Home Another Way (15 page)

I played with my eyes closed, leaning against the back of the sofa so I wouldn’t lose my balance, and tried to conjure up an image of Tartini in his bed, in a nightgown and sleeping cap, as Satan stood at the footboard, bow flying over the gut strings, heel tapping. Instead, I saw myself under the blankets, and my own devil—my father—playing before me.

“What do you want from me?” I dropped the instrument onto the couch. Why did he want me here? Was it so I’d come to some appreciation of his reformed life through the gushing praise of the people in this place? Did he hope I’d regret shutting him out of my life, perhaps even forgive him? I thought about my arrival in Jonah, how the credit card waited for me, and recognized my father had watched me, had known I was broke and miserable and shiftless. I’d felt vindicated then—but now I was ashamed, almost. Because I’d shown him I was nothing more than a murderer’s daughter.

I’d let him get the better of me.

The cabin seemed to shrink around me, walls and ceiling pressing in. I saw Luke’s ghost in every corner, mocking me. My heart thumped against my rib cage, and a heavy, tingling sensation rushed down my arms. I flung open the door. The puffy flakes attacked my face in tiny, cold pricks. I flicked the switch to turn on the outside porch light. The bulb lit, surged, and went out with a snap.

The darkness swallowed me. I sprinted, coatless, shoeless, to the truck and pulled the headlight handle. Two thin streams of gold light reached into the night. I climbed onto the hood of the truck, socks caked with snow. My thighs stung, jeans no protection against the frigid metal beneath me.

“I hate you. I hate you,” I whispered. To me. About me.

I maimed everyone I touched. And I did it purposely, to soothe the furor within. Each nail I drove into someone else deadened another nerve in my own heart.

Was I numb enough yet to stay out all night? I could just lie down against the windshield and sleep.

But Beth would come tomorrow, bubbling over with news of her date, and find me, curled up like a cocktail shrimp, all blue and hard, and dead. I couldn’t do that to her. She’d been through enough.

Snow whirled in the headlights, luminous flecks of glitter. I watched, captivated, seeing sparkles of pink and green and blue mixed with silver. Then I wriggled off the truck, punched out the headlights, and went back into the cabin.

In the distance I heard the clatter of pots and pans.

chapter TWENTY-FIVE

The beautiful, dainty snowflakes from the night before accumulated to thirty inches. I groaned and, snow shovel in hand, went to dig myself out. I cleared the steps, shoveled a path around the truck. By then, I was panting. The driveway to the cabin was at least twenty-five yards long. But I finished, clothes plastered to my sweaty skin, my whole body smarting, and most of the daylight hours gone.

Back inside the house, I made a box of instant mashed potatoes. I didn’t have any milk, or butter—I’d used it all on the popcorn last night—so the spuds tasted like flour paste. My muscles, unaccustomed to manual labor, stiffened as I ate. Gimping into the bathroom carrying a kitchen chair, I twisted the showerhead to massage. I put the wood chair in the stall so I could sit and relax while the steamy water pelted my skin.

I dressed and, too lazy to blow-dry my hair, pulled my wool hat over my head. Then I turned on the television before sinking into the couch. College bowl players pounded each other between the fuzzy lines of poor reception. I hated football but wasn’t getting up to turn it off.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” I said. I wasn’t getting up to answer it, either.

“You shoveled the whole driveway?” Beth asked, plopping next to me. She kept her coat on.

“Don’t remind me. I officially hate snow.”

“Jack told me once that Eskimos have something like four hundred words for snow.”

“I have a few, too.” I kneaded my cramping hamstring.

She laughed. “I’ll ask Dom to put you on his plow list.”

“Dom, huh? I guess that meant your date went pretty good.”

“I have something to tell you. Mom is the only other person who knows.” Beth’s face reddened, her left cheek brighter than Dorothy’s ruby slipper. “Dom and I are getting married.”

“What are you talking about?” I rubbed my ears, convinced I heard wrong.

“He asked, and I said yes.”

