Matt & Zoe (2 page)

“Do you know where Mom and Dad have been keeping the key?” I ask Jasmine.

She shakes her head. I look over toward the garage. I haven’t been in there in a long time, and I don’t want to go in now. Some of my happiest memories of my childhood are in that garage. I want to go in there, but not right now. Instead I want to wait. I want to go slow, take my time, peel it back like a band-aid. It seems that if there’s any place Dad might have left a house key, it would be on a hook in there.

“Stay here,” I say.

I walk toward the two-car garage. It’s detached from the rest of the house, a white building with a shallow angled roof and no windows. Dad always keeps the Austin Healey parked in here, and the van stays in the driveway.

Rather, he kept it in there.

I shuffle toward the garage. My feet weigh a hundred pounds.

Nicole comes back around the corner. “I found the key,” she says. “It was under the loose brick in the back stairs.”

I close my eyes. There’s no way I can express the relief that floods through me. I follow Nicole back up the stair onto the porch. Jasmine is leaning against the front door, turning the knob. Nicole says, “Hey, honey, let me unlock it.”

We enter the house.

The living room looks the same as always. The wide plank flooring has needed refinishing since before I’ve been alive. A mix of antique and thrift-store furniture surrounds a broad coffee table. The curtains are drawn back and light streams into the house. It all looks so normal it's indecent.

The floor creaks a little as I walk down the hall toward the kitchen. The hallway smells, and the odor gets stronger as I approach the kitchen. It’s been three days since anyone has been in the house—it smells like something went rank in the trash can.

The kitchen is dazzling, the sun glaring through the window. The blue flowery wallpaper is peeling in the corners, and fruit flies buzz around the trash can. I brush the lid open and see a banana peel crawling with fruit flies. I shudder, then begin to gather up the garbage to take outside. I need to fix this right now.

Nicole is in the living room with Jasmine. I can hear Nicole’s voice but can’t make out the words. She’s speaking in almost musical tones, and I realize as I pull the bag out of the can that I’m crying.

Dad takes the garbage out at night. Took. He took the garbage out at night.

I can’t think of them in the past tense. But he won’t be taking any garbage out ever again. As I pull the bag out, the stainless steel can falls over with a crash. I stagger toward the kitchen door and open it up, then walk to the trash can out back. Flies buzz around the can.

I swipe my hands at my face and eyes. I need to hold it together. I have an eight-year-old sister in there who’s been through hell. And she needs my help. I turn and walk back into the house.

When I enter the living room, Nicole looks up. Her eyes narrow a little bit. “You okay?”

She could always see right through me. I shrug and say, “You know.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Let me get your duffel bag. Why don’t you and Jasmine check out upstairs? She was asking about her stuffed bunny, but didn’t want to go up alone.”

I smile at my little sister. Jasmine’s usually not afraid of anything. “Come on, Jasmine. Let’s both get changed and we’ll go check on the horses.”

I stand up and take her hand.

Chapter Two

Mono (Zoe)

“C—Ca—can I come with you to the stable?”

Jasmine looks frustrated and unsure of herself when she asks the question—as if she’s afraid I’ll say no—or maybe she’s just unsure of me. Either way, I tell her to come. She tags along beside me, a solemn expression in her face.

The stutter is new. I think. At least, she wasn’t doing it last time I visited home, and my parents certainly never mentioned it.

My sister doesn’t know me, and I know nothing about her. At least nothing that matters now. She doesn’t care that I used to mash up bananas and spoon feed her when she was a baby, or that I cried when I learned she’d been born, or that I used to blow on her feet to make her squeal with laughter. That’s ancient history, and well before anything she can likely remember.

As we walk down the back steps toward the stable, I rack my brain trying to remember her favorite color. What kind of ice cream she likes. Whether she likes ponies or unicorns or what.

I don’t have a clue. I know some things. Mom and Dad sent me pictures, and I always saw their updates on Facebook. I’ve seen a hundred pictures of Jasmine riding horses, including Mom’s giant Shire horse Mono. At 18 hands high, Mono looks fearsome, but he’s a gentle giant. The name was Mom’s little joke. He’s called Mono because he was sick for most of first year after Mom bought him. Mom said it was because he wasn’t getting decent nutrition, she got him from a divorcing couple in Hadley. When I was home on leave the summer after she bought him, her eyes were glassy with tears when she talked about the condition he’d been in. The first two months she’d had him, he had thrush in two of his hooves—from standing around in a soggy and filthy stall.

