Something Of A Kind (13 page)

What the hell are they doing?

The man’s face flushed as he realized he had company. Alyson
stood at Noah’s side, analyzing his expression with concern. He
straightened his shoulders, forcing his dropped jaw shut.
“Is everything alright?” Noah asked, hesitant.

He didn’t make small talk with his parents, especially with his
father. They rarely spoke beyond organizing chores and work, or
defending drunken fits and making excuses for missing paychecks.
This scene wasn’t right, though. It didn’t look like Lee had hurt
Mary-Agnes, but this was something he only saw when venturing
out of his room in early morning hours. They shouldn’t even be at
the house. Lee belonged at the deck, or the fishery. Mary-Agnes
belonged at the cash register or in the kitchen.

Something’s not right.

“Why? How could you bring strangers into my house?” Mary
-
Agnes mumbled, sounding like she had been crying or was about to.
Everything about her screamed wooziness, a flagrant sign she was
unstable in every sense.

I don’t want to be around when this goes down.

 

“Shortcut,” he muttered, tugging Aly’s wrist as they moved past
them.

 

I don’t even want to know.

He felt like he could wake up one day and the house would be
empty, Yazzie’s falling apart. The docks would have fallen into the
ocean. Life would be gone, red skies and ruins. He wasn’t sure he’d
care– being alone, for once, belonging to nothing and no one.

Noah didn’t know what he wanted from his parents, to be seen
and accepted or invisible and released. He didn’t want whatever was
waiting in the room at his back.

Cutting through the attachment from the house to Yazzie’s, the
sudden hollers of an argument passed through the walls. He couldn’t
tell who was speaking, or which side it was on. Confused, he
exchanged a look with Aly.

Entering the diner, he sprinted through the white hall into the
eating section. As she tried to keep up, Aly knocked over the heavy
frames filled with pictures of the various grand re-openings over the
years. He waved her off when she tried to retrieve it, wordlessly
insisting she shouldn’t worry about it.

The front of the diner was in chaos, patrons raising their hands,
some already walking out. With the bang of industrial pans hitting
the floor, Sarah screamed, a following wail resonating through the
wall. Kennedy’s voice rang back, too muffled to make out the
words. The whirr of the water pipes shuttered in the wall, the room
empty and silent enough for the noise to carry.

Noah ran for the doors, pushing himself up and over the counter
in the same way he had yelled at his brothers for doing a thousand
times. He slammed through, a stumbling mass of people following
at his back.

The first thing he saw was blood
– a lot, everywhere. It took a
moment to realize the thick liquid was actually maroon sauce, either
a marinade or a soup base, sprayed across the burgundy tiles. It
steamed, splashed across the floor, running
down the walls,
splattered on the legs of tables. The huge pan still rolled on its side,
a red-handed culprit.

Kennedy had Sarah bent over a dishwashing sink, forcing both
of her hands beneath a running faucet. She sobbed in his arms, her
face buried in his chest, twisted away from the water, unable to look
at the burns. As Noah jumped around the mess, he placed each foot
wherever the stuff wasn’t with as much care as panic allowed,
rushing to their side.

He couldn’t tell what was skin and what was sauce, though
wherever the water was running clear was swollen with white
patches or angry reds with noticeable welts. His own scars stung
just looking at it.

“Oh no,” his mother said, her voice high and confused, “Oh dear,
oh no!”

 

I thought she was half-dead in the living room. When did they
get here?

He prayed it wasn’t as bad as his had been. The memory rushe
d
into his head –
eight years old, racing
through the kitchen
screaming, John fast at his back, face flushed.
His brother had
grabbed the handle of the pan from the fryer, whipping it forward,
splattering boiling oil. His jacket had protected his back, but his
neck bubbled. For the first twenty minutes his body was in shock.
By the time he was treated at the clinic, the pain returned with a
vengeance in the nerves that hadn’t been burned through. The next
few months were agony.

The scar still covered the flesh of his neck, concealed by shaggy
hair and a hoodie, slightly dipping between the shoulder blades. It
was the only time he had ever seen his father angry with one of the
golden boys, a fault in the flawless prodigal sons.

