The Favor (33 page)

Janelle’s never seen him cry, and she thinks that’s what he’s doing when he sinks onto the bed and puts his head in his hands. All she can do is shift from foot to foot and rub at her bare, cold arms. If she takes a step away, will he look up at her? She doesn’t want to see tears. She’s not sure what to think or do or say, or how to feel about the fact that Gabe might really...need her.

So when she sits beside him, puts her arm around his shoulders, and he turns to press his face into the curve of her neck, Janelle doesn’t think about what to say. Or what to think. She just holds him, and she strokes his hair. When he shudders against her, his face wet and hot, she lets him push her back onto the pillows and climb on top of her.

She lets him kiss her. She lets him touch her. She lets him scrape his teeth along her throat, and that makes her arch up against him in response.

When his mouth finds hers again, the kissing is still so new it shocks her. Kissing, kissing, she pulls his shirt off over his head. Her hands move over his body, exploring the ridges and curves of all the places she’s always admired but never given herself permission to learn. His hand slides over her belly, into her jeans. She undoes the button and the zipper and tips her hips to urge him to move beneath her panties. She unbuckles his belt.

They are naked, arms and legs tangled. All of it feels so good she wants to cry with it, even the pain when he pushes inside her for the first time. When she makes a noise, half startled yelp and half groan, Gabe stops. His hair hangs in front of his face. His arms are corded with muscle as he pushes himself up.

They’re connected. He’s inside her. This is it, this is sex, unexpected and uncomfortable and perfect, because it’s with him. She pulls him closer, makes him kiss her. She hooks her heels over the backs of his thighs and makes him move. It’s nothing like she thought it would be. She thought she wouldn’t like it as much as she does.

He’s still kissing her when he shudders again, though this time not with grief. Her name sighs out against her mouth. She never imagined she might have an orgasm the first time, but that pleasure explodes through her at the sound of him saying her name, because that means something. It means he’s with
her,
not some random girl. He’s with her. She let him start this, but they finish it together.

Breathing hard, not sure what to say, Janelle stares at the ceiling when Gabe rolls off to lie beside her. Their heads are very close on the pillow. He’s not twitching or jittering anymore. Gabe’s gone smooth and silent again.

Janelle links their fingers. She’s not cold anymore. She fits next to him just right, the hollow of her hip matched perfectly to the jut of his. She doesn’t look at him, but studies the ceiling. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

After another minute, he sits and bends to fumble with the mess on the floor, cursing again when he finds no lighter. Janelle gets up, finds her inside-out jeans. She pulls her father’s Zippo from her pocket and hands it to Gabe. He lights his cigarette and offers her one, but she shakes her head. When he tries to hand her back the lighter, Janelle curls his fingers around it. She cups both her hands over his. Giving it to him.

They sit that way for a minute, before Gabe says, “I can’t ask you. I was going to, I thought it would work, it would be the right thing. But I can’t—”

She stops his words with a kiss. “Ask me.”

He shakes his head. She kisses him again, longer this time. When she breaks it, she looks into his eyes.

“Ask me, Gabe.”

“I can’t.”

“What is it? A favor?”

“Yes.” It’s not, it’s so much more than that, but she won’t know that until later.

Janelle rests her head on his shoulder. “Whatever it is, are you afraid I’ll say no?”

Gabe shakes his head. “I’m afraid you’ll say yes.”

Which of course, she does.

FORTY-THREE

NAN FOUGHT SLEEP the way Bennett had as a toddler. First, she called out for a new book, complaining she didn’t like the one she had. Then she wanted a drink of water. Next, the toilet, which was better than if she’d been unable to make it, but meant Janelle had to haul her up and out of bed, and walk her to the bathroom, then wait while she finished. Then Nan wanted to see if the mail had arrived, and if there were any bills that needed to be paid. If the newspaper had been delivered. She insisted on heading for the living room to check the front door.

Janelle said, exasperated, “Nan, if you don’t want to take a nap, nobody says you have to.”

Her grandmother turned, shuffling, her shoulders hunched. “No?”

“No.” Janelle shook her head and shrugged. “If you’re tired, you should sleep. If you’re not tired...don’t sleep.”

Nan blinked rapidly, her lower lip trembling. “But I am tired, honey. I’m so tired.”

