CHAPTER 19
Josh
“Nastya can’t make it to dinner. She asked me to drop this off on my way to work.” The blonde woman at the door hands me a really tall, elaborately iced cake. I can see the blue paisley pattern around the edge. The last time I saw that plate, it was on my front porch covered with cookies.
“She asked you?” I say skeptically.
Does she talk to other people and she’s lying to me? I don’t know why, but that bothers me. A lot.
“She wrote down this address under the words Drop off, Sunday and 5:45. At the bottom she tacked on the word please.
It’s the most communication I’ve gotten from her in years.” She sounds aggravated at having to explain herself to me.
“OK. Thanks.” I take it out of her hands and she looks at me like she’s waiting for something.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Josh Bennett.” Who are you?
“Can I come in?”
I’m kind of dumbfounded by the request but I don’t want to be rude. I look at her again. She’s really thin and tan and blonde and doesn’t remotely resemble any serial killers in my mind. She doesn’t resemble Nastya, either, but I’ve got to assume she’s the aunt Drew talked about, so I push the door back and let her step inside. I really don’t know what she wants from me, unless Nastya’s messing with me in more ways than I imagine and this woman knows things I don’t.
“Margot Travers. Nastya lives with me.” She holds out her hand. I hold up the cake in response.
“Listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush because I have to be at work soon, and frankly, it’s just not my thing.” Okay.
“Even if I didn’t have to drop the cake off, I would have been over here this weekend anyway to find out what’s going on.” I can’t decide if I’m more nervous or curious now, but I’m definitely listening.
“There’s a tracker on Nastya’s phone.” She pauses for a second. I guess she’s giving me a minute to react. I don’t. “I check it periodically, and a few weeks ago this address came up, so I started checking it more often and do you know what I found?” Of course I do, and you know that I do. You just want to ask for dramatic effect and then you’re going to tell me anyway. “This address came up again and again and again—at nine o’clock, ten o’clock,
eleven
o’clock.
Sometimes
midnight.” Sounds about right. I don’t confirm or deny. I’ll let her keep talking until she asks me something outright.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” she asks expectantly.
“Is there something you want to know?” I feel like I’m having a seventh-grade stare down with this woman.
“What’s going on?”
“Why aren’t you asking her?”
She looks at me as if to say yeah, right. “She doesn’t talk to me.” Every time she pauses, her eyes scan the room like she’s looking for my porn collection or the entrance to my hidden meth lab. I’m getting a little insulted at the fact that this woman nearly pushes Nastya out the door with Drew, of all people, but she’s here giving me the third-degree.
Maybe because Drew shows up, knocks on the door and asks her to be a guest at a well-chaperoned dinner on a Sunday evening, while I let her covertly hole up in my garage, late at night, with no adult supervision anywhere.
“Then why should I?” I respond, because now I’m just being a child. But then I realize what she’s really asking, what she really wants to know. And it’s not my first suspicion. Because this woman isn’t trying to figure out if her niece is sneaking over here and having sex with me. She wants to know if she’s talking to me. I take a breath; because now I want this over, and if I give her some sort of answer, maybe it’ll be enough to get her off my case. Plus, I’m getting the feeling she’s going to start issuing rules or threats and I don’t really handle either of those well. I may not know if I want Nastya hanging around all the time or not, but I don’t like the idea of someone else making that decision for me. I can give her an answer, but I’m doing it for my benefit, not hers. “She’s in my shop class. She’s really behind everyone else so she comes over here at night when she goes running and watches me work.”
She looks at me long enough to make me wonder how she’s going to respond.
“That’s it?” She sounds disappointed.
Her eyes narrow again. “Your parents don’t mind that she’s here all the time?”
“Doesn’t bother them at all.” It’s not really a lie. Not really.
***
“Where’s Nastya?” I’m greeted by Drew’s dad almost as soon as I walk in the door for dinner. The comment brings his mom around the corner a second later. The music’s already playing and I can tell it’s Sarah’s. I’d rather listen to a circular saw but we’re not allowed to insult anyone’s music when it’s their week.
“Nastya’s
not
coming?”
Mrs.
Leighton asks, taking the cake out of my hands
and
sounding
genuinely
disappointed. “Then where did this come from?”
“Her aunt dropped it off this afternoon and said she wanted you to have it.”
“She is the sweetest thing!” she exclaims, carrying it into the kitchen. I don’t know if there’s another person on Earth who would refer to Nastya as the sweetest thing, and I wonder if she sees something the rest of us don’t.
Dinner at Drew’s ends up being just the five of us, like so many dinners I’ve eaten at this table before. We don’t talk about Nastya at all until dessert comes and the cake gets brought out.
“She’s a freak,” Sarah says, glad to finally have the chance to talk behind her back. She looks at me when she says it and I look away because she’s pissing me off.
“Sarah, not everyone has such an easy life. Some people have problems and you need to learn to empathize, not judge.” Mrs. Leighton is skewering her with the look that has kept all three of us in line for years, four of us if you count Mr. Leighton.
“Is that why you invite her?” Shit. I wonder if my voice sounds as pissed off as I think it does.
