The Favor (27 page)

His father shrugged and looked at him with bleary eyes. “Your brother brought it home for me last night, since you couldn’t be bothered to leave anything for me.”

“You’re not a cripple. You can make yourself a sandwich.” Gabe gathered the trash, crumpling it in his fists, mindful of the way the sloppy leftover mayo squished through the paper and onto his hands. “This stuff’ll kill you. On second thought, let me run out and get you an egg, cheese and heart-attack biscuit.”

His father laughed, the sound like rusted gears no longer capable of turning, but trying hard. “You’re a son of a bitch. You know that?”

“So you’ve told me my whole damned life, old man.” Gabe paused before grabbing the last bit of trash. “You should get out of that chair. Do some exercise or something.”

“What’s it to you?” the old man asked with a weak shake of his fist. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t be tickled spitless if you came down one morning and found me in this here recliner, already cold.”

Gabe’s lips skinned back from his teeth in something more grimace than grin. Sometimes even liars told the truth. Sometimes they just lied. “Naw. That would break my heart.”

His father snorted, yanked his hanky from his pocket and hawked into it. He folded the cloth over the mess and raised a crooked finger at his son. “Go make me some eggs and potatoes. That crap your brother fed me last night went right through me. I’m empty.”

Cigarettes were still foremost on his mind, food a close second and a long, hot shower as soon as possible after that. Without answering, Gabe found a pack of smokes in the pocket of one of his jackets hanging in the hall closet. Leaving his dad muttering behind him, Gabe stalked through the kitchen to the back door. The first cigarette he pulled from the pack was broken, precious tobacco spilling from the white tube, but he had the second tucked between his lips in seconds. His lighter flared. He drew in the smoke, slow and deep. Let it out.

“It’s a little early to be lighting up, isn’t it?”

Startled, he almost dropped the lighter, but caught it with fingers already tingling with cold. Janelle, bundled in a hoodie with the hood pulled up, perched on the concrete steps of her grandmother’s back porch. She’d sounded teasing, but didn’t smile.

Silently, Gabe held out the pack to her. He didn’t expect her to take one—not from him, anyway, even if she still smoked, which he doubted. She heaved herself upright and crossed the two squares of pavement to stand below him. She held out her hand.

Gabe pulled the pack back. “No way.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Gabe. You offered. Gimme.”

He shook his head. “You don’t really want one.”

“Don’t you tell me what I want!” Her gaze went hard and flat. Glittery.

Shit.
Gabe tucked another cigarette in his mouth, lit it. Handed it down to her. He tucked his bare hand under his armpit and shifted to keep warm. Janelle puffed, coughed and puffed again.

“Gross,” she complained, but didn’t stub it out. Her second drag seemed to go down easier. She gave him a slight smile. “Rough night? Or just long?”

“Not really that rough. You?” He wondered if she’d gone home with that loser from the night before. He didn’t think so. He hoped not. He wondered if she’d been sitting out here when Gina left the house, and if she’d seen her leaving. He hoped no to that, too.

She hesitated. She had circles under her eyes, he noticed now. And the hollows of her cheeks were too deep. She looked away with a shrug.

“Nan had a rough night. Yeah.”

“Which means you did.”

Janelle nodded silently. She let the cigarette burn between her fingers for another few seconds before putting it to her lips again. “I hate smoking. It tastes like shit, it stinks, it costs too much money. It gives you yellow teeth. And cancer.”

“So don’t smoke.”

She looked back up at him with a frown, tossed the cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with the toe of her boot. “Okay, Mr. Chimney. How about you don’t tell me what to do?”

He took the last drag off his own smoke and stuck it into the coffee can on the porch railing. He held up both hands. “Peace.”

Without another word, Janelle turned and went inside her house with a slam of the door. Gabe stared after her for a minute. He considered another cigarette, but his rumbling stomach convinced him breakfast would be a better order. Inside, the sound of laughter drew him to the living room, where he waited in the doorway, watching.

The old man watched raptly as Andy told him some story about what had happened at work the day before. Andy could tell the hell out of a story. Probably because he forgot so many of the words he wanted to use and had to rely on gestures or phrases he made up to get his point across. He’d always been a clown, but he’d become a talented mimic. He stuttered on some of the phrases, but that just made their dad laugh harder.