That made sense, since she’d been up several times last night. Janelle was tired, too. She sighed and gestured toward the hall. “So...sleep.”

“But I—” Nan broke off and gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m being a cranky old fool. That’s all.”

Janelle found a smile beyond her own need for a nap and the ache in her back and shoulder, beyond the creeping edge of anxiety about the three loads of laundry she needed to get to, and the fact that Bennett hadn’t brought home his last math test. Beyond even the unpaid bills she hadn’t shown Nan because they would only get her worked up about the cost of electricity.

The soft thump of the newspaper being delivered at the front door caught Nan’s attention. “Ricky?”

Janelle froze. “What?”

Nan shook her head and pressed a hand to her eyes. “Oh. No, never mind, honey. I was thinking about something else, that’s all. About your dad.”

“What about him?” Janelle went to her grandmother to hook a hand beneath her elbow. “C’mon. If you don’t want to go to bed, at least come sit on the couch.”

In the family room, settled not on the couch but in the recliner, with her feet up and the remote close by, her legs covered with an afghan, Nan shook her head again. “He just came into my mind, that’s all.”

Janelle had faced her grandmother while high on pot and more than a little drunk, after sneaking out of a boy’s room where she’d spent hours using her hands and mouth to give him pleasure. Thinking about how she’d blocked her dad’s number, she felt guiltier now than she ever had any of those times. But he deserved it, she thought fiercely. Just as Nan did not deserve to be disappointed once again by her prodigal son.

“He was a terrible father,” Nan said.

Janelle coughed into her fist. “Nan.”

“It’s true. No matter what I did, no matter how I raised him, he never quite got the hang of it. That’s all. I think he wanted to,” Nan said thoughtfully. “I’m sure he did. But he never really managed.”

“No. He didn’t.” Janelle took a shallow breath, old anger sweeping over her though she tried to push it aside.

“I’m going to watch a program now.”

“Okay, Nan.” Janelle made sure the volume was set to the right level, and went into the kitchen to pour herself a mug of coffee. She needed the caffeine.

Then

“Nectar of the gods, Janny.” Her father’s voice is gruff, his eyes smeary with sleep, his hair a mess. He stinks like smoke and BO. He holds up the mug, sloshing the black liquid, and shows her how to add a lot of sugar and some cream. “Here.”

He pours a little into her mug, and Janelle sips it cautiously. The smell is good. The taste, not so much. She’d have preferred a soda, but when the waitress came, her dad ordered her a coffee. Eggs, toast, pancakes, bacon. Orange juice. You don’t drink soda for breakfast, anyway. Janelle sips again, letting the flavor flow over her tongue.

“You don’t like it now, but you will.” Her dad holds up his mug for her to clink against in a toast.

The fourth or fifth sip goes down much nicer. By the time the eggs and toast come, Janelle holds out her mug for a refill, and her dad laughs, shaking his head, but he gives her one. He winks and smiles at the waitress, who doesn’t seem to like him very much. Janelle understands. Dad thinks he’s being charming and funny, but he looks kind of like a bum.

“Coffee ain’t good for kids,” the waitress says in a flat voice, her eyes skimming over Janelle’s mismatched clothes, all she had left that was clean. Over her bushy, uncombed hair. The waitress puts the check on the table, facedown, close to Daddy, then goes away.

“You drink up, Janny,” her dad says.

Later, when she feels every color is too bright, all the noises too loud, when everything is sharp and clear and there’s a ringing in her head and her stomach’s sort of sick, her dad laughs and watches her jump from the couch to the chair to the couch again. He laughs and laughs until she underestimates the distance and leaps, arms and legs spread, mouth wide open in a victory yell, but misses. Goes down. Her leg is cut open, blood everywhere, requiring a trip to the emergency room for stitches.

Her dad takes her, leg all bandaged, to a local carnival, where he gives her dime after dime to try and win a goldfish, a glass plate, a mug in the ring toss. He buys her the wristband so she can ride the rides, although after the first spinny one her head hurts too bad and she can’t ride anymore. Then her dad gets mad because he wasted the money, and he takes her back to her mom two days early.

* * *

That was the price she’d paid for her dad being her friend instead of her parent. She still had the scar, though it had faded over time. Not all of them had.

