Laugh (14 page)

She’d loved Sam’s father, and they had waited several years before having Sam. Marie Astor and
Patrick Burnside had only been nineteen when they married. When it was just the two of them, Paddy had driven a cab. He’d spend Thursday through Sunday taking as many fares as he could, then he and Marie would spend the week road-tripping as far as they could get in a few days.

His mom had told him that they always took the long way home.

Sam had forgotten that, a little—that it wasn’t always the Burnsides. First had been Patrick and Marie, and the love they had for each other, love they barely understood yet.

Then Sam, and Sam remembered, just a little, nights curled up between them in their bed, under his dad’s arm, his mom tickling him. Sneaking into their room in the middle of the night, feeling lonely.

Then Sarah came, and Sam remembered sitting solemnly on the sofa trying to keep still and hold, as gently as he could, Sarah’s soft baby head while his dad told him how important it was that he be a good big brother.

He’d been loved.

He didn’t know how to … take it.

He didn’t know how to take the love, just as it was, or give it when he felt it.

“Why’d you give up the priesthood, Daniel? Seems like you’re pretty good at it.”

“I’ve done my best to live my life in such a way that I’m always listening to what God has to tell me. I went through something where I listened to my heart, I listened to what was in it, but I didn’t tell God what I heard.

“I loved someone, not the love a priest has for his flock, or for God, but the ordinary love a man has for a woman. And I lost her. Like you just told me, losing her meant I could reflect on the love I had shared with her so that it seemed perfect, even though it wasn’t. That perfect memory of love wasn’t enough; I was meant for that ordinary love, or I wanted it.

“I didn’t give up God when I gave up the priesthood, though. I finally found Him. I didn’t have to hide from Him anymore, or hide what I felt. It took a while, too, because I lost and grieved for a woman I never shared enough with, because we had to lie to everyone, and each other, and ourselves to have a relationship. Which— That’s not love, not really. The vestments weren’t love either.”

“God is love?” Sam grinned.

“Well, yeah, sure. And so are you.”

Sam felt himself go quiet all over. Like he did, sometimes, with Nina. “That’s a lot of fucking priest mojo, right there.”

“Pardon your French.”

Sam stood with Daniel looking at Betty’s house and her garden for a few more long moments, feeling the low evening sun across his back and seeing how it made the flowers in Betty’s garden glow. “So she’s in
there?”

“Yeah. She helped Betty make dinner. They experimented and made some kind of Italian bread salad with tomatoes.”

“Sounds good.”

“Yeah?” Daniel gripped Sam on the shoulder.

“Yeah, it does.”

The salad was good, not even really a salad, it had heavy ripe chunks of tomatoes and some kind of soft, white cheese, and chewy cubes of bread that soaked up olive oil and tomato juice.

Sam ate it slowly, looking at Sarah, who looked more like their mother than ever, small-boned, short. She had one blue eye like their mom’s, and one gray one.
Complete heterochromia.
The only person he had ever seen with it, though he found himself casually looking for it all the time, when he examined a patient’s eyes.

Her dark hair was cut close to her head, like a boy’s, the way she’d kept it since she could vocalize her choice. The conversation was mostly perfunctory around Betty’s small table.

More iced tea?

Move your chair away from the window unit, it gets too cold.

These tomatoes are wonderful.

It was making Sam feel unsettled, like he was missing something or doing something wrong. He didn’t want to stare at Sarah, but she did look much better. She had been almost emaciated after her poor recovery from her winter accident, and now she had filled out, her shoulders rounded with new muscles from using her crutches. She looked a little older, maybe.

“Something you need, Sam?” Betty leaned back and crossed her legs. Her pale blond hair was in a ponytail, which he didn’t remember that she had ever worn before.

“I’m good.”

“You’re fidgeting.”

Sam let the knee that was jiggling go still. “I’m good. And the food is good.”

Betty just looked at him and Sarah put down her fork. Daniel kept eating but still had a small smile on his face. Sam wondered if that ever annoyed Betty.

“Des wants us to talk.” Sarah’s voice seemed neutral, but Sam had no idea how to answer this direct approach.