“Two days ago you couldn’t even look at each other.”

“I know. But”—she shrugged, giggled—“it was a very good first date.”

“No, no buts. What are you thinking? You don’t even know him.”

“Sarah, I grew up with him.”

“You can do better.”

Beth frowned, voice quavering as she said, “Better than what? A dumb hick grease monkey?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. But I did.

“I’m not ever leaving Jonah, Sarah. Until yesterday, I thought I’d be alone for the rest of my life.”

“I just don’t want you to settle because . . . well, because . . .”

“I’ve been in love with Dominic since I was twelve. I used to go over to Draven’s garage and pretend I was waiting for Danielle to come home, even though I knew she had piano lessons every Thursday after school. I’d sit on the steps, with my homework open on my knees, and watch Dom under the cars. Sometimes he’d ask me to get him a wrench. I’d make sure our fingers touched when I handed it to him,” she said. “I’m not settling.”

I crossed my left hand to the opposite shoulder, crooked my right toward my head and twisted it in a circle. Oh, did I ache. “Then I’m happy for you,” I said.

“Really?”

No.

A sour concoction of jealousy and regret ballooned in my stomach, pushing against my diaphragm. I tasted it, snaking up my throat and around my tongue, metallic and sticky, like blood. I wanted to be the one in love, the one giggling and glowing, and picking out monogrammed bathrobes.

“Yeah, really,” I said, looking at the television, at the bronzed, lithe cheerleaders, all big-toothed and bouncy on the sidelines.

“Okay, then, I have a favor. Be my maid of honor?”

“Me? Shouldn’t it be someone you’ve known longer than two months?”

“You’re the one who got us together. Please, Sarah?”

I held a small spark of Beth’s happiness in my hands, and having so little control over my own life, I coveted this bit of power. And I felt mean at that moment. I wanted to say no, to close my fist over that spark and squelch it. To watch Beth’s face crumble, so she might know—for a day, a minute, a few seconds, perhaps—how I felt all the time.

Something stopped me, though—a nearly unrecognizable sense of self-reproach. My latent conscience jolted to life, like Frankenstein’s monster, bound to the table, twitching and straining to break free. I stomped on people all the time, but this was Beth. In all my callousness, I cared about her.

“Fine,” I said. “But you better not make me wear some nightmare of a gown. No bows. No pink and purple polka dots. I’ve heard the horror stories.”

“That’s so great,” she squealed, hugging me.

“I’m guessing you’ve already set a date. When is it? Tomorrow?”

Beth laughed again. It came so easy for her. “February twenty-second. That gives us almost eight weeks to get ready.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Sarah,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Okay, okay. I won’t ask again,” I said, holding up my hands in mock surrender. “What do you think your brother will say?”

She grinned sheepishly. “I asked Mom to tell him.”

Beth left to meet Dominic and his parents for dinner. I willed my sore body off the couch and into my still-damp parka. I’d go see Jack and try to convince him to talk some sense into his sister.

The paths to the Grange hadn’t been shoveled. I wondered, briefly, if I should turn around and go home. My desire to see Jack, however, propelled me from the truck, and I plodded, knee-deep in snow, to his door.

“She told you,” he said, letting me in.

I stomped my feet on the welcome mat, black and growing a rainbow assortment of plastic flowers. “How did you know?”

“Small town.”

“Right. And news travels fast.”

I hadn’t seen Jack since Christmas Day, having intentionally stayed away, ashamed at the vulnerability I allowed to leak out on him and all over Maggie’s living room floor. I braced for a moment of awkwardness between us. But he smiled at me, and my guts kinked with delight, as if I were the only person who could make Jack flash that tasty, tilted grin.

“Do you want some hot tea? You look cold.”

“Okay. And maybe a towel, so I can dry my jeans.”

“You’re soaked through. I can give you something to wear, and hang yours over the radiator.”

He opened the dresser in the corner, his clothes folded and piled in neat stacks in the drawer, and tossed me a pair of sweatpants. “Bathroom’s in there,” he said, pointing.

