Love Over Matter (3 page)

I get a pang of sadness for the
peas-in-a-pod relationship my father and I used to have, before the
stress of the restaurant, Mom’s heart attack, and Haley’s “dark
period.” I form my lips into a pleasant smile. “To
sleep?”

Dad smiles back, but it’s more of a
gotcha smirk than a happy-to-see-you greeting. “C’mon, Cassandra,”
he says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“
But . . . what
do you mean?” I shoot him my famous doe eyes and angle for the
table.

He studies me as I sit down and start
flipping through the paper. “You were at the cemetery, weren’t
you?”

I shake my head, suddenly unable to
breathe.

He lays a palm on my shoulder, then
pats my hair against my back. “It’s okay. We know how hard this
is.” He sighs. “But you’ve gotta keep us in the loop. Stop sneaking
out in the middle of the night to . . . do whatever it is
you’ve been doing.”

“
I don’t sneak out,” I
mutter. “We were practicing for the track team.”

He bursts out laughing, which,
honestly, is a tad insulting. “Yeah, okay.”

Swish, swish
goes the news in my hands. “We
were.
”

He takes a seat beside me, and even
though I try not to look, I can’t help noticing he’s aging at warp
speed, the specks of gray that once dappled his temples now forging
an all-out assault on his bushy mane. “It wasn’t your fault, what
happened to George,” he tells me.

I wish he wouldn’t talk to
me this way; it’s too raw.
I’m
too raw.

“
He could’ve been texting
anyone,” he continues. “It was an accident.” I bite my lip, shut my
eyes against the tears that are welling. “And he wouldn’t want you
to blame yourself.”

That’s what a therapist told me too:
forgive yourself for George; he’d want it that way. But I guess
survivor’s guilt exists for a reason, a natural response to loving
someone and being helpless to stop from losing them.

If only he hadn’t sent
that message
 . . .

“
He was texting
me,
” I say. “About
nothing.
Absolutely
nothing.” (Not that I know, really, never having worked up the
nerve to read that final heartbreaking communiqué.)

Dad eases off his chair and
heads for the stove, where he gets the teakettle percolating. “I
don’t want to say ‘get over it, Cass,’” he tells me gently. “I know
it’s not a ‘get over it’ situation. But you
do
have to figure out how to move on.
You’ve been . . .
stuck
for a long time.”

Most dads probably wouldn’t
be so sensitive, mine included. But while Mom was sick, he changed.
It was like he tried to absorb her—
become
her, almost—in case the worst
happened. Thank God, it didn’t.

“
I’m trying,” I say with an
exasperated sigh. “I am.”

He sets a steaming mug of tea in front
of me, the paper tab clinging like used bubblegum to the side of
the cup. “Anything I can do to help?”

I blow on the tea, take a tentative
sip. “Maybe.”

His eyes brighten. “Do
tell.”

“
You know Ian
Smith?”

“
Ian Smith?” he repeats,
his eyebrows puckering.

I swirl the tea bag around
in the water, creating ripples of bitterness. “He’s a senior. One
of George’s friends,” I remind him. “A short guy. Kind of looks
like Justin Bieber, without the Bieber
ness
. You met him at the funeral; he
was one of the pallbearers.”

“
What about him?” says Dad,
his curiosity—and protectiveness—piqued.

“
His father’s
sick.”

Dad’s spine compresses, making him
seem three inches shorter. He drops into a chair. “How
sick?”

Since Mom’s heart attack, Dad takes
death and disease personally, even if he’s unfamiliar with the
victim. “I’m not sure,” I admit with a shrug. “But I think it’s
pretty bad. He needs money for a new liver.”

His gaze bores into me. “You can’t buy
organs, Cass. It’s illegal.”

A swallow of tea slithers down my
throat. “He’s on the list,” I explain, “for the liver. But he’s got
no health insurance. And they’re broke. The only cash they’ve got
is from Ian’s job at Waterslide Village, and that’s only until
September.”

