Harder (29 page)

It snowed a ton that December.

The first week of Putnam’s winter break was supposed to be Frankie’s last week of school, but it dumped so much on Putnam County that all the schools were closed.

Caroline had planned to spend the few days before Christmas with her dad, but she ended up stuck at our place.

The temperature hovered around thirty degrees. The garage roof creaked and groaned under the weight of the snow.

We ate grilled cheese with tomato soup and watched Christmas movies.

When we were starting to get restless, Laurie and Rikki loaned us a thousand-piece puzzle of the earth made up of hundreds of tiny pictures, and we spread it out on the coffee table and worked on it together for most of the morning and the early afternoon of Christmas Eve.

After a while, Caroline and Frankie wandered off. Frankie borrowed my art pencils and fussed with a drawing she wanted to give Mom for Christmas. Caroline sat on the couch
researching media opportunities on her laptop, gearing up to become Iowa’s revenge porn poster girl once the holidays were over.

I stayed with the puzzle, identifying one piece after another. Matching them to their neighbors by color, shape, content, and slotting them into place.

Piece by piece, the satisfaction built until I’d finished the whole thing.

I looked at what I’d made and realized I’d spent the entire day absorbed in a metaphor.

The puzzle was the future—formless, confusing. A thousand tiny decisions I’d have to make. A thousand things to figure out without anything much to guide me but some idea of where I wanted to end up.

That night, with snow blanketing the fields and the roof of Laurie and Rikki’s house—with snow on the roads and over the stair rail and blown up into the corners of every window—we made a huge bowl of popcorn and watched
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
. I sat between Frankie and Caroline, my arms spread behind them on the couch, my feet up on the coffee table, lights winking on the little artificial Christmas tree that Frankie and I had picked up at Walmart.

After my sister went to bed, Caroline helped me put the presents out, and we turned off the overhead lights and soaked up the glow of the tree, watching the snow fall.

We didn’t say anything.

We didn’t have to say anything. We were here.

And as for what came next—it would be like the puzzle. Complicated, but I could take it one piece at a time.

Even though I came from a fucked-up family in a fucked-up place, and even though I’d been through a lot of fucked-up shit that didn’t teach me the right things to live a normal life, I had clear eyes, curiosity, and perseverance.

I had Caroline with me.

The future would slot into place one piece at a time.

“No, I know.”

It’s lunchtime on Christmas Day.

Caroline is pacing from the front door of the apartment to the back of the kitchen. She’s got her dad on a headset, her hands sunk into the back pockets of her jeans. She’s wearing a dark green sweater with a drapey neck that looks soft and open and inviting.

She means it to be festive, and it is, but it’s so fucking sexy, too. There’s a shadow under her collarbone where I’d love to put my mouth.

“Yeah, I know,” she tells her dad. “Sorry not to be there. I wanted to. If it clears up in an hour or two, I’ll see if I can make it tonight.”

I must be frowning, because when she passes and catches sight of me, she lifts her eyebrows and her shoulders at once, like,
What do you want me to tell him? It’s Christmas
.

“I-80’s gonna be too slippery,” I say.

“It might be,” she tells her dad, who must have said the exact same thing I did. “I’ll keep an eye on the weather and—”

She pauses.

Then, “Yeah. If you think that’s the best way to handle it, all right.”

“Handle what?” Frankie asks. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, drawing in her new sketchbook with the pencils I gave her for Christmas.

“Don’t eavesdrop,” I tell her. “It’s bad manners.”

“
You
are.”

“True.”

She rolls her eyes. “Hypocrite.”

She’s learning all these big words from the gifted-and-talented teacher. She’s been reading a ton, too—the teacher hooked her up with a librarian at the Putnam Public Library who saves out books just for her. Frankie is blowing through a book every day or two. She doesn’t want to talk to me about them, but Jeff Gorham tells me it’s good for her.

Enriching.

“He’s going to reschedule the family Christmas dinner,” Caroline tells us both. “Since they’re not sure when I’ll be able to get there.”

Frankie gives me a pointed glance and sticks out her tongue.

A moment later, Caroline’s saying, “I need to talk to you about that, actually,” as she walks down the hall toward the bedroom.

She closes the door behind her.

“What’s she need to talk to him about?” Frankie asks.

“None of your business, Little Miss Nosy.”

“You don’t even know, I bet.”

I’m pretty sure I do, though.

More sure when Caroline’s end of the conversation gets loud enough for me to register that she’s angry, though I can’t quite make out the words through the door.

Then I can make them out just fine.

“For the fifth time, I’m not
asking
you, I’m
telling
you. I’ve already made a decision, and I’m not going to just wait and see how I feel in a few days. I already know how I feel. That’s why I’m
informing
you of my feelings.”

“Stay here,” I say to Frankie.

I find Caroline sprawled on the bed, hands and legs flung wide, scowling at the ceiling. “No,” she says. “No! I don’t accept that. I knew you’d say it, and I hear where you’re coming from, but I don’t accept it.”

I sit down on the bed, prop my back against the headboard, and extend my legs over top of hers.

She reaches out to find my hand.

The conversation takes a nasty turn, and every time she raises her voice, she squeezes my hand tighter.

“Not listening to me.”

“No, Dad, I hear you, but no.”

“Damn it, Dad, it’s got nothing to do with him!”

She doesn’t say anything too ugly to take back, but she’s upset enough that her voice cracks, and I can tell she’s not getting anywhere with her old man.

