It's Complicated (54 page)

The book.

That was the key.

Snatching it up, she stared at the cover.
A Wrinkle in Time
. How could time wrinkle? Closing her eyes, she willed her breath to slow, her pulse to follow, and her mind to stay clear. A picture of Alex, smiling and accepting, was part of that sharp focus.

As silly as it seemed, her baggage really was enormous, like Darla said.

Except most of it was in her hand. Right here.

This fucking book.

Eighteen years of messy internal chaos floated away and she realized she needed to open the book, start reading, and then—

Then what?

Didn’t matter. Just…
then
.

She would actually have a
then
. A future. A
more
.

As if on cue, her phone rang. Grabbing it from her pocket, she groaned when she saw the number. Mom.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Josie. This a bad time?”

“Actually, yes.”

Silence. Josie didn’t
do
that. Always accommodating, always deferring. Marlene’s voice came through with a mixture of aggression and confusion. “Well, it’s a bad time for me, too.” The whining was louder, though, than anything else.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Her voice was dispassionate steel. “If this is a bad time for you, too, then perhaps we can talk later.”
Be officious.
Clutching the book in her hand, she held it like a talisman, as if it could ward off evil spirits. Funny how an item she’d carried around her entire life, one she’d never been able to bring herself to open and use, could be a source of comfort in this moment.

“Well, aren’t you being a smartmouth.” Josie closed her eyes slowly. That word. There it was. Marlene began the slow burn, her words punctuated with sharp drags off her cigarette, the smoldering that Josie knew all too well. “Too busy for your poor old mother, huh? Maybe that’s why you didn’t send the money you promised? Too busy,” she spat, “playing around with Darla?”

Say nothing
, she told herself. Just like when she was eleven. And fourteen. And seventeen. And twenty. Hunker down and weather the storm and just go on like nothing happened. It was easier that way.

Safer.

“You there?”

No,
she wanted to say.
Nope. Not here. Gone. Long gone, hiding away where you can’t hurt me, can’t snap at me, can’t bring strange men home and kick me out into the cold. Hidden in the abyss inside me that cracked open the day Daddy died, when you came home from the hospital six weeks later and told me I was the worst thing that happened to you. Far, far away from the you that you became, spiriting myself off to where the old you lived. Where the old you loved me.

“I’m here.”

“Whatcha got to say, then? I need my money, Josie,” she wheedled. “The gutters don’t fix themselves. You can pay for Darla to come out there in your fancy city, in an apartment I haven’t even seen. The only time you helped me visit was when you graduated college, and that was what? Five years ago?”

“Six.”

“How’s that music guy from your college, anyhow? He really took a shining to me.” Pause. Drag. “Might be worth moving in with you if I can see him.”

“Moving. In?” The words choked out of her as if she were on the receiving end of the Heimlich maneuver, forced out of her with a resounding gag.

“You got room for Darla. Why not me?”

“No.” The word came out before any filter could even try to catch it. Before her brain could process it. Before she could even gasp at the monstrous idea that Marlene would move to Cambridge and live with her. Her palm clamped over her mouth in shock. Had her mouth really done that?

Come to her own rescue?

“What?”

“
No
.” This time, it came out with deliberate force. Always evasive, using jokes and sarcasm to blunt Marlene’s pleas and demands, this time she just decided it was time to face her head on. No bullshit. No dancing the two-step while juggling live fish and doing it all spinning on top of a basketball. No worrying nineteen steps ahead, like a chess player moving not chess pieces, but her own emotions, constantly putting them in danger and making calculated moves to get just enough space to breathe—

No.

Fuck
no.

She was done. Where was she supposed to have anything left over for her? For Alex? For friends and family and to build her own life? Moving six hundred miles away was supposed to give her space, but she’d made one crucial mistake in her concept of what it meant to get away: if you let the people you’re trying to leave behind live in your head, you never lose them as roommates.

“No what?”

“No to everything, Mom. No, you can’t move in.” Her heart raced, and her peripheral vision started to fade to white. Textbook panic attack, she knew, her nurse’s mind kicking in. Only it was a shame that she couldn’t be objective and couldn’t just see this for what it was.

Subjective and raw and all too viscerally real, she had to feel it. Not watch it.

“But Darla can—”

“That’s right. Darla can. Because Darla views me as a human being. Not as some object she can manipulate to get what she wants. It’s like you’ve seen me all these years since Dad died as some
thing
you can move around and use at will, but if I don’t comply with your demands I become an enemy.”

“That’s not—”

“So I’m done. You know that researchers did studies years ago on how to trigger mental illness in a kid, Mom? You move the goal posts. Constantly. You make sure they never feel like they’re good enough, and when you tell them how to do something and they do it that way, then you pull the rug out from under them and insist that you never said what they damn well know you said. It’s a damned miracle I’m not more fucked up than I am.”

“Oh, honey, you’re not fucked up.” Marlene’s voice had turned unctuous, a fake affect that made Josie’s fillings hurt. This was the voice she had used publicly when Josie hurt herself, a “doting mother” tone that made others smile in approval. The same tone she used when Josie won awards. Or impressed an adult. A far cry from real life and so painfully different from Marlene’s authentic self that it could be crazymaking.

“I’m not giving you the money.” Much more of this and her vision really would disappear. Her shoulders were above her ears, and a strange pulsing sound was starting to swallow the room. Was that her pulse in her ears? Would she descend into a fugue state if this went on much longer? Blacking out wasn’t her idea of fun, but she wasn’t sure she could stand much more of this.

Click.

