Falling Stars (2 page)

She opened the door, but reached out and pressed the doorbell, then called out, “Hello!”

It seemed odd… No matter how long I’d lived away from home, I still just walked in. But Julia’s family wasn’t like mine. Not at all. Back home, Dad would be puttering around the kitchen, ready to crack a joke or pass a beer to anyone who dropped by. Not retired Ambassador Thompson or his witch of a wife, Adelina. From what Julia had told me, she’d never really lived in this house, just visited during the holidays, because the whole Thompson clan moved here when her dad retired just a couple years ago—after Julia had already left home for college.

At Julia’s shout, a stampede of small feet came down the stairs: four little girls. Alexandra, the eldest of the four, was thirteen now. She had golden brown hair framing pretty green eyes and looked substantially older than she had just a year ago. She was going be a knockout, and I felt an instinctive protectiveness. There was a whole world of complete dicks out there; guys like me, when I was her age, who were nothing but trouble. I wanted to shield her from it.

Alexandra hugged Julia, but the twins headed straight for me, with Sarah leading the charge. “Crank!” she shouted, launching herself from the fourth step up straight at me. Luckily I caught her before she broke my neck, and next thing I knew both twins were hugging me and grabbing at my leather jacket. Weird, because I’d only met them twice. I guess I made a good impression.

Andrea, the youngest, stayed back. She was six now and already taller than her seven-year-old twin sisters. She looked like a tiny version of Carrie, the second eldest of the six sisters. Carrie was six-two and when she walked into a room curtains smoldered and windows blew open. To be honest, she intimidated the fuck out of me. Julia was beautiful. Incredibly so. But all of us paled beside Carrie, a graceful creature who seemed to come from another planet.

I followed Julia and Alexandra up the stairs with one twin on each hip. It was a good thing I’d been eating my Wheaties. Well, I hadn’t, actually, so when I got to the top of the stairs, I found myself wishing first, that I had a cigarette, second, that I’d never smoked a cigarette in my life, and third, that I knew where the restroom was so I could go vomit in peace. Instead, I found myself easing the twins to the floor and shaking hands with Richard Thompson.

He wore brown corduroy pants and a tweed jacket. Seriously. This guy was right out of the 1970s and looked kind of like Mister Rogers. Except for his cold eyes. Something about him just freaked me out. Even when he smiled and was friendly, which was pretty much always, it never really reached his eyes. He was strangely unlike his wife, who was caustic and mean to her daughters, but at least you knew where you stood.

“Crank,” he said, “you look well.” His hands were dry and his grip firm; he looked me dead in the eye as he said the words, one eyebrow slightly raised.

I felt off balance. Even I knew I looked like shit right now. Why the lie? I blinked my eyes and pictured Julia’s father strapped to a revolving circus target thingy in a clown suit while the twins threw water balloons filled with paint at him. That vision made me smile. A lot. I returned his handshake with enthusiasm. “Yeah, I’m doing great, Ambassador Thompson, how about you? Retirement’s suiting you?”

He nodded. “Quite. I’m writing my memoirs.”

“You must have a lot to write about, with all that travel, huh?”

“You have no idea,” he responded.

“This is my brother, Sean.”

Mr. Thompson stuck his hand out to shake. This was always a delicate moment with Sean. Shaking hands is one of those customs which makes little sense to him—we’d talked about it before. “I don’t understand why it’s ever necessary,” he always said. Then he’d mount his objections. Touching hands with people, especially strangers, was unhygienic. Sean once spent two full days telling me all the various infections, bacteria, viruses and fungi which can be spread via handshake. All I could think at the time was, if just
shaking hands
could do that, what all could you get from sleeping with someone? It was three weeks before I could touch a girl after that.

So as Sean shook Mr. Thompson’s hand, all I could think was
botulism
? But Sean wasn’t interested in talking about infections right now. Because no sooner did they shake hands than he said, “Want to know something ironic? I read that in the 1980s, there were a lot of very shady dealings with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that led to the formation of the Taliban, and that the United States funded a lot of that. Isn’t it odd that the United States would arm and fund the very people who came back and attacked us?”

