Love in the Time of Cynicism (6 page)

Mom leads me around, showing off merchandise she thinks would look good on me until the shady attendants return bearing armfuls of clothes in every color and fabric. God, I’ve never seen so much material in my life. They hands the clothes off to mom, who goes over them with a perceptive eye and sorts them into two piles – love and hate. There is no in-between. When she’s finished, she hands the love pile back to the attendant and ushers me away.

I go with whichever woman is leading me around at this point and head to the dressing suits (they’re not called rooms in fancy salons because they’re bigger than my old kitchen). She asks me to change into every garment and come out then she makes notes to herself and puts pins where they need to go. It’s a quiet process where the only speaking is either ‘Oh my god if I had a body like yours’ statements or ‘We just need to do small adjustments here’ with a quick jab to the area of interest.

Basically, the entire thing is so much fun I want to claw my eyes out with a hanger.

When we leave the last boutique (and the day is half over), I’m dragging approximately thirty garment bags of clothes home to a closet that needs to be cleaned out. Worse, when we return home, mom makes me twirl around in a bunch of dresses and have my nails painted, the works. The final tally: enough shirts and blouses to clothe every struggling fashion student in New York, enough dresses to make a Disney princess drool, and enough pairs of tights to give away to the cast of every production of
The Sound of Music
ever made.

Later on, I’m sitting in my bedroom finishing up some mind-numbing homework when Michael knocks on my door. His head pokes around the doorframe as he asks, “Del? Can I come in?” His voice is saccharine sweet and sounds like molasses running down my walls.

I shrug. He enters and sits himself on my bed like there’s nothing going on between us right now and this is just a normal daddy/daughter talk.

“Alright, kiddo, it’s time for us to have a good-ole-fashioned conversation. Mano a…woman-o.”

Kiddo? Woman-o?
Sighing heavily and with unbridled irritation, I shut my astronomy book and swivel in my chair to face him. “What’s up?”

“I want to make something very clear.” He pauses and puts on his best dad-of-the-year face and throws in serious-macho-man voice for shits and giggles. “Until we have the baby, you need to be on your best behavior. I heard about your pep talk with your mom, and I know it was utter bullshit.”

I blink, feigning childish shock. “What could you possibly mean,
daddy
? Why wouldn’t I be über-pumped to have another perfect sibling related to you?”

Michael sighs almost as heavily as I do. “Listen, Del, I understand your perspective here. Both my parents are divorcees and I’ve got a few half-siblings myself. But if this pregnancy is going to go well and we’re going to have a healthy baby – and no matter how much you hate this, you can’t wish ill on an innocent child – you need to cooperate. When you speak to me, I expect you to call me dad and to respect me like I respect you. For your mother’s sake. And you’re grounded. Three weeks minimum with a potential for good behavior probation.”

Not in the mood to argue with him, I nod. “Fine.”

“I need more than that. Promise me you’ll be good, that you won’t see that boy again and you’ll do everything asked of you.”

“I swear on my real dad’s grave I won’t see Rhett again and will do everything you ask,” I say through clenched teeth and eyes begging to roll.

Then he leaves, and I realize how quickly I’m going to break that promise.

Because there’s a tapping on my window.

Please no
.

It’s got to be Rhett. Who else would show up in my backyard at (I check the clock) 11:29 at night?

I ignore the sound, incessant and just loud enough to annoy the crap out of me. My pen drifts across the pages of my astronomy work, them my calc work, and the tapping goes on and on and on. Constantly the metallic clank of
something
against my window grates on my brain. Every knock drills at my thoughts until I’m no longer writing but clutching my red pen between white knuckles and waiting for it to stop all the while praying it doesn’t.

Because I know it’s him. And, despite having promised
less than ten minutes ago
that I would stay the hell away from Rhett and thinking this very day that he’s trouble and an outsider and nothing like my family, he’s alluring. A speck of brightness on a sheet of black. A moment of color.

