Breakaway (14 page)

“Jason,” my grandmother said with an attempt at a smile. “How are you?” she asked.

The question was so stupid, so inappropriate, that my shocked reaction was to laugh. My grandmother's eyes went wide, as if I had slapped her or screamed a curse at her.

“Don't even talk to him,” Mom said, her voice a strangled cry.

“Ma,” I said, holding up a hand to quiet her. “Calm down.”

“Claire, you aren't doing Jason any favors by keeping us away. We want to help,” my grandmother said. Her eyes were traveling over the room, taking in the tangled sheets I had left that morning on my sofa bed, the pile of dishes on the table that filled the small dining area. I had been meaning to clean up the mess but I spent so little time in the apartment it was easier to just ignore it. A pair of my jeans was draped over the arm of the couch—not dirty enough to warrant a trip to the Laundromat but not clean either. Beside the couch was a laundry bag full of my underwear and shirts. I knew they were seeing all of this and judging the way we lived. In contrast with my grandmother's neatly pressed skirt and blouse and my grandfather's precision-trimmed hair and beard, I felt like I always did when someone from the outside saw our living conditions.

Mom gave an angry, garbled cry. No words, just an expression of grief and frustration. Then she turned and fled to her bedroom.

My grandmother stood with a small sigh and moved as if to follow Mom.

“Leave her alone,” I said as I put myself between them and the hall door. “She doesn't want you here.”

“She's upset,” my grandmother said, her mouth in a grim line. “She's sick, Jason. She needs help.”

“You think you're telling me something I don't know?” I asked with a mirthless laugh. “Where were you a month ago?”

“It's a long drive from Florida,” my grandmother said after casting an uncertain look over her shoulder at my grandfather. “Gladys called us. She thought we might be able to help.”

“Ma and I can take care of ourselves,” I said. “You've never been there when we needed you before. I don't get why you think now's the time to start.”

“Jason,” my grandmother said, her eyes turning sad as she tried to decide what to say next.

“You should go,” I said and turned my back on them to walk to Mom's room. Her door wasn't locked and I let myself into her dark bedroom, shutting the door behind me. There was a sour smell to the room, strong, like she hadn't done her laundry or washed her sheets in a long time. At first I held my breath against the smell. As much as I had been out of the house lately I hadn't really noticed how much further she had slid into despair.

Mom was curled up in a ball in the corner of her bed, her back pressed against the dingy-white wall. Her hands were over her face and her breathing was ragged and loud from the snot that filled her nose. Her crying was no longer the desperate sobs that had become so familiar. Now she only whimpered, like an injured animal that doesn't understand the source of the pain it's experiencing.

“Ma, Ma, Ma,” I moaned as I climbed onto her bed and pulled her arms away from her face. She didn't fight me, just went limp as she continued her whimpering. “Hey. Hey, they're gone,” I said in almost a whisper as I sat down with my back against the headboard and put my arms around her shoulders. I pulled her against my chest as she sniffled loudly.

“Don't let them come back, Jason. Don't let them come back.”

“I won't,” I said, wondering as I did how I would stop them if they tried to visit her again.

“They don't care about me,” she said as fresh tears spilled onto my shirt and soaked the front of it. “They never cared about me. They kicked me out. Their own daughter. Kicked me out when I needed them the most.”

I shushed her and held her tighter as her body shook with sobs. She was like a child in my arms and it made me uncomfortable. Like maybe she really was too sick for me, for anyone, to help her. I was still alive, still here with her, but it would never be enough.

“And now I'm just like them,” she said. “I don't know how to be a good mother. I wanted there to be more. So much more. I can't ever seem to do anything right.”

“Don't say that,” I said, though just to make her feel better. It was killing me, listening to her cry and go on and on about what a failure she was, what a disappointment her life had been. I wanted to push her away and leave, be someplace—anyplace—else. But there was no way I could leave her. All I could do was sit there and hold her and silently promise myself that I would never end up like her.

“I killed her,” Mom said, the confession rushing out on a gust of breath that warmed the wet patch on my shirtfront. “I killed her by not being there when she needed me.”

“Don't say that,” I said again, wanting to beg her to stop talking altogether as my own tears broke the dam of my lower eyelid. The wetness burned my cheeks and I put out my tongue to catch the line of tears before they reached my chin, the taste completely foreign because it had been so long since I had let myself cry. About anything.

I buried my face in her hair and held her tighter as she started to calm down, her breath slowing toward sleep.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled. “I wanted to be more.”

I shushed her again and tipped my head back against the headboard, my eyes closed.

“It's just the two of us, Jason,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest. “It's just the two of us now. We don't have anyone else.”

“I know,” I said dully.

Once she was asleep I carefully slid off the bed and pulled a blanket from the end of the bed to cover her, deciding as I did that I would wash her sheets and remake her bed for her the next time she was out of the house.

Though I took care to shut the bedroom door silently behind me, I probably could have slammed the door and it wouldn't wake her she was so out of it. It was like she was getting the first real sleep since Sylvia had died, and I hoped she would stay asleep all night.

It was just now turning to evening though it seemed much later, as if many hours had passed since I got home from school. There was a light tapping at the door and I went to open it. Mario and his mom stood on the stoop. He was holding a large basket and a shopping bag and handed me the basket as they came through the door.

His mom didn't make a point of looking too carefully but I could sense her taking in the condition of the apartment—the stale air, a rancid smell emanating from the kitchen.

“She's sleeping,” I said.

“Bueno,”
Mario's mom said with a nod of approval.

They were silent after that, Mario working under her direction as she spoke to him in quiet Spanish, telling him to dust this and wash that, with him never managing to do anything to her satisfaction the first time. He was used to that. I sat at the small table eating a plate of steak with rice and salad, the contents of the basket they had brought, as they worked around me.

