TWENTY | LUCAN

OUT IN THE BACKYARD with Ivy, the two of us reeking like a chemical spill, I could almost forget how I’d ended up there in the first place. I felt practically normal. She was so easy to talk to. Not that I usually have a problem talking to people, but with her, even the hard topics seemed halfway to painless.

I didn’t want to stop talking and go inside. The mosquito lotion (which, believe me, smelled a hell of a lot worse than the guest room air freshener) bought me some bonus time, but in the end she got sleepy and said, “If I stay out here much longer I’m going to start falling asleep on you.”

“Again,” I kidded.

“I know.” She dropped her head, pretending to feel guilty. “But listen, I can give you a ride to work tomorrow. That should make up for it.”

I nodded at her, my mind on tomorrow. I wouldn’t be ready to show up at home then either, not unless Mom had kicked Julian’s hairy ass to the curb. I could try Dad’s place for a while, maybe, but I was still pissed with him too. I didn’t want to hear him talking trash about his ex-wife. Whatever she was doing, she also happened to be my mother. Involving Paolo or Jack would mean contact with Des, and I wasn’t ready to go there. I needed a cigarette. I needed to take off for Europe and come back in six months when all the dust had settled.

Ivy stood up with a yawn. “Do you need anything else? A toothbrush, maybe?”

Deodorant. Fresh clothes. My auto-injector. “A toothbrush would be good. Thanks.”

We went upstairs. I brushed my teeth, washed the poison smell off my arms, and got into my borrowed pajamas, the freakiness of the situation bounding through my head. There I was lying around in the pajamas of the man responsible for bulldozing Mom’s relationship with her cousin. I never would’ve seen that coming.

I must’ve been worn out. I fell asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow and dreamt about hanging out in the yard with Ivy. We were talking and kidding around, the usual. Next thing I knew she was up in the spare room, in the double bed with me, her hair and skin smelling like lemon. We weren’t doing anything, swear to God. Just lying next to each other under the bedspread. I didn’t mind about the smell. No, I liked it. My body got wound up to the extreme over a completely platonic incident, and I woke up gritting my teeth just before the situation turned critical.

It would’ve been simple to go along with it, finish the job, and drop back to sleep, like I normally would’ve done. Instead I set my mind to reversing the process. I thought about Ivy’s dead grandmother lying right where I was just then, how sick she probably got in the end, and how shitty it is that so many of us have to go like that. After a while it worked, but then I felt gloomy and on edge and didn’t want to lie in the bed anymore.

I sat up and reached for my phone in the dark. The only messages were from Mom. The first was in an uptight voice and said, “Lucan, I need you to call me. We have to talk.” In the second she was trying to keep her cool. “Lisette told me that you’re staying with them for the night, but I’d appreciate it if you’d at least return my call. Maybe you think you’re making some kind of statement, but you’re not a kid anymore; there are realities you have to deal with.” The final message was logged only ten minutes after the second and had an almost apologetic tone. “We’ll talk about things when you’re back here tomorrow, okay? We’ll iron things out. Goodnight, Lucan.”

“We’ll iron things out” didn’t sound promising. It didn’t sound anything like dumping Julian’s ugly gorilla ass. I changed into yesterday’s clothes, slunk down to the living room, and sprawled out on the couch watching TV. Poker was on, then anxious investigators roaming around in the Mississippi woods with night-vision video cameras, looking for Big Foot. I didn’t want to wake Ivy’s family too early, so I waited until it started to get light before jumping in the shower. When I got out of the bathroom I heard someone else up and walking around, and I headed downstairs again, hoping it was Ivy and then remembering my dream and hoping it wasn’t.

Her father was brewing coffee in the kitchen. He glanced at me over his pinstriped shoulder. “You’re an early riser, I see. What can I get you for breakfast?”

I got the feeling it was a question he wasn’t used to asking. I grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl in the center of the table. “Is there a cereal stash around?”

He opened one of the cupboards for me. I reached for the Corn Flakes and ate them at the table. Ivy’s dad sipped his coffee and gnawed on a muffin across from me. I used to call him David, but that didn’t feel right anymore. Mr. Hawkes?

“Sleep all right last night?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine. Thanks.”

Mr. Hawkes set his muffin down on the plate and raised his eyebrows. He still had what Mom had called movie star hair, but it was grayer now. “Are you driving in with Ivy this morning, or do you need a ride to work?”

“I’m going with her. Thanks, though.” He went back to working on his muffin. I didn’t feel like talking, but it seemed rude not to, after sleeping in his pajamas and all. “You have a really nice house here.” Everybody liked hearing how nice their house was.

“The property values in this neighborhood have skyrocketed in the past five years,” he told me. “I suppose the last time you saw us we were in Applewood. That was a very family-friendly neighborhood too, but small lots.” Mr. Hawkes talked real estate until he was finished his muffin. “Well, I’m off,” he said, with a final gulp. “Don’t work too hard, Lucan.”

