Just a Girl, page 14
One night she’d gone out to his house to pick him up. Earlier on the phone, Luke had said he might even be up to going out somewhere.
But when she got there, nobody answered the door. She went in and saw half a pizza in a splayed-out box from Pizza Palace on the counter. Immediately, she felt gaggy.
“Luke?” She went downstairs and saw the light was on in his bedroom.
“Are you in there?” she called, knocking on the door.
“Come in, girly,” he said.
“What’s going on . . .”
“Quick,” he said, shutting his laptop and setting it on the floor. He stood, only in boxers and a T-shirt. He hopped on one foot, not bothering with his crutches. He grabbed her arm and tugged her backward toward the bed. “My mom had to go out to Dalby with my grandpa and my grandma’s at bowling. Get over here.”
“What?”
“You know what, girly,” he said. She stood in front of his half-made bed and he started rubbing up behind her.
“Luke, are you sure that it won’t hurt you . . . ?”
“I didn’t break my dick, Jesus!” he said. “Come on.”
He took off her sweater, then the dress she wore under it. Her boots were up on the front hall rug. She had worn something cute in the hopes they’d go out.
When she turned around, he was taking off his T-shirt. She could already see his boner in his boxers. He took those off too and sat on the bed, his back to the headboard.
“Just get on top.”
“Can’t I just . . . maybe I can just give you . . .”
“No,” he said. He was past the pity blow jobs she’d given him. “I want the whole deal.”
This was the last thing she felt like doing. Mainly because she didn’t want to undo all the work she’d done to feel cute. After weeks of just sitting around, tonight she’d made an effort. Her hair was nice, she’d spent time on her makeup. In addition to all that, she’d done Pilates with Mercy earlier that day, in an effort to cheer her up about Caleb. Mercy was a disaster. Caleb was now staying with some relatives but Mercy wasn’t able to find out where. Mrs. Kovash was regularly asking Kaj and Rianne to come over for dinner, to hang out, just to get Mercy off the couch. They’d done the workout all the way, no excuses, and though she’d felt jealous of how easy it was for Mercy in some parts, now she felt tight and fit. Energized. Her muscles punished and sore in the way that made her feel good about herself. She wanted Luke to admire her, see and say that she looked pretty, not just get her naked in two seconds. She reached over and turned off the nightstand light.
“Come on,” he said, watching her settle herself over him.
Her thighs burned as she got in place, her whole body tense to make sure she didn’t hurt his leg. But they’d barely started kissing when he told her to get a condom. And when she moved to get off him, he made a sound like she’d hurt him.
“Shit! Luke, are you all right?”
“Yes! I’m fine! Hurry up!”
She opened the condom still standing up. Above them, they could hear Sally’s babyish barking, her little puppy claws clicking on the floor.
“Should Sally be loose like that?” she asked. “What if she gets into something?”
He snatched the condom out of her hand. “She’s fine.”
Only after he was inside her did his crabbiness cease. Then he was sweet again. Gentle. Whispering into her ear how good she felt, and how pretty she was, and how much he missed her, and needed her, and goddamn, Rianne, do you even know?
And yes, she did know. She totally knew. He was so handsome, Luke was. And nice. And sweet to his family and his puppy and to her, mostly. Except lately, maybe.
She wondered if they’d actually go out. She was feeling so uncomfortable and bored lately. Even having this sex was boring. Uninteresting. She tried to make good sounds so he wouldn’t notice. She knew how lucky she was. How sad Mercy was to be without Caleb. How tense Kaj was feeling about knowing she wanted to break up with Kip.
But Luke? Here he was loving her and wanting her to be with him. Desperate for sex with her. But she knew that his wanting extended past that.