She’s already screaming – that’s a good sign. No nerves fried.

He shivered, his hands uselessly outstretched, trembling. He
realized his mouth was moving, demanding details and screaming at
his parents. Mary-Agnes shrunk back, Lee leaning against the door,
half-dazed and half-stewing. Aly was frozen, her eyes locked on
Sarah, seeming oblivious to his shaking breakdown.

“M
-momma was drinking. She just left me. I- I just t-tried to
take over” Her voice cracked, her head shaking fiercely. She tried
pulling her hands back, crying thatit hurt, it was cold, he’s hurting
her. When he didn’t budge, she bit down on her lip, eyes squeezing
shut.

“Your mom walked out. I told her we could close, Sarah refused.

She said she could take care of the kitchen because she knew most
of the menu. Erma was going to come back from break, we thought
Mary-Agnes would come back. She ran to get a plate she forgot and
bumped the edge of it, I don’t know, with her arm swinging or
something. Usually the handles are turned in, she had it to the edge,
I don’t-” Kennedy spoke fast, his panic launching him into the role
of auctioneer rather than credible witness.

Noah ran his hands through his hair, unable to think. His head
pounded, anger and frustration building until his chest as though he
could physically explode. On the verge of a scream in the chaos, he
stumbled back, arms crossed over his head.

Aly shoved past him. The wide handle of a red tool box slid
down her forearm, awkwardly slamming against her shoulders as
she tied her long hair behind her head. Dropping it on the table, a
white cross dragged the recognition that it was a first aid – an old kit
kept beneath the register after the irregular health inspector dropped
in through a town scouring.

She pulled Kennedy off Sarah, taking his place so his sister
couldn’t recoil. Catching the boy’s eye, Aly said, “I need you to
clean that stuff up before someone else gets hurt. Can you do that?”
He blinked, looking between the floor and Sarah before nodding
quickly. Aly’s smiled reassured. “And Kennedy? You did a really
good job – probably saving a lot of her skin. Your surprise from your
grandfather is sitting on one of the tables. You should deliver it
yourself. Oh, and please don’t slip.”

Kennedy mumbled, for a second looking at her the same way
Noah did. He disappeared, stepping around what remained of bored
bystanders. Noah heard his father yell for everyone to leave the
restaurant, ignoring questions for plates and bills.

Mary-Agnes stood muttering to herself in the corner, eyes wide
in shock. He realized he mirrored her, although silent, frozen and
shaking, unsure what words had spilled from his mouth. Looking at
the horror across his mother’s face, he closed his dropped jaw. They
tasted like profanity.

“Noah? I need you to call 911 –
or whatever it is you guys have
here. A housecall doctor or an ambulance.” She said carefully,
squinting to examine Sarah’s forearms, guiding her wrists to each
side beneath the stream. Sarah had fallen silent, releasing occasional
whimpers.

“Nana did,” Mary
-Agnes yelled suddenly, her chubby face too
wet to tell where tears, droll, and snot began. She was a patchycheeked mess. He couldn’t even look at her, the anger clenching
against the compassion he would normally shower on his mother. “I
called, babies, Nana called.”

“Who did you call, Mama?” Sarah whispered, her eyes
glowering beneath tears.

 

“Mr. Jacob. I call Mr. Jacob and he say, ‘It’s okay, I come to
Yazzie’s,’” she slighted, her words slamming together.

Aly looked doubtful, her brow knitted as she looked to Noah for
reassurance that it wasn’t a drunk fit. He nodded, replaying her
distinct recall of the volunteer paramedic in his head. His mother
was like a child when she was drunk – too much coincidence made a
lie unlikely and accurate details were short-term memory.

“Alright –
I’d rather have a professional look at it, but I think we
can do a temporary bandage,” Aly announced, catching Noah’s gaze.
“Give me a hand? Grab the first aid?”

As he retrieved the box from the opposite counter, Aly dragged
the chopping stool into the light. By the elbows, Aly eased Sarah
down. Noah pulled another to her side, sitting. Lee returned through
the doors, Mary-Agnes
at his
back as they
stumbled around
Kennedy, streaking the remaining sauce with their feet.