She moved through the house, clearing clutter. Tidying. She found Bennett’s backpack, still overflowing with miscellaneous garbage and papers, though most of them were corralled inside an accordion folder. She found a handful of test papers, emblazoned with red, and pulled them out, already gritting her teeth. Ready to bring the hammer down.

They were math tests, yes, but each had been given a B, with extra credit problems on the back applied to his overall grade. He wasn’t going to finish the year with a math grade higher than a C, even with these tests, but at least he was improving. The question was, why hadn’t he shown her the work, the way they’d both agreed?

She peeked in on Nan, who was finally dozing. From upstairs she heard the faint noise of Bennett’s video game. Lots of shooting and screaming. She’d checked it out ahead of time, of course, so either she was the best mom ever for letting him get it, or the worst. She climbed the stairs, pausing in the doorway to watch him. Her golden-haired son. Though getting him to do his homework was still a struggle, the tests in her hand proved he was at least making more of an effort. He’d been invited to a birthday party and had invited that same friend over to work on a school project, two occasions Janelle had let pass without more than the briefest comment, aware of how he might react if she made too much of it. Too aware of how he’d accused her of not wanting him to grow up, of never trusting him. Of being too strict.

Of being no fun.

“Hey, buddy.” Janelle crossed the room to sit down next to him. “How’s it going?”

“Good.” Eyes on the game, Bennett manipulated the controller back and forth. “Just leveled up, killed the big boss, now I’m almost out of health and I need to get to the next save point.”

“Can you pause for a second?”

With a hefty sigh, he did, not giving her his full attention until she held up the tests. “Want to tell me how come you didn’t show me these? I thought we agreed you’d show me every test you got, and the homework, too.”

As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them, but there they were. She couldn’t take them back. Instead, she settled papers on top of the dresser and sat on the edge of his bed.

“I was afraid you’d be mad,” he admitted. “Because I didn’t get A’s.”

“Oh, Bennett. Did you do your best?”

He nodded.

Janelle sighed, wondering if there was ever any easy way to be a parent. “When we talked about your grades, I never said I expected you to only get A’s. B’s are great, so long as you did your best. That’s a good grade.”

Bennett shrugged, still looking at the screen, though the game was paused and his eyes glittered suspiciously. “Okay.”

Janelle opened her mouth to say more, but she could still taste the regret from her words of moments before. Sure, she could talk this to death. She could be stern or lecture. She could make certain he understood the consequences of not showing her the tests, the consequences she’d promised for the next time he hid something from her.

Or she could let it go.

In her day, Super Mario had been a big deal. This game system had cost as much as her car payment, and featured graphics and stories as complicated and impressive as movies shown on the big screen. Janelle had never had any desire to do more than watch for a few minutes, but now she gestured at the monitor.

“Can I play?”

Bennett looked up. “What?”

“The game. Can I play?”

He laughed. “Oh, Mom.”

“I’m serious! What, you think your mom can’t shoot a zombie?”

Bennett shook his head, still chuckling, then saw she was serious. He handed her the controller. “Okay. Go ahead.”

She had no idea what she was doing, which made him laugh all the harder. When she got killed, the screen filled with dripping, gory blood. Bennett didn’t take the controller from her. He put his hand over hers and showed her how to manipulate the buttons and levers. Then he reset the game.

“Go,” Bennett said.

She did her best, which was really all she could do.

FORTY-FOUR

Then

EVERYTHING’S GONE WRONG, and it’s all Gabe’s fault.

Probably everything has always been, ever since the beginning, when whatever he’d done as a kid had sent his mother packing. It’s something inside him, so deeply rooted he can’t pull it out. Not without killing himself in the process, anyway, and yeah...he’s thought about that. More than once.

He asked Janelle to do it—to fool around with his brothers—because he wanted Andy to feel better. He wanted him not to focus so much on what the old man had done, which wasn’t Andy’s fault. It was Gabe’s fault, just like everything else was. So he’d tried to fix it, tried to get Andy to see that no matter what the old man had done, Andy was fine. He was good. He was okay. He wasn’t any of those names the old man had called him. And even if he was—the way Mikey might be, shielded in his desire to become a priest, as if giving his life to the church would make it easier to forget what he really wanted—well, even if Andy was a fag like the old man had said, Gabe wanted to show him that it didn’t matter. It just didn’t fucking matter.