“We’re eating” was what he said. Sarah looked at him—he had no idea how to figure out what she was thinking—and then she got up and reached for her crutches. Slammed out the back door.

“Sam,” Betty said, soft.

“Did she want me to talk to her right here at the dinner table?” The bread and tomatoes suddenly felt both heavy and acidic in his throat, his middle, under his heart.

“Just go talk to her. She probably went into the garden.”

Sam didn’t want to. He wanted to leave, or go for a run, or stand in a swampy onion field with Nina and listen to her tell stories and look at her mouth when she laughed.

But Betty stood up and started gathering plates, and Daniel looked at Sam and jerked his head toward the door.

Sam found Sarah sitting on a bench in the lot Betty was gardening next to her house, tearing apart some flower. He sat next to her, and she moved away from him a little. He tried not to let that hurt his feelings.

“You look good,” he said.

“You don’t have to talk to me, Sam. I don’t even know what we would talk about.”

“I’m not talking, I’m just telling you that you look good.”

“Okay.”

Sam leaned forward and tried hard not to jump up and pace. “Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Are you okay living here, now that this Daniel guy …”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Sarah stood and picked up her crutches. Made her way to Betty’s back stoop. “Good talk,” she said, not turning around.

Sam stood up so fast, the bench toppled backward. “Wait.”

Sarah stopped but didn’t turn around.

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t walk away, so Sam took that as an opening.

“I don’t know your reasons. I don’t think I can know your reasons, for why you rode that race right after we lost Dad. Obviously you know how I feel about it, and I think it was just fucking stupid.” Sarah stiffened, but didn’t move away. “But I’m sorry for what I said in the hospital all those times. I’m pretty sure I could have talked to you about why I was upset without, you know. Yelling. Saying some of that stuff.”

“You’re an asshole, Sam,” Sarah said. There was no edge to her voice, and she turned around. “You’re an asshole, but you’re my brother.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? That’s your answer?”

“Yeah? Because, we’re okay now?”

Sarah looked at him for what seemed like a really long time. Sam tried to think of something else to say. He could think of things that he knew would make her angry, but he thought were fair, and he could think of things that would probably be nice, but he didn’t mean. He shouldn’t say anything he didn’t mean, but he was willing to try, if he had to.

“What is it, to you, that we’re okay, Sam? What does that look like to you?”

“Like you pick up the fucking phone, that’s all.”

“When you call?”

“Or you pick it up to call me.”

“And what is it that we’re talking about?”

“Your stuff. What your treatment is, how you’re progressing, how many hours you’re working, when you’re planning on moving out. Your stuff.”

“You think that’s my stuff? You think that’s why we should talk, so I can tell you that
stuff
?”

Sam could not work out where the seams were on this puzzle box.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?
Jesus Christ
, Sam.”

“What’s better? That I don’t know that stuff? That I look for excuses to talk to that jackass in ortho when I’m on rounds to see if he might mention something about you? That I have to work out what code Des and PJ are using to talk about you to get a single fucking scrap of information?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Sarah threw down one of her crutches and ran her fingers through her hair, and Sam resisted the urge to walk over and give her the crutch back. Surely she wasn’t on weight-bearing orders quite yet. “You completely and totally don’t get it. And I’m supposed to deal with what a hopeless asshole you are because there isn’t any way that you’ll ever get it. That’s what I do. I think of what I expect from a normal human being, and then I fucking adjust all of that when I think of you, Sam. Because you’re Sam.
Oh
,
that’s just Sam.
It’s what we all say—you know that? We deal with your bullshit and then we just say,
Just Sam. Don’t even
,
that’s just Sam.
Mom started that, dealt with the emotional crash-and-burns you left in your wake.
Don’t cry
,
baby, that’s just Sam.

“Well, I’m done with Just Sam. Done. You want to call, then call. Call me. Call me and then leave a normal message, like, I don’t know,
Call me back when you get a chance, Sarah.
Try that. One time. Try doing that instead of calling me six times all day and hanging up and then complaining all over town about me. When I feel like calling you back, try asking me about my letterpress. Try asking me, I don’t know, what I did over the fucking weekend. How Betty’s doing. If I’ve heard from Des. But I am not dealing with
Just Sam
anymore.”

