38
beth
The morning after the festival, I woke to Jo’s and Meg’s loud voices down the hall. Ever since Jo was a kid, whenever she got angry, her tone went a few octaves deeper. Meg was the opposite; her usually soft voice became a screechy kind of noise, a lot like the sound of Mrs. King’s little dogs.
“You could have told me!” Meg yelled at her. “Weeks have gone by—and nothing!”
I threw my leg over the bed to get up. To go mediate whatever the hell was going on with my sisters. I was always the mediator. I was so tired, though; the festival noises, smells, chaos—it was exhausting. My entire body, mind included, throbbed when I lay in bed last night. Still, no matter how tired I was that morning, it wasn’t that important. Not as important as whatever was happening down the hall.
“Don’t blame me! You’re always the victim!” Jo yelled back.
I closed my eyes for a second and stared at the ceiling. Nothing would change in the next few seconds. The day before had started so differently than it had ended. When it started, I was anxious, sure, but it was nothing compared to the end of the night, walking Meg through a crowd, hiding her in the mood-ring girl’s booth . . .
I couldn’t hear what Jo and Meg were yelling about anymore. I lifted my hand into the air, studying the stone on my finger, which had turned a light blue. The lighter shades of blue were supposed to indicate that I was relaxed. I wasn’t sure that I believed mood rings really worked.
A door slammed, and Meg continued to yell. I got out of bed and followed the noise. In the kitchen, Meg was crying, leaning her shoulders against the fridge. Jo was gone, and the back screen door was swinging open.
My dad wheeled himself into the kitchen. “What’s going on?” he asked Meg, who didn’t answer. She only cried out, covered her face, and ran off to her room.
My dad and I both stared at the now-empty hallway for a few seconds before he said, “What is happening around here?”
I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know, either, and I didn’t know how much of last night my dad was even aware of. He had so much going on already himself, it was selfish to add another rock to his shoulders.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll work it out, whatever it is.” I looked at him. “Want some breakfast?”
My dad looked at me, at the door, and then down the hallway, slowly. He sighed, his thin shoulders visibly dredging up and right back down. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with a small hole in the collar. His outfits never varied much, just different-colored T-shirts and sweatshirts. Sometimes he would wear a button-up shirt, when we went to restaurants or my sisters’ school functions. And even more rarely, he would dress in his Class A’s when there was a military ball or ceremony of whatever sort.
I always loved when there was a military ball for my parents to go to. Meg had done Mom’s hair and makeup for the last few years, and she would always take us to the mall and let us help her choose a dress to wear. That was one of the few times a year we got to shop at the mall. It was pretty fun helping my mom try on dresses; somehow, the JCPenney’s dressing room would become the set of Say Yes to the Dress. Meg would have Mom twirl and turn and bend down and stretch up, showing off every inch of the dresses. We would always go to Friday’s for lunch, and sometimes even to Starbucks beforehand. My dad would get my mom a corsage, and Amy would make kissing noises when he slid it onto her wrist. Mom almost always poked his chest with the boutonniere pin due to his habit of making her laugh at the worst times. The memories I have of them are mostly fond, but sometimes it’s hard to square up the dad in my memories with the man sitting in the wheelchair before me.
I checked the cabinets and fridge to see what I could make for him. His appetite had changed since coming home. He says the cocktail of medications the Army put him on made him too nauseous to eat.
“What was all that noise?” my mom croaked, walking into the room. She slid behind my dad’s chair and sat down at the kitchen table. The table was the oldest thing in our house, given to us by my nana, before she and my mom stopped talking. I wondered if Aunt Hannah talked to her still . . . I couldn’t be sure, no matter how much intel I had on the adult stuff around us. The table was scratched, beat-up, and broken during our PCS from Fort Hood to Fort Cyprus, and my mom’s elbow was resting right in the deep splinter of the glossy dark wood. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, even though she just woke up. She had been watching The Twilight Zone on the couch, a cup in her hand, when I got up to pee in the middle of the night.
“Meg and Jo were fighting over something,” my dad answered.
When Mom asked for specifics, I shrugged and popped open a can of biscuits and started making everyone’s meal.
Several minutes later, Meg came back into the kitchen right as I handed my mom her plate. Meg was calmer now, if a bit disheveled.
“Want some?” I asked.
She nodded, and her puffy red eyes focused on my mom, who was swallowing the pile of biscuits and gravy on her plate and washing them down with milk. A faint white milk stain colored her bottom lip as she chewed. I wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but something on the wall behind me seemed to be entertaining to her.
