They had some Swedish chick lined up to be the au pair, all qualified and shit. A grad student in child development. But she bailed at the last minute. Back in Sweden her mother got leukemia. Was that the country where they all wore clogs? Lexie pictured the mother, bald and clog-dancing sadly in some tulips. Wearing a chemo turban. But Google said tulips and clogs were Dutch—a country with dams they called dikes, which a boy once put his finger in. No joke. They had a legend about it. People rode bicycles. And drove clown cars.
Holland looked lame on Google, like a creepy fairy tale with all the tulips and windmills, but Sweden seemed normal. And friendly. Probably had to be, so people would keep living there when it was shit-cold all the time.
Jem told her the au pair thing would be a sweet deal. The house was killer, the food was free, and how much work could a new baby be? She’d babysat a couple of babies. They didn’t do much for the first four months, basically lay there. Sometimes crying. When you picked them up, you had to support their heads. Their necks were rubbery. If you didn’t hold up the heads they could roll back. And then what? Would the babies strangulate? She looked it up. Enh. Didn’t happen that much. Their deal was sleep, cry, drink milk, shit. The baby shit barely even smelled bad, people said. Looked like mustard.
After that she figured she’d cut out anyway, get her own place. Six months max. When babies turned six months old they started to do stuff. She didn’t want to be around for that.
He said to tell them, when she called to set up the interview, that she had trouble at home. Which was true: a perv stepfather counted as trouble. Jem’s dad’s new wife would give her points for that. Like, she’d count as help for the baby, but also count as charity. Fine. The wife was a ditz but pretty nice, said Jem, and also might have come from a sketchy background, since his dad had picked her up in a strip club. He said to act innocent and mega-sincere, but tell them she’d helped to raise her brothers.
And she had, if stepbrothers counted. Who were older than you and ran a pretty decent-sized meth business. A few times she’d had to slap them down. That counted as helping to raise, didn’t it? She’d taught them a lesson or two.
She wanted to be an actress, so act, said Jem. You dream of being a theater major. Maybe UCLA. It’s hypothetical, said Jem. He used big words.
His grandma was a risk factor. He said she used to be a professor, was perceptive and could smell bullshit. Also, don’t fuck with her, he said. He was fond of the old lady. I want her taken care of, he said. With her, don’t be fake Christian, she’s Jewish, well, kind of, but she was raised by some kind of missionaries so she’ll see through it. Tell her about your trashy family. I mean, don’t mention the Internet sex biz, that being how we met and shit, but other than that, just try to be a straight shooter. She won’t mind the white-trash part, as long as you’re smart and not rude. She likes an edge but she really doesn’t like rudeness. Treat her with respect, she’s had a hard life. Her whole family died in the Holocaust when she was six.
Plus her husband, Jem’s grandpa and also a Holocaust survivor, had offed himself in aught-6. One of those car-in-the-garage situations. Jem’s parents had told him it was a stroke at the time, he was only seven then, but later he found out the deal.
So she hitched a ride down from Carpinteria with some friends going to a concert, not to cut into her savings. For the interview she wore a preppie, baby-blue button-down shirt with flat-zero sex appeal. And a necklace with a small cross on it, to show she was wholesome. She put her fingers on the cross when she was asked a personal question, kind of suggesting it meant security, plus that she loved the baby Jesus. She also learned a bunch of quotes from the Bible. Well, three. She tried to find ones about being nice to kids, but the Bible wasn’t into that.
“Children are a gift from the Lord,” was the best quote, which she trotted out in the interview. She got it from an embroidered cushion in a thrift store, but Googled it and it was in the Bible all right. In the Psalms part. She mentioned that to Jem and it was a good thing she did, because he told her you didn’t pronounce the P.
Rookie mistake, he said.
