Cherish Farrah, page 20
He’s squatting again, hovering and turning my arm despite the fact that it’s entirely overcast by his shadow and he can’t see it any better than I can. He must, though, because he clucks in regret.
“That can’t feel good,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I promise through a smile, though it’s unlikely a child can ever reassure the parent. I’m almost certain he’ll blow cool air over the disrupted skin if this goes on much longer, but when I try again to retract it, Jerry Whitman lays his palm flat against my arm.
I suck my teeth, and he looks from my arm to my face, though he doesn’t otherwise adjust.
“Does that burn a bit?” he asks, and I nod.
“Yeah. A little.”
Another second and he removes the hand that seems to radiate heat by comparison to my cool, damp skin.
“I was afraid of that,” he says with a chuckle, and then he lets me go entirely. Almost immediately, he lifts his hand again, index finger raised as though he’s considering something before he points at my wrist. “Were you wearing a bracelet earlier?”
“The one with the engraving,” I agree enthusiastically. Instead of cradling my stinging forearm against me, I plant the heels of both hands against the rim of the pool as though the topic excites me. As though I’m unaware he wouldn’t be asking unless he were already sure. As though I can’t tell by the way he’s asking that he thinks I shouldn’t have been. I will not lie to him—not after the way he and Brianne kept me when my parents tried to take me home. Or if I lie it will only be the way parents expect their children to, the way siblings use each other as scapegoats. It will be harmless. “Cherish thought it’d make me feel better,” I tell him, “after being so ill and hideous for two days.”
I smile but I don’t bare my teeth. I keep my lips closed, and instead hunch my shoulders high as though my head is sinking into my chest, I’m so touched by my best friend’s gesture.
“It’s so beautiful,” I say. “Of course I knew better than to wear something that precious in the pool.”
“It’s an heirloom bracelet,” Jerry Whitman says, but not chastisingly. More evidentially.
“I love the name Eloise.”
I should have waited a beat. With anyone else, I would have. But I trust Mr. Whitman, especially after today, so I’m not listening to him. I’m not giving him a chance to speak, and instead of performing penitence, I’m trying to impress upon him how special I understand the jewelry to be.
It’s the kind of self-involved Cherish would get away with being—but I’m the family’s new addition. I have to be much more conscientious before I can get away with flouting the house rules. I have to be perfectly well-behaved, a pleasure so that my invitation is extended again and again.
“I didn’t feel right accepting it,” I say as confession. “It must mean a great deal to all of you.”
“It does. It was my mother’s, and Cherish has always understood the gravity of inheritance.”
This time I wait, but so does he. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so squarely in Jerry Whitman’s sights, or else it’s the kind of gaze that feels singular. It’s impressive. I could see this stare cutting through any manner of Cherish’s dissents or tantrums, stilling her into silence because Mr. Whitman is being so quietly direct. I find myself studying it, noting the anatomy of the presentation from his unwavering eyes to the athleticism that allows him to stay squatted beside me without tensing or his muscles trembling.
I should react, but I’ve never seen Mr. Whitman be the least bit disciplining; I’m not sure what he expects in return.
Control.
I wait a moment more. He will know I’m unaccustomed to this side of him, that I require some manner of instruction or explanation on how to proceed.
But his brow starts to furrow and then irons out almost before it’s noticeable.
I’ve been matching his gaze too long. He’s noticed—which can only mean Cherish wouldn’t have.
Now I curl my arm protectively close to my torso and let my eyes fall, sweeping over the pool and out across the darkness of the yard rather than studying the stone beneath me. He’ll know I’m not Cherish, not exactly. Even if I’m unsettled, I wouldn’t cower.
He takes in a breath before he speaks, giving me a chance to return my gaze to his attentively.
“I’ll have a word with Cherish.”
I don’t flinch, don’t give any suggestion that I am threatened by this course of action.
“Family heirlooms are for family,” he says.
It’s night and even the light is creating shadows, so I don’t know if Jerry Whitman sees the way my face goes slack.
Control.
I go still, the way he did a moment ago.
Control.
Even the good make missteps. That’s what I tell myself when it threatens to uncoil in the deep of me. When the release that I let spill out over Kelly wants to unspool in my belly, when I wonder what it takes to knock the wind out of Jerry Whitman and I immediately know that it has to do with his daughter.
Control.
Because it would serve no purpose past this moment to tell him what happened in this pool last night, or in mine the night he and Brianne had to come retrieve Cherish and me. It would leave him breathless, knowing that there’s an empty space inside her, that it’s of his creation, and that only I can fill it—but there’d be no going back.
Control.
Tight.
Tight.
Wind it back like a fishing line.
Even the good make missteps, and Jerry Whitman is good.
Control.
I will not share our secrets. I’ll only tell him what he already knows.
“Cherish knows that,” I say, in a reassuring voice that nearly pleads on her behalf. “I guess she just considers me family.”
A moment later, and one corner of his mouth ticks as though it wants to smile. When it doesn’t spread, he looks almost smug in the uneven darkness. It could be a smirk in this light, a challenge. Like he knows more on the subject than I do, despite the fact that Cherish didn’t know she was empty until she saw me smile.