The sun had long set by the time they left. I sat at the table once again and tried to finish my homework but my eyes kept sliding closed. Soon after Mario and his mom were gone I fell into bed and was asleep before my mind had time to drift anywhere it shouldn't go.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I was standing in the lunch line contemplating the choice between a salad and overcooked broccoli. The salad was just a small cup of lettuce with a wilted slice of tomato on top—the slice so thin it was like they only had one tomato to go around for the whole school so they had to be tight with it.

Between the free breakfast at school and the occasional dinner with Mario's family I managed to get a decent meal here and there, but I was still hungry most of the time. I had to always be planning a meal ahead, thinking all the time about whether I had exhausted my welcome at Bad Habits for a burger or if Mario's parents would think it was weird that I was stopping by to eat, again.

Sometimes Aunt Gladys would come by the apartment with a casserole or cookies or something, but usually I was going most of the day on coffee and some kind of day-old pastry from the convenience store that I passed on the way to school.

Though she had been barely functional before, somehow Mom was worse since my grandparents' visit. Seeing them had made her retreat further into her own misery, though she didn't mention anything about her latest breakdown and I didn't bring it up. Now I was doing everything to manage our small apartment, including Mom's laundry. She hadn't done any grocery shopping since Sylvia died.

Mom had been losing weight. Her face was thin, the lines around her eyes more obvious than they had been a month ago. I never saw her eat, assumed she was eating at work, which was where she spent most of her time lately unless she was in her room. She was working double shifts a few days each week. Sometimes I worried about her but since that was a futile exercise, I tried not to think about it. It just made my stomach hurt.

My dad did send Mom money every month for my expenses. I don't know how much. The way Mom told it, the money was never enough, just enough to keep us out of the poorhouse. I thought we were already living
in
the poorhouse, but I suppose it could have been worse. Besides, when Sylvia was alive there was always plenty of food in the house, and even though we qualified financially for the free breakfast at school and lunch vouchers, I hadn't used them much until after Sylvia died.

If I wanted the free breakfast at school, I had to get there at least twenty minutes before classes started, which meant that if I waited for the school bus, I got there too late to get anything to eat. If I did go to school for breakfast, I had to be up by six so I had time for the thirty-minute walk to school. Some rubbery eggs and a few withered pieces of sausage weren't enough of an incentive for me to get up before the sun.

Since I got a free lunch at school I couldn't just use the voucher to buy whatever I wanted. If you accept a free lunch, you also have to accept the absence of choice. I had to take the protein dish, even when it was the disgusting goulash they were serving today, and at least two servings of fruit and vegetables. The fruit consisted of those cups of little oranges or peaches packed in sugary syrup, so at least it was kind of like getting dessert. Dessert is not included in a free lunch.

As I stood there contemplating my vegetable choice, someone stepped up beside me in line, too close to be socially acceptable, and it dragged my attention away from the vegetable servings.

“Hi,” Raine said with a shy smile as she crowded my space.

“Hi,” I said. Though we had Civics together every day we never spoke other than to exchange the occasional hello. Sometimes she would still give me the finger if she caught me looking her way, but now it was more of a playful thing, almost a flirtation.

“I hope that disgusting smell is your lunch and not you,” she said.

I lifted one arm and sniffed at my armpit. “No, it's definitely the food,” I said.

“Gross,” she said as she hit my shoulder with the side of her fist. She reached across me to grab a yogurt and an apple from the cold food shelves, and her right breast pressed against my arm. Raine didn't show them off much but she had a perfect set of breasts. Not too big, and not too small. Perfect. I could feel the soft roundness of her breast pressing against my arm, just a fleeting thing, but I would be able to conjure the memory of that feeling, and would often, over the next few days.

She smelled good too. Not like perfume or shampoo but like the earthy good smell of the part of a girl's neck that is warmed by her hair.

“You're like a gorilla,” she said. “I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you also fling your own poo around.”

“Do gorillas do that?” I asked, but she ignored the question.

“How's your eye?” she asked as she studied my face.

“Better,” I said, wondering if she knew the abuse I had taken at the W & L game was because of her.

“It was horrible to watch when you got knocked out,” she said. “I was really worried.”

“Yeah?” I asked, raising my eyebrows with interest as we inched along the lunch line.

“I mean, not just me,” she amended quickly. “We were
all
worried.”

“It was worth having a headache for a week to beat those guys for once,” I said.

“There was a party after the game, down by the cliffs.” Raine was talking about a place in the woods that overlooked the Potomac River. A popular place for major parties because it was so remote—a place the cops never bothered to look. “It was mostly W and L people even though they lost the game.”

“Yeah? Who'd you go with?” I asked, keeping my voice casual—didn't want to give her the impression I was all that interested.

“I went with Madison. Jordie and Cheryl went out to dinner or something so just the two of us went.”

“You walked down to the cliffs just the two of you?” I asked in surprise. “That wasn't exactly smart. Pretty girls attract all kinds of unwanted attention.”

“Did you … Did you just give me a compliment?” she asked in mock astonishment. “You did, didn't you? You just called me pretty.”

“I suppose before now you thought guys were into you for your stunning intellect,” I said.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I won't tell anyone you said something nice to me. I know you have a rep to protect as the stoic tough guy.”

“When have I ever not been nice to you?” I asked.

“You're joking, right?” she asked. “Look, now that Jordan and Cheryl are a thing, you and I should have a truce. Despite her personality flaws, Cheryl
is
my best friend, and you and Jordan are tight. So, you and I should get along. You could start by eating lunch with us.” As she said this she gestured toward a table by the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one end of the cafeteria where I could see Jordie sitting with Cheryl and a few other people.