His dad and Lora weren’t religious, Jem said, but they’d feel safe with a Christian girl around the house. Christian was short for boring. “Ergo, safe,” said Jem. Lora was pretty distracted by the baby coming out soon. Obsessively rubbing cream on her stomach to fight off stretch marks. But she seemed to like Lexie OK. All Lexie had to do was take a course in infant CPR. They’d pay. And the references were no problem, she gave them friends’ phone numbers and one number of an actual woman she used to babysit for, before she found faster ways to make money.
With Lora and Paul the act was Nice Girl, which she’d done plenty of times on camera, minus the full-frontal and grinding.
The grandma was for sure a harder nut to crack. With her she also did Nice Girl, and tried to speak correctly. Nice Girl but kind of damaged. Which she was, technically, due to the acts of Stepdad Pete. She wouldn’t pass the virgin test. No blood on the white sheets. The grandma didn’t drive much anymore, but still owned a car, which she let her use for errands. On her days off too, the lady said, she could use it, and also said to call her Aleska.
She checked with Jem: it wasn’t the one his grandpa had suicided in. Though she would’ve driven the shit out of it anyway.
Jem said she’d be his mole. She’d feed him information on his dad. Not clear what. Point was, he couldn’t stand the guy. Mumbled about wanting to force him to give more money to his mom. She’d had to downsize big-time after the divorce. Even though she got alimony and all that, they still had to leave their swank pad in the Hills for a regular house. It was from the eighties and uber-ugly, but had a decent view of the Silver Lake Reservoir, he said. But he wanted his mother to get more. Plus his dad should be punished. With extreme prejudice, he said.
The room was private, with its own bath and entrance and even a lock on the other door, the one that opened to the rest of the house. So she could keep her business going. Plus the Wi-Fi was faster than her setup back home, where she’d had to make out with the Comcast guy for an upgrade because Perv Pete was such a cheapskate. She kept that sideline to the nights though, times when she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted. You’d lose repeat customers if you stopped what you were doing, in those scenarios.
She and Lora were putting finishing touches on the nursery, four days into her stay—Lora was rearranging a shelf of stuffed animals and Lexie was basically just watching and sometimes going, “Oh that’s so cute! The koala bear’s my favorite!”—when she looked down and saw her foot, her own foot with nothing covering it but a pink flip-flop, and the flip-flop was standing in a puddle. She thought Lora had peed herself, the baby pressing on her bladder, which Lora complained about six times a day, but only for a second.
“OMG! I’m so sorry,” said Lora. “Call Paul! Would you?”
When he pulled up in his car to get her, Lexie handed him the hospital bag, prepared weeks before, and said cheerily, “I hope it all goes great! I’ll pray on it!”
After they drove off she was home-free, just had to check in on Aleska. She fixed her a sandwich, pastrami and Swiss on toasted marble rye the way she liked it, then grabbed a diet soda from the fridge and went back to her room, where she chalked up two sessions back to back. The first was with an old geezer in Sherman Oaks who paid for a Coy Cheerleader but ended up crying over his dead wife, and the second was with a closeted lesbian in Texas. The closeted part was obvious because she was using her husband’s credit card—had barely heard of Paypal. How did these people stay so clueless?
It wouldn’t be a problem, Lexie reassured her: the name of the business was Organic Natural Cosmetics, and that was the line item that would appear on the statement. She was a professional small-business owner, she took care of business. The closeted lesbian asked for Slutty Schoolgirl, gay version, which Lexie did exactly like she did the straight version, except with a different script and extra props.
Then she messaged Jem and told him his baby half-sister was coming. Felicitations, she wrote, since he liked long words.
Break out the monster spliffs, he texted back.
She wouldn’t do him IRL any more than she would the geezer with the dead wife, mostly the zits would be the problem, plus he was hella gangly—a human spider with acne. But he was a friend, more or less. Only a friend would set you up in a gig like this. A rich kid, yeah, but he somewhat knew how shit went down. She’d promised him freebies online, but it was pretty much a joke, they’d stopped that after they met face to face. Plus she was living with his family now, or part of it. Anyway free online sex was an expanding universe. Went on and on forever. Only rubes paid for it, or people who didn’t care about money. And that wasn’t Jem anymore: he’d stopped abusing his mother’s plastic. Something about dignity, although he said it in ancient Greek. Dignitas something something. Certified nerd.