I’ll admit my eyes widened, and I saw Julia startle too. Sean had never talked about anything political in front of us before. Now he was off like a storm, asking Mr. Thompson if he knew the details of the financial dealings between the anti-Soviet rebels of the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the State Department.

Mr. Thompson was pale. “I really can’t talk about any of that sort of thing,” he said. “I’m sure you know it’s classified.”

“But
why
is it classified? That was a long time ago. And it’s in the public’s best interest to know,” Sean asked at almost the level of a shout, because that’s just the way he talked.

I’m pretty sure poor Mr. Thompson, who never spoke above a low, cultured tone, had no idea how to handle this loud, monotone, strange teenager.

“Come on, Sean,” I said, because it was clear Mr. Thompson was finished with this discussion.

Mr. Thompson stepped back, not even attempting to hide his annoyance, but his words were as smooth as a raspberry lime rickey. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I can’t join you all for lunch. I’ve got an important phone call coming in.”

I’d been intimidated by Richard Thompson before. I’d been annoyed by his snobbish attitude, his disapproval. I’d been made to feel small by the way he looked down his nose at me. But I’d never felt blind rage. Not until now. Because when he said those words, Julia shrank just a little, her shoulders falling even as she gave him a counterfeit smile and responded, “No problem, Dad, I know you’re busy.”

The old bastard slinked back into his office and we were enveloped in chaos again as Carrie stumbled to the main floor and bumped into her mother, who was just walking in from the kitchen.

“Carrie,” Mrs. Thompson scolded, “watch where you’re going!”

Carrie straightened, but I could tell it was an effort. By all appearances, she was as hungover as I was—hair a mess, eyes bleary, skin pale. Last night at the after party, she’d done more drinking than was a good idea for any seventeen-year-old. Apparently she regretted it this morning.

Mrs. Thompson turned to Julia only after she’d chastened her next eldest daughter. She spoke in a breezy, almost friendly tone. “Julia, I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been at my wits’ end with worry this summer. You must tell me everything.”

Okay, that was just weird. Really weird. Julia has nightmares about her mother and here she was being super friendly.

Whatever. I followed them into the dining room, preceded by Andrea and Alexandra and flanked by the twins, my own little honor guard. Carrie was just putting a plate on the dining table when we walked in. It was already set with plates adorned by dainty little sandwiches cut into triangles. I eyeballed the sandwiches. Turkey and Swiss? I thought about my stomach for a second, trying to decide if I’d be able to manage eating, and decided that yes, I would.

When we walked in, Carrie’s eyes went to Sean. They’d met, briefly, at the after party the night before.
Just before I got arrested
. Now, Carrie saw Sean, then looked away, her cheeks going a little red.

That was odd. Had he said something obnoxious to her? Because it couldn’t be…

Now that I thought about it, I took a good look at my brother. He was Carrie’s height, two inches over six feet, and had spent a lot of the last nine months working out. At first I’d thought it was weird, until I realized his workout regimen was designed to deter the bullies at his high school. He’d developed powerful muscles in his chest and arms; I wouldn’t want to tangle with him. His hair, cropped short, framed blue eyes. He looked…not like I thought of him. He looked like a young man. Sean was my little brother. When I looked at him, I saw meltdowns. I saw struggles with basic interactions with other people. I saw the boy who wept after the assholes at his school stuffed his favorite hat down the toilet.

Apparently Carrie saw something else.

Andrea held back when we came in the room, but the twins ran for the table. Jessica, who had the same brown hair and green eyes as Alex, stopped at a sharp word from her mother. But Sarah…black hair, light blue eyes, all expressive attitude, climbed right up into her chair and grabbed a sandwich.

At the sight of Sarah suddenly gobbling forbidden food, Andrea and Jessica froze. Carrie’s eyes darted back and forth between Sarah and her mother, and Julia just shook her head.

“Young lady!” Mrs. Thompson shouted loud enough to shatter windows.

Sean lifted his hands to his ears as if to block out the sound, and Sarah shouted back, “Hungry!” and stuffed the sandwich into her mouth.

