“Don’t go,” he started, but then she disappeared anyway.
It was hard to feel like that wasn’t a sign.
21
Night Eight
Betty
Just Before Thanksgiving
In the weeksince Zeke’s surgery and the weeks since meeting Sybil’s casting director friend, Betty hadn’t really thought much about Natalie until she got a text telling her that she’d booked a commercial. If shehadthought about it, she never would have agreed, would have told Natalie no before the yes even came in. But she was tired; even with the better housing, sleep rarely found her, and the fog of that fatigue sometimes clouded her thinking, like a notion would be in her brain and then poof, it was gone. So maybe Natalie was just a poof, or else Betty would have mounted a better protest.
“They loved your look,” was Natalie’s only explanation in her text, and before Betty could write her back and decline, Natalie followed up with a second text with a monetary figure that would mean that Betty could quit the diner for good or at least pare her shifts down to a couple of nights a week. Betty had been so prudent, so meticulous for the past four years, but also, she was sick of constantly being poor. To confidently lock in a permanent exit plan, she needed more money than whatshe had in the storage locker at Grand Central. That was the foundation, but to build the walls, tack on a roof, she neededmore.
Betty so rarely allowed herself to be greedy, which was her only excuse for agreeing to finally meet Caleb for a drink after a string of back-and-forths in the two weeks since she’d impulsively texted him that night at Sybil’s house. She’d already be in midtown for a hair and makeup test for the commercial; it felt easy, it felt convenient, and unfortunately for Betty, it felt safe. Betty never trusted safe, but shewantedto. She really really wanted to put her full faith behindsafe.
Zeke had been moored on the couch, painkillers coursing through his veins, when she left in the late afternoon for the shoot. More or less where he’d been in the week since his surgery.
“Betty,” he said, his eyes glassy, his arm elevated, his jaw loose. “It’s almost Thanksgiving. What should we do for Thanksgiving? Why don’t you invite your family? We’ll make a feast of it. Like the Pilgrims. Like we just got off the boats.”
“Oh, my family couldn’t come,” she had said. She wanted to correct him that he meantships, notboats, but Zeke wasn’t in any state for fact-checking. But Betty had been a reader—sneaking into the school library as a child, and of course never checking out a book and bringing it home because there were consequences for disobedience, but still. She’d made that mistake only once—Judy Blume. She could still envision the cover, as well as the punishment. Now she reminded herself that at least she knew the difference between a ship and a boat. That even if she was just a high school graduate with no discernable life skills, she knew the difference. Also, she reminded herself, she did have life skills. She was still here.
“Didn’t I hear you say you havefoursiblings?” Zeke asked asBetty searched the living room for a stray mitten. “Can’t I meet one? Couldn’t you invite even one to stay with us?” He dipped his head back on the couch cushion. “Betty, I would like to meetjust one.” He quieted, and Betty thought he may have fallen asleep, but then he jolted his head up and said, “My sister, Lani, is coming. Did I tell you that? Don’t worry, you’ll love her. I bet you guys will be best friends. My mom and dad too.”
Betty didn’t have the heart to tell him that she almost never made friends easily, and she was highly doubtful that Lani would break that streak. Growing up, her father had told her that with so many siblings, she didn’tneedfriends. But once Patience was married off, she’d really just had Levi.
“Sybil worries about you, you know,” Zeke said.
“Sybil doesn’t need to worry about me.”
“She told me that she thinks it’s weird that you have such a big family but never talk about them.” His eyes were closed, and it was possible that he was making all of this up in a fever dream. But it was also possible that he wasn’t. And Betty didn’t want Sybil asking questions.
“Oh,” she had said, “I do talk to them. We email. And text. We just aren’t really the phone types. You know how it goes.”
Zeke had hummed something that sounded like a concurrence, but Betty didn’t think she had convinced him.
“Actually, maybe my friend Caleb can come to Thanksgiving,” she had said. “I’m sort of seeing someone.”
Zeke’s head sprung up from the back of the couch. “Yes! Yes!” he said. “Bring Caleb to Thanksgiving. Then Sybil will shut up.”
Betty hadn’t actually meant to suggest that Caleb would come to Thanksgiving. But she spoke before she could think it through. She hadn’t even gone on an official date with him yet. But if Sybil was talking, then Sybil was plotting, and that meantshe was going to roll up her sleeves and dive headfirst into Betty’s life with or without her permission. Maybe Betty could find a way to ask Caleb and not make it weird. For obvious reasons, she hadn’t been allowed to date in high school. The assumption was that her father would match her with a suitable boy and that would be that. When he turned out to be closer to a man than a boy, Betty wanted to protest, scream, fight. Her dad, as if sensing her rebellion, her need to turn and flee upon an introduction to Silas, squeezed her upper arm so tightly that she was bruised for a week. Patience had been paired with his brother, Matthew, who Betty always thought looked like he would endorse cannibalism if God told him to, but Betty no longer spoke with Patience, so she didn’t know what God did or didn’t say to them anymore.
Now, after three hours of test hair and makeup and wardrobe, Betty spotted Caleb at the bar, scrolling through his phone with a scowl on his face, and she forced herself similarly not to turn and bolt. Her nerves rose up in the form of bile in the back of her throat, and everything about the situation screamedrun. But before she could, Caleb looked up and saw her, and his entire face shifted from scowl to delight, and well, what was she going to do then? Even an expert runner had to time her escapes carefully.
“Oh wow, you look really pretty.”
And she allowed herself to blush because she had wanted to look pretty for him.
“Thank you,” she said. “So do you.” She slapped her hand across her mouth as soon as she realized, but he laughed.
He ordered them two beers, and then they moved to the back, where she slid into a booth next to him and let her stomach feel fluttery when their legs touched. She decided right then, even if it was just for a night or even if she just needed himas some sort of proof, an offering of normalcy to Sybil, that she could permit herself this. She could take something that she wanted. And she wanted the money from the commercial, and she wanted Caleb. She liked who she was when she was being greedy, even if she also knew that greed could end up eating you from the inside out.
Her father had always liked to preach about greed—and, as he eventually learned, greed could end up being the thing that giveth, but also taketh away. Betty knew that lesson too.
22
Night Eight