Aleska buzzed on the intercom and said there was a guest coming over. Would Lexie “be so kind as to” listen for the door and bring her on back? So she couldn’t book more sessions. Then Paul texted that Lora was “still only two centimeters dilated.” TMI. Plus why centimeters? Why was it the metric system all of a sudden, as soon as you talked about somebody’s hooha opening up to squeeze out a baby? The only time she ever heard it. You wouldn’t use it in porn, that was for sure. “Come on, baby. Shove those fourteen centimeters inside me.” Wouldn’t get far with that.
Guys liked to hear inches. Some liked a two-way feed, so she had something to go on. But it didn’t make a difference, really. You had to say eight inches minimum, even sight unseen. The dumber they were, the more inches they wanted to hear. That was a rule of thumb.
Doorbell. She put on her Nice Girl face and went to answer it.
A woman stood there, pretty and put-together but mega-sad. The sadness was all over her like sand was on the beach.
“You’re here for Aleska, right? My name’s Lexie. I’m the au pair.”
“Nina,” said the woman, and reached out to shake her hand.
For a second Lexie wanted to hold it. Weird. She never held her mother’s hand. Couldn’t remember ever holding it. Her mother’s nails were too long: she was proud of them. She got manicures every week. It was all about the nails.
“Cool. Come on back.”
“Nina? Welcome. She’s going to sell my house for me,” said Aleska, when they went into the cottage. You had to knock and go in; if she was sitting at her desk, which she usually was, Aleska didn’t get up.
“Oh, right,” said Lexie. “You love that house.”
Shit, she’d said the wrong thing. Aleska’s face looked fallen in. But she mustered a smile.
“I do,” she said softly. “That house is my baby.”
No wonder, because Paul wasn’t much to brag about. Aleska, all elegant and refined, had to be bummed about having a son who was your basic Beamer-driving asshole. He texted and played phone games at the dinner table, which OK, maybe was normal some places, such as at her mom’s, but she saw a look of horror on Aleska’s face. Plus he made Lora wash her coochie right in front of him, with antibacterial soap, before he’d go down on her. He had to see firsthand that it was sparkling clean. That was a bonus about Lora: she talked about everything. No boundaries. Or self-respect. By Day Two she’d already told Lexie half the secrets of her sex life. Apparently not knowing they were kind of pathetic.
But she was nice. That counted for a lot.
At least, unlike Pete the Perv, Paul didn’t seem to have a weakness for teens. He’d never looked at her sideways. Although she hadn’t stress-tested him, hadn’t wandered out of her bedroom in her gauzy thong so he could get a gander at her well-kept Brazilian-plus-landing strip. She didn’t dare risk it, though she was curious if he would pass or fail. But curiosity killed the cat. Anyway she sensed his natural cutoff was somewhere around drinking age. It showed in how he didn’t ogle her. He was a lech, given Lora had half his years and probably half his IQ, but not a perv. So you could say two good things about Paul: he was rich and not a pedophile. Both were advantages he had over Pete. Go Paul!
“I think I may understand,” said Nina. “I recently had to sell a house that belonged to someone I was close to. Who died suddenly. There was a lot of emotion.”
There it was: the sadness.
Aleska gazed at her thoughtfully, nodding.
“I’ll leave you guys in peace,” said Lexie. “Oh. And Paul texted me. He said, um, she’s only two centimeters dilated?”
“Good gracious,” said Aleska crabbily. “Why people think we need to know these details. It really is beyond me. You can spare me the 3-4-5 updates, dear. I only wish my son would spare you.”
