Dirty (31 page)

The night my doorbell rang I went to my door with my heart in my throat, wishing I’d worn makeup instead of leaving my face bare and wearing my hair in a messy tail. The man on the other side of the door couldn’t have cared less, though. He swept me into his arms and squeezed the breath out of me, then knuckled my sides until I couldn’t breathe.

“Chad!” I wriggled out of his grasp so I could get some air in my lungs, then squeezed him again before holding him at arm’s length to look him over. “What are you doing here?”

“Luke convinced me I should see my big sister.” Chad grinned.

He looked good. My little brother, who’d been taller than me since hitting puberty. Blond to my brunette, brown eyes to my blue, tan to my fair skin, we didn’t look much like siblings except in our smiles. I searched him for the changes time had made and saw a few.

“I can’t believe it’s been so long,” he said.

“I can.” I took his hand and drew him inside. “I just can’t believe you’re here.”

Even as he sat at my kitchen table rattling off his latest adventures, I had a hard time convincing myself it was really him. He paused in his narrative to stare at me, his grin softening as he took my hand.

“What’s that look for, sweetness?”

“Just glad you’re here, Chaddie.” I held his hand, tight, and we shared another look.

Survivors.

I wouldn’t hear of him staying in a hotel, of course. I wouldn’t send my little brother to stay in a hotel when I had two empty bedrooms. It was nice, having him there. Having someone to share coffee with in the morning. To make eggs for. Someone who knew me so well I never had to explain anything. We went out to dinner at night, to the movies, I took him dancing. We spent hours on my couch talking. We watched episodes of
The Dukes of Hazzard
and argued over who was the hotter cousin, Bo or Luke. Chad maintained their hotness would only be magnified if they tongue-kissed, which made me laugh so hard I spilled the popcorn.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I told him over mugs of hot cocoa topped with marshmallow fluff. “I wish you’d think about moving back home.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You know I can’t.”

I sighed. “I know. Luke.”

“It’s more than Luke. I have a job. I have a house. I have a whole life.”

“I know, I know.” I waved my hand. “You’re just so far away, that’s all. I don’t get to see you enough.”

“You could visit more often. Luke adores you, doll. We’d take you shopping.”

I raised a brow. “He says, as though I need a new wardrobe or something.”

Chad laughed. “You said it, not me. We’d put you in something other than black and white.”

“My clothes are fine.”

“Ella, baby. Honey. The world’s not made up only of black and white.” My brother looked around my living room. “This place could use some color, too. The dining room is fabulous. Spread some of that around.”

He wasn’t wrong. “I like black and white, Chad.”

“I know you do, muffin.” He reached for my hand and kissed it. “I know.”

“Are you going to tell Mom I’m here?” He set his mug on my coffee table.

I didn’t answer right away. “Do you want me to?”

He shrugged. It was a rare moment when Chad wasn’t smiling or cracking a joke. He looked up and our eyes met, and I saw myself reflected in them.

“I don’t know.”

I nodded, understanding. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”

He sighed, rubbing at his face. “Luke says I should. My counselor says I should.”

I took his hand. “Chad, I know better than anyone why you don’t want to. But maybe it’s time.”

He squeezed my fingers. “How about you? Have you kicked the ass of the past?”

I laughed a little. “Kicked the ass? No. Stubbed its toe, maybe.”

“Elle. What happened to your fella?” My brother stuck his fingers through the holes in my afghan and wiggled them.

“He went home with me when Dad died. He met Mom. She wasn’t nice.”

“He went home with you? To the house?”

I nodded. Chad sat back, impressed or shocked, I couldn’t tell. He rubbed his face again.

“You went back to the house.”

“It’s just a house, Chaddie. Four walls and a door.”

We shared another look, and he didn’t hesitate, he leaned over and hugged me. I didn’t mean to cry, but I did, wetting the shoulder of his shirt. It was all right. He cried, too.

“I didn’t want to leave you, Ella,” Chad whispered, holding me tight. “You know that. I didn’t want to leave you alone with him. But I had to get out.”

“I know. I know.”

I handed him a napkin to wipe his face, and I wiped my own. We talked so much our throats got hoarse and so long our stomachs started to rumble because we’d forgotten to eat. We cried. We screamed. We threw things. We cried some more and held each other, and sometimes we even laughed.