“Goddammit. God. Thank you, baby,” he said, pushing her against him harder. Like he was driving something. A car, a truck. Not a person. She pressed her hands against the headboard so it wouldn’t knock as loud against the wall. He took this movement as a sign for him to kiss her boobs, rub his face between them, and she wanted to laugh out loud at how fucking crazy life was. His leg in its cast was a heavy weight behind her on the bed, like one of those balls prisoners wore on their ankles in cartoons. A jailball, she had called it until Renata had teased her and told their mom that Rianne didn’t know what a ball and chain was, how stupid. Like this was some big proof of how much of a dummy Rianne was.
Was Renata a virgin still? After all these years? There’d been no boyfriends for Renata through high school. And no one asked or cared if she had one now. Renata could be gay for all they knew.
It had never occurred to her, Renata having any kind of sex life. Any relationships, really, beyond family and her music. It would kind of explain a lot, though, if Renata was gay. How controlled she was about everything. How careful. Maybe everyone else did see it, except Rianne? She would have to ask her father, probably. He would talk about that kind of thing. Her mother, just like Renata, would dismiss it with an eye roll.
But how cool would that be, to see Renata surprise them all! Renata being an actual human being, with human behaviors for once. It made her almost . . . interesting. More than the high-achieving, rule-following, scolding older-sister grouch that she always had been.
Why hadn’t he come yet? She shut her eyes and pressed down harder. He said, “Yeah, baby.” She opened her eyes and he was staring at her. Looking up at her. His blue eyes so wide in the semidark. His hands reaching past her boobs and up around her shoulders, holding her face. Rubbing his thumb over her mouth. “Fuck,” he said. “You feel so good.”
She felt so guilty. It wasn’t a good sign to be riding your boyfriend’s dick while wondering if your older sister who you couldn’t really stand might be a lesbian. But there was only so much pretending she could do while sober. She hoped he wasn’t thinking that he was making her come. Because she couldn’t pretend that anymore. They were so far, far away from that.
DISSEMBLE: seem, bleed, side, meld, miss, less . . .
He said her name. She said his. He said, I love this, I love you, and when he shut his eyes while he came, she could hear Sally barking and scratching above them. The only blue eyes she wanted to see were not Luke’s, but off somewhere she didn’t know about. Some other place than this basement bedroom entirely.
TEN
ON GOOD FRIDAY in April, she didn’t have school. But instead of sleeping in, she was mopping and sweeping her grandmother’s house. Her father had flown back for the weekend and he was loading boxes and furniture and plastic Rubbermaid tubs into a storage pod. This was her trying to work off his goodwill about him giving her the truck. The day was sunny and chilly and beautiful. Her father had stripped down to a T-shirt, sweating while he carried load after load out of the house.
She squeezed out mop water with her hands. The night before she’d gone out to eat with Luke and Kaj and Kip to Brewery Grill, but the place was packed with a groom’s dinner. So they’d ended up at Pizza Palace, where she drank Diet Coke and tried not be a buzzkill.
“Who doesn’t love pizza?” Luke asked her, the millionth person in the world who had asked her this. “Who orders the turkey sandwich at a pizza place?”
Some things took too long to explain. Some things were not worth explaining. Some people just asked questions when they didn’t want an answer.
When everything had started with Luke felt like decades ago. She was just a party girl then. This totally up for whatever chick. Now the whole world had tilted like a bucket spilling out into a drain and nothing felt the same. She was as energetic as the mop water too. Pretending she was in love with him—he said it all the time now and she would just kiss him back as an answer—pretending she wanted to have sex, pretending she was happy for his every bit of progress (physical therapy goals achieved, stitches taken out, no more painkillers) wore her out.
All she could think of was Sergei and the for-sale sign in the front of her house. The boxes from the liquor store that her mother was piling up in the living room.
“Start sorting through your things,” her mother reminded Rianne every time she came in the front door. “Anything you want to get rid of, let me know and I’ll donate it to the Goodwill. Just leave it by the back door and I’ll take it on my way to work!”
