Smashed (5 page)

When Will and I worried that he’d been hurt in an accident, my mother claimed my father was alive and well, that much she knew, though she insisted he’d never contacted her. As the months passed, we convinced ourselves he had to be dead—until
Will got a birthday card from him in April. Mom never showed us the envelope. She claimed he hadn’t settled anywhere yet, so the postmark made no difference.

“It was from one of those Midwest states,” she said. “I can’t even remember which one.” She handed the card to Will and walked away.

The spring after my father left, Ron Bailey started coming around to visit my mom. They’d known each other all their lives, graduated from high school together just two years before I was born. Mom said he’d asked her to go out with him a few times when they were teenagers, but she’d always put him off.

“I guess he just wasn’t exciting enough for me,” she said. Her anger over my father had drained her; she was quiet now, depressed. On her days off, she lay in her room, coming downstairs only to pour herself another glass of wine. Empty bottles piled up in the recycling bin; dishes and laundry went undone. Some days, she didn’t even bother to get dressed.

“Will you go out with Ron now?” I asked.

“What makes you think he asked me?” She turned her head away and lay back on her pillow.

“I’m not stupid, Mom,” I said.

“You know,” she said, “I think I just might.”

It was not the answer I wanted. I liked him and everything, but my father had been gone less than eight months, and if he came back and Mom was dating Ron Bailey, my father might just turn around and leave again. The truth was, I had a secret fantasy—bigger than getting a birthday card from my father
in the mail. In my daydream, my father would make a grand entrance at my birthday party in June. He’d arrive looking healthy and handsome, bearing gifts, good excuses, and pleas for forgiveness. Ron just wasn’t part of the family reunion I had in mind.

She went out with Ron a few times despite me. I glared at him when he came to the house and refused to talk to him, infuriating my mother.

“Katie Martin, you stop acting rude,” she’d say, when he was standing right there.

“It’s okay, Sandra,” he’d say softly, compassion in his eyes.

There was a lot about Ron Bailey I liked, though I couldn’t admit it. But my mother broke it off after a few weeks, anyhow.

“I’m not ready for a man in my life,” she’d said. And that was the end of it.

When my birthday finally came and went and my father didn’t even send a card, I spent the whole night locked in my room, crying.

My mother stood outside my door, knocking and questioning me impatiently.

“What’s wrong, Katie? For God’s sake . . . Did something happen today?”

I wasn’t going to tell her my dream about my dad. It was obvious she wouldn’t get it. It was my first birthday after he’d left, and she had to ask me what was wrong? No, I wasn’t going to tell her. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

I tucked inside myself, like a turtle retreating into her shell.
I protected my brother and kept to myself. I stopped mentioning my father’s name.

No one would know how I felt about my dad but me.

*     *     *

I got up abruptly and left Alec on the porch, taking the empty potato chip bag into the kitchen. Talking about my father made my throat ache. I wanted to go to bed, to be by myself. I’d never meant to say half as much as I did, and now I felt exposed, stripped to the core. I threw some empty beer bottles into the recycling bin. Who cared if my mother saw them? She barely lived here. As far as I was concerned, what I did was no longer any of her business.

Alec had followed me silently into the kitchen. Washing the glasses at the sink, I sensed him behind me, then felt his hands rest gently on my shoulders. I paused, my hands trembling, afraid I’d start to cry, but I had to do something. I turned and looked into his face.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, “talking about your dad.”

“I did all the talking,” I whispered, my voice unsteady. “Not your fault.”

His hands fell down around my waist. I took a deep breath, and we looked at each other. It felt like we’d been friends for a very long time. We understood each other; we both felt it. I looked away, and for some time we just stood there in my kitchen, until my body relaxed into his and he held me.

When we kissed, it was long and slow. A river of heat flowed through me, a powerful yearning. I reached for him, pulling him close, and he lifted me up onto the counter, his lips brushing my
hair, my cheeks, my neck. His fingers, rough from yard work, slipped across my belly, lifting up my bra until he could slide one hand, then the other, underneath it. I exhaled, my face lost in his soft hair.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered, and suddenly everything was moving too fast.