“Genetically, Cherish and I are probably more family than she could be with Eloise.”
I laugh. I have to. I spoke again without meaning to, and they aren’t the kinds of words that can be taken back. I have to be a silly, thoughtless teenager who doesn’t understand the impact of what she’s said.
Jerry Whitman turns his face from me and I almost hear Kelly laughing, the broken way he bore the pain so that I’d know he was willing to hurt to prove me wrong.
They only want one.
My legs are still in the water, and even if I try to kick Kelly down again, it’d be too slow and heavy the way it was in my dream. He’d just keep laughing because he doesn’t know what the Whitmans and I did together today, that I am as in sync with them as I am with Cherish now. He doesn’t know that they’ve already disproven whatever he wanted me to believe that night.
Kelly is wrong—but I have never been this clumsy before tonight, and I wonder if my mother’s got something to do with it. She came and disrupted me, even if she didn’t get her way—or else she did and I just wasn’t smart enough to see it until now. Until I’ve said the single most offensive thing imaginable to the adoring father of my best friend.
Nichole never fails. She never falters. If she’d really come to take me home, she would have and no unrehearsed display of unity between me and the Whitmans would’ve changed that.
She didn’t come to take me home. She came to ruin this one. To get inside my head, pretending she didn’t understand the waltz we did around Kelly’s phantom body, letting me place her exactly where he fell, so that I’d uncoil it again. She got me to call it back to the surface and I couldn’t tuck it away.
Cherish’s father stands, but he’s always angled away from me, the light from the house splashing across his face where I can’t see it. His shoulders rotating once when his hands slide into his pockets.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to tell him I’m not myself, that this is sabotage and I am not to blame—until I do. Until, as quickly as my breath went sharp and shallow, it settles.
I know how to show him that I’m not myself, that I couldn’t be.
Thank you for loving our daughter the way we do, Farrah.
It’s what he knows best about me. That I love his daughter. That the real Farrah—the Farrah who is in her right mind, who can be held responsible for what she’s saying—would never speak ill of Cherish. So I do, mildly, because he’ll still feel bruised and defensive over what I’ve already said.
“She has been kind of inconsiderate lately,” I say, my words slipping free as though on tiptoe, venturing but timid. “Not just about family heirlooms.”
Jerry doesn’t turn completely, but his chin almost meets his left shoulder when he glances back, his weekend attire completed by the absence of product holding his hair in place. There’s a sharpness to the way it curves away from his brow.
“She doesn’t mean to be, though,” I reassure him. “That’s not how Cherish is. When she hurts you it’s never because she meant to. She just broke up with Kelly! I think it’s got more to do with that than losing respect for Whitman family tradition.” And then I confess as though unaware anyone else can hear me, “Or really wanting to steal Tariq away from me.”
I don’t wait for him to face me before shrugging the way self-conscious teenagers do when they’re trying most to convince themselves, and when he does, I’m looking between the pool and the sky at nothing. I’m as confused by Cherish’s behavior as he is. I’m helpless.
“It’s okay. It isn’t like Tariq and I were really together. She probably doesn’t think it counts since she knows we didn’t do the kinds of things she and Kelly did.” I pull my lips to the side because it’s awkward talking about intimacy with a dad, even when it’s a relief to get something off your chest.
I wish I could see his face without looking. I want to know whether or not Jerry Whitman is preparing to scoop me up the way he did at the renovation site, even though Cherish isn’t hurt this time—and even though she’s the reason I am not myself.
“Come on,” he finally says through what Cherish calls a dad sigh because she thinks Jerry’s adoring brand of bemused exasperation is common. “Brianne’ll never forgive me if I don’t get you out of the water and get that arm dressed.”
He gestures toward the house with his head and without removing his hands from his pockets. He doesn’t extend a hand to help me up because sometimes he coddles his daughter and sometimes he reminds her that he knows she’s capable. It’s loving in a way that bolsters her confidence and doesn’t feel like a gift because it isn’t. It’s an acknowledgment.
I show him that I understand, smiling through a firm nod before easily getting to my feet.
“Where’s your towel?” he asks, walking ahead of me because I don’t need a chaperone in what is now my backyard.
“I forgot to grab one,” I tell him, without confessing that I’d hoped Cherish would bring one down to me when she noticed. “Should I wait outside while you get one?”
“Since when is that an option?” he jokes. “Am I not supposed to know about the last time you girls made a post-swim mess in the kitchen?”
“We were very mindful not to wake anyone,” I say, almost as dismissively as Cherish would.
“Church mice, the both of you.” Jerry feigns sincerity, holding the door and bowing his head at me while I pass. “Have a seat and I’ll get the supplies.”
I obey and sidle up to the kitchen island while he disappears around a corner. It must be a drawer in one of the nearby alcoves, because I hear it open and shut, and Jerry’s back a moment later.
