Bittersweet (8 page)

Her mother’s eyes slipped to slits and she stood. “You’re sorry? Have you seen that house? Their life?” She laughed a laugh that wasn’t quite real. “My mother spent a lifetime wrecking her body. Now she’s old, dizzy, and can’t even afford a marker for her grave.” Edy’s mother went unusually still at this. “A woman can never rob herself of independence.”

At this, she strode to the door, froze, and turned to face them, gaze distant.

“Are the two of you sexually active?” Edy’s mother said.

Hassan blinked. “Uh … we, uh.”

“Yes,” Edy said.

Hassan vaulted her an incredulous look. She would have laughed had they not been facing a firing squad.

But this was her mom. And as the Brits liked to say, “truth willed out” where she was concerned. Her mom had the harshest of candor, yeah, but she dealt in facts. She asked a question and dealt with the answer. How she dealt with that answer, well, was another issue.

“You’ve used protection?” her mother pressed. “Every time?”

Okay. What was all this ‘every time’ business? It rushed heat of the worst sort under Edy’s skin, threatening to drown her in it. There’d been the one time, their first time, and they’d been shaking like crazy. Sure, they’d flirted and kissed but the idea of sex still her flushed and embarrassed.

“Do we need to discuss the perils of teen pregnancy?” Edy’s mother demanded.

“No,” Hassan blurted. “We know them and we used protection.” His look of incredulity amplified.

Edy had never pictured him as terrified of her mother. He was terrified just now.

“You’ll be getting birth control,” her mother said. “While you, Hassan, are marching down the hall and into the guest room. Stay there if you know what’s good for you.”

“I know what’s good for me,” he returned automatically.

A smile curled her mother’s lips. “See there. Don’t you try and charm me after slipping in through the bedroom window. I know you’ve been doing it for years, but it has an altogether different ring now, doesn’t it? And Rani here has been worried about a kiss.” She laughed.

Edy’s mother leaned against the doorframe, hair snagging on wood, spine curving in a dramatic arc. How much wine had she drunk?

“She talked to you?” Hassan demanded. “About us kissing?”

Edy’s mother stared as if he were dumb. “It’s what I said, isn’t it? Anyway, she wanted to go to your father. By that time the letter had come from the Patriots. I persuaded her that in life, as in politics, a rush to action often ends in folly.”

“And she bought that?” Hassan blurted.

Her gaze slashed to him. “People buy what I sell. End of story.”

Edy’s mother straightened enough for a stretch. “Time’s up, Hassan. Let’s head for the guest room.”

No. She couldn’t walk out like that, not after dousing Edy in so many conflicting emotions. Did her mother even realize the magnitude of what she had done for them by convincing Rani to keep quiet? Or what about the confusion it caused? Did she understand that? Nothing came from Edy’s mother without supreme forethought and a price attached. This gift—and she hesitated to call it that—came with festering horns attached.

“Why did you do it?” Edy blurted. “Why did you convince Rani not to talk?” Unlike everyone else in her mother’s life, Edy had nothing to barter with—no valuables she couldn’t simply confiscate. In the plainest language possible, Rebecca Phelps had no need to keep her daughter’s secrets.

A while passed before her mother sighed. “Listen to me, Edith. I never bet against my own horse. Not even when it’s losing.” She gave Edy a sympathetic once over. “Now go to bed. Goodnight.”     

Day one back at school with everything the same and yet everything different. Winter held as a frostbitten reminder that weeks instead of months had passed since the start of holiday break and Edy, having prepped herself, counted on bold, gaping stares and whispers twice as loud, whispers twice as urgent. “What could they possibly say?” Hassan had asked her with that faux ease of his. It had a touch of hope in it if nothing else. What he’d meant to say was, “What in the world are they gonna say?” To which she had no earthly answer. There’d be speculating bold as a trumpet’s blare with snippets of rumor barely flirting with truth. And the truth was wild enough, of course. But who could know it with her mom working overtime, making use of both her power and prestige? Hell, they were just kids. South End High would be South End High. Which meant they’d plug in what they didn’t know. Edy wouldn’t let a few ‘hellos’ at a party fool her.

She got the inaugural greeting at school.

“Total slut … all these boyfriends. Reggie, Hassan, Wyatt.”

