The Care and Handling of Roses With Thorns (12 page)

“Hi, Dad.”

“Gal.”

I take in a breath. “I’m just having one of those days, is all.”

“Oh.” One syllable from Mom, containing a world of understanding. “Let me talk to Riley. I want to let her know what to do.”

“She shouldn’t have to do anything, hon. She’s only fifteen,” my father says.

“Fifteen is plenty old enough to pitch in. I had a full-time job when I was fifteen, and took care of my younger brother and sister.” Mom sniffs. “Go get her, Gal.”

I tell Mom to hang on and go out to the living room.

It’s dark. No television. No light in the kitchen. No light in Riley’s room. I turn on her lamp to check. No Riley.

I go out to the garage. The bike sits where it’s been sitting since my parents left it, still dusty.

I return to the bedroom. This is the second time today Riley’s gone off doing whatever she likes, without regard. I’d told her to be back at dark. I get back on the phone with Mom. I don’t exactly wish to relay this to my mother. Admit I might have lost their only granddaughter. I think I know where to look for her.

“She’s in the bathroom right now,” I say instead. I force every bit of brightness I can into my tone. “Washing her hair.”

“You tell her to call me tomorrow.” Mom buys it.

“Listen, I’m super tired. Let me get off the phone.”

“Good night. Love you.”

“Good night. Love you too, Mom. And Dad,” I add. There’s no answer on his end.

“He hung up while you were out looking for Riley,” Mom says. “I’ll tell him.”

Immediately after hanging up, I call Riley’s phone. No answer. I get out the school directory and look up Samantha’s phone number. Her mother answers and tells me Samantha’s not home. “She told me she’s studying with you, Ms. Garner,” she says, sounding surprised and immediately anxious. “You and Riley.”

The plot thickens. I tighten my grip on the phone. “I think I know where they are,” I say grimly. “Don’t you worry. I’ll get her and bring her home safe.”

14

B
RAD LIVES A FEW MILES AWAY FROM ME, ON A STREET WITH
small lots and even smaller houses. The lights are all on at the low-slung house when I pull up. His father’s truck is gone, I note as I step out of my car onto the cracked concrete driveway. Brad’s there. This girl is going to catch it when I get her.

I knock sharply on the painted green door. The house is not so well kept for the home of a custodian; gray paint flakes, and there’s visible dirt even in this porch light. The porch itself is covered in a fake grass carpet.

Brad creaks open the door, his face registering shock. “Ms. Garner!” He probably wants to make a joke, but stops at my face.

I push him aside with my hand. “Where is she?”

Brad moves backward, not acting as if he has anything to be ashamed of. He shakes back his hair. “Riley! Your aunt’s here.”

She comes out of a back room, her hair wrapped in a towel. The collar of her shirt is soaked. Samantha follows. Both girls look extremely guilty. Samantha can’t even bring her eyes up to meet mine.

I gasp. “Why were you taking a shower here?”

“I can explain.” Riley holds up her hand. “It’s my hair.”

“What about it?”

“We were dyeing it.” Samantha steps out from behind, chewing on a cuticle. “It looked pretty bad. My mother doesn’t approve of hair dye, so we came here to do it.”

Riley shakes out her hair. It tumbles down, an array of blond and brown once again. No more black. And it’s considerably shorter, now shorn just below her ears. Brad looks on admiringly.

“We had to cut it. The ends were all damaged.” Samantha lifts up a hunk of hair to show me.

“So you’ve been dyeing hair this whole time?” I am not sure whether I should believe this. I’ve never dyed hair. I suspect they were doing more than dyeing hair; they are teenagers, after all. Brad does not seem like the type of boy to me who would be content with hair dyeing. Though I have no personal experience with males in this capacity, I’ve seen it plenty of times in my classes and with, of course, my sister. I purse my lips disapprovingly at him, but he merely gives me a small grin, his face innocent of all sin.

“We had to bleach the black out first, then dye it back.” Samantha sounds proud of herself. “It’s a two-step process.”

“You sound pretty knowledgeable.”

She shrugs modestly. “I do all my friends’ hair.”