My father’s expression glazes over. “I
could use him as a dishwasher at The Moondancer,” he
offers.

It’s a nice thought—and one Ian might
take him up on—but . . .

“
I have a better idea,” I
say. “Something more . . .
immediate
.” I mean, I owe the kid
one, since our treasure hunt went ker-bust-o.

“
Lay it on me,” Dad says,
his hands doing backwards somersaults through the air.

I get up and sling an arm around his
shoulder, balance on his knee like in the olden days. “Let’s do
what we did for the Angelos,” I whisper in his ear, even though
we’re the only ones around.

He gets a big grin. “I’ll tell your
mother.”

* * *

I had George’s obituary
blown up and laminated. It was two days after his funeral that I
got up the nerve to clip it from the paper and parade into the
Staples by the mall, a twenty crumpled in my jeans for the
memorialization. When I tried to explain my request to the woman
behind the counter, though, she shot me a concerned look that
said:
I’m about to phone the police and
report you as an escaped kidnap victim.

Then she saw the obit.

While Mom was sick, I thought about
obituaries a lot, wrote hers in my head a thousand times, in a
thousand different, sparkly ways: a poem; a short story; a laundry
list of heroic deeds. I made her into a myth. A legend. Someone the
world would have no choice but to mourn, because then I wouldn’t
have to grieve alone.

I don’t have a two-by-nine
strip of newsprint summarizing my mother’s life—not yet—a fact
that, on one level, convinces me that I’ve won the lottery. But
another part of me, the part that once had a sweet neighbor,
protector, and friend named George Brooks—a boy I was just figuring
out how to love—feels ripped off, ripped
open
, destroyed.

I turn on the chintzy French floor
lamp by my bed, sprawl face-first on my poufy comforter and dangle
my arms for the carpeted floor. From under my bed, I withdraw a
shallow black box I’ve borrowed (or, more likely, stolen, since I
don’t plan on returning it) from Haley.

Inside this box is what I have left of
George: the cracked wheel from his favorite skateboard; a cool,
oblong rock with quartz veins he dug up the summer we both decided
to become geologists; a snapshot of the two of us poking our heads
out of an igloo we built in his front yard one Christmas; and, of
course, the obituary.

Also in this box are things
I hope will connect me with George one last time, grant me the
power to deliver a final message: a small, knitted doll with X’s
for eyes and a black slash for a mouth; an old nip bottle that once
contained bourbon and belonged to my parents, but now serves as a
vessel for the holy water I’ve pilfered from St. Dominick’s; a
map—hand drawn by me—of Redeemer Cemetery, a glittery heart-shaped
sticker marking George’s grave; and last but not least—the
pièce de résistance
—my
cell phone, which captured and forever froze the final words of
George Alfred Brooks.

From nowhere, there’s a
knock at my door. “What?” I yell. Luckily, I’ve remembered to lock
the knob.

It’s Haley. “Let me
in.”

I want to complain about
having a little sister, but the truth is, Haley isn’t half bad.
Sometimes she even helps me. I scuff over to the door and crack it
open. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“
Nah. I
couldn’t.”

“Why?”

She shoulders the door
open just wide enough to slip inside. “Nightmare,” she tells me,
her gaze catching on the box. “I got a stomachache.”

Haley’s a good sister but
a bad liar; I suspect she’s here to comfort me, instead of the
other way around. “You wanna sleep in here?” I ask, the light of a
new day slicing over my twin headboard.

She nods meekly. “If you
don’t mind.”

chapter 3

When Ian wheels his father to the head
of the guest-of-honor table, I do a double take. “That’s him?” I
ask Haley, elbowing her in the ribs as we slosh plastic pitchers
full of ice water at the prep sink.

“
Yep,” she replies without
looking up.

“
Didn’t he used to be
. . . taller?”

“
He’s in a wheelchair.
What’d you expect? You said yourself that he was going to die
soon.”

