The Familiar Dark(41)
“You’re drunk,” I told him, trying to lay hands on my patience, my kindness. Because if anyone deserved a night of oblivion, it was Cal. It wasn’t fair to always expect him to be the strong one. I wondered how many hours he’d been putting in since Junie’s death. Cal was the one who always worried about me, but who worried about him? Made sure he was eating and sleeping, gave him a hug even when he tried to shrug away? Told him everything would be okay? I made a vow to myself to do better by him when all this was over. Assuming I was still around to keep such a promise. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”
“No,” he said when I gave his arm a tug. “Sit with me for a minute, Evie.” He smiled at me. “Please.”
I shot Keith a helpless look. “It’s okay,” he said. “I gotta go in the back and wash up some glasses, lock things up. I’ll give you two a few.”
“Thanks, Keith. We won’t be long.”
Cal squinted up at the clock behind the bar. “What time is it?”
“One thirty,” I told him.
“Aw, shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. Keith didn’t need to call you. I’m fine.”
I laughed. “Definitely not fine, cowboy. You can barely keep your eyes open and your ass on that stool.”
Cal clutched the bar with both hands at my words, sat up a little straighter. “Have you seen the papers?” he asked me.
“What?” I shook my head. “What are you talking about? No.”
He loosened one hand from the bar and reached inside his jacket, pulled out a folded-over newspaper and slapped it onto the bar. My own face blared up at me from the front page of the Kansas City Star, my skin pale, eyes wild, mouth a snarl. Caught midsentence at the press conference. Nobody who looked at that photo would care about the person who killed my daughter. I was the monster now.
“This one’s from a few days ago. Look familiar?” Cal asked, tapping the photo. “Because if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was Mama. Spitting image.”
He wasn’t wrong. Younger, less used up, maybe. But my mama all the same. “I already said I shouldn’t have done it. What more do you want from me?” I turned the paper over so I didn’t have to see. “Is that what caused this? Seeing me splashed all over the front page looking like a psycho? As far as I’m concerned, you should be thanking me.”
Cal squinted, processing my words. “How you figure that?” he asked finally.
“Thanks to me and my total fuckup at that stupid press conference, all those reporters are gone. Chasing more interesting stories.” I said it flippantly, but inside it stung. I didn’t like having them here, following me around, ambushing me with their nosy questions. But having them gone meant they no longer cared, the wider world forgetting Junie already. Tragedy’s attention span was short to begin with. Add in a white trash victim and an unsympathetic mother, and it shrank to almost nothing.
Cal scrubbed his face with one hand, the pulling motion making his skin sag, a little preview of his future. “You ever think we’re still stuck in that trailer with Mama?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, to point out he’d taken a conversational U-turn I could hardly keep up with or make sense of. “’Cause I do. Sometimes I’d swear all this is a dream and we’re still kids who never got away.” He shook his head, drained the dregs of his whiskey before I could stop him, set the glass down with a clank. “When I think back to growing up, to being around Mama, you know what always sticks out the most? That time we were out playing, building a fort or some shit. I’m guessing we were about five and six. Thereabouts, anyway. It was winter, cold, and I had a new hat and mittens. New to me anyway. Who the hell knows where Mama got them. Knowing her, she stole them from some other kid. Anyway, we were out in the woods and that little shit Randall . . . What was his last name? You remember?”
“Goff,” I said. Remembered the whole story and wished I didn’t have to hear it. But Cal was on a roll now, liquor loosening his tongue. “He was always a pain in the ass.”
Cal nodded in agreement. “He took that hat right off my head. Snatched it and dared me to do anything about it. And when we got home, Mama took one look at me and asked where the hat was. Woman never cared what the hell we got up to, could be passed out drunk ninety-nine out of a hundred times we walked through the door, but that one time she had to be paying attention.”
I remembered, too, how my stomach had sunk when she’d asked the question. There’d been a quick glance between Cal and me, followed by the inability to come up with a lie fast enough to ward her off. Her bony hand gripping Cal’s arm, whipping him around to face her while I melted away into the wall, praying for invisibility.
“God, I’ll never forget the look on her face when I told her. The total disgust and disappointment.” His voice morphed into our mama’s nastiest drawl, and my skin rippled. “‘You let somebody take what’s yours? You walk back in here still standing upright? Still breathing while that little asshole is out there wearing your hat? What’s the matter with you, boy? Nobody takes something of yours, not if you’re alive to stop them.’”
The real lesson had started after the tongue-lashing, when she’d grabbed the mittens off Cal’s tiny hands, told him to get them back, not to let her have them. What kind of weak, pathetic pussy was he to let her take his mittens? It had ended only when she’d beaten him to a pulp, thrown the mittens in his busted-up face. Crouched down in front of me where I cowered in the corner and slapped me hard. “Never let anybody take something from you. You hear me? You get it back or you die trying.” One thing you could say about our mama: Her lessons stuck. I’ve never forgotten a one.