Rules for Life (11 page)

“Izzy! Hey, where are you going?” he called. When I didn't stop he came to the top of the stairs. “Iz, c'mon. Stop. I didn't do anything. No pills. Nothing, I swear.”

I started counting the steps.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven
.

“I had a few drinks, that's all.”

He'd traded drug addict for drunk and that was supposed to be okay. I didn't answer. I just kept counting in my head.
Sixteen, seventeen.

“You're a self-righteous, prissy little bitch, Izzy,” he shouted down the stairwell.

On the bottom step I stopped and looked up at him. “Anne had the baby,” I said. Then I pulled open the street door and left.

The hospital was brighter and busier in the daytime. A janitor, mopping the floor by the elevator, told me how to get back to where I'd been the night before. I was headed for the nurses' desk when I spotted Dad, slumped in a chair, in a room halfway down the corridor.

Anne was sleeping, her face pale against green sheets. Dad looked up. Everything sagged on his face and I knew. He glanced at Anne and led me back into the hallway.

“How's Anne?” I asked, keeping my voice low so I wouldn't wake her up. Maybe if I could stop him from actually saying the words it wouldn't be true.

“She'll be all right,” he said.

“When can she come home?”

“I don't know.” He sighed and his shoulders dropped. “Tomorrow, probably.”

I stared at Anne through the half-open door and I could feel Dad looking at me.

“Izzy,” he began.

“I'm sorry I went off on you before,” I said quickly. I had to keep him from saying it.

“It doesn't matter.”

I started talking again, trying to fill up all the empty spaces so he didn't have a chance to speak. “It does matter, and I'm sorry, and—”

“Stop,” he said softly. “Just stop for a minute.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him. I couldn't stop the tears. “She was too small.”

I shook my head and twisted out of his grip. I had promised Anne that everything would be all right.

“It was too soon,” he whispered. “It was just too soon.” I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to himself.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the cold yellow wall. In my mind I could see the fuzzy little baby shape from the ultrasound. Tears spilled down my face. Dad stood beside me, silent, hands jammed in his pockets.

26

Jason showed up at the hospital about an hour and a half later, showered, shaved and phony. I stayed in a chair beside Anne's bed and watched her sleep. It seemed like a better idea than beating him over the head with the stainless steel bedpan from the nightstand.

Anne came home from the hospital the next afternoon. She moved slowly and stiffly, as though every step hurt. I didn't know how to say what I needed to say. “I'm sorry” was all that finally came out.

“It wasn't your fault,” Anne said. She looked empty. All the emotion was gone from her face and her voice. “Thank you for everything you did.”

“If I can do anything for you, please just ask, okay,” I said.

She nodded.

I watched her make her way up the stairs, one at a time. Jason didn't show up at the house for another day.

I was at the kitchen counter making cinnamon toast and tea for Anne. All the hairs went up on the back of my neck— some kind of prehistoric early-warning system kicking in— before he even spoke.

“Hey, Izzy. What're you doing?” he said.

“I'm making a tray for Anne.”

I didn't turn around. I cut two slices of bread, dropped them in the toaster, brushed the crumbs into the sink and rooted in the cupboard for the cinnamon sugar. In my mind I saw myself grinding the rest of the loaf into Jason's lying, drunk's face. I was breathing hard, as though I'd been running from something.

“How is she?” he asked finally.

“About how you'd think she'd be.”

“You okay?”

I set down the knife I was holding and swung around. “Anne's not okay. Dad's not okay. I'm not okay. Why don't you ask me what you really want to know, Jason? Did I rat you out?”

“I had a couple of drinks,” he said with that I-haven't-done-anything-wrong tone I remembered from when he used to scarf whatever pills he could get his hands on. I noticed he'd shaved and gotten his hair cut. His clothes were clean—no holes. Someone had ironed his shirt. It was all part of a big put-on. I remembered that, too.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “How big was the glass?”

“Oooh, good one, Iz,” he said, smirking. “Tell me something, do you ever have fun? Or are you always Little Miss Perfect?”

