The Favor (18 page)

He stared at her, fists clenched, brow furrowed. Scowling. For a minute, Janelle thought he wasn’t going to go, but then he turned, muttering things under his breath she didn’t have the strength to ask him to repeat. She remembered the day she’d figured out her mother couldn’t actually force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. She’d never thought about the day when Bennett would figure out the same thing.

“It’s my job,” she said softly.

Then

On the TV is some weird program showing how to make a telephone out of some string and two soup cans. It looks like fun. Daddy and Uncle Marty and Uncle Bobby and Uncle Joey are all sitting around the table with their beers and pizza, playing cards. Nan’s at work. Janelle’s eyes are droopy, but she wants to stay up until Nan gets home so it will be easier to sleep late tomorrow. If she gets up too early, she’ll make too much noise, and Daddy will yell.

Nan comes home in her white nurse’s uniform. She hollers at all the guys to clean up their stuff and go home, but not like she’s mad. She even eats a piece of pizza with them before noticing Janelle still on the couch.

“What’s that girl doing up?” Nan shakes her head. “No rules. You’re raising her like a wild animal, Ricky.”

Daddy looks over at Janelle and gestures for her to come to him. She does, her eyes heavy with sleep, stifling a yawn she doesn’t want Nan to see, because that’s proof she’s too tired to be up.

“Janny’s okay, aren’t you, hon?”

“Of course she’s okay, she’s doing whatever she wants.” Nan shakes her head again. “Did they feed you, honey?”

“Yes, Nan.”

To Daddy, Nan says, “A child needs boundaries and rules. And a bedtime. When’s the last time she had a shower, for heaven’s sake?”

“C’mon, Mom, who cares? It’s summer. Let the kid have a little freedom.”

At home with her mother, Janelle showers every other day whether she wants to or not. Bedtime is always too early, and they have pizza only once in a while, for a treat. When Daddy’s got his own place, the routine is much the same as it’s been at Nan’s, only without any showers at all, and sometimes not even pizza. One time they ate saltines and peanut butter every day for a whole week until Daddy got a paycheck. Then he took her out for a steak dinner and bought her a new doll. It was great.

“There’s freedom,” Nan says, “and there’s just lack of responsibility. You know her mother wouldn’t approve of this at all.”

“Her mother doesn’t need to know anything, and who cares what she thinks?” Daddy’s chair scrapes along the carpet. “It’s my turn to have my kid. She’s not in danger. She’s got food, clothes. So what if she hasn’t had a shower?”

“Or brushed her teeth, I’ll bet. Definitely not shampooed her hair—there’s a knot in it the size of my fist. Have you fed her a vegetable at all this week?”

“Mom,” Daddy says, but that’s all.

“More importantly, Ricky, have you spent any time with her?”

“She’s with me every day.”

Nan sighs. “She’s here every day. You’re here. That’s not the same thing. You keep her up too late, then she’s sleeping half the day away. Or she’s up a the crack of dawn and neither of us are with her. She spends too much time alone.”

“She plays with those kids next door, doesn’t she?”

“The Tierney boys?” Nan laughs. “Sometimes.”

“So? She’s not alone.”

Nan knocks her knuckles on the table. “It’s her summer vacation. Take her to the pool once in a while. To the park. We could take a day trip down to Parker Dam, take a picnic....”

“I can’t be doing all that stuff, Mom. I have to work. You know that.”

Silence.

“Work is something that you get paid for doing.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“Just hear me out,” Nan says, and even if Daddy’s mad, he listens. “I know you’re trying hard to make a go of this music thing, and believe me, honey, I want you to make it more than anyone. But how long are you going to go from job to job, never putting in more than a few hours here and there, just enough to get you through?”

“It’s hard to have a full-time job and get gigs. I have to be able to travel. Why do we even have to go over this again?”

“Because you’re living in my house and you have a child to raise,” Nan says. “So at least for this summer, Richard, you need to pull your head out of your behind and find some steady work. Or send her home to her mother so you can run off all around the country playing in bars. You can’t have it both ways.”

Daddy flicks his lighter on, off. On, off. It’s a big one, heavy and silver, with a picture of an eagle engraved on it. Sometimes he lets Janelle light it for him. She loves the smell of the gas just before the flame appears.

“You don’t think I can make it.”

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to,” Nan answers in a tired voice. “But my God, Richard. Set your mind to something. That’s all.”

