The Moment Before (10 page)

There are stains the next day. On my cheek, in the driveway. Black and blue marks made by a fist and rubber tires. Mom left a note on the table.

Hope you’re OK. Had to go into work early. Have asked Dr. Stern to meet us this afternoon at 4:00. Please don’t be late.

My feet are two throbbing, bloody slabs of meat. There is a smear of charcoal-black under my eye and around my cheekbone. If ever there was an excuse to not go to the school … but I’m not sure I can stay home, either. Dad never returned last night, and I’m certain he’ll show up, hungover and apologetic. I’m not ready to talk to him yet. With or without our therapist.

Plus, my feet the way they are, there’s no way I’ll be much good on foot.

In Sabine’s room I find some padded Smartwool socks and the orthopedic nurse shoes she’d wear when her own feet were bunioned up from dance class. To complete the frump look, the abused housewife ensemble, I choose one of Nona’s dusters leftover from her hip-surgery stay with us, under which I’ve donned a Spandex unitard. After I add a pair of I-walked-into-a-door sunglasses, I’m ready to go, and be the weird, artsy outcast they’ve come to know and avoid.

In school, Mrs. McConnell isn’t buying it. She seems distracted all period, and her thoughts on Faulkner and duplicity and existentialism are stalled out. Even Cathi and her ever-raised hand can’t get a rise out of her. I’m not surprised when, again, she keeps me after class.

“Take them off, Miss Wilson,” she says, pointing at my ten dollar RiteAid shades.

My face is the sort of lopsided swollen of movie-of-the-week heroines. I can feel it. But Mrs. McConnell is an experienced sleuth. She says, “I am a mandatory reporter, you know.”

“I was in a car accident,” I spit out. “The other day. I was driving my sister’s car, and I stopped suddenly, to avoid a dog, and my head hit the wheel. I don’t have a license. My parents don’t know I drove. Report if you must, I know I deserve it, but it’ll only add to their troubles.”

My Classics teacher ponders my lie. She’s had decades of bullshit, and her meter is honed. But, I’m learning how to lie pretty well these days. Getting some sort of latent crash course. It’s easier to poker-face when only half your face looks normal. Finally, after circling me, and scrutinizing my outfit, she lets it go. “Ms. Bowerman told me about the Art Show investigation.”

So now it’s an investigation?

“Mrs. Cupworth is rankled,” I say. “But she’s been very gracious to me. And Bowerman—Ms. Bowerman—too. I hope it all works out, the article. You know, with the vote coming up and funding on the line and everything.”

“Well, politics aside, I’m not sure if it’s the right time to be bringing you into the middle of a battle. And, I’ve said as much.”

I’m not sure why Mrs. McConnell has taken such an interest in my well-being. Language Arts has never been my forte. I’m a solid “B” student in this class, not exactly a genius.

“Art is pretty important to me,” I manage.

“I know, dear. And I’ve seen your work. Promising. You have an eye for truth.”

An eye for truth
.

“Well, if that’s all, I shouldn’t be late for Spanish,” I say, feeling naked, suddenly.

“That is all,” she says, and, before I’m truly out the door, “Brady?”

“Yes?”

She points to her eye, “When you’re ready to talk about what really happened there, I hope you’ll feel comfortable enough to share it with me.”

After last period, I immediately dash out the main doors. Sore feet or not, I can’t stand another minute in this building. I’m halfway jogging, my backpack bouncing up and down against the soft cotton of my grandmother’s housedress. And then, there it is. In the school lot. Already retagged with a new parking sticker. Nick’s managed to find time in the last twenty-four hours to wax it up, and it reminds me of the way dogs have to pee against every blade of grass in another dog’s yard. There’s even a new bumper sticker on the back.
LAX: Trample the weak. Hurtle the dead
.

Really?

