Fix You (6 page)

             
“Well it’s not like you were just sitting around,” Beth said. “Running a house and raising children is work.”

             
Child
, Jess thought bitterly.
Not children
. Because even though she’d wanted several, Dylan hadn’t wanted more than one. Sometimes it felt like she loved Tyler double to compensate.

             
“And you’re, like, the Queen of Organization,” Randy thought he was being helpful. “You could run an office no problem, sweetheart.”

             
“It’s been a day, Jess,” Jo said. Jess glanced across the long kitchen table and saw that her sister was the only one not trying to put a super positive spin on the situation. She’d always been realistic in some respects. “Nobody expected you to land a job in a day.”

             
But she’d expected it of herself.

**

              “The house is for sale, Dylan,” Jess reminded him two afternoons later over the phone. She held her hair back off her face with her free hand and propped a hip against the dining room table, fatigue pulling at her. “Susan,” she said of their realtor, “had the open house yesterday.”

             
“The house is for sale because that’s what you wanted,” he said, voice getting tight. “I didn’t - ”

             
“Oh,” she snorted, “yes, I wanted you to fuck around on me. This is all
exactly
what I wanted.”

             
“Quit being a smartass,” he snapped.

             
“Quit being an adulterer.”

             
“Jess,” he sighed – sighed like cheating on her with his twenty-two-year-old mistress and walking away with half of their furniture was too taxing to bear. “We can take it off the market. If you’ll just calm down about things, we don’t have to lose the house.”

             
She glanced out through the front windows toward the street. A whole troop of kids on bikes pedaled past the house. “It’s adorable, really, that you think I give a shit about the house.”

             
“Mama!” Dylan called from the living room, and she figured Willa was trying to eat one of his Hot Wheels again.

             
“I’ve gotta go. I have a kid to worry about.” She hung up without waiting for a response.

**

             
Dear Ms. Beaumont, Thank you for your interest in the administrative assistant position at –

             
She didn’t read the rest. The email would say the same thing the previous thirty had said: no one wanted her. She wasn’t a “good fit” – not for any of the companies to which she’d applied, not to her husband. She didn’t warrant a phone call or interview. She didn’t warrant fidelity.

             
She was going crazy.

             
Jess slammed the lid of her sister’s laptop and left the kitchen. Tyler was stretched out on the couch, head lolling off the side as he watched TV upside down. He was bored and unhappy and growing more petulant by the day. Even Willa, always happy, was starting to be fussy, feeding off the poisonous energy Jess was polluting the house with.

             
“Hey, sweetie.” She propped an arm over the back of the couch and reached to tug at the hem of Tyler’s t-shirt. “You wanna go get some ice cream?”

             
His head came up, his dark hair sticking up in messy cowlicks. “Really?”

             
“Really. Get your shoes on.”

             
She took them to Bruster’s because it was close and because it was consistently good. And also because she’d spent many a summer afternoon with her little sister bickering over Jo’s clumsiness and spilled mint chocolate chip on its ironwork benches. Jess didn’t get any for herself, instead helped Willa master her spoon and watched Tyler lick his chocolate cone and stare blankly across the parking lot.

             
A dozen times she started to say something to him, but stopped short. How did she begin to assure him that their lives would return to normal when the normal they’d known no longer existed? She wished she was a parent who lied, so she could paste on a big fake smile and tell him that he wouldn’t have to change schools and that they’d go home eventually and that Daddy really did plan on taking him to the car show.

             
“Hey, Ty?” She finally reached out and ruffled her fingers through his dark hair. She thought he leaned away from her and when his eyes cut over they were guarded. He didn’t trust her anymore; she was the one who’d uprooted him. “I’m sorry about what’s happening, baby. I love you so much and I wish it didn’t have to be this way. I just want you to know that, okay?”

             
“Okay.” His voice was flat and his eyes moved away from her, back across the parking lot. He didn’t believe her. He was six and he couldn’t understand that there were real, deep, painful reasons his parents couldn’t be together anymore. Years from now, maybe he would, but not now.

