Chapter 8
I was full of the delicious burger and happiness when we left Lorelei and Joaquim. Digger couldn’t stop talking about my house plans, the timeline I had created, and how much effort I had put into it. How good I was at planning and with computers, with everything. I was practically basking in his praise.
“I wish you could come down to the garage and help Lorelei. The program we use for billing is so old it was carved on a stone tablet and it’s all fucked up. She can’t figure out how to fix it or get a new system, just starts swearing at it and me.”
“Imagine that.”
“Smartass.” His hand snaked underneath me. “Speaking of…Ah, there it is. I love your ass.”
I squirmed. I was pretty sore right there. “You should drive with two hands.”
“I find I need somewhere to rest my arm,” he said seriously. “You know I like having you next to me.”
I liked that part too. I sighed contentedly and cuddled up to Digger.
He came to the appointment with the audiologist with me and we sat looking at bad magazines in the waiting room. In fact, he stood up when they called my name and walked back with me. “I have some questions,” he explained, when I looked at him in surprise.
Digger had a lot of questions, about hearing, hearing aids, hearing loss, the structure of the ear, sound frequency, lip reading, and on and on. At first, I thought the audiologist was going to kill him, but then she warmed up and I ended up learning a lot, too, things I had never thought to ask in all my years of appointments. He held my hand, lazily running his thumb across my knuckles. It felt nice, but what felt even nicer was that he wanted to know all that stuff.
As much as my hearing aid sometimes bugged me, and as much as I tried to hide it, I was very glad to have the new one in my ear. It made a difference in how I could hear and that made a definite difference in my confidence. I smiled up at the sky when we got into the parking lot and Digger looked down at me and smiled back.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much better. You know what I was thinking about?” I’d had a lot of time on my own to think that week. “You weren’t surprised to learn about my hearing aid when I told you that it got broken that night,” I said, as we walked toward his car. “You already knew.”
“Yeah, I already knew.”
“How?”
He moved apart the sides of my coat with his hand and picked up the Saint Francis de Sales medal that I wore around my neck. “He’s the patron saint of journalists, but you said you weren’t a journalist. He’s the patron saint of the deaf, too.”
I closed my hand around his. “My grandma is very religious. She gave this to me.”
“I saw the hearing aid in your ear later, but I figured you didn’t want to talk about it.” He reached with his other hand and tucked back my hair so that it showed. “You were shy about it.”
“I’m always embarrassed.”
“That’s a crock of shit.”
“Well, it’s hard, Digger. I got a lot of crap for this, growing up. At school and at home. It made me want to hide it. You’ll be able to watch now how people react if they know I have a hearing loss. Some of them are jerks without meaning to, but some people act like I’m totally deficient.” That was how my parents treated me, and they always had.
“Fuck them, anyway.”
“That’s why I hide it,” I explained.
He got angrier. “I mean it, Rebecca, fuck them, and if anyone fucks with you, they’re fucking with me, too.”
“That’s a lot of F words. Lucky for you and your wallet that Joaquim isn’t here.” But when we walked to the car, I kept my hair tucked back where Digger had put it. Fuck them, anyway.
“Thanks for taking off work to chauffer me around,” I said, as we pulled into my driveway.
“I took off to see you. I’m glad I did.” He leaned across the seat to kiss me and it wasn’t too long before I was lying on my back with Digger on top of me, his hand up my shirt.
“Oh…” I sighed, as he moved his hips in a circle. My legs were clasped around his waist. It felt so good.
“You’re going to need to come back to my house this weekend. Remember the construction work we were doing in my bedroom? I have some more jobs I've been thinking about,” Digger said, and kissed me until I was about to come out of my skin.
“Not this weekend at your house. But soon,” I promised, panting. “I’ll see you Sunday at Ian’s game.”
He sat up, pulling me with him. He looked at me for a long minute. “Sunday. I’ll be there, Cinderella. Joaquim and Lorelei might come, too. I never saw people more in love with a school. If he doesn’t get in…”
“He will,” I said. I was going to make it happen. Digger walked me to the door and kissed me again and when I opened it to go inside, I still had a huge smile on my face. Digger.