“Impaling small feet on long nails aside,” he begins, half lowering himself before he’s maneuvered the stool beneath him. “Cherish never hurt herself much more than a skinned knee or scraped chin.”
He’s got a bottle the size of a nail polish container between his thumb and forefinger, and he’s shaking the thing to mix its contents.
“This stuff still works better than a plain old Band-Aid, and no goopy mess festers underneath.”
“It’s just a couple layers of skin missing,” I say, twisting my arm so I can see the wound myself. Under the kitchen lights, it’s an angrier bright red than it looked by the pool, and there are more abrasions surrounding it like little inflamed satellites.
“It turns out skin is sort of important,” Jerry tells me, setting the bottle down on the island and fiddling with a nail kit I hadn’t noticed before. Opening the clear sleeve, he unsheathes what looks like a set of small pliers. “So we’re just going to give you an artificial layer to stave off infection.”
He catches my eye and then tilts his chin as though he can read my mind, or as though having done so, he won’t embarrass me by divulging what he’s found there.
“No, Fair-bear, this isn’t going to hurt, no need to worry.”
My lips lift while my shoulders dramatically relax so that he knows I trust him. That I have chosen to, and that it means something. It is not an honor given lightly, and in the whole world right now, it’s one only on offer to the occupants of this house.
“Ready?” he asks, his brow high and what must be the cuticle trimmer raised as though for my approval.
“Ready,” I say, and then squeeze my eyes shut playfully, as though afraid to watch.
The trimming end of the instrument is cold against my skin—or the layer below the skin that scraped free on the edge of the swimming pool. The sensation makes me straighten up and open my eyes, and Jerry checks in again.
“Okay?”
“Yes.” I nod and perform calm, glancing absently around the empty kitchen while he works. I don’t ask why he’s trimming the impossibly thin and almost indiscernible frays of skin at the edges of my wound. It’s not something I’d think to do or have ever done before dressing a severe scrape, especially not a tender one, but Jerry Whitman is known for his attention to detail. There is a process for all things, a proper way to prepare, proceed, and complete a task. Even when his renovations threatened unwieldiness and petered close to breaking his intended budget, he always reined them in. He always knew what could be trimmed to salvage a profit.
Cherish had no idea how it worked. When we were in middle school and her dad decided his passionate hobby had run its course, she was completely unimpressed. I asked why he’d lose interest when his last four flips had sold well over his projection, and not only was she unaware; she acted like it was weird that I knew that. She must’ve thought everyone had a head for real estate and renovation. She thought profit was a guarantee—which her parents probably found adorable. Except it meant she couldn’t ever marvel at her father’s prowess. If she couldn’t even witness it, it certainly wasn’t something she could study. Which meant she would never adopt his skill, make it her own, improve upon it and outshine him, the way parents must hope their children will.
My breath clips, a sharp and sudden abbreviation I hear almost before I can process that I made it.
My wound is stinging, hot and angry beneath the hand I’ve protectively shielded it with. I’ve retracted it from Jerry Whitman’s reach, my eyes searching our scene to determine what’s happened in the time I’ve been inside my mind.
He’s still sitting on the stool next to mine, but he’s twisted at the waist, holding a cotton ball to the mouth of a bottle of alcohol that he tilts three times in quick succession before motioning for my arm.
For a moment I have a silly hesitation. I want to keep my arm snug against my torso with the opposite hand guarding it—until I hear Kelly’s crippled laugh. Until I’m behind his eyes and it’s me contorted on the lawn outside the gazebo, my arm pinned to my side because of the bull’s-eye hiding beneath his shirt.
I return my arm to Jerry Whitman before I’ve deduced what happened because of the pressure above his brow. He’s concerned, concentrating on the dressing while I’ve been distracted.
“A little too close,” he says, pressing the damp cotton against what feels like an opening, the acknowledgment serving as an apology. “We just wanted to trim the strays away, not make it worse.”
I make an involuntary sound between wincing at the pain and agreeing with him.
“Maybe we’d better just get on with closing this up,” he says, as though he’ll soon be suturing a gaping wound.
I nod.
“Okay,” he says now that we’re decided, and sets all else down before reaching for the first bottle I saw him shake. “We’re in the home stretch now.”
And then he pauses, holding my gaze in a way that stills the air around me. My hair is still wet, like my suit and the towel I’m sitting on over the stool, but the occasional breeze of conditioned air I’ve been feeling disappears.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, tipping his forehead like he’s preparing to let go of my bicycle for the first time instead of apply some liquid bandage to my hurt arm.
Jerry Whitman’s question is an invitation, not just to trust him, but to entrust myself to him. To his family. To be less strict with my mask when I’m with them.
I may never get this chance again.
Kelly may never be on the grass outside the gazebo again, and I might never get to uncoil myself the way I did with him. I may never get to bring my weight down on the broken side of him, to hear him bark again. But that doesn’t matter anymore.
Jerry Whitman is waiting. He won’t proceed without my go-ahead. My trust.
Fair-bear.
I uncoil a little.
Control is a warning in my mother’s voice now. It’s a strategy in her offensive, to keep me from being truly at home here.