“No, we really like her.” She sounds surprised by the question. Her response is sincere, but it’s the sincerity that pisses me off. Before I get a chance to respond, Sarah opens her bitchy mouth and saves me from myself, if only for a moment.
“Speak for yourself.”
“Shut up, Sarah,” Drew counters with the phrase that must leave his mouth a hundred times a day.
“Drew!” Mrs. Leighton lays her fork down next to her plate and it’s obvious that it pains her not to slam it onto the table.
“What? She can be a bitch but I can’t tell her to shut up?” Drew stands up and pushes his chair back from the table.
“Sit down, Drew.” The forced calm in his mother’s voice is a warning and he sits. He’s readying for his comeuppance, but I’m not done yet.
“How can you like her? You don’t even know her.” I should drop it. I know I should, but I don’t get it. It’s like she’s a novelty or a pet. Look at the troubled, misguided mute girl we’ve taken in.
Aren’t we amazingly generous and understanding? I hate it and I don’t want it coming from Drew’s mom.
“I don’t know how well you can really know a girl who can’t talk,” she says sympathetically.
Doesn’t talk, I silently correct. Can, just won’t. I know that one thing.
Mrs. Leighton’s attention is on me now. She’s trying to explain it for me as well as for herself. She wants to convince me, but she doesn’t need to. I already know. The answer is you can’t . You can’t know her at all; at least not Nastya, because she won’t give you anything, and what she gives you isn’t real. She may talk to me, but I don’t know her either.
“So how can you say you like her?” I’m not as angry now, but I want to know.
“She’s obviously a nice girl. She has manners. She never comes to dinner empty-handed.” I don’t know how manners and nice are equal, but I keep my mouth shut because being mad at Sarah is one thing, but being mad at Drew’s mom is something else. I don’t think she’s ever done anything to piss me off before. The feeling sucks. I don’t even know where it comes from. “Clearly, there’s something going on in her life and we can’t judge—”
“So what is it? You invite her because you feel sorry for her or because you’re using her to teach Sarah how to be a better person?” I had to cut her off. It was getting way too close to the point where the psychoanalysis was going to start and I didn’t want to let it happen. I didn’t want to hear it. It would feel too much like I was being psychoanalyzed, letting them tear me open and pick apart every action and choice and motivation, so they can feel superior and sane. I didn’t want them to do it to her while she wasn’t even here. Of course, I feel like I’ve just ripped myself open for them, spared them the trouble and dumped out my feelings so they can lay them across the dining room table and poke around in them with a stick.
“Josh.” She says a lot with that word.
Like I’m being called out and judged and questioned and pitied. Everyone’s looking at me. I can’t blame them. I invited it by being the stupid bastard who couldn’t keep my mouth shut. It’s not even an outburst. I never even raised my voice. I don’t even think my tone changed at all, but they still aren’t used to it. It’s the Josh Bennett equivalent of tattooing her name across my chest. Regrettable, moronic, and really f*cking embarrassing.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Leighton continues, and now I can tell she thinks I’m deluding myself. But I’m not the one taking in strays.
I’m not trying to save anyone.
“She’s not a side show,” I cut her off again because I don’t want Mrs. Leighton’s apologies. She doesn’t owe them to me. I should quit while I’m ahead, but that would be smart, and I’m not being smart tonight.
“She dresses like one.” Obviously Sarah isn’t being smart either.
“I like the way she dresses.” I don’t know if Drew is trying to get everyone back on track by reminding us all what an idiot he is, or if he really is just an idiot.
“Less work for you,” she retorts.
“What is your problem Sarah?” I demand.
“What’s yours? My parents aren’t allowed to be nice to her and I’m not allowed to not be nice. You’re the one with the issue.” Sarah has no problem raising her voice. The worst part about it is that she’s right. I am the one with the issue and I don’t even know what the issue is.
I don’t know how this whole dinner devolved into the mess we’re in now, but I have a feeling I’m to blame for it. I could have kept my mouth shut, listened to them play a nice game of Solve Sunshine and let it go. But I didn’t.
***
Mrs. Leighton manages to corner me at my truck before I can leave, and I wish she’d just leave me alone like everyone else. Apparently I’ve been claimed by this woman whether I like it or not.
“Which one of you is dating that girl?”
“I don’t think either of us is.” Maybe Drew is, but I don’t think so. At least dating wouldn’t be the word for it, but I don’t want to think about that so much.
“Drew, I guess.”
“I doubt that.” She looks knowingly at me.
“Then why ask?”
“Josh.” I wish she would stop saying my name like that. Soft and tentative, like she’s licking broken glass. “Look at the way she dresses, the way she covers her face with that make-up and the fact that she doesn’t speak. She might be silent, but she is screaming for help.”
I feel like I’m watching an episode of General Hospital.
“So why doesn’t someone give it to her?”
“Maybe
nobody
knows
how.
Sometimes it’s easier to pretend nothing is wrong than to face the fact that everything is wrong, but you’re powerless to do anything about it.” I wonder if she’s talking about me and she thinks she’s being subtle.
“Why are you telling me this?
Shouldn’t you be talking to Drew?”
“Drew doesn’t care.”
Her accusation is clear and I answer it.
“Neither do I.”