FRAGILE BEAUTY

 

 

OLIVIA BALKED at putting Elton in her dad’s bed, but there was nowhere else for him to go.

And nowhere else for her to go either.

“I’ll change the sheets,” Christi offered, bags of exhaustion under her eyes.

“Why would you need to change the…?” Sometimes Olivia felt really dumb next to her younger sister. Christi just regarded her with that little twist to her eyebrow that begged Livvy to catch up so she didn’t have to say anything that would make her feel bad. “Oh. Really?”

Christi chuckled. “They’re super quiet about it, and we all pretend we don’t hear. But yeah. Happens more than you’d think.”

Olivia thought about it—not the act, because ew!—but about her father. Over Christmas, he and Aaron had always touched—bumping hips, hands on shoulders, heads on chests. It hadn’t freaked her out—even if Larx hadn’t been very up-front about being bisexual and what that meant, her first year of college would have opened her eyes to a whole lot. In fact, she hadn’t noticed the touching much or thought about it—until this moment.

“Does it ick you out?” Olivia asked, curious. Her family home had become an alien ship in the last year and a half. She was literally asking her little sister how she should feel about this newly co-captained vessel, because she had no reference for herself.

Christiana’s look was all scorn. “Oh my God—Livvy! He’s a grown man! Besides.” She bit her lip and looked around. “It’s… it’s comforting. The two grown-ups love each other. It’s, like, way better than he was with Mom.”

And just like that, Olivia was smacked in the face with her greatest fear, the thing that had haunted her into gnawing depression, the thing that had dogged her every thought of the sweet young man currently dozing in front of the television downstairs.

All her memories of her mother and father interacting were unpleasant—Dad would come home and go for a hug, and Mom would recoil and say things like “Get off me!” or “Geez, Larx, really? Now?”

Olivia remembered the look on his face—muffled hurt—as he’d tried to laugh it off.

Dad would bring home dinner—and her mother would cry because she took it as a criticism. He’d wash dishes to help out, and she’d yell that he was doing it wrong.

He’d sit down to play with the girls, and she’d looked relieved and angry, like he should have been taking that burden from her shoulders all along.

She never hugged them after day care or school, didn’t play with them or talk to them while she was getting dinner ready, and seemed to resent him for not being there, all the time, to do the thing she hated worst to do.

He’d so loved giving hugs.

She and Christiana would hang on him at night, sit on either side of him to watch television, sit in his lap and play on his phone. Sometimes he would fall asleep next to them after reading at night, holding them close.

Her father had taught her how to feel safe—how to make touch safe. Her mother could have made her afraid, but her father, larger than life, charmed by her and Christi’s every burp, fart, and giggle, made hugs and held hands and ruffled hair a healthy part of her day. She hugged her girlfriends without a thought, kissed them on the cheek and didn’t worry about what it looked like. Held hands with boyfriends and platonic friends and new friends.

Her first lover—the high school boy before Elton—had told her when they’d broken up that he’d miss the way she cupped his neck when they were talking. He said she made him feel important, and he would hold out for that, whatever his next relationship would be.

Larx deserved someone who would touch him.

The thought haunted her for the rest of the day.

She let Christi change the sheets and went downstairs and tried to be responsible about making sure everybody had eaten and there was food in the fridge.

Kellan and Kirby she knew—had grown to know better over Christmas vacation, when everybody mooched around the house and played Monopoly and held Destiny events on the game system.

They were both very different—Kellan bouncy and restless in his body and guarded in his heart, and Kirby self-contained in his body but witty and cheerful in person. Together they seemed like brothers who should have been. They left each other alone when they needed it but could very easily play a game, watch a movie, or even tussle with the ginormous dog pretty much at the drop of a hat.

They were spending some time outside with the dog—and with Jaime, her father’s personal stray—when she went downstairs.

She grabbed a spare coat hanging on the pegboard by the sliding glass door and put her slippered feet into her father’s galoshes, which were sitting on the porch. The cold smacked her face a little, digging underneath what was probably Yoshi’s parka, but for the first time since the previous spring, she felt what it was like to be warm in the cold.

“C’mon, Dozer—gonna get it! Gonna get it!” Kellan yelled, his short, powerful body literally springing up and down in the knee-deep snow. He waved a ball on a rope in front of the big blond dog, who barked in ecstasy whenever it swung near his face.

“Dozer!” Kirby called. “Dozer—c’mon, buddy! You know you want it!” Kirby was standing about eight feet away, a big fake ham-flavored piece of rubber in his hand. The dog turned around and ran toward Kirby, tongue lolling, to see what new wonder this boy held for him.

Jaime, who had been throwing a ball for the dog before Olivia came out, came tramping back toward the porch, shivering in a snow parka a little large for him and boots that looked just as large.

