Lies of the Heart (12 page)

When she reaches the counter, she drops the ice cream on the conveyer belt and focuses hard on the girl’s name tag: Tricia.
Tricia.

“Hey, you,” Tricia says happily, reaching for the carton of ice cream. Katie’s face must be panicked, because Tricia’s eyes go wide and she sucks in her breath. Katie looks helplessly at her, pulls her purse onto the counter as the girl scans the ice cream. She keeps her head lowered and tugs at the zipper, but it’s stuck; there’s white tissue woven into the teeth from the inside and it won’t budge. Dottie’s footsteps come up behind her.

“Hey, Justin?” Tricia says in a smooth, professional voice Katie has never heard before, “Are you able to take a customer?”

Katie turns to the front of the store, sees the pimply kid behind the customer-service desk looking around the empty store. He humps his shoulders up.

“Sure,” he says, and then Tricia is smiling big over Katie’s shoulder.

“Ma’am? Justin will take you over at the customer-service counter so you don’t have to wait.”

Katie lowers her head gratefully, keeps tugging at the zipper with trembling fingers.

“Katie?” Dottie says behind her, but Katie keeps her head down and shakes it slowly this time. “Okay. Okay,” Dottie says and moves away.

“Here,” Tricia says gently, and takes the purse out of Katie’s fumbling hands. She jiggles the catch a little, unzips the purse in one fluid motion. The girl reaches into the purse, shuffles around, pulls out Katie’s wallet.

“Cash?” Tricia asks.

Katie nods without looking up, watches Tricia’s perfectly manicured fingers unsnap the wallet, flip through the bills, pull out a five. The polish is a deep, shiny red, with alternating white X’s and O’s in the center of each nail. Katie closes her eyes, listens to the beep of the register, to her heart pumping, pumping.

She’s not sure how long she stays like this, only knows that when the girl finally speaks, her rib cage doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode or collapse anymore.

“She’s gone,” Tricia says, and Katie opens her eyes. The girl puts the change into her wallet and the wallet back into her purse. She zips up the purse and pushes it toward Katie.

“Thank you,” Katie says quietly.

“You’re welcome.” They hold each other’s eyes for a few, quiet beats.

“She worked with my husband,” Katie says.

“I figured it might have something to do with that.”

“Yeah.”

“It must be, like, so hard all the time,” Tricia says.

“You can’t imagine.”

“Guess not.”

Another small beat.

“I . . . I like your nails,” Katie says.

The girl looks down at her nails. She takes a little step back and flares her fingers against her green apron. “
Très chic,
no?” she says with a grin in her voice.

Tricia flutters her fingers, and it is only then that Katie notices the swell under the green apron.

“Almost four months,” Tricia says, nodding and resting her hands on top of her stomach.

“Oh, my God.”

“I know,” the girl says, “Kenny is
so
freaked.”

Katie pulls the straps of her purse over her shoulder, speechless.

“My mom’s refusing to help now, too. She’s all like, ‘You play, you pay,’ but I don’t really care. She’s always been a wicked jerk to me anyway. That’s why I’m in my own place already.”

“What about—what about your father?”

Tricia shrugs. “I haven’t seen
him
in ages.”

Katie knows that she should say something encouraging, but all she can think is that this world, this whole
stupid
world, is hopeless. Tricia pops the ice cream into a beige plastic bag.

“So what will you two do now?” Katie asks.

Tricia shrugs again. “I don’t know what
Kenny
will do, but I’m having a baby,” she says.

Katie blinks at her a few times, shakes her head. “But—but won’t it be so difficult, all by yourself?”

“I’m not saying he’s refusing to help, and believe me, I’ll be totally freaked if he bounces. But what can you do?” She pushes the plastic bag toward Katie.

Katie just stares.

“Be careful out there,” Tricia says, “because even, like, this little bit of snow makes the roads pretty slick.”

B
y the time Katie rounds the corner and turns onto her street, the snow has slowed to barely a trickle, but she keeps her wipers on full blast anyway. Tears pool at the back of her throat, inch upward with every swipe of the blades that seem too close to her face.