“My dad’s the only parent who doesn’t care about the mess in the bathroom,” Brad says.

“I see.” I tear my gaze away from the boy. “Samantha, your mom wants you home.”

She looks shocked.

“Yeah, you might want to get your stories straight before you tell them.” I jerk my head toward my niece. “I called your mom looking for her.”

“Oh, shit,” Samantha breathes. She rushes back and reappears with a backpack and an arm full of books.

“So, how much studying did you get done?” I glance at Brad and at Riley. She looks at the wall.

Brad looks at me. “Enough to get by.”

“What did you tell my mother?” Samantha takes my arm rather roughly. I remove her hand.

“That I’d come get you.”

“Please don’t tell her where I was.” Samantha’s eyes are reddened. “Please.”

I step back resolutely. “Samantha, I can’t hide this from your mom. Come on. Let’s go.”

“You don’t understand!” She backs up behind Brad. “She will kill me.”

These teens. Always so dramatic. I assess her, standing behind Brad, who has his arms raised as if he wants to protect her. Riley stands behind him, too, behind Samantha. I wonder exactly what sort of relationship the girls have with Brad. “She won’t.” Though lying and being at a boy’s house and shaming her family in front of a teacher can’t be good. My heart softens for a second. Then I get a grip. “Let’s go.” I shepherd Riley and Samantha into my car. Samantha sits in the back, hanging her head down low into her lap, her hair covering her face like two planes of dark water.

• • •

O
N
M
ONDAY,
I see Brad walking alone. Samantha follows him several paces behind, several random students between. Then Riley, in the same manner. They pass me in the hall without glancing up, continuing down to the adjoining church for our monthly school Mass.

Samantha’s mother showed no visible reaction when I dropped her off. She only apologized for putting me to any trouble. Samantha stood silently next to her mother, her gaze directed down.

“No harm done,” I said, though I thought Riley certainly deserved some sort of reprimand or punishment for being where she was not supposed to be, and staying out later than I’d said to boot. Reassured that Samantha’s mother would not do anything worse than I would, I left with Riley.

I still hadn’t thought of a suitable punishment for my niece. Not for dyeing her hair, but for staying out far later than she was supposed to and for not telling me where she was and ignoring my calls. “You’re a minor. What you do falls on me,” I’d said to her several times the next day.

“I know. I know,” Riley said, her voice low.

Now I slip into the back pew onto the hard wooden seat, pulling down the padded kneeler. The nearest student is six rows ahead of us, but I don’t have supervisory duties at the moment, and I want a break. The church is modern-looking, built in the 1960s with oak and mahogany paneling, and is used for the community as well as our school. Big clear windows slant into pyramids toward a clear sky above the pulpit. Along the side walls, angular stained-glass depictions of the Stations of the Cross form windows fourteen feet above the congregation. I stare blankly at Christ carrying the cross, the faces all acute angles and the robes sharp. The organist, our music teacher, plays a melody I don’t recognize.

“Sorry I didn’t call you back this weekend.” Dara kneels beside me with difficulty, wearing a green Chinese-style sheath dress with a high collar and silken frog buttons in red. I’d tried to call her all day on Sunday, after the Riley-Brad-Samantha fiasco, but she never did answer or return my call.

“I have a cell phone now. You can call me anytime.” I keep my voice lower than hers. “Where were you?”

She squints up at the sky. “I went out with George.”

Acid from my breakfast burns my throat, though I can’t remember what I could have eaten to cause it. Mr. Morton sits with the kids, kneeling in a pew. The back of his neck has a fresh haircut and looks soft above his green shirt collar. I swallow. “Finally taking my advice. Did you have fun?”

“I did.” She allows herself a small smile. I wonder how much fun was had. My friend is not known for her saintliness. She sits through the Mass only as a courtesy to the school, not because she feels any great religious need. It has never bothered me. “How was the rose show?”

I look back up at the stained glass. “You don’t want to know.” I didn’t call her to talk about the rose show. I called her to talk about Riley. I fill her in now, as we rise and the processional into the church begins with the priest walking down the aisle.

She steps out of the pew and motions me to follow. I dip my knee and make the sign of the cross as I leave, which my friend does not.