“Let me see, drug addict, drunk, liar.” I made a show of counting on my fingers. “Are you always a total freaking screwup?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. “Heard it, heard it, heard it, Isabelle. For once, stay out of my life.”

I looked at him, sprawled in the chair, and I realized that I didn't want to clean up his puke anymore. I didn't want to listen to his excuses or make excuses for him. I didn't want to be around Jason. I didn't like him. I wasn't sure I could even love him anymore.

“I am out of your life. Things are bad enough here, Jason. I didn't say anything. And I won't.”

The toast popped then and the water was boiling in the kettle. I made the tea, buttered the bread and arranged things on the tray.

“What do you want me to do?” Jason asked then. His tone had gone from pissed to whiney.

“I don't care what you do,” I said. I just sounded tired. “Leave me out of it.”

I picked up the tray and moved past him. It wasn't my job to look after Jason. Besides, I hadn't managed to save him the last time. I couldn't save anyone. I could barely take care of myself these days.

27

The funeral was on Thursday. It was nothing like the memorial service for my mother. That day there were too many flowers, too many people, too many fake smiles.

This was just the opposite: just Anne, Dad, Jason and me, along with Anne's minister friend. And a tiny brass urn that seemed way too small. Anne stood silent and stiff next to a hole in the ground draped with too-green fake grass. Her skin was so pale even the wind didn't bring color to her cheeks.

I stood to her left, back a little, clutching three yellow daisies. It was as far away as I could get from that brass container. I listened to the minister talk about eternal life and I laid my flowers next to the others when it was time.

The sky was a deep, endless blue and the sun was warm on the back of my head. It felt wrong. The sky should have been full of dark, heavy clouds. It should have been raining.

Dad, Anne and I drove home in silence. Jason had said he would walk. Maybe he was going off to get drunk. I didn't care. Life went on, sort of. We were walking, talking, breathing, Dad and Anne and I, but we were like those mannequins you see in a department store window: there was nothing inside. Rafe's mother filled the refrigerator with food nobody ate.

I hadn't cried since the hospital. Whenever Rafe put his arms around me I pressed against him, hoping that somehow I could fill myself with his warmth. “What can I do?” he'd ask. I didn't have an answer.

Every few days Mrs. Mac called to check on me. The conversation always ended the same way. “If you need anything, please call me,” she'd say. I always promised I would.

In class I was on autopilot. I studied notes I didn't remember taking and handed in assignments I didn't remember doing. Sometimes I caught Lisa watching me. I knew she was worried about me, but I didn't know what to say to her.

I started taking long, roundabout routes home from school, mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other. One afternoon I passed Keyes Deli. A man was at the counter in the window eating noodle soup, and I stopped on the sidewalk, remembering the first time Anne had made soup for us.

That night I took Anne's cookbook, the one that had belonged to her grandmother, down from the cupboard over the sink. The next day after school I took the shortest way home. I stopped at the grocery store and carried out two plastic sacks of supplies.

The soup smelled wonderful and tasted almost as good. I filled a bowl and arranged some little fish-shaped crackers on a plate.

Anne was in the living room, curled in the wing chair, staring out the window. “I brought you something to eat,” I said.

She turned her head. “Thank you, Isabelle,” she said.

I set the tray on the table to her left. She looked over at it and then turned back to the window.

When I went back to get the tray about half an hour later, she hadn't even picked up the spoon. I started back to the kitchen.

“Isabelle?”

I stopped and turned partway around. Curled into the chair, Anne looked swamped in her sweatshirt, as though it were a couple of sizes too big. It probably was. She hardly ever ate.

She gestured at the tray. “Thank you,” she said. “I'm just not hungry right now.”

“It's okay,” I said. “Maybe I can get you something later.”

“Maybe.”

I went into the kitchen and set the tray on the counter by the sink. I was just so sorry. But I didn't know how to say it so Anne could hear me.

I was sitting at the table with my own bowl when Dad came in. “Where's Anne?” he asked.