**

              Friday afternoon Dylan sent her the text message she’d been dreading; he couldn’t take Tyler to the car show. Jess broke the news at dinner and Tyler stared mutely down at his plate. Randy and Tam assured that they’d take him; they really hammed it up and Jess appreciated their efforts, but for Tyler, the change was heartbreaking. In the whirlwind month they’d endured, he had kicked and yelled and thrown monster fits, had screamed at her and told her he hated her, had thrown toys and lapsed into zombie-like silences. But that night, after the car show news, Jess tiptoed to the cracked doorway of her brothers’ old room and heard the telltale sniffles of the true, honest cry Tyler had been holding back for weeks.

             
She slipped inside the dark room and went to the bed in bare feet and her pajamas. Walt’s old bed swallowed Tyler up and in the dim glow of the soft blue nightlight plugged into the opposite wall, she saw him rubbing his little fists into his eyes. Jess wanted to take a baseball bat to the side of Dylan’s head, but she settled for folding herself into bed beside her son and sliding her arms around him.

             
He wasn’t a baby, he always reminded her, but he didn’t fight her this time. He pressed his wet face against her neck and cried himself unconscious.

             
“I’m sorry,” she whispered over and over again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

5

             
T
am didn’t understand men like Dylan Beaumont. Maybe if Dylan had lost his first tooth at seven thanks to a backhand across the face; maybe if he’d gone to bed hungry every night for twenty-six years; maybe if he’d nursed his ailing mother through round after round of chemo that only prolonged the inevitable; maybe then Dylan would have found the solace he needed in his wife and kid. Maybe then his wedding ring would have been something more than the thing he slipped in his pocket before he went to see his mistress. Tam couldn’t fathom how anyone could take a family like his for granted; but then again, Tam couldn’t fathom a lot of things.

             
“Alright, dude.” He slid his Malibu into park and realized he’d missed the sound of its gears sliding over one another now that he was driving the Mustang to work. “You ready?”

             
A check in the rearview mirror proved that the mosaic of shiny, candy-colored cars spread out across the parking lot before them was too tempting for Tyler; he’d unbuckled his seatbelt and had his nose pressed to the window, finally starting to come up out of his funk.

             
Tam shot a glance to Randy in the passenger seat and was met with a
who knows?
shrug. Neither of them was quite sure how to handle the divorce situation. They were both realists and for that reason, Beth had warned them with,
“Don’t say anything to get him upset, you two,”
on their way out the door.

             
“Come on, boys.” Randy opened his door and rolled out of the car, taking the leadership role Tam was glad to give up in this situation.

             
Tyler scrambled out, a wild, excited light in his eyes Tam hadn’t seen in a while.

             
The show was being held in Vinings, in a Publix parking lot that had been totally overrun. It smelled like exhaust, Turtle Wax and grilling hot dogs. The tinny sound of a radio carried just loud enough to be heard, but too soft for Tam to make out the song playing. The day was cloudless and already starting to get hot; Tam shrugged out of his zippered sweatshirt and tossed it across the driver’s seat before he locked the door and followed his father-in-law and nephew.

             
Tyler set the pace and he had the attention span of a hummingbird as he went from car to car. A cherry red ’67 Chevelle finally caught his interest and pulled him around and around it in circles, fingers hovering over the glittering paint, knowing he shouldn’t touch.

             
“SS,” Tam observed as his eyes moved over the car’s grill. “She’s sweet.”

             
The owner was parked under an umbrella in a lawn chair, a hat pulled down over his sunglasses, and he nodded.

             
“What’s SS?” Tyler asked.

             
“Super Sport,” Randy answered like he’d been waiting for such a question. “It’s got a 396 Big-Block under the hood, yeah?” He turned to the owner for confirmation and got a nod. “This guy’s got a ’65 Malibu,” he said with a tilt of his head in Tam’s direction.

             
The guy pushed his hat back a fraction. “You wanna sell it?”

             
Tam grinned. “No.”