Her mother was so cheerful lately. Even boxing up Renata’s old stuff made her happy and full of energy in a way that seemed strange to Rianne. Lucy Hettrick had her phone stuck to her ear every second, talking to Renata, going over what things could be tossed, what needed to be stored. The leftover clothes could be donated, the sheet music needed to be stored so she could go through it later, the piano was going to be donated to Renata’s piano teacher who lived in Dalby.
It hadn’t been so simple for Rianne. Digging through just her own closet meant several depressive evenings reviewing ugly clothes from middle school, volleyball team photos she’d never taken out of the plastic order sleeve, her old retainer in its watermelon-colored case, the busted-out pill packs from her first few months of birth control. Gabby had wanted to make a sculpture with them a long time ago, as a joke. Seeing the soft plastic wheels in a shoe box made her wonder if Gabby even remembered the whole stupid idea. Then there were the YMCA camp photos. Eli, standing behind her. His ears stuck out in the worst way.
“Looks good, honey,” her father said, passing through the kitchen with another box marked “RIANNE” that he set on the counter. He swiped his forehead with a dish towel that had a faded goose wearing a sun hat on it.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Just setting aside some of your grandmother’s stuff for you,” he said. “You know. Dishes and cups and stuff. Basics.”
“Did Mom tell you to do that?”
“No, but I doubt she’d mind. Your grandmother has two whole pallets of toilet paper in that bathroom.”
“You should give them to Mom, then.”
“Your mother can afford her own toilet paper, honey.”
Rianne shrugged. “You could buy this house, maybe?”
He looked at her like she was crazy and rummaged in the fridge for a can of mineral water. When he wasn’t drinking beer, he was drinking that fizzy tasteless shit. “Hell no. I hate this house.”
“So you’re moving in with Mom?”
He paused with his nasty drink. It was “blackberry-flavored” sparkling water. To her, it had more in common with what was in her mop bucket than an actual blackberry.
“Did she tell you that?”
“No.”
He put down the can on the counter, which she had just wiped clean.
“Would you be upset if I did?”
“Oh god, Dad!” she said, dropping the mop into the dirty water. “Really? You’re really back with her? I’m not just seeing things?”
“What did you see?”
“Would you stop asking me the questions for a second? I mean, grow up, please! I’m not an idiot. I have eyes. You’re both totally ridiculous if you think I can’t tell what’s going on.”
Her father sighed. Looked up at the ceiling. Rubbed his jaw. Nodded. Made every gesture that suggested he would say something. Tell her the truth. Own up to the fact that he was here, back with her mother. Rianne knew she was supposed to want the fairy-tale reunion. That they would love each other and make a whole family again, not Hettricks or Wynnes, but Hettrick-Wynnes, all of them.
But she didn’t want that. She didn’t see how her mother deserved her dad and she didn’t care if Lucy Hettrick got her way. Lucy Hettrick always got her way.
As for her dad, well. Moving in with his ex was pathetic. Nothing but a comedown for Dean Wynne. He was way more interesting than his ex-wife. He was way more interesting than living in some apartment in Wereford, or Dalby. More interesting than someone like her mother.
She tugged the mop out of the water and pressed the squeeze lever until it stopped dripping. She would sit here forever, she decided, until he said something. No dropping it this time.
“The truth is, honey, that I don’t know. I’m not sure whether to retire or what. I’m waiting.”
“What in the hell? You’ve been here months!”
“I have a lot of leave saved up. I barely use it, you know. I work my ass off, honey.”
She nodded. She knew. He was always saying that. “I work hard, I play hard,” was his thing. Such a cliché. You could have that for your life, though, if you didn’t have a house or a family. If you had a flag tattoo on your chest and an eagle holding missiles on your arm.
“You’re still not telling me anything I’m asking, Dad.”
“My next billet’s probably in Colorado Springs. It’s not the one I hoped for, but it’s the last one before I retire. I’m just waiting for confirmation. You can keep the truck, anyway, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, I’m asking what’s going on with you and Mom.”
