Eighteen
The memory of Betty’s naked breasts had haunted Viola well into the night. Horrifying as the memory was, she still found the act of holding back her laughter bordering on torturous when she awoke the following morning. All day long, she’d been fighting the good fight, trying to hold herself together.
The family had woken up that morning excited about their annual fishing trip, setting off at the crack of dawn for a campground about an hour east of Salt Lake City. Even though the thought of camping was almost as alarming to Viola as the memory of Betty getting pounded, she’d still allowed the Moore family to convince her that climbing onto a dirty fishing boat and sailing into the middle of a muddy river was nothing short of a rip-roaring good time. She’d promptly embarrassed herself by not catching a single fish, even though every other family member had nailed at least a guppy in the four hours they’d spend on the water. Regardless of her subpar hunting skills, however, the amusement in her belly remained every time she snuck a look at Betty Moore.
Only when the family had returned to dry land after sunset and set up their tents at the campground they’d be spending the night in, did the consistent urge to burst into a fit of cackles finally seem to ease within Viola. Probably because the nippy sixty-degree night air was rapidly catching up to her. Not even the hunter green parka she had zipped up to her chin, or the roaring campfire before her, was enough to warm her bones. The entire family was dressed in their thickest winter coats, apparently much higher quality coats than Viola’s, since she appeared to be the only one freezing to death.
She pulled the furry hood of her parka lower on her head, shivering softly. Four logs lay on the ground, surrounding the campfire Robert had built as he prepared a fish dinner for the family. Milo sat beside Viola on one log, Jon and Jackson on the log to their left, Mary straight across and finally, Betty, closing the circle on the log to Viola’s right. Beau rolled a Tonka truck in the dirt at her feet, attached to his grandma at the hip as always.
Six tents had been set up on the forest floor around the fire. Once again, Milo and Viola had been expected to sleep in separate tents until, as Betty had insisted, “you make an honest woman out of her.”
Viola slammed her eyes closed as she shot back to what a dishonest woman Mr. Washington had made out of Betty the night before. The thought of Betty’s flagrant hypocrisy nearly took Viola to the ground in uproarious, hysterical laughter, threatening to rise up her throat with every second that passed. She could feel Jon’s blue eyes burning into her from his log, but Viola didn’t dare look at him, knowing she’d burst out laughing if she did.
As Viola fought for control, Betty and Robert had somehow found themselves entrenched in an argument. The kind of argument that had started off as a “joking” comment that wasn’t really joking at all and, upon being called out, quickly evolved into a full-on argument.
“Ma, I’m not trying to fight with you,” Robert said, poking at a piece of the massive trout he’d gutted and laid across the cast iron skillet on top of the campfire grill, it’s skin undergoing a slow sizzle to the perfect crispness. “I’m just telling you, I can’t stand waking up in the middle of the night, and you’re not in the house. Especially when you know there’s a sex offender that’s been on the loose in our neighborhood for months. God only knows when he’s gonna strike again, and you’re a prime target.”
Betty rose her chin high in the air while ignoring Baby Beau, who was desperately seeking her attention by rolling his toy truck up and down the arm of her white winter coat and making growling sounds with his pursed lips.
“Robert Moore, I am a grown woman, and in Jesus’ name if I want to take a walk I’m going to take a walk whenever I darn well please.”
“But at 3 a.m., ma? Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for a woman your age to be out alone at that time of night?”
“A woman my age! I never!”
“Where in God’s name do you disappear to, for hours at a time?” Robert demanded. “Hell, last night I woke up in the middle of the night and stayed up until 5 a.m., sick to death worrying about you. And you come strolling in grinning like a Cheshire cat!”
Jon and Viola shared a look across the logs and pressed their lips together at the same time, both fighting the same battle not to burst out laughing. The orange flame licking at the night air made Jon’s blue eyes seemed almost grey, lighting up the amusement in them and proving that he was moments from losing the battle.
