Chapter 5
Lorelei had flipped out over what Ian and I had done to her son’s application, and she flipped out more that I was meeting with Sylvie when I called her right before I went to bed to tell her the latest news.
“Rebecca…fucking A, I’m speechless. Never happens.”
“Don’t get too excited,” I cautioned. “Maybe Sylvie won’t be able to do anything. Or maybe she won’t want to, I don’t know.”
“When did you say that you’re you meeting her? Friday? Can you come to the garage tomorrow afternoon and meet Joaquim first? If you have time and can get away from your job.”
My job was at a steady hum of nothing. Melina hadn’t shown back up or contacted me, and with my dad still out of town, no one else was watching me either.
“Yeah, I was going to be there tomorrow anyway, so that would work out great.” Digger and I’d had a three second conversation about his house: come to the garage Thursday afternoon and we’d talk more, was the upshot.
“Oh, you were heading here anyway, were you?” Lorelei cackled. “I knew it! Digger’s been wearing his laid face.”
“What?”
“You know, his ‘I got some’ look. That face that men make when you give them some tail.”
“Oh, no, he…I…” I trailed off, bright red and biting my lip. Then I had the thought that Digger could have been getting anyone’s tail, there was nothing to prevent him.
“I think he just looks happy,” Lorelei quickly corrected herself. “That’s all it is.”
“Right, yeah.” I was glad she couldn’t see my face, because I was sure I looked despondent at the idea of him with someone else. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”
I didn’t sleep that well that night. I thought hard about being a little looser with my own tail. What did it matter? What was the big deal, anyway? But it did seem like a big deal, still.
The next day, I met Tracey in the lobby of the hair salon—for once, I was the late one, because I was very much regretting that I had decided to come. Hair salons were not my favorite. I had to take out my hearing aid and I hated having to explain it. I had gone to the same woman for years and she understood, but she had moved to Arizona, and I hadn’t had a haircut since. And generally at hair salons, everyone wanted to talk and chat, and with all the hairdryers and other background noise, it was all pretty difficult even with my hearing aid in.
This new stylist either didn’t understand what I said before I took my hearing aid out, or didn’t really care that I couldn’t hear her well. After her own trim and blow-out, Tracey plunked down in the open chair on my left, my bad ear side, and the two of them chatted away a mile a minute. I closed my eyes and purposefully didn’t try to listen; it made me tired, after a while, straining to hear. And since I hadn’t slept very well the night before, having vivid dreams about Digger—very vivid—I almost fell asleep.
I opened my eyes to Tracey poking me. She leaned down to my right ear.
“What do you think?”
I looked at myself in the mirror, and my hair did look nice. Not totally crazy different, but more polished and grown-up, with some new caramel-colored streaks among my natural chocolate brown, and some cool layers that curved toward my face.
“I like it a lot,” I said, trying to be loud enough so that the stylist heard me too. I took my hearing aid out of my purse and put it in, just in time to catch the stylist telling Tracey that she was such a good friend to come with me to be my interpreter. Tracey smiled graciously and I rolled my eyes at her.
“It does look good,” Tracey told me as we left and walked across the parking lot.
“Thanks, interpreter.”
She laughed. “You’re the only reason people think I’m decent!”
That made me slow down. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, if I wasn’t friends with you, my parents would think I was a lost cause, the teachers I had to beg to write my recommendations for college wouldn’t have done it, you know!”
“That’s why you’re friends with me? Because my hearing loss makes you look good?”
Tracey stared at me. “What are you talking about? You’re nice, Wreck. You help people. You try hard and you don’t get in trouble. That’s why you make me look good. I don’t know why you’re always caring about your dumb ear.” She shivered. “It’s fucking freezing out here. I have to get back to work, I could only say I was getting dialysis for so long.”
“Wait a minute, what did you tell them?” But she was already getting in her car. “Thanks for the haircut!” I called, and she waved at me. Even though I was cold, I looked after her car for a while, thinking about what she had said.
I did feel a little guilty as I drove to Detroit. I hadn’t spent one second in my real office that day. But there was nothing for me to do there! Kelvin and I had finished the memo about updating warehouse procedures and had it ready to send…and I had decided we should send it to my dad when he got back on Friday afternoon. It made me nervous, just thinking about it, but if it had another name on it also, Kelvin’s, I thought my dad might read it, and maybe at least consider it. Maybe he would think I did a good job—maybe. No news from Melina. I had sent an email to our one HR person to try to find out what was happening with her but he just said he had no information for me “at this time.”