Jerry thinks he did a good thing. He thinks he
saved
Nick.

In an instant all the whys inside her head doubled, tripled—killing Nick was
good
? Jerry wanted to
save
him? From
what
? And then always back to this, the fear coiling up tightly inside her: Where do I fit into this picture, into that day in the gym?

She swerves into her driveway, nearly slams into the rear of her parents’ gray Chevy; she backs up, tires spinning and shooting rocks out into the street, and then pulls alongside their car.

Her mother is in the passenger seat, arms crossed, her platinum wig almost touching the roof of the car. Her eyes are stuck on the windshield, lips pressed tightly together: the perfect picture of parental indignation. upset, Katie assumes, because she hung up on her earlier.

“Way to pick your battles, Mom,” she mumbles. She grabs the bag of ice cream, shoulders the car door open, almost falls out onto the slick rocks.

Her shoes slip and slide as she charges past the Chevy and up the walkway toward her father, who is packed into his bulky blue Eskimo coat, the brown fur around the hood framing his long, angular face. He digs into a bag of rock salt with a blue plastic cup, spreads it generously onto the bottom stair.

“Just in case,” her father booms, holding up the bag with a gloved hand.

She pushes past him onto the stairs, the salt crunching underfoot. “It isn’t a good time,” Katie says in a strained voice.

“Took the driveway there a bit quick, didn’t you, sweetie?”

She whirls around on her father from the top step, her warm breath exploding into the frosty air. “It’s barely snowing, Dad!” she shouts at him. She swipes at the thick coat of salt with the side of her shoe. “What the
hell
?”

Katie’s heart sinks at the shocked look on her father’s face, her fury instantly evaporating. She lowers her head apologetically at this betrayal—she’s the one who doesn’t yell, the one with infinite patience for him, the one who listens and nods and never questions his actions, no matter what. She inhales deeply, feels the cold air enter her lungs. Counts to three.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she says in a choked voice, turning away and ramming her key into the front door.

“It was your mother’s idea,” her father says behind her in an unusually quiet, confidential tone. “She insisted we come over. Got me out of my pj’s and everything.”

Katie turns back to her father. He motions with the plastic cup toward the idling Chevy. Her mother hasn’t moved an inch, but her window is a quarter of the way down now. Katie skips her eyes to the dark street, to a patch of melting snow glistening under the streetlight.

“She’s worried, sweetie,” her father says, his hazel eyes slanting up at her.

Katie isn’t sure what’s worse, the curious, greedy stares of strangers and reporters, or this—a wounded look of love from her dad, who stands shivering on her walkway. She looks at her front lawn, at the wet tips of grass that sparkle and bend. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks to be let in, short, mournful pleas that echo into the night.

“Dad, I didn’t mean it—”

Her father holds up one finger, wiggles his nose; he lets go of a string of noisy sneezes with gusto. Pulls a white handkerchief from his coat pocket.

“Bless you,” Katie says.

He nods, trumpets loudly into the hankie. “Tough day, huh?” he says, swiping the cloth back and forth under his nose.

“Yeah.”

Her father stares intently at her for exactly two seconds, and then his face does that thing it always does when anyone around him shows too much emotion: it fills with alarm, then almost as quickly shifts to a look of pure concentration—eyes suddenly heavy-lidded and trained on a spot on the ground.
It’s your father’s “need to split the check” look,
Nick used to say, and then he’d scrunch up his face like her father’s and scratch his chin with his index finger.
Let’s see, twenty-four fifty for my veal parm and Grace’s shrimp scampi . . .

Her father slowly folds his handkerchief into a square, his long fingers smoothing the cloth with each crease. After he makes a fold, he strokes the cloth carefully, uses his index finger to make a crease for another fold. The movements are exact and meticulous, soothing in their repetition.

Although the snow hasn’t quite stopped, there is a stillness in the air, a motionless calm that falls around them. It suddenly feels okay, standing here now and watching her father’s precise motions, like the world has finally shut down for the night, has closed in around her and her parents and these small, deliberate gestures; a respite, then, into something solid, into familiar relationships that aren’t perfect, but recognizable and constant. For the first time today, she feels the muscles in her lower back give a little.

