Monsoon Season (6 page)

‘All right, man. I guess I’ll see you this week, then.’

‘Yep.’

‘Later.’

I pressed the hang-up button and leaned back. I liked the version of my life that I had sold to Matt. It felt good thinking about Riley coming home from work. Tossing her purse on the kitchen table and collapsing on the couch next to me. The way she would lean her head on my shoulder when she was tired. I’d kiss her forehead and we’d talk about how the day had been. I’d tell her about my mom’s dinner and we’d compare our work schedules for that week. She was the first girl I’d been with who didn’t mind spending time with my family. She’d help my mom in the kitchen while Matt and I sat on the patio with our beers. Their laughter would float out of the window, filling the yard. Even Amy liked her, which was a first. They’d talk about books and boys, their heads together, voices low.

I kept watching the door.

Gracie was on the porch, wagging her tail. My dad was talking to her as he turned the steaks on the grill. Flames burst up, then settled. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He talked puppy nonsense in a low voice.

I put the steak knives on the right, blades in. Setting the table had always been my job growing up. Whenever I was mad at my older brother, I used to lay his knife with the blade out. Passive aggressive. Nothing had ever come of it.

My mom walked quickly down the hallway carrying a pot in each hand. I set out the pot holders just in time. The small pot held green peas, the medium one mashed potatoes.

‘You keeping an eye on mine?’ she called out to the porch. She liked her bacon burned, her steak rare.

He didn’t answer, just came in with it on a plate. He put it on the table, made a cut into the middle, and held it apart with fork and knife so she could see the red fleshy centre.

‘How’s that?’ he asked, as the steak bled.

She nodded. ‘Just right.’ She patted him on the back, between the shoulders. He slid the steak onto her plate and returned to the porch. Gracie followed, tail wagging, hopeful.

My mom sat down across from me and scooped some mashed potatoes. Two scoops for my dad. She handed the pot to me and reached for the peas. They rolled around in the steak juices on her plate, into the potatoes on his. She hesitated one spoonful before the pot was empty and offered it to me, smiling.

‘No, thanks,’ I answered, and she spooned the last of the peas for him.

My dad came in with Gracie close on his heels. He set a plate in front of me and cut it for my inspection. It was pink in the middle, bloodless.

I shrugged. ‘Looks good to me.’

He shut the door to the porch. ‘Go lie down,’ he said to Gracie, and she did. He took his seat, poured himself a glass of red wine. The yellow sticker on the bottle said ‘$8.99’.

I’d made it through the week without revealing too much, but weekends were treacherous. Too many opportunities for conversation.

‘Sure was hot today,’ my mom said, brushing her dark hair off her forehead, behind her ear.

‘Nothing like the heat in Tucson, I’m sure,’ my dad said, through a mouthful of potato.

I nodded. My stomach tightened. ‘We don’t have mosquitoes like this, though.’

‘They’ve been just brutal this year,’ my mom said.

‘It’s all the water and humidity,’ my dad explained. ‘Tucson’s heat is a dry heat.’

I nodded again. My glass of water was perspiring on the table.

‘My oven’s a dry heat, too,’ my mom said.

My dad smiled into his plate.

The phone rang and my mom pushed her chair back from the table.

‘Let the machine get it,’ my dad mumbled, but she was already walking down the hallway. He shook his head, and stuffed a forkful of peas into his mouth.

‘It’s Ben,’ she said, holding the phone out to me.

The surprise I felt was illogical. I had been home for a week, and with every day that passed, it had become easier to believe that I had simply vanished from that other world.

I took the phone from her and smiled. ‘I’ll just take it in my room.’

I think she was trying to figure me out by watching my face.

‘How did you get this number?’ I asked, keeping my voice low as I closed my bedroom door.

‘Riley.’

He said my name. He said it softly the way he used to whisper it into my ear when we were making love. I felt my jaw loosen and I couldn’t talk over the lump in my throat. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

‘I found this number on the phone bill,’ he said finally, as if I’d been waiting for an answer.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

‘I miss you,’ he said.

I shrugged to myself. ‘I miss you too.’

‘Then come home.’

‘I can’t, Ben. I can’t.’

‘But I love you. I’m sorry.’ There was another long pause as he waited for a reply I didn’t have. ‘Just tell me what to do.’

‘There’s nothing to do.’

‘Don’t say that.’ His voice was thick and seemed to come from a part of his throat I wasn’t familiar with. ‘I don’t believe that. There’s always something you can do. Riley.’ He took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds before continuing. ‘Riley, I love you. You can’t just give up on me. Please. Don’t you love me?’

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my forehead into the palm of my free hand. ‘Don’t ask me that. It’s not fair and it doesn’t matter.’

‘How can you say that?’

My fingers and thumb applied pressure to my temples. ‘You know why I left. I’m not going to argue with you about it. I wish you weren’t someone I had to protect myself from.’

‘Just give me another chance.’

‘I’m hanging up now.’

‘Wait.’

‘Goodbye.’

I left the phone off the hook, took a deep breath, and returned to the dining room.

I stood in the restaurant parking lot when my shift was over. Tomorrow was Independence Day and the sun had been sleeping for hours. Since monsoon season hadn’t yet begun, the nights were as warm as the days. The pavement trapped the heat in all afternoon and released it into the air after dark. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. There was nowhere to sit and I’d been on my feet all day.

Ben pulled up about twenty minutes late. I climbed into the car. It seemed to take all the energy I had left to pull the door closed behind me. Ben started to slide his hand up my thigh and under my skirt. I swatted him away and turned up the AC so that it blew my hair wildly.

‘Cranky,’ he accused, pulling the car out onto the main road with a slight squeal of tyres.

‘You’re late.’ I sighed, leaning my head back and closing my eyes.

