“Seriously?” Grade spluttered indignantly.
“If,” Dory said again, emphasizing the word. “If I get marriedorgo to collegeorbecome a mechanic, he’s not going to be there. It’ll be Mom, who’ll say something about how I could have done this earlier if I’d not gotten pregnant.”
“I’ll be there,” Grade said.
The last bit of glossy highlighter smeared away under the oily wipe. Dory blew her nose into the makeup-smeared tissue and then crumpled it up to throw in the trash bin. Then she met his gaze in the mirror.
“No,” she said, “you won’t. Just like you weren’t here for anything else. And that’s fine. I get it. YouknowI get it. Just don’t lie about it.”
Grade broke the reflected eye contact first. It wasn’t fair, but she wasn’t wrong either. Sometimes things were like that. People didn’t always get what they deserved, good or bad. Grade couldn’t change who he was, and he couldn’t bring their dad back.
They’d all just have to live with that.
He got up off the bed and poked at a knotted tangle of jeans and swimsuit on the floor with the toe of his sneaker.
“Are these for the laundry?” he asked.
Dory turned to look at him, a pot of cream held in one hand. “You’re doing the laundry?”
“If I’d picked the school run, Cody would be running pretty late.”
“OK,” Dory said, drawing the word out over her tongue. She patted the air like she had to soothe it. “It’s OK. We can deal with this. There’s no need to worry.”
“I’m not.”
“You should be,” Dory said. “You ruin one of my work outfits and I’ll gut you.”
“I can do laundry,” Grade said. “Or did you think I just bought new clothes every day in LA?”
“The way you dress, who cares,”Dory said as she wiped the excess cream onto her elbows. “I’m not spending the next six months wondering if I’ve put on weight or if you’ve shrunk my jeans. You go and pick up anything lying on the floor of Cody’s room, and I’ll get my stuff ready and meet you downstairs.”
She made shooing gestures at him with both hands and looked expectant. Grade glared at her.
“You know this is part of what I do for a living?” he said.
“And if I needed to get blood out of my Miu Miu rip-off skirt, that’d be great,” Dory said. “But I need you to pre-treat the baby oil stains on my sequined booty shorts. So just do what you’re told.”
“You remember that you’re the little sister, yeah?” Grade asked.
“I’ll drive.”
“And I always enjoy your company,” Grade said. “I’ll see you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”
***
The laundromat hadn’t changed.
Same nicotine-colored machines, same cut and greasy linoleum on the floor, and the same caked slots you had to slam with the heel of your hand to get the money to drop in. Even the clientele was the same. Grade nodded to Mrs. Fowler, who’d taught them both history, and got the expected look of suspicion in return. The woman, her artificially baby blond hair still in the bob he remembered, grabbed her bag, clutched it tightly, and stomped down to the other end of the room to mutter aggrievedly to a middle-aged woman placidly pairing socks.
“I still got it,” he said to Dory.
“She hates Cody too,” Dory said. She’d changed into jeans and stolen one of Cody’s sweaters, her hair scraped back in a skimpy ponytail. Before Grade could just stuff everything into the drum of the machine, she pulled out a handful of mesh bags and handed half of them to Grade. “Sequins in one. Lace in the other.”
“They’re all clothes.”
“Just sort.”
Grade sighed, but he got pissy when people tried to tell him how to do his job. He started to sort them out quickly—interrupted by the occasional “that’s not silk, it’s rayon” protest from Dory—so they could get on with this. Once he accepted it was going to be done, he found it quite relaxing.