I hoist a number of
pitchers onto a serving tray and steel my shaky grip to avoid
taking a bath. “I said he
could
die,” I clarify. “He
might
die. I’m not in the business of
predicting tragedy.”

Haley opens her mouth to speak, but
before she gets anything out, our mother floats in between us and
starts lathering her hands with antibacterial soap. “You girls
doin’ okay?” she asks. “Everything under control?”

It’s weird to see Mom at the
restaurant, since she usually works behind the scenes at home,
keeping the books, cutting the checks, paying the bills and
engaging in screaming phone fights with vendors over late
deliveries and spoiled product.

“
Should I put the donation
box out now?” I ask. “It’s getting busy.”

The cover charge for this shindig is
ten bucks a head, every cent of which goes directly into Mr.
Smith’s pocket. Beyond that, guests are encouraged to give what
they can to help ease his physical and financial pain. From the
looks of the yellow-green raccoon mask around his eyes and the
grayish tint of his lips and fingertips, though, it’s going to take
quite a wad of cash to put Ian’s dad back together
again.

Mom offers to set up the donation
box—or basket, as it were—in a special spot by the entrance,
leaving Haley and me on waitress duty.

As Haley weaves through the dining
room with her tray of water, Ian catches my eye with a nonchalant
wave. I unload three of my four pitchers en route to his side.
“So . . . ?” I say, feeling a self-satisfied
rush as I top off Mr. Smith’s glass. “What do you
think?”

Ian appraises the crowd and nods.
“Sweet. You really came through.”

I take a goofy bow, the serving tray
tucked behind me like a tail feather. “My pleasure.” Ian’s dad
looks even worse close up. “Is he, uh, up to this?” I whisper. I
mean, it’s not like the guy has to dance a jig, but for his sake,
it would be best if he could remain upright.

“
I tried to talk him out of
coming,” Ian tells me with a shrug, “but he insisted. He said it
wouldn’t be proper to have a benefit without him making an
appearance.”

The wicker plate that one of the real
waitresses has delivered is now empty. “You guys want some more
bread?” I ask.

An elderly woman seated across from
Mr. Smith pipes up. “Would you, dear?”

“
Sure thing.” I give Ian a
happy pat on the shoulder, snatch the plate and flit back to the
kitchen.

As I enter, Mom presses a bouquet of
wildflowers at me. “Here,” she says. “I forgot about these. Drop
‘em at the Smiths’ table for me?”

I got my platinum hair and watery
blue-grey eyes from my mother, a fact that, had she lost the heart
attack battle, would’ve haunted me in the mirror. “Yeah,” I say,
pushing the vase back at her, “just gimme a sec.” I twirl around
and deposit the tray on the counter, refill the bread plate and
collect the flowers with a smile.

With a bump of my knee, I
swing the kitchen door open.
This is
awesome,
I think, surveying the
crowd.
Ian’s dad will be okay now; Ian
will be able to relax.

Then the chaos begins.

“
Quick! Help!” a chorus of
voices shouts. There’s a rush of movement through the dining room,
in the direction of the Smiths’ table. “Call an
ambulance!”

I slide the vase onto a vacant chair,
bob my head around to catch a glimpse of the commotion. But I can’t
make out what’s happening, until . . .

A husky gentleman in a
brown tweed suit steps out of my line of sight, revealing Mr.
Smith, slumped forward in his wheelchair, his milky eyes tacked
open as he tries—but fails—to draw a breath.
Oh, God,
I think.
Don’t let it be his heart.
Mom was
lucky. Most people don’t survive.

“
He’s choking!” a muffled
voice proclaims.

I make momentary eye
contact with Ian, who looks crushed with panic. “Not on
my
watch,” I murmur.
Because even though my powers are limited (and spotty in their
reliability), they do exist. The proof? Something told me to bring
the voodoo doll, which is tucked in my apron pocket behind my
ticket pad, with me today.