Ivy stumbled in while I was washing my dishes later. Actually, I was washing her dad’s dishes too. He’d left them in the sink. Ivy shuffled towards the refrigerator in red sweat shorts and a long yellow T-shirt with a picture of Snoopy on the front. She didn’t smell like lemon, not even like shampoo. She must not have showered yet, but I couldn’t catch any hint of last night’s bug lotion either. Way too much thought was going into what Ivy didn’t smell like. I gritted my teeth and shifted my concentration to the dishes.

“Morning,” she mumbled groggily.

“Morning,” I said back.

We didn’t talk much in the car, either. She still seemed half-asleep. When we pulled up to the café she lowered the radio and turned abruptly towards me. “Hey, I forgot to ask you what’s happening later.”

“I don’t know.” I was already opening the car door. “I haven’t been thinking that far ahead.” I didn’t want her to ask me to spend the night at her house again if it was only about feeling sorry for me or paying me back for Nanook. Suddenly that seemed nearly as important as the fact that I hadn’t organized another place to sleep.

“Okay, well, call me and let me know,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“I’ll talk to you later,” I confirmed. Inside the café Miriam was slicing tomatoes. Christie had the coffee brewing, and Emmett was sweeping under tables. It’d only been two and a half days since I’d been in the place, but it felt like longer. I was slow getting back into the flow, and Miriam joked around, saying I must’ve had a wild weekend. Then the regulars began trickling in. I toasted bagels, grilled BLTs, and fried eggs. A bald truck driver flirted with Miriam. The breakfast rush came and went, and I was starting to think about giving my dad a call when Mom appeared on the other side of the serving counter. “And what’ll it be today?” Miriam asked her.

“I just want to talk to him.” Mom pointed at me, her face an A+ example of someone with a tension headache.

“I’m busy working here,” I told her, cocking my head at the girl in line behind her. “Can I help you?”

“You go take your break,” Miriam commanded. “I can do without you for a few minutes.”

“Fine.” I yanked my gloves off, dropped them beside the cutting board, and stomped out from behind the counter. It didn’t surprise me to see Mom at the café, but shouldn’t Julian have tagged along for moral support? Who was going to back up Mom’s right to get laid?

I stiffened as she touched my shoulder, and she felt it. She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “Can we at least do this outside?”

Mom followed me out to the curb, which made me think of sitting there with Ivy last week and how I’d been stupid not to ask her if I could stay another night. Having a dream about her didn’t mean anything. I was complicating things for no reason.

“Lucan.” Mom breathed in parking lot fumes. “Why didn’t you return my calls? I know you had a run-in with Julian, but that’s no reason not to come home. I don’t understand where all this hostility is coming from. Ever since I started seeing him —”

“Ever since you started seeing him,” I cut in. “He’s an ass! He’s ten years too young for you, which makes you, like, a MILF. You know that, right?” I folded my arms across my chest and looked away. My heart thumped rabidly under my right hand. Laying into Julian was as easy as inhaling, but I had no idea what to do about my mother. She should’ve known better than to let things go this far; I shouldn’t have had to spell it out like that.

I stepped guiltily back towards the café. Mom grabbed my arm, hard. One of her nails dug into my skin. I flinched and hung my head. “This is your father’s garbage,” she said quietly.

I glanced down at her from under my eyelashes, but I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. I focused on my arms. She let go of me. She stood in front of me on the cement, her short-sleeve blazer hanging stiffly off her shoulders. There was no way to fix things. I couldn’t even think of a way to have the same conversation.

“I’m not just your mother,” she said, her voice catching. “I’m a whole person.”

With wants and needs, sure. I knew she’d get around to saying something like that sooner or later. “Yeah, me too.” I looked her in the eye. “It’s rough when you can’t sleep through the night in your own bed, you know. Did it ever occur to you two to keep it down?”

Two guys in charcoal suits were walking in the direction of the café. We moved aside to let them pass. Mom’s face was as white as copy paper. “Are you coming home tonight?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“When then?” she said.

I didn’t know. If I went back like that, things would be worse. Julian and I would get into it the second there was an opportunity. Maybe the two of them would take it quiet and easy for a while, but who knows? I couldn’t jump back into the picture without knowing if anything had changed.

“Can I give you a call?” I asked.

Mom inclined her head towards me slightly. Her lips were shut tight. She swiveled to go. “What about your auto-injector?” she said, turning back. “Do you have it with you?”

“I’m okay. I don’t need it this second.”

“Lucan!” Mom tossed her head back. “You can’t leave the house without it. You know that.”

“I know,” I said apologetically. It was easy to feel sorry about that. The rest of it was grimy and embarrassing. “I didn’t think.”

“Call me later and I’ll bring it to you.” Mom didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled her purse tight to her waist and headed for the parking lot.

