The Rest of Us Just Live Here (16 page)

“So what were they, do you think?” Mel asks me, as she brushes our grandma’s hair.

“More cops?” I shrug from the chair next to Grandma’s bed. “More deer? I don’t know.”

“I wonder if we ever will.”

“And if we do, I wonder if we’ll regret it.”

Our grandma leans against Mel’s brush with her eyes closed, like Mary Magdalene when you scratch her between the ears. Mel’s the only person she’ll let do this. She never speaks while the brushing’s happening, never mentions it when it’s over, much less thanks her, but she’ll sit still the whole time, enjoying it, quiet as a cat.

“No one died, though,” I say. Mel shushes me and crooks her head to Mrs Richardson’s empty bed. Someone did die. No idea how or when, but it must have been really recent, because they don’t keep the beds empty here for long. Mrs Choi is still in the bed by the window. She must be sad for Mrs Richardson, because she barely waved when we came in. I lower my voice. “But that could just be because we’re not indie kids. Or maybe it was just luck–”

“Do you
really
think Nathan has anything to do with it?” Mel asks. “Because I don’t. And I think I’m a pretty good judge of people.”

I sigh out through my nose. “Probably not.”

“How much of this is jealousy?”

“Probably all of it.”

Mel takes a final swipe with the brush. “You want me to plait it, Grandma?” Grandma says nothing, her head still back, her eyes still closed. Mel starts plaiting.

“So,” she says, innocent in a way that I know something’s coming. “You’re going to start seeing someone?”

“Mom told you.”

“Only to ask if I wanted to see someone, too. It was actually surprisingly supportive.”

“I know. She’s been different lately.”

“I’ll bet she feels like she’s graduating, just like us, so she’s finally noticing that the majority of her kids are leaving.”

“Isn’t it funny how we’re not even pretending Mr Shurin has a chance?”

“He doesn’t.” Mel folds up one large plait, isn’t happy with it, starts over. “Dr Luther again?”

Dr Luther was the psychiatrist I saw before, way back when. Mel saw her, too, and for those few times we went as a whole family, it was Dr Luther who tried to figure us out. This should be the place where I make fun of her, where I put her in my past as a goofy hippie-chick; a lonely lady, soft as a wild herb, looking at us poor, wounded kids with the eyes of a fawn.

Except she wasn’t. She gave off this air of, like, total competence. Like you didn’t have to worry she didn’t understand you or that she didn’t know what she was doing. Any idea how much of a relief that is?

“I think so,” I say. “Time is short, and it’s better than having to start from scratch.”

“Time is short,” Mel repeats. “It is, isn’t it?”

It is. The Bolts of Fire concert is tomorrow. The prom is next week, then we graduate. Time is short.

Mel folds our grandma’s hair between her hands in a twist I couldn’t even begin to replicate. “Could you hand me that?” Mel nods at a bottle of old-fashioned anti-tangle cream my grandma used to like. I hand it to her. She squirts a bunch into her hand and massages it into Grandma’s hair, filling the room with a really nice coconut smell.

Grandma suddenly laughs, the smell triggering something.

“What’s funny, Grandma?” Mel says, smiling.

But our grandma just smiles back at her and then at me. “You remember the islands, Phillip?”

“Which islands?” I say. She doesn’t answer, just closes her eyes, still smiling. “Was Grandma ever on islands?” I ask Mel.

“Vancouver Island, maybe,” Mel says. “But I don’t think Canada really grows coconuts.” She finishes up with Grandma’s hair, getting up from the bed and gently laying Grandma back down on her pillow. Grandma doesn’t open her eyes again and is asleep almost immediately. The usual ritual after Mel does her hair.

Mel watches her, hands on her hips, brush in her hand. “She won’t miss this when I leave. But that kind of makes me even sadder that I’ll have to stop.”

“I know,” I say, standing, getting ready to go.

“Not yet,” Mel says. I sit back down and she leans against the table by my grandma’s bed. For a few minutes, we just watch my grandma and Mrs Choi sleep, that empty bed in the middle seeming like a hole either of them could fall into at any moment.

