The Six Rules of Maybe (29 page)

“I don’t need money,” I said. “I’ll eat something here. Actually, I’m not feeling too well. I think I’m sick.”

Mom put a distracted hand up to my forehead. “You feel fine,” she said. “It’s the heat. Take some vitamins. Go to bed early.”

“I might be
really
sick. I might need you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “You?” She laughed. “You’re fine.” She was right. I wasn’t the sort who needed things. Even when I was sick, I felt a pride about getting my own ginger ale and Kleenex.

“Hot date, huh,” Hayden said to Mom. He caught my eye, tightened his jaw in fellow Dean hatred. He had no idea. I noticed that the ring box was missing from the counter where it had sat for weeks. It was in her purse, I guessed. Her fingers had probably touched it as she had rummaged inside. By the end of this night, she’d be wearing that ring.

“Dean and I are having dinner,” Mom said. I could smell her perfume. Her hair looked stiff from hair spray and was high off her neck like Juliet’s. She wore a slinky black sleeveless blouse. It wasn’t the kind of blouse you wanted your mother to wear. It was a blouse with ideas.

“When you recover from your sudden illness, you and Hayden can order a pizza,” Juliet said. Of course—you made plans for other people only when you wanted them busy and out of your way.

“Yeah, come on, sister-in-law. We can watch some stupid television. Distract ourselves from the fact that it’s a hundred degrees out.” Hayden tipped the last of the beer into his throat.

“Mom’s got a huge collection of old videos now,” Juliet said.

It was the second time she had used the word
huge
. If there was a time to believe in the subconscious, maybe this was it.
Huge
described what she was about to do. Enormous, disastrous, monumental. Buddy
Wilkes must have changed his mind about Elizabeth Everly. Juliet and his history together, whatever it had been, and whatever it still was—I guess it was just too powerful to let go of.

Mom was right—sometimes the bad guys did win. Sometimes, even if you tried your whole life to keep things going in their best direction, to hold things in their truest places by your sheer will, rightness could slide through your fingers so fast, you could feel the actual
strength
of badness. You could stand there in your own kitchen one summer night and find that all of your control had suddenly run out, the way a car with a broken gauge suddenly runs out of gas in the middle of some dark nowhere.

Hayden and I were alone for the night, then. It was hard not to be aware, aware, aware of this. The heat made sweat gather at the base of my neck, behind my legs. I worked on the Clive Weaver project, made my nightly, unanswered call to Nicole, but I felt restless. I looked for Kevin Frink’s Volkswagen, which was not out by the curb or anywhere on the street, as far as I could tell. My window had been repaired from Jeffrey and Jacob’s rocket, but with all the windows in the house open, I could know if he was driving up. It seemed important to hear Kevin Frink coming.

“Scarlet!” Hayden called up the stairs. “Come on, let’s get out of here. It’s too hot to stay inside.”

I was no different, maybe, from my mother or sister, who had walked right into something destructive to themselves or others. I didn’t do the responsible thing and mentally argue the pros and cons of going with him on that night in particular. I knew where my sister was, that she was taking something that wasn’t hers, or giving away something of hers that she couldn’t or shouldn’t give away twice.

“One sec!” I called back to him. I actually hurried. So fast that I
caught the toe of my sandal on the carpet and nearly lunged forward. The edge of the bed caught me; I did not catch myself. I rushed on a swipe of lipstick. Mascara. A clean-smelling perfume I had snitched from Juliet’s drawer a long time ago, when she was still living here.

“You look great,” he said when he saw me. Both he and Zeus looked up at me from the bottom of the stairs. I flushed. “You’re going out with a piece of crap.” He pointed to himself, in his ragged shorts and T-shirt.

“No worries,” I said. I thought he looked great too. He was one of those guys who looked even better the messier he got. After he mowed the lawn and he was unshaven and his hair was damp with sweat … You didn’t mind the smell of outside and motor oil and grass that he brought back in. You wanted it.

“I’m not even in the mood for pizza,” he said.

“Neither am I,” I said, although I didn’t care what we had. I wasn’t hungry. Maybe it was the heat, but more likely it was the moment, which filled every bit of me, even my stomach. My body was humming oddly, more awake than awake, conscious of every one of his movements. He put down the back of his truck for Zeus to get in, and Zeus leaped up.

