How to Build a House (12 page)

Things were never equal with Tess.

Despite my being only a few weeks younger, she dominated me like an older sister. I always let her take the lead, or maybe it was that she always took it without ever giving me a chance to get there first.

When we played cards as children she’d make up new rules and I’d let her, and it didn’t even bother me that the rules always tipped in her favor.

That was just what she was doing now. She’d been doing it since October.

Making up new rules.

Creating a game in which her home was safe and mine dangerous. Her mother was good and my father bad. And as usual, I’d accepted everything like the timid younger sister.

And tonight in my car, she was constructing yet another set of the Rules According to Tess. In this game there was nothing wrong with what Tess was doing by the tennis court with Gabriel, and I was overreacting by calling her a bitch.

“Get out of my car.”

“Get over yourself. So I made out with Gabriel. So what? It’s stupid. I’m not committing any cardinal sin here. I’m not violating any laws or breaking any vows, which is more than I can say for your father.”

“What? What exactly are you trying to say?”

“Exactly what I’m trying to say, no, what I’m saying, is that your dad is a sleaze, and after everything he did, Mom still wants me to protect him by keeping my mouth shut around you. But now I don’t care because you’re sitting there with that look on your face like
I’m
the one who did something terrible, but all I did was kiss some guy at a party who isn’t even your boyfriend, while your dad fucked one of his patients’ mother while he was married to mine.”

She got out and slammed the door.

I thought the window might shatter, but it didn’t. The full moon slipped behind a cloud. The only thing left was the sound of glass not breaking.

HERE

I don’t ride the bus to the work site anymore. Teddy picks me up in the mornings and he brings me a real cup of coffee in my travel mug. Yesterday he came early and we went back for breakfast to his trailer, where Diane made us egg and sausage sandwiches on biscuits and Coach Wes asked us questions about
To Kill a Mockingbird
, which he was in the middle of reteaching to his summer-school class.

“Your parents are the best. You’re so lucky,” I said to Teddy as we walked up the hill to the site.

“You just say that ’cause you don’t have to live with them,” he said. “They can be just as annoying as anyone’s parents.”

“Like how?”

“Well, my mom’s a mom. You know. She can be a nag. She babies my sisters. She thinks hip-hop is the work of the devil. Really. She does. But I just tell her that she’ll never understand black music. That really infuriates her. And Dad’s obsessed with football season. You should be here in the fall. He becomes a totally different person. He can’t talk about anything else. We have football players over all the time and Mom has to cook these huge meals, after a full day’s work at the clinic, and I don’t think she really likes it and Dad doesn’t seem to notice or care one way or the other.” He stopped in his tracks and looked at me. “Is this too much information?”

I took his hand. “When it comes to you and your family, there’s no such thing as too much information.”

This morning we’re eating with the others in the conference room of the motel: Raisin Bran out of a plastic bowl, and a too-ripe banana.

Frances is mad at Captain because he got a letter from his ex-girlfriend that borders on X-rated, with visuals included in the form of a Polaroid.

Captain seems to be loving every minute of Frances’s tantrum. Usually she keeps things pretty close to the vest. Captain tends to be the one who shows all the emotion and Frances, with her too-cool New York attitude, acts like she barely tolerates him. But this morning her sulkiness reveals everything.

“C’mon, baby,” he pleads with a troublemaker’s grin. He takes the picture out of his back pocket and holds it out toward Frances. “Look. She’s not even
that
hot. I mean, those tan lines are too damn much. I’m so over the Florida look. I like my girl to be all pasty-fleshed, like you.” He reaches for her but she pulls away.

“Dude,” says Teddy. “You should really shut up. I think you’re kind of blowing this.”

Captain tosses the picture onto the table.

Teddy scoops it up and stares at it for a long time. Then he peers over the top of it at me. “She’s nothing special.”

That’s a lie. I’ve seen the picture. If I could cut and paste my own body from an assortment of perfect physical features, it would look exactly like hers. And now that Teddy is staring at it, and comparing it to what I’m stuck with, I feel slightly ill.

“I’m about to do you a big favor,” Teddy says to Captain, and he gets up and flings the Polaroid into the trash can.

Captain shoots Frances a smile as he brushes his shaggy hair off his forehead. “See, baby? See what I do for you?”

She stands up and pushes in her chair. “You didn’t do shit, Captain. Teddy did it.” And she storms out of the room.

Captain shrugs at Teddy and then gets up and goes off after her. “But, baby …”

“Well, I’m going back to finish packing,” Marisol says.

It’s her father’s sixtieth birthday this weekend, and there’s some kind of family reunion. Her parents made special arrangements to fly her home. She’s thrilled. Not so much about the family reunion. It’s all about seeing Pierre.

She’ll be gone for three nights. We talked about what might happen with Teddy and me when I have the room to myself.

“Is this when you guys start having sex? Help me here, I don’t know how this works.”

“You mean, you and Pierre …”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “Whenever I think about it—and believe me, the thought crosses my mind, like, a lot—I picture Sister Jean.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s this stern and rather unattractive nun at my school. She’s got a butt as wide as a Buick. I plan to keep this image handy till I’m married.”

“And Pierre is cool with this?”

“I’m not sure he gets Sister Jean’s role in everything, but he’s okay with waiting. He’s the rare breed of guy equipped with preternatural patience.”

We never got any further on the topic of what would happen with Teddy. Topic avoided. Score one for me.

Now Marisol gets up from the table and gives us each a hug.

“So, I’ll see you two in a few days. I’ll be gone. You’ll have the room to yourselves.” She gives me a final pat on the shoulder. “Good luck with that.”