My mother was standing on the stairs, her hand on the bannister. “Oh!” I jumped. “Hi.” I started to run past her to go to my bedroom but she put out her hand.
“Did you go to the audiologist?”
I nodded and leaned away from her.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“A mechanic.” I knew I was blushing.
“Are you…seeing him?”
I jerked convulsively. “What are you going to do?”
Her eyes were huge in her thin, worn face. “Nothing. It seems like he makes you happy.”
“Please don’t tell. Please, Mom.”
“Your father wasn’t always like what he is now.” My mother reached out as if to touch me, but pulled her hand away. “Be careful, Rebecca.”
I got furious. “He’s not like Dad! Don’t say that.”
She just stared at me. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She didn’t want me to get hurt? I couldn’t respond to that. I turned and walked up the stairs, leaving her staring after me.
∞
“The name of the team is the Wethers? What the hell is a Wether?” Digger sat next to me on the crowded bleachers as Ian’s team shot around to warm up on Sunday. “Do they not sell food here?”
“No, they don’t.” I leaned closer to him but it was still too noisy for me in the gym. “A wether is a castrated sheep. I guess it was an old joke because of the name of the school, Lamb’s Academy. The girls’ teams are the Ewes.”
Digger grimaced and patted Joaquim on the back. “Wear it proudly, man.” He leaned down to me. “You ok in here? Kind of loud.”
“Yeah, I’m ok.” I put my hand against his cheek and stopped myself from kissing him in front of everyone in the stands. It was hard, though.
“Wreck!”
Lorelei poked me. “Is that girl talking to you?”
I looked down and saw Tracey. For crying out loud, she had never been to a sporting event at Lamb’s even when we both went there. We hadn’t spoken since she’d hung up on me, when I’d told her that I was angry at how she had been treating me. Now Tracey waved and started climbing up through the old, wooden bleachers, stepping on spectators and pushing them out of the way. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Wreck, there you are! Your mom said you’d be here.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I’m Tracey, Wreck’s best friend. You must be Dinger.” She was smiling at him, her flirty smile that always worked when we went out together. I’d never seen a man not give her a second look.
He stood up. “It’s Digger,” I heard him say, then she leaned forward and put her hand on his arm, talking in a lower voice.
Lorelei elbowed me. “Who the fuck is that?”
“My friend Tracey,” I explained. “My best friend.”
Lorelei looked unconvinced. Tracey sat, finally, on the other side of Digger. He was turned toward her as she must have continued to talk to him. And he talked back. That was what people did, they had conversations, I reminded myself. Lorelei was busy with Joaquim and I couldn’t hear her that well, anyway, so I just sat in the middle of the group, feeling alone. That was fairly common, unfortunately. I could be in the middle of a crowd and if I couldn’t hear or understand what people were talking about, I was alone. I slumped, feeling sorry for myself.
Ian played well and the Wethers were up by two at the half. I stood up to go, to get away for just a moment. Lorelei grabbed my arm but I shook my head and held up my hand, like I was taking a five-minute break. I was tired of trying to listen and tired of staring at Digger’s back. Joaquim tugged on my shirt and I motioned him to follow me. We climbed down the bleachers and left the gym, walking down a few hallways through the building until it got quieter.
“Is this where you went to school? These rooms? Will I be here?” he asked me.
“This is the high school, so yeah, I was here. You’ll be here someday pretty soon.” I pointed at a door. “This was my math class, senior year.” We turned down another hallway. “This is where all the language classes are.” I messed with my hearing aid a little in the quiet.
Joaquim watched me. “You kept your hands over your ears during the game sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I said again. “My ear is kind of sensitive, I guess. I’m also afraid of noise, that it will hurt the hearing I have.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I like to see my brother play. I’ll come see you play when you have your games here too. I bet your mom yells for you a lot.”
He nodded. “It’s embarrassing. If you come to games, you should wear those headphones, like the ones that block sound. My mom’s old boyfriend was in a band and when we went to hear him play, I wore the special headphones. Man, they were terrible. Not the headphones, the band.” He shook his head, remembering, and I burst out laughing.