             
Randy launched into a full scale explanation of the Chevelle’s history that Tyler probably didn’t understand – the ’64 and ’65 models with the Malibu SS badges; onto the SS396 series; body style changes in the late sixties and seventies; and the eventual end of the line. Tam shoved his hands in his pockets while the old man talked and walked around the red ’67, setting it up against his own ride in his head.

             
The shout of, “Uncle Tam!” didn’t register until Logan Walker was standing in front of him beside the car.

             
“Hi…” Tam’s head snapped up and he scanned the lot. Walt was here? What the hell had he done to deserve that? “Who’re you here with?”

             
As the question left his lips, he spotted Walt’s big square head over the roof of the neighboring car. His eyes found Tam, he scowled, and then he headed their way. Oh, goody.

             
Chase preceded his dad’s approach and Tyler spotted his cousins. The three of them erupted into little boy chatter.

             
“Little far from home, aren’t you?” Walt asked when he was close enough.

             
“Tyler wanted to come. And your buddy Dylan couldn’t make it,” he said with a sideways non-smile that left Walt frowning.

             
“I could have picked him up. Jess could have - ”

             
“Walt,” Randy greeted, stepping between them. “This is turning into a family reunion, huh?”

             
Walt, and even Mike sometimes, thought Randy was this boisterous, oblivious dad-figure who knew nothing about subtlety. But the glance Randy shot over his shoulder at Tam was full of subtext; their feud wasn’t going to bleed all over the boys in the middle of a public place, not given what Tyler was going through especially. Tam nodded.

**

              “Thank you for your time,” Jess heard her sister say as she put her back to the bank’s reception desk and headed for the door, knuckling her sunglasses up on her nose. Then “Jess” was a sigh behind her as Jo hefted her kid higher in her arms and followed. “You have to be
polite
,” she said as they pushed through the double glass doors of the airlock and hit the sidewalk.

             
“This from the queen of ‘I don’t give a fuck.’” Two elderly women were making their way up to the bank’s door and both shot Jess startled, disapproving glances. She didn’t care.

             
“I never gave the cold shoulder to someone I wanted to work for,” Jo countered as they stepped off the curb and headed toward the Tahoe.

             
“You heard them. They’re not hiring.”

             
“Not now, but…” Jo sighed. “Whatever. Let’s grab some lunch and regroup.”

             
“Sure.”

             
Jess was driving because it helped her feel in control of something and they rode to Chick-fil-A in silence. Only once they were seated at a window table, Willa in a high chair pawing through her fries like the wild urchin her mother had been at that age, did Jo take a deep breath over the top of her chicken sandwich and revisit the politeness issue.

             
“I know this is hard.”

             
“Really?” Jess fired back. “You’ve filed for divorce?”

             
“Jess, when other people say this, they’re usually wrong. But right now, trust me, you’re being a bitch.”

             
“I…” She was. She was being a complete bitch. But recognizing it and preventing it were two very different things, she was realizing.

             
Jo’s expression soured. “You do realize I work a high schooler’s job for just above minimum wage, right? And up until a month ago, my husband made less and we had a brand new baby. No, I haven’t gotten divorced, but I know what it’s like to need and find work.”

             
Jess sighed. Her sister had always suffered a bit from the sense that, as the youngest, her elders were forcing wisdom on her. Being in the worst financial shape of any of the five of them had only worsened her paranoia that, like Walt, they all judged her poorly for the decisions she’d made. Every little thing was taken as a slight against her or, God forbid, Tam, and with her own worries, Jess hadn’t been sensitive to that. “Calm down, Joanna of Arc,” she said with another sigh.

             
“I’m one hundred percent behind you when it comes to Dylan,” Jo pressed on, “but you’re gonna have to do some ass kissing if you want a job.”

             
“I hate ass kissing.” She scowled as she dragged a waffle fry through a ketchup puddle on her tray.

             
“Me too.” Jo took a bite of her sandwich and then talked around it. All of Mom’s
she’ll be a lady one of these days
wishes had never come true. “But in this economy - ”

             
“I know, I know.”