Teddy and I are alone. An awkward silence takes over as the things we haven’t talked about pile up between us on the table.

He’s seen Captain’s ex-girlfriend’s naked body, but he hasn’t seen mine. We haven’t done more than kiss. I share a room with Marisol and he lives in a tiny trailer with his parents and his twin sisters, one of whom is the nosiest child on earth.

You do the math.

And honestly, I’m afraid. All I know so far is that having sex does nothing to further a relationship. It only complicates things.

But with Marisol leaving for three nights, I’m thinking there’s no avoiding it, so maybe I should bring it up.

But I don’t know how.

Gabriel and I never talked about having sex. Ever. It just happened, I never knew why it would one night and why it wouldn’t the next. After that first time it seemed always to be up to him, and when it was over, he’d act like nothing had happened, and so sometimes it felt like, well,
nothing
.

And other times it felt like everything.

Teddy moves his chair closer to mine. “I’ve been thinking about something.”

But I guess I don’t have to bring up the question of sex. Teddy will. He’s a guy. All guys ever think about is sex. And Teddy’s enough of a grown-up to think about it
and
talk about it.

“What have you been thinking about?”

“My aunt Abigail.”

Never, in a million years, would I have guessed that these would be the words that would come out of his mouth right now.

“What about your aunt Abigail?”

“She’s my mother’s sister, but I’ve never met her. My mother doesn’t speak to her and hasn’t for twenty-two years. The truth is, I don’t even know if she’s alive or where she is, because my mom’s parents are dead, so there isn’t any tie left to her. The point is, she’s my mom’s sister, and they used to be pretty close when they were kids, and now they don’t know each other anymore.”

“What happened?”

“When my mom met my dad and they fell in love, she didn’t have the greatest reaction to a black man dating her sister and Mom never forgave her for that.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Does it?”

“It does to me.”

“I don’t know…. I mean, sure, obviously racism is in excusable, and I certainly don’t mean to be apologizing for it, but maybe it’s something she would have gotten over. Maybe if Abigail had gotten to know Dad, and realized he’s just Dad, then maybe there’d be that much less racism in the world. Anyway, what I’m really trying to say is that Mom lost a sister, and she didn’t even put up a good fight. I’ve watched her be sad her whole life because of that. She has a hole in her nobody can fill. And now it’s just too late.”

Talking about sex would have been less confusing for me than figuring out how to respond to this story.

I’m quiet for a long time.

“Tess did things to hurt me,” I finally say.

“Maybe that’s because she was hurting too.”

He slides his chair even closer and puts his arms around my waist. “You need to fix this.”

I stare at the planes of his face. His lips. A small cluster of freckles near his left eye.

“You’re not normal,” I say.

“Normal’s overrated.”

“How come you’re not trying to figure out how to get me to let you crash in my room for the next few nights?”

“Oh, I already have that covered.” He pulls me even closer.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He kisses me just above my ear.

“So what’s your plan?”

“I’m just going to ask, like a good Southern boy,” he whispers in my ear. “Real nice and polite-like.”

HOME

When I came back that night, Dad was still out. Cole was asleep. I paid the babysitter from the rolled-up wad of bills we kept in the drawer with the tinfoil and plastic bags. I opened the refrigerator and stood there, letting the cold escape onto my face and into my lungs. I went and sat at the counter. Pavlov curled himself at my feet.

I waited for what felt like a long time.

Dad’s key in the front door made Pavlov’s ears stand up, but the footfalls were Dad’s, so he settled back down to sleep.

“Hi, honey.”

There was Dad, facing me, his keys still in his hand.

“What’s wrong?”

Here we were. Back in the kitchen. Just like we were months earlier. But this time he was standing and I was sitting. And this time
I
was about to surprise
him
.

“Tell me about what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” I said, and I looked at him, hard. His face fell and he put his keys on the counter.

“I’m an asshole,” he said. “That’s what happened.” He pulled a stool around and sat down facing me.

If he was looking for me to contradict him, he was looking in the wrong place.

“Go on.”

“I’ve screwed up everything. Everything. I’ve even screwed this up, right here. This isn’t how we should be having this conversation. You shouldn’t be coming to me with this. I should have just told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Told you …”

“That you had an affair?”

“Yes.”

“With your patient’s mother? Isn’t that just a little unethical?”

He winced like he’d just been bitten on the face.

“Yes. It is.”

I tried to calculate how many minutes, hours, days I’d spent feeling sorry for Dad. How I tried to wish his dark circles away. The hair back on his head. The pounds back on his disappearing frame.

I was trying to work up some anger. But when I reached for it, I grasped only air.

I thought of this picture I have of Dad and me when I’m about three. We were at a party for a college friend of his where children probably weren’t welcome, but in those years Dad never went anywhere without me. I’m in his lap and he’s clutching me around my waist.

That picture always confused me. From one angle it’s sad: Here’s this man who’s lost and has nobody in the world but this three-year-old with a sour expression, tangled hair and a shirt that clashes with her pants. From another angle, it’s beautiful: Here’s this man and this child who have each other to cling to through whatever the world can conjure up.

Dad is all I have.

“I really thought you loved her.”

“It’s so much more complicated than that, Harper. Of course I loved Jane. I do love Jane. I wish things were that simple. I wish it were as simple as having an affair. An affair isn’t everything, you know. It’s just one small part of a much more complicated picture.”

“So are you still with the patient’s mother?”

“I wasn’t ever ‘with’ her.”

“Explain that one, Dad.”