“Never mind,” she said. “You can teach me.”
I sat back down. “Pass the cards,” I said gruffly.
I could tell Belly felt bad because she said, “You shouldn’t sit too close. You’ll get sick too.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I never get sick.”
“Neither does Conrad,” she said, and I rolled my eyes. Belly worshipped Conrad, just like Steven did.
“Conrad does get sick, he gets sick all the time in the winter. He has a weak immune system,” I told her, although I didn’t know if that was true or not.
She shrugged, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. She handed me the cards. “Just deal,” she said.
We played poker all afternoon and it was actually pretty fun. I got sick two days later, but I didn’t mind that much. Belly stayed home with me and we played more poker and we watched The Simpsons a lot.
Chapter thirty-five
jeremiah
As soon as I heard Belly come up the stairs, I met her in the hallway. “So? What’s going on?”
“My mom’s calling your dad,” she said gravely.
“She is? Wow.”
“Yeah, so, don’t, like, give up already. It’s not over yet.” Then she gave me one of her wrinkly-nose smiles.
I clapped her on the back and practically sprinted down the stairs. There was Laurel, wiping down the counter. When she saw me, she said, “Your father’s coming over. For breakfast.”
“Here?”
Laurel nodded. “Will you go to the store and get some things he likes? Eggs and bacon. Muffin mix. And those big grapefruit.”
Laurel hated to cook. She had definitely never made my dad a lumberjack breakfast. “Why are you cooking for him?” I asked.
“Because he’s a child and children are cranky when they haven’t been fed,” she said in that dry way of hers.
Out of nowhere, I said, “Sometimes I hate him.”
She hesitated before saying, “Sometimes I do too.”
And then I waited for her to say, “But he is your father,” the way my mom used to. Laurel didn’t, though. Laurel was no bullshit. She didn’t say things she didn’t mean.
All she said was, “Now get going.”
I got up and gave her a bear hug, and she was stiff in my arms. I lifted her up in the air a little, the way I used to do with my mom. “Thanks, Laure,” I said. “Really, thanks.”
“I’d do anything for you boys. You know that.”
“How did you know to come?”
“Belly called me,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Drunk.”
Oh, man. “Laure—”
“Don’t you ‘Laure’ me. How could you let her drink? I count on you, Jeremiah. You know that.”
Now I felt awful too. The last thing I wanted was for Belly to get in trouble, and I really hated the thought of Laurel thinking badly of me. I’d always tried so hard to look out for Belly, unlike Conrad. If anyone had corrupted her, it was Conrad, not me. Even though I was the one who bought the tequila, not him.
I said, “I’m really sorry. It’s just that with my dad’s selling the house, and it being our last night, we got carried away. I swear, Laure, it’ll never happen again.”
She rolled her eyes. “‘It’ll never happen again’? Don’t make promises you can’t keep, hon.”
“It’ll never happen again on my watch,” I told her.
Pursing her lips, she said, “We’ll see.”
I was relieved when she gave me another grimace-smile. “Hurry up and get to the store, will you?”
“Aye aye, sir.” I wanted her to smile for real. I knew that if I kept trying, kept joking, she would. She was easy that way.
This time, she really did smile back at me.
Chapter thirty-six
My mother was right. The shower helped. I tilted my face toward the shower head and let the hot water wash over me and I felt much, much better.
After my shower, I came back downstairs a new woman. My mother was wearing lipstick, and she and Conrad were talking in low voices.
They stopped talking when they saw me standing in the doorway. “Much better,” my mother said.
“Where’s Jeremiah?” I asked.
“Jeremiah went back to the store. He forgot the grapefruit,” she said.
The timer went off and my mother took muffins out of the oven with a dish towel. She accidentally touched the muffin tin with her bare hand and she yelped and dropped the tin on the floor, muffin side down. “Damn!”
Conrad asked if she was okay before I could. “I’m fine,” she said, running cold water over her hand.