So, without any real conscious thought, I’m standing up because I know it’s him and the tug in that direction is impossible to resist. It’s not like he’s going to be right outside the window – I live on the third floor, after all – so what’s the harm in seeing him, if only for a moment? It’s not like things could get any worse between us after last night.

I push the curtain wide open and there he is. A grimace is slapped across his tanned face and he wears a sweatshirt even though sticky Texas heat still clings to the September air.

Before he can speak I shout down, “What the
hell
are you doing here?” My previous calm and intrigue vanish at the sight of him as I relive everything I felt last night – from the anxious terror of knowing about my mom’s baby to the anger at Rhett thinking he needed to protect me after only just having met me. It comes back in a flood and my pale face flushes beet red. Hopefully he can’t see it in the dark.

“Cordelia Kane!” He’s all smiles now. Though his face is distorted by how the light spills out my window, I can hear the laughter in his voice; it’s strained, like he’s trying too hard to sound happy. “I wanted to apologize for my terribly protective behavior last night; I should’ve remembered after the jacket incident that you aren’t a fan of chivalry.”

I try to hide my instant smile, still unsure whether or not he can see and how much I care. “That all?”

Rhett pauses for a moment, shocked I let him go on even this long. “Actually, I wanted to invite you out for breakfast tomorrow morning. As an extended apology.”

I almost consider his offer for a moment. Then, realizing the time, I shout back. “Before school? As in six hours from right now?”

“First period doesn’t start until seven forty-five and breakfast is up the street from school, assuming you go to Lightfoot as well.”

I think of lying to him – saying I go to the same prissy private school as Amanda – but then the issue of not knowing whether or not we’ll have classes together (as there are only 600 or so kids at Lightfoot, we probably will) and worrying he’ll somehow catch me in the lie, I reply, “Fine. What’s the address?”

Rhett Punches the air triumphantly like Judd Nelson at the end of
The Breakfast Club
and laughs, “47 Eleora!”

Despite the lovely name, I know for a fact nobody would let me drive a car there, not even Trent. It’s on what mother dearest would call the classless side of town and what Trent would call the wrong side of the tracks; that alone makes me nervous.

Before I can respond, there’s a knock on my door.
Shit
. Whoever it is, they’re going to be pissed I’m up so late on a school night. I motion to Rhett to stay there for a second then go into my position. If it’s mom or Michael or even Amanda, the knock is just a warning before marching right on in. So I whip out my contacts, put my glasses on crooked, mess up my hair, turn on the television in the corner, and flop onto my already messy bed.

Then mom shuffles in, silk embroidered bathrobe tied firmly around her waist. Late at night, it’s still possible to see traces of who she was before Michael: her messy hair, glasses falling down her nose, sleep sewn like the thread of her fancy robe into her barely showing wrinkles. She asks quietly, “Who are you talking to this late at night? I thought I heard voices.”

“I was just watching TV, mom. Chill.” It’s a bullshit teenager response is there ever was one, but there’s no backing out now. “Some cheesy as hell eighties movie where a boy throws rocks at a girl’s window to get her attention.”

Mom, as usual, buys it immediately. She’d rather get back to her beauty rest than believe her daughter is doing something requiring parenting. “Language, missy,” she corrects lightly, then kisses my head and returns to her own room.

The second she’s out the door and safely down the hall, I vault off my bed so fast an Olympian would be impressed and lean as far as I can out my window to hiss, “Get out of here; you woke my mom up.”

He laughs and hollers even louder, “Only if you swear to come tomorrow, seven sharp!”

I tilt farther out the window, resting my weight almost solely on my awkwardly angled arms, and ask barely loud enough for either of us to hear, “Why do you care so much?”

Then he’s running off into the dark and I’m alone in my bedroom with my thoughts.

So I go to sleep.

