The Favor (12 page)

Janelle laughed, then again, a little louder. She leaned to hug her grandmother. “Oh, Nan. I love you.”

She smiled. “I love you, too, honey. And don’t you worry about Benny. He’s just having growing pains.”

“I know.” Janelle sighed and tugged the bottom of the afghan over her to warm her feet, tucked on the couch next to Nan’s. “It’ll all work out.”

“Ask Andrew to help him, if he’s struggling,” Nan advised again.

“Andrew. From next door? Andy Tierney?” Nan nodded. Janelle laughed again, but saw Nan was serious. “But he’s...”

“Oh, some things about him aren’t right, that’s for sure. The brain injury, you know.” Nan leaned forward a little bit, to whisper, though there was nobody there to hear them. “And of course, he was always a little strange, anyway.”

Of the three Tierney boys, Andy wasn’t the one Janelle would’ve said was strange. Mikey had been a little weird. Gabe, just surly. Andy’d been goofy...well, mostly, at least until the end, when he’d changed. He had been smart in school, though. “How do you know he’s good at math?”

“He plays those Sudoku puzzles.” Nan waved an airy hand. “Also, he used to help me figure my coupons.”

“Coupons...?”

“You know. All those coupon deals, buy three get one free, that sort of thing. Back when I was into that.” Nan shrugged. “It got to be too much, but there were weeks I saved so much money, Janelle, I can’t even tell you.”

“And Andy helped you with that.”

“You ask him,” Nan said. “He’d be happy to help Benny with his homework, I’m sure of it.”

FOURTEEN

ANDY MIGHT’VE BEEN happy to be asked, but his brother was definitely not. By the way Gabe glared, you’d have thought she was asking him to donate an organ, not spend a few hours a week tutoring. Janelle glared back.

“I’ll pay him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“She’ll pay me,” Andy repeated, delighted as Bennett would’ve been about being offered a new video game or a trip to an amusement park. “Forty dollars a week, Gabe!”

“If that’s not enough, if you think he deserves more...” Janelle shrugged. “I checked into the going rate for tutors through the school, and they get less than that.”

“Oh, let ’im do it. What do you care about it, anyway?” This came from Mr. Tierney in his recliner, feet up, in the corner. “Always trying to act like you run the place.”

Gabe didn’t even glance at his father, but his mouth thinned. He crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t look at Andy, either. He stared unrelentingly and unblinkingly at Janelle. “He doesn’t need the money.”

“Everyone needs money.” Mr. Tierney snorted into a handkerchief and folded it in half, then did it again. “You’d think so, too, if you didn’t have enough.”

“Who says I ever have enough?” Again, Gabe didn’t look at his dad when he spoke, but at least he stopped staring at Janelle. “Between all that beer you’re always drinking and Andy’s lottery ticket habit—”

Andy did a brief, shuffling dance. “I’m going to win the lottery! I am! It’s just a matter of finding the right numbers, the right numbers.”

“You know why they call it the lottery, right? Because it’s by chance. You can’t predict it.” Gabe shook his head and kept his gaze away from her.

Janelle understood why. He’d been in her face and belligerent since she walked through the door, but now he was embarrassed. Ashamed, even. She might’ve reached out a comforting hand or even tried to give him a sympathetic look, but Gabe was having none of it. She shifted half a step forward and he took two back.

“I’m going to win,” Andy repeated.

Awkward silence, broken only by the television’s ranting and Mr. Tierney’s honking nose. Janelle tried again, this time focusing on Andy. Giving Gabe space.

“Andy, if Gabe thinks you shouldn’t help Bennett, maybe it’s best if I get someone else.” She kept her eyes on Andy’s, ignoring the white streak in his hair and the way he shifted from foot to foot. “It’s really okay.”

“No, it’s not!” His hands came together, fluttering, until the fingers linked and clutched. He made an obvious effort at holding them still. “I can do it, Gabe. I really can.”

“Too much stress upsets you, Andy. C’mon. You know that. If you agree to do this, you can’t just give up on the kid after a session or two. You’d have to stick with it until the end of the school year, or until he doesn’t need you anymore. And you couldn’t blow it off because you wanted to stay home and play your games.”