My stomach lurches up into my throat. I think I’m going to vomit. I start jogging for real, and oddly, my feet feel up to the task. The
bump, bump, bump
of my textbooks up and down in my backpack only makes me run faster.

It’s cool outside. Overcast and heavy. I’m not sure where I’ll end up, but I keep turning corners, crossing streets. I just want to be away from people.

My backpack starts ringing.

There’s a picnic table up ahead, in one of those miniature neighborhood parks that time forgot with a metal swing set and long, straight slide. By the time I extract my phone, there’s a voicemail.

“Hello, Brady? This is Rory Davis, from the
Portland Journal
. I’m writing an article on the Cupworth situation, and your number was passed along by your teacher, Vanessa Bowerman. I’d love to ask you a few questions. Do you have some time to chat this afternoon or tomorrow?”

In her practiced calm reporterish voice, she left various numbers and emails, and good times to reach her. I take a breath and realize that my heart is still beating like crazy from my accidental boot camp up the hill. Everything is happening so fast. Maybe Mrs. McConnell is right—people need to back off. Stop asking things of me. I look up and watch a mother push her young daughter on a swing. The mom is very pregnant and looks exhausted. The little girl wants more action; she wants to go higher, and she’s squealing “Do it harder, Mama.”

I want to let that little girl know that her mother will continue to disappoint her. Not only will she make her get off the swing before she’s ready, soon, there will be a needy little infant in the house gobbling up all her time. For the first time, I try to consider what it must have been like to be an older sister. To have your parents all to yourself, and then, suddenly, not have them all to yourself. Sabine must have resented the hell out of me.

I sit watching the mother-daughter show in mesmerized silence. I don’t call the reporter and I don’t hustle on over to the therapist’s. Instead, when at last the little girl is pried off the swing a tantrumy mess, the mother yanking her down the little grassy slope, I call Connor.

He picks up on the first ring with a “Yo.”

I don’t bother with any chit-chat. Like Nona after the bless-me-father in the confessional, I’m right to the point. “My parents gave Sabine’s car to Nick.”

“Figures,” he says. Then, “Want to come over?”

I’m so eager to get there, it doesn’t occur to me until I’m almost at Connor’s front door that I’m wearing this goofy outfit, my enormous backpack pushing me over the edge into certifiable.

The door is open a crack and when I knock, Connor’s voice pierces the Beastie Boys on the stereo, “C’mon in.”

Connor’s house is all Stickley furniture and high-end fabrics. His mother’s an interior designer, and his stepdad is an architect, so good taste is the vibe here, and it screams from every corner of the living room. Connor’s back is facing me and he’s fixing a sandwich on a slab of granite bar. “Hungry?” he asks.

He’s wearing a thin brown tee-shirt and skinny jeans, and everything that’s amazing about his body is accentuated as he puts the finishing touches on the stoner haute cuisine—a white bread PB&J, with extra J.

“I’m good,” I say.

When he turns around and catches the grandma outfit, he tries to hide it, but he can’t. His face explodes in laughter. He’s practically snorting as he says, “Nice kicks, Nurse Brady.”

“Yeah, well, my feet are all blistery from your enforced march through the woods.”

“I like the apron look too,” he says, stuffing a chunk of his sandwich in his mouth. “Suits you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just, you know, you’ve got that artsy thing going on.” He reaches out to me and chucks me under the chin like you do a little kid, and, reflexively, I slap his hand down.

“Spicy,” he says.

“Don’t patronize me Connor Christopher.”

He fake-pouts before cramming the rest of the Wonderbread. Then he says, “So, Nick’s managed to finagle her car, eh? Dude’s an operator.”

I drop my backpack and sit down on a bar stool, facing a stainless steel appliance kitchen and a picture window that looks out over blossoming trees. “My folks seem to think he walks on water.”

“You planning on sharing the counter-evidence to that?”