“Wyatt, really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. How else do you explain him being in her house so late?”

“I don’t know. It’s just … Wyatt?”

“The shooter was aiming for Edy, you know.”

“Really? Why?”

On and on it went. Edy found that there were as many people to question the one hundred versions of what happened as there were those to spread the tales. When Hassan and the twins asked if she wanted them to handle the yapping mouths, which kind of sounded Mafioso given the circumstances, she politely declined. The new and hardened part of her welcomed a chance to face the onslaught of wagging mouths and prove herself tough enough to endure. 

A new faction broke free from the gossipers early on. At first they stared, watchful, studious to Edy’s every motion and conversation, as if hopeful of picking up on a tidbit of meaningfulness. After her entrance to the lunch room, the bolder ones began asking, first how she was, then what it was like to fight off Reggie. The admiration in their voices rang clear. She heard the wonder and the open morbidity. Once the question was asked, everyone fell to her like flies on honeyed pakhana.

It took Hassan to see her and come work a bit of crowd control so she could grab a lunch she didn’t want, because she had none of Rani’s cooking. She took a seat at the “it” table, where they ventured with only one Reggie Knight question before Hassan warned them to shut the hell up.

So that was her day.

It wasn't until Edy came home from school and read the note from her dad that she realized some very strange territory was about to be embarked on.

Edy,

Forgive me for the hurried leave, but we wound up needing to depart earlier than expected. I know you'll be in capable hands next door, even if this is a difficult time. Don’t hesitate to talk to Rani if you need to. Of course, make sure to get your dinners there, too. Anytime you feel like the house is too much, given everything that’s happened, you can always stay next door. In fact, Ali and I would prefer if you did, but I know how independent teens can be. I didn’t want to rob you of the choice. Whatever you decide, Rani knows to set up the guestroom for you should you want it. Expect your mother to be in and out.

Dad

Edy stared at the paper forever, paper that danced under gusts of central heating currents. She stood in the hull of a darkened house, the sole inhabitant post-apocalypse. Had she been abandoned? It felt like it. Had she been left to fend for herself? Sort of. Going to Rani for everyday care and shelter weren’t within her realm of possibilities. That left Edy in a hollowed out home still sticky from crime tape.

She could make do. She would have to.

So, home alone. An empty house. The silver screen said she should dial fifty friends, set her house on fire, and do keg stands in a loose fitting bikini.

Eh, she’d settle for OJ out the jug and a homework binge. Being an AP juggernaut came with responsibilities, after all, as a few of the teachers tut tutted over her while still giving out their assignments. No matter, she’d kill the work and raid the fridge for roast beef, old turkey, wilted lettuce, whatever. What Edy wouldn’t do was drag a bowl and spoon over to the Pradhans Charles Dickens-style and beg up on a little thin soup with a bit of crusty bread.

The homework refused to be done. Edy told herself she was a capable girl, but still it wouldn’t listen. She moved on to thoughts of independent living and wondered at the feasibility of it. She had money of her own; well, a credit card or three. The bills would’ve been paid. She could grocery shop, she supposed, but that would tip her dad off that something was amiss at home. A call to her mother would alleviate the food shortage, if not the emptiness of the house. The second she thought of interrupting her mother’s campaign stumping to wave for a little attention, Edy’s fast souring stomach promptly dismissed it. How long would it take her mother to notice that her kid had no food to eat? Better still, would she ever?

Following a dig through the fridge that actually did turn up wilted lettuce, Edy went on the hunt for takeout menus. She’d order Chinese, which would send her enough to hold her over for that night and the next, and at least that way she’d feel like she had a semblance of a plan.

Just not a very good one.

She sat at the kitchen table, head bowed over her history text when banging sounded at the door.

Banging with the first knock? Talk about rude. Well, maybe the restaurant was short staffed and the deliverer had a lot of drop offs to make. Still, denting her door in was going to give him a whole new set of problems.

Edy threw the door open to face Hassan.

His chest was a mold of power rising and falling in jagged breaths. God, that shirt he wore snagged tight just where it should.

“Edy, come on. Let’s grab dinner out tonight.”

His eyes were darting and over bright, while a lone hand massaged his neck rough. Behind him, a gray Nissan pulled up before a slight Asian guy jumped out. He made it up the walkway while bumping his head and whistling a tune. Once close enough, Edy recognized it as the latest Beyoncé hit.