We go into the front alcove, closing the heavy double doors behind us. Dara stands before the bulletin board, with notices of roommates needed and gas guzzlers for sale. “The only part that sounds really terrible is you telling Samantha’s mother.”

I gasp audibly.

She holds up a hand. “Samantha comes to the after-school art program. She’s only allowed to do academics. No socializing. No friends. Certainly no male friends.”

“I’m pretty certain Brad is more than her platonic male friend.”

Dara cocks her head. “That’s probably true.” Her abdomen expands and contracts in her dress. “But do you know how badly she’s going to suffer for something as innocent as helping Riley with her hair? She probably won’t come out of the house until she leaves for college!”

“I happen to think Samantha’s mother deserves to know. What she does with that information is not my concern.”

“It should be.”

“I don’t control other people.”

“No, but you know how some people react better than others.” Dara crosses her arms.

“That is not the point. The point is the girls were lying and breaking the rules.”

“What were you doing while Riley was gone?” Dara paces the floor.

I hesitate. “Taking a much-needed nap.”

Dara turns back to me, her face sympathetic. “Gal. Do you think you’ve taken on too much?”

I shake my head. Unbelievable. “I’d expected you to tell me what Riley’s punishment should be, not get into this whole other moral debate.”

“It’s not my place to tell you.”

“Yet it’s your place to tell me I was wrong about everything else.” I put my hand on the door to go back into the church. I need simple support, not criticism. I feel like she’s slapped me.

“Gal.” Dara’s shoulders slump, but she makes no move toward me. “Don’t be like that.”

I go inside.

The priest prepares the Eucharist, the biscuits and wine. Body and blood. I lean against the wall, unwilling to go back to the pew yet. Is Dara right? Should I have not told Samantha’s mother? Does Riley not deserve punishment?

A simple restriction should do. One, maybe two weeks. No recreational computer use, no venturing out with her friends. Riley sits with her sophomore class, apart from Samantha. Indeed, apart from the others. Samantha sits flanked by the pre-Riley posse, the girls who remain unsoiled and perfectly studious. I realize Samantha is not going to be allowed out with Riley again, no matter if Riley is my niece, a relative of a woman who could write a stellar college recommendation. Yet, what else is there to do except tell the whole truth? It’s not for me to decide what is good for Samantha’s mother to hear and what is not. Just as during my parent-teacher conferences, I tell the parents both the good and the bad. I will not hide details.

I decide to go out and tell Dara what I’m thinking. I crack open the church door and hear her voice.

“She just can’t stand to be told she’s wrong. Ever. No matter what. She has to get her way.” Her voice rises in frustration. “And you feel so bad telling her she’s wrong, anyway, because she’s already sick.”

Dr. O’Malley’s voice returns in a rumbling baritone. “They’re not bad kids. You’re right. There are worse things to worry about.”

I sink back, my hand closing the door silently. Dara is the one person at this whole school who has bothered to see beyond my cracked exterior shell and be my friend. I thought. I go back to my pew just as the students begin lining up to get the Eucharist. Mr. Morton gets in line behind them, his back straight and tall. He glances back at me and gestures for me to join him. Instead, I move down to the kneeling pad, my mind roiling and my knees protesting. I stay like that until the church is empty once more.

15

A
FTER SCHOOL,
I
BREAK THE RESTRICTION NEWS TO
R
ILEY,
and she takes it with a single nod.

I hesitate before I ask. Do I really want to know this? “Was Sam’s mother very angry?”

“Does it matter?” Riley cracks her math book open on the coffee table. “I haven’t talked to her. She hasn’t e-mailed me. I have no idea.”

I don’t pry further.

“Can I call my mother?”

“Of course.” Though you shouldn’t, I add silently. Because your mother’s only going to agree with you because it’s easier.

That night, I drive myself to the hospital. At the dialysis center, I collapse into a chair. Perhaps I should switch to daytime dialysis. I hate leaving Riley alone, especially now that I know she’ll go off at any moment. Are there kids coming over while I’m gone?