I shrug. Connor leans on the counter, positioning that muscular torso right at the level of my hip. His bicep is touching distance. I’m getting distracted. Connor pivots and those green eyes of his are leveled at my cheap sunglasses. “When it comes to assholes like Nick? Sometimes life catches up.”

“You believe in karma?”

“Well, I’m not sure about the whole Hindu wheel thing, but I do believe in this saying I heard once, ‘live by the ego, die by the ego.’ That’s what’ll happen with Nick. He’s gonna burn some bridges. Big time.”

I’m wondering about Martha, and what her reaction might be to hearing Sabine’s voicemails. The threats, the anger. “Did you know Martha’s in the running for Rose Festival Queen?” “Nope. I’m not really up on that community stuff, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“And, something else. Mrs. Cupworth and Bowerman want to make a big stink about the Art Fair, how that all went down. There’s a reporter who wants to talk to me about it. It could get ugly.”

Connor slants his head a little. Narrows his eyes. The Beastie Boys’s
Mullet Head
fills the room. That meaty hand that held my sister’s foot all last year while her body contorted into bends and straddles, it strokes the sore spot on my cheek I’d all but forgotten about. And then that same hand peels off my sunglasses. His touch is soft as a kitten brushing up against a leg, but his voice goes deep and serious. “Who the fuck did this?”

I freeze. I don’t even want to say it out loud. How can I? “It’s complicated.”

“Brady. C’mon. Don’t bullshit me. I know a right hook plant when I see one.”

He’s calling me on it, and I don’t know what to say. That my dad hit me because I deserved it? That he’s a stupid drunk? The world and everything I know about it died with my sister?

It’s past 4:00, and I’m sure if I looked down at my muted phone right now there’d be a few missed calls. “I think my parents are going to split up,” I say, shocking myself with the words that I didn’t even know were in my head.

“Welcome to the Happy-Happy Club. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”

I wish I could just curl up and be that little kitten I’m imagining when Connor’s fingers stroke my cheek. Have those careful hands hold me, and not have to say another word. “Last night, when I finally got home, my dad was wasted and I know he’d just had it out with my mom, who, by the way, is probably cheating on him. We argued, he slapped me. Big whoop.”

“Wasn’t your dad some big deal baseball player or something?”

“Minors. But, yeah, he’s got an arm.”

“That really sucks. I’m sorry. I mean really, I apologize if I kept you out too long and that contributed to any of this…”

The trees outside are fluffy with white and pink, and that’s exactly how my insides feel right now. Sore feet, sore eye and cheek, all of that is melting away. I’m sort of lightheaded, and I want to tell Connor Christopher that he’s more beautiful than David. More holy than the apostles that float around on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I want to sketch him. Paint him. Kiss him. Dad hitting me, the horribleness of that, it dissolves into the possibility of feeling Connor’s lips pressing on mine. And then, just like that, I move my swollen, bruise-filled face toward him, and push my lips—the top one, then the bottom one—up against his.

My eyes are closed, but when I open them, I see his surprised and bulging eyes staring back. Though I haven’t done a lot of kissing, I’ve done enough to know that in order for a kiss to really work, both parties need to participate. And Connor, he’s not cooperating. His lips don’t pucker, they don’t push back. But they don’t back away, either. Until they do. Finally. And he says, “Brady. Whoa. I was caught off guard there.”

I’m sitting on a stool at the counter of the boy accused of killing my sister, wearing my grandmother’s housecoat, and I’ve just made a pass at him. One that, it looks like, he’s refusing. In all the world of awkward circumstances, there can’t be any that top this. The Beastie Boys are screaming
… you don’t stop
.

I wish.

“Not that I wouldn’t be interested…” Connor tries.

I sigh, stab the shades back in place, straighten up. “I get it. You don’t feel that way about me. No worries.”

“Brady, honestly, I don’t know what it is I feel for you. But it is
some
thing.”

Now he’s just toying with me. I can’t take it. “I’m out of here,” I say, swinging my legs off the stool, grabbing my backpack.

