Gun Shy(24)

“I miss Cassie,” Hannah says, tugging on my hand. “Can we please go visit her now that you’re home?”

I grind my teeth as I try to think of a suitable response.

“Leo?”

“No,” I say, resuming my brisk pace, half-dragging Hannah behind me. “Cassie and I aren’t friends anymore.”



* * *



The trailer’s exactly as I remember, only smaller. It feels tiny, no doubt because my family has grown bigger in my absence. My mom sits on the torn leather couch like some kind of royalty on her throne, smoking a cigarette as she watches the television intently, and two brand new baby brothers somebody forgot to tell me about play with Legos at her feet. They’re two and three years old at best, and the quietest kids I’ve ever seen. Pike’s already told me that the triplets—Matty, Richie and Beau, who were barely in grade school when I went to prison—are living with their paternal grandmother in Reno after my mother failed to send them to school for almost a year. I glance at these new little boys again and wonder if she’s given them NyQuil to calm them down. That’s what our batshit mother used to do when Pike and I were going stir-crazy inside in winter. Give us each a dose of medicine to calm us down before she got her own ‘medicine” sorted.

“Mom.”

“Oh, hey,” she says, glancing away from the TV for a second. “Welcome home. They give you gate money?”

I chuckle, shaking my head. That’s a record, even for her. Normally she’d try to sweet talk me before asking for money.

“Hey, Mom,” I reply. “Missed you, too.”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be like that. I need to buy food for the boys.”

“What happened to Hannah?” I ask her, ignoring her question. She shrugs, blowing cigarette smoke over my brothers’ heads as they play quietly. She’s older than I remember. Her mouth is smaller, the corners of her eyes more lined. She’s barely forty and she looks sixty.

“Mom,” I say, more forcefully this time. “Hannah’s pregnant.”

She looks at me like I’m dumb as shit. “You’re kidding.”

Sarcastic bitch. “She’s fourteen.”

“I know that.”

Hannah breaks away from me, going for the Lego on the ground. “Hey,” I say, pulling her back gently. “Go shower first.”

For once, she doesn’t argue. A few moments later I hear the water turn on and Hannah starts singing the theme song from Frozen.

I don’t move from my spot next to the TV. I stare at my mom, imagining laser beams shooting out of my eyes and burning holes in her face. Anger in my veins. I always think of the pasta sauce I used to make with Grandma when I’m angry. It had to simmer for hours before it was done. That’s how my rage works. It simmers for hours, and then I’m fucking done.

I’ll wait. As long as it takes, I’ll wait for my mom to bite.

“What?” she says, lighting a new cigarette, the old one burned down to the filter and abandoned in the overflowing coffee mug she’s using as a makeshift ashtray.

“Did you know what she was doing down in my room?”

She coughs. “I’m sorry, did she mess your room up some time in the last ten years, baby?”

Sarcastic bitch.

“Eight years,” I correct her.

Bitch doesn’t respond.

“I don’t care about the mess, Ma,” I say through gritted teeth. “I care about walking in on my fourteen-year-old sister being used as a plaything by some guy you used to date.”

“She’s almost fifteen,” Ma says, flicking a bit of tobacco from her lip. “I was sixteen when I had you.”

“Mom!” I yell. “She’s not almost fifteen! She’s intellectually fucking disabled.” The ‘thanks to you’ part is silent, but strongly inferred.

She stands up, furious. “How dare you!” she cries. “Coming in here after all these years and yelling at me! I’m trying to watch my show!”

I respond by yanking the TV’s power cord out of the wall socket. “Leo…” my mother growls.

“Mother,” I reply. I really didn’t mean to come back and upset her. But then Hannah happened.

“Have you got food? A turkey for Thanksgiving?”

“That depends,” she says. “You got gate money for me? Turkey ain’t cheap.”

I snort-laugh. “How much money you think they give you at the gate? Not enough to spring for a fucking turkey to feed six people. Six and a half, if we’re being accurate.”

Her eyes narrow to slits, and I know she doesn’t believe me. “Derek got two hundred dollars and a bus ticket to anywhere in the country after he got out,” she says.

I shrug. “Yeah, well, Derek was in prison in California, Mom. In Nevada, they don’t give you two hundred dollars.”

She taps ash on the floor, digesting that. “Well, how much?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I’m not giving you money so you can go and shoot it up your arm.”

She’s about to launch a tirade against me when a horn beeps outside. I know that noise. Short and sharp, two beeps. Mayor Carter is here. Hannah’s biological father, though he’d never admit it, and he definitely won’t come in and see the daughter who has no idea her daddy is the town mayor. Fucking prick. Probably getting one in before he has to spend Thanksgiving with his poor, unsuspecting wife and their six teacup poodles.