“Warm up,” Olivia told him, smiling gently. The boy—all limpid eyes and frightened glances—looked cold and tired and out of place. Her father had taught her to project kindness—because that’s what he did as often as he could. “I think Christiana started some hot chocolate. We can go inside in a minute and have some.”

“You’re not gonna torment the dog?” the kid asked, a brief crinkle to his eyes to show that he approved.

Olivia shook her head. “I’m more of a cat person.” She thought sadly of Delilah. Every night over Christmas, she’d looked around for her furry Siamese goddess and every night she’d remembered that Delilah had passed away over Thanksgiving, and everything changed.

“I like them both,” Jaime said, shrugging. “But dogs—we lived in an apartment in the city. All the dogs are little and yappy. Not real dogs, you know?”

“Now that you’re here, you should get a big one,” she suggested. She never would have thought a big blond dog—but then, she never would have thought a big blond sheriff’s deputy for her father either. Maybe these were things that some people needed.

Jaime nodded, still watching the dog. “My brother—I think… I think a dog would make him happy,” he said softly. “He needs a thing—a thing he can just love that doesn’t need him to do anything but love it.”

“And food,” Olivia said, thinking about the giant bag of kibble that Dozer seemed intent on plowing through in giant increments.

“That dog can eat,” Jaime agreed. “But see? He’s so happy with kibble and some water, some scratches on the head. Berto—he tries so hard.”

Olivia heard the hushed pain in Jaime’s voice.

She was used to being the one in pain, the one with the list of prescriptions, of daily mantras. It took her a moment—a long moment, like lungs full of water—to remember how to react to someone else’s pain.

“Why’s it so hard for him?” she asked.

And it was like Jaime grew, he was so relieved to talk about it. His shoulders straightened, and he bit his lip. “He got hurt, really bad. He was in a gang—we lived in a shitty part of town, and, you know. Him being in a gang, it kept me safe. But then one day, his… I dunno, captain, asked me if I wanted to stand watch while two guys went and knocked over a store. I…. Berto always told me to tell him if that happened.”

Olivia stared at him, terrified. All the things her father had worked with when she’d been a kid—they’d sounded scary then, but they were worse now.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I told him. And he stood up to Cameron, and they said he had to let me join or he had to get out. So he said he was through with them and they jumped him. Just… beat the hell out of him, left him for dead.”

Olivia held her hand to her mouth. “Oh God.”

Jaime nodded, swallowing quickly. “I found him, you know? He told me to run, but I hid instead. I called an ambulance, put pressure on his worst bleeding. But… but when he got better, it was like, every minute, he was still in that knot of people, beating him up. And it’s hard—sometimes I’m still hiding, watching him get hurt, but I remember we don’t even live there anymore and I’m okay. He never remembers. He spends his every day trying to remember how to breathe like he’s free.”

“That’s terrible,” she whispered, her heart racing with anxiety. This wasn’t even her stress! This wasn’t even her life—but it was his. This boy who had just played with a big dumb dog until his hands were chafed with cold and his cheeks looked slapped.

“Yeah.” Jaime took a big breath. “He smokes his own, you know? Doctors said it’s okay. But that guy, he just ran into our house with a gun, and your dad told me to stay put and I did. That’s what I do, right?” He sounded bitter, and she didn’t blame him.

“It’s not your fault,” Olivia said, her voice thin in her own ears. “You didn’t… you might have been killed. Aaron was in there, and he had a gun and a vest, and he was almost killed.” Her heart clenched at that. Aaron had been there. He might have been new to the stepfather gig, but he was like Larx—Dad to his bones. And he’d been so decent about finding Elton, about not interfering in her business, about protecting Elton from her if she was too flaky to make her shit her own.

She swallowed, her world widening a little. It wasn’t just her and her pain, or her and the growing life inside her—and her pain. It wasn’t Elton, chasing after her like Don Quixote after a windmill and then turning into a true knight in shining armor when the giant bad thing was a tiny baby that would derail both their lives.

Aaron had been hurt—and she hadn’t really seen it. Her father had been lonely for so very long, and she hadn’t seen his pain.

And this boy, fragile and young—younger than Christi, or the two other boys in the yard—was afraid for his brother and trying so hard not to be alone.

With a sigh, she put her arm over his shoulders, waiting to see if he’d recoil. He didn’t, relaxing against her with a sort of boneless grace.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said again.

“My brother’s in a bad place,” he whispered. “He wasn’t doing great before, but he’s… he’s so scared now. He texted me about an hour ago, and it was, like, ‘’sup,’ and that’s all. He… he loves me. I know it. But all he’s got around him right now are big scary monsters, and he can’t see me at all….”

And this boy—this stranger—cried in her arms. She stood for a moment, stunned, and then pulled him into a hug, remembering all the times her father had done that.

