Guardian

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The Guardian

Joyce Sweeney

To my editor, Kate Farrell, who brings vision, creativity, and joy to the process

Chapter 1

I start answering the door so I won't feel invisible. It's one of the tricks I've picked up in foster care—even people who hate you will cut you a little slack if you make yourself useful.

Andrea, in the corner, watches me make my move. I call Andrea The Watcher because whenever I think I'm alone, I'll get this cold feeling, like how you know there's a cockroach in the room, and there she'll be with her bulging forehead and bland blue eyes, recording like a machine in case I do something worth reporting to Stephanie, our foster mother. The grieving widow.

Andrea has done something weird to her hair today, like she confused the funeral with a prom. It makes her forehead jut out even more. She just started high school and she's already getting the message she's not exactly a magnet for boys. She's not actually ugly, but, as a guy, I can see why she doesn't get asked out. Andrea has no mystery. That sounds stupid, maybe, but I think it's true. You can't fall in love if there isn't some kind of mystery. Have you ever heard anyone say they love soft-boiled eggs? Andrea is like a soft-boiled egg.

I open the front door and two women storm in, almost stepping on me. I have to jump out of the way. I don't know them. I don't know most of the people here, filling up our living room, sitting on chair arms and coffee tables, filling our kitchen with sweaty casserole dishes. Most of them are women. Hey, who knows? Maybe Mike had something going on.

The two women push me out of the way and make a beeline to the couch where the Widow Stephanie is holding court in her new black dress from Saks, holding a black lace hankie up to her face, saying she doesn't know what she'll do now, four kids dependent on her, no emotional support, please make all checks out to cash, et cetera. I don't know what she's talking about. Mike was the kind of guy who would have a ton of insurance and since he was a veteran of the Iraq War, she's probably got a brand-new government check coming. But maybe she'll decide four kids are too many. I'll give you one guess which one of us she'd put in a sack and drown.

I decide to sit in the kitchen for a while, poking a fork into one of the casseroles. Room temperature mac and cheese clearly spiked with Cheez Whiz or some such chemical. But Rule Number One in this house is take nourishment whenever you find it. Just like it is with wild animals. You think ravens would eat carrion if they could go to McDonald's?

McDonald's is a Mike memory. Some Saturday mornings we'd do manly things together, like pull black leaf rot out of the gutters, and then we'd head out, just us, for a plastic tray of artery-cloggers. That's what Mike called the foods he loved. He made a big mistake, as it turns out, thinking that was a joke.

I listen to the high-pitched whine and chatter in the living room, longing to hear a deep voice. An image flashes in my head of Mike, lying on the ground, having his stroke, twitching like a hot wire. Cheez Whiz rises in my throat. I put the fork down and replace the aluminum foil cover like those sheets they put over the dead patient's head on TV.

I detect motion in the doorway. My eyes flick up. It's my foster sister Jessie. Jessie is The Stalker. I have a loving little pet name for each of my three sisters. Jessie is actually the best of the bunch. Her only flaw is that she's in love with me, not because I'm all that, but because I'm a guy who's thirteen and she's a girl who's twelve and we live in the same house without being related. Jessie is fighting forces beyond her control.

She stares at me now with her earnest freckled face, twisting her fingers into weird shapes in front of her skirt.

“Hunter? Are you okay?” One of Jessie's stalking techniques is to pretend to be concerned about me. It's effective too because that's something I'm sort of starving for.

But it doesn't work today. “Go away, Jess.”

Of course, she doesn't buy that. She comes closer, slowly draws out a chair. “This must be harder on you than anyone else.”

I wonder what she'd do if I grabbed her and kissed her. Enjoy herself probably. “I would think it's harder on Stephanie than anybody else,” I say.

“But you …” Her clammy hand descends over mine. “You need a male role model.” That's how she actually talks. Needless to say, she's the favorite of bullies all over our school.

I lower my eyebrows until I can hardly see. “Don't worry, Jess. I won't start trying on your dresses.”

The clammy hand withdraws. A good stalker always knows when to retreat, so she can stalk another day. “I'll be in my room if you want to talk.” She stands up, dark flowered dress swishing. I glance up to see her lifting her brown curls off her neck with one hand. For a second, she looks like a woman. It's creepy how girls our age keep morphing back and forth.