“I think she went for a walk,” I said. I'd heard her go out about ten minutes before.

His shoulders sagged and he let his breath out slowly.

He hadn't shaved, I noticed. And he needed a haircut. It was like he was sleepwalking most of the time, like he wasn't aware of what was happening. I couldn't help wondering if he and Anne would make it through this. Once he had asked, “Are you all right?” And I'd said, “Yes,” even though I wasn't. We pretty much avoided each other, and when we couldn't, we slipped past one another and didn't make eye contact.

“I'll be in the office,” Dad said finally.

I nodded. A part of me felt sorry for him—the baby was his too. But a part of me hated him for starting it all. I didn't want to hate my own father, but I had to walk a wide circle around him because otherwise I might start screaming, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stop.

28

“Do you know where Jason is?” Dad asked.

I knew by the tightness of his jaw and the way the words squeezed out of his mouth that he was upset. “No,” I said, shaking my head as I spread peanut butter all the way out to the edge of a piece of toast. “It's Friday night. He's probably downtown outside the liquor store doing old sixties songs.” Or inside looking for something to drink, I added silently.

“He said he had a job.”

“Jason thinks singing in front of the liquor store for change is a job.” I took a big bite of toast so I wouldn't have to talk about Jason anymore.

Dad rubbed the back of his neck. His hair was down over the collar of his shirt. Was he ever going to get it cut?

“I loaned him the truck to move some equipment. He was supposed to have it back here by six.”

I sucked in a breath in the middle of swallowing and almost choked. I started to cough, spraying toast crumbs all over the counter.

“You all right?” Dad asked.

I waved him away. “Sorry,” I gasped. “It went down the wrong hole.”

It was ten after seven by the clock over the refrigerator. Was Jason stupid enough to drive when he was drinking? Maybe. He was stupid enough to be drinking in the first place.

I knew this was where I was supposed to tell Dad about finding Jason drunk. And if he'd been the old Dad and I'd been the old Isabelle, that's what would have happened. Instead I mumbled and shrugged and escaped upstairs to my room.

But I couldn't stay still. All the questions I had about Jason—Where was he? Was he drunk? Had he had an accident?—were jumping around in my mind. I looked out into the hallway. The cordless phone was lying on the table at the top of the stairs. I darted out and snagged it.

Rafe picked up on the third ring. I could hear him smile when he knew it was me. “Can you pick me up now?” I asked. “There's something I have to do. I'll explain when I see you.”

“Sure. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“No, no. Pick me up at the end of the street. At the corner.”

“What for?”

“Because I asked you to.”

For once I was glad that Rafe wasn't like anyone else's boyfriend. He didn't say, “Are you crazy?” or “Is it that time of the month?” He just said, “Okay.”

I pulled my blue polar fleece sweatshirt with the hood and the kangaroo pocket over my head. It took a couple of minutes, but I managed to find a pair of gloves that matched each other and a red knit beanie hat on the floor of my closet.

Dad was on the phone downstairs. I gave him a quick wave and escaped out the door. I hadn't wanted to stand around waiting for Rafe because I didn't want to have to lie to Dad about where I was going. I didn't want to talk to him until I knew what was going on with Jason. I waited at the corner, shifting from one foot to the other and watching the cars for Rafe.

“So where are we going?” he asked after he'd kissed me and I'd buckled my seat belt.

“Jason's apartment.”

We drove for maybe a minute in silence. Then Rafe spoke. “You gonna tell me why I had to pick you up at the corner?”

“I don't want anyone to know where I'm going.” I pulled at a piece of dry skin on my bottom lip. “It just seemed easier.”

“Why?”

“Look, you can't tell anyone.”

“That'll be easy,” Rafe said, glancing over at me for a second. “Because I don't know anything.”

The only way to say it was all at once. “Jason borrowed Dad's truck, but he didn't bring it back and he's not answering the phone and the thing is, he's been drinking—getting drunk—and—” I let out the breath I didn't even realize I'd been holding. “And maybe … and maybe other stuff. I don't know.”