“That’s a good idea,” I told him. I had always been too embarrassed to wear them before, but I decided I should have some. “I’m going to look into it. Not the band, the headphones.” Joaquim laughed now, too.
“Wreck, what are you doing down here?” Tracey called from the end of the hall, her arm linked through Digger’s. I stepped back and put my hand on Joaquim’s shoulder. She pointed at the language rooms. “Oh my God, do you remember Spanish with Señor Moreno? You were so bad in Spanish! Remember? You always said, ‘Qué? Qué?’ Like a broken record!” She laughed.
“Is that the same as it is in Portuguese? You were asking ‘what?’” Joaquim asked, and I nodded. I had hated Spanish and right now, I hated Tracey, too.
“I remember how you thought you would be able to improve your grade with Señor Moreno, Trace, but I told you not to try,” I said. She immediately stopped laughing and glared at me.
Digger disentangled his arm from hers and walked over. “Had enough of the game?” he asked me.
I hadn’t planned to stay for more than five minutes. I had thought that Digger and I could go off somewhere together, alone…“No, I want to go watch Ian,” I said, and with my hand still on Joaquim, I steered him back to the gym.
The Lamb’s Wethers won on a last second shot. The crowd went wild, and I clapped my hands over my ears. A split second later, bigger hands covered mine, and I looked up into Digger’s face. He put his arm around me and we left the gym, out through the lobby, onto the brick patio in the cold night air.
Tracey was half a step behind. “That was so fun! I always love seeing Ian play.”
I turned to stare at her. In all her life, the entire time we had been friends, she had never seen my brother at any of his games.
“Where should we go next?” she asked. “See, Wreck? I’m doing what you want to do!”
My heart softened a little. “Thanks, Tracey. I appreciate it.”
“Rebecca and I are heading out,” Digger told her. “Nice to meet you.” He raised a hand to Lorelei and Joaquim as they came out of the gym.
“Bye,” I said over my shoulder as I hurried to keep up with Digger into the parking lot.
“How long do we have?” he asked me.
“Only about half an hour,” I said. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” I was sorry I had insisted on staying for the second half, sorry I hadn’t spoken up when I was angry that he was ignoring me and talking to Tracey. It hadn’t been my finest hour.
“I don’t like her much. Your friend.” He started the car and gunned the engine a little. “I don’t like how she talks to you. About you, either.”
“She just teases.”
“It’s not funny.” We were kind of racing through the campus, but then Digger took his foot off the accelerator and sighed. “I don’t know where the fuck I’m going. I’ll drive you home.”
I nodded in the darkness.
“You should introduce me to your dad.”
“No!” I almost shouted back. “I mean, no, that’s not a good idea.”
“I’m not the sneaking type, Cinderella. I’m not going to climb in your window, or be happy only seeing you at your brother’s basketball practices. It’s crazy.”
I didn’t answer. He was 100% correct. And I still wouldn’t introduce him to my father.
“The offer still stands. If you’re afraid of him hurting your brother, you can both come stay with me.”
“Do you have any idea what would happen if we did that? He’d have you arrested, Digger, and I’m not kidding. Ian is a minor. I’m sure he would say I wasn’t in my right mind, either.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your mind.”
“That’s not what my father thinks!” I sighed. “I know you’re right, that it’s ridiculous to sneak around. I know I have to do something about my situation. About Ian’s situation. I need more time. Ok? Can you wait a little?”
Digger didn’t answer that question. “If I can’t meet your family, you come meet mine.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to meet my mom and my sister. They want to meet you, too.”
“You told them about me?” I remembered Maryam’s smile when I told her that Ian talked about her to me. Now I understood her feelings completely.
“You think more about what you want to do about your dad. Next Friday, we’re going to visit my sister with my mom.”
“Ok,” I said. “I’d like to.”
“Good.”
“Stop here,” I told him, pointing to the entrance to my driveway.
“I’m not leaving you here in the dark.” He started to turn in and I grabbed the wheel.
“Yes! You have to do things my way, Digger. Trust me. Please.”