I flipped my cell open and called my father as she went. Why not get all the bullshit out into the open at once? He’d be at work on someone’s kitchen or whatever, but he kept his cell on him. I’d leave a message if I had to.

“You think this is a good time?” he griped instantly. Yeah, hello to you too. “When I’m at your mother’s place you’re nowhere to be found and not bothering to answer your phone, but this — my bread and butter hours — this is a good time for you?”

“Dad, you have no idea, okay? I couldn’t be there, and I’m not going to say I’m sorry for it after the way you acted with Mom.”

“Whaaat? What did she tell you?”

“They were bouncing off the walls when I came home,” I told him. Where was cowboy boots guy when I needed him to fix me up with a smoke? “So don’t play innocent with me.”

“I don’t think I’m the one who has to worry about playing innocent. Your mother, with that schoolboy boyfriend of hers, now that’s a problem. I can take an interest in my son’s life. And what I see there is not right.” Dad pumped up the volume as he went on. “What kind of an example is that? A mother bringing another man into the family home, acting like they’re married when she hardly knows him?”

“It’s not up to you,” I told him, matching his tone. “I don’t want to hear about it anymore.” Never mind that I didn’t like Julian any better than he did. From now on the topic was off limits.

“I say what I have to say,” Dad muttered gruffly. “I won’t have my son telling me what I can’t say.”

“And I won’t listen to my father telling me my mother’s a whore, so if you want to see me anymore …” I stopped talking and paced the pavement. My eyes hurt. I couldn’t let myself get worked up like that in a damn parking lot. Christie or Miriam could pop out at any second and ask me what was wrong. Everything. Everything was wrong.

“I never said that.” He paused on the other end of the line. “So why weren’t you there when I came over? No phone call. No nothing.”

I kicked at the sidewalk, blinking hard. “Des had an emergency. I can’t talk about it. I just … I had to go.”

“An emergency,” Dad repeated. “… All right. If it was an emergency …”

“Yeah. It was.” I glanced swiftly over my shoulder. My co-workers were still tucked safely inside the café. “I should get going. I just wanted to get some things about yesterday straight.”

“All right,” Dad said again. “All right.”

“I meant what I told you. You can’t —”

“I said all right.” He sounded serious about it. “You heard me say all right. Can we stop with that now? I have work to do here.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“You give me a call when you want to come over,” he said. “I’ll pick you up.”

“You have to stay outside when you’re over there from now on,” I warned.

“I always stay outside. Just that one time —”

“I know, I know.” I rubbed one of my hands on my jeans. I wished I wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. “I actually thought I might come and stay at the house with you for a while, if that’s okay.” Before he could gloat I added, “Just for a change.”

Dad hesitated like he was swallowing the urge to rip into my mother. “It’s okay, of course. Do you want me to pick you up after work?”

“I don’t know. I thought I might stay with a friend tonight.” If Ivy was cool with letting me tag along with her again, that is. I needed more buffer time before raising the issue with my mother. “I just wanted to make sure it was okay with you. In case.”

“You let me know,” Dad said. “Whenever, eh? You’ll let me know.”

I thanked him and hung up. I felt better for having ironed things out with him. Maybe a change of scenery was all I really needed. My parents had joint custody. There was no reason I had to spend more time with her than with him, especially when that didn’t seem to be working for either of us. It was the perfect solution, really, so how come I knew my mother wouldn’t like it? My blood pressure started to shoot up again as I argued with her inside my head.

“Did your mom leave?” Emmett said from behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. He was pinching a toasted cheese sandwich between his fingers, and he chomped into it as I bobbed my head.

“She’s pretty, your mom,” he added.

Three teenage girls bounded out of the café, laughing to themselves as they swaggered by. Emmett’s face dropped so fast that I thought he must’ve been doing it on purpose, making some kind of joke. I didn’t think he liked girls that young, but he kept gawking at them as they went.

He looked weird with his face stuck in that pained expression, like you’d know something was wrong with him straight away. I guess there was no joke after all.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded, his mouth relaxing a little. “Did you see that girl in the red skirt?”

“Sure. Why? Did you think she was cute?” She looked kind of like Annalea but with brown hair and minus the extra weight. The micro-skirt was definitely something Annalea would’ve poured herself into.

Emmett held his sandwich in front of his chin. “She said I would’ve been almost hot if I was normal.”

“She said that to you?” One minute I was nearly breaking down, and the next I was surging with the urge to break something with my bare hands. Not her. I don’t mean that. I don’t even break things. I’m not a destructive person. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have those feelings.

“She said it to her friends. They thought it was funny.”

“Her and her friends are stupid bi—” I cut myself off. If I didn’t want to hear shit like that, why should I say it? “Her friends are stupid and shallow. They need to grow up.”

Emmett shrugged and started nibbling on his sandwich again. His eyes looked tired, but he said, “A lot of people need to grow up.”

Amen to that. I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone that didn’t apply to.