I felt a little guilty, but I also felt pretty with my new hair. I turned my head back and forth, feeling the silky strands swirl around my shoulders. I also felt needed, and wanted. Lorelei thought that I had done a good job editing her application. Well, Ian and I. She trusted that I would do a good job meeting with Sylvie Bowen Everhart from the Lamb’s admissions office, too. Digger wanted me to go to his house and help him with that. Lots of people were suddenly thinking that I could do things, that I was capable. It was a nice feeling, even though I had to question if they were right, and I was worried that I would let them down and wreck everything.
Lorelei jumped up and gave me a huge hug when I came in, nearly crushing the life out of me. “Here’s my favorite, best friend!” she told me, then stepped back. “Oh, you look gorgeous! I love this,” she said, running a hand over my hair. “Come meet Joaquim.”
She was still talking as we went through the office and into the shop, and I still hadn’t said a word. The minute one of the guys there saw me, he yelled out, “Hey!” Everyone put down their tools and stared at Lorelei and me.
“What’s going on?” I asked, interrupting her. “Why did they stop?”
“What? Oh, Digger told them that they can’t make noise when you come through.”
“They don’t have to stop,” I mumbled, embarrassed.
She shrugged. “They’re going to do what he tells them. Look, there’s my guy.” She pointed to one of the disassembled cars, where Digger and a little boy were leaning into the engine. “Digger’s so good to him. Lucky for us, because Joaquim’s dad is a real fuckwit. He’s not in the picture.” She shook her head. “Not that it would be better for Joaquim if he were here, because he’s a piece of elephant shit.” I understood that. My few days without my own father being at home were like a wonderful vacation. “Anyway, his dad was a mistake, but without him I wouldn’t have Joaquim.” Her face was full of love as she looked at her son.
“Right, that’s it,” Digger was saying to Joaquim. “Good job, man.”
Joaquim straightened up and beamed at Digger. “I could work here, for you.”
“Yeah, after college,” Digger told him, and wiped at a big black smear on Joaquim’s face with a rag.
“Come here and meet Rebecca,” Lorelei said, and both of them turned to us. Joaquim solemnly shook my hand, leaving it as dirty as his was.
Digger held up his own hands. “I would greet you properly, but I don’t want to leave my fingerprints on your a—person. On your clothes.”
Lorelei was pulling her son toward the office. “Come clean up, then we’re talking.”
“I brought some brownies for you,” I said, opening the shopping bag I was carrying. “And for the guys in the garage.”
“You’ve just made five new friends,” Digger told me, and put his arm around me, keeping his hands clear. “How’ve you been, Cinderella?” He kissed me lightly.
“Fine,” I squeaked, embarrassed. Everyone in the garage was watching, since they weren’t working.
Joaquim was a bright, good-mannered, funny kid. We talked and ate brownies in the office while Digger went back to work. He told me about his chess club, and soccer, and learning Portuguese from an app on his mom’s phone. “It would be easier if I had my own phone,” he pointed out, giving his mom a significant look.
“Not a chance, boyo,” she told him.
“What’s your favorite subject in school?” I asked him, and he considered for quite a while.
“Science,” he said finally. “I want to be a lepidopterist. Butterflies,” he explained. “It’s hard to pick, because I like all my classes, except music. The teacher has really bad breath.”
“We saw the science building on the Lamb’s school tour,” Lorelei said. “It’s amazing! And all the nature stuff they do on the grounds, all the experiments. You loved it, right? You were lucky to go there.”
I nodded. It hadn’t felt lucky at the time and even now I tended to conclude that my parents had just wasted a bunch of money sending me to an expensive private school. But my dad enjoyed telling everyone that his children went to Lamb’s, so maybe it had been worth it to him. “My brother does really well. His teachers are amazing and they encourage him so much.”
“Didn’t you like it?” Joaquim asked me. He looked a little worried.
I smoothed my hand over my hair. “I wasn’t great at school. The teachers tried hard but I wasn’t really, uh, capable.” There was that word again. “It wasn’t the school’s fault,” I assured both of them.
“Different people have different strengths,” Joaquim told me, sounding like he was quoting someone. Probably his mom. “Like how I can play soccer, but every time I go skating I fall on my butt. I want to get better.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “I’m with you about skating. I’m terrible on ice.”
Lorelei was looking at me, her forehead all puckered up. She looked like she was going to say something else, but the blue metal door opened, and Digger came in. “Ready, Cinderella? Let’s go check on the war zone. I put out raccoon traps last night. Cages with cans of cat food in them. If I caught any, they’re probably plenty pi—mad by now.”
“Can I see?” Joaquim’s eyes lit up.