Lexie fixed a club soda with lime for Nina and left the cottage just as Jem texted he was out front. His new tactic with the dad was Nice Guy, which Paul was too thick to see for the act it was. So for the birth of his half-sister he was bringing over a gift. He’d leave it. Wouldn’t hang around. It was a giant purple teddy bear with crazy eyes. He’d won it, he said, in a shooting game at the Santa Monica Pier. High as a kite.
“I even bought a card,” he said, and showed her the envelope, which had For My Baby Sister written on it in a flowing script. He’d drawn hearts and flowers around the words. They were obviously ironic, but Paul wouldn’t look and Lora wouldn’t suspect.
His mom, he’d said, was wrecked by the whole baby thing. She’d wanted another kid after Jem, kind of wanted to have a boy and a girl, but Paul had said no. One was more than enough, he said. Then he went and knocked up Lora on the side, and meanwhile Jem’s mom was too old now, her eggs all dried up like they got.
She showed him her room, which he hadn’t seen before. “Not bad,” he said curtly. “Beats mine hands-down. Thing’s the size of a closet. And not a walk-in, either. You’re high on the hog here, Lexie.”
“Only because of you,” she said.
Home was a pit. The apartment always smells like stepdad B.O. and old beer. One thousand spilled PBRs must have soaked into the shag. and her mother went crazy with the Febreze. That was the third smell: B.O., stale beer and Febreze.
“Yeah, no worries.”
“You and Aleska getting along?”
He picked up a vase from a shelf. Not hers, of course. Square, glass and modern-looking. It came with the room. Some twigs were sitting in it. On purpose. Around the house there were a bunch of vases with nothing in them but bare sticks.
“I think so. I can’t tell if she likes me, but she’s cool. I make her favorite sandwiches for lunch, with pickles on the side. And I pour her drinks stiff.”
Jem nodded jerkily. Awkward fucking guy. He put the vase back carefully. For a second she’d thought he might drop it. What stepbro Ely would’ve done—he lived to smash up shit. Whenever something looked breakable, Ely wanted to break it.
“The way she likes ’em,” he said.
“Two measures,” said Lexie.
Jem had his hands shoved down in his pants pockets and was avoiding her eyes. Embarrassing, them standing like this. Next to her bed.
“You want to go back and say hi?” she asked. “There’s a real-estate agent here. To talk about selling her house.”
He shrugged.
“In a while.”
“OK.”
Was she supposed to offer him sex? Was there a bill coming due? Maybe she’d assumed wrong. She’d never had actual sex in trade for favors. The Comcast guy, that was just face. And tits. Pete didn’t count.
But nothing was free. And every guy wanted it.
Small panic. She’d do it. If it meant staying here.
“Hey. Jem. Is there . . . do you need anything? From me?”
Smooth, Lexie. Smooth.
He turned to the window, looked out at the neighbor’s hedge. There was a hummingbird feeder in a gap and as they watched a bird hovered, dipped its tiny beak. Flew away.
“Nah, I’m good. Let’s take the home tour,” he said.
Relief.
She never went into the master except at Lora’s invitation, but Jem led the way. The bed was made—a big gold thing, four-poster and angular—and the room was neat. The housekeeper’s work, since Lora tended to drop her clothes wherever she changed and leave them lying there. Dolores went around picking up after her. One wall was sliding doors to a private patio, and opposite the bed their massive TV was sunk into the wall.
“Dad’s stuff,” said Jem, and opened some drawers in a nightstand. “He always takes this side. Score! The blue pills.”
He raised a Viagra box.
“But every guy his age pops these,” said Jem. “Not blackmail material.” He tossed the package back in and kept rummaging. Pulled out a set of handcuffs.
“Better,” said Lexie. “Right?”
She felt kind of nervous, but then: only two centimeters.
Still, she sneaked a glance over her shoulder.
“Who wears them, him or her?”
“Him, for sure,” she said. “It’s his idea and he wears them. If it was her—too obvious.”
