Dirty (29 page)

I haven’t been around children much. I don’t have nieces or nephews, and while my cousins have all begun having children, my experience with them has been admiration from afar. I’m never quite sure how to speak to kids. I hate the smarmy face adults put on, like children are stupid, and yet the way young humans act usually baffles me.

“Hi,” I said to a little girl holding on to her younger brother’s hand. “Would you like a treat bag?”

Nothing. Not a smile, not a nod, not word. The little boy grunted, but the girl was silent as a tomb.

“Kara,” said the woman with them, I assumed was their mother. “The lady asked you a question.”

She nudged her forward. I held out the bag encouragingly. I felt like Dian Fossey, tempting a shy primate to accept her. The little girl still stared. The brother stuck his finger up his nose. I recoiled and handed two treat bags to the mother.

“You can give them to the kids,” I told her. “There’s a pack of tissues in there.”

She didn’t get it. Maybe nose-mining was such a commonplace occurrence it no longer shocked. She took the bags, though, and thanked me, and then moved off into the crowd.

“Hi,” I said, turning from my box of treat bags to confront the next festival-goer. “Would you like a treat bag?”

The boy who stood in front of our table was a bit too old for minitablets and crayons, though I supposed the tissues might come in handy. Gavin shifted from foot to foot, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his oversize sweatshirt. His hair had grown longer and obscured his eyes, but I didn’t think he was looking at me.

“Hi, Miss Kavanagh.”

He’d hit us at a lull in the crowd. I glanced over my shoulder at Bob, who was opening another box of treat bags. Marcy had defected from her post at the popcorn machine to grab us all some snacks. I straightened my spine and kept my voice neutral.

“Hello, Gavin.”

“I saw you over here, and I just wanted to say…I wanted to say…”

I didn’t help him out. I kept my eyes fixed on a spot just over his shoulder. The accusations from his mother had cut too deep for me to smile at him.

“My mom, she kinda got out of control.”

I nodded and fussed with the literature set out on our table. He shifted some more. The front of his sweatshirt featured a grinning skeleton with a dagger through its skull.

“My mom, she…she just got a little upset about me not doing my chores when I was spending so much time with you, and she wanted to know what we were doing over there.”

“I see.” I looked up and right into his eyes beneath the fringe of his hair. “And you told her, I guess.”

He chewed his lip. “Yeah.”

I nodded and went back to tidying the piles of notepads and stacks of pencils in front of me. “Interesting, then, that she thinks it’s something else.”

He didn’t say much else, then the defensiveness kicked in. “Hey, you’re a pretty lady and I’m a kid—”

I looked up again and my glare must have struck him because he cut himself off. “I don’t think you understand, Gavin, exactly how much trouble you could get me into.”

I kept my voice pitched low. I handed out another couple treat bags to a set of identical twins wearing matching outfits. Chocolate ice cream stained their matching smiles. Their parents urged them away, and I turned back to him.

“Do you understand?”

He shrugged. “Mom said she knew I was a horny teenage boy and if I had the chance to do something dirty, I would.”

Dirty.
That word again. The feeling of it was worse. I crossed my arms over my chest as Bob told me he was off to the bathroom. He left us alone, and I was glad.

“I never did anything dirty to you.” My words clunked like ice between us.

He stared at his shuffling feet. “It got her off my back. So she didn’t ask about the other stuff.”

“I thought we were friends,” I told him, at last, without sympathy. “Friends don’t betray other friends to save their own butts.”

He shrugged again. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m working,” I said. “You need to go away now.”

And he did, looking over his shoulder with a mournful glance I refused to acknowledge.

“Pardon me for saying so, honey, but you look like six kinds of shit on a splintered stick.”

“Gee, Marcy. Thanks so much.” I added sugar and creamer to my mug of coffee and sipped. Awful. I drank it anyway.

“Seriously, punkin.” She shook her head. “Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll force you to listen to stories of my vacation in Aruba.”

Marcy had convinced me to go out to lunch with her and take advantage of the last bright days to eat outside. Now I couldn’t escape her, and not even the four coats of mascara she wore on each eye could keep her from peering right inside me.

“When did you go to Aruba?”