“Janelle! Get your butt to bed! And in the morning, you take a shower.” Daddy snaps his fingers, waking her all the way.

Janelle sits up, rubbing her eyes. “Huh?”

“You heard me. Get upstairs.”

Nan reaches for her as she passes, kisses her cheek. “Tomorrow we’ll do something fun, okay? I have the day off.”

“Okay, Nan.”

Upstairs, Janelle takes an extra-long time brushing her teeth, even though she knows if Daddy comes up and finds her not in bed he’ll be mad. She has to take extra time because Nan’s right, she hasn’t brushed them in...well, she can’t remember the last time. She thinks of the tiny cavity monsters in her mouth, biting away at her teeth, making holes. She scrubs and spits, scrubs and spits.

This visit, Janelle’s in the big room with Daddy, because the little room is full of his equipment and stuff in boxes he brought from his last apartment. The window in the big room looks across the alley into the window next door. There’s a light on over there, not in the bedroom, but the hall, so it shines into the bedroom.

That’s Gabe’s room. Janelle goes to the window, meaning to see if she can wave at him. She thinks of the telephone idea, those tin cans and the string. They could make one of those, she’s sure of it.

Because it’s dark in her room, she can see into his, but nobody over there can see into hers. She pulls aside the curtain only partway before seeing it’s not Gabe moving around his room. It’s Mr. Tierney. He’s pacing next to Gabe’s bed, and because of the way the light falls into the room from the open door, sometimes he’s in shadow, sometimes he’s in light. Dark, light, back and forth.

Then he stops.

He bends over Gabe’s bed. He must be tucking him in. Janelle’s mom does that, tucks her in so tight she can’t move at all. Janelle likes that. It makes her feel as if she’ll never fall out of bed.

Gabe must not like it, though, because all of a sudden he’s sitting up. Hands are waving. Mr. Tierney stumbles back. The shadows move, making it hard to see what’s going on, but whatever it is, it doesn’t look good. In the light, Mr. Tierney’s face is twisted, his mouth open as if he’s shouting. He reaches for Gabe to shake him by the shoulders. Gabe pushes him back again. There’s a muffled sound of yelling.

Daddy’s feet thump on the stairs, and Janelle lets the curtain fall. She runs across the room to dive into the bouncy bed—it’s not a real bed, it’s a rollaway that folds up when nobody’s using it. It bounces when she jumps into it, and she goes very still to keep the springs from creaking as Daddy comes into the room.

She closes her eyes. She slows her breath. Downstairs she was way more tired than she is now, but watching Mr. Tierney and Gabe fighting and knowing that she’ll get in trouble if Daddy knows she’s not asleep yet have both made her heart pound a little too hard. She snuggles deep under the covers, faking sleep.

Daddy runs the water in the bathroom. He turns off the light in the hall and moves through the bedroom in the dark, bumping into something and muttering about it. She expects to hear the creak and groan of his mattress in the big bed along the wall, but the darkness by her bed gets a little darker even through her closed eyes.

She thinks of Mr. Tierney shaking Gabe and tenses. What does Daddy want? Does he know she’s not asleep? Is he going to be mad?

Her father touches his fingertips to her forehead, brushing away her hair. Then comes the soft press of his lips in that same spot. A murmured, “Love you, kiddo,” and a few seconds later, the creak of his mattress as he gets into bed. Snoring, after that.

And after that, before she knows it, it’s morning.

* * *

Her door creaked. “Mom?”

Janelle turned. “Yeah, buddy.”

“Are we going to leave Nan’s house?”

Janelle let herself sink onto her bed and gestured to him. He came to her willingly enough. He hadn’t combed his hair the way she’d told him to, but she didn’t have the strength to argue with him. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d have snuggled up close to her, but now he sat with some distance between them.

“No, buddy, we’re not going to leave Nan’s house. At least, I hope not.”

“Will we go back to California?”

She couldn’t resist stroking her hand over the damp tangle of his hair. “No. Do you want to go back?”

Bennett shrugged without looking at her. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

She knew he’d left friends behind, that they kept in touch through Connex and their online games. She’d expected him to make new friends here without much effort, because that was her sweet boy. But she did not know if her son was happy here.

“How’s everything at school?”

Bennett shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“Any more trouble with those boys?”

“No.”

