He grumbles something about having too much fun last night, and Aunt Jeanne nods in her slightly amused way. Clearly, she can tell he’s riding the struggle bus this morning. Maybe he really is getting old. Thirty is a bitch so far.
She shuffles the mess of boxes and papers on her tiny kitchen counter in search of her coffee maker. Cameron picks up the paperback sitting on top of a pile of junk that has nearly buried her rickety little desk, an ancient desktop computer humming somewhere beneath the heap. The book is a romance, one of those ones with a shirtless muscled guy on the front. He tosses it back down, causing a stack of piled-up crap to cascade to the carpet.
When did she get like this? The collecting, as she calls it. She was never like this when he was growing up. Sometimes Cameron passes through their old neighborhood back in Modesto, the two-bedroom house where she raised him. That house was always clean. A few years back, she sold it to help pay off the medical bills from the summer before. Turns out, getting knocked out in the parking lot of Dell’s Saloon costs a fortune, and it wasn’t even Aunt Jeanne’s fault. Some asshole guys from out of town were making trouble, and she was just trying to get everyone to simmer down. Somehow, she took a punch to the side of her head and ended up flat on the pavement. A bad concussion, a shattered hip, months of physical and occupational therapy. Cameron had ditched a decent job with a restoration company, one that could’ve led to an apprenticeship, to care for her, sleeping on her couch so she’d remember her meds and driving her to and from the brain-injury specialist in Stockton. Every afternoon, he met the mailman on the porch, opening the door quietly so she wouldn’t notice. His pathetic savings account held off the collectors for a little while.
When Aunt Jeanne finally sold the house, she had just turned fifty-two, the age requirement for Welina residents. For reasons that still baffle Cameron, instead of getting a regular apartment or something, she decided to use the small amount of cash left over to buy this trailer and move out here. Was that when the collecting started? Is this dump of a trailer park causing it?
Still railing about how Sissy Baker has had it out for her since the misunderstanding at the Welina potluck last summer (Cameron doesn’t ask for details), she sets down two steaming mugs on the coffee table and motions for him to sit next to her on the sofa.
“So how’s work been?”
Cameron shrugs.
“You got canned again, didn’t you?”
He doesn’t answer.
Aunt Jeanne’s eyes narrow. “Cammy! You know I pulled strings down at the county office to get you on that project.” Aunt Jeanne still works part-time at the reception desk at the county office. She’s been there for years. Of course, she knows everyone. And yeah, the project was a big one. An office park on the outskirts of town. Still didn’t matter: ten measly minutes late on his second day, and the asshole foreman told him to pack it. Was it Cameron’s fault the foreman had zero capacity for empathy?
“It’s not like I asked you to pull any strings,” he mutters, then explains what happened.
“So you screwed up. Royally. Now what?”
Cameron’s mouth twists into a pout. Aunt Jeanne is supposed to be on his side. A loaded silence sits between them; she takes a sip of coffee. Her mug is covered in dancing cartoon frogs with bright red lettering: WHO LET THE FROGS OUT? He shakes his head and tries to change the subject. “I like your new flag. The one outside.”
“Do you?” Her face brightens the tiniest bit. “I got it from one of those catalogs. Mail order.”
Cameron nods, not surprised.
“How’s Katie?” she asks.
“Katie’s fine,” Cameron says, his voice breezy. Actually, he hasn’t seen his girlfriend since he kissed her goodbye when she left for work yesterday morning. She was supposed to come see Moth Sausage play, but apparently she was too tired to come out, then he ended up staying out later than planned and crashing at Brad’s. But, of course, she’s fine. Katie’s the type of girl who’s never in trouble, always fine.
“She’s a good catch for you.”
“Yeah, she’s great.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I’m happy.”
“And it would be nice if you could hang on to a job for more than two days.”
Great, this again. Cameron scowls, rubbing a hand across his face. His eyeballs are pounding. He should probably drink some water.
“You’re so smart, Cammy. So damn smart . . .”
He rises from the couch and stares out the window. After a long second, he says, “They don’t just hand out paychecks for being smart, you know.”
“Well, for you, they should.” She pats the space next to her on the couch, and Cameron sinks down, dropping his throbbing head onto her shoulder. He loves Aunt Jeanne, of course he does. But she doesn’t get it.
NO ONE IN the family knows where Cameron got his smarts. And by “family,” he means him and Aunt Jeanne. That’s his whole family.
He can barely remember his mother’s face. He was nine years old when Aunt Jeanne picked him up from his mother’s apartment after she’d told him to pack his bag to stay with his aunt for the weekend. In itself, this wasn’t unusual. He often stayed overnight there. But this time, his mother never came to retrieve him. He remembers her giving him a hug goodbye, tears running inky trails of makeup down her face. He recalls, with clarity, that her arms felt bony.
The weekend turned into a week, then a month. Then a year.
Somewhere in her cluttered curio cabinet, Aunt Jeanne has these little ceramic tchotchkes his mother collected as a child. Shaped like hearts, stars, animals. Some of them are engraved with her name: DAPHNE ANN CASSMORE. Every so often, Aunt Jeanne asks him if he’d like to have them, and every time, he says no. Why would he want her old crap when she couldn’t get herself clean long enough to be his mother?
At least Cameron knows who he inherited the disaster gene from.
Aunt Jeanne applied for sole custody with the courts, which was granted without contest. Much better this way, he remembers the caseworker saying in a low voice, for Cameron to be with family rather than “entering the system.”
A decade older than Daphne, Aunt Jeanne never married or had children of her own. She always called Cameron the blessing she never expected to have.
With Aunt Jeanne, his childhood was good. She was never exactly like the mothers of his friends. Who could forget the Halloween she showed up for his grade school parade in a homemade Marge Simpson costume, the year he went as Bart? But somehow, it worked.
In school, Cameron did well enough. He met Elizabeth there, then Brad. Surprisingly well-adjusted, he overheard people say sometimes, for a kid in his shoes.
As for his father? It’s possible that’s where Cameron got his smarts.
Anything could be possible when it comes to his father. Neither he nor Aunt Jeanne has any idea who his father is. When Cameron was a kid, before he understood how baby-making worked and the necessity of, at a minimum, a sperm donor, he used to believe he simply didn’t have one.
“Knowing the crowd your mom ran with, he was probably someone you’re better off without,” Aunt Jeanne always says when the subject comes up. But Cameron has always doubted that. He’s sure his mother was clean when he was born. He’s seen the photos, her hair in soft brown curls as she pushes him on a baby swing at the park. The using, the problems, Cameron is sure, came after.
Came because of him.
Aunt Jeanne starts to get up. “More coffee, hon?”
“You sit, I’ll get it,” he says, shaking the headache off. He picks his way across the clutter toward the kitchen.
As he’s pouring two fresh cups, Aunt Jeanne calls from the sofa, “Say, how’s Elizabeth Burnett doing? She’s due at the end of the summer, right? I ran into her mama at the gas station a few days ago, but we didn’t have much chance to chat.”
“Yeah, she’s about to pop. But she’s good. She and Brad, they’re both good.” Creamer swirls in white streaks as Cameron pours it into his coffee.