“I haven’t, yet, but I’m going there on my honeymoon.”

I drank more coffee, though by this point I was so wide-eyed from caffeine I wouldn’t have been surprised had my lashes met my hairline. Then it registered, what she’d said, and I looked to her left hand at the new diamond ring she wore. I put down my cup with a thunk.

“Marcy! You’re engaged?”

She beamed. “Yep.”

She told me how Wayne had gotten down on one knee and proposed. Our food came and she talked as we ate, her fork waving animatedly and earning her bemused looks from the table next to us. I sat and listened and nodded, her pure, giddy joy infectious.

Finally, with cheesecake clinging to the tines of her fork, she paused for air. “This is my last cheesecake until after the wedding. I want to lose at least ten pounds. But, Elle. How are you doing, honey?”

I studied my own, half-eaten dessert. “I’m all right. Thanks for the card and the plant.”

She smiled. “Wayne thought you might like the plant better than flowers.”

“I did. You can tell him so.” I poked a hole in my cake. “It was very thoughtful of both of you. I really appreciate it.”

“Sure.” She chewed, swallowed, sipped her coffee.

I felt the weight of her eyes on me but didn’t look up. Marcy, however, was not to be deterred by something so simple a social-avoidance technique like avoiding eye contact.

“You know you can talk to me, if you want. About anything.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Marcy, but my dad was sick for a while. It wasn’t a surprise.”

Her concern hadn’t made me look up, but the aggravated sigh she gave now did.

“I wasn’t talking about your dad.”

“You weren’t?”

She shook her head and popped the last piece of cheesecake between her lips. “Nope.”

I sat for a moment, staring, then forked a bite of cake into my mouth. Sweet sugar, gooey chocolate…my mouth applauded.

“I saw Dan downtown last weekend.” Marcy wiped her fingers on her napkin.

I made a noncommittal noise. Marcy pinned me with her bright-blue gaze, her spangled shadow glittering. She wore a new shade of lipstick, today, her mouth pursed. I braced myself for the lecture.

“He said you two broke up. That you wouldn’t answer his calls.”

I meant to laugh, I really did, but the sound came out somewhat strangled. “Broke up?”

“Did you?”

“We weren’t—”

“Elle.” Marcy put her hand over mine, and I put down my fork. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I looked into her eyes.

She squeezed my fingers. “Okay.”

“I mean, even if I had anything to say about it, which I don’t, really.” It wasn’t often that my mouth outraced my mind, but it did that day. The more I said, the more I felt I had to say. To explain. To deny, postulate, consider. To justify.

Marcy sat and listened, silent for once.

“He wasn’t my boyfriend. We were just having a good time. It wasn’t serious. I don’t get serious. I told him right up front, that it wasn’t going to be a relationship. I don’t do that. I told him that. He said it was all right.” Words, like raindrops on a windowpane, sliding down, dividing, branching out, always one more showing up when it seemed they’d all disappeared. “It’s not my fault he misunderstood, I was honest with him. I was always honest, right from the start. He knew. I knew. We both knew. And now it’s over, but really, can something be over that never started?”

“You tell me,” Marcy said gently, sitting back in her chair and looking as calm as though someone verbally drenched her
every
day.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I mean…no.”

She smiled. “Elle. Honey. Sweetie-pie. What’s so wrong with being happy?”

I didn’t have an answer for that at first. The cake sat in my stomach like a rock. I finished my coffee, even though it was cold.

“I’m afraid,” I whispered at last, ashamed.

“We’re all afraid, honey.”

I looked up at her with a heavy, heavy sigh. “Even you?”

She nodded. “Even me.”

That made me feel better, a little, and I smiled. She smiled back. She reached for my hand again, linking her fingers through mine.

“Look at those two old guys over there,” she said. “They’re anxiously awaiting some girl-on-girl action.”

She won a laugh from me. I didn’t let go of her hand. “Except in their version, there’ll be pudding involved.”

“Oooh, pudding,” Marcy said. “I could get into that.”

We shared another smile, and something in me eased. I reached for my fork again. We signaled for the check.

