“Where am I supposed to go?” she asks.
“I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay in my bed.” I mean it. She can’t, because Carrie is coming back. I’m not sure what day, but I sure as hell don’t want her to find Jack in my bed when she does get here. “Where are your clothes?”
She shrugs.
“Did you have clothes on when you got here?”
She sits up, clutching my sheets against her chest. “I don’t remember,” she admits.
“You have to stop doing that,” I warn.
“I know.” She flops back down against my pillow.
I ruck one of my shirts up in my hands and slip it over her head. She sticks her arms in the holes and tries to close her eyes again. “Out!” I say. I pull her legs over the side of the bed and tug on the shirt she’s wearing until she sits up. “Now.”
She stands up, tilting on her wobbly legs like a newborn colt. She walks toward the door.
“Hey, Jack,” I say softly. She looks back at me, her eyes mere slits.
“What?” she asks.
“You have to stop doing this to yourself, okay?”
“I know.” She doesn’t say more than that. She just walks out of my room in my shirt and her panties. I watch her, because I don’t want her to leave looking like this. But I have a feeling I know where she’s going. Just like I thought, she goes to Malone’s room and pushes his door open. I hear her say something to him, and then the bedsprings squeak.
I follow her and peek inside the room. She’s under the covers and his arms are wrapped around her. I don’t know why she didn’t just start out in his room. I very softly close his door. He’ll take care of her.
I have to get ready for Carrie. What if she has a boyfriend? What if she doesn’t remember me? What if she’s no longer the person I remember? Why didn’t she send a card or condolences when my parents died? Why didn’t she come back? Ever?
I have a lot to do to get ready. So I start by changing my sheets. Then I have to get the AC serviced at Carrie’s house. I still have a picture on my dresser that we took in a photo booth three years ago. It’s a strip of four photos. Carrie has her tongue out in one, her lips pursed in a kiss in another, and one with her lips pressed to my cheek. The last one is her looking into the camera lens while I stare at her.
I wonder if she’s changed. And how much.
Carrie
I cover the mouthpiece and try not to breathe heavy enough for them to hear me. “I already made arrangements to have the beach house opened and everything. Just let me have her this summer,” my mom pleads. Her voice breaks over the line.
Please don’t let her have me this summer, I think to myself. I don’t want to go.
I haven’t seen my mother in four years. Not since she decided to leave our family. She met a man she loved more than us, and one day she just left. It was sort of like she never existed, once my dad got over his temper-fit. He threw all of her things, or at least what she left in the house, onto the fire pit in the backyard and sang “Living on a Prayer” at the top of his lungs until nothing was left but a hangover and ashes.
Dad groans. “Where are you taking her?”
Her voice is quiet. “I thought we’d go to the beach.”
Dad heaves a sigh. “Patty,” he says on a breath. I can imagine him squeezing the spot between his eyes at the top of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
“We had a lot of good memories at the beach,” she says, her voice soft and so familiar that it makes my gut ache. But she’s not my mother anymore. She’s that woman who left. She’s that woman who never came back. “You could go with us, if you’re worried,” she says. Her voice sounds…hopeful? I don’t even know how to describe it.
“You know I can’t do that,” he says.
“Would your girlfriend mind?” she asks.
Dad doesn’t have a girlfriend. He never did after she left, but I get the feeling he told her differently. “She wouldn’t approve,” he says.
“Oh,” Mom breathes. “But I could still get Carrie? For the summer? This is the last time I’ll ask. I won’t be able to darken your doorstep after this.”
What does that mean?
“You’ll never have to deal with me again. Just let me have this last season. Please?” Her voice breaks.
“Patty,” Dad breathes. And I hear his bedsprings squeak through the phone. I can almost imagine his knees going weak, because that’s what she does to him.
“John, please?” she begs.
“Okay,” he says on a heavy exhalation. “Fine. You can have her for the summer. If…things weren’t…like they are…I would never allow it. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “I know that. And I understand why.”
“I have one condition,” he says.
“What is it?”
“You have to tell her about your diagnosis before you two leave. And you have to promise to send her home the minute you’re too sick to take care of her.”
What? What’s he talking about?
“I’ll tell her.”
“We’ll tell her together.”
I step into Dad’s bedroom doorway, the phone still clutched to my ear. He’s sitting exactly like I imagined, with his index finger and thumb pressed against the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. “You’re going to tell me what?” I ask.