Oh. Well. That was that.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit
. Josie couldn’t get the thought out of her mind. Never. Never had she stood up to Marlene. Never ever. Slinking around, hiding, running away—those Josie could do. Standing and facing a problem? Nope. That meant you got hurt—physically or emotionally. Being emotionally honest about feelings? Pfft—what were those? Marlene made it
aaaall
about her anyhow, so why bother? And when you made yourself vulnerable, it just gave people one more way to spear you.

Alex. Alex wasn’t like that.

The book’s pages were crushed in her hand, half the paperback wrinkled.

Grabbing her keys and sprinting out the door past Darla, who now sat on the porch, she reached her car and that clarity she felt earlier came back.

She knew exactly where she was going.

“Where are you going?” Darla shouted. “I got Trevor and the rest of the band coming to help with this,” she said, pointing to the kitty litter. Josie stared at her, at the pile of bags, but didn’t really connect with what Darla was saying. She had to get out.

Now.

“Great. I’ll be back.” She got in the car.

“When?”

“When I finish unfuckupping myself.”

“That could take years! Where are you going?”

“To the library!” she shouted, revving the engine and pulling out of her parking spot, everything in her aligned for a single purpose, her clarity turning the abyss inside into a minimalist shelter from the storm of what was about to be unleashed.

“Crackhead! Hey, Crackhead!” Darla shouted from the porch as Alex rounded the corner. Trevor, Joe, and two other guys about their age were in the front yard, moving large bags of sand from a pallet in the yard on to the porch.

“I might do ’shrooms and some pot, but I don’t touch crack,” a red-headed guy said drolly.

“Is that a term of endearment, Darla?” Alex called out.

She planted her hands on her hips and smiled. “I feel right at home when I'm shouting for that cat.” She laughed, the sound eerily similar to Josie's cackle. “Dr. Perfect. How’s your head?”

“It’s better.” He touched the healing wound lightly. “What’s going on here?”

“I won a lifetime’s supply of kitty litter. Or, at least, my mama did.”

“You only have two cats, right?” He chuckled, watching the guys haul and re-stack. “Where are you going to store it all?” He imagined Josie would have a mixed reaction, given her apartment’s clean, spare look.

“You got one?” She perked up. “Trevor, give Alex a bag.”

Oof!
As if he were lifting a newborn baby, Trevor handed off a twenty-pound bag of litter. Alex’s knees bent at the weight and his hip screamed.

“Thanks,” he said, acting like it was no big deal. The testosterone level in the yard was up to his chin, and something primal in him made him man up. “But I don’t have a cat.”

“How about your mom? Your grandpa? Someone you know? Maybe take a few bags to the hospital and see if people want some?”

He set the bag down carefully. “No thanks, Darla. But it might come in handy this winter on icy walkways.”

“Oooh, good selling point.”

“Who are all these guys?”

“The band. You know Trevor and Joe.” Both grunted a “hello.” “And this is Sam, the drummer,” she said, pointing to the redhead. Deep auburn hair and the kind of skin that tans, rather than burns, with greenish hazel eyes. He was the only guy wearing a shirt, something from a geeky t-shirt store, and the quick eye contact and downcast eyes were more about shyness than anything else.

“Liam’s the guitar player.”

“One of them!” Trevor protested.

“The best one,” Liam crowed, reaching out to shake Alex’s hand. Liam and Trevor could have been brothers, both possessing a natural confidence and blonde surfer-dude look, though Liam was taller, looking down at Alex as they shook hands.

“So, this is the entire band?” Josie’s texts this past week had explained who Trevor and Joe were, and Darla’s relationship with them, as well as the Random Acts of Crazy band. Alex hadn’t heard of them, but then again, he lived in his own hospital-filled bubble.

Liam nodded. “We’re all here, moving kitty litter for Trevor and Joe’s puss—”

“HEY!” shouted the two guys, Joe throwing his shirt at Liam. It caught him on the side of his grinning face.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Darla said, going right up to Liam and smiling. This was all good-natured, Alex could see.

“Where’s Josie?” Alex asked.

Darla just stared at him. No anger, no consternation, just an open look of evaluation. He wondered how different their fathers must have been, for Darla had untamed blonde waves and ocean-green eyes, with a fuller figure, while Josie’s features were dark, her body petite and slim. How interesting genetics could be. If he and Josie had a baby, it would have dark hair and dark eyes.

Even as he held Darla’s look, he paused internally. The thought of having a baby, of growing a family, with Josie filled him with a sense of protection and love.

Hope, too.

Waving him toward the door, Darla said, “Let’s go inside and talk. You want something to drink?” The guys were about halfway through their labor; Alex could see, now, just how much kitty litter you could pack into an entire pallet.

“You can call the local humane society, too, and donate some.”

Darla clapped excitedly as she entered the kitchen. “Great idea. Lemonade?”

Alex was itching to see Josie. “No, thanks. So…is something wrong with her?”

Blinking rapidly, Darla seemed torn. “She’s…not okay, but it’s not that there’s anything bad. It’s just that Josie, well, she’s—”

“Complicated,” they said simultaneously.

“You really are Dr. Perfect, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “I wish. If I’d let Josie see Dr. Imperfect a bit more, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“What are you in with her? She says you’re ‘somethinging.’”

“
She’s
something,” he said, grinning. They exchanged a knowing look, one that pleased him. How did two women come out of what Josie described as tragic circumstances only to be so fascinating, so down to earth and funny and intelligent? Darla was rough around the edges, and he knew Josie worried about her, but she’d be fine. Josie was fine. It made him wonder about her father, the librarian. What kind of man was he? His influence came through in Josie's intelligence.

Whatever made Josie think she wasn’t an exceptional person made his heart ache. He wanted to banish the roadblocks that got in her way, even as he knew that the only person who could really do that was her. Being supportive, walking down the road with her, standing on the sidelines while she navigated her way—that he could do.