“Excuse me,” she said to Hassan. “But I have dinner. Thanks.”

A few minutes later, they sat at her kitchen table splitting her sweet and sour chicken.

“It’s not that she doesn’t want you to come over,” he said. “Because she’d never say that.” He took way too much interest in stabbing his pork fried rice. “It’s just that the two of us weren’t getting along today. I didn’t want you to see that.”

“Because I’ve never seen you disagree with your mom?” Edy said.

His face pinched.

“It’s okay, Hassan. Really. I know what’s happening. Stop trying to protect me. I love you for it, but it is what it is. I’ll adapt. We’ll adapt.”

“Will we?” he said and looked rebuked the moment Edy’s head snapped up.

“Yeah,” she said. “Of course.”

Did she make too much of him looking away?

Maybe.

The days trekked on, with them reaching a silent agreement. Rani cooked and Hassan delivered meals—dinner mostly. Edy made due with cereal for breakfast or leftovers. In that way they reached an impasse. Her mom dropped in and out, mostly out, as her senate race became unexpectedly tighter. After all, Massachusetts was a Democrats’ state and no Republican had any business being competitive there. But it had happened before. So her mom campaigned and fundraised and had luncheon after luncheon endlessly, too many with Cam at her side. Meanwhile, no word had come from her father. Not even an email. Edy had no idea what country he was in or even if he had left their country yet. She told herself he was doing important work. She told herself that soon enough she’d be an adult, on her own, and it would always be like this, not knowing where her parents were. She was provided for, while children in the Congo starved. Everything else, all the contrived necessities as her mother once put it, were weaknesses a foe could exploit.

Edy’s eyes flew open and a gust of glacial wind knocked the air from her lungs so she expelled it in a single puff of smoke.

Ice.

It coated the floor. It was the floor. She looked up to find it her prison.

On unsteady feet Edy eased up to a crouch, her hand low and pointed to the ground. A look straight up revealed the sort of mega florescent lights reserved for school.

But no windows. Not anywhere.

A tendril of concern unfurled within her. Was she in a freezer of some sort? That made absolutely no sense. They didn’t even own a deep freezer at home; deep freezers were for people committed to cooking. Rani owned a deep freezer, but it was the sort that you lifted and stuck your head in. She kept legs of lamb and whole chickens locked in there, not people who wandered off.

The Dysons had a walk-in freezer, but this wasn’t it. This stretched on both higher and longer than the one they kept at home.

Plus, Edy couldn’t find a door.

Fear clawed at her, but she shoved it back. She faced no immediate threat here. Yeah, the cold bit at her but she could think and reason. So, she’d think this thing through.

Edy hugged herself and began to pace, slow, then with building momentum. A shot of the foot and a slip later had her head slamming hard on ice. Her skull shrieked with pain. The crying she heard wasn’t her own.

“Wyatt?” she said eventually.

Snow began to fall. Edy stared straight up at the iced roof and saw no opening, no natural explanation. Ice shavings. Faux snow. Christmas cheer, maybe.

A bark of a cough pierced the air and clung in so much silence. Another followed like a wet splat and by the third, Edy found her feet.

“Wyatt?” she choked out. Affirmation came in a cough. “Please! Wyatt, where are you? I can help you. I—I know I can.”

Shivers racked her body while her heart thumped out a marathon. Somewhere in her icebox was a boy who’d been shot. Was that right? Was that remotely right? Her brain trudged through numbness.

She needed to get to him. She needed to know how to get to him to … to end his suffering. No, not that. Was he beyond help? Was that her fault? Whatever led her, memory, intuition, straight logic, grew weaker with each moment she stood there.  

“Wyatt,” Edy said. “Tell me where you are.”

Could he hear her? Was he still capable of responding? A rasp of wheezing drifted over.

Edy knew that sound and feared it. She bit her lip and reeled back the tears. “Wyatt?”

Heavy hands grabbed her from behind. She went wild, arms and legs pitching for her life.

“Edy! Edy, stop it!” The command came sharp, disembodied, warped.

“Wyatt, help me!” Edy screamed, head swiveling for a sign of help, for a sign of him.

The arms disappeared in a shock of emptiness. Edy gasped and opened her eyes.