“Things are up in the air. I know that’s not a good answer.”
“Does Mom think it’s a good answer?”
“Your mother is much more independent than you give her credit for.”
What the fuck, she thought. In psychology, they’d read a thing about how babies don’t know they’re separate from their mothers. Rianne couldn’t imagine feeling that way with her mother. Lucy Hettrick had always been a person apart from Rianne. Always independent of everyone. Less like a mom, more like some British nanny who insisted on using napkins and pinched you for being noisy and carried an umbrella.
Dean Wynne had taught her the army way, which was that umbrellas were for pussies: it’s just goddamn water, he always said. And now he was acting like Rianne saw her mother as some kind of precious girl who loved him in some sob story, desperate way. Like Rianne might be, if she weren’t his daughter. He was like the old shitty computer of Grandma Hettrick’s, the one they couldn’t even turn on because the software wouldn’t run on the operating system anymore. Dean Wynne had been gone so long “gathering intelligence” that he didn’t even know what updates had already happened in the middle of the night.
“Okay, so you admit that you’re back together at least?”
“We’ll always be together, honey,” he said. “Renata and you; you keep us together.”
She laughed. “Oh. Right. Yeah. That makes me feel so special.”
“It should. It’s true.”
“Dad, don’t you find it a little ironic that you’ve got a built-in place to stay, no matter what you decide, and I’ve got to go live under a bridge once Mom sells the house?”
“Your mother is being hotheaded about that, I told you. The stuff with your grandma really made her want to go the other extreme. Downsize, get rid of all her stuff. She’s just getting an apartment, not joining a convent. And apartments can have more than one bedroom, you know. I think just talking to her once in a while will soften her.”
“I don’t want to talk to her! And I think the feeling’s mutual!”
“Honey, come on.”
“She doesn’t talk to me, because she really doesn’t want to know. It’s a fact.”
“Rianne, sweetheart, that is simply not true. I’m telling you. You just need to reach out.”
Rianne slammed the mop down on the floor, skimmed it along the baseboards to loosen the dirt in the woodwork.
“And if you’re worried the house will sell right away, well, don’t,” he continued. “The market here isn’t that strong. And she should really drop the price if she’s that aggressive about . . .”
“There were two showings last week!” Rianne yelled. She’d had to clean her room within an inch of its life. Take down all her pictures off the corkboard so that it looked generic. Like a room anyone could move into and make their own. Stuff all the crap back into her closet and try to pretend her life was tidy for strangers.
“Rianne, you’re being impossible. You’re not listening.”
She finished the next baseboard corner, and the next, then slipped the mop back into the bucket. Rinsed her hands in the sink. Looked out at the storage pod blocking her view of the street. And then, wearing only her hoodie, she walked out. No good-bye. Not even a slam of the door.
But she couldn’t drive off. Her dad had driven them and the flatbed was loaded with junk headed to Goodwill. Only a few weeks of having her own transportation and she had no idea how she’d ever lived without it.
First she walked. Then she ran. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She didn’t answer. Instead she called Mercy.
“I’ll come get you.”
“No, I’ll be there in another ten minutes.”
The Kovashes had lived near Grandma Hettrick. Mercy had come over and played at Grandma Hettrick’s since elementary school. Was that where they became friends? Or was it school? It was a blur to Rianne. She started running, passing the familiar boarded-up gas station on Leroux, then the block past the sad park where no one ever went for a picnic, then down Holly Lane, Mercy’s street. Officer Kovash’s squad car was in the driveway, Mrs. Kovash’s minivan was not. Rianne let herself in, taking off her sneakers, being quiet and calm, despite her heart beating fast and wild. Officer Kovash had to be sleeping ahead of the night shift.
Mercy was in the downstairs rec room entertainment space, under a giant quilt on the couch. Only her head and hands, phone between them, peeped out. The television was on but muted. One of those cooking shows where they ate nasty diner food all over America.