Chapter Four – Breakfast at Tressler’s

My alarm clock rings forty five minutes early at five o’clock (ugh) in order to give me enough time to contort my body into one of mom’s new clothing picks and try to make myself look presentable to have breakfast with Rhett. It’s an odd balance trying to go through my old clothes and the new ones to find something suitable for someone as strange and outstanding as Rhett. Something that says ‘I’m not quite sure how to feel about you’ and ‘I sort of really like the idea of eating breakfast with you’ at the same time. Today’s hotter than yesterday – peaking at ninety on the third day of ‘fall’ – leading me to settle on a pair of near threadbare, dyed and bleached too many times to count, studded in weird places denim shorts with a painfully contrasted belted white blouse my mother loves. Trying to please everyone has turned me into a mismatched nightmare. Somehow, though, it all fits together once I tug on my ratty old skate shoes (which belonged to Trent before puberty due to my size 10 ½) and put in a dragon shaped ear cuff.

I shove the textbooks still laying on my desk into my rucksack, sling the bag over my shoulder, and trot downstairs to find Trent’s keys. I’ve decided, since Trent’s unemployed and functionally useless, I’m going to take his truck with or without permission. It’s early enough nobody will know I’m gone and I’ll have it back at the end of the day, probably before he even gets out of bed.

A conflict arises once I’m in the kitchen searching the key bowl. Trent’s – with the one googly eye stuck on the back to identify the owner – isn’t there. I nearly groan at the thought of going into my brother’s room to search for his keys while he sleeps. Surely his space is a wasteland of unwashed clothes and half-eaten food and generally unpleasant to enter; I haven’t been there since we moved in with Michael and his family a few years back and the idea doesn’t appeal to me.

Maybe this is a sign from God telling me not to go to Rhett’s place. On the other hand maybe it’s a sign asking my brother not to get so wasted late at night he can’t even drop his keys in the bowl. Signs are tricky to read, especially this early in the morning.

Nonetheless, I head back up the steps and delicately turn the handle of my brother’s door. Thank god he doesn’t take the time to lock up when hauling himself back into bed at two. It’s pitch black in there, like the rest of the house, but the layout is identical to mine so I manage to make it to his desk, where I feel around a pile of clutter until my fingers land on the familiar shape of the key.

Keys in hand, I shut the door and dash down the steps, grab my blue bag off the floor and make sure it’s got everything I need inside; I’m in the truck before anyone else wakes up and it isn’t until I’ve got the keys jangling in the ignition that I catch Amanda’s eyes in the front window. She normally wakes up a good half hour later than me; my extra noise must’ve woken her early.

I curse myself as she stares at me, mischievous glint in her eyes as she thinks of the many ways to ruin my life by telling mom or Michael I was up early for God knows why to see God knows who. Meeting her gaze with force – probably sleep deprivation clouding my judgment as usual – I drive off.

Though I’ve never been to the address, I’ve passed it about a thousand times. Eleora, ironically, is the street my grandiose public school is on. So, while I drive, my mind autopilots in that direction while bursting with thoughts about Rhett. I have
no idea
what to say to him about anything and my mind is drawing a blank when I give our breakfast meeting any thought.

So I shut off. Until I reach number 47, my brain goes on with random chatter. But when the car shudders to a stop, my thoughts shut off completely and I can’t help but take in what’s in front of me.

The house is an oxymoron. While it’s the smallest house I’ve seen in this part of town, with only two floors compared to my split level resting at the end of the cracked sidewalk, it’s also the friendliest. Multicolored plastic kiddy toys are strewn haphazardly across the patchy lawn, some smashing the delightfully jumbled, carefully tended flower garden of roses and daises and pansies and tulips and any flower imaginable.  The disarray of color is deafening as the sun begins its ascent. Already golden hues seep over the Texan landscape and set the world on fire, and coupled with the faded yellow of the small house and the drops of dew on the dying grass, this may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Something wells up inside me as I stand there staring at this place where Rhett must live. Imagining him playing with little siblings who look like tiny clones of him, laughing and shouting and living a life like I never got to have because of my crazy mother. The feeling is like a desperate, grasping sadness mingled with inexplicable joy at knowing there are still children playing, still older brothers pushing on swings, still parents who care more about their children than themselves.