Let me tell you something. Back in the day I used to go with Wheezy and Gearhead and Lenny and hang out in the cemetery and get wasted, and sometimes we’d get high on whatever we could afford. It was all fun and games, and when the cops came around we’d run like hell through the gravestones and out into the neighborhood, cutting between houses and gardens to get away. Half the fun was outwitting the cops. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, one time I was running through the gravestones and it had rained the night before, so the ground was slick. I felt my feet slip out from under me and I went sliding along, then slammed into a wall. It knocked the air out of me, which was no big deal, and almost got me caught, which was. But then I heard the cop behind me slide, and he didn’t make a nice soft thump like I did. He hit something with a loud crack and cried out.

Aw, shit, I thought. See, maybe I was trouble, but my dad was a cop. And that guy was probably somebody’s dad. Suddenly it had stopped being a game. I ducked my head around the gravestone, and there he was. A Cambridge cop, and worse, one I knew. Officer Brandon McCaffrey. Yeah, I knew him. He knew my dad. It was all one big incestuous family. And from the look on his face, Officer McCaffrey was in a world of pain.

I couldn’t leave him. So I slid back around the gravestone and said, “Shit. Let me call for help.”

Bad idea. See, I didn’t think. Officer McCaffrey had a radio and was perfectly capable of calling for help. He had a nightstick too, and he was pretty good at using it. From a supine position in incredible pain from a broken ankle, he still managed to clip me right on the temple with said nightstick, knocking me out. McCaffrey spent the rest of the winter working behind a desk. I spent two nights in the hospital and two weeks in jail.

And the icy, murderous expression on his face right before he knocked me cold? That was the expression Adelina Thompson had on her face when she started walking toward Sarah, who had at that point consumed the entire triangle of sandwich.

You can’t really blame her. Sarah was being intentionally defiant. And then it got worse. Because when Adelina started for her, Sarah jumped onto the table and ran for dear life. Her little feet knocked over a plate with a sandwich, then a pitcher of milk—seriously, who puts milk in a pitcher?—and then they were moving faster than her body and she started to slide on the table in the spilled milk, straight toward Carrie, whose eyes had widened.

“Young lady!” Adelina screamed.

Sean, who had thus far only managed to mortally offend one of Julia’s parents, decided it was time to start on the other one. With a full-throated roar, he shouted, “
Let’s all start screaming
!”

Jessica and Andrea both burst into tears, and an astonished Adelina forgot all about Sarah, who made her getaway by sliding down the length of the table until she slammed into Carrie at the end. Carrie swung her to the floor and Sarah ran out the door. Adelina stared at Sean, slack-jawed, and I said, “Sean, stop!”

Julia raced to Sean and she did something I’d never seen anyone but our mother do successfully. She put her hands on both of his shoulders and looked him eye to eye as best she could, given that he was nearly a foot taller than her. “Sean. Calm. Down.” Her voice was firm, calm, and loving; hearing it brought tears to my eyes, because lately all I’d heard from her were the strained voices of stress, anger and sadness.

Sean took a breath and closed his eyes. Silence fell.

I surveyed the chaos of Sarah’s departure for about five seconds. A mixture of milk and mustard was smeared from the center of the dinner table down to the end, an impressionist painting by an eccentric artist with primary colors and a brush made of Keds. The pattern continued on the floor and right out the door of the dining room.

Sean had taken a deep breath and stopped shouting. My mother, however, was just about to get started again, and she didn’t know that anything she did now would just make things worse. Crank looked hungover and irritable, so he wasn’t going to help solve anything.

“Mother, I think we should just skip lunch at this point. I’ll go up and help Carrie finish packing. Sean and Crank, do you think you can get the car ready for Carrie’s stuff?”

I raised my eyebrows as I looked at Crank, hoping against hope he’d catch my drift. It wouldn’t take the two of them any time at all, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to separate my mother and Sean before one of them said something unforgivable.

Crank nodded and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on, Sean,” he said, and the two of them headed back down the stairs.

My mother looked at me, alarm on her face. “Julia, what—”

I held a palm up. “Mother…just… Stop. Don’t ask.”

Her eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to say something which would undoubtedly be awful.

“
Please
, Mother. It’s fine. Let me help clean up in here, okay?”