“Careful. Hot,” he said to me of the vinyl truck seat, and he was right. I could feel the sear of heat through my dress on my thighs and back.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Here.” He tossed me a towel, and then leaned over to hold it against the seat so that I could set my back against it. His face was right near mine. I could see the places where the stubble grew from his cheeks. “That’ll help,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“What do you want to eat? Burgers? Fish?”

“Anything is fine.”

“There’s that great burger place by the docks.”

“Pirate’s Plunder,” I said.

“Annoying treasure boxes on the napkins?”

I nodded. “Sounds great.”

We rode with the windows down. I felt uneasy, but it was stupid because feeling easy with him was one of the things I liked best. No one else was feeling guilty tonight. He turned on the radio, some cowboy song that he knew the words to, and he sang loudly, a show for me. He kept looking at me sideways, to make sure I was appreciating the fineness of his terrible voice.

“So, why do you think dogs can’t see themselves in a mirror?” His voice was raised over the wind and the radio.

“Or feel music,” I said.

“Right. That, too.”

“The eternal questions.”

“And maybe they
can
talk, but they just choose not to.” He was grinning.

“Messing with us.”

“They talk to each other behind our backs,” he said.

“So that’s what that noise was.”

“I crack jokes to him all the time, but … no answer.”

“Maybe it’s the jokes,” I said.

He laughed. “Do you know this is our second meaningful conversation about dogs talking?”

He remembered. Of course I did, but now I knew that he did too.

We got our food, wrapped in foil, sat out on that same bench in front of the Hotel Delgado, which overlooked the marina. The water off the straits cooled the air, and finally you could take a breath that
went all the way through you. The metal rings on the tops of the sailboats clanged against their masts, and you could hear the flap of the flag on the hotel and, on the boats—a couple of guys joking, who later appeared and called out Zeus’s name as if they were old friends. Zeus went over for his own visit and the guys waved to Hayden and then disappeared again. It reminded me that Hayden had his own life outside of us, and this thought took me by surprise even though it shouldn’t have. He had a life and experiences and a past and his own private thoughts and it could be a scary realization, that one. It meant a person had options. It meant they had chances, maybe, to leave.

“Larry and Gavin,” he said. He leaned over and took a man bite out of that burger. Zeus was back again and sitting politely for food, his
Please notice, please notice
look on his face, sitting as straight as the second-grader who wants so badly to be excused for recess first.

“Your friends,” I said.

“Not exactly. I haven’t seen my actual friends in a couple of months. These guys sailed in from the Keys. I would bet money that Gavin’s running from the law or something. What do you think? Drugs?”

“White collar crime. He used to be a banker,” I said. God, those fries were so good.

“You gotta wonder about guys like that who just disappear.” He froze his burger halfway to his mouth. “Christ, I’m sorry. I can be such an idiot.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. If he thought he was offending me, he wasn’t. Then I realized. “Oh, you mean our
father
?”

“You sound surprised. Okay, great. You didn’t even care. Now I should apologize for apologizing.” He took another bite, chewed with appreciation.

“It’s just, we don’t even really think about that. Him. It was a long time ago. I don’t have a single memory of him. Not one. So, nonissue, you know? I don’t exactly cry over it every morning.”

“I thought maybe it bothered you like it does Juliet. Zeus, quit it. Back off. Those are not your business.” He leaned down, lifted our Cokes from the ground where Zeus had been sniffing their lids.

“It doesn’t bother Juliet,” I said.

He looked at me, perplexed. “I think it does. I
know
it does. A lot.”

Now we stared at each other. We each had a person in our mind that the other didn’t know, not at all. I didn’t know how I could make him see.

“Juliet is invincible,” I said.

He laughed.

“Juliet gets what she wants.”

He shook his head, the sort of shake that means you think someone is sadly mistaken. He didn’t understand. Wouldn’t. Maybe even refused to. And if he didn’t understand, if he didn’t
see
, how could he be warned? How could he ever protect himself? He didn’t see what was coming, what was happening right then at that very moment. Juliet, with her fingers in the belt loops of Buddy’s pants, pulling them down past his thin hips. I could see into Hayden’s future as he sat there on the bench with his soft eyes, and it made me feel like my heart was being crushed.

