The Same Sky(38)

Over her head, I watched the kitchen nervously, afraid that Jake would see our embrace and be angry. I could see the little painted sign I’d hung above the refrigerator: Home is where the heart is. I’d found it in the pile of trash the previous owners had left in the living room of our Mildred Street house. I’d also found some beat-up pots and pans and a Crock-Pot that worked fine once you duct-taped the crack in the lid. I found it surprisingly easy to feel hopeful when I read the plaque, rather than focusing on the fact that the previous owners of our house had perhaps given up on the sentiment while packing for Pflugerville.

“Shh, shh. What can I do?” I said.

She took a deep breath and pulled back, presenting me with her tear-stained face, made grotesque by some sort of multicolored mascara. It’s not that I fell for her histrionics, but I remembered clearly being a teenager and wanting a mother. I guess I saw a bit of myself in Evian, though we hadn’t had the sort of face paint Evian favored at the Ouray Variety Store. Her pupils were wide, and I tried to remember if this meant she was drunk or stoned.

“I don’t have anywhere to go!” she cried. “Sam doesn’t have a house! He lives with the football coach. I can’t go there!”

“Sam lives with the football coach?” I asked.

“He’s the quarterback!” Evian wailed. This was surprising news, as Sam was certainly tall but not very broad. Maybe he was the JV quarterback. Sometimes it seemed as if every man I met in Texas was, wanted to be, or had been a quarterback.

“His mother’s on drugs,” cried Evian. “I have nowhere to go!”

“I’ll take you home,” I said. “Let me get my keys.”

“No!” shrieked Evian, folding inward and howling as if someone had kicked her in the spleen. Jake came to the door.

“Alice?” he called, pushing open the screen.

“Here,” I said. “I’m here, with Evian.”

“Oh. I see,” said Jake. He went back inside, not stopping the screen door from slamming (as he knew it would) with an emphatic bam. He couldn’t have planned it better: Oh. I see. Bam!

“Wait here,” I told Evian.


In the kitchen, Jake was making coffee-chipotle sauce. He raised his eyebrows when I came in. “Her mother kicked her out,” I said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jake evenly. He looked old under the fluorescent lights. I saw fine lines around his eyes that I’d never noticed before.

We both leaned against the steel counters we’d salvaged from a restaurant on South Lamar when the owner had been arrested for trafficking heroin. “I think I’m going to tell her she can stay with us tonight, and that’s all,” I ventured.

Jake whisked with fervor. He set the metal bowl down sharply, snapped his head up, and said, “I disagree.”

“Noted,” I said, pushing the door open and stepping outside.

“This is a really important week for me,” said Jake. “Lainey’s here for six more days.”

“Fuck off,” I told him.

I went to Evian and took her hand. “You can sleep on our couch,” I told her, leading her to the truck.

“Thank you,” she said. I noticed she was dragging a large garbage bag, which she explained was her belongings. (“Mostly dirty laundry,” she told me.) I couldn’t tell if I had done the right thing, but I felt strong at least, as if I was taking charge of something.

I made Evian a bed on the couch with a sleeping bag and two pillows. I even found a mini-tube of Crest and an extra toothbrush that had probably not been used before. I brought her a washcloth and a bar of soap and told her to sleep tight. Pete had stayed at Conroe’s with Jake.

“Hey, Alice?” called Evian as I was changing into pajamas.

“Yes?”

“Do you have, like, a Wi-Fi password?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I jotted it down, WHERESTHEBEEF, and brought it to Evian, who seemed to have recovered completely from her previous hysteria. She sat on the couch in my pajamas with her legs crossed, tapping away at her device. I went into my room and tried to fall asleep, but sleep would not come. After a while, I heard the front door open. Jake tiptoed to our room, changed quickly, and climbed into bed.

“I’m awake,” I whispered.

“I have to get some rest,” said Jake. “Lainey and I are leaving in a few hours.” Since Jake had told Lainey about the different styles of Texas barbecue—hickory-smoked and slathered with sauce in East Texas; South Texas barbacoa, beef heads smoked in a hole in the ground; direct-heat, mesquite-flavored “cowboy style” in West Texas—she’d gotten the go-ahead from her editor to take Jake on the road. “Are you sure you and Benji can handle the rush?” asked Jake.

“We’ll be fine,” I said.

“She can’t live here,” said Jake.

I breathed out. “She has nowhere else to go,” I said.

Jake spoke with a measured calm, as if he had practiced his words on the walk home. “I know you wanted a baby,” he said. “I know how much you want to … take care of someone. But this girl isn’t ours. She needs more help than we can give.”

“Noted,” I said.

Jake paused. I knew he was fighting the urge to yell. “When I get home from the trip, I don’t want her here,” said Jake, his voice tight. “Is that noted?”