Both my jeans and long underwear were wet. I peeled them off and changed into Jack’s pants. Then I flushed the toilet so he wouldn’t hear me rummaging through his medicine cabinet. Half empty and not nearly as neat as his dresser, I found nothing scandalous—deodorant, a tube of toothpaste, squeezed from the middle, a scraggly-bristled toothbrush, and a bottle of Brut aftershave. And a square, green tin of something called Bag Balm. I read the label.
Use for bunches,
caked bags, cuts, sore teats, chapping, and inflammation. Also excellent
for horses, dogs, and other pets.

A steaming mug waited for me on the dinette table, a quart of milk and bag of sugar next to it. “I didn’t know how you liked your tea,” Jack said, draping my clothes over the old cast-iron heater.

I stirred in milk until the brown liquid turned creamy beige, and added two spoonfuls of sugar. “Thanks, this helps,” I said. “Are you having some?”

“I’m not the one who’s frozen.” He sat in the other chair, across from me. “So, tell me. What did you think of my darling sister’s big news?”

“It’s crazy. Can’t you do anything about it?”

“What should I do?”

“Talk her out of it. She’ll listen to you.”

“You’re the one who set them up.”

“I never expected this. I figured they’d go out, maybe have a few drinks, have . . . I don’t know . . . whatever fun people like them have. Then, maybe in a year or two, the marriage subject might come up. It’s crazy.”

“You already said that.”

“Jack, seriously.”

He exhaled thickly, lips vibrating, making a buzzing sound. Then he closed his eyes, sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, grabbing the curls at the back of his neck and tugging. “I’ve been fighting the urge to wield my brotherly power the entire day. To tell Beth to wait. But that’s my own bruised ego speaking. I’ve been the most important man in her life for so long. It’s hard to be replaced. Especially after just one date. But I guess I’m going to have to learn to share.”

“I don’t think he’s good enough for her,” I said.

“That’s one thing I’m not worried about,” Jack said. “I couldn’t have chosen a better husband for my sister. Dominic’s a hard worker; he’s kind and good-hearted. Most importantly, he loves the Lord. Of course, if he got out of line, I’d have to go over there and kick his you-know-what.”

I had tea in my mouth when he said this, and the words shocked me so much that I coughed up my drink; it spewed from my mouth and nose, back into the mug. Jack jumped up, grabbing a handful of napkins. I wiped my chin and shirt.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Pastors say things like that?”

“You act like we’re a different breed of people. I’m not perfect, Sarah.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I don’t think you want this anymore,” Jack said, reaching for my cup. He took my wrist instead, turning my hand over. “What happened here?”

I rubbed the pad of my thumb lightly over the blisters. I’d sliced them open last night, pressing on the strings while playing, and they’d crusted over. “I burned myself cooking. It’s nothing.”

“You’d better watch those hands of yours. They’re valuable,” he said, carrying the mug into the kitchen. “Juilliard hands, right?”

“I never told you that.”

“Luke did.”

I looked at my fingers again. I always imagined a true virtuoso’s hands to be carved by Michelangelo, long and strong with embroidered veins. Mine were stubby, all crooked fingers and broad knuckles. “I never graduated,” I said.

Jack shrugged. “Just getting in there has to be worth something.”

Yeah, a two-week stint in the pit orchestra of some lowbrow,
off-off-off-Broadway musical.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”

I couldn’t remember the name of the musical now, or what the plot had been. But a year after I dropped out of school, I’d run into a Juilliard acquaintance who told me about the pit orchestra job. Actually, I served him a poppy seed bagel and iced coffee. He came into the Dunkin’ Donuts where I worked. He served as set designer for the show, and said they were desperate for musicians.

After the way I left Juilliard, I didn’t think I’d ever want to touch a violin again. But I loved it, and the mention of music started my fingers curling around a phantom bow, my chin tingling with the pressure of a phantom chinrest. I thought, perhaps, a pit orchestra job would be an easy, mindless way to find my way back to my first love.