He put his burger down in his lap. Set down that food and looked at me hard. “Scarlet,” Hayden said softly. If he was calling me, I wanted to go, wherever he was leading. “If you lose someone like that …”

Inside me, there were a pair of doors, and right then something was shoving up against them. Shoving and pressing, but I could not open them, even if he was asking me to. There was too much behind
those doors. Too much, enough to spill out and over me; I could feel the press against my chest at only the thought.

“That’s not the way it is,” I said. But my voice was hoarse. Something was squeezing me inside.

There was the scrunch of a paper bag and then the feel of his body as he scooted next to me. He put his arm around my shoulders, and I laid my head against his chest, the soft T-shirt beneath my cheek. I was supposed to be saving him, helping him, leading him to a safer place. But instead, it was me who was feeling the shelter of someone stronger.

“It’s okay, Scarlet. Huh? A lot of life is just about surviving what happens.”

I lifted my cheek from his chest. I was so close to him. He was smiling, and then he wasn’t. His eyes had a seriousness I had never seen before. I could smell the tang of his sweat. I looked into his face and he looked into mine. He swallowed hard.

I leaned in and I kissed him then. His lips were soft and sudden and somehow familiar. I breathed in his smell. I could have wanted more, much, much more; I believed and held on to that belief, I knew what I desired and why; I wanted to go, go—but he pulled away, there was a firm shove on my shoulder.

“Scarlet, stop,” he said. “No.” He looked sad. He looked so sad that shame and embarrassment instantly filled me. I wanted to run. I wanted to run so far away from there.

“Don’t say anything,” I said. “Just don’t.”

“I’m sorry, Scarlet.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m really sorry.” I wouldn’t look at him. “Listen,” he said. “Hey listen.”

“Oh my God. I can’t believe I did that. Oh God. Oh God, I’m
so sorry.”

“Scarlet, it’s okay, okay? We’re good friends. We’re good friends and that’s a great thing.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I was too ashamed to look at him, to move, to walk back and sit beside him in that car again. Ashamed, but if he had changed his mind then and kissed me back I’d have forgotten that. He was nervous, rubbing his palms on the bare skin of his legs, running his hands through his hair. We didn’t move or look at each other. We just sat on that bench for a long while, not saying anything. We sat there longer than I even realized, because the sun and sky turned orange-yellow and the night shadow started to fall, and it got cool enough for me to shiver.

“Let’s just go back,” Hayden said finally.

Those words were so simple, you could almost forget how impossible going back truly was.

Chapter Twenty-three

W
hen we came home, the house was still empty, emptier than empty, the way it is when you can hear a ticking clock and the rooms almost echo. Zeus made two victorious laps around the living room, but the furniture seemed to be sitting ever so still, and you could hear the sound of crickets coming through the back screen door we’d left open.

Every movement of mine felt full of shame and humiliation and wrongness. I didn’t speak, because I knew my own voice would be bad and horrible. We, Hayden and me, did not settle onto the couch in the living room to watch the Martinellis’ old movies that had been popular in the 1970s, as he had suggested before. Instead, Hayden said he was going to bed. He walked down the stairs to the basement, but Zeus stayed behind, by my side. He knew when a person needed
comfort. He would never know what a fool I was. “Velvet head,” I whispered to him.

Finally, I went upstairs. My room felt like a display of my wrong love, still blazing, blazing right then at that moment—the paper cranes, that photo, all the hours I had spent there with feelings that were mine and mine alone. I could feel Hayden’s presence downstairs, awake and waiting for Juliet. I heard him walking around, heard him come upstairs again, heard the worry in his footsteps.

In my mind I kept seeing Buddy Wilkes, the times he had been at our house. The way he had showed his right to be there—by stretching his legs on the couch, his arm on Juliet’s leg as if to hold her down. And the other times I saw him too. His skin glowing green from the TV left on without any sound, his bare ass leaping into jeans as Mom’s car came down the street. Juliet hooking her bra with one arm behind her back. Nothing tender or romantic or permanent, just zippers and hooks and body parts with other body parts and Juliet seeming distant and preoccupied in the morning. Buddy Wilkes’s cigarette butt in our garden the next day.