He looked across the seat to me. “I do trust you. I don’t trust this situation and I don’t like it.”
I unbuckled and leaned across to kiss him. “Thank you. Just give me a little time.” I got out of the car but he didn’t pull away. The headlights from the Fairlane lit my way down the driveway.
Monday morning dawned with me going to work for my dad—directly for my dad. He had gotten home late the night before and reminded me, holding both my arms, his face right in mine. I forced myself not to struggle and try to get away as he reminded me. He wanted me in the same office with his assistant, being her assistant. Sherri wasn’t a bad lady, in fact, she had always been very nice to me, but it was galling to sit next to her as she invented things for me to do, her eyes full of sympathy for her boss’s dumb, useless daughter. I did everything she gave me with speed and accuracy, trying to show her that my dad was wrong about me.
It didn’t matter what I did, because whenever he came through his door or talked to her on the phone intercom, there was some message about me and how pitiful I was. “Sherri, that spreadsheet is too complicated for Rebecca. I told you she reads at a very low level,” he said. “She’s borderline illiterate, unfortunately, despite our best efforts.” The liar. I knocked my hand into Sherri’s mug of pens and pencils and they all tipped across her desk. He stood watching as I tried to pick them back up. Over the phone, he remarked, “Sherri, I’ll be on the London call until 12:30. Around noon please remind Rebecca to eat lunch.” Sherri tried to smile at me and made a gesture like she was putting something in her mouth while I nodded in shame.
“I know enough to feed myself,” I muttered, and she looked at me worriedly. She didn’t want to get in trouble with him either.
By the time lunch rolled around and Sherri reminded me to eat it, I felt like I was stretched pretty thin. Being in such proximity to my father all the time was already wearing on me. I had tried to tune out his constant comments, insults, and jokes at my expense for the past week. For my whole life, really. At home I mostly hid in my room whenever he was around. Now there was no getting away from him for eight hours, every day. I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I walked to the employee lounge and sank down at a table by myself. The lounge was empty, so I picked up my phone and called Tracey back.
“Wreck!” she answered. “Fucking finally! Where the hell have you been? Why did you leave me after the basketball game?”
“Digger and I had plans. How are you?”
“Things around here are terrible,” Tracey said, and she told me why in great detail. How her best friend was ignoring her and being a real bitch even after she had gone to a horrible high school basketball game (“Get it, Wreck?”), the write-up she had gotten at work (“They said it was going in my personnel file, like I give a shit!”), her parents all over her back, trying to get her to move out (“My mom made me go look at apartments. Do you know how gross they are?”), etc.
Finally she stopped, and sighed. “I don’t know. It really sucks.”
“What does?”
“All of it. Everything. I went out by myself last weekend when I couldn’t get you and the guy I went home with…he scared me.” Her voice sounded funny.
“Hey, are you crying? What did he do?”
“He didn’t want me to leave. He, I don’t know. Never mind. I really needed you.”
“You need to stop going home with those guys.” I said. I looked at the time on the giant clock on the wall. “I need to run. I don’t have that long to eat.”
“I’m not done talking to you! I didn’t even tell you the rest about school!” She kept talking about a problem with someone breaking the copy machine in the teachers’ workroom but it totally wasn’t her.
“Tracey, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later,” I said firmly. I finally got her to hang up, but then I was just sitting by myself, staring at the picture of Ian on my phone.
“Hello, Rebecca.”
I took my head out of my hand and looked up at Arthur, the kind of strange guy from the accounting department. “Hi there.”
He sat at my table in and opened a lunchbox. “I’ll eat here with you,” he informed me.
I was crumbling the sandwich I had brought into tiny bits. “Ok, sure.”
Arthur was one of the skinniest people I had ever seen, but he took container after container out of his bag, and started to eat faster than Digger. I let myself think of Digger for a moment. He seemed very far away as I sat under the flickering florescent lights in the windowless room.
I watched Arthur eat for a while, incredible amounts of extremely smelly food disappearing into his mouth. He didn’t really seem to chew.
“Do you like your new job?”
It took me a moment to notice that he paused his consumption to speak. “Huh? Oh, I just started today. It’s not enough time to know yet.” No, I knew. I hated it already.