“True dat, the girl’s already cuffed and stuffed,” said Jem. “In jail for life, baby mama.”
“What’s this?” he asked, holding up a small chain.
“Nipple clamps,” said Lexie.
“You’re an old hand.” He put them back and picked up a leather billfold now, thin and worn. Flipped it open.
“No cash,” he said. Then pulled something out of one of the folds: a photo. She leaned in to see. A toddler boy holding a red alphabet block with the letter J.
“It’s you,” she said.
Jem stared at it.
“He keeps a picture of me with the sex props,” he said. “That’s twisted.”
“Or maybe he just looks at it sometimes.”
“No way. This photo hasn’t seen the light of day for years. He forgot it’s in here. Guaranteed.”
He shoved the picture in his pants pocket and tossed the wallet back in the drawer.
“Should you—”
“He’ll never know it’s gone. Let’s book.”
Text from Aleska. Could Lexie bring back white wine from the wine refrigerator? Choose an expensive bottle, she wrote.
“Gotta get some wine for your grandmother.”
“She doesn’t drink wine. Hard liquor only,” said Jem.
“It’s probably for the real-estate lady? Right?”
“Same one that sold our house, I bet,” said Jem. “Heard my moms on the phone. Recommending.”
One bottle still had a price tag on it, eighty bucks. She figured that should qualify and headed for the back-door sliders. Jem lingered behind.
“You don’t want to come back?”
“Later,” he mumbled, and threw himself down on the couch. Closed his eyes.
In the cottage Nina was settled in an armchair. Aleska had moved into another one—rare that she left her desk.
“Could you pour a glass for Nina, dear?” she asked.
She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know her way around a corkscrew. Pete was a beer-and-whiskey man, but her mother drank two-buck Chuck. She weighed maybe a hundred pounds and lived off Dr Pepper and curly fries. Usually too wasted by the first bottle to open the second. Lexie’d been uncorking them at the ripe old age of twelve. A preteen sommelier. Pervy Pete called her that. But now her mom drank screw-top or box. She and Pete would fall asleep on the ancient recliner, Mom on Peter’s lap, half their clothes off. Mom, stretch marks. Pete, hairy ass and thighs. Snoring.
Q: Did the widdle girl miss her mommy?
A: Not really.
Blackmail material, Jem’d said. Did he mean it? Probably running his mouth. He was pissed, but come on. He might be smart and have half a clue, but like all rich kids, when push came to shove he didn’t know how good he had it.
It was like: Don’t rock the boat, man. Don’t screw me over.
C-section, texted Paul.
“C-section,” read Lexie, and handed Nina her wine.
“Of course,” said Aleska. “They’re always in a rush. Just cut her open. Like Caligula. Fix me a drink too, will you, Lexie? The hour is upon us, thank God.”
“Sure,” said Lexie, and reached for the Hendrick’s.
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Um, no,” she said, surprised, pouring.
“You dropped out of high school, is that correct?”
“Yeah,” said Lexie. “I didn’t like going there. I did a GED instead.”
“I’m taking an informal poll. You see that poster there? Above my desk?”
You couldn’t miss it. Thing had a big-ass swastika. German words about triumph. Lexie nodded.
“What did that illustrate, do you think?”
“Like . . . a Nazi rally?”
“And that one. Who’s in that picture over there?” Aleska pointed. Her hand shook as she lowered it again, the fingers slender and bony. One graceful silver ring. Or maybe platinum. Sparkling with small jewels.
“Papa Joe Stalin,” said Lexie promptly.
Perv Pete fancied himself a WWII buff. He liked to talk about the firebombing of Dresden over pepperoni pizza. He said, “Twenty-five thousand burned alive in one night. Women and children. Thanks to Uncle Sam.” He said, “Yeah, that’s right. 9/11 wasn’t shit.”
“Thank you, my dear. I knew I could count on you. Will you take a drink yourself?”
