Drawn to the tray of cookies on the stove, Paul made his way across Marigold’s kitchen and pried off two of them with the spatula he found on the counter. He shoved them in his mouth. “These are so good,” he mumbled around a mouthful of warm cookies. “Come try one.” Celia stood across the room, just inside the door.
She held her hands linked in front of her, and chewed on her bottom lip, glancing around. Her gaze stopped on a shelf on the wall near her head, piled high with mail about to topple over. He chewed and swallowed, and enjoyed watching her take in this room. The dining table was completely covered by planters with varying amounts of dirt in them. There were bags of potting soil and fertilizer on the floor, not to mention a few scattered piles of dirt. Her eyes went to the prism hanging in the window, which cast dozens of tiny rainbows around the room.
He saw the moment she felt the beauty of the space. Her eyes lost the questions and she looked at Paul, a warm smile on her face. “You have a rainbow on your forehead.”
He grinned and licked the melted chocolate from his fingers. He scraped another cookie off the tray and held it out to Celia. The second it landed in her palm, a timer buzzed, and she jumped.
Marigold swished into the room, her long ochre skirt billowing out behind her. She grabbed a pot holder and opened the oven, fanning the air before leaning over. “Goodness, I’m glad I heard the timer this time. The last tray burned up entirely because I thought I could manage to rake leaves and spread them over my garden in nine minute increments.” She chuckled as she lifted out the tray and set it beside the other one. “I outsmarted myself this time, and painted my toenails instead.”
She lifted her foot to reveal her orange toenails, smudged all around the skin of her toes where the hem of her skirt had brushed across them. “Well, would you look at that?” She laughed deeply, and Celia giggled.
Marigold looked up at the sound. “I haven’t even said a proper hello. Hello. It’s so nice to see you, Celia. I was overjoyed when Malcolm told me you’d be coming by.” Holding out her skirt to prevent further staining, she hobbled over to Celia and put her arms around her in a warm hug. She pulled back and looked at her face. “Have you had a cookie? The serving size is a dozen, just ask your boyfriend.”
“Oh…” Celia trailed off, then put the cookie to her lips and nibbled.
Paul snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her close, feeling a sharp fondness at watching her out of her element, and at seeing her react to Marigold using that word. “Where’s Malcolm?”
Marigold spooned cookie dough onto a third tray. “He and Fay are in his bedroom. Feel free to wander on back, and take some cookies with you.”
Paul stacked up a few more cookies and held them in one hand, grabbing Celia’s hand with his other. They walked down the hallway, Celia going slower than him because she was trying to take in all the paintings lining the walls. They were mostly terrible, amateur attempts, but fun to look at.
Malcolm’s door was open, so he walked on in. Fay and Malcolm lay flat on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. Paul tilted his head to see what they were looking at, and smiled when he saw the hanging wooden animals. For years, Malcolm had been carving little figures, mostly animals and mostly crudely done, just to keep his hands busy when they sat around. He had a box full of them, and when he finished one he just tossed it on the top.
“Hey, Paul. Celia. Look what Fay did.”
“You made them, I just hung them.”
Paul lay down beside Fay, fitting his long limbs in between a pile of laundry and the desk. Celia leaned against the wall, her eyes scanning the ceiling. “There must be a hundred of them.”
“A hundred twenty-three,” Fay said. “It took me two hours to hang them. I did it while Malcolm was at practice this morning.”
“Your house is…” Celia’s voice was full of wonder.
“Crazy? Messy? Weird-smelling?” Malcolm supplied.
“All of that, yes. But I was going to say that it’s amazing.” She stepped forward, standing over Paul’s legs to get a closer look at one of the figures. She tapped it with her finger and watched it swing on the string it dangled from. “Is that Mr. Parrish?”
Malcolm and Paul busted up laughing. “Yeah. I ran out of animals and moved on to people. He’s probably the only one you’ll recognize, though.” Mr. Parrish, one of the most beloved teachers at the high school, always wore bell-bottomed pants and had huge glasses that slipped to the end of his nose.
A soft smile passed Celia’s lips, and she sat down against the wall. Paul was glad to see she looked more comfortable. It was pretty impossible to feel weird for very long at Malcolm’s house. Mr. Dearing poked his head in then, and Paul saw Celia’s shoulders inch up.
“Hi, kids.” When his eyes reached Celia, he smiled broadly. “Oh, Celia, how nice to have you here.” He must have noticed her wide eyes, because he addressed the room at large again. “What are you kids planning to do today?”
Malcolm gestured his hands around the room. “You’re looking at it.”
“Ah well, we all need a little time sitting around with friends. I, however, am going to figure out how to smoke a ham.”
Paul laughed. Mr. Dearing was always trying to learn something new, and he enjoyed buying new gadgets to accompany the experience.
“You won’t be laughing later, Paul, once you’ve tasted a freshly smoked ham.” He grinned and tapped the doorway before wandering off.
They cocooned themselves in the house all day. By evening, it was cold and dreary outside. In the cozy warmth of the Dearing house, they ate slightly too smoky ham and watched stupid movies.
Celia had relaxed as the hours wore on, but still fidgeted with the ends of her shirt sleeves, chewed on her lips, and looked down at her hands too much to be entirely at ease. Paul wondered if it was bothering her that her dad would be angry she was here.