Digger told him he would send pictures. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, after I see the woman from admissions,” I said to Lorelei. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” I told her son, and we shook hands again very formally. I really liked that kid.
“You go first, I’ll follow,” Digger directed me. “If you go too slow, I’ll bump you, so keep up the pace.” I wasn’t sure if he meant it, so I drove at least three miles over the speed limit all the way to his house to appease him.
“That’s what it feels like when time slows down,” he said, as we both got out of our cars. “Never took me so long to get from one place to another before.” He walked quickly to me and pulled me into his arms. “Damn, Cinderella, I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you hours ago.” Suddenly I was back up against my car and he was kissing me, pressing his hips to me and holding my head in the crook of his arm. When he picked up his head, I was panting. “Hi,” he told me.
“Hi,” I breathed back.
“Your hair looks pretty.”
“Thanks.” I was still trying to catch my breath.
“Let’s check the traps.”
I let Digger do that on his own, and spent my time walking carefully around the house after he shoved open the front door for me. There were guys working today and I stopped to talk to them about what they were doing. They gave me a lot of good information about what was left to accomplish. The short answer was, there was a ton of work to do, and they didn’t consider the house habitable.
“Digger’s the best mechanic I’ve ever seen, but don’t let him near the pipes again,” the plumber begged me. “Every time he touches something he screws it up royally.”
“Is there anything you think he should be doing?” We went over a list of tasks.
I had brought a notebook to carefully write things down and several pages were filled just from touring the first floor. I was shaking out a cramp in my fingers when Digger came back in. “Here’s what we need to do,” I said, holding up the notebook. He took it from me and studied my terrible handwriting, flipping through the pages.
“Holy fuck. That much? Really?” He looked a little bleak.
“Maybe it’s more than you can do yourself,” I suggested. “Or maybe more than just these three guys can do alone. It might help to come up with a plan, rather than having them come and do a little job followed by another little job.” That’s what the electrician, plumber, and carpenter had told me, anyway. “I can help you figure it out, if you want.”
Digger grabbed me again, making me yelp, startled. This time he swung me up into his arms. “My hero,” he said, and started for the stairs.
“I think that’s my line. Digger, the electrician is watching us!”
“Yeah?” He was completely unconcerned. “Think he knows what we’re going to do?”
I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. I just shook my head and hoped he wouldn’t step on a weak stair tread.
Digger sat on the bed with me on his lap. “Thanks for helping Joaquim,” he said. He bent to nuzzle my neck. “He’s a good kid. I hope this school thing works out.”
I tried to keep my thoughts on track, but it was hard with what he was doing with his mouth. “I hope so, too. I’m afraid that even if he gets in, it may be hard for him.”
Digger picked up his head. “Why? He’s plenty smart.”
“No, not that. I just mean, kids aren’t nice to other kids if they’re different. If they know he’s on scholarship, or they see Lorelei with her tattoos, I don’t know how they’ll treat him.” Digger’s face hardened. “I’m not saying I feel that way! I just don’t want him to get teased or bullied. They can be awful, Digger. Kids treat each other terribly, viciously.”
“Yeah.” His features had softened, and he rubbed his nose against mine. “You know this personally?”
I felt my body twitch involuntarily. “I’ve seen it plenty of times.”
“Uh huh.” He studied my face. “Well, we’ll watch out for that. I won’t let anybody I care about get hurt.”
I twitched again, then pretended it was because my leg itched. “I’m glad he has you.”
“Yeah, he has me.” Digger nodded, putting his forehead against mine. “Tell me again what we need to do to the house.”
“By mistake I dropped my notebook downstairs, when someone picked me up and carried me off.”
“Some asshole, I guess.” He played with the button on my shirt. “Let’s talk about it from memory. We probably need to open up the walls.” He slid the button out of the hole, then moved his fingers to the next one down. “A lot of walls.” I watched him ease apart my shirt, exposing the tops of my breasts. My chest was moving up and down quickly, making the lace on my bra tremble.
Digger looked too. “Then we’ll have to see what’s been behind there all that time,” he continued. He laid me back on the bed and his mouth traced over my neck, down to the valley between my breasts. He moved across my nipple and I twisted up, pushing it towards his lips. “We’re all anxious to see what we’ll find,” he commented, and took my nipple into his mouth, nipping through the lace.
My head fell back and my eyes closed. I held him to me and moved restlessly against him as he sucked and nibbled and flicked out his tongue. He moved to the other side and put his hand where his mouth had been. Then his hand slipped down farther to undo my jeans and his fingers moved inside, rubbing across the lace that he found under the denim.
“Cinderella.”
“Yes?” It barely sounded like a word. My voice had deserted me.