Dialysis for me now is nothing more than an endless middle ground. The light at the end of the tunnel is always a kidney for a dialysis patient. When that is gone, what is there? It’s like telling a kid Santa’s dead and there’s never going to be another Christmas. My next appointment with Dr. Blankenship is not until mid-May, and I doubt anything will change between then and now.

A rustle of a newspaper makes me look up. Mark Walters folds the paper into his white-jeaned lap. The man looks not much the worse for wear, despite his dialysis. His skin has a new brownish glow, as if he just climbed out of a hammock strung between two palm trees on a warm beach. Today he wears a gray V-neck T-shirt instead of a white one, and my surprise is so great I can’t help but blurt, “Wow. That’s almost a color.”

He glances down at his chest and laughs.

Furious with myself for breaking my vow of silence to this man, I pick up a
Newsweek
and turn my body away from him. I don’t want to have a conversation. I’ve promised myself often enough I wouldn’t. Everyone thinks he’s so terribly charming. There’s nothing charming about him. He reminds me of the popular girl in high school who pretends she is dumb to get praise and male attention but is smarter than the rest of us. “Fake” is the word I’m looking for.

Before I know it, he’s sitting in the vacant seat next to me. “Excuse me, young lady. Have I done something to offend you?”

I shrink away from him, shocked that he’s talking to me still. “It’s ‘pardon me.’ ‘Excuse me’ is for when you want to be dismissed from something, like the table during dinner.” I am buying time. What has he done specifically to offend me, besides exist?

“What?” He blinks, the gray reflecting into his eyes and making them bluer than usual.

I put down the magazine. I have had enough. Dara and Riley and the rose show and the kidney. Especially the kidney. “I just think it’s funny how some people are born with a disease and need help to fix it, while others bring it upon themselves and get more help than they perhaps deserve.”

He twists one side of his mouth. “You’re talking about me?”

I stare at him, daring to deny it. “I know all about you. Everyone does.” Alcoholic, non–blood-pressure-medicine taker, ruining his perfectly functional organs. With a shudder, Becky comes into my mind’s eye. This could be Becky in ten or twenty years.

He laces his fingers over his crossed knees. “And that’s why you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you, exactly.” I take an enormous breath, aware of the nurses behind the glass partition watching this exchange carefully. I hope they will still be gentle with the needles later. “I got bumped off the list.”

His impressively shaggy brows knit together, casting a hairy shadow over his cheekbones, like a dark caterpillar is marching across his face. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know the wait is difficult.”

“I’ve done it before. Twice. I know what’s involved.” I will not be talked down to. Not by him, not by Dr. Blankenship. “I happen to think there should be criteria for treatment.”

“So only the morally deserving get served?” His tone is pondering, not angry. “Perhaps if a motorcyclist refuses to wear a helmet and gets a head injury as a result, we should refuse treatment? Or an obese person who gets diabetes should not be helped?”

I consider this. “I hadn’t thought about it, but perhaps we should all take responsibility for our actions, and the results of those actions.”

“Are you not considering the frailty of the human condition?” Walters gives me a sad smile. “I started drinking, Gal, at a low point in my life. My wife had just passed away. I lost my business. I was in a pit I could not quite climb out of alone.”

I search for something to say. “I’m sorry.”

He sits back in his chair and I think I detect a note of triumph in his demeanor. His smile looks smug to me.

This riles me again. “So you think that it’s excusable for someone to hurt themselves because of a tragic event? Others have bad things happen to them without destroying themselves, or others, for that matter.”

“I’m not saying it’s an excuse. It’s simply something that happened. A reason.”

I sputter. I’m not a believer in explaining away misdeeds by shirking responsibility. “I bet you think all the murderers on death row should be let out because they had bad childhoods.”

He raises his hands. “Not at all. I am simply saying,” he puts his hand on my forearm, “that none of us is perfect, Gal.”

I remove my arm from him. “How do you know my name?”

“The same way you know mine. We all know you around here, Gal. And contrary to popular belief, we are not all against you.”

“It’s not just popular belief,” I mutter.

A nurse calls his name.

Walters pats my arm, retracted though it is, and gets up. “Chin up, Galilee.”

It is difficult for me not to throw the
Newsweek
at his back.