He did lose, chortling softly while dropping his chin into his chest, catching the attention of everyone around the fire but Robert and Betty.
“Mind your business, son,” Betty said. “You’re my child, not the other way around. You have no right to tell me what I can and can’t do, or where I will or won’t go.”
Robert turned to look at her, trout on the verge of burning. “Ma, I’m just saying—”
“Mind your business, son!”
“But, ma—”
“Lord!” Betty cried, holding up a hand toward the night sky while slamming her eyes closed. “Bless this night, Lord. Lord, I pray that you give me the strength of mind and patience to get me through this trip without resolving it in an angry, indignant way, Lord. Lord, I am thankful for my absent-minded son who foolishly forgets how much his brazen noisiness really, really upsets his mother. But today, Lord, I rebuke that Devil that’s trying to creep up on my back and interrupt my prayer—in a minute, Beau!” Betty cried, pausing her prayer just long enough to give Beau—who was still rolling his truck over every limb on her body—a look of warning before she drew in a slow breath and closed her eyes once more, voice lowering. “Lord? Give me patience, Lord. Put love in my heart, Lord Jesus. And let all the small things go because it is too beautiful a night to end on a bad note. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.”
“Amen!” Beau cried, grinning up at Betty, his snaggletooth smile earning him a kiss on the forehead.
“Thank heavens for you, baby Beau.” Betty rustled his blonde hair before shooting a sour look up at Robert, who’d surrendered sometime in the midst of her fevered prayer and was back to grilling his fish in silence.
Viola couldn’t help but think that what Betty should’ve really been praying for was forgiveness from the lord for being such a deceptive, adulterous hypocrite but, seeing as Christmas was less than a week away, she made the Godly choice and kept her mouth closed.
Apparently too intimidated to go toe-to-toe with his mother for a moment further, lest she devolve into another lengthy speech, Robert turned his aggravated eyes to his wife instead.
Mary straightened on her log the moment Robert looked at her as if she could sense nonsense on the horizon.
Robert nodded toward her, eyebrows pinched. “What is that?”
“What’s what, honey? Can we just have a nice night, please?”
“What is that around your neck?”
Mary looked down at the sterling silver heart pendant necklace hanging between the open flaps of her red puffer jacket before immediately zipping it closed.
“It’s just a necklace, Robert.”
“Take it back out,” Robert demanded. “Show it to me.”
Sighing, Mary snuck a quick look at Jon, rolled her eyes, and then unzipped her coat. She took hold of the silver heart and held it up for him to see, letting it gleam against the fire.
“Jon bought it for me the other day. As a surprise.”
Robert’s cheeks heated up. “The same necklace I told you I was saving up to buy for you? The one I’ve been working double shifts the last few months for?”
A stillness fell all around the fire, every muscle tensed, every mouth sealed shut.
Mary exhaled heavily. “Honey, I just told you it was a surprise. He saw me eyeing it online and raced right out and got it.” She held the pendant up a little higher, inviting him to take a closer look. “He even got both of our names engraved, see?”
Dots of sweat began collecting on Robert’s forehead. Somehow, Viola knew his hot, gleaming skin had nothing to do with the persistence of the flames lapping below him. When Robert’s eyes flew to Jon and protruded, the veins in his neck swelling, her suspicions were confirmed.
“It’s a gift, Robert,” Mary said, though he was no longer paying attention to her.
“What did I say to you on the first day you got here?” Robert asked Jon. “Huh? What did I say? We don’t want or need your money, Jon.”
Jon craned his jaw but didn’t respond, silently holding his father’s gaze.
“What’s the big deal?” Jackson cringed from next to Jon. “Don’t you know Jon’s worth eighty million dollars?”
“Jackson, that’s incredibly rude,” Betty said.
“All you have to do is Google it. It’s right there on the front page.” Jackson shrugged. “He got the pipes fixed too.”
Jon shot Jackson a look of disbelief, as if his younger brother had just recited the nuclear codes on national TV.