He reaches for my arm and I jerk it out of his grip. “Don’t go,” he says, with a question mark at the end of it.

“Look. I’m an idiot. And I’m tired of being an idiot.”

But really, why I need to get out of Connor’s house immediately is I’m about to sob. To scream and cry like that toddler on the swing earlier. I’m tired of being an idiot but more than that, I’m tired of being me. Connor calls my name a few times, the sound of his voice behind me like salt on my blistered feet.

By the time I round the corner where I’d almost taken Sabine’s car over the edge, my eyes are so brimmed with tears, I can’t see. I’m sneezing like crazy—either the pollen or the sting in my sinuses from holding back crying. Don’t know. But what I do know is that if I start weeping now, I’ll never stop. The weight of everything is a cloudburst inside me. The sadness. The relentless sadness. My sister. Dad. Everything crash-landing.

I miss her so much. It feels like a canyon opening inside me, as though an Exacto knife is separating organs from tissue. This must be what people feel before hurling themselves over the Vista Bridge. The two suicides at Greenmeadow this year, one was a jumper and the other, pills and alcohol. What goes through a brain on its way out? And Sabine. Did she know she was going to die in that second before her neck snapped in two? Who was she thinking about when she landed, chin first on the gym floor? What last words did she want to say amid the gasps and disbelief, the still recording camera phones? She died cheering, my sister. Encouraging her team to victory.
Never give up
, that’s who she was. She died raising cheer.

Brady Brooder. The remaining Wilson girl. The half-empty sister. I feel like I’m treading water, not knowing where to go next. The rest of the world, they’re getting on with it—Martha and Nick. And Mom, scheming a new life for herself. Every step I take on my sore feet seems aimless, pointless, wrong.

I continue down the hill in the direction of home. There will be consequences for missing the session at Dr. Stern’s, but I don’t care. I have a paper due on
As I Lay Dying
, and I have yet to start it. I flunked another trig test. Maybe I, too, will end up at BALC, or on track for a GED. Birds are singing all around me, oblivious that the world is a festering ball of shit headed for doom. The sun breaks through the leaden cloud, like it often does in late afternoon. Why didn’t Connor kiss me back?

My phone vibrates, and this time I just answer it. “This is Brady.”

“Hi there, Brady. Rory Davis again. Is this a good time?”

In the end, after my twenty-minute grilling session with the reporter, my stomach is a knot of panic. Judging by the tone of her questioning, this Rory Davis wants to stir things up in a big way.
Leading the witness
is how they put it on the lawyer shows when the defending attorney screams for a mistrial.

“So, they told you you’d won, and you didn’t find out they’d changed their minds until the ceremony?”

And,

“I understand that that very afternoon you were speaking with the vice principal. And he mentioned nothing, even though they’d had a meeting an hour earlier where they decided to give the award to Miss Hornbuckle?”

And,

“How did it feel, having just lost your sister in the most horrific accident imaginable, and then, having yet another rug pulled out from under you?”

The rug, pulled out from under me. My father, cracking me in the face. Connor’s lips, shrinking away from me in repulsion.

I don’t know if I answered any of the reporter’s questions, but I do know I said more than I should have. With all the sobs, the curses, the nonsensical rant, I’m sure I sounded like a raving psycho. What would this Rory Davis make of my weepy, angry words? Did she get the story she wanted, this hungry reporter?

I conjure various headlines.
Crazy student loses prize
, or
Angry nutjob embarrasses family, self.

But the whole thing is out of my hands now. Whatever will be, will be.

When I check my phone, there are several missed calls and messages. My parents, no doubt, are frantic. I don’t want to worry them, but I also don’t think I can face them today. My father and his inevitable drunken sobbing. Mom and her demanding, know-it-all action items. So I make another call.

“Nona?”

