Soft and Low, page 21
I helped Fatima clear the table. “Salim cooks, I clean it up,” she said to me. “Early in our marriage I tried to convince him that whoever made the dirty dishes had to wash them, but that didn’t work.” While she rinsed in the sink and I put everything in the dishwasher (two things I really appreciated after doing the dishes from our party in the bathtub), she spoke to me in a low voice. “I’m sorry we brought up your parents at the table. Maryam never mentioned to us that there were…are, uh, problems.”
“I’m sure Ian didn’t tell her. He’s very embarrassed about it, about our father.” I thought of last spring, when my dad had come to one of his lacrosse games and had been so abusive to the refs and the other team’s coach and players that the Lamb’s coach had to jog across the field to talk to him. Ian had wanted to die.
“Ian is welcome at our house any time.” She patted me on the shoulder.
Maybe the good impression wasn’t totally screwed up.
I gave my brother a ride home after we said goodbye to Maryam’s family, back to the house he shared with our parents. He was very quiet in the car. I kept looking over at him.
“Every time you do that, you slow down even more. Stop staring at me,” Ian finally said.
“I’m not! I was just wondering, a little, what you thought about tonight.” More like dying, feverish to know.
“Maryam must not have told her parents about, you know,” he said.
“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking too.” No matter how nice they were, if they had known about the possible sexual stuff between my brother and their daughter, I sincerely doubted they would have been urging him to have a second slice of cake. More like they would have been throwing it at him.
Ian sighed. “That means that I got really mad at her for no reason.” I didn’t answer until he prompted me. “What do you think, Wr—Rebecca?”
“Ian, I don’t care if you call me that!” I reached over and shoved his shoulder a little. “It reminds me of when you were little and I made you play dolls with me and dressed you in a lace bonnet. You were so cute.” He snorted. “About Maryam, maybe she’s not ready to, you know. Maybe she said that her parents didn’t want her to come over because she didn’t know how to tell you that. Think of all the excuses we’ve told over the years to hide the truth.” Like, why can’t you participate in swimming in gym class, Rebecca? Not because I have bruises to hide, not at all. It’s my ear. “I would say, if you’re still interested in being her boyfriend, apologize a lot. Tell her you’re not going to talk about, you know, until she brings it up. Then don’t!”
“You’re good at this stuff, Wreck. You were good with her parents.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. They liked you and Digger a lot. Maryam’s telling me right now.” He held up his phone.
I had done a good job for my brother, without tripping, falling, or dropping anything. In fact, it had been a while since any of that had happened. It also seemed like Ian’s dreams of Ilsa Brody might be fading, for which I was grateful. “I’m glad it worked out so well.”
“Me, too.”
For his sake, I tried to drive a little faster, but it didn’t come easy.
Chapter 14
Lorelei was about an inch away from melting down.
“Any minute. It’s coming any minute!” she said, and refreshed her email inbox again. She rocked the desk chair back and forth and tapped her nails on the keyboard.
Her nerves made me nervous, too. Joaquim came to the garage a lot, and the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. I really wanted it to work out with him getting into Lamb's Academy. “Let’s step back for a minute,” I counseled her. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Joaquim can stay in an underperforming school with a long-term substitute teacher who isn’t certified. He’ll get so bored he'll start causing trouble, get kicked out, steal a car, and get sent up,” she shot back. “Then in prison, he hooks up with a gang—”
“Well, yes, I guess that’s the very worst,” I interrupted her. “But I was thinking, if he doesn’t get accepted at Lamb’s Academy, we can look at the other schools in the area. You could potentially move to a new district. There are a lot of good schools, public and private. So even if—”
Now she interrupted me. “It’s here!” I made myself not look over her shoulder as she read. I went to the door to the garage and beckoned to Digger, who immediately walked over. The garage got silent. Everyone working there knew that today was the day that Lorelei would find out about Lamb’s.
“I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it,” she said.
Digger and I looked at each other. Was this good or bad?
Lorelei stood up and turned around. She had gone bright red and her eyes looked glassy. Oh, God.
“He got waitlisted,” she told us. Her voice wavered.
I let out a huge breath. “Ok, waitlisted is not the same as a no.”
“Why would they do this to him? What’s wrong with him?” she asked me angrily.
“Nothing,” Digger said firmly. “Who the fuck knows why they do what they do? Ilsa didn’t get into every college she applied to. Admissions people make mistakes.”
“And it’s not the same as a no,” I added again.
Lorelei turned on me, furious. “What did your friend tell you? Did she tell you that she was rejecting him? Did you already know?”
I stepped back and into Digger. “No, of course not! I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me anything. Not even a hint. I was sure he would get in, Lorelei, and I still think he will.”
She was still glaring at me. “Right. Sure. Dig, I’m taking the rest of the day.” She grabbed her coat off the back of her chair and stormed out.
I turned to Digger. “I really didn’t know. Sylvie wouldn’t tell me anything when I asked. I did ask.”
He scowled. “Yeah. I know. She acted nice to our faces, and all the time she was submarining Joaquim.”
“What?”