“There should be one good thing,” Chad said. “One good thing we can find to remember about him, Elle. So we can find a way to let it go.”

We’d ended up foot to foot on my couch, under the knitted throw. Tissues littered the floor and my pillows had suffered our wrath. The remains of sandwiches prepared between rants dried on the coffee table.

“He was good at sports,” I offered. “All-American Boy.”

“He didn’t let the bigger kids pick on me.”

“That’s two, Chad. We found two good things.”

He smiled. “My counselor would say that’s very good progress.”

I smiled, too. “He’s right.”

“It’s easier to remember the bad things he did. The drugs. The stealing. The other stuff.”

“You can say it out loud,” I told him. “It might be better if you did.”

My brother’s eyes welled with tears again. “I tried to get him to stop. That’s when he started getting mean. That’s when he told Mom I was gay.”

“I remember.” I lined up our feet, our knees bent in an old game. Choo-Choo train. Back and forth beneath the blanket.

“And even when you cut yourself, she didn’t listen. She just covered it up.” His fists clenched and my heart swelled with love for his love of me.

“I don’t blame you, Chad. Please don’t blame yourself. You were just a kid. You were only sixteen.”

“You were only eighteen, Elle.”

“And now we’re both older. And he’s dead.”

“I still feel guilty for being glad when I heard. When Dad called me at Uncle John’s place to tell me Andrew had killed himself, I laughed at first.”

I hadn’t known that. “Oh, Chad.”

He shrugged. “I should have come home then.”

“You couldn’t have changed anything. And she’d only have made your life hell, too.” I shook my head. “But listen, we’ve both made it through, and look at us. We’ve got great jobs. We’ve got houses of our own. Lives. You’ve got Luke. We’re making it, Chad. We’re doing all right.”

“Are we?” He asked softly. “Are you?”

“I’m trying,” I answered. “I’m trying hard.”

“Me, too.”

Being understood by someone who had been there did more for me than any amount of counseling could have. We had both survived that house and what had gone on inside it.

“He made Mom laugh,” I said after a moment. “And when she was laughing, she loved all of us as much as she loved him.”

“Yeah,” Chad said. “I guess that’s worth forgiving him for, then, isn’t it?”

And for the first time, I thought it might be.

I took flowers to the cemetery. Lilies for my father’s grave and sunflowers for my brother’s. My mother had buried them side by side, and the grass over both of them was soft and well tended. The carving on the headstones had their names, dates of birth and death. My father’s said beloved husband and father. Andrew’s said beloved son and brother. I knelt in front of them with my hands on my lap, shivering a little in the sudden fall breeze, and I tried to pray.

It didn’t work so well. My mind wandered as my fingers thumbed the rosary beads, and at last I put it away. I sat quietly in the soft, brown-turning grass, and I wept slow, effortless tears.

It seemed wrong, somehow. Incomplete. I had not attended the graveside services for either of them. I hadn’t been asked to speak. Now, faced with two slabs of marble and a bouquet of wilting flowers, with fall winds tugging my hair, I needed to find the words I had denied myself for so long. I told my father I loved him and that I forgave him for choosing distance and drinking instead of me, and I didn’t merely mouth the words. I meant them.

They didn’t come any easier than anything else ever had, and when I’d finished I still wasn’t done. I sat in silence for a while, trying to make a list of good things to remember. Something to hold on to in place of the bad.

And then I did it.

“You’re the one who taught me how to find the Big Dipper, Andrew,” I said aloud. “When I was six. It was the first time I looked up into the night sky and saw something other than numbers, something to count. You’re the one who taught me there could be beauty there, too.”

The trees lining the cemetery had already begun turning red and gold, and the wind rustled the leaves. I didn’t imagine it as something else, an angel’s touch or my brother back from the dead to accept my forgiveness. I was too practical for that. I watched the leaves ripple, their colors so vibrant and lovely and yet harbingers of death still to come, but I took solace in the thought they’d return to life in the spring and be renewed.

That’s what I wanted. To be renewed. Sitting in front of the graves of my father and brother, the two men who had most shaped my life, I thought maybe I’d be able to do it, too. Come to life again. Make my own spring.