Including not four days ago, when she’d crashed through the front door with all her things and said she couldn’t go to school anymore and she was moving home and hadn’t given a single word of explanation.

Her father deserved some explanation.

But not now. Now he was out… what? Saving another kid like this one? Lost and alone and betrayed by the world at large?

Yeah.

That’s what her father was doing.

He was her hero—she’d always known that.

But standing here, holding this kid as he came unglued, she saw how her dad, who could be so goofy, so comically unprepared for adulthood, could also be a hero to the world at large.

He never closed his arms if he could possibly help it. He went out and did what needed to be done.

Elton had gotten hurt, and all she could think about was Elton.

Aaron had gotten hurt, and they’d both made themselves think about a bigger world.

The idea was terrifying. She couldn’t make herself brush her teeth some days. How was she supposed to extend beyond herself and help somebody else?

But she couldn’t just leave this boy. He needed her. He needed someone who would hold him and tell him it would be all right—even if that person didn’t know for sure.

Just like her father had when she and Christiana had been small. For the first time, she remembered those early days when they’d moved to Colton, and he’d been a single father and trying to convince both of them that he wouldn’t desert them—not like their mother had. He wouldn’t neglect them, suddenly finding them distasteful and tainted. He had worked long hours into the night—because he’d spent all their waking time together being everything he could for them. He’d made a game out of everything from eating their vegetables to saving money on the heating bill so they could afford the vegetables, so they would feel this, right here, this safety in the world.

Olivia had spent so much of the last few months obsessing about her mother, wondering if she was going to be just like Alicia, cold, distant, so immersed in her own personal pain that she lashed out at the people she should have loved most, that she’d forgotten the basic, most important lessons her father had taught her.

It all started with this right here.

It started with a hug when someone felt bad. A soft voice when someone was afraid. A safe haven when the scary monsters threatened.

It started with touch.

 

 

EVENTUALLY SHE shepherded Jaime and the other boys in. Even the dog had been played out and was content to flop on his pillow in the entryway, watching the people move around the kitchen and prepare him wondrous leftovers.

Olivia tended to the chocolate Christi had started, using the Larx method of throwing in all the things that made it tasty. Cinnamon? Yes. Nutmeg? A dash. Pumpkin spice? Sure. Some white chocolate cocoa—the last little bit in the canister? Perfection. And, oh hey, there were marshmallows, so everything was hunky-dory, right?

Yoshi was the one who pulled out two giant tubs of Cool Whip so they could pour the concoction over big fluffy pillows of fake cream and pretend sugar shock wasn’t a thing.

Jaime drank his cocoa with them in the kitchen, laughing with the rest of the table when Kellan tried to lick a big dollop of cream off his nose, and Elton pretended to explain how he got high on hot chocolate, no alcohol necessary.

Yoshi had ordered pizza—in spite of the fact that Christiana and the boys had already started a stew in the Crock-Pot, and there were sandwich fixin’s in the fridge—and everybody dug in cheerfully when it arrived.

Yoshi’s boyfriend, Tane, arrived about ten minutes into the pizza, with Jaime’s brother at his heels.

Berto looked like Jaime—pale skin, dark hair, dark eyes—but he looked like Jaime would if somebody had beaten him with a lead pipe at some point in his life—probably because they had.

His nose was squashed and sideways, and his jaw sported two or three lumps as well. His arm hung oddly at his side, his thumb twisting out at bizarre angle, and he walked with the measured limp of a man who would walk in pain for maybe the rest of his life.

He looked like he’d been crying for hours, and he held on to his little brother like a man hanging on for dear life.

“Come in,” Jaime urged him. “Berto, they’ve got a dog. Just for a minute. We’ve got pizza—you can eat pizza and feed the crust to the dog and….” His voice wavered. “Come see that it’s not awful here, okay?”

Berto nodded weakly, and Olivia gave the boys their distance. Yoshi tapped her on the shoulder when she came inside.

“Hey—could you go upstairs and get a couple of changes of clothes for your dad and Aaron? Maybe take your sister? He’s having sort of a busy day today, and I think he’s going straight to the hospital afterward.”

Olivia yawned, ready for her depression nap. “Wow. Poor Daddy—this has got to really suck for him.”

Yoshi nodded and looked compassionately at Tane. Tane—thin, bark-colored from the sun, heavily tattooed, and as lean as old shoe leather—had the same sort of weariness around the eyes that Berto did.

With a shock, Olivia realized that Tane wasn’t okay inside either. Uncle Yoshi—cheerful and sarcastic and so damned capable—had always worshipped Tane, but Tane had never been part of their circle. Olivia had never even wondered why until now.

Now she knew why.

He’d been shattered too, just like Berto.

A little bit like her.

“Yeah,” Yoshi said after a moment of communing with his beloved. “Bad day all round. So if you could go get him some sweats and some toiletries and slippers—they’ll let him shower at the unit, and he can stay with Aaron tonight, make sure he’s all good.”