“She had us over for dinner, her fucking husband comes down here and wants my help with his car. Fake pieces of shit.” He raised his voice to everyone in the garage. “Next time you see that guy with the sixty-six Scout 800, you can tell him to go fuck himself. Tell him I said so if I’m not here to do it myself.”
“Hang on, Digger. I’m sure this decision was made by committee. Sylvie wasn’t the only one who put him on the waitlist. And Tom didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He looked at me coldly. “Anyone who fucks with Joaquim fucks with me.”
I stared after him as he slammed the blue door, hard.
My phone started ringing, showing Sylvie’s name. Despite defending her to Digger, I wasn’t really itching to talk to her at the moment. “Hello?”
“Oh,” she said. “I can already tell by your voice that Ms. Wynne read the email about Joaquim.”
“What did we do wrong?”
“Nothing. As we told her, there were very few spots open in next year’s fifth grade class. We have a new teacher starting in the high school next year and his son will get one of them. We had three siblings of current high school students also applying.” She sighed. “It wasn’t a rejection and there’s always a chance. Right now, all the spaces in the class are filled, but we don’t know. I really encourage Ms. Wynne to write and say how interested they still are.”
It made total sense. I was still mad. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Rebecca, you can’t be angry at me over this!” She sounded exasperated.
“I’m upset at the situation,” I prevaricated. “Um, I would mention to Tom, he shouldn’t come down here with the Scout again. There are a lot of angry people. Joaquim has a big cheering section and no one can believe that anyone with any sense would say no to a kid like that.” My voice rose a little bit at the end. “Thanks for calling.”
Sylvie was silent for a moment. “Ok, I’ll tell Tom. I was afraid something like this would happen! Remember, this wasn’t a no.”
I felt bad about my behavior. “I realize that and I’m sorry, I’m just upset. I remember some of the kids who went to school there and how their parents bought them in and they didn’t deserve it. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
“Admission to Lamb’s isn’t something that can be bought,” Sylvie said, just as cold as Digger had sounded earlier. I wasn’t helping Joaquim here.
“Yes, I meant, kids who didn’t appreciate their admission.” That was not what I had meant at all. “Thanks for calling,” I repeated. “Bye, Sylvie.” We hung up. Now everyone was mad at me.
The front office was quiet without Lorelei there. I had been helping her organize the paper files that everyone had just stuffed, apparently for decades, into giant, overflowing metal cabinets. But Lorelei needed to be there with me to help decide what to shred and what to keep. I didn’t think I should continue without her.
I waited, manning the desk, but I had found out that Brody’s Automotive never took walk-ins, as I had done on that day that seemed so long ago when I had tracked down Digger. They also generally only dealt with repairs or rebuilds of vintage or antique cars, not a brand new one like I had driven. As Digger put it, they could fix anything on wheels, but he just didn’t want to. They also weren’t accepting any new customers, probably until March, they were so busy and in such demand.
The front desk was dead. I answered one phone call in an hour and then walked into the back. As they always did, they guys stopped working when I came in, so I tried not to do it often. And I brought them lots of treats.
“Digger?” He was on a creeper under a 1972 Gran Torino. “I’m going to head home. There’s nothing much going on here and I want to talk to the electrician.”
“I’m right in the middle of this, Rebecca.”
Not Cinderella, or baby, or anything. “Ok. I just wanted to tell you.”
“Fuck! Eddie, hand me that…no, the other one! Fine, yeah, see you there, at home.”
I left the garage feeling miserable. Clearly, Digger was mad at me, too. I had practically promised to get Joaquim into the school, throwing around that I went there, pretending like I could help with his application, playing up my connection with Sylvie. I had totally wrecked it all up. I was so stupid.
A car laid on its horn behind me at a light and I jumped and hit the accelerator, barely stopping before running into the car in front of me. I leaned forward over the wheel and drove as carefully as I could. What if I wrecked Digger’s loaner car, too? Or hit someone and hurt them? Totally something I would do.
It was getting dark when I pulled up on Digger’s street. The driveway and most of the block were full of the trucks of the crews working at his house; today had been a busy one. I got out, carrying the bag of groceries I had stopped for on my way back. I would at least make a good dinner. Maybe I could do that without screwing it up. It wasn’t exactly raining, and it wasn’t exactly snowing, just a steady barrage of cold, frozen pellets of moisture, so I pulled my hood up to protect my hearing aid. I carried the grocery bag with both hands, it was so heavy. I was looking forward to getting into the well-lit, semi-warm house. Maybe I would turn on the oven in the dining room to—
A hand grabbed my shoulder. Hard. Oh, my God. I knew that grip. I dropped the bag of groceries, almost threw it, and food went flying. My hood slipped off as I tried to jerk away.
“Rebecca. I should have guessed you would be living in the house with the broken windows and the animal infestation.”
“What are you doing here?” Now I did pull myself away, but only by almost falling, stumbling back.
My father studied me. “Careful. You always did have trouble staying on your feet. No one has ever called you graceful, have they, Rebecca?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked again. My voice was high and reedy, obviously trembling.
“Your mother was worried and I said I would check on you, now that I know where you live. Two daughters ran out on her. What do you think it’s doing to her? You’re going to kill her, you know. Neither of you care what you’re doing to your mother.”
