A Little Hope(9)

If Tabitha weren’t here she would go to this woman, her seamstress, a few years older than Mary Jane and Luke, pretty and fragile with her blond wisps of hair in her face. She would hug her the way she should have hugged Luke those years ago. “Whatever has happened, dear?” she would say. She hears the words exactly as she would say them: Tell me. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.

She thinks she would send her home, to go fix what’s broken. She surprises herself by feeling she would do anything to help mend this. Darcy wants to hold Frederica against her like she’s her third child. She knows, she knows, what it’s like to feel that type of pain.

“I can’t believe it’s fall,” Tabitha says as she bites a muffin.

Frederica holds Darcy’s gaze for a moment longer, and then there is the chime of the door and a burst of talking: the Peruvian woman with her two small children who sometimes bring Darcy drawings to hang below the cash register.

Darcy shrugs and watches Frederica as she shakes her head as if clearing her mind. Frederica angles one of the dresses a different way, and the machine makes its reliable pounding sound.

Oh life. Oh broken glass.





4. Hurts




Luke Crowley lies in bed, arm folded behind his head, and watches his new girlfriend, or whatever she is.

Hannah stands in the kitchen with his T-shirt over her body and pours herself a poor man’s mimosa: Korbel champagne and Turkey Hill orange drink. “Cheers,” she says, and holds it up to him.

He gives her a half smile. Her hair is mostly blond, but the ends are dipped in pink, and he likes the lines of her body: smooth long legs and the way the shirt stops just below her ass. She has two tattoos, but he likes that only he can see them and that they’re covered when they go out. He likes the earrings she wears, large hoops or the silver ones that dangle like feathers.

His mother would size Hannah up and roll her eyes. “Next in line,” she’d say, clicking her tongue. The pink hair would set her over the edge (So we’re into punk rock?). Hannah says gonna and wanna and chews too loudly. His mother would probably disappear into the kitchen and whisper a prayer, and when she’d talk to Hannah, she’d use that awkward voice, the way someone talks to a foreigner or an old person.

Oh well.

He looks at Hannah and lifts the covers. “Want to come back?” he asks. His morning voice is hoarse from too many Camels, from shouting over the music last night at Rocco’s and telling her the band sucked and he could have played better.

She winks at him. She sips her fluorescent mimosa and places it on his kitchen table—among the binder pages with his artwork, the scattered bills, the measly tips (mostly singles) from his shift Thursday night, the invitation to his niece Lizzie’s party (so colorful and promising against his sad stuff). She tiptoes in his direction over the scuffed hardwood floor and lifts the shirt over her head. “You rang?” she says.



* * *



The party is at one.

He stands out on his small balcony overlooking the city, in frayed sweatpants and no shirt, even though it’s on the chilly side, and smokes. He tried to keep a plant out here, but it died in the early frost a few weeks ago. Now it sits like a brown squid in the planter.

Another planter next to it is filled with cigarette butts, and there is a folding chair someone was throwing away. The city is gray today, and a couple walks by in J.Crew-style coats holding hands, gripping white coffee cups, making the most of the morning. A fit woman jogs by in a sports bra and leggings, and a father and little daughter come out of Let’s Bagel with a large paper bag. The girl wears ladybug boots and marches ahead. Luke blows smoke out of his nose.

He has got to clear his head. The party is at one. He hates when things are at one. Too in the middle. Either be at ten in the morning or six in the evening. He hates the middle of the day.

It takes at least thirty minutes to get from Wharton to his sister’s house in Middletown. His sister, Mary Jane, has probably been awake since 4 a.m., arranging the napkins in a perfect fan and trying out some alcohol-free punch recipe from Pinterest. He guesses the party will be circus-themed, since the invitation showed Lizzie in a lion tamer’s costume. Why didn’t he hide the invitation from Hannah? What if she asks to come? Should he bring her to stuff like this? He’s not ready for that. Keep that can of worms inside another bigger can, his dad would have said.

Mary Jane will have made her husband, Alvin, wire up some complicated red-and-white tent and spotlights to the garage ceiling. There will be a tower of cupcakes and a clown walking around. She may even have enlisted their mother to pass out cotton candy and small bags of popcorn. He shakes his head.

He feels his back being touched. “What are you getting her?” Hannah asks.

He cringes. She knows. He turns to look at her. The sun is in her blond hair, and there is this girlishness about her he never noticed beneath all that eye makeup. Her eyes are light green, and he imagines his father saying, She’s a looker, Luke, and doing that thing where he’d push up his eyebrows a few times. Luke lights another cigarette and keeps staring at her.

“Sorry,” she says. “I saw the invitation.”

“It’s okay.” He sighs. “Yeah, a day with the family,” he says, hoping she won’t ask to come. He touches her cheek, and he wants to love this girl. Why can’t he? Because of the disapproval from his mother, his sister? Because she’s not who he pictured he’d end up with? He sees two extra holes in her ear, and feels let down. By everything. By the day getting away, by the fact that he hasn’t bought a present for Lizzie, by the fact that he’s not showered yet and just wants to play his guitar and climb back into bed with a white pill or two. He wants to be better than this guy who stands around in the cold morning with his raspy voice. With his mistake tattoo on his rib cage, another mistake tattoo on his left shoulder.