“Listen here. This can’t happen. You can’t be your running
mouths or nothing,” Lee demanded, his droopy eyes wide with rage.
“This was real dumb.”

“This,” Noah yelled, “is your fault.”

“You’d better watch your ungrateful mouth,” he sneered. His
gaze suddenly fixated on Aly, unable to look at the wounds she
tended.

“You are a horrible father!” Noah shouted. He closed in on Lee,
chest inflated, neck arched, emphasizing his height– he felt like his
brother, but it suited the anger, every year of it. Voice low, he
warned “You need to leave, right now.”

His only daughter– and he’s pissed that she was ‘stupid enough’
to get hurt.

Lee cleared his throat, staring at Alyson. Backing down for the
first time in Noah’s life, Lee grumbled, “We’ll address this later. As
a family.”

“What family?” Noah muttered, waving him good riddance, too
confused to hold the anger or mull over the small victory. He sat,
accepting Sarah’s hands from Aly so she could fish for aloe.

“It wasn’t nobody’s fault,” Mary
-Agnes mumbled incessantly.
“We all have our accidents. Little baby ones. I didn’t do nothing
wrong. I just… step outside. You understand me. It’s okay. It’s
okay.”

“Bury the sins elsewhere, okay?” he snapped, pointing for his
mother to leave. Ignoring her crumbling face, he turned back to his
sister, muttering, “Justice wouldn’t justify.”

The doors smacked together, swinging
as she wobbled out
weeping, words carelessly slurring from her lips. When the wails
were out of ear-range, Sarah turned to Noah, offering her swollen
hands.

“You can’t make excuses when you hurt people. It’s not
supposed to be that easy,” Sarah whispered, her voice wavering with
the onslaught of tears.

She sounds so young.

“It’s not fair,” he agreed, clamping down on his anger. Gently
turning her hand in his, he promised, “I know it hurts like hell, but
you’re going to be okay. I’ll bet it looks worse than it is.”

“If we weren’t the only damn eat
-out place in this God-forsaken
Podunk town it would have gone under,” she mumbled. “We’d be
starving or in social services or something. You know in cities when
this happens, that’s where you go? A foster home until your grown,
then the government pays for you to go to college because your
parents can’t.”

“I don’t think it’s quite so glamorous, Sar,” Noah sighed,
slathering another lather of aloe as her burn heated the last. “Don’t
believe everything you read on the internet.”

“I’m so tired.” Her voice ended in a hiss as the skin made
contact with Noah’s best makeshift attempt at wet gauze. She
swallowed audibly, shifting her gaze to Aly. “How’d you know what
to do?”

Noah glanced towards her, his curiosity growing. “That was kind
of amazing. You were the only one who didn’t freak out.”
“Most burn accidents happen in the kitchen,” Aly replied.

 

Sarah waited, exchanging a glance with Noah as if it could
clarify. Finally, she prompted, “And?”

 

“My mother was a chef and a klutz.” Aly forced a smile. “It’s
just something I had to know.”
~
“Aly, I am so sorry. I can’t believe that just happened,” Noah
said earnestly, rubbing his neck.

“It’s not a big deal. I mean it is, but not with me. Well, not that I
don’t…” she sighed. “I’m very sorry you had to deal with that, but I
want you to know you don’t have to worry about it being a problem
with me.”

He shook his head. “Seriously, tha
nk you. I think you helped
everybody
calm
down,
especially
Sarah and
Kennedy. Getting
everyone to focus like that…”

“I’m only good with people when they’re acting weirder than
me,” she mused. “Not a big deal, at all, like I said.”

 

“That’s everyone in Ashland. I think you’re all set.” He laughed.
“Scared off yet?”

 

“Hardly.” Staring at her hands, she added, “I’m sorry you have
to deal with that. It’s not right.”

He shrugged, jogging ahead of her to grab the door. “Don’t be.
It’s not forever. When I graduate, I’ll be able to get my sister and I
out of here. I can’t even think about that part yet though.”

“I know what you mean. I don’t have to live with my dad if I’m
not a minor. At the end of this school year, I’m eighteen. Then I’ll
figure things out.”

So what happens when the year ends?

 

He nodded, silent for a moment.