Olivia nodded. Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted Aaron to be all good not just for Aaron, or for his son, or even for herself, so she didn’t have to endure the labor of grieving.

She wanted Aaron to be okay for her father, because Aaron was to her father like Yoshi was to Tane: the glue that held them together.

“I’ll grab Christi,” she said.

It was Christi’s idea to put the Garfield slippers in the bag.

“In the hospital?” Olivia asked, sounding way too grown-up, even to her own ears.

“Livvy, if there’s any place in the world that you need cheering up in, it’s the hospital. Trust me. We spent, like, a week there in the fall when Kellan’s boyfriend got hurt—people saw my purple Snoopy pajamas, and it was like they’d never seen the sun before. If it’s quirky, keeps you warm, and is brightly colored, people need to see it.”

“Ugh,” Olivia said, looking at her father’s hooded sweatshirt drawer. “That is the opposite of his clothes collection. You’d think now that he has a boyfriend, somebody would buy Dad some purple.”

Christiana regarded her with deep disgust. “It’s like you’ve never met your own father.”

Olivia eyed Christi dispassionately—her sister could be a total stinker, and everybody knew it. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think it. We’ve lived in Colton too damned long for our thoughts not to have redneck non-left-wing overtones.”

Christi smirked. “I gave him purple socks for Valentine’s Day,” she said, smiling so hard her chipmunk cheeks popped out. “I couldn’t resist. It’s like when Schuyler bought me overalls for Christmas.” She sighed. “I’m gonna miss Schuyler.”

Olivia swallowed. Sure, a high school breakup wasn’t the end of the world—but Olivia remembered when it felt like it was.

“Sorry about the breakup,” she offered tentatively. “I wasn’t really… in a place to hear about it when I got here.”

Christiana reached around her and grabbed a standard gray hooded sweatshirt, two pairs of white socks, and a couple of pairs of undershorts. “Well, when you pull your head out, come talk,” she said frankly as she was stuffing the clothes in a canvas bag. “I miss you.”

Olivia wouldn’t let herself get defensive about that—she figured she’d had it coming. “I promise.”

Christi looked around the bedroom again. “Want to grab some more pajamas for Aaron?”

Shrug. “Sure.” It would make Larx happy. Olivia was all about that.

 

 

BERTO AND Tane stayed for about twenty minutes, and Jaime managed to get him to eat a slice of pizza and sit on the dog pillow while petting the dog for a good long time. When they left, Berto was probably wearing half a coat of big blond dog on his jacket—and Dozer wasn’t going to move until absolutely necessary. Ever.

When they were gone, Jaime gave her a beaming smile and wiped the back of his cheek with his hand before going to the kitchen to help clean up.

His brother wasn’t okay—but he had help. He’d eaten pizza, he’d petted a dog—Jaime would take that hope and cling to it.

Olivia found she was in the mood to do the same.

Elton had gone back into the living room and was channel surfing dispiritedly in the recliner. She walked in to him and took his free hand.

“Hey,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. “El?”

“Liv?” His smile was tentative and hopeful, and she realized with a pang that she’d rebuffed him pretty hard these last few months, while yearning equally hard for his kindness, his quirkiness, the way his blue eyes took in the world with unexpected wonder.

Had she become so selfish in her pain that she inflicted it on other people, like her mother had with Larx?

She sank to a crouch in front of him and took his hands. “My sister got Larx’s bed ready for us. Don’t get too comfy—I can see the snow plow on the forestry track from here, so we’ll probably be moving into Aaron’s house tomorrow.”

“We?” he asked wistfully.

Oh. “Well, yeah.” She brought his knuckles to her lips and kissed them, letting the affection she’d kept so bottled up escape. “I’ve missed you since Thanksgiving. If you… if you want me, after all this—”

“Oh, I do.” He nodded earnestly, and she couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“Good,” she said softly. “I’m… I’m still sad inside, El. I’m still lonely. And I need to talk to my dad, and maybe to a few other people as well. But….”

“But?”

She allowed her legs to fold, and she sat, resting her head on his knees. “I care about you. So much. I care about this baby. I’m scared. And I hurt. But there are so many big things to be scared about—so many worse ways to hurt. I want to get help. But I want this baby, and I want you in our lives. Can we try that?”

“Come here,” he said, his voice thick.

She climbed into his lap, because he was still bigger than she was, and she rested her cheek on his shoulder. His arm around her reminded her what safety was, reminded her that people could be kind, could fill in the empty places in your soul.

“I love you,” he whispered into her hair.

“I love you back,” she told him, and giving him the words felt liberating. She no longer had to trap them against her chest, afraid they’d die if she set them free.

They wouldn’t die—they’d heal.

And Elton deserved healing too.