Robert’s face fell too, arms collapsing at his sides, every bone in his body going limp.
“Haven’t you noticed that the house barely smells like mold anymore?” Jackson asked. “He does nice things for us because we’re his family and he loves us. Why is that bad?”
“That’s a ten thousand dollar job,” Robert now spoke to Jon through clenched teeth. “So, what? You waited until I went to work? Waited until my head was turned to do a ‘really a nice thing’ behind my back?”
“He did it behind your back because he knew you’d go all psycho on him like you are right now,” Jackson’s voice hitched. “Would you rather we all died from an asthma attack from breathing in all that black mold? Why do you think Beau is always wheezing in bed every night? You should try saying thank you.”
“Hey,” Robert jabbed a finger at him. “Shut your mouth and watch your tone when you’re talking to me.”
Jackson crossed his arms with a pout but didn’t dare speak another word, eyes falling to the dirt as he kicked the heel of his feet against it, his chest heaving wildly.
A long silence fell.
Jon nudged Jackson a few minutes later, filling the quiet. “Aye, go grab the guitar in my tent, loudmouth. Show everyone what we practiced.”
Reinvigorated, Jackson leaped up from the log with a beaming smile before racing across the camp towards Jon’s tent. A long moment of silence fell once more, everyone’s eyes dashing from one person to the other at the campfire. As if they were all praying that someone would break the silence and save them from the quiet, awkward hellhole they were all falling into.
But no one spoke.
When Viola’s eyes landed on Jon, he was looking right at her. She straightened her spine as she found herself able to read him like a book just from seeing the dark shadows clouding his eyes. Her deepest instinct wanted nothing more than to close the space between them and give him a hug. Did he need her arms around him at that second as badly as she needed to do it?
His eyes broke away from hers before she could decide on an answer, smiling over her shoulder as Jackson came racing back to the fire and reclaimed his seat next to Jon, guitar in hand.
“We’ve been working on this one since I got back,” Jon said, making a point to lock eyes with everyone but his father.
“It’s not perfect,” Jackson warned. “But we’re getting there, right Jon?”
“What did I tell you?” Jon said, softly, whispered voice just high enough for everyone to hear. “Confidence. When in doubt, go full out. If you go full out, your audience will always believe you, no matter what.”
“When in doubt, go full out,” Jackson repeated.
Jon smiled tenderly at him, then nodded toward the guitar, motioning for him to start.
And Jackson began to play. Viola immediately recognized the slow, sultry tune as one of The White Keys’ first singles. One of the songs that’d made her fall in love with the band—with Jon—nearly a decade ago. A song where the guitar riffs had always been the real star—outshining even Adam Brand’s widely beloved falsetto—and had catapulted Jon into a realm where he was regarded as of the greatest players in the country. Jackson’s playing was a little shaky—enough to make him sheepishly pause several times, egged on by Jon’s persistent positivity until he finally made it to the last note, his shoulders relaxing once he finished strumming his trembling thumb over the vibrating string.
Applause rang out all around the fire, causing the blush that had already stained Jackson’s cheeks to ebb even deeper. Jon wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in for a bear hug, squeezing tightly enough to make Jackson groan and squirm to break free.
“That was wonderful, sweetie.”
“It was alright,” Jackson shrugged, chin in his chest.
Jon took hold of his chin and popped it softly, forcing Jackson to hold his head high.
Robert’s nostrils flared at the sight.
“That was nice, Jackson,” Robert said to his middle son before turning to his eldest. “But I don’t want you teaching him that stuff, encouraging him to travel down the same bad path he’s been on the last few years,” Robert said to Jon, motioning to him with his spatula before aiming it at Milo. “Milo’s who Jackson really needs to be talking to, alright? Tightening up those math skills. Getting those grades up.”
“Robert,” Mary warned, voice hushed in warning.
