Split (16 page)

“Don’t let them scare you,” he said. “It’s just weakness, but you’re strong, right? Yes, you are. You’re strong.”

I nodded. I hoped I was. I hoped I couldn’t end up like that, with hunger and panic and need in my eyes. My dad’s arms gripped me, and I relaxed in them.

The next morning, he let them back in the house, and a few days later, a real estate agent came over. She was told my mother had cut her hand when cutting up a chicken. I don’t remember how long it was until we moved, but our first night in our new house, I went to their bedroom. My mother was sitting in a rocking chair with his head on her lap.

He looked up at her and said, “Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to have to do that again.”

She pushed his head back to her thighs and stroked his hair.

When she tucked me in that night, I said, “Let’s stay here. It’s a nice house. I like my room. Let’s stay.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re staying.”

Her eyes traveled over to the window. I thought she was just studying the new neighborhood, but now I think that that far-off look was about all the things she couldn’t have. Now I think she saw her life shrink, contained inside a two-thousand-square-foot house.

When she looked back at me, she said, “I promise.”

She wrinkled up her nose and waited for me to smooth it out before she gave me a kiss.

Now, as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, I wonder what I’m doing to her. Am I wrong to hope for Thanksgiving? Surely it’s worse to stay trapped like that than to risk getting out.

The sky is unblackening in preparation for the sun. I go for a run, watching the horizon and listening to my blood pulse. I train my footsteps to a mantra:
She is coming. She is coming
.

chapter 24

a
t Tom’s party
, the music is pounding through the house.

Dakota says, “You brought me. Now you’ve gotta dance with me.”

Tonight I have already touched her waist to guide her inside and her forearm while getting her a drink.

We walk out onto the makeshift dance floor. (Tom has pushed all the living room furniture to the walls). For a second, we face each other, neither of us moving. Then she takes a step toward me, slings her arm over my shoulder, and, with hips grooving, sinks down.
Oh, that kind of dancing. I can do that
. I put my hand on her hair, and as she comes up, I slide it down her back until my hand rests just above the curve of her butt. Under my fingers, her back muscles are working, keeping her hips on the move. I pull her toward me, and in one quick move, she straddles my leg. The beat drives us closer together, and her breath brushes my shoulder.

She leans back, her weight against my hand, and I see her stomach stretching long, her jeans dipping lower. I curl over her, my mouth by her collar bone, her cinnamon-rain scent everywhere. When she comes back up, I lean down so her lips come close to mine. Her eyes start to close, and I pull back.

“You want something to drink?” I say.

Tom, who has been watching us, says, “I’ll keep her company. You go.”

She asks for a beer, and I thread my way through flying arms and pounding feet as I head for the kitchen. A cooler sits on the table. After grabbing her drink, I rifle through a bunch of ice and bottles to find something nonalcoholic. (I’m driving.) I retrieve a Limonata and watch Dakota dancing with Tom. She keeps her distance, maybe a foot and half between them. The dirty dancing is just for me.

“Who’s she?” I hear next to me.

I turn and see Caitlyn watching Dakota.

“Come on,” I say, because I can barely hear Caitlyn over the music.

I catch Dakota’s eye and gesture to the door. She nods and continues her moves while I lead Caitlyn to the porch. She hops up on the railing, and I rest Dakota’s beer on the porch rail. Caitlyn launches into twenty questions: What’s her name? Where did you meet? What is she like? But I become so monosyllabic, she switches topics.

She tucks her chin to her chest and snickers. “Tom’s quite a dancer, huh? He’s too uncoordinated even for that, much less soccer.”

Tom’s not a bad guy. Someone who you could trust with a girlfriend. Not at all like Edward. Tom isn’t trying to use me as a ladder to get to the top of the social stratum. He has never seemed to care about that.

“Tom’s okay. Leave him alone.”

“Good thing he has a man to stick up for him.”

“I get that you needed someone to play off Eric, and I was cool with that, but now … What, you’ve gotta put someone else down to lift yourself up?”

She lifts her eyebrows and crosses her arms; I’m out. I’m sure of it. Maybe not this minute, maybe not even this month, but slowly I’ll be cast to the side. Maybe that’s where I need to be to keep that bastard-no-longer pledge once and for all.

Eric comes out of the house, slamming the screen door behind him.

“Hey,” he says, weaving a little already.

He puts his arm around her back, and she nuzzles into his shoulder. Their mouths meet for a second. Well, I guess that’s why he has become Mr. Friendly Guy.

“So, who’s your date?” Eric asks.

“Her name is … We’re not dating.”

“Yeah, right.”

“How come no one believes me when I say that?”

They both laugh, and I push out a couple of ha-has with them.

“If you dance like that with someone you aren’t dating, what do you do with your girlfriends?” Caitlyn asks.

My cheeks get hot, and they laugh again.

I feel a weight on my shoulder and turn to find Dakota, who is making me her chin rest. When I introduce them, Dakota and Caitlyn size each other up.

I hand Dakota her beer, and she offers me a swig. It’s bitter and rich. Eric puts his arm around Caitlyn, and they go in for another long kiss. I exchange a glance with Dakota as their kissing escalates.

