No Place Like Home (12 page)

“It’s all yours.” I clutched my dirty clothes to my chest and went to my room, carefully not turning my head toward the sex god’s door, just in case my kid was watching. Sex and kids just don’t go together, and it gets even stranger when you have a boy you know is thinking about it every three seconds all day long, every day. He would be so humiliated to know what was on his mother’s mind.

Dumping the clothes on the floor, I crawled into bed and pulled the pillow over my head. Happily, sleep is never hard and I forgot about everything as it washed over me, tugged me down into the deep ocean of it, where I was still anything I wanted to be and had nothing to regret.

MICHAEL

In his bed, alone in the night, Michael practiced yoga breathing against his pain and reached out for a picture to go with it, something calming and peaceful.

The afternoon came back to him, all of them down at the river. Under that slate gray sky at the confluence, Michael had stood straight against the plucking pain in his chest. Nothing physical. Physical discomfort had become his constant companion, and he was used to it. This was stranger, harder.

Three heads, all so dark. So dear. How was it that he’d never understood it was the small things that made life so sweet? Jewel’s curls bouncing as she ran, the long mussed mass of it making him think of a mermaid’s hair. Shane’s thick, glossy black, so much like Billy’s, who was—as he would tell you if you gave him so much as two seconds—one full quarter Oglala Sioux and on the tribal rolls at Pine Ridge, you could go and check. Not that Billy himself had ever been there, but it gave him a good exotic tale to share.

And Malachi. Thick hair, unruly as hell when they were kids, so thick a brush wouldn’t go through it and they had to buy him long-toothed combs. He’d scream for an hour while their mother patiently combed it out after a bath, letting it dry by itself into waves cut with a million colors. Michael had once tried to count the colors in his brother’s hair—strands of gold and fiery red, darkest black and palest blond, as if every ancestor from every county in Ireland had contributed its legacy on one head.

It was hair just like their father’s.

A half-buried rock stuck out of the hillside nearby and Michael sat down, nodding at a pair of boys in oversized, very clean professional baseball shirts who made their way by. He saw tattoos on their hands, tattoos that contrasted strongly with the way they pushed and laughed at each other once they were past him. It was a tough hood, but even here, boys could play when nobody important was looking. They steered clear of the trio close to the banks, and Michael watched them for a while, letting that strange pain ease a little before he looked back to his beloved three.

It was love that made it hard, the whole dying thing. Thinking of not seeing Jewel anymore, or Shane, who was like his own kid. Or Malachi, who still hadn’t forgiven their father, who still had that tight hard knot in him from so long ago. Maybe it wouldn’t ever go away. Maybe that violent day was just gouged too deeply in the man’s soul to erase. Michael couldn’t imagine it; he’d only seen the bloody scene a few days later, after the cops and forensics people and everybody else got through with it. Malachi had heard the shots and raced out of his bedroom, a truck in his hand, and saw it all.

Poor kid.

Below, Jewel tossed her head at something Malachi said, and Michael watched as Malachi leaned in close to show her something he’d picked up. A shine bounced around both of them, shimmering and clear in the dark day. Clear enough that Shane stopped what he was doing for a minute to look at them. They didn’t notice.

It was so plain now. Michael wished he’d seen it before. He hoped he had enough time to see it through. Wasn’t an easy task, considering Malachi had the unfortunate tendency of running hard at the slightest sign of settling in. And Jewel had that little image problem.

But he thought he could go easier, knowing they had each other in place. A whole lot easier.

JORDAN’S HEALING OIL

Gather lavender and yarrow flowers just after dawn, before the heat of the day dries up the oil. Within an hour, pack a quart Mason jar with an equal mix of lavender leaves and flowers, yarrow blossoms, and shredded white willow bark. Add 1 ounce powdered comfrey root. Fill the jar almost to the top with a high quality, cold pressed olive oil, leaving room for about an ounce of gum benzoin or rubbing alcohol at the top (keeps it from spoiling). Cover and let stand for two weeks to a month, shaking it once per day. Strain the oil through cheesecloth and pour into pretty bottles with corks. Excellent for eczema, dry heels, aching joints, general pain. Smells great!

Chapter 8

Michael was sick all night. I heard him about two, pacing and giving the soft grunts that meant he was trying not to groan. Scrambling into a pair of sweats, I padded into his room to see if there was anything I could do to help. He looked up at me, surprised and relieved and wishing he didn’t need me, an expression that always broke my heart.

“Come lie down,” I said, patting the bed. “Let me rub your back for a little while.”

“I’m all right,” he said. Light from the windows caught the edges of his pale hair, the bridge of his nose. “Go on back to bed, Jewel. You have to get up in a few hours.”

“Michael.”

A startle of pain went through him, and one arm went reflexively around his thin middle. “Go, Jewel.”

Gently I put my hand on his arm and tugged. “Come on.”

He gave in. Sometimes it took longer, and I was relieved when he let go of the rigidness in his body, that rigidness that he tried to use to keep himself aloof, in charge, and gave himself up to me. In the dark, in the middle of the night, was almost the only time he ever could.