I waited for something to happen. Like for the heavens to open up in beams of rainbow light, or a hand to thrust out of the ground and grab me. All that happened was the breeze blew, and my teeth chattered.

But I felt better. I had faced another demon and come out unscathed. How many more could there be?

I got to my feet, dusting off the crumbles of grass from my long skirt. I bent and arranged the flowers in a prettier fashion. I cleared away some weeds sprouting up at the corners of the headstone. I traced the letters of their names with the tip of my finger and thought how insufficient the inscriptions were to describe the lives of the men whose bodies lay beneath the ground.

“He loved British comedy,” I said aloud, my hand on my father’s headstone. “He loved Irish music. He used Old Spice cologne and liked to fish, and he always ate what he caught. He was born in New York City but moved away when he was three and never went back.”

There was more. Memories of my dad. My tribute to him, the best one I could give. The one for Andrew I thought would be harder, but maybe remembering about the stars had opened the way for me.

“He played games with us even when he was too old for them. He taught me how to ride a bike with no hands. He was the first one to tell a story about Princess Pennywhistle.” I spoke on, not caring if I sounded like a loon talking out loud to a grave. I wept again, the tears not so effortless this time. They wet the throat of my sweater and made me cold. “He was my brother, and I loved him. Even when I hated what he did.”

The something I’d been waiting for happened, though it wasn’t as dramatic as an angel chorus from above or a cheap horror movie thrill. I let go. Not everything, and not all at once, but I took in a breath of crisp fall air that didn’t weigh me down. I wiped my face. I took in another breath.

Then I walked away.

When offering an apology, it’s always better to bring a peace offering to smooth the way. For me it was a box of chocolate éclairs and a thermos of hazelnut coffee to replace the sludge we usually had in the break room. I knocked on Marcy’s door, the bright-pink box announcing the arrival of sugar-filled treats.

She looked up from her desk with a pinched smile. “Elle. Hi. C’mon in.”

She’d breezed into my office plenty of times and plopped into my chair. I wasn’t quite as relaxed, but I did slide the box toward her. “I brought you something.”

She leaned down to sniff the box, then slit the tape with one manicured fingernail. “Oh, God, you bitch. I’ve been on a freaking diet…”

The moment she called me a bitch, I knew things were all right between us. Coming from Marcy, it was almost a term of affection. I held up the thermos.

“I brought good coffee, too.”

“Oh, my God, I love you.” She twirled around on her chair and pulled down a mug from her shelf and held it out. “Caffeine’s supposed to slow weight loss, but I’ll be fucked in fudge if I can understand how.”

I’d brought my own mug and filled them both. “Wouldn’t that get messy?”

She gave me a blank look at first, then laughed. “It might.”

We raised our cups and she pulled out éclairs, one for each. She bit into hers right away and moaned so long and loud I laughed. A moment later, biting into my own pastry, I managed an enthusiastic echo of her exclamation. Together we stuffed ourselves with sugary goodies and strong coffee.

“Marcy,” I said when the feeding frenzy had eased. “I’m sorry.”

She waved a hand. “No big whoop, hon. I’m a nosy bitch. I admit it.”

“No. You were trying to be my friend, and I wasn’t being a very good one. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fuss yourself!” she cried.

“Marcy, damn it! I’m trying to apologize, would you let me? Please?”

She laughed but nodded. “Yes. All right. I was a nosy bitch and you were an uptight shrew. We’re square?”

“Square.” I sat back in the chair. “I missed your gossip.”

She clapped her hands. “Oooh, and have I got some for you!”

She certainly did. A full half hour’s worth of time we both should have spent working, but instead spent giggling over speculation about the new guy who worked in the mail room. Marcy was convinced he was a stripper on the side. I hadn’t noticed him.

“What do you mean, you haven’t noticed him?” She crowed. “Are you blind? Are you dead? Are your legs glued together?”

“I thought you were getting married!”

“I am getting married, but I’m not dying. It’s okay to look, Elle.” She paused. “I wouldn’t tell Wayne, of course.”

“Of course not.”

She scraped some chocolate from the side of an éclair and licked it off her finger. “So…how’re you doing? Aside from tempting me with disgusting pastry and trying to make me so fat I can’t fit into my wedding dress.”