“Hey,” I finally say. “There are rooms upstairs.”

They separate, then look at each other and head inside.

“Ho-kay,” I say. “Let’s walk?”

She puts her arm around the porch pillar and leans out over the bushes, looking up into the sky. “Okay.”

When we’re on the sidewalk, I can’t think of anything to say; there’s too much residual heat in my mouth from the dance, from how close my lips were to her bare skin, from how she felt riding my thigh.

“How’s your brother?” she asks. “It’s funny. I would have pegged you as the oldest.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem like someone who has relied on other people to take care of you. You know, you’re bossy.”

“My brother wasn’t really around for a long time. College. And my mom had enough of her own problems to deal with. It was my dad who …” I want to say took care of me, but that doesn’t sound right, does it?

“Who what?”

“Listen, how come no one believes us when we say we aren’t dating?”

She shrugs. “Probably because we want to.”

I don’t say anything. She stops walking and takes my hand. She puts it around her back and then slings her arm over my shoulder again. I’m surprised I don’t exhale steam.

“You want to dance here?” I ask.

We can still hear the music floating out of the house.

“No,” she says. “I want you to make your move. Meet me halfway.”

“No.”

“Jace, I honestly don’t get you. I know you want to date me. Hell, everyone knows you want to date me. So, what’s the problem?”

“Yes, all right? Yes, I do.”

A dog starts barking. I stop and wait until the dog’s commentary is done.

“Your last girlfriend couldn’t have been that bad.”

“She wasn’t … Believe me, it wasn’t her. I’m just not a good boyfriend, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Oh, really? What makes you such an awful boyfriend?”

I glue my lips together.

She waits.

Glued.

She waits.

Superglued.

She caves.

“So let me get this straight. You like me. You want to date me, but you think I shouldn’t date you? Don’t I get to decide that? There’s a fine line between chivalry and control.”

I shrug. “Sometimes people make the wrong decision, and if I can help it, you won’t.”

“Jace, that is so condescending. It assumes you know more than me.”

“I do. I know more about me.”

“Well, that’s fixable.”

She reaches up and draws a line with her knuckle from my temple to my jaw. I step back, out of her reach.

“I can’t, okay? I can’t.”

“Know what?” Dakota says. “It’s not okay. I’ll get someone else to drive me home.”

She turns, and I watch her walk away.

chapter 25

“d
o you really think we need this much?”
Christian asks as I weigh a bag of green beans on the grocery-store scale.

This is the first time we’ve been grocery shopping together, and we’re doing it on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving since both of us have the rest of the week off (him as a long Thanksgiving break and me because school was only a half day today). We were hoping to avoid the crowds, but they aren’t cooperating.

I watch the red needle swing and then settle. “Recipe calls for a pound and a half.”

“There will only be four of us, Jace. You’re cooking enough to feed a homeless shelter.”

I spin the plastic bag and twist the green tie around it. “Mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberries, green beans, and turkey. Sounds reasonable to me.”

“Twelve pounds of turkey.”

“That’s actually a very small bird.”

“And then Mirriam is making, what? Four pies?” Christian says.

“You’re exaggerating.” I tick them off in my mind—pumpkin, apple, pecan, and peach—and then glance at him aslant. “Oh. Four.”

“How much do you think Mom will eat?” he asks. He looks down at the cart and runs his thumb over the green plastic handle. Back and forth. Back and forth. “And we had to shop organic?” he says.

I put the green beans in the cart. “You’re worried about the money?”

“I’m worried about the waste.”

He pushes the cart. As we pass the mushrooms, he slows, but doesn’t stop.

“You don’t like the menu?”

“No, Jace, it isn’t that.” He picks up a lemon and passes it from one hand to the other.

“We need two lemons.”

He doesn’t reach for another one. “What if she doesn’t come?”

“She’ll come.”

“Jace, she hasn’t even left yet. Isn’t it a day’s drive from Chicago?”

I shrug and push the cart out of the produce department.

“You need onions,” Christian calls.

I park the cart by the chicken breasts and head back for the onions. White, I decide, and pick up a bulb. The papery skin flakes off in my fingers revealing green lines that stretch like longitude marks. Christian has a plastic bag open and waiting. I toss three in.

“Sometimes I thought she would come out to New York.”

“She’ll come. All that time, I’ll bet she stayed for me. Now there’s no reason. The night I left, she told me she would come to me,” I say.

I take the bag from him. Maybe she said that just so I would leave. Would I have left without that reassurance? Is that why she told me Thanksgiving, to keep me away? Did she know that I wouldn’t want to return once I got settled here with Christian? I spin the bag too fast. It whips out of my hand, clunks to the floor, and rolls to Christian’s feet. He picks it up and twirls it closed. When he hands it back to me, his forehead wrinkles with a sort of pity-worry look. But then it smooths out.

He sighs and says, “Does she still like cherries? Maybe we should have some fresh fruit on the table.”

I choose to believe that I’ve convinced him, that he’s not indulging me.

