Ink Is Thicker Than Water (23 page)

Chapter Twenty
-
two

On Tuesday I assume after newspaper I’m going straight to pick up Finn and then home, but once Mom texts that I don’t have to, plans shift. I have coffee with a bunch of the staff and end up walking down to Dr. Jazz with Jessie and Paul to get ice cream. Paul makes another reference to me having a secret tattoo on my butt, and so even if I didn’t already think he was into me or whatever, there’s now seriously been enough butt talk to confirm that. Afterward, I immediately make a call to Oliver because I feel sort of weird spending so much time in the presence of one dude who thinks I’m that awesome when I am having sex with another one.

I still can’t believe I am having sex.

When I finally get to the house, Mom is dashing around upstairs wearing her splurge-of-a-purple-dress. “Why do you look so fancy?”

Mom laughs, but it isn’t in her eyes. That’s weird; Mom isn’t a lady who fake laughs. “Just a dinner I’m going to. Sorry, Kell-belle, I’d love to ask about school and how everything’s going, but I’m really in a hurry. Oh, and Finn’s with Linda, you don’t have to worry about him. Russell will get him on his way home.”

“You texted me that part already,” I say. “What dinner?”

“It’s nothing.” She kisses my forehead. “Just meeting with Sara and your dad and Camille.”

Right, like that’s nothing. “Are you guys going to talk to Sara about—”

“You know this isn’t any of your business, baby.”

It’s not?

Mom walks to her and Russell’s room and looks under the bed. “Where would I have put my brown shoes?”

“The ones with the little buckles? I have them.” I run and dig them out of my closet. “Sorry, I should have asked.”

“It’s fine.” She steps into them and surveys herself in the mirror. When I was little, I hadn’t realized we looked alike at all. Something about getting older, though, the more I see myself in her, or her in me, or however that works. I guess it’s nice then to see how pretty she looks in the purple dress.

“Maybe I should wear boots instead.” She steps back out of the shoes. “What about yours, Kell-belle, can I borrow those?”

“Totally,” I say and fetch them for her. With the boots in place, I realize you can’t really see any of her ink, like she’s just any old mom going to any old dinner. “Maybe pull up your hair?”

She shrugs, brushes out her dark blond hair, and secures it into a ponytail. Now, just barely, the four-leafed clover on the back of her neck is visible. She’d gotten it inked not long after Finn was born; every leaf is supposed to be one of us: Russell, Sara, Finn, and me. Otherwise, Mom actually doesn’t have a tattoo symbolizing Finn yet; she says she wants to know more of who he’ll grow up to be before making such a permanent mark. (She’s turned down all my suggestions, from a zebra to a ninja to the singing fish.) I understand, but hopefully by the time Finn is old enough to get a complex from such a thing, she’ll have figured out the right image for him.

“Better?”

“Definitely.” I’m still sort of angry, but I hug her anyway. “Have fun.”

“Oh, sure.” She gives me a tight hug. “Have a good night. Do you have something to eat for dinner? Give me a minute, I’ll leave you some money so you can—”

“I’m okay, Mom,” I say for whatever reason. “Just go.”

She still shoves a few bills into my hand, then kisses my cheek before taking off. Obviously, since I have the house to myself for awhile, I call Oliver, who drives right over. I figure we’ll just have sex, but he brings a pizza, since I’d mentioned I hadn’t eaten yet. (I make him take half of the money Mom gave me.)

“Everything okay with you?” Oliver asks. Considering I’ve barely spoken to him, outside of making him take seven dollars, it would have been weird if he didn’t ask.

“Just stupid family stuff,” I say. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“If you don’t want to talk, why’d you want me to come over?”

I try to give him A Look. It must have worked because he laughs.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.” I get up from the table and take his hand to lead him to my room, like suddenly I’m the boss of our sex life. From the way he follows, though, it’s safe to assume I am.

“This is a small room,” Oliver says when I lock my bedroom door behind us.

“It used to be half of a really big room, but Sara and I didn’t want to share.” At Sara’s name I feel like crying, so I pull Oliver back on the bed with me as a distraction to my brain.

Total success, of course.

Afterward, Oliver gets nervous that Russell or Mom is going to arrive home any moment, so he gets dressed and runs downstairs in a blur. I put on pajamas because they’re more comfortable than the jeans and shirt I’d been wearing and chase him down in the driveway.

He hugs me really, really tightly. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I say, because as far as he’s concerned, I am more than okay. “Go, you probably have homework or something.”

“I always have studying, trust me. But if you need anything, let me know.” He kisses me before getting into his car, and I watch until he’s backed out of the driveway and driven off down the street. Before I’ve even made it inside, Mom speeds in from the other direction and parks where his car had just been. It probably looks odd that I’m just standing there, barefoot and in my pajamas with messy hair, but it would look even stranger at this point if I dash inside. So I wait.

“Hey, baby.” If Mom finds me suspicious in any way, it doesn’t matter, because her face is red with mascara streaked down her cheeks in mean, wet lines.

I’ve never seen Mom look like this.

“Are you okay?” I ask, even though no one’s looked like this in the history of being okay.

“Oh, Kell-belle, I’m fine.” She gives me a big, big hug, like I’m a little kid, and I kind of scoop myself into it because despite the ten million reasons I shouldn’t receive little kid hugs anymore, I really need this one. “Did you eat dinner?”

“Pizza,” I say.

“Good girl.” She smooths down my hair a little. “Are there leftovers?”