“I’m only seventeen,” said Lexie.
“We used to drink watered wine at dinner,” mused Aleska. “As children. I don’t think it stunted our growth. Hard to tell, though. We were all undersized.”
“My parents are lushes. My mom and stepdad. So I never got into it.”
“Have a splash of the white. If you don’t like it, you can just dump the rest. Sit down with us a while. Won’t you?”
“OK. Yes. Thank you.”
She poured a little wine, took a cautious sip. It tasted sour. Not good, but not that bad.
“Your father isn’t in the picture, I gather?” said Aleska. She had a way of asking prying questions that sounded totally polite. The way she said it, it almost sounded like: hey. It’d be rude of her not to ask.
“He took off when I was in kindergarten. Then, like, later—I think I was in maybe sixth grade?—he ended up in prison. For lame stuff, Spam scams or phishing. Fraud I guess. He was at Lompoc? Near the big fields of flowers?”
“I’m not familiar with that particular prison,” said Aleska.
“You can see the flowers right from the road. Anyway it’s low-security but someone beat him up in there. Some white-power dude. Head injuries. He got kinda brain-damaged after that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Aleska.
“No sweat,” said Lexie. She sipped the wine. “Like you said, right? He’s out of the picture. I barely remember what he looks like anymore.”
They were quiet for a minute. Had Jem fallen asleep, back in there on the couch? Jem liked to sleep.
“Sounds like you had it rough,” said Nina.
“Not like Aleska did,” said Lexie. Was that allowed? Was she supposed to say it? The wine was already making her say stuff. Jem liked to say in vino veritas. His whole dead-language deal.
“Ancient history, dear. As it happens, none of us in this room really grew up with fathers,” said Aleska. “Although—your stepdad? Was he any help?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Lexie. Pete standing, boozy and swaying, at the door to her room. One time, the side of his head crushing her face, she tasted greasy hair and earwax.
“To the fatherless children,” said Nina quietly, and lifted her wineglass. Lexie must have been staring at the floor, because when she looked at Nina with the glass raised she was still thinking of it. Like the spot seared into your eyeball if you looked at the sun, except it wasn’t bright. It was dim. A gray rug with a pattern of blue flowers.
Pete’s exit line: Don’t hurt your mother, now. Don’t ever hurt your mother, kid.
He took the low road, Pete.
“The lost children,” said Aleska, and drank.
Did they mean her?
Jun, her only real friend at school, had been adopted from China when she was a baby. It wasn’t fair, Lexie had thought when she listened to Jun’s parents tell her adoption story at their dinner table once, how those adopting parents had to pass a gazillion tests to get a kid to take care of, but people pumping out their own babies didn’t have to pass jack shit. You had to take a bunch of tests to help a kid that needed you, but not to make a brand-new kid you’d warp for twenty years. Or more.
Jem was rapping at the door.
He must have got bored.
“Come in, dear,” said Aleska. “Have a drink.”
“We’re drinking,” said Lexie. Like an idiot.
“A celebration,” said Aleska. “Of the new baby.”
Jem stepped in, nodded briefly at Nina, walked over and bent to kiss his grandma on the cheek.
“You got any Glenlivet?” he asked.
“Something like it,” said Aleska, and waved her hand at the bar. Jem started opening cabinets.
“So,” said Aleska. “Jem. Lexie. How did the two of you meet?”
“Oh. Just online,” said Lexie. Shit.
“You mean, one of those online dating services?” asked Aleska. “They’re popular, I hear.”
“Gram. We’re not dating. Jesus,” said Jem.
“We’re just friends,” said Lexie. “It was more of a chatroom deal.” Not completely a lie. They had chatted. And been in rooms.
“A chatroom. Like, for troubled teens,” said Jem. He held the whiskey bottle but didn’t pour. Kind of frozen.
“For troubled teens?” repeated Aleska. Skeptical. No wonder. Jem had never said “troubled teens” in his whole life.