Andy looked up. “Gabe! Did your friend go home?”

Gabe stifled a groan. He knew it had been a mistake to bring that girl back here. Usually he went to their houses so he could make a quick escape, no witnesses. Now he was sure Janelle knew—of course she did, because she’d been at the bar last night and seen him with the other woman. And not that she should care, or that he should care if she knew. But now Andy knew, too, and Gabe did mind about that.

“She’s not...yeah.” He scrubbed at his hair with his hand and rubbed his eyes. “She did.”

“Should’ve asked her to stay for breakfast. I’m going to be make toad-in-the-hole. Or frog-on-a-raft. Your choice.” Andy grinned. “Dad, what do you want?”

“Jesus, just eggs and toast,” their dad said with a shake of his head. “You and your fancy schmancy stuff.”

Andy dropped Gabe a wink. “How about you?”

“Eggs. Toast.” Gabe yawned, thinking how nice it would be to crawl back into bed with a full stomach and nothing to do all day but sleep. No work, no chores, no errands. Nobody breathing in his ear. A shower first, though, because he wanted to rinse off the stink of skank. “I’m going to shower. I’ll be down by the time you’re done. Eggs over easy. Toast not burned.”

By the time he finished in the hot water, though, his eyes stung, and not from the shampoo, as he’d thought. It was the burn of smoke, and as he stepped out of the shower, the smoke alarm went off. Cursing, Gabe wrapped himself in a towel and hopped down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he found Andy running his hand under water at the sink while the old man limply waved a tea towel under that alarm.

“Open the back door, for God’s sake,” Gabe cried, and did. Then he turned on the fan over the stove, and the ceiling fan, too. He waved his hand in front of his face, coughing. “What happened?”

Andy turned from the sink with a frown. “Nothing. I just let the toast go a little too long, and we didn’t have butter so I used some oil for the eggs, but that made them too slippy, so when I was turning them, I almost dropped the pan.” He lifted his bad hand, frown deepening. “It was my damned fingers. They just gave out.”

“Language,” their father said, and Andy looked chastened.

“You burned yourself? Let me see.” Ignoring the old man, Gabe took his brother’s wrist. Carefully, he uncurled the fingers. A blister was rising on Andy’s palm, but it didn’t look bad enough to need a trip to the emergency room. They’d had their share of those visits over the past few years. “Be more careful.”

“I was being careful,” Andy said stonily. “It was my hand. My goddamned hand, it just doesn’t work right....”

This time, their dad said nothing about the cursing. Gabe found some bandages in the kitchen drawer and wrapped Andy’s hand after applying ointment. Then he cleaned out the burned pan, emptied the crumb drawer, pitched the burned toast and eggs, and made them all breakfast.

Andy ate in silence, carefully picking at his food. The old man shoveled down two helpings of everything, then pushed away from the table without so much as a thank-you, to disappear into the living room and watch television. Andy got up to put his plate in the sink, and nearly dropped it; Gabe bit out a command to just freaking leave it. Andy put the plate down but didn’t leave the kitchen.

“What?” Gabe barked.

“I was thinking about later, umm...I was going to see if maybe Janelle wanted to go see a movie with me. Think she would?”

“The hell if I know,” Gabe said. “Why are you asking me?”

“Did she...like me, before? Ever?”

“I’d be more worried about if she likes you now,” Gabe said, treading carefully, not sure what to say. The thought of Andy asking Janelle out was enough to stun him. “What difference does it make about before?”

Andy rubbed at the stripe in his hair, frowning. His gaze went a little blank, his mouth slack. It passed in seconds, with him blinking rapidly before focusing on Gabe again.

“Get out of here,” Gabe said quietly. “I’ll clean up.”

Andy did, without another word about Janelle. Gabe looked around the mess of the kitchen, still stinking of smoke. Forget about napping all day, forget about sleeping for a few hours. He wanted to run away. But this was his life, he thought as he got up from the table to start cleaning up. He’d made his choice, and he was stuck with it.

Stuck.