Gabe sounded exasperated, and now Janelle understood. It must be exhausting dealing with his brother. Just because Andy could feed and dress himself, could get around—could tutor math, for God’s sake—that didn’t mean he wasn’t disabled, Janelle realized. She was learning for herself how hard it could be to care for people who couldn’t quite manage on their own but insisted on it, anyway. It was like having a child you’d never given birth to.

“I won’t. I won’t.” Andy gave Janelle a pleading glance.

Oh, those eyes. Those blue Tierney eyes. They’d always been able to break her down, and this time was no different. “Honey, if Gabe says no...”

The endearment slipped out, made things worse, but Janelle lifted her chin and gave Gabe a head-on stare, daring him to say anything. He didn’t, of course. How could he?

“Listen, you little shit. Let him do the damn tutoring, let the kid earn a few bucks. It’s nothing off you. And you—” Mr. Tierney pointed a bent finger at Andy “—better buck up and stop that whining. Get your act together. You do this thing, like Gabe said, I don’t wanna hear you whining about how you gotta go help that kid instead of farting around on that computer.”

“I won’t, Dad. I promise.”

Gabe sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes before scrubbing it back through his dark hair. The motion showed off the silver strands, and when he pulled his hand away, strain showed in his eyes, so much like Andy’s in color but so different in the way they looked at her.

“Fine,” he said. “Whatever, what the hell do I care?”

Janelle wondered that, herself.

“But you go there.” Gabe stabbed a finger in the direction of Nan’s house. “That kid doesn’t come over here. You hear me, Andy? You go there, or meet him at the library, or whatever. He doesn’t come here. Ever.”

Andy nodded. “I got it. Jesus.”

“Watch the mouth,” Mr. Tierney said.

“Sorry, Dad.”

Without another word or even a glance at her, Gabe stalked out of the room. The silence he left behind was louder than the TV. Mr. Tierney didn’t seem to notice, and Andy definitely didn’t.

“When do you want me to start?”

Janelle smiled at his enthusiasm and once again held herself back from ruffling his hair. “Tomorrow, why don’t you come over around four-thirty? Bennett can show you what he’s doing, and we can figure out how often you’ll need to help him.”

“I can come every day.”

“I’m sure you won’t need to do that, Andy.” At the flash of disappointment on his face, Janelle added, “But I know my grandma loves having you over. So don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Mr. Tierney’s thick and rattling laugh turned both their heads. It changed into a cough, his shoulders shaking and his face turning the color of his red flannel shirt. He covered his mouth with the hanky, then spit into it. Then again.

“What’s so funny?” Andy asked.

Mr. Tierney had blue eyes just like his sons, but his were rheumy, the whites yellowed. He showed his teeth, straight and too white to be natural. “You. You can’t help being a stranger, can ya? Cuz that’s what you are. Strange. Always have been, huh?”

Andy didn’t look offended, but Janelle was on his behalf. “You come over whenever you want, Andy.”

She reached to squeeze his arm, meaning to be reassuring, but she must’ve surprised him, because at the touch, Andy jerked his arm from her grasp. He whirled, eyes wide. It passed in a moment, nothing more than an automatic reaction, but Janelle stood with her mouth open and her arm outstretched. She pulled it back in a second, embarrassed and not sure if it was for him or for himself. Andy blinked, then grinned.

“Sorry,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I’m a little crazy sometimes.”

The grin had broken her heart, just a little. His statement finished the job. Janelle said a strangled goodbye around the lump in her throat, and let herself out the front door.

Andy stalks the halls without looking from side to side, gaze straight forward but seeing nothing. If you’re in his way, he elbows past. If you step in front of him to catch his attention, you end up shoved against a locker.

“Hey!” Janelle says, pissed off. “Andy, what the hell?”

He turns, slow, slow, his face pale, blue eyes somehow dark. He looks at her without emotion. He says nothing.

Whatever Janelle meant to ask him is lost in the depths of that gaze, and she watches him walk away, feeling as if a goose is dancing on her grave.

Outside, the frigid air turned to smoke in front of her face, and the tears became glass on her cheeks. She paused on the bottom step of the Tierneys’ front porch for a moment to swipe her eyes clear. The path was slippery enough without trying to navigate it with blurred vision. Snow crunched under her boots on the sidewalk as she headed for Nan’s back door.

