Evvie Drake Starts Over(16)

It wouldn’t be fair at all to spy on him and then run downstairs so she could pretend to coincidentally run into him as he came in. If she was curious about what he was doing out there, she would just ask. She would at least tell him she had been watching. Spying was bad. Being nosy was bad. These were all the things Evvie was thinking as she took the stairs two at a time, down to the kitchen, where she snatched the kettle off the stove so that she was filling it just as the side door opened. “Oh, hey, I didn’t know you were out there,” she said as he came in, still wiping his hands on his jeans. “I was making some tea. Can I make you some?”

   “Oh,” he said to her. “Sure, thank you. How’s everything?”

How’s everything with you? What happened? Why can’t you pitch? How did you get the trash-can lid to come off like that?

“Everything’s good,” she said, plunking down in the kitchen chair. “How have you been settling in?”

“Can’t say I’ve done that much exploring. I should be getting out a little more.”

“I say that to myself a lot, believe me.” She fidgeted with the salt shaker. “And I’m sure the last few months in New York were hard, privacy-wise.”

“You could say that,” he said with a barely perceptible smile, or maybe a barely perceptible grimace—it really was…barely perceptible.

She listened to the clock. She wondered if he’d say something, but he didn’t. They sat there together, and nothing happened. The kettle started to make a noise like a long exhalation, and they still sat there. Her chest felt tight.

She put down the salt. “There was a memorial thing for Tim today,” she said. “They planted a tree.” She figured he had to be startled that she’d come right out with this. She certainly was.

“Oh, boy.” He leaned forward, but she didn’t immediately go on. “How did it go?” She knew they were breaking their deal, punching a little hole in the rowboat in which they’d decided to float. Just this once. You can always patch a hole.

“Well, a lot of people said a lot of things about how wonderful he was. So that was great for his mom and dad. He has lots of friends. Well, he had. One lady ripped off a poem from a TV show, so I think she might be disqualified from the Grief Olympics, but there was a patient he helped who had lots of good things to say.” She rubbed the back of her neck.

   “How was it for you?”

She wrinkled her brow. “What do you mean?”

“You said it was great for his mom and dad, his friends. I’m asking how it was for you.”

Evvie licked her lips. “Um.” And she couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Now she was going to cry. Now, in her kitchen, while she was making tea, while she was talking to someone who was probably not ready to be promoted north of “acquaintance,” she was going to cry. She’d had to pray for wet eyes at the tree-planting, had to coax a lump into her throat while everyone else was sniffling away, and now this. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to look like she was thinking about what to say. Finally, she felt herself calm.

“I felt bad,” she said, “because they all loved him so much, and I didn’t. I mean, I loved him originally, a lot, but I didn’t when he died. He wasn’t nice to me. He didn’t hit me or anything, but he was sometimes pretty nasty. And then he died, and now when I’m around people who miss him, I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I don’t miss him so much, which sounds crazy. But…that. It’s that, that’s why I’m…” Her voice trailed off, and she waved a hand in front of her face. “Nobody knows all that, by the way. Not even Andy. So, if you don’t mind.” It had just tumbled right out. Not all of it, not the leaving, but more than she’d expected. It might have been sheer exhaustion, or the sight of him throwing at ghosts under her outside light.

Dean met her eyes. He nodded. “I’ve only done one thing seriously since I was ten, and I can’t do it anymore, and nobody can tell me why,” he said. “So I don’t know what to do either.” He ran his hand over his hair. “It’s not the same at all. I don’t mean to say it’s the same.”

“Honestly, I don’t know if it is. I don’t know…a lot.” She sighed. The kettle haaaaa-d louder and they sat. Finally, the hiss became a whistle. She got up, and as she passed him on her way to the cabinet, he reached out and grabbed her hand with one of his. He squeezed, then let go.

   She pushed her hair behind her ear and moved the kettle off the burner, listening to the whistle fade. The quiet came up behind her. “Did I tell you about the time Andy and I won $100 with a scratch-off ticket?” she asked. “We spent every penny of it on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.” She poured the tea and told the story, and they talked about the weather and the repairs his truck needed.



* * *



—

When the mugs were empty and he’d vanished into the apartment, she cleaned up the kitchen and went upstairs to her bedroom. She took her laptop down from the dresser, sat on her bed, and did something she had not done yet: she googled Dean. And she read everything. This was when she learned that what had happened to Dean was called “the yips”—although right now, they were also calling it Dean Tenney Disease.