             
“I’m only trying to help you.” Her sister shot her a pointed look before she reached over to consolidate the fries Willa had pushed out of reach on top of her high chair tray. “And I’m doing it the only way I know how.” She picked up her sandwich again and gave herself a little shake. “Okay, so, where to next?”

             
She was tenacious; Jess would give her that. It was ineffectual, but wasn’t it the thought that counted?

             
Whatever.

**

              Tam shoved his hands in his jeans pockets as they strolled between the rows and rows of cars, and he waited. Randy was serving as tour guide for the boys and somehow, Tam had fallen into step beside Walt. Shittiness was coming, it was just a matter of time.

             
It came. “You’re working with Mike at Parrish?” Walt asked in a voice that hinted at civility. He’d been, if not decent, then at least indifferent toward Jo for a long stretch now. The resentment was still there on both sides, simmering beneath the surface, but Walt had at least stopped attacking her.

             
“Yep,” Tam said like it was no big deal. Like he hadn’t puked on the side of the road before his interview, like he hadn’t sweated inside his brand new suit and been pasty-pale and stuttered like a moron. He lived in near constant fear that the guys at work saw him as a sad sack charity case, but that was a fear Jo kept reminding him was only in his head. So he was working at Parrish with Mike and his first paycheck had taken his legs out from under him and sat him down hard at the kitchen table, his breath stuck in his throat. But Walt didn’t know any of that.

             
He snorted. “How many strings did Mike have to pull to make that happen?”

             
“He got me the interview,” Tam said with a shrug, “but I made dean’s list every semester; three other guys applied for the job and I had the best resume.” He’d never bragged in his life, but Walt was forcing him to. “Besides, Mike’s never been good at pulling strings.” He shot Walt a sideways glance and saw him frown. “Speaking of
not good
, how’s Dylan?”

             
There was something Frankenstein-like about Walt when he frowned as hard as he did now. It was the stress lines in his forehead. “Guess you’re loving this, huh? Somebody besides you fucking up.”

             
Bolstered by the knowledge that Walt had taken his last threat seriously, and still mellow thanks to Tyler’s very thankful Aunt Jo climbing into the shower with him that morning, Tam felt the beginnings of a smile threaten. “You can call my situation fucking up if you want,” he became serious and gave Walt a flat look, “but no, I’m not loving that Jess is going through this. Say what you want about me, but you can bet your ass I’ll never treat my Walker sister the way that asshole did his.”

             
Walt’s response was to lengthen his stride and catch up with his sons.

             
It had taken Tam his whole life, but he was starting to feel just how solid the ground was under his feet. Walt’s silence meant he was probably starting to feel it too.

**

              “I love my sister,” Jo said as she stepped out of her jeans and left them in the middle of her bedroom floor. She’d pick them up tomorrow. “Really, I do.” She padded barefoot to the bed in her panties and one of Tam’s old shirts, massaging her sore scalp as she pulled out her hair elastic. “But, damn, she’s been…”

             
“Stone cold?” Tam supplied.

             
“Yes,” she said with a groan as she folded up like a boneless doll on the bed beside him. It was a sticky, warm night and he was shirtless, the sheets down around his ankles. Jo rolled over him to her spot closest to the window and hooked a leg across his hips, tucked her face into the hollow of his throat. “She’s like Robocop. With claws. I thought she was gonna dive across the counter when the girl at Macy’s told her they’d just filled the last of their open positions.”

             
Tam’s arm came around her waist, fingers finding their way under her shirt out of mindless habit. His wedding ring was cool and smooth against her skin. “You gotta give her credit, though,” he said, his voice echoing through his chest and against her ear. “A lot of women would be drowning in tissues and chocolate in her situation.”

             
“I wouldn’t.”

             
“No?” She felt his chin against her hair as he strained to look at her. He chuckled. “Not even for me?”

             
“It’s not like you would know; you’d be six feet under.” She meant it as a joke, and he chuckled as if it was, but her voice was hollow. “You know I’d totally kill you if you cheated on me, right?” She tipped her head back and stared up at him through her lashes.