“I’m just looking out for him, you know. For both of them.” Gabe’s voice stopped her with her hand on the door handle.

Janelle turned. Gabe leaned against the back porch railing of his house, gazing over the shrubs that still looked new to her. The cherry tip of his cigarette winked at her. She’d given up smoking when she found out she was pregnant with Bennett, and had never taken it up again, but the old craving rose in her with a sudden fierceness.

“I understand.”

“No,” Gabe said. She couldn’t see much of his face, but that hint of sardonic laughter was familiar enough. “You don’t.”

She wasn’t going to stand out here in the cold and argue with him, but she didn’t want him to have the last word, either. “So, try me. Tell me what your problem is, Gabe. Because you’re right. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how it feels to be responsible for someone’s welfare and well-being, what a burden it can be.”

She drew a shuddering breath. “I sure as hell can’t possibly know how it is to feel like everyone relies on you. I certainly don’t have any clue what it’s like to have guilt weigh you down so much that you’ll do just about anything to make yourself feel better. Oh...wait. Yes. I can.”

He laughed again. The cigarette went dark. He became nothing but shadow.

“Big difference,” he said. “You had a choice.”

Then he went inside his house and left her standing in the freezing dark.

FIFTEEN

ANY MOTHER OF a twelve-year-old boy had to also be an archaeologist. Sorting through the detritus in Bennett’s backpack, layer by layer, Janelle could’ve written a dissertation on the social life of a sixth-grader. Along with the half-filled water bottles, candy wrappers and worn-to-the-nub pencils, there were also the crumpled, forlorn and ubiquitous pieces of paper.

She was looking for a permission slip for the field trip, which absolutely had to be turned in tomorrow or Bennett would have to stay behind in the principal’s office. She found the needed form and set it aside. She also found a lot of other things.

With Nan napping, Janelle didn’t want to holler for him, but neither did she want to haul everything up to his room. She settled for calling him from the bottom of the stairs. When he appeared at the top, she held aloft a rainbow of papers. “Come here.”

Reluctantly, he did.

“What’s all this stuff?”

Bennett shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff. Junk.”

Janelle pulled out an insurance form, one for reduced lunches, another with instructions on how to deposit lunch money in his account so he didn’t have to carry cash every day. She’d been killing herself trying to make sure she had small bills for him to take, and now she found out she could’ve just written one big check to last a few months.

“Some of this stuff isn’t junk.” She plucked at a creased paper covered in what looked like melted chocolate from a granola bar or something. “Some of this is important. From now on, please make sure you take everything out of your backpack when you get home and sort through it.”

“Okay.” Bennett had a foot on the stairs, easing upward, but he wasn’t going to get away so easy.

“Hold it.” Janelle shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a test emblazoned with a scarlet F. It had a space for her to sign. “Were you supposed to show this to me?”

His shrug was maddening.

“This says I was supposed to sign it and you had to return it. Obviously, you didn’t.” She dug farther and pulled out a note from his teacher expressing concern about Bennett’s performance in math, and requesting a meeting. Janelle held it up, hating the way his eyes shifted from hers, how his feet shuffled. Connor had looked at her that way once or twice, and that had been enough.

“You can sign it now.”

She’d known he was struggling with math, but not the extent. Andy had come over only a couple times to work with him. “Is Andy helping you at all?”

Another shrug.

Janelle sighed. “Is your homework finished?”

“Yeah.”

“Math? Everything?”

Bennett paused. “Yeah.”

That didn’t convince her. She dug again and pulled out a reading log with spaces for books read, how many minutes spent and if a comprehension test had been completed. Half the log was blank but for red pen marks. Janelle’s stomach tightened, anger making her grit her teeth. Math was one thing, but Bennett had never struggled with English or Social Studies.

“What is going on with you? You’re supposed to be reading, and you’re not? What?”

“I already read the books she has on her list. She won’t let me skip them.”

“So finish the tests on them, get the credit if you already read them. You have to do the work, Bennett.” Janelle pinched the bridge of her nose against a headache. “No games.”

“What? No!”

She nodded. “No games or anything else until you’re caught up on your work. And you bring it to me. I’ll check it.”