His finger moved back and forth. “This all new to you?”
I nodded. “Uh huh.” It wasn’t my own voice coming from my throat.
“Good to know. We’ll keep talking about the house. Electricity will be next. Let’s see if we can get a spark going down here.”
He went under my panties with his fingers, drawing them up and down against me, slipping through my wetness. He rubbed against one spot and I know I said something, but I was arching my back and gasping and I lost track of exactly what was going on. Digger sucked hard on my nipple and slid his finger inside me, stretching me so that I moved, a little uncomfortable, but then he put his thumb back on that spot—oh. Oh. God, God. It roared over me, all the pleasure and ecstasy, and I shook with it, pushing myself down against his hand.
Digger slid his fingers out of me and undid his jeans. He took my hand in his and guided it to his cock, hard and, oh God, huge. “Touch me,” he told me, wrapping my fingers around the warm, soft skin over the rigid length, moving my hand up and down. He rocked his hips and put his face in my neck. “Fuck, fuck…” he murmured, then, “Rebecca!” His fingers convulsed around mine and I felt him come. Digger sighed into my neck and then moved my hand away, groaning. He rolled on his back and pulled me to him, pushing my cheek to his chest. “I never had so much fun doing construction,” he said. He sounded out of breath.
I couldn’t talk yet. A funny contentment filled me, and I nuzzled my face against him, breathing in his lovely smell and listening to his heart race.
“I messed up your pretty hair,” he said, running his hand through it. “You could braid it up.”
“How do you know about women’s hair?” I asked drowsily.
“My sister. I used to do her hair before she went to school. My mom worked the early shift. I’m pretty much an expert.”
I picked my head up and looked at his face. He did have a satisfied, kind of smug expression. Maybe this was the “laid face” that Lorelei had been talking about. I hoped no one else was giving it to him.
“What are you looking at, Cinderella?” Digger put his hand on my cheek. “You got all worried.”
I didn’t know how to say what I was thinking. Or what I was feeling. “What’s your real name?” I asked instead.
“Digger.”
“That’s not a nickname?”
He ran his thumb over my lip. “Do you have a nickname, besides Cinderella? Anyone ever call you Becky?”
“Wreck.”
“Huh?”
I put my head back down. “When my brother was little, he couldn’t say Rebecca. He said Recca instead and then he just called me Reck. Then it turned into Wreck, with a W, because…because other people thought it was funny.”
“Like a car wreck? How’s that funny?”
I sat up and started buttoning my shirt. “I need to get home.”
Digger reached for me again. “Why? What do you have going on tonight?”
“I need to get dinner for my brother. He has basketball practice right now and he’s always starving afterwards.”
“He’s not old enough to help himself?”
My fingers slowed on the buttons and I played with one, twisting it. “I like cooking for him. He doesn’t really need me anymore, but there are some ways I’m still good. I always make him dinner, when our, um, whenever I can. It’s our tradition.”
Digger watched me try to fix myself up. “Why don’t you and I do something outside of this house tomorrow night,” he suggested.
I was sorry I was going to have to say no to that idea. I stood up and tucked in my shirt. “I can’t, unless you want to meet me out. I’m supposed to go somewhere with Tracey. But I’m going to tell her, it’s the last time we’re going to a bar or a club. If she wants to hang out with me, we can do something I like to do instead.” I nodded firmly.
Digger slapped me on the butt and I squealed. “That’s a good idea. Where are you going with her?”
“Some place in Ferndale.”
“Sounds terrible. I’ll go.”
I turned, smiling. “You will?”
“Only if you’ll come back here with me after.”
My smile fell. “I don’t know if I—” I stopped myself. I was a grown woman. I wasn’t going to mess this up with Digger because of my father, no matter what it cost me. “Ok.”
Digger’s hand was still on my butt, and now he squeezed. “Your ass fits so nice in my hand.” He slapped again and left his hand there. I moved my hips unconsciously, rubbing into his grip. “Go, or those jeans are coming right off,” he ordered me.
I tried to look dignified and businesslike as I walked past the grinning electrician in the hallway downstairs and said goodbye.
The next day, I met Sylvie Bowen, now Sylvie Bowen Everhart, at a coffee shop near Lamb’s Academy. It was an off-hour for beverage sales, apparently, and the few people in there were typing on their phones or reading, so it was nice and quiet. Sylvie came in just after I found a table and smiled and waved when she saw me. “Hi, Rebecca!” She came over and gave me a hug. “Wow, you look so different!”
“Do I?” I patted the hair down on my shoulder.
“Different in a good way! You look great. Life after high school must agree with you.”