Sam’s ears had gone hot and when he looked at Sarah, she seemed to be moving forward and back in his vision, bigger and smaller.

“I told Nina about your letterpress, didn’t Rachel call you with a menu order?”

Sarah closed her eyes and Sam watched her take a deep breath. “Yeah, Sam. She did.”

“So she ordered some menus?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. That’s good.”

Sam wanted to say something to make Sarah’s eyes open and to make her say something to him that would make him reasonably sure he could call her tomorrow and ask her how her fucking weekend went, so then maybe he could figure out what was happening with her treatment plan. “So that woman Nina?”

Sarah opened her eyes. “Yeah?”

“I asked her out.” Just saying that made him feel a little better in general. It had taken some finessing after the onion picking, but he asked her out on a date and she said yes. It felt like something in his life was working when she had agreed.

“Okay …?”

“Yeah. I just mean I asked her out because, you know, I like her.”

“I do think, in fact, that’s how it works.”

“Yeah, but I mean, I asked her out.” Now Sam closed his eyes.

“You like her.”

Sam let out the breath he was holding. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. And I’m glad Rachel ordered your menus and stuff.”

Sarah bent over and picked up her crutch and Sam watched her body for how it moved, for any sign of pain. Her shoulders were a little stiff, maybe, but she was able to retrieve the crutch without wincing, and maneuvered her body back on it smoothly.

He let out another breath.

“Good luck with Nina,” Sarah said, and she made her way back to the house.

“Wait,” Sam said, but he wasn’t sure if he’d said it loud enough.

She stopped. “Yeah, Sam?”

“We’re good? Can I call you?”
Jesus.

“It’s fine. Call me if you want, Sam.”

He sat back down in Betty’s garden. Looked around. Some of the plants looked a little dry, maybe.

It was almost dark when he was done watering, and then he walked home, thinking of Nina.

Nina sat on the edge of her bed and looked at her toes.

They were a color called Russian Caviar, and she supposed that Russian caviar was red, because her toes were red, but she had never eaten Russian caviar, or caviar of any kind unless you counted the bright orange fish eggs that supermarket California rolls sometimes had, and she guessed it was as unlikely that bright orange nail polish would be called Fish Roe as it was that she was wearing nail polish on her toes.

Her toes hurt, her feet hurt. They had been roughly scrubbed and sanded and even planed with what looked like a potato peeler while she sat in a vinyl captain’s chair at a place called House of Nails and tried to overcome the spine-cramping discomfort of tolerating a woman sitting at her feet, holding them by the arch while curls and flakes of her skin drifted into a tub of water so strongly scented with oils that her eyes had burned.

She held up her feet now, which looked overly pink and tender, the cuticles a little puffy, the small bones over the instep shining with the glittery lotion that another person had rubbed into them.

She had agreed to a
date.

She wondered if her
yes
had been the effect of the sun in the onion field, which by the time the trailer had been loaded with packed boxes of early yellow globes had been unrelenting, coming in at an angle that burned steam from the soil. The afternoon had been productive—Nina hadn’t directed a harvest in some time and while she didn’t get the field cleared as quickly as Tay would have, she did get it done.

So she had been hot, maybe. A little full of herself, definitely. A lot horny, absolutely.

Sam.
His T-shirt had soaked through with sweat, draped over the striated muscles along his spine and over his ribs, and crawled up his body at his waist, so that as he bent over the rows, the waistband of his cargos losing purchase, she could see his skin, slick and flushed.

It didn’t matter where she worked in the field, she could see him.

His hair, in the sun, was like a warning, asking her to look, to slow down.

By the time they were done and those Burnside men had come to take their leave of her, so dirty and sweaty and pleased with themselves that they looked almost like little boys, Nina’s resistance to reason was burned away. She had nothing stern left against those grinning boys—Paul had lost his shirt long ago, Sam was using the tail of his to wipe the sweat from his eyes, but of course nothing about how the Burnsides were made was actually boyish.