“Don’t you like it here?” Janelle asked.

He leaned against her, just a little. “It’s okay. It’s cold here, though. Does it get warm, ever? Is there summer here?”

She laughed. “You act like it’s the North Pole.”

“Feels like it,” he said.

Janelle laughed again. “Yeah. I promise you, it’ll get warm. And summer here’s nice. We’ll go swimming. We can go hiking, too. Out in the woods. We’ll go to the elk preserve. How about that?”

Bennett looked up at her. “Who will stay with Nan?”

Summer was a few months away. Another few months of being chained to this house as caretaker, barely able to get away to the store by herself. An entire summer of it seemed intolerable, and when summer came, Bennett was right. Who would stay with Nan?

Probably, nobody would have to.

“Maybe,” she said, pushing his hair away from his eyes, “she’ll come with us. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

TWENTY-TWO

APRIL SHOWERS BROUGHT May flowers, but an overcast sky on Easter morning brought worried looks and anxious parents. With everyone dressed in their finery, frilly dresses and bonnets and white gloves for the girls, adorable little pastel suits with vests for the boys, Janelle didn’t blame any of them. Her own son, of course, wore black cargo pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a picture of a tuxedo on the front. He had consented to tying back his hair, though it looked suspiciously uncombed.

“I think the rain will hold off,” Janelle said to Karen Jones. Karen was a couple years older than her and had lived across the street from Nan her whole life, until she went away to college and moved to Pittsburgh. Now she only came back to St. Marys for holidays, to visit her parents so they could dote on their only grandchild, Emma. Janelle had heard the whole story already. Twice. “Look how much fun they’re having.”

“It was really nice of you and your grandma to add to the Easter egg hunt. Emma looks forward to this so much every year.” Karen smiled, but her gaze never left her daughter, who was bobbing and weaving through the crowd of twenty or so kids aged three to twelve who were systematically foraging for the plastic and hard-boiled eggs planted everywhere. “Every year, she begs to come.”

“That’s great. I’m glad to hear it. I guess it’s Mr. Tierney’s thing, really.”

Mr. Tierney held court in an ancient, sagging lawn chair that looked as if it might collapse at any moment under his bulk. Karen smiled. “Oh, yes. He really gets into it. I guess because he doesn’t have any grandkids of his own.”

Janelle didn’t miss the assessing look Karen gave Gabe, who stood overlooking the festivities from his familiar place on the porch. He wasn’t smoking, maybe out of respect for the children. Maybe a cigarette would’ve made him less grouchy, Janelle thought, then laughed silently. Probably not.

Karen gave her a curious look. “What?”

“Oh. Nothing. Just enjoying this hint of warmer weather. Even if it does look like rain.” Janelle stretched her hands up toward the glimpse of yellow sunshine peeping through the gray clouds. “I’m glad winter’s over.”

“You wait. We’ve had snow in early May before,” Karen warned, then must’ve seen her daughter heading for danger, because she took off sprinting, leaving Janelle behind.

Janelle didn’t even have to turn around to know Gabe was looking at her. She zipped her hoodie a little higher on her throat and shoved her hands in her pockets. “It’s a good thing the snow melted, huh?”

“We just wouldn’t have colored the eggs, that’s all. Would’ve made it wicked hard to find them.”

“This is a nice thing you do. You know that, right?”

He looked at her. “It’s my dad’s thing. And Andy’s. I’m just the muscle.”

She thought of the hour or so they’d spent stuffing the plastic eggs with candy and pennies. “Uh-huh.”

He looked at her again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shook her head with a smile and looked out to the yard, where all the kids were running and shouting. “You like it. Admit it. You like seeing them find all those eggs.”

Gabe made a low, disgruntled noise. Janelle didn’t poke him further. She left him there on the porch as she went out into the yard to help some of the smaller kids find the well-hidden eggs, both hard-boiled and treat-filled, that the older kids had missed. The grass was cool and soft on her bare feet, and when the sun finally managed to burst out from its prison of clouds, she stood in the center of the yard with her head tipped back and arms out, enjoying the warmth and promise of spring.

There’d been a few squabbles so far when more than one kid found the same egg at the same time, but this raised voice was adult. Janelle’s eyes snapped open at the shout. Mr. Tierney was yelling, shaking his fist at Gabe, who had a hand on the old man’s shoulder as though holding him back.