Eventually, they start cooling down. I’ve never heard anyone argue loud enough to be audible through a closed door and then, ten minutes later, work back around to, “Merry Christmas, Daddy.… I love you, too.”

Caroline hangs up and shifts onto her side. I lie beside her. She turns her face into the bedspread, letting her hair conceal her expression.

“Are you crying?” I ask.

She sniffles. “No.”

“It’s okay if you’re crying.”

“I’m not. I’m gathering my strength to fight another day.”

“Okay. Does you gathering your strength but not crying mean that now would be a bad time to give you your Christmas present?”

Slowly, she sits up. Her eyes aren’t red, but her throat and cheeks are flushed.

I think if she’s going to be president, we’ll have to work on her poker face at some point.

“You already gave me a bunch of presents,” she says.

“Those were from Frankie.”

“Since you paid for them, they were from you. I love my scarf.”

She wore it earlier over her pajama T-shirt—orange and blue and red, with silvery threads shot through it. It looked good.

Felt good, seeing her wear something I’d bought her.

I release her hand so I can get up and dig around on the top shelf of my closet. The jewelry store box is dense as a rock in my hand. The leather bracelet seems stiff and clumsy when I hold it out to her, a symbol I’m not sure about.

What if she doesn’t want the reminder? Maybe I should have buried it in the backyard.

But Caroline extends her wrist and lets me put it on her. My name pressed into leather, snugged around her skin.

She traces the letters with one finger. Smiles at me.

“It’s okay?” I ask.

“It’s good.”

She draws close and kisses me, and it
feels
good. Like I’ve righted a wrong, restored something that was out of balance.

When she eases away, I press the jewelry box into her hand. She takes it with eyes so huge, I wonder for a second what the fuck I did wrong. Then I figure it out and laugh. “It’s not a ring. But good to know it’s too soon for that.”

“It’s not—I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine, Caro. Open it.”

Inside are the heavy silver links I bought her.

“Pretty,” she says, lifting the bracelet out. “What’s this on it?”

The light catches the charm when she lifts it to the light. She answers her own question. “It’s a comb. West—”

“I thought I’d give you both,” I say. “The comb, and the watch chain. It’s … maybe that’s not a good present, but I thought—”

And then her arms are around me, so I don’t have to say the rest of it.

“West.”

She’s crying for real now.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry. It just reminded me, is all.”

I’ve thought so many times of her telling me not to write a story over us. Not to give myself a role—good guy or bad guy, sheriff or villain, because life’s more complicated than that.

That conversation was never about the story she read in English. It was about me.

It was Caroline telling me I fucked up, but I could have another chance.

When I went to the jewelry store, I was going to see about silver combs to give her. I thought she should have a keepsake of the moment she offered me what I most needed—what I didn’t even know I needed.

But then I thought,
No, I don’t want her to have half
.

I want her to have everything
.

She kisses me. “It’s perfect.”

When I kiss her back, she drags me on top of her, the cool silver links dripping down my neck from where she’s clutched her fingers around them. “You’re perfect,” she says.

“I’m so fucking far from perfect.”

She kisses my lips, my cheeks, my closed eyes. “Close enough for me.”

I roll to my side, and we lie there for a few minutes, legs intertwined, looking at each other.

Close enough.

“Frankie.”

I tap her door again. “Open up.”

“Leave me alone!”
she shouts.

“Franks, honey, it’s Christmas. You’re crying. I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’m not
crying
!”

She throws something at the door that hits hard enough to make me take a step back. Caroline’s behind me, hands cupping her elbows.

“You want me to try?”

Twenty minutes. Twenty lousy minutes on the phone with my mom on fucking
Christmas Day
, and me in the next room the whole time monitoring the call, but it still ends up this way—with my sister flinging the phone down, busting out in sobs, and running from the room.

Mom didn’t even call until right before Frankie’s bedtime. I tried her earlier, hoping to get it over with, but she answers the phone when she feels like it, and Christmas is no exception.

Usually, we get her when she’s on her way somewhere in the car and she wants to fill ten minutes with pointless chatter.

How are you guys doing?
she’ll ask, but she doesn’t want to know.

Frankie has a harder time than I do with the calls. Some afternoons I’ll come in from working with Laurie to find her shut in her room, her hand-drawn STAY OUT sign taped to the door, and I’ll look at Caroline and mouth,
Mom called?

Yeah
, she’ll mouth in response.

Then she’ll make cookies, or I’ll download an episode of a show Frankie likes and use it to pry her out of her isolation.

Tonight, Mom was more emotional than I felt like dealing with. “I
miss
you guys, oh my
gosh
,” she said when I was on the phone with her. “Like fucking
crazy
.”

There was a looseness to her speech, the way it spilled out of her, that made me reluctant to turn the call over to Frankie, but I figured, it was Christmas. I couldn’t really say no.

I should’ve said no.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say.

“You could give her a minute to cool off.”

“She’s not mad, though. Not really. She’s hurt, and I don’t want to leave her be.”

I tap at the door again. “Frankie. Open up, or I’ll take the knob off the door and let myself in.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can, actually.”

“You’re not my dad!”

“I’m your brother and the guy who’s paying the rent around here, so open the door, Franks. I’m serious.”

“No.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“West—” Caroline says.

I turn around, put my back to the door, and slide down it. “I don’t know how to be her father,” I say.

“You’re doing great.”

“I’ve been at it for weeks. Asking her questions. Being here, trying to let her know I’m listening, talking to the fucking counselor, talking to the gifted-and-talented teacher, filling out the fucking paperwork, but I’m not getting anywhere.”