There are actually bizarrely few slices left, assuming I hadn’t split the pizza with anyone (How can guys, even skinny guys, eat so much?), but Mom doesn’t say anything about that, just takes the box out of the refrigerator and sits down at the table with a slice. I try to think of a good reason the pizza is from the place near Oliver’s dorm that definitely doesn’t deliver out here, but again, if Mom notices, Mom doesn’t care. Maybe we are all lying, like me sitting here watching her eat like someone just let out of a hunger strike when I know she’s just come from dinner.

“I’m glad we’re here without Russell and Finn,” Mom says finally after consuming the two remaining slices. “We need to talk.”

“Sara,” I say.

“Sara’s going to move in with Camille,” Mom says in a very normal voice. “For the time being.”

“What?” Sure, I’d felt this coming, but I thought it would involve Sara running away and lots of protesting from Mom and Dad. “Seriously?”

“It’s what she wants,” Mom says, which makes me shake in what I realize is anger. There is a lot I want that I can’t just go and do, and I don’t believe for one second that once I turn eighteen all the gates will open.

“I can’t believe you’re just letting her,” I say. “We’re her family, Camille’s—”

“Camille’s her mother, too.” Mom cries as she says it. This time I don’t hug her. “And this is her decision. Not yours, not mine.”

“No, it totally
is
your decision, but you’re so obsessed with coming off as open-minded and supportive you’re letting our family fall apart.”

Mom bursts into fresh tears, which should have stopped me, but I’m on a roll. A roll of being a jerk, sure, but it’s called a roll for a reason.

“Dad would have done something.” Gross, why am I suddenly all pro-Dad? “He’s just going along with you because you’re so convinced letting us make our own choices is what’s best, but sometimes it
isn’t
.”

“Kellie—”

“I’m really sorry you didn’t make enough good choices for yourself and ended up with a job and a husband you didn’t want, but that’s not going to happen to me, and it wouldn’t have happened to Sara.” I don’t know what I’m even saying, but I do know I mean every awful word of it. “We’re not you, okay? And maybe if you’d been more of a normal mom, Sara would still be here.”

“Go to your room, Kellie,” says this voice behind me. Russell, who must have come in while I was yelling like an asshole at the only person who probably feels worse about all of this than I do. So I march upstairs.

I sit down at my desk and try to just text everyone like it’s a normal night, but it isn’t a normal night. My family is falling apart—
has
fallen apart—and now some of that is due to me.

After getting dressed, I throw some things into a small suitcase and walk back downstairs, where Mom and Russell are sitting on the living room sofa, her head on his shoulder, her hands in his. She is still crying. My heart and brain ache in a way I didn’t know they were even capable of, but that isn’t enough to stop me.

“I’m going to Dad’s,” I say.

“Kellie, baby,” Mom says.

“Drive carefully,” Russell says. “And call your mom when you get there so she doesn’t worry.”

“I will.” And I know I will, too, even if it makes me so angry that Sara doesn’t have to cater to Mom’s feelings anymore, ever. “Bye.”

I let myself in to Dad’s, which I guess I shouldn’t have done, because he’s sitting on the couch with Jayne, watching TV, being totally normal except in Dad World. “Oh, hey, Kellie, there she is, we have plans tonight?”

“No, I just thought I’d… Sorry I’m interrupting or—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” He jumps up and hugs me, a really tight hug from Dad. “You remember my friend Jayne?”

“Hi, Kellie,” she says, walking over and shaking my hand. “It’s good to see you.”

“You, too. I’m sorry I didn’t call, and I really just need to sleep, so—”

“Jayne was just leaving,” Dad says, which is obviously news to Jayne.

“Dad, she doesn’t have to go,” I say, and not just because even in my current state, I’m dying of curiosity. His craziness is so unfair to her, which means we have at least that much in common.

“Well,” he says, giving a wary glance at Jayne, “all right.”

“Are you hungry?” she asks me. “We have leftovers from last night.”

I’m suddenly starving, actually, so Jayne ducks into the kitchen even though I insist I can help myself. Dad still stands next to me. “Sorry for—”

“Kiddo, you okay?”

Hello, of course I’m not okay. “Sara’s gone. Why aren’t you guys freaking out?”

Dad sighs and shakes his head. “You don’t get a standard-issue rulebook when you become a parent. You’re just trying to do the best thing, and right now this is what Sara wants.”

“I want to quit school and travel the world,” I say. “Are you going to let me do that?”

“I’m sure you feel like you’ve lost your sister,” Dad says, weirdly enough understanding me for the first time in forever. “But I think everything will be fine.”

“Why would Sara come back when she finally gets to leave the freak family behind? It’s like her dream come true.”

Dad ruffles my hair. “You’ve got to be wrong about that much, kiddo.”

“Here you go, Kellie.” Jayne walks back into the room with a plate of some kind of fish with carrots and a little salad (clearly she’d cooked because Dad doesn’t even order meals that well-balanced), and the three of us sit down. Them on the couch, me on the floor. “How have you been?”

It’s either a really generous or really stupid question considering I am clearly mid-meltdown. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Great,” she says with a big grin. Jayne is sort of average looking, but her smile is really good. Straight white teeth, dimples, the whole nine yards straight out of a toothpaste ad. “Three cats at the shelter went to new homes today.”

“Good for them.”

“It’s wonderful,” she says. “How’s school? The paper sounds fun.”

I nod and take a few bites of what turns out to be salmon. Not bad. “The paper is really fun, yeah. Which I guess is weird.”

“Not at all, I was on yearbook in high school, and I loved it.”

I nod. “This salmon is really good, did you make it?”