THIRTY-FOUR

Then

EIGHTEEN’S SUPPOSED TO feel different, but so far it’s only been more of the same. Nan’s making lasagna and homemade garlic bread for dinner, Janelle’s favorite. The aunts and uncles and cousins will all come over and sing to her, maybe slip her a five dollar bill in a card or something. Her mom already called this morning to sing the birthday song she’s sung to Janelle every year of her life that she can remember. This year it should feel different, if only because she’s living with Nan, because she’s almost an adult, because the last time she saw her mom it was through the back window of a car and her mom had turned away without waving. Because, because.

Eighteen doesn’t feel any different at all.

“Are you going to invite any of your friends?” Nan asks. “I have plenty of food, I just need to know.”

Janelle does invite some friends. Mandy, Dawn, Kendra, Barbie. Not Gabe. It would raise questions, maybe earn some good-natured teasing that might hit too close to home. She doesn’t want anyone getting even an inkling that there might be something more to her and Gabe than being neighbors.

Her friends and family sing “Happy Birthday” to her and there’s cake. Chocolate, Nan’s homemade. Ice cream, too. Her friends, who’ve lived in St. Marys their entire lives, know Janelle’s cousins better than she does. It’s not the first time she’s reminded that she doesn’t really fit in here. Not all the way. Not the way she would’ve if she’d lived here with her dad as a kid instead of visiting every once in a while.

Then again, Gabe has lived in St. Marys his entire life and he doesn’t exactly fit in, either. It’s because he doesn’t try. People would like him better if he just tried. That’s what Janelle tells him later that night when she opens her window to crawl into his.

“You’re going to kill yourself one of these days.” He ignores what else she said.

Janelle doesn’t. “It’s not that you weren’t invited because they don’t like you, Gabe. Or even because I don’t like you.”

She likes him too much, as a matter of fact, but she won’t say so.

He frowns and closes the window behind her. “Who says I even care?”

She holds up the note he taped to the outside of her window and starts to read aloud. “‘If your done,’ it’s spelled
y-o-u,
apostrophe
r-e,
by the way. ‘If your done with your fancy party and want to hang out—’”

Gabe tries to snatch the note from her, but Janelle dances out of reach. Laughing, she ducks his much-longer arms. She can’t escape him entirely, though, she discovers when he grabs her by the hip and spins her. He backs her up to his bed, and she falls down on it, looking up at him. Daring him to get on it with her.

Gabe takes the note away, crumples it up. Shoves it in the trash. “Fine. There.”

Janelle scoots back on the bed to prop herself up on his pillows. “I didn’t think you’d want to come over. It was all family. And Mandy and them. You don’t even like them.”

Gabe frowns. Then scowls. Shrugs. “I don’t care.”

All at once, Janelle wishes he did. “I thought we agreed, that’s all. About anyone knowing anything.”

“We did. It’s cool.”

It’s really not, but she’s not going to push it. She rolls over to reach for the tin box beneath his bed. Gabe watches without expression when she pulls out a joint he already rolled. She holds it up, then digs in her pocket for the Zippo lighter her dad left behind in the closet. He’s never come back for it, so finder’s keepers. She flicks it open, then closed. Open again. Gabe loves this lighter, and she knows it.

“Happy birthday?” she says.

“You already helped yourself, might as well go ahead.” After a minute or so, he sits beside her. He takes the joint from her and takes the first toke.

Janelle waits for her turn. She watches him. When he hands her the joint, she takes a drag from it without taking it from his hand. When she looks up at him, she smiles.

Gabe smiles back.

Some time later, flat on their backs on the bed with Janelle’s feet propped on the slanted ceiling, she says, “I should’ve brought you some cake.”

“I don’t like cake.”

She’d sit up if it didn’t feel so good to keep still. “What do you mean, you don’t like cake? That’s...that’s like saying you don’t like blow jobs.”

“No, I like blow jobs. I just don’t like cake.” Gabe sounds drowsy and warm.

She turns her head to look at him. “Why?”

“Because blow jobs are awesome.”

His grin makes her want to rub herself all over his face. “I’m sure they are. But why not cake?”

“I dunno. I just don’t like it. I like pie. I like cherry pie. I like apple pie. I like blow job pie.”

“You’re an idiot,” she tells him.

“That would be the best kind of pie, ever.”

“I think I’d rather have cake.”

“You wouldn’t think that if you’d ever had a blow job.”

Janelle can hear how slow and syrupy they both sound. How silly. She laughs, then some more. “Girls can’t get blow jobs.”