Arthur was staring at me. “I saw your memo about updating the inventory practices.”
“You did? How?”
“It was right. That whole department has squandered money for years,” he answered. “It will be better with Melina gone.”
“Arthur, were you the one who caught her stealing? You came into our office that day, and asked me if I liked working at Lindhart Auctions…”
“Do you?” he asked me.
“No,” I admitted now. “Do you?”
“It’s pays ok, benefits aren’t great. You don’t get paid anything.”
I blushed. “No, I don’t.”
“You should look for another job.” He started to pack up his mountain of now-empty containers and I realized that my 20 minutes was also up and had been for quite a while. “You should look, now.”
I stopped sweeping the remnants of my sandwich into my hand and stared at him. “What does that mean?”
He was pushing back his chair with a high-pitched squeak. “Bye,” he told me as he left the lunchroom.
Digger called me as I was going toward the stairs. “Someone broke into the house last night,” he said, after I said hello.
“With you in it?” My heart stopped.
“I’m fine. I sleep like the fucking dead and I didn’t hear them until they came up the stairs. They stole a bunch of copper, everything that was left of those pipes, and they tried to pry off the mantel.”
“What happened when they went upstairs and you heard them?” I was leaning against the wall now, clutching the phone.
“I made them leave. Listen, Cinderella, I gotta get the house together. They only broke in because they thought it was a construction site. Can you help me?” I heard him give directions to someone about adjusting the idle mix and then swear. “I’m too busy here to be in charge there but you could do it great. I have the guys over at the house now but they need more direction. Your timeline, that stuff.”
I was stuck on the one point. “How did you make the burglars leave?”
“I’m fine, baby girl. They won’t come back. Can you help me? Can you get away today?”
I ground my teeth together, worried about him and worried about how I would get out of the office. “Yes. I’ll go over there now.”
“Thanks.” He sounded so relieved. “You’ll be good at the house with the guys working, no one will bother you. I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
We hung up and I went up the stairs. Sherri was just finishing eating at her desk. “Is my dad in?” I asked her.
“No, he went out to lunch.” She eyed his door. “Listen, Rebecca, I’m not sure what’s going on. This is a very awkward situation.”
“I know. I’m sorry you’re in the middle of it. Just so you know, I’m perfectly capable of eating on my own, things like that. I don’t need to be watched.”
She was nodding nervously. “I’m sorry that I’m in the middle of it, too. I don’t like it at all.”
I thought of what Arthur had said to me in the lunchroom. “Maybe you should look for another job,” I told her. Sherri’s eyes widened. “Benefits aren’t good here and it can’t be any fun to work for my father.”
She tapped her long nails on the desk. “Every time I make a mistake, even if it’s a little one, it’s like the world is ending, Mr. Lindhart gets so angry. Now I’m so afraid of making mistakes that I think I make even more.”
I thought of how I always got clumsy around my dad, tripping and knocking into things and dropping stuff. “He makes me nervous, too. He waits for me to do something wrong so he can call me out. He’s happy when I mess up.”
Sherri nodded. “Yeah. But I can’t believe he treats his own daughter like that.”
“He treats everyone like that,” I answered. “If I were you, I’d look around. Even if it was a pay cut, it would be worth it. Listen, I have to leave for the afternoon. I’m going to put a note on his desk so you don’t have to tell him.” She looked anxious at the idea of me leaving and I couldn’t blame her. I felt the same way.
I walked into my dad’s office. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in there, even when I worked two floors down. It was decorated a lot like our house with what I knew was expensive furniture and art. There was a picture on the desk of Ian scoring a goal in lacrosse. You couldn’t even see his face because of his big helmet, but he looked strong and powerful, and there was a player on the other team lying on the ground near Ian’s feet. It was an image right up my dad’s alley.
His desk was very neat and orderly. I took a piece of paper and in my best handwriting I explained that I had to leave for the afternoon for personal business. I would see him at home. I held my hand steady so that it wouldn’t shake as I wrote it.