“Everyone seems to meet on social networking sites these days,” said Nina to Aleska. “When I was coming up, there was no way to meet new people. I mean. Except school or the neighborhood. You had to take what was there. Or leave it. Now—there are downsides, but at least it expands their social possibilities.”
Nina to the rescue! Whoa. Thanks, Nina.
Jem shot the woman a startled look, but she didn’t meet his eyes, just took a dainty sip of her drink.
“So what are they naming the baby girl?” she asked.
“Aubree?” said Jem, turning back to the bar, and poured himself way too much whiskey. An inch from the rim, like it was orange juice. Had he even drunk his very own glass of whiskey before? Didn’t appear that way. She wanted to say, Jem, two fingers, man. Be cool. “Madison? Kinsley?”
“Oh dear. I do hope not,” said Aleska.
“Too nineties,” said Lexie.
“Or eighties,” said Nina.
“We had a lot of Tammis,” said Lexie. “In my class once there were three Tammis. And a Pammi.”
They were shooting the shit after that. The wine started to taste OK. She let Jem get her a second glass. Nudged by Aleska, of course. He wouldn’t have thought of it.
The buzz was lighter than pot, not as sleepy. But less fun than coke. She’d never tried Ely’s meth. One look at the skanks that did it was enough. Plus Toff, for some reason, didn’t want her to. It wasn’t a clean high, he said. That was the nicest he’d ever been, not wanting his stepsister to do his meth.
“I should get used to the Madisons. Mom wants me to go to some private school for senior year,” said Jem. Unexpected.
“What do you want?” asked Aleska.
Jem shrugged.
“Don’t care,” he said. “She’s really into it. I warned her I couldn’t get in anyway. My grades are kinda crap. Some, anyway. Plus I cut all the time. But she said her friend’s on some committee and owes her a major favor. They went to high school together back East. She showed me old pictures. It’s like, this New York all-girls school? That’s been there like, forever? Get this: their mascot is a beaver.”
Lexie laughed.
“Slang,” said Jem to Aleska. “Don’t worry about it.”
He seemed relaxed. Probably the booze, but as she looked at him she thought: what he needed was company. If she was his friend, like if they hung out and did shit together, there was a chance he wouldn’t bother messing with his dad. Wouldn’t want to. He might let it go, even. There might be calm seas.
She could stay on here. Maybe a whole year. Maybe two.
Sex was too obvious. Plus it could backfire. She’d been thinking too small. Selfish. Like, wanting control. It wasn’t cool.
“You should go,” she said. “Mix it up. It’s not like you like being where you are.”
“Yeah,” said Jem, and swirled the whiskey around in his glass. “Whatever. You know. Whatever makes her happy.”
He loved his mom. She should love hers. Shouldn’t she?
But Pete had blocked out her mother. And her mother had no clue. She knew Lexie wasn’t there, but she didn’t know why.
Pete rubbed off all over everything. She used to tell her mother stuff. But since he started up, she never did. Couldn’t. Too much in the way. Because Pete was the truth and she couldn’t tell it. And she used to be all her mother had. “You’re the only good thing I ever did,” she always said. Not fair. It wasn’t fair to her mother. Her mother didn’t understand. Couldn’t.
The night before she left her mother’d wanted to talk but she hadn’t wanted to. Because she never did anymore. So they just sat there on the sofa, her channel-surfing and her mother clicking through kitten and puppy pictures on her phone. Her favorite pet celebrity: Grumpy Cat. Clicking, clicking. “Look. Isn’t he so funny?” But Lexie’d just rolled her eyes, changed the channel again, not even looked. She hadn’t even looked at Grumpy Cat.
All she felt for her mother was pity. Feeling it was terrible. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to feel it.
She could try harder, now that she wasn’t living at home. Now that he wasn’t on her. She could be nicer from far away.
But could you just decide? To make love come back?