When the opportunity to talk to her alone presented itself, in the form of Mr. and Mrs. Dearing retreating to their bedroom and Fay and Malcolm running out to get everyone slushies, Paul pounced—literally. He jumped over the back of the couch where Celia sat, landing beside her so hard the whole couch skidded forward. “Oops, sorry,” he said as he pushed the couch back where it belonged.
She smiled and lifted the edge of the blanket that covered her legs, inviting him to join her. He kissed her forehead, the end of her nose, and leaned toward her lips. A millimeter apart, he asked, “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” She pressed closer to him, but he backed up.
“If the answer’s fine, that’s not the answer.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She tried again for the kiss, and he obliged.
He sat back against the couch and she rested her head on his chest, her hair tickling the underside of his chin.
“Are you tired?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I’m tired. It wasn’t a good night at my house,” he said.
“What happened?”
He looked down at their feet, covered by the threadbare quilt, thinking about what to share, how best to put it. He took long enough coming up with an answer that she backtracked. “You know what, never mind,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, we have to talk about this stuff. We have to talk about our families. It’s important. If we don’t talk about the big stuff, what are we even doing?”
She sighed. “Okay, but you go first.”
“I always go first.”
“I know,” she said, and snuggled deeper into his side.
“I was up late with Mom. Since she started her new job, she made this plan she’d finish out the bottle of pills she had and not refill it. She’d been doing great, but yesterday she made some mistake on the computer at work, and her boss got mad, and she was stressed. She really wanted to take a pill, but she only had three left. I sat with her. She could hardly sit still. Eventually I cut a pill into four pieces and gave her a tiny crumb. It took her forever to fall asleep.”
Celia was quiet for a minute. He jangled his foot against the coffee table, wondering what she was thinking. It was getting easier to tell her these things.
“So you sit with her?”
He nodded. “I wait it out. I’ve…thought about how to help her. She’s making more money now and her insurance is pretty good, so I might bring up therapy again. I don’t know. It might be pointless. She’s had therapy before and it didn’t seem to help.”
“Maybe she wasn’t ready for help back then.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure she’s ready now, either.”
She swallowed, and he felt her throat move where it rested against his chest. “My dad didn’t come home after work last night,” she said.
Laughter echoed down the hall from Malcolm’s parents’ room. Paul held his breath and waited. He had a lot of practice waiting. He hoped Malcolm and Fay would take a little longer. He held absolutely still. Celia was like a slippery ice cube—the tighter she was squeezed, the easier she slipped away.
“Mom got to worrying he was dead, and woke me up at about one in the morning. She kept talking herself in and out of calling the police. She’d say how awful she’d feel if he was dead in a ditch somewhere, and she hadn’t sent for help. Then she’d say she shouldn’t call because he might get arrested for public intoxication again. She doesn’t have a job right now. We can’t afford for him to be making these kinds of mistakes. But the car was gone, Paul, and I kept thinking how awful it would be if he was driving drunk. It was one of those strange times when I was glad an adult was around to make the decisions, but I also felt like she was making the wrong one.”
Paul laid his palm against her hair.
“We didn’t get any sleep.” She glanced up at him nervously. “So yeah, I’m tired.”
“Did your dad get home okay?”
“He showed up this morning about five. He really yelled at Abe, good and harsh. Abe had woken up and came into the living room, wondering what was going on. I mean, my God, he had on Star Wars pajamas, Paul. He’ll be thirteen soon, but he’s still a kid, you know? But Dad’s always harder on Abe, especially when he’s drunk, and it makes me feel like my entire body is on fire. Like if I talk, I would breathe fire at him. And when he yelled at Abe to go back to his room and stop looking at him, I did. I breathed fire. I yelled back.”
Nervous, uneasy, Paul asked, “What did he do?”
“He was surprised, I think. Usually I go along with what he wants, because I don’t want to make things worse. But I promised myself I’m not doing that anymore. And I yelled at him.”
“But what did he do?” Paul clenched his teeth together hard.
“He cried. I yelled at him, and he just started crying. And then Mom took him to bed.”
Paul breathed out slowly, almost painfully. He’d said things that had made his mom cry before. He knew that torment, that guilt, and he also knew the wrongness of it—that it wasn’t his guilt to bear. It was another thing that didn’t stop just because of the knowing.
“Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed this morning, because I had to get ready for work. I barely had enough energy to tie my shoes, let alone wait tables. But I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I got up and got ready for work. I went to the kitchen, and there he was, at the table, wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday.”
Paul ran his hand over her hair, trying to comfort her.
“He said he was sorry. That he was tired of making the same mistakes. He got a little teary again. Mom came in then and tried to make breakfast, but he told her he would do it and that things were going to be different and he was sticking to it. I don’t believe him, but I want to. It’s stupid to want that, but I do.”
Paul’s mom had thrown her pills out many times before, lasted a few days or a couple of weeks, only to end up tearing through the house looking for a bottle that she might have forgotten about, or calling the doctor in Bakerstown who wrote her prescriptions without question. He knew the agony of hope.
Fay and Malcolm burst in the front door, Fay’s arms circled around four huge Styrofoam cups, and Malcolm’s carrying three paper sacks. “We are loaded up on junk food,” Fay said. “We have enough here to last all night.”
Celia sat up and smiled. “Perfect.”
“It’s good here, huh?” Fay said, and squeezed onto the couch beside Celia.
Celia looked over at Paul, her face wide open. “Yeah, it’s good here.”