“
Nipote
. Papi and I were just talkin’ about you.” Her voice moves away from the phone, and I hear it shouting at my near-deaf grandfather, “Papi, Papi, Brady is on the phone, pick up the extension.”

We chit-chat about nothing for a while, and then I drop the bomb. “Can I come stay with you for a few days?”

“With us? But what about school? Your Ma?”

“It’s a little tense over there right now,” I tell them.

“Are you in any trouble,
bambino
?” asks Nono.

“Not exactly,” I tell them. “I’ll take the bus over, and we can talk about it.”

The buses to North Portland are not what you’d call express service, and by the time the 44 makes its way to the University of Portland neighborhood where my grandparents have lived for fifty-three years, it’s well-past their supper hour.

Their neat-as-a-pin pink aluminum-sided bungalow clashes with the red sky behind it. A new wheelchair ramp criss-crosses the front of their house, and I wince thinking about them needing to use it sooner or later. Nona and Nono are plan-ahead types. They shop for Christmas in January. Get their furnace serviced in May. The front door opens a crack while I’m still making my way up the front walk, which is lined with orderly tulips.

Nona steps out on the stoop, her arms spread wide the minute or so it takes to reach her.

“My duster,” she cries, as though I’d planned it, this reunion between my grandmother and her housecoat.

But, as soon as she’s done hugging me, squeezing the non-bruised side of my face, she takes in a breath as though witnessing a homicide. “What happened to you?”

I think about giving her the steering wheel story, but then, I don’t. “I’ll tell you later. Meanwhile, have anything to eat? I’m starved.”

All three of us are sitting at Nona and Nono’s little boomerang table—one they’ve had since the 60s. My grandmother pushes bowls of macaroni and sliced ham my way. Where does all of this food come from? Nono is growing thinner and balder. He’s practically nodding off at the table.

“I was so mad when that girl got your prize, you know?” says Nona all fire and spit.

“Forget it, Nona. Besides, that lady who spoke? She wants to give me an equal prize. And, she bought my drawing.” I don’t mention the forthcoming
Portland Journal
article.

Nona jiggles Nono’s arm. “You hear this? Papi? Good news, eh?”

My grandfather nods and half-opens his eyes, tweaks my cheek. And then, “What the hell happen to your face, Brady?”

I take in a deep breath. From where I’m sitting, I can see the shrine of Sabine. A 5x7 next to a photo-electric candle, which also features my sister’s alive face. The obligatory Virgin statue, along with a stack of mass cards.
Tell them
, says the voice of my sister.
Tell them what happened
.

“I guess it was my fault,” I start. “Smart-mouthing Dad. Let’s just say I had it coming.”

My invalid grandfather slams a fist down on the Formica so hard you’d think there was a prosthesis involved. Some robot arm jutting from his feeble body. “He hit you?”

Nona yells something in Italian. I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of curse.

“Let’s not overreact,” I suggest, my voice as calm as I can make it given my heart is beating all crazy in my chest. The last thing they needed was an excuse to hate my father more than they do.

“You are not going back to that house, Brady. Not until I speak with your mother,” Nono says, his mouth wet with spit.

On the wall opposite the table, there hangs an oil painting of President John F. Kennedy in a skinny gold frame. One of Nona’s first efforts, copied from a photograph. This is who my grandparents are. Catholics and non-forgetters. The summer of Johnsaffair, they went from being lukewarm to my father all the way down to hate. There’s no going back with Nona and Nono. They know what they know.

“We’re in counseling,” I say, in my best Dr. Stern voice. “We’re working through this stuff.”

“You think a head shrinker will fix this?” Nona says, pointing to my bruise. “There’s only one way to handle it. Eye for eye.”

“Nona. You better not do anything you’ll regret. Dad’s suffering, you know?”

I’m thinking we need to change the subject. Nono seems to have nodded off again, and a small snore starts up from his place at the table. I redirect. “Let me take you to bingo, Nona. We can stop for lottery tickets.”