He stretched out on his stomach on the hospital bed my sister Jordan had scrounged up for him, and I felt the pocket of dead air around it, stale and empty of oxygen, filled only with the exhalations of a man in pain. I opened the window and tied up the curtain to let in some fresh air.

“Trying to kill me?” he said in his gravelly voice.

I smiled at the reference to night humors, the admonition of my grandmother to keep the windows closed at night no matter what. “Gotta leave a window open for the other fairies to come find you,” I said, pouring oil in my hands. It was something Jordan made out of the herbs in her garden, a concoction that smelled like midsummer. She told me what was in it—lavender, for one thing, maybe something like horehound; she has a huge herb garden that she actually uses. I let the oil warm in my palm for a little while, then put it on his long, white back and started rubbing it in, gently, slowly, trying to ease away the tightness of pain in him. “Did you take any pain pills?” I asked.

“Nah. Makes me too dopey. I want to go fishing with Malachi in the morning.”

“How about just some ibuprofen?”

He groaned softly when I hit a pocket of tenseness over his shoulders, and gave himself up to the process of letting me ease it away. “You don’t have to pretend to be okay with him, Michael. He knows you’re sick.”

No answer, but under my fingers a bunching of the muscles told me he didn’t like that, and I made a mental note to bring Malachi into the caretaking process the next time Michael had a really bad day.

Or was that fair? Maybe Michael had a right to choose what to show and not show, maybe he liked being the big brother who was strong. Maybe Malachi, like so many people—I almost said so many men, but there are lots of women, too—would be alarmed and dismayed, even disgusted, by illness.

On the other hand, maybe Malachi deserved the chance to do something for his big brother. As I rubbed oil from his shoulders to the small of his back, it gave me as much as it gave Michael—something concrete I could remember later, something to do in place of getting rid of the virus eating him alive.

“You know what I was thinking about?” Michael said quietly.

“Tell me.”

“When you were so scared to go to cooking school.”

With a rueful smile, I shook my head. “I would never have been able to actually walk through those doors without you.” I’d been petrified, scared to the point of lint mouth.

“What scared you so much, Jewel? I mean, you grew up in a restaurant. What’d you think about when you couldn’t go?”

I started on his right arm and took a breath, trying to remember. “I don’t know, really. They all seemed so sure of themselves, so convinced of their absolute right to do whatever they wanted to do.”

“That’s how you were when I met you.” He turned his head to look at me. “What changed, Jewel?”

“I don’t know. A lot of things.” Things I was looking for here in Pueblo, maybe.

“Billy?”

He liked to talk in the middle of the night, and it was a small enough thing I could give him, even if he was turning it on me tonight. “Well, that was one thing, I guess. Everything that happened with him.”

“The girls didn’t mean anything, Jewel. You know that.”

The girls. The curse of the musician’s wife. Billy had been better than most at resisting their overtures, but he’d had a few weak moments. “I know that,” I said, dismissing them—then not quite able. “You didn’t take lovers, though, did you? You were always faithful.”

“Lotta good it did me.” He put his chin on his fist and looked toward the window, and I knew he was thinking about Andre. “Wasn’t quite the same situation, though. Boys don’t come around like girls do.”

“It’s not the girls, anyway,” I said. They really hadn’t meant anything. “Just . . . his whole decline. Your brother was talking about Billy the other day, when he met him. He said he’d seen a bad end on Billy even then.” I pushed the heel of my palm into the base of his spine. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah, probably.” He sighed. “I know you loved him, Jewel, but he had missing pieces nobody could put right.”

“I sure tried.”

“Yeah. Probably bought him some time, too.”

We went quiet. My mind was full of memories, and I could feel them echoing and repeating in Michael’s head—Billy, so bad and beautiful and utterly doomed with his hair and tattoos and heartbroken guitar. “It wasn’t me, or you,” I said. “It was music that bought him time. If the music hadn’t failed, he might have been an old man eventually.”

“The music didn’t fail him,” Michael rasped. “He failed the music. He wanted it to be his slave, instead of the other way around.”

It was true, though I’d never thought about it like that, and I felt a quickening of hope that maybe Shane wasn’t doomed to repeat his father’s life, even if he chose music. “Do you miss it, Michael?”

“God, yes.”

“Will you sing for me?”

“Always.” He took my hand and pulled me around to sit beside him. In the dark, he began to sing an old hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River?”

Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God. . . .

His voice, low and raspy and rich, poured over my skin and into my heart, as it had always done, and when he tugged my fingers, I joined in quietly, trying not to hear my voice or interfere with his. A breeze lifted the curtain and showed us a glimpse of the stars. Michael sang the whole song, only drifting a little by the end. His body was easing, and when he finished, I simply sat there holding his hand, listening to him breathe.

After a time, it seemed he’d fallen asleep, and I got up, about to creep out, when he said, “Jewel?”

“Yeah?” I whispered.

“Will you stay for a while?”

