Emergency Contact(24)
Instead he considered the cost of diapers.
One time Liar sent him to the store to buy tampons and he was stunned by how expensive they were. Diapers had to cost about the same. Except that a period was a week a month, so you could space them out, but a baby needed diapers pretty much constantly for years.
Christ, he had to relax. Sam let his mind drift and panned out to orient himself on Planet Earth and reassure his brain that things were going to be fine.
His brain had other ideas.
Okay, so if Lorraine was pregnant, it could also mean . . .
SHE COULD HAVE HERPES. WHICH MEANS THAT EVEN IF SHE’S NOT PREGNANT SAM COULD STILL HAVE HERPES BECAUSE PAUL DEFINITELY HAD HERPES.
Thanks, brain.
He walked past the old Marriott, where his mom used to work. It consistently struck him as funny that his mother spent any time in the hospitality business. Brandi Rose Sidelow-Lange was a piece of work. She had what in the old days they’d called moxie. Sam inherited his smart mouth from his mother, and like a snake eating its own tail, it only served to drive her crazy.
Once upon a time, though Sam never knew it, Brandi Rose had been a different person. Infinitely less pissed off. This was evidenced by a photo in the living room. The frame was blue and white with a sunflower on the bottom corner and featured his mom at sixteen, grinning with a Texas Elite Princess Pageant sash draped over her shoulder. Her hair a shiny brown and wearing a knee-length navy dress, Brandi Rose waved. It was a beautiful photo made more so by how happy his mother appeared. Mostly, though, it was displayed in the front room as a trap. Anyone who mentioned it would get the same bitter rejoinder.
“Well, that sash ain’t first place,” she’d point out, ice cubes clinking in her Long Island Iced Tea. “Bitsy Sinclair won. Her daddy, Buck, owned nine car dealerships from here to El Paso.”
According to Brandi Rose, rich people got everything.
“Second place is just about as good as first loser,” she’d continue. “I only did it for the state scholarship anyway. Fat lot of good that did me.” Clink. Clink.
His mother’s response to Sam’s happy addition would be more of the same. Tirades about how shit rolled downhill and how she had to be the one to take care of everything. The accusations would then turn to his father, which led right back to her dissatisfaction with her son. The rejection stung on all counts. Sam was a carbon copy of his father. Though despite the evolutionary wisdom that babies resemble their dads so they’d stick around, Caden Becker was immune to the charms of his tiny doppelg?nger.
As much as it broke his heart, Sam knew his old man was a loser. Granted, he was handsome, tall, dark, with a gleam of wicked about the eyes and Sam had inherited his father’s ease around strangers and his rangy bearing, but that’s where he wanted the similarities to end.
The last time Sam saw his dad, the elder Becker was stumbling right in front of Tequila Six, looking alarmingly well preserved for his lifetime of hard partying. Rumor had it that he and the old bass player of his band had gotten an apartment in the rundown town houses off Mo-Pac favored by Austin’s newly divorced bachelors, but to Sam his father looked homeless. He was wearing a torn ThunderCloud Subs sweatshirt and appeared to be muttering at a couple of sorority girls, who swerved from him without interrupting the flow of their conversation. Sam walked briskly in the opposite direction. He hadn’t considered the inevitability of running into his old man if he got a second job at a bar. Sam knew he wouldn’t deny his father money if he asked for a loan he had no intention of paying back. If anything, Sam figured his dad was a step up from his mom, who stole it.
Thinking about his parents upset him, and when he blinked he felt the horizon lurch abruptly. He took a deep breath. He should have eaten something before leaving. Or else he should have gotten some sleep instead of obsessing about whether or not he and Lorraine should get married.
Marriage was useless anyway. Nothing more than a bogus contract to ensure all parties wound up disappointed. At least that had been the case for his mother. Before this talk of houses with pools and good school districts with Mr. Lange, Brandi Rose had known better than to expect anything from the world. The rash of consolation prizes didn’t help. They reminded Sam of a military air-drop, except instead of humanitarian aid with food or cash, both of which they lacked and needed, a sixty-inch flat-screen TV would appear at their door. Or a Blu-ray player without any of the overpriced discs they couldn’t afford to buy. There were designer clothes, two boxes labeled ARMANI, containing a white cashmere coat and sweaters. For his fourteenth birthday Sam received a pair of silk pajamas from Calvin Klein that was missing only a big, fat Cuban cigar to complete the cartoon tycoon Halloween outfit.
Then came the weepy phone calls behind closed doors. Brandi Rose removed her emerald wedding ring. It was around the time she ceased communicating with her son, as if it had somehow been his fault. A wall of radiant rage was erected between them.
Sam pulled at his T-shirt. Good Lord, it was hot. The only shade was directly in front of the bars, and he didn’t want to get close enough to smell the tang of dirty bar mops and the sweet oakiness of whiskey. Sam’s head swam. He didn’t want to drop out of school and become a washout like his dad. This was a terrible idea. He had no business working at a bar or near one. Whatever swirl of ingredients that made both his parents such devout drinkers hadn’t skipped a generation.
He peered down the road. Miles to go. Sam’s vision wobbled violently and his knees hitched beneath him. Sam had passed out once, in fifth-grade gym. He’d hung slack in Coach Tremont’s arms and could hear her talking about his bird bones though he couldn’t lift his head. It was humiliating.