That does the trick. Before long, I’ve cleared the table and rinsed the dishes. Nona has tucked my grandfather into bed, and put on a fresh face. Extra powder on her nose, her large mole now caked in beige. Arm in arm, in matching housecoats, we make our way to the Lincoln. My grandmother thinks I have a driver’s license and I don’t dissuade her from that idea.

Nona is chatty while I navigate the giant-hooded car through the streets of North Portland. She tells me that I’m beautiful, and that some day I’ll have my pick of boys. She tells me the story that she always tells me. What a late bloomer she was, and how she didn’t meet Nono until after the war, when everyone had given her up for an old maid, and once she married, at age thirty-six, she prayed and prayed to Saint Agatha of Sicily that a baby would “find a way to my womb.”

Nona had miscarriages. Four miscarriages. And finally, a pregnancy that went to term. Mom. Born when Nona was forty-three.

“She died a virgin,” she says.

I’m concentrating on staying in my lane, and slowing down at every intersection while a line of cars grows like a tail behind me, so I’m thinking she means Sabine. Who lost her virginity in the forest, drugged out on Ruffies, by the way. But once Nona starts in with the
a life consecrated to God
, I know she’s talking about poor old Saint Agatha. The patron saint of fertility and breast cancer and all sorts of women’s issues. I get the breast cancer part (Agatha’s boobs were chopped off because she
just said no to sex
with some dude named Quinctianus), but it seems weird to me that a saint famous for guarding her virginity would be who you pray to when you want to get knocked up.

“Maybe that’s why your mother always had such a will. Like Agatha, you know?”

There’s an impatient guy in an Iroc kissing the bumper of the Lincoln. I hate that.

“She was beaten and tortured and laid on the hot coals. Everything bad. But she died a virgin,” Nona repeats, proudly.

I’m thinking that if Nona ever found out that Sabine was not only
without
virginity at her death, but also
with
child, it would just about do her in.

Finally, the chain-link fence of Holy Redeemer comes into view. I press down on the blinker stick, and the sports car guy behind me zooms around, leaving rubber on the road.

“You’re a good, careful driver,
Nipote
,” my grandmother says, patting my arm as I make my way around the potholes of the poor old parish parking lot.

While Nona’s happily installed in front of a six-pack of game sheets in Holy Redeemer’s parish hall, I make my way out to the stairwell to call Mom. She answers immediately.

“Thank God,” she says. “I was
this close
to calling the police.”

“I’m staying with Nona and Nono for a while.”

“You’re what?”

“Sorry I missed therapy.”

“Brady. Your father and I need to talk to you. There’s no excuse, of course, but he is devastated.
Dev
-astated, about the incident last night.”

“You mean when he cracked me across the face?”

“He’s staying elsewhere for a while. We all decided that until things cool down—”

“Cool down? Between who and who?” I can’t bring myself to say what I want to say, which is,
between you and your lover
.

“You need to come home, Brady.”

“Too late, Mom. Nona and Nono saw the bruise. They know, and they won’t let me come home.”

I hear Mom sigh in concert with a yelping
Bingo
from the adjoining room.

And apparently, Mom hears that too. “Where are you?”

“Look, Mom, there’s an article going to be in the paper tomorrow. Thought I’d give you a head’s up. It’s about the Cupworth Prize and they interviewed me. They might include stuff about, you know, the accident. I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t freak.”

It’s silent on the phone, and then, “Why would you even think about talking to a reporter given everything that’s going on?”

“Everything? What do you mean, everything?”

She breathes a little heavily, like she’s tugging on a boot or something and then, “OK, fine. Stay with your grandparents for now. I’ll bring a bag with your clothes by. We’ll talk later in the week.”

We hang up, and my device immediately rings again. It’s Connor. I press
decline
, turn off my phone, and join dozens of old ladies in the hall as the volunteer Knight of Columbus pulls out a little ball and calls
G 18
.