I didn’t even answer, just went around to the side of the bed that he cleared for me and climbed up beside him. Like we were an old married couple, I pressed my body against his back and looped my arm around his waist, my cheek against the herbal scent of his shoulder blade. He captured my hand with his and pressed it against his chest, and just like that, he eased. Fell asleep. I could hear him breathing, wheezy but steady. It eased me, too, feeling his warmth, the steadiness of him, even the sharpness of his spine. It drove Billy crazy sometimes, to find us this way—I often thought it was as much out of jealousy over Michael as for me, to tell you the truth.

I don’t remember anymore how we fell into the habit. Proximity, maybe. Loneliness. No, that’s not really fair. We clicked, Michael and I, that first day, so long ago, as if I’d found the brother I’d always wanted. No. Not even brother goes deep enough to describe it—finding Michael was like finding some missing piece of my own soul. It was never the slightest bit sexual.

In the dark of Michael’s room, on his narrow bed, I pressed my thighs against the back of his, content to be in this minute, in this day, with him, and fell asleep.

Blackbirds awakened me before first light. Their song wove its way into my dreams and whistled around inside them until I woke up, still curled close to Michael. He felt cool and utterly relaxed next to me, but the blackbirds made me melancholy. That song by the Beatles has to be one of the most piercing in all of music, and I found myself humming it under my breath as I got up and tiptoed out to the hall.

Just as I got there, Malachi came out of the bathroom, and I will say that for three seconds, I forgot I was wearing only a long T-shirt and my sweats, because all
he
was wearing was a pair of boxer shorts. White boxers, no frills, the most boring possible underwear a man could put on. Except that you can kind of see through them a little, and there was also a lot of dark, flat stomach and that chest I’d been fantasizing about last night. He was chewing on a toothbrush, his hair tousled still from bed, and I’d startled him.

Embarrassed him. He touched his belly with the flat of his palm, looked at me, at my breasts, back down to his body. “Uh, sorry,” he said, voice gravelly and low as the rumble of a train so early in the morning. “I’ll just run and get my . . . clothes. Jeans. Uh. Something.”

His chagrin made me realize I was not exactly dressed for company, either. I nodded, not quite able to speak, and needing that bathroom pretty darn quick.

We both moved at the same instant. I thought he was going to turn toward his room, and ducked to my left to get around him, but he had stepped backward to grab something off a hook in the bathroom, and I misjudged the duck, so when he swung back around, we tangled. His elbow caught my shoulder, and his foot snared my toes. When I—flustered—tried to get out of the way, dodging under him, he was trying to move out of my way, and shifted the jeans in his hands to the other side. Something on them caught hard in a loop of my braid, and yanked so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

“Wait!” I grabbed my hair to keep it attached to my head and swung around to see what caught it.

Which put me right up under his arm, next to that flesh that really did smell like his shirt, only deeper yet. He grabbed my arm, and I was thankful that at least there was a thin layer of cotton between the possibility of bare flesh contact, though it didn’t help when I found myself face to face with a pelt of dark chest hair.

“It’s too early to play Twister,” I said. “Can you get me unhooked and let me brush my teeth?” I could only imagine how my breath smelled and covered my mouth with my hand.

“It’s the button, see?”

I looked at the button on the fly and nodded, waiting for him to free it, keeping one hand anchored around my waist, the other over my mouth. Maybe I was trying not to breathe in any more of that smell.

But he didn’t do anything. Just stood there, holding on to my braid, wearing those sinfully thin boxers that tempted me to look (I didn’t). I finally scowled up at him.

He’d been waiting, the end of the braid in his fingers, and he tickled my nose with it, winking when I gave him a reluctant smile. He let me go.

I stood at the sink to brush my teeth and saw how I looked. That’s part of the trouble with me and men. It always shows in my face, that heat. Pupils dilated, cheekbones bright red, nipples standing at full alert. Oh, no, he hadn’t bothered me at all.

“Shit.” I said the word forcefully, bending down to scrub the night off my face. Scrubbed vigorously, telling myself all the reasons it would be a big fat stupid idea to have sex with my best friend’s brother. A kid in the house had to be top of the list. A not-stupid kid to boot, one who’d notice immediately, and that would send the wrong message.

Madonna said,
“What message would that be?”
She was filing her nails in my imagination, bright red nails.
“That people have sex?”

She had a point. As did June, who said,
“Stability is what that child needs. He’s been through too many upheavals the past few years.”

“It won’t kill him if his mother has sex,”
said Madonna.

June spoke directly to me, that gentle reproach in her tone.
“Jewel, you don’t have to give yourself away like that all the time. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”

The aim was so true, I knew that it was my mother’s voice speaking. My father’s. Right there in one delectable package of temptation was every reason my life was where it was.

Stung, I waited safely inside that crummy little bathroom until I heard Malachi go down the stairs, whistling some happy thing, before I dashed out and down the hall to my own room and closed the door. It was very dark still, and I had to turn on the light to find anything to wear. Jeans, the old ones, a pair of 501s that didn’t do a damned thing for my big butt. I tossed them on the bed. Opened a drawer, wishing it was winter so I could layer on the sweaters, but I’d be cooking and it was going to be hot enough, so I settled for an oversized T-shirt that would hide every inch of my torso.