Mel’s been spending a lot of time with Call Me Steve. She has also somehow managed not to tell our mother yet that Call Me Steve actually exists. She’s afraid he’ll become just another part of our mom’s schedule, an issue to be dealt with, a point on a memo for her advisors. She’s probably right. Mom’s victory seems so assured, though, she’s getting hardly any press coverage. They’re concentrating on a nasty Senate race instead. My mom says this is the best thing that could happen, but I can also tell that the biggest deal in her life not being the biggest deal for everyone else is a little disappointing.

Mel picks up her bag and takes out a plastic container. She opens it.

I frown. “Is that your lunch?” We didn’t eat together today. Mel was at the dentist getting a check-up on the enamel treatments she’s been having to repair her teeth. But it wasn’t a Novocaine-type thing and she could have eaten,
should
have eaten afterwards.

“Don’t freak out,” she says, but I’m already standing, already kind of freaking out.

“Mel–”

“Mikey, please–”

“You can’t start again. It’s bad enough me doing it. I couldn’t
take
losing you, Mel, I couldn’t–”

She puts her hand on my mouth, rolling her eyes to our grandma, still sleeping.

“Mel,” I whisper. And I’m nearly crying. I know what it’s like to lose her, even for three or four minutes. It makes you live afraid every minute of every day that it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. You can be happy. You can have fun. But it’s always there. Always.

“I have moments, Mikey,” she says. “You have ’em, too, I know, and mine aren’t as bad as yours. But with everything that’s been going on–”

“Is it Steve?” I say, suddenly ready to break him in half with my hands.

“No,”
she says, firmly. “He’s nothing like that at all.” She sighs. “Though I did think about it. Like you would with anybody. Like you’d want to be sure you looked attractive enough for someone you really like, even if he doesn’t care about that stuff.”

“Mel–”

“Like your scar.”

This stops me. She puts her hand up to it like Henna did, tracing it with her fingers. She drops her hand. “This is
my
scar. I carry it around. Most of the time, I don’t even think about it.”

“But sometimes you do.”

“The world’s uncertain, Mikey,” she says, and then she repeats the words from earlier. “Time is short.”

We look down at her lunch. It’s a wrap, Japanese-style, salmon, shoots, rice. There’s a fork tucked in next to it. Mel takes it out.

She hands it to me.

I don’t say anything, just look at the fork, look at her, look at her eyes asking me a question.

“I’m going to be okay,” she says. “I really am. Just do this for me today, yeah? Like old times. Remind me that it’s possible to feel safe.”

She’s keeping her voice steady, but I can see the nervousness in her arms and shoulders. She didn’t eat her lunch, and it’s probably a bit more serious than she’s letting on, but it’s also probably a bit less serious than in my worst worries. None of which makes me feel any better.

“I would tell you if it was bad,” she says. “I wouldn’t tell Dad, I wouldn’t tell Mom, I wouldn’t tell Meredith. But I’d tell you. I promise.”

“You promise?”

She smiles, and it’s so true, my heart sort of hurts. “I really do, Mike. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to live long enough so I can
really
live.” She shrugs, and it’s more relaxed, I can see. “Just a blip in the day. And I need a reminder.”

I believe her. I know what a blip is. I think I’d know the look of someone who was having more than a blip that freaked her out. They’d look like me.

I get some salmon and rice on the fork. I lift it up.

And I feed her. Mrs Choi and our grandmother sleep, the room is quiet, that middle bed between them empty, empty, empty, and I feed my sister her lunch. We share our craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.

“I’m still mad,” Henna says.

“Are you
sure
you want to do this?” I ask.

“Did you hear me? I said I’m still mad.”

“Then you should be mad at yourself, because if you’d told me it was you who wanted to paint the bridge–”

“And
yes
, I’m sure.”

She
is
still mad at me. I’m kind of mad at her, too. But she called asking me to drive her here tonight, not Mel or Jared or
Nathan
. Me. And I said yes.