With her, too. She was glowing, but she had always been beautiful. Sylvie rested her hand on her little pregnancy bump when she sat down after getting herself an herbal tea, so we talked about the baby first, a boy they were planning to name after her husband’s twin brother. She had married a guy who worked with her dad and was now running the business her father had started, and it was clear from the way Sylvie talked about him that she was totally crazy in love. I asked about her sisters, too, and they were all doing well. The one I knew the best after Sylvie, Rosemond, had just given birth to a son. “You know, we all have our ups and downs, but things with the Bowens are good,” Sylvie told me, smiling. “What about you?”
I toyed with my coffee cup. “I’m fine.”
“I see your brother around the Lamb’s campus. He’s a cutie.”
I grinned. “Isn’t he? He has a girlfriend now.”
“I know, Maryam. We all gossip in the admissions office,” she explained. “But what are you doing? Working?”
“For my dad at the auction house. Besides that, nothing’s really happening.” My mind leapt to Digger and I felt heat rise in my face. “I see Tracey a lot.”
Sylvie made a funny face. “Is she still getting into trouble?” Even though Sylvie was older than we were, Tracey had managed to make an impression with everyone at the school.
“As much as she can. But she’s fine.” I hoped. She had sent me a strange message that morning that hadn’t made a lot of sense. I was crossing my fingers that she hadn’t been pill popping at her job again.
“My mom said she ran into your mom,” Sylvie told me. “How is she doing?” She tilted her head, looking serious.
I looked down at my coffee. Everyone from Lamb’s had known what had happened in my family. “She’s better than she was.” I looked up, and Sylvie was nodding sympathetically.
“Do you ever hear from Margot?”
I realized my hands were in fists on the table and I carefully straightened them out. “No. Never.”
“The last address we had from her for the school was still your house here. She hasn’t updated any information for us.” She shrugged. “I checked before I came to meet you.”
“It’s been a long time, now.”
“I’m so sorry, Rebecca. I can’t even imagine if I didn’t see one of my sisters.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Just thinking about it, and you missing Margot…”
I willed myself not to cry. I took a sip of coffee and cleared my throat. “I’m sure we weren’t as close as you are with your sisters. Anyway, like I said, a lot of time has passed. I’m fine.”
Sylvie nodded. “I have to say, one of the reasons I wanted to meet with you right away was because my mom said she was worried after she saw your mother.”
My heart beat harder. “Oh?”
“My mom said something just seemed off, I guess. She wanted to get together with your mom again and see if there was anything she could do to help. What do you think about the four of us, you and I and our moms, having lunch together? Or dinner?”
My mom would probably say no. “I’ll ask her. Thanks.”
“Sure.” She reached in her bag and pulled out a file, very businesslike. “Now, you wanted to talk to me about Joaquim Wynne, right? Tell me about him and why you think he’d be a good fit at Lamb’s Academy.”
I was thrilled to change the subject from my horrible family issues. I told her all about Joaquim and Lorelei, more stuff that Digger had told me too, about how they had struggled. “I just wanted you to know more of his story, in case he was getting overlooked because his mother is asking for financial aid. Lorelei, his mom, wants to be involved in the school, too, like in the Parents’ Committee, and fundraising, and whatever you guys need. Digger, uh, her boss, Digger Brody, he suggested that he would be able to donate to school auctions, or really, he’d do anything that would help Joaquim get into the school.”
“I noticed that name. He would be willing to pay partial tuition, if necessary, according to the application.”
I hadn’t known that and my face must have shown it. Sylvie put her hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say that. I would get in huge trouble…”
“No, Lorelei mentioned that to me,” I lied, very obviously. Sylvie still looked worried. “I already knew that Digger was willing to pay what he could,” I stated with more assurance. “You didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know.”
She relaxed. “Ok. I love this job, and I don’t want to jeopardize it. Or God forbid, to lose it. I’ve lost enough jobs in my life.”
I imagined having a job that I loved. A bakery right next door to a certain garage in Detroit. I snapped back to attention. “You’ve lost jobs? Really, you?”
She started laughing. “Oh, yes, maybe a few.” We spent the rest of our time before Sylvie had to go back to work laughing about what she had done after college.
“Let me know about going out with your mom,” she repeated as we said goodbye in the parking lot.
I nodded, thinking that I hadn’t really spoken to my mother all week. Maybe the week before, either. “I will,” I told Sylvie.
Then I drove home remembering back to when my mom really, really hadn’t been ok. I didn’t want Ian to have to go through that again. I didn’t want it for myself, either. It made me think more about my sister, Margot. And since I was alone in the car, and no one could get mad at me for remembering her, I let myself cry.