Is Matt home?
I wondered. And then Matt’s voice sounded in my head, refusing to shut up:
I can’t stand that guy.

“You should go,” I said.

Alec paused. “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

He took my hand and led me back out to the porch. There, he kissed me again, picked up his cooler, and headed for his truck. “I’ll call you,” he said.

Across the street, a light flicked on in Matt’s house. My eyes fell to his driveway. Sitting in the dark was the car Matt had driven to work that night. He was home.

He couldn’t have missed Alec’s truck in front of my house. He’d probably even seen us kiss on the porch.
He’ll flip out,
I thought. And for a moment I wanted to take back the whole night, start it all over again from the minute Will got in the McSherrys’ car and left. I’d hide in my room when Alec pulled into my driveway, pretend I wasn’t home. I’d read a book, go to bed early. And in the morning, Matt and I would still be best friends who had no use for Alec Osborne. Nothing would change.

I touched my lips, still swollen from kissing. It was too late for that.

Sun streamed through my bedroom window. I blinked and ran through the night before in my mind. Alec on my porch. Alec in my kitchen. Alec saying
Let’s go upstairs.

Well, at least I hadn’t done that.

Not that part of me hadn’t wanted to.
A big part
, I thought. But Matt—I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d say. And I’d always sworn to Cassie that I was going to wait for the right guy, the right time, the right place; that I wasn’t going to do it in some backseat with just anyone, you know? My parents may have screwed up their relationship, but I still believed in love. I was holding out for the real thing.

A wave of butterflies sailed through me. What was I feeling? Excitement? Anxiety? Some bizarre mix of the two?

My heart knocked heavily in my chest.

Downstairs, my eyes rested on the kitchen counter. Had I really sat there, making out with Alec? What had I done? What was I
doing
?

I had no idea.

I took a bowl of cereal out onto the porch and sat. It was ten o’clock, the sky perfectly blue in the morning light. I longed to talk to Cassie. If anyone could help me, she could. Matt was immovable when it came to Alec or any of his friends—but Cassie? She’d talk it over with me, help me figure this out. That’s how she approached things. And she’d listen.

We’d made fun of Alec together, Cassie and me. “Part the Red Sea, Moses—they’re coming through!” Cassie would say in her southern preacher imitation when Alec and his buddies came marching down the hall in a pack, Alec in the lead, so smug, Scott smirking at his side.

I’d burst out laughing, but Matt would just glare at them.

How long ago had that been? Two months? Three?

But everything was different now. I’d told Alec all about my father, and he’d listened so well, had understood when I’d gotten upset. His mother had left, too, just in a different way. The pain, the empty place inside that never goes away—he knew those things. For once, I felt like someone understood—not just because they were my friend and wanted to understand, but because they’d
been
there. That was the relief: talking to someone who’d been there, too.

Maybe this all made sense. Maybe there weren’t two Alecs, the one from school and the one I knew this summer. Maybe the way Alec acted at school was a cover-up, a way of keeping people at bay, a misguided attempt to look normal and
be
normal when only he knew how empty he felt. I could understand that: I lived it.

Across the street, Matt appeared and waved. In a couple hours, we’d be packing up for the camping trip we were taking out to the island. We’d been planning it since we’d managed to get the same night off. If Matt had seen Alec at my house, there’d be no escaping an argument.

I had to try to make him understand.

*     *     *

“He’s after you,” Matt said quietly, his eyes fixed on the water that stretched from the beach outward to the circle of buoys.

I pulled my paddle through the water, propelling us forward. Behind me, in the middle of the canoe, a couple of daypacks, two sleeping bags, a two-man tent, and way more food than we needed for one night lay piled in a heap.

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“Alec.”

At three o’clock, it was still hot, the beach still crowded with kids, their shouts ricocheting across the lake. My eyes scanned the water as we passed. There—what Matt saw: Alec’s head bobbing up and down out beyond the diving board.