Then she picked the tin back up and set it on the counter, on top of the towel. I sat down on one of the counter stools and watched my mother empty the muffin tin into a basket. “Our little secret,” she said.
The muffins were supposed to cool a little while before you took them out of the tin, but I didn’t tell her that. A few were smushed but they mostly looked okay.
“Have a muffin,” she said.
I took one, and it was burning hot and falling apart, but it was good. I ate it quickly.
When I was done, my mother said, “You and Conrad take the recycling out.”
Without a word, Conrad picked up two of the heavier bags and left me the half-empty one. I followed him outside to the trashcans at the end of the driveway.
“Did you call her?” he asked me.
“I guess I did.” I waited for him to call me a baby for calling my mommy the second things got scary.
He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Thanks.”
I stared at him. “Sometimes you surprise me,” I said.
He didn’t look at me when he said, “And you hardly ever surprise me. You’re still the same.”
I glared at him. “Thanks a lot.” I dumped my garbage bag in the bin and shut the lid a little too hard.
“No, I mean . . .”
I waited for him to say something, and it seemed like he might have, but then Jeremiah’s car came down the street. We both watched Jeremiah park and then bound out of the car with a plastic grocery bag. He strode up to us, his eyes bright. “Hey,” he said to me, his bag swinging.
“Hey,” I said. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. It had all come back to me when I was in the shower. Making Jeremiah dance with me, running away from Conrad, and him picking me up and dropping me in the sand. How humiliating. How awful that they saw me behave that way.
Then Jeremiah gave my hand a squeeze, and when I looked up at him, he said “thank you” so sweetly it hurt.
The three of us walked back to the house. The Police were singing “Message in a Bottle” and the stereo was very loud. Right away my head started pounding and all I wanted was to go back to bed.
“Can we turn down that music?” I asked, rubbing my temples.
“Nope,” my mother said, taking the bag from Jeremiah. She pulled out a big grapefruit and tossed it to Conrad. “Squeeze,” she said, pointing at the juicer. The juicer was Mr. Fisher’s, and it was huge and complicated, one of those Jack LaLanne ones from the late night infomercials.
Conrad snorted. “For him? I’m not squeezing his grapefruit.”
“Yes, you will.” To me, my mother said, “Mr. Fisher’s coming to breakfast.”
I squealed. I ran over to her and wrapped my arms around her waist. “It’s just breakfast,” she warned me. “Don’t go getting your hopes up.”
But it was too late. I knew she’d change his mind. I knew it. And so did Jeremiah and Conrad. They believed in my mother and so did I—never more so than when Conrad started cutting the grapefruit in half. My mother nodded at him like a drill sergeant. Then she said, “Jere, you set the table, and Belly, you do the eggs.”
I started cracking eggs into a bowl, and my mother fried bacon in Susannah’s cast iron skillet. She left the bacon grease for me to fry the eggs in. I stirred the eggs around, and the smell of the eggs and the grease made me want to gag. I held my breath as I stirred, and my mother tried to hide a smile as she watched me. “Feeling okay, Belly?” she asked.
I nodded, my teeth clenched.
“Ever planning on drinking again?” she asked conversationally.
I shook my head as hard as I could. “Never, ever again.”
When Mr. Fisher arrived half an hour later, we were ready for him. He walked in and looked at the table in amazement. “Wow,” he said. “This looks great, Laure. Thank you.”
He gave her a meaningful look, the adult co-conspiratorial kind of look.
My mother smiled a Mona Lisa kind of smile. Mr. Fisher wasn’t gonna know what hit him. “Let’s sit,” she said.
We all sat down then. My mother sat next to Mr. Fisher and Jeremiah across from him. I sat next to Conrad. “Dig in,” my mother said.
I watched Mr. Fisher pile a mound of eggs on his plate, and then four strips of bacon. He loved bacon, and he really loved it the way my mother made it—incinerated, almost burned to a crisp. I passed on the bacon and eggs and just took a muffin.