When we get home, I drop my four bags on the table and go straight to the computer. She’s supposed to be here in two days. Christian’s right; unless she’s driving straight through, she should have started. But I get a two-word e-mail from her.

Just fine.

I sit down, Google her route, and find hotels every four hours on the trip. I drop the links in an e-mail and write:

Thought this might be helpful. When are you leaving?

Christian is watching me while unloading the insanely expensive winter cherries. He takes out the green beans and sets them beside the cherries on the chair. His way of unloading groceries: dry and crunchy items on one chair, bathroom stuff/tissues/cleaners on another, and fridge and frozen goods remain on the table. That organized. That much like my mother. If she was coming, she would have planned out her own hotels, I know. I stand up and start helping him.

“Anything?” he asks.

“She hasn’t left yet.”

We are silent so my words dog us. They follow me around as I kneel down to find the herbs for the rub. They cling to my ear as I put the spice jars on the counter. I decide to shake them off.

“But she will,” I say, while he continues to organize frozen from fresh.

“What?”

“She will come.”

When the silence falls again, I start making the brine, pouring a steady stream of salt into a pot of water. I measure out and dump in the herbs: small dried sage leaves; sharp, unforgiving rosemary. He comes in, opens the freezer door, and begins to fit the new food in.

“You don’t think so,” I say.

“Maybe we should call.”

“I’ll just finish this first,” I say. “We’ve bought the groceries, anyway. And the brine alone takes twenty-four hours.”

I’d rather keep thinking she’s on her way.

I reach for a knife to start cutting the flesh-toned plastic off the bird, but he catches my hand.

“Make the call,” Christian says.

I dial and hear it ring.
Please don’t pick up. Be gone. Be on the road already. Be in a hotel
. I want my dad to pick up and say in a breathless voice, “Jennifer?” I want to hear that desperation.

Ring
.

“Judge Witherspoon.” My father’s voice comes, gruff and angry.

“It’s me.”

I hear something behind him that makes it sound like he’s on a train platform or something.

“Why are you calling us again? You need money?”

Sometimes I wonder why words can’t actually make us bleed.

“What’s that sound?” I ask.

It clicks off, and I can hear him more clearly now.

“The vacuum cleaner,” he says, and my stomach tightens.

“Mom’s cleaning?”

“Of course.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s busy right now,” he says. “She decided to scrub the floors by hand this morning, instead of asking the maid to do it. She’s doing everything herself for the party we’re having.”

“For the what?”

“Thanksgiving party. We’re having the judges over.”

There’s a pause while I try to absorb what he’s saying. She’s not going to walk out on him before a party with his colleagues.

“Can I talk to her?” I say.

“Who is it?” I hear her ask in the background.

“It’s Jace.”

There is a long pause, and I know what’s happening. They’re doing the post-abuse dance. My dad is judging: How many minutes can I let her talk to earn her forgiveness? How close can I stand? If she comes on the line, I know he’s back in charming mode, know he has something to make up for.

“Jace?” she says, but her voice is shaking, and she hits the sibilant sound too long. “How are you?”

My throat tightens up. “Are you all right?”

I grip the phone tighter. I know we won’t really be able to talk, not with him hovering over the phone. But I wish she could say,
Never better. I’m heading out tomorrow and I can’t wait to see you and your brother
. I wish she would say,
We’ll be okay now
.

“I’m fine, honey. Don’t worry about me, okay?”

Her vowels are flat; it hurts to move her mouth.

“When are you leaving?” I ask.

“No, he’s doing fine, too. Lassst night, he thought that I wasss trying to find you. How ssstrange that you called usss today. Where are you?”

“Say ‘that far?’” I tell her.

“That far?” she says.

“Does he know that you’re leaving?”

“Not ex-ss-actly. You can’t call usss again, okay, honey? It’sss not good for you to think we can be a family again.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Jennifer,” I hear him say.

“I have to go now.”

“He doesn’t know about the e-mail account, right? Has he found it?”

“No, no. I should go. Bye, honey.”

“Are you coming?”

Click
.

Christian is waiting in the kitchen doorway. Characteristically, he doesn’t ask. He just walks beside me.

I step back. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s in trouble, Christian. Real trouble. She just took one from him, but he hasn’t let up. He’s suspicious, but he can’t find proof yet. Calling was … I just made things worse.”

I cup my forehead in my hand, my thumb pressing into my temple. I know what I need to do. I put her at risk when I drove off without her. I put her at risk when I hit my father, knowing full well that he would not tolerate me in his house anymore. I can’t leave her there unprotected. I need to go back. But Christian isn’t going to react well. I’m going to have to argue.

I’ll say, “I have to get her.”

And he’ll say …
My imagination stutters.

It doesn’t matter. Anything he says, I’ll have the same response: “I have to.”

I take a breath, drop my hand, and turn around.

When he sees my face, he sighs.

“Okay,” he says, his voice tight and his elbows pasted to his sides. “Let’s go.”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath, but now it comes out in a rush. He’ll come with me? My eyes start to sting.

“Really?” I say.

“Really.”