She stared up at Hassan.

“You’ll be late for school if you don’t hurry,” he said and glared down at her, Adam’s apple dipping. Hassan opened his mouth as if to say more, shut it, and evaporated.

No. Edy swiped at her cobwebbed mind and fought to separate dream from reality.

“Hassan?” she ventured and got a slammed door in response. “Hassan? Come on, wait up!” Nothing.

In the shower, with the comfort of hot water and creamy suds, Edy’s mind kicked up a notch. She’d always heard of people who could drop into a dream and call b.s. on sight. Her dad, ever the ultra rational soul, was one of those people. All it took, according to him, was a once over of his surroundings. From there he’d deduct the likelihood of certain circumstances existing. Low likelihood equaled high probability of dreaming and therefore time to pinch oneself awake. Simple.

Why hadn’t Edy pinched herself awake?

She imagined Hassan’s jade-spoked and fire lit eyes staring back at her, pissed beyond all earthly redemption. She’d yelled ‘Wyatt’ first because she’d been trying to help him, second because she’d needed help herself. But what had that sounded and felt like to Hassan with his arms around her as she screamed for another guy? Why did other guy have to be Wyatt?

Edy’s head thudded against the back shower wall, her backside punished with cold tile. She watched as water chased the suds from her body in a whirl down the drain. The measure of the tiles, the pattern of the shower curtain, staring them down gave her no clue how to fix this.

She found Hassan at the kitchen table staring at his clasped hands in the dark. Thin streams of sunlight broke through to illuminate the room only just.

“Ready?” he said.

Edy hesitated. “Yeah, but Hassan—”

“Not now, Edy. Let’s just…” He looked at her and then away, as if the sight of Edy pained him.

What did he think? The worst of her? That she’d been in the throes of some hot dream about Wyatt? That he’d caught her enjoying herself, living vicariously, or worse, remembering?

He had to know better.

“It was a nightmare, Hassan. You know do that, don’t you? You scared the crap out of me when you grabbed me,” she said.

Seconds ticked by to the thrum of her heartbeat. He said nothing and she waited.

“Why would you call for Wyatt to help you? Even in a nightmare. You’d call him?” Pain slashed his every word. The hands that he studied became fists.

Edy pulled out the chair across from him and set her backpack on the floor. They could be nothing but late at this point, but she couldn’t fathom going to school with this between them. With Wyatt back between them. It had to be fixed. Now. Yet, they had no time. No time until Rani looked out the window and saw his Mustang sitting in the drive. No time before she came to Edy’s house and made a bad problem infinitely worse.

“Please listen to me,” Edy said and placed a hand over one of his fists. She counted it a victory when he clenched, but didn’t pull away. “I was trapped in an ice box freezing to death. I listened to Wyatt dying a second time.” She cleared her throat and paused long enough to reign in an anguish she didn’t permit herself to feel. “Then,” Edy said calmly. “I thought I was being attacked. I screamed for the only other person I knew was there.”

Hassan stared at her. He stared at her for an unblinking infinity before dropping his gaze. “He shows up sometimes,” he said. “In my dreams. Always dying and reaching out for me. I don’t …” Emotion clogged his throat, holding back words he might not deliver. “I don’t know if I’ll help him in the dreams. The question is always there.” He looked past Edy to a point on the floor. He rubbed his face tiredly and exhaled. “He haunts me.”

Edy rose, rounded the table, and squeeze him from behind. She didn’t have the right words. She didn’t have any words, but she knew they could be there for each other instead.

“We should get to school,” Hassan said.

“Uh yeah.” Edy rose when he didn’t. Her thoughts were with Rani and the fallout that would follow if they stayed ten minutes, five, maybe one.

Still, she didn’t open her mouth and say, “your mother’s going to kill us if we don’t head to school.”

“Take me for a drive?” Edy said.

He woke up. “Where?”

It seemed she wasn’t the only one not feeling school that day. As far as their destination, a devilish smile played across her lips. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

“The house on the Cape,” Edy said. “It’s a two hour drive. A little less if you’re eager.”

It turned out he was eager. A two hour drive became an hour and forty minutes before the two of them rushed their rickety old clapboard, giggling and shoving at each other.

“You don’t even have a key,” Edy said as frigid sea winds bit and scraped at her face.