“He’s not usually here on Saturday,” I said, then realized my mistake.

But he didn’t seem to hear me. Alec had Matt’s full attention. “He sees us,” Matt said.

I lifted a hand high to wave, but Alec, who appeared to be staring right at us, turned and swam toward shore. My stomach knotted; I looked away.

“Cocky bastard,” Matt said.

“He just didn’t see us, Matt.”

“How could he
not
?”

Above our heads, the late afternoon sun shone. Ahead, the lake opened wide, our island in the middle of all that blue, tiny waves lapping its shore.

“He was at your house last night and now he acts like he doesn’t see you.”

My heart dropped. So he knew. “It’s no big deal—it was no big deal last night.”

“I doubt that,” Matt said, but it was more to himself than to me.

We didn’t speak for several minutes after that; we didn’t need to. It was a silent truce. A temporary truce. Warm wind blew through my hair. I took the paddle out of the water and rested.

“Mind if we float?” I looked back at Matt. “It’s so beautiful.”

He shook his head.

I lay back on our gear and closed my eyes. I cared what Matt thought—that was the problem. His opinion, his friendship—those things meant something to me. He was one of the most caring people I knew, but he was also solid, unflappable. He had his head on straight; his own mother even said so.

Matt was the first person I ever talked to about my father leaving, all those years ago. I’d kept it inside for months, all through the long, horrible school year that was seventh grade. I hadn’t talked, and nobody had asked. Not nicely, anyway, not in a way that made you want to tell them how it felt to have your father just walk out and never come back or call or write or tell
you that he was alive or why he did it—just left you to think it was because of
you
.

But that summer after seventh grade, Matt did.

“Your parents got divorced this year, huh?” Matt had said, tilting his head to one side. We’d been at the beach on a bench that’s away from the swimming area, shaded by some trees.

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, my father left last November.” My throat tightened and ached.

“Do you see him ever?” Matt asked.

“Not really, not much. No.”

He kept quiet, just looking at me, waiting for me to speak again.

“Actually, not at all.” I took a deep breath and blurted it out. “I don’t even know where he is. I figure we’ll maybe hear from him when he gets settled someplace. That’s what my mom says.”

“That must be hard,” Matt said, like he meant it.

I stared at my left foot, which I was digging deep into the sand with my big toe. Tears had welled up in my eyes and I didn’t want to look up. Neither one of us said anything for a few minutes. Then Matt asked me to go in the water.

I’d been so grateful. Grateful not only for the chance to escape into the water, but also that Matt knew what I needed at that moment—to escape to someplace I couldn’t be seen.

The rest of that summer, Matt patiently walked to the mailbox with me day after day, watched me open it, and watched my eyes fill with tears. He learned to hate my father, hate what he’d done to me. He had no patience for that.

“What kind of father leaves his kids without telling them where he is?” Matt blurted out one day.

But I wasn’t ready to hear bad things about my dad. It didn’t fit with my dream of his coming back to us, like a white knight, with a perfectly good explanation for everything.

“There’s a reason,” I said, my voice trembling. “You’ll see.”

Matt pursed his lips and nodded, wrapped his arms around me, and held me tight. With Matt, I was always safe. I knew it then, and I knew it now.

With Alec, how could I be sure?

*     *     *

It was cool enough on the island to have a campfire without roasting ourselves, but just a small one. We’d dug a hole out there years ago, placed stones around the edge, and built our fires in the same spot ever since. With that burning slowly behind us, we lay near the edge of the water on a soft bed of rusty pine needles and watched the sun slip down behind the trees.

Matt lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, facing me. “My mom said Alec was out late mowing your lawn a few nights ago. You know, I would have done that for you. . . .”

“I didn’t ask him to do it.”

Matt looked away, shaking his head.

“He was just being nice, Matt. I mean, do you really know him?”

“I know enough.”

“Like what?”

“Like the way he struts around school,” Matt said. “The way
he talks about girls he goes out with. You should hear the things he says about Marcy.”