She smiles at the reverent way her father finally offers her the square of cloth when he’s done pressing it. Katie shakes her head no, shifts the grocery bag onto her forearm. Her father’s face brightens, eyes locking onto the bag as he stuffs the hankie back into his pocket. He clears his throat, winks at her.

“You know,” he begins in his normally loud voice again, “you can always
freeze
that bread. Your mother does it all the time. No harm in it, and we always have it when it snows and we can’t get out.” Her father peeks over at the car, and Katie turns, sees her mother nodding in agreement from inside.

Katie turns back to her father, to the hopeful look he gives her. It’s the same one he’s used since she and Dana were children, the one that says,
Why not just get it over with so we can all move on?

“Okay,” she says, “I’m going.” She drops her purse and the grocery bag onto the heaping salt, takes small, crunchy steps down the stairs.

“Good girl,” he says, patting her arm.

By the time she gets to the car, the window is rolled back up. She listens to the motor rev from the heater kicking on, watches her mother stare stonily ahead. Fat snowflakes sputter onto the windshield and instantly melt into tiny puddles. From a few houses away, the dog barks again, this time more urgently, a steady stream of indignant yelps.

Katie leans in until her face is only inches from her mother’s on the other side of the window. She taps the glass twice with a fingernail. Her mother turns her head, stares at her with raised eyebrows. She rolls down the window.

“Kate,” she says in a crisp, matter-of-fact tone.

“Mom,” Katie says, matching her tone exactly.

Her mother leans back, startled. “Oh, no, do not mock me in this moment, Kate,” she says, “you don’t want to do that.” She pulls the collar closed on her coat.

“Sorry,” Katie says. “And I’m sorry about earlier, too. Okay?”

Her mother lifts her chin. “For what?”

“I’m sorry for hanging up on you, Mom.”

“It wasn’t right.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Her mother nods, finally appeased. She shifts her body all the way around to face Katie. “It’s just rude, hon.”

“I know.”

“Your father was beside himself,” her mother says.

Katie turns to check on her father, who is slowly salting his way back down the walk. The layer of salt, even thicker than the one on the top stair, twinkles in the light. He sees Katie watching, grins and raises the plastic cup like he’s making a toast to her.

Her mother scoots Katie out of the way with her hand, leans out the window. Her wig shifts up on the left, and she tugs it back down, shakes her head impatiently.

“Not so thick, Jimmy,” she calls out. “We aren’t in a
blizzard,
for God’s sake.”

She rolls her eyes at Katie. “More is always better with that one.”

Her mother gives her a lopsided smile, reaches up to tuck Katie’s hair behind one ear.

“Mom—”

“No, hold on,” her mother says. She dips her head toward the driver’s side. “Hop in.”

Katie walks around the front of the car, slips into the driver’s seat. She shuts the door behind her, feels the heat press into her like a thick woolen blanket—it must be a hundred degrees inside the car.

“Whoa,” Katie says, and reaches for the heater before remembering how cold her mother gets these days, an aftereffect of the chemo even though her last session was nearly five years ago. “Doctor says her internal temp is off, probably permanent,” her father told Katie over the phone last month when it first started to get chilly at night. “But everything’s good. Blood work, levels, everything,” he said. “Except this cold thing.” And then, in a loud, magnified voice meant for her mother: “But I told the doc, ‘Hell, we’ll take her any way she comes, hot
or
cold.’ ”

“You can turn the heat down a little if you want,” her mother says, motioning to the dashboard, “Or crack your window.”

Katie rolls the window open a little, unzips her coat and stares at her mother’s wig, which has shifted up on the left again.

“This one never stays put,” her mother complains. She slaps down the visor, tugs both sides of the wig, and scans her face in the mirror.

Though neither one would admit it, her mother and sister are alike in so many respects that it amazes Katie at times. The way they move and behave even in small moments like this—like they’ve always known their place in the world, are comfortable with themselves and their bodies in a way that boggles Katie. Sometimes she still catches herself in a room with both of them and one word forms clearly about herself: “incidental.”