“Listen, I can’t pretend to be the queen of good advice, here. I’ve had more boyfriends than I can count, and I’m not so sure that’s any better than not having any. But I do know this. When you find someone who makes you smile and laugh, when you find someone who makes you feel safe…you shouldn’t let that person go just because you’re afraid.”

“Is Wayne that person for you?”

She nodded, and every line of her expression softened with joy. “Yep.”

“And you’re not afraid of it ending?”

“Sure I am. But I’d rather have something this good for a little while than have nothing forever.”

I finished my dessert and wiped my mouth. “Thanks for the advice, but I think it’s over. Dan, I mean.”

“He’s a good man, Elle. Won’t you give him another chance?”

Her assumption that I was the one who had the right to give him anything surprised me. “There’s nothing to give. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s not the one who…he didn’t—”

While only moments before, my mouth had spewed word after word, now my lips moved but nothing came out. I was wordless. I couldn’t think of what I meant to say.

Marcy, heaven bless her, didn’t need me to say anything.

“You could just call him, you know. Talk to him. Work it out.”

For a moment, the thought of doing that lifted my spirits, but it passed as soon as it came. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Oh, Elle.” She seemed disappointed in me, and that stung more than I expected it to. “How come?”

“Because,” I said after another long pause. “I don’t have enough of myself to give to anyone else. And until I do, Dan deserves better than someone with only half to give him.”

She studied me, then nodded slowly. “Did you kill someone?”

“What?” My cheeks bloomed with heat and I coughed. “Jesus, Marcy!”

“Did you?” She asked calmly. “Because I can’t really think of anything else that would be so bad you couldn’t forgive yourself for it.”

I gaped, my mouth working but nothing coming out for a second. “What if I said yes?”

“Did you?”

“Maybe I did!” I cried. “Yes.”

“Did you?” She asked again, frighteningly perceptive. “Shot them? Stuck a knife in their guts? Poison?”

My voice sounded flat and faraway. “No. I just didn’t pick up the phone and call an ambulance when I knew I should.”

“That’s not killing someone,” she shot back. “That’s letting someone die. There’s a difference.”

I blinked, wishing for a drink to wash away the taste of sugar and coffee and anger. “There was still blood on my hands.”

Her steely gaze gave me no release. “Nobody likes a martyr, Elle.”

My body reacted faster than my thoughts could catch up. I pushed my chair back and stood so fast my hand knocked my mug to the floor. It broke with a solid “thunk,” and a splash of coffee colored the brick.

We stared at each other across the table, me with heaving chest and pounding heart and Marcy looking as cool as spring water. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee. I clenched my sweating hands into fists.

“Why are you taking his side?” I asked her finally, my voice shaking. “You’re supposed to be my friend!”

“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t try to help you. Would I?”

“You think this is helping me?”

She nodded. “Yes, Elle. I do.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I told her. “Not a damn thing.”

“Whose fault is that?” she shot back.

My mind couldn’t seem to decide between anger and despair, and both filled me. I backed away from her, my hands up like I was pushing her away. Marcy didn’t move.

“Falling in love doesn’t make everything else magically disappear, Marcy. Finding your knight in shining armor is a fairy tale. It doesn’t change anything, and you’re fooling yourself if it does. You go ahead and live in your rainbow-glitter sunshine and marshmallow fantasies. I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you found Wayne and he filled up all those places inside of you that needed filling. Good for you. I hope you live happily ever after. But it’s just a dream, it’s not real. Love doesn’t make everything all better like a fucking fairy wand, Marcy, it doesn’t change things just like POOF, there you go, hey, I love you, now let’s run hand in hand through a field of fucking flowers!”

The venom in my voice burned my throat. Marcy flinched, her cheeks turning pink in an uncharacteristic show of discomfort. She blinked rapidly, and I should have been ashamed to see that she had tears in her eyes.

“And so what if it does? What if falling in love does make everything else seem better? Is that a crime? Is it a sin to let someone else help you out a little, once in a while? But no, you have to be a damn martyr and carry it all on your own shoulders, all the time! You just keep on hating yourself so everyone else will too, okay? Keep on being miserable because you’re too afraid to let go of it! Jesus H. Christ,” she cried. “Don’t you want to be happy?”