My sister, Frankie, came into the world with two strikes already against her. Mom hadn’t planned on another kid and wasn’t real thrilled. Frankie showed up early, way too puny. She slept a ton.
Because I’m curious—because I can’t help myself—I read this pamphlet that had come home from the hospital in a bag of free formula. It said babies were supposed to wake up every three or four hours to eat, but Frankie wasn’t doing that. Not even close.
“What a good baby,” everybody said.
Nobody wanted to hear she was starving.
I didn’t want to love Frankie. I just wanted to fix her. But the thing about babies is, you mix up formula for them in the middle of the night—unwrap their blankets, change their diapers, run your fingernail across the bottom of their tiny bare feet until they’re awake enough to eat—and the next thing you know they’ve got their little fingers wrapped around your soul, and they don’t ever let go.
I had to do things for Frankie. Whatever needed to be done. I just had to.
So I learned what hours DHS is open. What paperwork you have to take to the office, who to call if you swipe your Oregon Trail card at the grocery store and it turns out there’s no money on it because your mom missed the appointment and didn’t tell you. I learned where to go to get secondhand onesies. Who gives out free formula on what days. How to turn in cans for quarters to pay for laundry, where to find work when people say there isn’t any.
I learned. I’ve got a knack for it.
By the time I turned fourteen, I was making more money than my mom was, and I guess I started to think I was the man of the house. The rock the surf broke over. Invincible.
Then my dad showed up.
If I was the rock, he was the tide. Nothing I could do to keep him from dragging my mom back out to sea. All I could manage was to keep Frankie sheltered, give her somewhere to hide and huddle so he couldn’t drag her under, too.
After that, I started thinking about what else I could do.
Just working and keeping shit together the way I was already—it wasn’t ever going to be good enough. I had to give Frankie a life somewhere else, somewhere better, or she was going to end up like all the other girls, screwing twelve-year-old boys in supply closets, getting screwed over again and again by some worthless bastard she’s decided she’s in love with.
I couldn’t stand the thought of it.
When I was old enough to drive, I got a job at this ritzy golf course twenty-five miles away. I got that job on purpose, because I knew if there was anywhere I could meet the right people, study them, figure out how to become one of them, it was there.
I worked my way up to caddying, which is how I met Dr. Tomlinson. I caddied for him once when his usual guy was sick, and then he requested me and I got to be his usual guy.
This golf course I’m talking about—when I say it’s ritzy, I mean it’s so ritzy that people fly there from all over the world just to play golf, and once they pick their caddy they keep the same caddy for as long as they want. It’s swank.
So, anyway, Dr. T is rich—an anesthesiologist—and his wife comes from money. I’ve been in their house, high up on a bluff with a view over the golf course. It’s huge, clean, everything immaculate, nothing broken or out of place.
That house looked like everything I wanted for Frankie. A fortress that would protect her from my dad, from pain, from making stupid, fucked-up decisions and wasting her life.
I saw that house, and I wanted it. I wanted what he had.
I guess Dr. T saw something in me, too. The weediness in me. My willingness to work, to grow toward any kind of light I can find. He said I reminded him of himself back when he was a dirt-poor farm kid in Iowa, desperate to do something with his life.
I make him feel big, is what he means. Show him who he was and how far he’s gotten.
Dr. T made me his project. He taught me how to talk so I don’t sound ignorant. He told me when I was acting like trash, how to fit in among people like him. He and his wife don’t have kids, and he kind of adopted me.
His wife—she didn’t want a kid. She took me out in the woods and told me to lift up her skirt. Took me in the pool. Took me into her bedroom when Dr. T wasn’t around.
She wasn’t the only woman to use me, or even the first. She wanted into my pants. I wanted her money. A fair exchange, I figured.
Dr. T told me they would send me to the college where he’d gone, the best college, according to him. If I could get the grades and get in, they would ship me off to Putnam, Iowa, with full tuition. Room and board would be up to me.
The Tomlinsons would do that for me. They liked me that much.
I worked my ass off to get in to Putnam. I did things I’m proud of, and I did things Dr. T would kill me for if he found out. I did them so I could get here, and I’m here so I can get a good degree and meet the right people to give me a leg up in life.
I did them for Frankie and my mom.
I’m not ashamed. The world isn’t some flawless place where everything works. It’s a fucking mess, and if I have to cut corners or break the law to get where I need to be, fine. If I have to trade sex for money, for opportunity, I’m still better off using my dick than wasting my life, losing my heart.
Love is what fucks people up. Love is the undertow.
My mom taught me that.
At Putnam, I wasn’t not the same person I am back home. I was a student, a worker, an actor mouthing lines. I was an impostor, but a good one. I knew exactly how I was supposed to behave, what I could get away with saying and doing, when I needed to shut the fuck up and keep my head down, no matter how much I didn’t want to.
I knew the rules. I knew where they bent, and I was good at bending them, because for a guy like me, bending them was the only way.
But bending is bending and breaking is breaking. Except for that one fuckup with Caroline, I didn’t break the rules. I broke the law but not the rules.
I guess when I fuck up, I tend to go epic.
“Get your fingers out of there.”
Krishna is bent over the mixing bowl, poking at the nine-grain-bread dough. I take the towel out of my waistband and snap him across the back of the neck.
“Ow!”
“I said get your fingers out.”
He straightens and wipes his hand on his jeans. Flour released from the towel drifts in a cloud around him. “I just want to see if it feels like an ass.”
“That is some perverted shit.”
“You’re the one who told me.”
“No way did I say that. Wash your hands if you’re going to touch it. That’s all I ask.”
“I did before I came over here.”
“You did not.”
“I did too. I always wash my hands after.”
After, in this case, means, after I roll out of her bed. Half the time Krishna crashes my night shift, he’s wasted. The other half the time, he’s just gotten laid.
Tonight, I’m pretty sure it’s both.
“Maybe you should wash your hands before, quit spreading scabies all over campus.”