“I’m just saying,” Robert went on. “It’s easy to drop in once every decade and pretend you’re a positive influence…” When the hot look his wife was giving him grew more deadly than the fire blazing below him, Robert wisely let the rest of his sentence trail off and die a slow death.
“You can breathe easy, Dad. I just wanted to teach my little brother a song. My master plan isn’t to corrupt him and turn him into a Jon Baca clone since I know what a terrible person that would make him in your eyes. We’re just having a little bit of fun.”
Every adult at the fire groaned in response to Jon’s words, but it was Mary who had the most sadness in her eyes.
“Nobody thinks you’re a terrible person baby,” she breathed, shooting a heated look up at her husband. “Robert.”
“Dad, why are you so mean to Jon?” Jackson interjected, ignoring the gentle hand Jon placed on his arm in an attempt to calm him. The brotherly touch seemed to have the opposite effect, however, only upsetting Jackson more. “You’re seriously just mad rude. You’re the one who taught him to play guitar in the first place, remember? You act like he just woke up one day wanting to be a rock star, but he didn’t. You’re the one who got him into the whole thing to begin with.”
“Am I the one who made him start ditching school, too?” Robert’s voice rose. “Am I the one who made him walk out and never look back? Am I the one who put the needle in his arm?”
“Oh, Robert.” Betty breathed.
“You’re a liar!” Jackson flew to his feet with fresh tears gleaming in his eyes. “You are the one who made him walk out! You’re the one who told him to leave—to never come back! You’re the reason he hates being here, and I don’t blame him because I hate being here with you, too. I can’t wait to move to LA with Jon so I never have to see your stupid face again!”
Mary leaned forward and buried her head in her hands with a whimper, hiding the tears that had just begun gleaming in her own eyes.
Robert pointed his spatula at Jackson. It trembled in his hold, trout now smoking and burning below him. “Apologize. You apologize to me right now.”
“You’re the one who should be apologizing—to Jon!”
“You were already grounded for two weeks, and your mouth just made it three. You wanna try for four?”
Jackson’s shoulders collapsed. “Whatever, bro, I don’t even care.” Clenching his fists, he stomped across the fire pit, snatching his arm from his father’s grasp when he tried to reach for him on the way by.
“That’s four—Hey!” Robert made one more swipe for Jackson as he passed, but his middle child proved too fast once more, craning his body out of the way in the nick of time.
“Let him go, baby,” Betty said, hand over her heart, blue eyes wide as they followed after Jackson, who’d ripped open the zipper of his tent and was now climbing inside.
Viola didn’t realize that the beginnings of emotion had filled her own eyes until she felt the moisture in them shifting as she cut her wide eyes to Jon.
Jon’s head hung low between his heaving shoulders, his elbows propped up on his knees as he took several slow, careful breaths. Then, without looking up at anyone or making any attempt to fill the silence, he stood and made his way across the fire as well. Robert didn’t reach for Jon as he passed, only watching his oldest child from the corner of his eyes as he breezed by. A moment later Jon was at Jackson’s tent, unzipping it and peeking his head inside. He said a few words that were too muffled to hear in the distance, and then he unzipped the tent a little more and stepped inside, closing it behind him.
Every eye remaining at the campfire shifted up to Robert, who now had a hand over his mouth, his eyes slammed closed, and was slowly shaking his head.
“Why, baby?” Betty begged, craning her body against the log and tilting her head up at him. Even Beau had gone quiet, playing his toy car between his fingers while gazing up at his father, eyes wide as saucers behind his round glasses.
“I don’t know,” Robert finally said, his hand falling from his face and collapsing to his side.
The answer apparently wasn’t good enough for Mary, who stood from her log with a huff and stomped away from the fire as well. She disappeared into her and Robert’s tent a few seconds later. But not fast enough for her hushed whimpers to be lost on the ears of every soul that remained around the fire.