Still, Hassan slapped at her arms and fumbled at the lock until she dropped the keys and he beat her snatching them up.

“What!” she cried and leapt on his back. Except his back was a little higher than she recalled and the mistake left her clinging to his neck.

He crouched to accommodate her—sucker—and she took the opening to scramble all the way on. Now, it was him crying outrage and laughing as she played horsey.

“Edy,” he said and stabbed the door with the key yet again. “Last time, you may recall pissing me off when you pulled this.”

She did. She had. A vision of her bouncing in her new black swimsuit emerged. She’d beat his back and hollered, drunk with fun. He’d pitched her hard, hard enough for her to hit the bed and tumble to the floor.

“Sorry,” Edy muttered. She considered sliding off.

Hassan unlocked the front door and nudged it open with a boot.

“Sor-ry,” he mocked in a singsong voice. He stamped his feet on the welcome mat and launched in at warp speed, only to careen and pitch for walls until she screamed. At his bedroom, she resisted the wet dog way he shook her off, until she tumbled from his back in defeat.

“Confession,” he whispered and climbed atop her.

Edy swallowed and made a conscientious effort to concentrate on the ceiling, the walls, the space right above his face. She could hardly withstand him being so close. He must’ve known that by now. He must’ve sensed it. When they were all alone and close, couldn’t he feel her tremble or hear her heart race? She told herself to exhale. ‘Confession,’ he’d said. Let’s hear it.

He traced her cheek with a finger. “When you were on my back in your swimsuit, I wasn’t mad at you. I was pissed at me because I was way turned on. I, uh, had to get away from you.”

Edy grinned wide as the Gulf of Mexico and dashed on a little blushing. Yeah. She so didn’t mind this confession at all.

“And now?” she said.

“Now,” Hassan said, “I’m not afraid to say things, like, ‘I’d ride a bubble to Jupiter to get to you.’” Edy giggled as his lips brushed her neck. “Or that ‘we,’” he leaned left so that he could walk fingers from her knee up, up, up. “‘Belong together.’” His lips found her collarbone and pressed there, soft as butterfly wings. “More than sand and sea. More than sky and scrapers. More than Yankees suck.”

He dragged a hand under her shirt and across her abdomen, so her heartbeat hard and sure. Whether she flashed a grin or a grimace she couldn’t say.

“Yankees do suck,” she gasped.

“Monkey balls,” he agreed and kissed her slow, deliberately working as if to memorize the contours of her mouth.

A rap at the door interrupted them. They pulled apart in a whoosh of an inhale, eyes pinned one on the other.

“That’s no one, right? We should ignore it.” Hassan sat up, gaze eager for affirmation.

Edy wanted to give it to him. Really, she did. After all, they were visiting a shuttered, closed away second home in the off season in a town where few actually lived. Even at the height of tourist season, no one stopped by.

Yet, the second knock came just the same.

“I’ll get rid of them,” Hassan announced and jumped up. “You stay here.” Edy followed quick on his heels and ignoring his flash of impatience.

He threw open the door.

A barrel of a man stood on the stoop with a complete circle of a face. Black, raisin-like eyes sat sunken in his face, while red, sun slapped cheeks shown with his smile. “Mr. Pradhan?”

Hassan blinked. “Yeah?”

The man shifted his briefcase from side to the other before thrusting a hand forward. “Jimmy Carmichael. Pleased to meet you.”

Hassan let the hand hang there. Meanwhile, Edy’s stomach took on an oil-and-water churn. She took a step back and into the living room, groping with two thoughts, demanding discipline of a mind that wanted two directions simultaneously.

The heavy guy wiped the hand that hung on his coat, smile wilting at the corners. “Well,” he said. “In any case, I’m here for our appointment.”

“No,” Edy blurted as ‘appraiser’ and ‘appraise’ snapped lock and bolt into her brain. They were selling the house. Why would they sell the house? It belonged to them—all of them—and no one person could ruin that.

“We have to go,” Hassan announced and went back for their coats in a whirl. “We have to go,” he said again, as an apology to her, to Mr. Carmichael.

The appraiser stood on their deck watching, rotating clockwise as they moved, brows V’d in a trace of a scowl.

“We were never here! But your appointment will be here soon!” Edy called as they peeled off into the distance.