My mother poured Mr. Fisher a tall glass of grapefruit juice. “Fresh squeezed, courtesy of your eldest,” she said. He took it, a little suspiciously. I couldn’t blame him. The only person who had ever squeezed juice for Mr. Fisher was Susannah.
But Mr. Fisher rebounded quickly. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and said, “Listen, thanks again for coming to help, Laurel. I really appreciate it.” He looked at us kids, smiling. “These guys weren’t too keen on listening to what I had to say. I’m glad to have a little backup.”
My mother smiled back at him just as pleasantly. “Oh, I’m not here to back you up, Adam. I’m here to back up Beck’s boys.”
His smile faded. He put down his fork. “Laure—”
“You can’t sell this house, Adam. You know that. It means too much to the kids. It would be a mistake.” My mother was calm, matter-of-fact.
Mr. Fisher looked at Conrad and Jeremiah and then back at my mother. “I’ve already made up my mind, Laurel. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here.”
Taking a breath, my mother said, “I’m not making you out to be anything. I’m just trying help you.”
Us kids sat absolutely still as we waited for Mr. Fisher to speak. He was struggling to stay calm, but his face was turning red. “I appreciate that. But I’ve made up my mind. The house is for sale. And frankly, Laurel, you don’t get a vote in this. I’m sorry. I know Suze always made you feel like this house was part yours, but it’s not.”
I almost gasped. My eyes darted back to my mother, and I saw that she, too, was turning red. “Oh, I know that,” she said. “This house is pure Beck. It’s always been Beck. This was her favorite place. That’s why the boys should have it.”
Mr. Fisher stood up and pushed out his chair. “I’m not going to argue about this with you, Laurel.”
“Adam, sit down,” my mother said.
“No, I don’t think I will.”
My mother’s eyes were almost glowing. “I said, sit down , Adam.” He gaped at her—we all did. Then she said, “Kids, get out.”
Conrad opened his mouth to argue but he thought better of it, especially when he saw the look on my mother’s face and his dad sit back down. As for me, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. We all hustled out of the kitchen and sat at the top of the stairs, straining to hear.
We didn’t have to wait long. Mr. Fisher said, “What the hell, Laurel? Did you really think you could railroad me into changing my mind?”
“Excuse me, but f**k you.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth and Conrad’s eyes were shining and he was shaking his head in admiration. Jeremiah, though, he looked like he might cry. I reached out and grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. When he tried to pull away, I held on tighter.
“This house meant everything to Beck. Can’t you get past your own grief and see what it means to the boys? They need this. They need this. I don’t want to believe that you’re this cruel, Adam.”
He didn’t answer her.
“This house is hers. It’s not yours. Don’t make me stop you, Adam. Because I will. I’ll do everything in my power to keep this house for Beck’s boys.”
Mr. Fisher said, “What will you do, Laure?” and he sounded so tired.
“I’ll do what I have to do.”
His voice was muffled when he said, “She’s everywhere here. She’s everywhere.”
He might have been crying. I almost felt sorry for him. I guess my mother did too, because her voice was nearly gentle when she said, “I know. But Adam? You were a sorry excuse for a husband. But she loved you. She really did. She took you back. I tried to talk her out of it, God knows I tried. But she wouldn’t listen, because when she sets her mind on someone, that’s it. And she set her mind on you, Adam. Earn that. Prove me wrong.”
He said something I couldn’t quite hear. And then my mother said, “You do this one last thing for her. Okay?”
I looked over at Conrad, and he said in a low voice, to no one in particular, “Laurel is amazing.”
I’d never heard anyone describe my mom that way, especially not Conrad. I’d never thought of her as “amazing.” But in that moment, she was. She truly was. I said, “Yeah, she is. So was Susannah.”
He looked at me for a minute and then he got up and went to his room without waiting to hear what else Mr. Fisher said. He didn’t need to. My mother had won. She had done it.