Slowly, one after the other, everyone else left the fire too. Betty and Beau, followed by Viola, and, after clapping a supportive hand on his father’s shoulder, even Milo withdrew. Leaving Robert, standing alone, gazing down at the burnt trout as the fire below the cast iron skillet continued to lose it’s luster before it finally burnt out completely.
Viola stilled in the midst of following Milo into his tent, the sound of Robert’s soft voice freezing her in place as the wind carried it toward her one final time.
His heavy eyes remained on the charred grill—voice a hushed whisper. “I don’t know.”
Pressing her lips together, Viola climbed into Milo’s tent and zipped it shut.
——
“Enough, Milo,” Viola spat in a hushed whisper, unable to tame the explosion as she swung away from the entry of the tent that she’d just zipped shut. “Seriously. Why is Jackson the only man in this family with the stones to speak up for Jon? The way you and your father are treating him is bordering on abuse at this point.”
“Abuse, huh?” Appearing downright nonchalant from where he sat on the edge of his air mattress, untying his boots, Milo sighed. “You don’t know anything about it, Viola.”
“I’ll tell you what I do know. I know that, during the church service the other day, Jon looked just as disgusted by that service as I felt.”
Milo cut a look at her while pulling off his boots before ripping down the zipper of his coat.
Viola continued. “He doesn’t even know you’re gay, and he was still horrified. Which pretty much confirms that he would love you just as you are. Just as much as I do. More than you love yourself, even. Can you say the same for your father? No. And yet you continue enabling him, the man who was standing right next to you, cheering on that service—to treat Jon like dirt? Do you not see how backward this is? How wrong this is? You’re batting for the wrong team, Milo.”
“I’m batting for the team that used to go to Al-Anon meetings together, three times a week, for the whole of my childhood, because Jon’s downward spiral was taking a toll on us mentally. His refusal to stop until he was good and ready was bordering on abuse to us. All the games. All the lies. The complete and total disregard for how much he was hurting us is what has left him alienated. Not the other way around.”
“Whatever happened to forgiveness?”
“One can only forgive so much.”
“You know what I think? I think you like seeing him alienated.”
Milo hissed and collapsed back onto his bed, snatching his fleece blanket over his legs and staring up at the ceiling of the tent. “Leave my tent, Viola. I’m tired.”
“I think you like being the golden child. The one everyone loves the most. Maybe it’s the only way you can stand that the rest of the world loves him the most. Maybe your ego couldn’t take it if your family started loving him the same way the whole world does. But why does it have to be a contest, Milo? Brothers should be happy for each other. Proud of each other. Not in competition.”
“Leave. My. Tent.”
Viola clenched her teeth, shooting daggers at Milo with her eyes, and then turned towards the wall of the tent with a huff, violently unzipping it and stepping back out into the night air.
Outside once more, the crunch of dirt and bark at her feet and the cool night air nipping at her bones through her jacket once more, she zipped the tent closed with just as much anger as she’d opened it. Her infuriated, gasping breathing as she stomped back to her tent caused puffs of white air to flutter from her lips and kiss the night sky.
“Blessings to you, Viola!”
Viola paused in mid-stomp and swirled on her feet, catching sight of Betty peeking her head out and waving from her own tent. Clearly keeping a close eye on Milo’s tent to ensure Viola made her exit in a timely manner.
“Just saying goodnight to, Milo, Betty, that’s all. No living in sin over here.” Unlike Mr. Washington’s place. “And blessings to you, too.”
As Viola turned and began trudging toward her tent once more, Betty’s voice followed her as she went. “May the peace of God be with you as you rest!”
There was nothing Viola wanted more than peace, but it was becoming more apparent with every passing day that the desire for peace was one wish that would never come to fruition as long as she was shackled to the Moore family. The only real guarantee was disorder and chaos. The silent promise of an explosion, slowly bubbling up to the surface, growing closer to full-on detonation with each passing day.
Viola was beginning to fear that her friendship with Milo had grown too close to the blast zone to survive it.