“Henna Silven…” The tattoo artist gives up even trying to pronounce her name from the list and just looks at her.

“Silvennoinen,” Henna says. “It’s Finnish.”

“Sympathies,” the tattoo artist says. “My last name’s Thai. It’s seven syllables long. You ready?”

“Yep,” Henna says, standing.

She’s eighteen. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission for this, though she had to prove it to the tattoo parlour receptionist guy when we came in the door. I’m still only seventeen, but that’s okay, because I don’t want a tattoo. Like really, really not.

“You’re definitely sure about this?” I asked her a hundred times on the drive over. “You’ve never mentioned it before.”

“I never nearly died before,” is all she answered. She wouldn’t tell me what she was planning on getting either. Or how she found this place. Or why we were waiting for this one particular tattoo guy to finish putting a hummingbird on a lady’s upper boob. While we sat there, she did look through a catalogue of different types of lettering, so I’m guessing it must be words. She didn’t tell me what words, though, because she was too busy saying she was mad at me.

“Hold on a sec,” she says now, stopping me from following her in. I wait as she goes to the tattoo guy’s chair – he’s called Martin, which seems really old-fashioned for a cool Thai tattoo guy – and they have a quiet conversation about what she wants and where she wants it. It’s going to be on her side, by her stomach, the side away from where the cast is now. She shows the tattoo guy a piece of paper she didn’t show me. He nods, draws a few things on it, and I hear Henna say, “Exactly.”

She gestures me over, making me sit on the other side from the tattoo so I won’t be able to see it until it’s done. Then she goes back to telling me how mad she is.

“You’re too mean to him,” she says, as Martin preps her, cleaning and lubricating the patch of skin. Henna’s so focused on me, it’s like she gets tattoos every day.

“Your parents will go mental,” I say, also not for the first time.

“My parents won’t know. I’m not doing this for them.”

“You really think they’re not going to see it in Africa? You’re never going to go swimming or sunbathing or–?”

Henna snorts. “You obviously know nothing about missionaries.”

Martin the tattoo guy holds up his needle, ready to start. “You’re going to Africa?”

“Central African Republic,” Henna says.

“Isn’t there a war happening there?”

“Yes,” I say. “Her crazy parents are taking her anyway.”

“I went through Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia two years ago,” Martin says. “Most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Were they shooting at you?” I say.

“Not really.” Martin turns on the power to his needle. “Now, no one here is going to pretend this doesn’t actually hurt, but it’s a pain you’ll find bearable, I promise.”

“Thanks,” Henna says. Then she looks up to me, eyes still annoyed, and holds out her non-cast hand across her chest for me to hold. I take it. She grunts slightly when Martin touches her with the needle, but she doesn’t flinch. He paints in what must be a few dots, then asks, “How’s that going to be? It won’t get any worse, but it won’t get any better, either.”

“Compared to how much my arm hurt,” Henna says, “this is like a mild headache.”

“Good.” Martin carries on with the tattooing.

“You know if your parents find out,” I say, “they’ll blame me and Mel for sending you off the rails.”

“‘Off the rails’?” Henna asks, wincing. “You talk like an old woman sometimes, Mike.”

“I talk like a politician. My mom has a speech where she says ‘off the rails’ a lot when she’s talking about the other party.”

“Well, maybe it’s time I went off the rails,” Henna says, frowning. “Maybe I’ve been on the fucking rails for far too long.”

“Language,” Martin says, still tattooing. We both look at him. He’s covered in tattoos, some of which aren’t exactly family viewing. He sees us, shrugs. “Just a personal pet peeve. Everyone does it. So why be like everyone?”

He sticks her again with the needle. Henna tenses up. I think she’s holding her breath. He finishes, looks up. “That’s one element done.” He re-inks his needle and gets to work on the rest.

“How many elements are there?” I ask Henna.

“Just never you mind,” she says through gritted teeth. A single tear escapes from her eye. I wipe it away with my free hand. “Thanks,” she says.