“Don't count on it,” I mutter.

She swishes away, like she's sad for both of us.

I feel myself getting ready to replay Mike's stroke again, so I call up a different image. I think about The Motorcycle Man. If it can be said that anything good can happen when you're lowering a body into the ground, this would be it.

There we all were, this afternoon, trying not to hear the sound of the motorized coffin-lowering machine and Stephanie crying so loud it was like howling and suddenly: Vroom! Vroo-vroo-vroo-vroo-vroom!

We all looked up, automatically drawn to a better show. Some crazy man was riding his Honda through the cemetery.

Of course, Stephanie and her crew were horrified, hissing about respect and decency. Father Dunne took out his cell phone to call the cops.

But I was thrilled. My soul had almost been down in the grave with Mike after an hour of women crying and Father Dunne telling us that “the grass withers and the flower fades,” and this guy with the big Adam's apple singing “You'll Never Walk Alone.”

Suddenly, in the midst of that, something wonderful had broken through and was now making a sharp, banking turn and coming to a stop about a hundred feet away from us.

And here's the best part—it seemed like the rider was looking straight at me.

I stared back. I memorized everything, from the Gold Wing logo on the bike to his helmet—black with a mirrored visor.

I forgot to breathe and gasped. Then the spell was broken and he stomped the gas pedal and roared away, scattering all the birds in the trees and throwing up a plume of dust that hung in the air, long after the roar of his engine had faded away.

“Outrageous!” said Father Dunne, before lamely trying to finish his act in front of a distracted audience.

I thought maybe it was some long-lost army buddy of Mike's, coming to pay his last respects.

So why did I keep feeling like the guy had come for me?

“Hunter! What are you doing?”

I jump and drop the fork with a clatter. Thinking of The Motorcycle Man gave me an appetite and left me so deep in thought I had lost track of Stephanie. Usually I can follow her movements around the house by smelling the cigarette smoke.

“I was just …” I cough.

“Eating out of a casserole dish like the filthy pig you are, right? You're an animal!” She paces the kitchen, heels making a sound like artillery fire, her beautiful heavy dark hair swinging behind her as she pivots. My foster mother is pure evil, but she has gorgeous hair.

“My husband has died. Do you realize that, Hunter? Did it occur to you that instead of sitting here stuffing yourself and contaminating our food you could be helping me? Comforting me?”

She really isn't talking to me, so I don't answer.

She picks up a cake safe from the counter and shoves it into the crowded fridge, making something in there fall over with a clatter. “Maybe you could have been putting these dishes away for me, Hunter. Did you ever think about that?”

“I …” I pick up the mac and cheese to show my willingness to help.

“Just throw that in the garbage! You put a fork in your mouth and stuck it back in the dish! Do you think me and the girls want to eat your germs?”

I wonder about her friends in the living room hearing this. But they already know I'm her difficult child. I carry the dish toward the sink, careful not to get too close to her. Like a dog, Stephanie has an attack zone.

But I've misjudged. She lunges, grabs the dish from me. “Just throw it in the garbage! Just throw it in the garbage like everything else!” She is shrieking. The casserole slips from her hands. The smell of Cheez Whiz fills the air. Glass shards go flying.

“Oh!” Her ruby-painted claws dig into my arm. “Look what you made me do!”

“I'll clean it up. You just go back out …”

She lets go and sits on the floor, dangerously close to the glass. She buries her face in her hands and sobs.

I feel bad for her. She's lost her husband. She gets overwhelmed with little stuff, so what is this doing to her? Cautiously, I put out my hand, hover it above her shoulder. “Stephanie. We'll be okay.…”

She shoves me so hard, my feet leave the ground. I land on my back, feel glass dig into my shirt. Macaroni squishes under my legs. I notice it's gotten very quiet in the living room, but no one comes to help. No one ever does.

Stephanie stands. She's a mess; raccoon eyes, hair disheveled. Her whole body is trembling. For a second, I think she might stomp me, but then she just turns and leaves the kitchen.

I lay still for a while, cuts and all. I've learned over the years the importance of resting up after things like that. After a while, I've got myself breathing normally.

I work calmly and slowly. It's good to have things to do. I take off my shirt, pick the glass shards out, take the shirt into the laundry room, and put it in the laundry sink with a presoaker.