‘Yeah. I met the guys after work for a beer.’

I raised my eyelids halfway and looked at him without turning my head. ‘A beer?’

He smirked. ‘A few beers,’ he corrected.

I sat up. I could smell the alcohol in the car now. I could see the flush of his cheeks. ‘You’re drunk?’

‘Don’t start,’ he snapped.

We were silent the rest of the way home. All I could think about was that I was supposed to have got my period six days ago. During the month we’d been broken up, I’d been less than religious about my pill taking. I had wanted to talk to Ben about it but couldn’t seem to find the words. For days, every time I sat on the toilet, I checked the toilet paper for signs that the bleeding had started. It seemed like the First Response ad played during every commercial break, just to taunt me.

I gripped the handle on the car door as we cut someone off. They honked and Ben gave them the finger. I felt like being afraid for my life might be the least of my worries.

I imagined dying in the wreck. (Maybe Ben would live. Don’t the drunk drivers always survive?) After the autopsy, they’d discover I had been pregnant and everyone would be even more devastated. Do they do autopsies after car accidents? Maybe no one would ever have to know.

They’d send my body back to Massachusetts and some priest I’d never met would stand by my casket, talking about me to a church full of people who were supposed to actually know me.

I kicked off my shoes as we walked through the door.

‘So how long do I get the silent treatment?’ Ben asked, throwing his arms into the air in an exaggerated gesture of annoyance.

‘This isn’t the silent treatment. I just have nothing to say to you. I’m disgusted by you right now.’

‘Why do you have to make such a big deal out of it? I’m fine to drive. I know how much I can handle.’

‘Yeah. I imagine that’s what every drunk driver says right before they kill someone.’

‘Oh, man. You are such a drama queen!’ He slapped his thighs and laughed.

‘What? Fuck you, Ben. Excuse me if I don’t like being trapped in a car with a drunk.’

‘Take the bus next time, then.’

‘You know what? If I’d known you’d be driving drunk, I would have.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine? You’re an asshole.’ I turned to walk away.

‘Watch your mouth.’

I turned back. ‘Don’t tell me to watch my mouth. If you act like an asshole, be prepared to be called an asshole!’

‘Then be prepared to be called a bitch,
bitch
,’ he sneered.

It was feeling just like a fight I’d had with my brother in high school.

‘You have no right to be pissed at me,’ I said, pointing a finger at him. ‘You’re the one behaving like an alcoholic. Do you want to turn into your father?’

The back of his hand crashed into the side of my face so fast. I didn’t have time to duck. I fell to the floor, more from shock than from the impact, I think. My knees buckled beneath me and I slumped to one side, the base of my left palm pounding into the carpet and keeping me from falling on my face.

I looked at him with my mouth open, mutely. I didn’t cry. He rubbed both of his hands over his face as if to erase the image of me. I was still there staring at him when he looked again.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he yelled, grabbing his car keys and dashing toward the door. He turned back to me, motionless on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said again, yanking the door open and leaving in a rush.

I sat there for a while, my face throbbing. My teeth had sliced into the flesh inside my mouth. I spat blood into my hand and stared at it. I got up finally, noting the runs in my nylons, and went to the sink to clean up.

I tore out of the apartment that night, my keys pressed sharply in my fist. My first thought was to drive up the Catalina Highway toward Mount Lemmon but they had stopped letting cars up since the fire. I watched it smoke as I went up Interstate 10 and got off at the exit for Tangerine, driving away from the strip malls and apartment complexes. The land got really flat except for the house trailers and saguaros.

There was nowhere I could go. I couldn’t go home to Riley. The look in her eyes was still making me retch. I couldn’t go to my mother’s. What would I say?

When I was six years old, she’d packed each of us a suitcase and piled us into the station wagon without a word about where we were going. We’d spent several months in a two-bedroom ranch with my grandparents. The four of us shared the bedroom my mother had grown up in. Her dresser was still covered with trophies from spelling bees and science fairs. Matt had a sleeping-bag on the floor. Amy slept in a large white crib against the wall. My mom and I shared the twin bed and a scratchy blue blanket. She’d hold me against her body until she fell asleep, murmuring into my hair.

I pulled onto the dirt shoulder, rolled the windows down and turned off the engine. It was too hot to think or to sleep so I leaned back and watched the mountain burning in the distance, wishing I had a cigarette.

It had to have been her maternal antennae sensing something was wrong. That was why she kept calling, the lilt of her voice getting just a bit edgier with each unreturned message. The guilt weighed on me: making her worry just added to my list of sins. I had no excuse; I certainly wasn’t busy. The only reason I left the apartment was to get more cigarettes.

Amy was in the kitchen when I got to the house. I could see her through the window as I let myself in at the front door. She looked up from the sandwich she was making and scrunched up her face. ‘You look like shit,’ she said, tossing a knife into the sink and returning the mayonnaise to the refrigerator.

‘Thanks.’ I sat at the kitchen table and took off my sun -glasses.

Amy set down her sandwich and sat across from me. She had recently chopped off her blonde hair. It now ended abruptly at her chin. She left dark red lipstick marks on the white bread of her sandwich. Her eyes were lined in black. Riley never wore a lot of makeup. She had a little pot of lip-gloss she applied with her finger. She always tasted like raspberries.

‘So what’s wrong with you?’ she asked casually. She was trying to pretend she didn’t really care. It was sweet.

‘Nothing. How’s school?’ I rubbed my hand across my week-old stubble.

Amy tilted her head and her brow wrinkled. ‘It’s summer, Ben.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said quickly, rolling my eyes. ‘How were your grades?’

She shrugged. ‘I did okay. I got a C in Statistics, but the rest were As and Bs.’

‘Figured out your major yet?’

She groaned. ‘Let’s talk about something else. How’s Riley?’