Then I picked up my bag and put on my coat quickly, suddenly afraid that he would catch me before I left. I reminded myself that I was an adult. That I was free to come and go because I wasn’t in jail, no matter how much my life sometimes felt like it. I rushed out into the parking lot anyway and I was sure I saw my dad’s car on the service drive as I got onto the freeway. I turned on the music and kept going.
Digger’s house was in a state of chaos. There were a bunch of guys there working, trying to put in an alarm, new pipes, electricity, and everyone was stepping on each other and, it appeared, fighting. Like almost coming to blows. “Excuse me?” I called from the doorway. “Hello, can you all listen to me?”
They could not. I tapped a guy as he walked by. “Excuse me? Do you think you could yell loud enough to get everyone’s attention?”
He nodded and when he sucked in a big breath of air, I covered my ears. After his bellow finished echoing through the house, I held up my hand and tried to speak up. And be commanding. “Hi, I’m Rebecca. Could I please talk to whoever is in charge of each of your crews for second?”
I recognized the electrician, carpenter, and plumber that I had met before and I introduced myself to the plasterers and the alarm guys, who, it turned out, couldn’t do too much. It was hard to put plaster on walls that were structurally unsound, and they couldn’t wire windows and doors for alarms if there were only holes instead of windows and doors. There was also the whole issue of not having power. I told them I would call them to come back in a few weeks. The rest of us reviewed the construction timeline I had written up, and although they had a few change and additions, they agreed that it would basically function and hopefully cut down on the existing confusion.
“Can you go back to work, then?” I asked hopefully.
They could, and they did. After a few hours I felt like things were definitely under control. I spent my time taking more measurements, discussing issues with the guys working, trying not to freeze in the frigid house, and then, very bravely, looking into the garage. Nope! Still full of raccoons.
I waited as long as I could, then finally sent a text to Digger that I was leaving. I had been wanting to see him, a lot. I said goodbye to all the workers and gave them my number, hoping I would still have my phone after seeing my father for them to call me on it. I forced myself to drive at the speed limit rather than 20 or so miles under it to delay my arrival at home.
He wasn’t there yet and my mom and brother were waiting for him to have dinner. “Just so you both know, I left work really early today, and he’s going to be very angry,” I told them. “I’m expecting it and I don’t want you to be surprised.”
“Why did you do that?” my mom asked plaintively. “Why would you antagonize him?”
“I had things to do.”
“Digger,” I heard Ian mutter angrily.
I was opening my mouth to tell him not to blame Digger when we heard the front door slam. All three of us jumped. My mom made shooing motions. “To the table! To the table!”
No one said a word at dinner. I couldn’t eat from nerves, and it didn’t look like my mom and Ian were doing much better. Only my dad enjoyed the food and washed it down with a bottle of very expensive Cabernet from a wine cellar Lindhart had auctioned off last year (restaurant closure after a bitter divorce and custody battle, he had told us).
“Did you enjoy your afternoon, Rebecca?”
I stared at my plate.
“Where were you?” he asked me calmly.
“There’s nothing in your office for me to do, Dad. I went to help a friend.” I spoke slowly and carefully so that my voice wouldn’t shake.
“I’ll decide what there is for you to do.”
I nodded.
“You do seem fairly useless helping Sherri. You got in her way and wasted her time. The story of your life, isn’t it?”
I nodded again.
“We’ll decide tomorrow what to do with you. You and I will need to talk now, privately, about your decision to leave the office without my permission.”
“My mother called.”
My dad stopped swirling the dregs of his wine. “What?”
My mom glanced quickly at me then spoke up again. “My mother called from Louisville. She would like me to come visit her. I think I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“That’s ridiculous,” my father told her. “You have responsibilities here. You have a son to take care of. You can’t just leave because that old bat calls you.”
“She’s my mother,” she explained. “If she needs me, I have to go.” She looked at me and then looked at the door and I got the message.
My father argued back that she couldn’t go and I was sure he would prevail in that, but the distraction was working for me. Ian and I looked at each other and quietly got up from the table, and I went to his room with him and stayed until I was sure my father had gone to bed.
He wouldn’t have forgotten, but the crisis was averted. For now.