“ALS,” he said. And then, for Cielle’s sake, “Lou Gehrig’s. That’s why I cut off from you guys nine months ago. We were already … And … I didn’t want to put you through it.”
Though Janie’s face stayed still, there were tracks on her cheeks instantly, as if they’d sprung through the skin. He felt an overpowering urge to take her in his arms, but then Cielle said sharply, “That is so unfair,” and stomped away. They listened to her Doc Martens pound the stairs, and then a door slammed so hard that a magnet fell off the refrigerator.
Pete cleared his throat, then said, “I remember when Sally died, I couldn’t find any sense in getting out of bed. But after a while…” His hand circled, trying to land on a thought. “Someone said once that whenever a door closes in your face, another opens farther down the hall.”
“Which door is that?” Nate said. “To Valhalla?”
A sharp silence. Janie looked unsteady on her feet, and Pete pulled her in and rubbed her shoulders from behind. His face was heavy with sadness, and Nate felt a rush of regret.
He sucked in a breath. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.”
“No.” Pete shook his head. “It was a dumb comment for me to make. I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry to hear about it, Nate.”
Nate pointed upstairs. “Look, I’d better-”
Janie nodded, a quick jerk of the chin.
Upstairs, Cielle’s closed door waited, as imposing as a prison gate. The pencil lines on the door jamb marking her childhood heights were fading; a few more months and that piece of their shared past would be as lost and gone as Nate himself. He’d wasted so many chances. Countless nights he could’ve just walked down the hall to this room, pulled out a board game, read a story, picked her up, and breathed her in.
Gathering himself, he tapped the wood with a knuckle. No response. He entered cautiously, expecting to draw fire. She sat at her desk, hunched over schoolwork, facing away. He hardly recognized the room beneath the magazine collages, the posters of boy-men actors, the scattering of teenager clothes. But there, half buried by a cast-off jacket, was the stepstool that Charles had sent as a baby gift, her name carved in wooden letters. It remained where Nate had positioned it a decade ago so she could step down from her big-girl bed and come wake him if she had a bad dream. He clung to the sight of it, let it moor him.
He cleared his throat. Where to start? “Your boyfriend. Is he a nice guy?”
“Of course not. He’s an asshole who treats me like shit. I grew up with no positive male role model in the house, so that’s what I get.”
He watched her back, debated how to forge into a wave of sarcasm that thick. “Look, I get that you’re angry with me-”
“No. I’m just sullen and withdrawn in general. Ironically self-aware, too, which insulates me further. I could do drugs or cut myself or get a shoulder tattoo of some Chinese symbol for vagina power. But instead I think I’ll just stay pissed off.”
“Cielle.”
She whirled. “What?” Her face was fighting to maintain the tough veneer, but he saw right through the cracks.
“I’m sorry I’m not gonna be around.”
“I’m not sure what the big diff will be. I mean, even before you split, our seasonal dinners were hardly a mainstay.”
“You told me it was easier for you to see me less.”
“I was twelve! I was a kid. You shouldn’t have listened. You shouldn’t have believed me. You should have fought me.” Her voice was wavering now, on the verge.
“Well, honey, you were convincing.”
“You left. I had no say. I had no say.” She noted the effect her words had on him, and her scowl lightened, if only for a moment. “You know what? Never mind. Fine. It’s all my fault.” She turned back around. “Buh-bye now.”
He stared helplessly at the clothes littering the floor, a black polo shirt catching his eye. Car-wash decal on the breast pocket, Cielle’s name stitched above. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re working at a car wash? Why?”
“That’s not really your concern either.”
“Cielle,” he said. “What’s going on?”
She turned again. “Pete lost most of his money in the recession. Some real-estate thing crashed. Which means we can’t afford my stupid private school. So I got a job. But it’s still not enough.”
He sank to sit on her bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She picked up her iPhone in its pink rubber case and poked at the screen disinterestedly. “Because you’ve been so available?”
“So you guys are…?”
“We’re fine. Or so Mom and Pete say. It’s not like we’ll be on the street or anything. There’s just no money for extras. Which would be-oh, that’s right-my education.”
“How much is Brentwood Prep?” Since she’d started last year at Pete’s urging, Nate was unacquainted with the price tag.
“Twenty.”
“Twenty thousand dollars?”
“No. Twenty thousand glass beads. They’re having a special.”
“Do you … do you like it?”
“No.” She tossed the iPhone aside. “The girls are all named Chelsea or Sloane, and if I have to hear from one more assclown that he’s sooo brilliant he has to smoke pot to slow his brain down, I’m gonna puke on his worn-out Vans.”
Nate was struggling to keep up with all this. “So you don’t want to go there anyway.”
“The thing is, I do want to go there. Annoying, sure, but hello? It’s high school. At least the teachers are smart and there’s honors classes and the students aren’t as lame as they could be. Plus, it’ll get me into a good college, too, not that I’ll be able to afford that now either. So I’d better enjoy this semester, since it’s my last hurrah before I move on to stitching wallets in some sweatshop.”
Given his own experience joining the Guard to pay for college, Nate had always sworn he’d work until Cielle’s education was squared away. Pete’s arrival had seemed to take care of all that. Until now.
She glared at him. “Oh, c’mon. This isn’t your concern. Any more than anything else has been these past nine months. Or three years, for that matter. You just … what? Moved on? Got over it?”
“No. I never got over it.”
A cynical snicker couldn’t quite hide the hopefulness. “What then?”
He studied his hands. “I always thought there would be time.”
“There’s never time. There’s only right now. And you suck at right now.”
He was running numbers in his head, but there weren’t many to run given the anemic state of his bank account. “Maybe I can help with the tuition-”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“What can I do, then?”
Once again she showed him her back. “Die somewhere else.”
The words left a clean hole through him where his stomach used to be. He sat for a while and watched her shoulders, the back of her head. She was ostensibly reimmersed in homework.
His joints ached as he stood. “I wish I could’ve done better by you.” He heard the faintest sniffle, but nothing more. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m proud of everything you are and everything you’ll be.”
He took care to ease her door shut silently behind him. Janie and Pete were where he’d left them downstairs by the sink, the salad plates sitting unmoved. Janie asked, “You wanna stay for dinner?”
He thought of his date with a handful of pills in the quiet dark of his apartment. Those inked fingers curling through the Town Car’s window. “Nah. I have to get back.”
The look of relief in Janie’s eyes about killed him.
“I’m sorry to hear about the investments,” Nate said.
Pete tensed a bit. “We’ll figure it out. You have enough to worry about. Don’t worry about this, too.”
Janie added quickly, “She’ll be fine in public school. We were.”
“Okay.” Nate wanted so badly to raise a hand to her cheek, to feel those lips one last time, but instead he tipped his head. “I just wanted … I just wanted to say good-bye.”