Mom’s Facebook page displays hundreds of photos of Jasmine with the horses, and especially riding Mono. She’d ridden him during the Memorial Day parade this year, a tiny girl on top of a giant horse.

As we approach the stable, I hear the horses nickering through the open stable door. A deep voice croons something to the horses. Who is it?

“Stay back.” Jasmine ignores my order—instead, she runs for the door and into the stable. I’m right behind her, but I come to an instant stop as I walk in the door.

It’s Paul Armstrong, owner of the adjacent horse farm that runs behind the line of homes on College Street for a solid half mile from here. I haven’t seen him since my senior year in high school. He’s somewhere in his late thirties, I think, or maybe a very young forty. As always, he has red skin and ruddy cheeks from working outdoors. Paul and my Mom have always been rivals, but friendly rivals. Right now he’s chatting with Mono as he brushes him. Mono looks restless, and when he sees Jasmine he lets out a loud whinny.

Jasmine runs straight to him and without hesitation slips between the slats of the stall. My chest tightens with immediate tension—Mono was Mom’s favorite, and I know Jasmine rides him all the time. Still—he’s enormous. His black fur glistens from the light streaming in the door of the stable, and his hooves stamp at the ground, raising clouds of dust. Jasmine doesn’t hesitate, climbing up the slats to sit on the top rail. Mono nuzzles his face against her and she wraps her arms around his head.

Paul grins. “He adores her. Welcome home, Zoe.”

I nod. I’m not discourteous, just unsure why he is here. “Thanks. I didn’t expect to be here.”

“I’m so sorry about your Mom and Dad. I’ve been coming over here to keep an eye on the horses when I could—I was hoping you’d be back soon. Are you home on leave? How long are you staying?”

That was a lot of words all at once. I open my mouth, unsure of myself.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he says. He moves straight to me and wraps his arms around me. I stiffen at first—who the hell does he think he is? Then I almost collapse inside. The tension in my muscles slips away as if it had never been there.

“I think I’m here for good,” I whisper. “I’m out of the Army.”

“Ahhhh,” he whispers. “So you’ll be taking care of Jasmine.”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” he says. “That’s good. I didn’t know if she was with relatives or a foster home or what. I just knew no one was feeding the horses.”

“Do you have time to be over here feeding Mom’s horses? What about your teams?” Paul’s horses often win national prizes in shows around the country.

He releases me and waves a hand in dismissal. “Husband’s covering for me.”

My eyes widen. “You’re married now? When did that happen?”

He says, “Four years ago, honey. Blake quit his job two years ago to work with me.”

I smile.

Then I remember that four years ago I was in Iskandiriyah. I missed a lot of what was going on back home then. “I’m so happy, I just didn’t realize.”

“It’s all right.” I will say this: he looks happy, and that’s a change. I remember seeing him at competitions on the circuit the summer before my senior year in high school—when Mom and I were arguing all the time. Paul was never relaxed. In fact, he looked like the most stressed out human being I had ever seen. He was stocky, with a thick muscled neck and sometimes awkward movements. He always used to look like he was thirty seconds from a heart attack. Now, he still looks red in the face, a little parboiled, but the stressed-out look in his eyes has melted.

“Marriage seems to agree with you.”

His smile reveals orderly gleaming teeth. I think they’re new… I don’t remember that unnatural smile.

“How long have you been watching them?”

“Ever since the accident, I’ve been coming over twice a day. Although Mono needs more attention. I’ve been riding him in the morning, but he missed Jasmine.”

Jasmine hugged Mono again. “Can I ride him now?”

Paul looks at me, and it takes me a fraction of a second longer than it should for it to sink in that he’s looking to me for permission. Because I’m in charge, both of the horses... and of Jasmine. I shiver. I’m not ready for this.

“Go get your boots.” The words feel awkward coming out of my mouth.

Jasmine plants a huge kiss on Mono, then jumps down from the rail and runs for the house.

“I’ve never ridden Mono.” I’m eyeing the horse as I say the words. He’s huge. I know Jasmine rides him all the time, but it still makes me a little nervous.