“Did anyone call for me?” Meg’s voice sounded like she had been chewing on sandpaper in her room.
“Call what?” my dad said.
I hadn’t heard Meg—or anyone—ask that question in . . . years. Wouldn’t someone have just called her cell phone?
Meg blinked and mumbled, “Never mind.”
“What are you girls up to today?” my dad asked between bites. Clearly neither he nor my mom were eager to get into whatever all the yelling had been about.
When Meg remained silent, I guessed she wasn’t going to answer, so I did. “I’m doing nothing. Some school stuff, laundry. That’s it, really.” I shrugged.
“That sounds like a blast, Beth.”
It was a comfort that my dad still had his sarcasm. His tone wasn’t as malicious or as callous as the comment would have sounded coming from say, Amy, and it came with a smile and knowing about his high school experience. He was a lot like me.
“Don’t you have any friends around here?” he asked.
“You gave me so many sisters, I don’t need friends.”
We both laughed. His laughter was a little lighter than usual, but it still sounded so good in that yellow-wallpapered kitchen.
“Touché.”
“Jo didn’t come back yet?” Meg asked. She hadn’t eaten much of the food in front of her. I thought about soaking the dishes before I made myself a plate, so the slimy gravy wouldn’t stick to the pan, but I was so hungry and the gravy looked so, so good.
My dad answered, “No. She’s still next door.”
As far as I knew, no one knew for sure that Jo was at Laurie’s, but then again, we all knew. That’s where she always was. Laurie’s, a shift at Pages, school, then back to Laurie’s.
“None of you were going to tell me that Shia came here that night?” Meg pointed to my mom.
My mom snapped her head up, but my sister kept going. “He told me you all knew. He showed up there, and I didn’t even know he was looking for me.”
“Well, Meg, what difference would it have made?” Mom said, then went back to eating. She didn’t seem to notice the stain of gravy oiling up her shirt.
Meg’s eyes bulged. She wiped her mouth with a napkin before she spoke. “He came looking for me and I didn’t even know!” It felt like her anger was going to make the house rattle. “I’ve been waiting for so long for him to do that, and you guys didn’t even tell me. He’s getting married—”
“Would that have changed? And John Brooke?” Mom pointed out.
Part of me wanted to step in, but another part of me didn’t know what kind of tornado I’d be walking into.
I would never find out what Meg was going to say because Amy came rushing through the back door with puffy, wet eyes.
“What’s wrong?” My dad asked, and I watched him struggle to get up like his legs forgot they couldn’t quite move yet. He sank back down in the chair.
“My life! Everything sucks!” She stormed past us and twirled around when no one tried to stop her. “Fuck everything!”
Her cussing had my mom on her feet. “Amy, watch your mouth.”
Amy huffed at our mom’s warning and started to cry again. “Jacob Weber told Casey Miller that I tried to kiss him—and now everyone hates me!”
She paced around the room in a fury. I didn’t know who either of those kids were, but I knew how rumors could eat at someone and ruin lives. I’d watched it happen with Meg in Texas.
“Why did he do that?” Meg asked Amy. My two sisters’ heart-shaped faces had never looked as similar as they did in that kitchen, all puffy-eyed and pink-lipped.
“Because he’s a dickhead!” Amy’s voice turned into a cry like a puppy’s when you step on its tail.
Mom didn’t correct her language this time.
“He was the one who tried to kiss me!”
Our dad didn’t say anything; he just looked at the women in the room as they started fluttering around Amy.
“Are you saying you didn’t want him to?” Mom asked, on her feet and sharp-eyed in seconds. It was like she’d just shed a thick, groggy layer of skin.
“Where were you?” Meg petted Amy’s hair like she forgot that she was midfight with Jo.
Amy leaned into her. “Ew! Of course I didn’t want him to. He’s kissed, like, every girl in my class.” Amy’s little nose turned up at the tip and always gave the illusion that she was younger than a preteen.
“Tell us what happened.” My mom slid her hand behind Amy’s back, but Amy pulled away.
“Meg,” Amy whined.
My sisters shared a look, and Meg told us that they were going to talk alone for a minute.
My mom, my dad, and I all had our heads tilted a little, and I guessed that my parents were wondering when Meg and Amy had gotten so close. But I often caught them whispering and knew how often Amy crawled in bed with Meg, so I wasn’t surprised by that. My head was tilted because Meg only cared about Amy right then, not herself.