. But Geneva wouldn't have it. After Helen had made sure all the children were asleep, Geneva would climb out of her bed, dragging her stuffed monkey and blanket, and tiptoe through the dark house. Come morning, Helen would find her with her brother, sleeping head to toe like shoes in a shoe box. No amount of cajoling, bribery, or out-and-out insisting would stop her. When they locked her bedroom door, she lay down behind it and sobbed until the sound of it broke Helen's heart. Eustace went so far as to spank Geneva, but the next night she was out of her bed and off visiting Dublin again.

So Paris returned to the help's room, and Florence got the nursery, as it was the smaller of the upstairs rooms. Paris and Florence didn't get along too well, so it was all for the best. There wasn't a single thing they could agree on, and it vexed Helen to no end. While Louisa stayed home with the little ones, Helen walked the older girls to school in the mornings, and collected them every afternoon, unless it was raining pitchforks and hammer handles, in which case she drove. Paris and Florence argued about who would hold which of Helen's hands, whether they would stop to pat Mr. Thurston's hound, and how many steps it took to cross from Main Street to Marshall Street, where the school was. The way back presented further difficulties because Paris invariably desired to visit her daddy in the mayor's office, and Florence insisted on going straight home to a slice of Louisa's fruit pie and the freedom of bare feet. Eager to separate the pair, Helen would leave Paris with her father, assuming his secretary gave the green light.

“She's always an angel, Mrs. Riley. And the mayor will be ever so pleased.”

“Well, send her straight home if she gets underfoot.”

Helen looked forward to those afternoons. Geneva and Dublin would be waking from their naps when she came home. Florence would kick off her shoes, then race out the back door, with the little ones chasing after her like foxes after a rabbit. Louisa brought a tray with lemonade and a pie or a cake. Helen sat under the sycamore and listened to her children's squeals of laughter. Oh, there might be a beesting or a skinned knee to tend to, but it was, all things considered, a peaceful time. But when Paris came home with them, the mood was different. Paris would play, but with a purpose that set the others on edge.

“Too many rules,” Dublin would say, throwing the ball away in disgust.

“I'm telling Daddy you're a bad sport.”

The invocation of Eustace was Paris's privilege, as the eldest and his favorite, but Helen regarded it as an intrusion. She didn't find any harm in shifting the rules toward leniency when her husband didn't know about it. Did it really matter if Dublin used the side of the garage as a backboard for his kickball? And why couldn't the entire house, not just the children's rooms, be used for hide-and-seek? Paris, however, was keen to uphold her daddy's view of things. Helen suspected the girl spoke to Eustace about her behavior as well. How else had he known she sometimes invited Louisa to sit with her under the tree of an afternoon? So when Paris spent an afternoon at the mayor's office, everyone was happier.

Same as most men, Eustace saw in his son an opportunity to create a man in his own image. Such an enterprise was likely more successful when starting from scratch, as the Lord had done. Eustace attempted to school Dublin in what he took as proper activities for a Southern man: fishing, hunting, and golf. He might've
added football except Eustace got winded collecting the paper from the sidewalk in the morning. They did play catch once or twice, and Dublin was no worse nor no better at it than most boys, but the activity made Eustace perspire like a whore in church, and he took to a chair after a few throws. As the remainder of Eustace's chosen activities required patience, the boy was doomed from the start. While Eustace didn't hide his disappointment from his son, neither did he reject him altogether. Dublin was too likeable by half, and Eustace was as susceptible to his charms as anyone else who lived and breathed.

Geneva got all the patience that ought to have been Dublin's, and another helping besides. Eustace took her hunting and said she never once spooked an animal—except him, when he forgot she was behind him. But she didn't pander to him the way Paris did, and her lack of discourse bothered him when the activity didn't necessarily call for silence. For her own part, Helen found the girl unnaturally quiet, but it never worried her. Dublin seemed to get along with her fine, and Helen took it as a sign her youngest daughter was in her own way a good companion and would not grow old alone.

When Paris moved into the help's room the second time, Geneva was five and Dublin was six. The plan called for Geneva and Dublin to share the bigger upstairs room until they grew out of their attachment, or until their parents decided enough was enough. That point had about arrived when Dublin turned twelve. But then Eustace died, and there was no way on God's green earth anyone—least of all Helen—was going to force them apart then. When Florence went to college two years later, Geneva moved into the old nursery and took over Florence's desk and closet, but there were mornings, right up until they left the house for good,
when the wall between those two rooms got in the way, and Geneva would be back in her bed across the room from Dublin. She put her pillow on the end of the bed opposite his feet to make it easier to see his face.

For months after Dublin left home, Geneva hardly said a word, not that Helen would have had a lot to say in return. Luckily it was only a year before Geneva set off herself. She might have appeared to be content with her own company, but Helen knew better. She was like a child on a teeter-totter, with her end stuck on the ground and the other end in the air, empty.