“Jasmine handles him like a pro,” Paul says. “She’ll be fine. Nettles is out back with Eeyore. Wasn’t she yours?”

I nod. Mom always wanted me to be into horses, just like Dad wanted me to be into literature. Neither got what they wanted. “They’re doing okay?”

“Yeah. They’ve all been moody. They miss your mom.”

I swallow, unable to reply to his words. I do too.

My Fault (Matt)

When my phone rings, it’s two in the afternoon and I’m already late. I’ve spent the day driving from place to place, buying supplies for my classroom for the year. Dry-erase markers, paper, crayons, construction paper, glue—the staples of elementary education. Every year the school provides fewer materials and I buy more. I’m used to making do with even less, so it’s fine. At least the supplies are tax-deductible.

I take my right hand off the wheel and fumble to pick up the phone. It’s Tyler Norris, a fellow elementary school teacher. There are very few men teaching in the lower level grades, so the two of us form a sort of fraternity, even though we’re nothing alike. Tyler is … exuberant. He’s outgoing, muscular, a guy’s guy. He’s an assistant coach for the high school football team and drinks like a fish. Beer, mostly. I’m pretty sure he was the guy chugging Jägermeister from the bottle in college while his frat buddies shouted, “Chug! Chug! Chug!”

He’s also my best friend, though it would be impossible for us to be more different from each other.

I lift the phone to my ear. “Hey.”

No fancy Bluetooth or electronics for me. My Toyota is twelve years old. My flip-phone and the eight-year-old Mac I bought my freshman year at Boston University still work just fine. I love technology, but I love being out of debt more. I’m trying to pay off my student loans before I turn sixty.

“Yo, Matty, what up? Where are ya?” Tyler’s voice is boisterous with an undercurrent of gravel.

“I’m on my way, I got held up in traffic in Hadley. It’s chaos from the students coming back at UMASS.”

“Right, right. They’re ready to start without you.”

I mutter a curse. “I’m ten minutes away. Stall them, please.” As I say the words, I pull out into the traffic circle. Everything goes black as a minivan comes out of nowhere and crushes the front of my Toyota. Force yanks me toward the steering wheel, but the seat belt locks me in place. With a loud bang, the airbag deploys right into my face.

It takes a few seconds before the shock lifts. I turn off the car and just breathe.

Steam pours out of the front of my car, and Tyler is shouting in my phone “Matty? Matty? You okay?”

I groan. Then I say, “Tyler, I just got into an accident. Tell them I can’t make it today.”

“You all right? Oh, man—”

“I’m fine,” I say. I need to get him off the phone. I flip it shut and gingerly reach for the door handle.

The door opens. I step out, still disoriented. The front of my car is crumpled in, but the minivan doesn’t appear to have sustained any damage. Sitting behind the wheel is a young mother with bleach blonde hair and wide blue eyes.

She opens the door and slips out of her seat. She’s wearing a UMASS t-shirt, and as I stand up next to my car, I revise her age downward. She’s not a mother, she’s a college kid driving her mother’s van. I don’t know if her almost white hair is bleached or naturally blonde, but it’s cut longer in the front than the back. Her t-shirt is a little too tight. Not that I’m complaining.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, are you?”
Sir? Do I look like a sir?
I look down at the steaming front end of my car. The white cloud is not encouraging.

“Looks like you ruptured the radiator. You shouldn’t talk on the phone while driving.”

“Pot, meet kettle. You hit me, kid.”

“First, I’m not a kid. And second, I had the right of way. I hit you because you raced out into the rotary without looking.”

Just what I need. A twenty-year-old college sophomore patronizing me about my driving. “Lady, I’ve never had an accident in my life. How fast were you going? There’s no way I pulled out too fast for you to stop.”

She shakes her head, a grim look on her face. I’d have thought she was completely emotionless—her facial expression is remote—but her hands are shaking. “We’ll let the police do their report. I’m just grateful neither of us was hurt. You got insurance information?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Yeah, yeah, let me get my insurance card. Unbelievable.” I lean into the car to open the glove box. Traffic is moving again, inching around us. Her van is partially obstructing traffic. I hear sirens in the distance. Amherst Police, probably. Christ. This is going to end up costing me if the ticket gets blamed on me. Meanwhile, some over-privileged college kid walks away from the accident with no repercussions at all.