“Iheard voices downstairs,” Cassie said as I entered her room.
“You had a visitor. Luke Whitaker brought these over for you.” I put the mason jar of flowers on the bedside table and wondered vaguely where he had gotten them. He had to have driven somewhere to find flowers so nice.
Her face went from an expression of surprise to anger, then fear. “Don’t let him up here, Emily!”
“He’s already gone,” I told her soothingly. I had opened the back door and looked at him expectantly, and he hadn’t had much choice. Things were bad enough without a near-stranger criticizing my judgement and my parenting choices. My aunting choices.
“Why would he come here?” she asked nervously, smoothing what was left of her beautiful hair.
“I guess he wanted to see you, silly. Would you want to see him?” I busied myself fluffing the pillows but watched at her out of the corner of my eye. She just frowned. “Hey, how about I help you downstairs? You can hang out with Charlie a little. He’s really tired, just lying on the couch. You could watch TV together.”
She picked at a bump in the chenille bedspread. “What doesLuke look like?”
Unbelievably handsome.Chiseled.Masculine.Ralph Lauren model.Better than ever.
“Fine. I mean, he’s older.”
“I’m surprised he came here to see me. And flowers too. I broke his heart,” she explained, nodding almost smugly.
“You broke up with him?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.
She almost snarled. “Not one of my boyfriends, ever, has broken up with me!” I left the “except Mike” hanging. She still expected him to come back. “Of course I broke up with him.”
“Why, Cass? You guys always seemed…” Perfect. Two beautiful people, destined for a beautiful life together.
“Whatever, I don’t want to talk about it. Did you check out any magazines?”
“They don’t have anything new at the library. Why don’t you come downstairs for a while?”
She stared at me. “What’s all over your face?”
I looked in the mirror over Nana’s old bureau. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
I looked like I had been working in a mine. My face was covered in dirt. Brown lines streaked my forehead from when I had pushed my hair out of my eyes with the filthy gardening gloves. My cheeks were a mottled grey with clean lines from the tears I had cried at the sink when Luke implied I was dumb and an unfit aunt to Charlie. There were a few old leaves stuck in my hair for good measure. “Oh, my God.”
“You’re having people over looking like that?” Cassie asked. “Even for you, it’s pretty bad.”
“I didn’t know I looked like this!” I protested. “He didn’t say anything!”
Cassie snorted a laugh. Even though it was at my expense, I was glad to hear her laugh a little. “He’s still so damn polite. He was like that in bed, too.”
Heat rose in my face. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t feel good,” she said, then turned on her side away from me, and put her earbuds in.
∞
The trip to Roy’s was even harder than the bike ride to town that morning. Charlie had cried as I left, which was at a time even earlier than usual so I wouldn’t be late. I had to peel him off me, feeling like crying myself. Then a bunch of teenage boys in a truck had followed me for a while, yelling vulgar stuff and sometimes veering close to my bike, scaring me to death.
I had been thrilled to see the muddy parking lot at last. Even better was the fact that the El D was no longer in it, having been towed away by Martha’s angel of a cousin.
I hid my bike behind the dumpster at the back of the bar, then fixed my hair and waved my hands at my cheeks, trying to cool the red away. The joy of my fair complexion meant that every exertion and every emotion showed in the color of my cheeks.
Roy met me at the door. “I have something for you, sugar,” he told me. He sounded almost gleeful, and I was immediatelysuspicious. He took something from behind the bar and I held it up.
It was a neon yellow t-shirt, child sized, with I DRINK AT on the front, and ROYS TAVERN on the back. I was puzzled. “Roy, people aren’t going to buy t-shirts about drinking for their kids.”
“What do you mean, for kids? This is for you to wear while you’re waitressing.”