“No. No, I—” I had almost said that I knew she was all right, but I would only know that if I had talked to her or to my brother. He couldn’t find that out. “How is Ian? Is he ok?” I thought I might be able to make him believe that I hadn’t been in contact with Ian, either.
He studied me. “You ran out on him, too. You left your brother injured, when he needed you the most.” He stepped forward so quickly that this time I did stumble back, and fell, an ugly grunt escaping my mouth when I hit the wet pavement. My wrist throbbed from how it had bent backwards.
He leaned down, looming over me. I scuttled back, like a crab. Like an animal. “I know where you live, I know who you live with, you whore. If you think that you’ll embarrass me like your sister did, you have another thing coming. I won’t let that happen again.” He stood up. “It would have been better if you both really were dead.”
I didn’t try to get up until he walked away, then I kind of crawled around on the ground, picking up the groceries. I went in the back door into the kitchen and immediately ran into the plumber coming up from the basement. His eyes got huge.
“What happened? Did you get mugged?”
“I’m fine.” That was an obvious lie. I was pretty much crying, carrying an armload of groceries with flour spilling out, almost all of me and all of the food wet. “I tripped because I’m clumsy.”
He tried to help me pick up the falling food, wipe up the spilled, wet flour that was quickly becoming hard paste on the floor and on my clothes.
“It’s ok,” I told him, making a grand effort to stop crying. “Thank you for your help. I’m going to go change. Um, there’s nobody in the master bathroom or bedroom, right?”
Thankfully they were empty of workmen and of animals. I stood under the dripping water, thinking that something had gone with the water pressure now that more bathrooms had working fixtures, realizing that this wasn’t making me feel any better. I studied myself in the mirror when I got out, running my eyes over my naked body to check for bruises as I had done way too many times in my life. I had a red mark on my shoulder from where he had grabbed me but I didn’t think it would turn black and blue. My wrist hurt from when I had fallen, but it wasn’t bad. It had been my own fault for not being able to stay on my feet. To stand up to him. I pictured myself, crawling around on the ground. No wonder he didn’t respect me.
I put on layer after layer of clothes and forced myself to go back downstairs, to talk to the electrician like I had said I would, to clean up the mess I’d made in the kitchen and to start dinner. I put in too much salt and forgot to add basil. The sauce was going to suck. I burned the garlic bread. I thought about what my father had said to me. The house with the broken windows. With the animal infestation.
“Something smells good.”
I dropped the spoon I was holding and screamed.
“Hey, hey! It’s just me, baby girl. Did I scare you?” Digger bent to pick up the spoon. “What’s cooking?” He took my face between his hands. “What’s the matter? You look funny.”
Great, somehow I had gotten uglier, too. “I made spaghetti sauce but it didn’t turn out. Sorry.”
“That’s what got you upset?”
I nodded. I had come to some conclusions while I took the dripping shower in the chilly bathroom, but I didn’t need to share them with Digger immediately.
“Cold?” he asked me. I nodded again. He held out his arms and I couldn’t help but lean against him. “There, that’s better. I’ve been in such a pissed off mood that I thought the guys were going to kill me. God damn it, I wish it had worked out for Joaquim. I talked to Lori and she hasn’t broken it to him yet.”
“It still could work out. Sylvie says there’s always a chance. She said that Lorelei should respond to the email and say how interested they still are.”
“Maybe I’ll suggest that to her tomorrow. Right now, I think all the Lamb’s Academy admissions people are lucky that she’s not driving around and throwing dog crap at their houses. We’re thinking of taking him ice skating tomorrow, give him a fun day. Instead of a good education.” He scowled.
“There are a lot of other choices,” I said. “Lots of other schools. If they don’t want him…”
“Then fuck them.”
“Yeah. Digger, I’m really sorry. I’m so sorry I let everyone down, especially Joaquim.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Digger held me away from him. “How did you do that, exactly?”
“I know she was depending on me…” I remembered what he had told my mom about me and Lamb’s. What a help I’d been for Lorelei. A godsend, he had said.
“Lorelei asked for your help, at my suggestion. You did help her. What else could you have done? I bet it was like you said about them being different, the admissions people saw her tattoos, and the piercings, and the fact that Joaquim’s dad got sent up to Jackson—”
“Do you mean prison?” I asked.
Digger nodded. “They probably tripped over the sticks up their asses running out of the room,” he concluded.
“Did I say that about sticks?” I tried to smile.
“You said Joaquim was going to get teased there, with all those snotty fucking kids.” Digger let me go and leaned into the refrigerator.
“Like Ian.”
“Huh?”
“Ian is one of the ‘snotty fucking kids’ at Lamb’s Academy. I was, too.”
He stood slowly. “You know I didn’t mean Ian, or you.”
I turned back to the disgusting spaghetti sauce on the stove. “I’m not very hungry. I wouldn’t eat this, if I were you. I think I’m a little tired so I’ll just go to bed.”
“It’s seven o’clock.” He was staring at me.
“Yeah, I’m just so tired.” I turned to leave.
