Matthew touched me in a way that was far different than Joseph ever did. Matthew’s hands were considerate, whereas Joseph’s were not. Matthew’s hands moved slow and gentle, but Joseph’s did not. I thought of Matthew’s hands as an eraser of sorts, as if them touching me could erase that image of Joseph’s hands right on out of my mind.
Matthew talked more and more about getting me out of that home. But he said he knew his father wouldn’t let me leave. And Matthew didn’t have the money to take care of himself, much less me. Matthew never told me where he stayed once he left that homeless shelter. Not the truth anyway. He talked about sleeping on a buddy’s couch, or a friend letting him sleep on a cot in some storefront he owned, but when he said these things, he looked away, like when he talked about riding barges on the Missouri River, and I knew that he was lying. Matthew always looked tired. He started looking old. His skin was weathered, like maybe he was living on the streets somewhere, I didn’t know.
But still, he talked about getting me out of that home. He talked about places outside of Omaha he wanted to see. The mountains, the beach. He talked about saving money. He talked about other ways he could get money: stealing women’s purses or robbing a bank. I didn’t think Matthew had it in him, but if it got me out of that home with Joseph and Miriam then, I thought, okay. Just so long as no one got hurt.
Maybe, he said, and one day.
There were times when Matthew wanted to kiss me there, in that Omaha home, in my bedroom. There were times he wanted to lie beside me on the bed for reasons other than to read.
I didn’t know what Matthew did and didn’t know about Joseph, about what he did when he came into my room. I was too afraid to tell Matthew for fear he wouldn’t believe me. It’s my word against yours, Joseph said. No one will believe you.
And besides, Joseph reminded me. I was a child that no one wanted. No one but him and Miriam.
Matthew and my library trips continued throughout the fall and into winter. There were weeks, maybe more, when Joseph stayed home and didn’t go to work. Winter break, he said, and there he was in that house with me all day long and I didn’t see Matthew at all. But I thought about him. I thought about his hands on me, his lips on mine, the way he said my name. Claire. The snow fell from the sky, thick and heavy, coating the lawn with a layer of white. I stared out the window at that never-ending snow and thought of snowmen and sledding and snowball fights with Momma and Daddy back in Ogallala. But here, the snow was just another reason to stay inside. The temperatures were cold, in and out of that Omaha home, the windows drafty, the heat set to no more than sixty-eight degrees. I was cold all the time.
Joseph went back to work, and Matthew returned. Winter continued on and on for nearly forever, and though the calendar had turned to March, the weather outside resembled anything but spring. Cold and gray, icicles clinging to the rooftops of the homes on our block.
And then, one early March day, Matthew came to fetch me to the library, excited to show me some new program he’d discovered on the computer. He was excited that day when he arrived, more animated than I’d seen him in a long, long time. The sky was the color of charcoal, the breath from our mouth that kind that flowed into the air like smoke.
But what Matthew and I didn’t know was that Joseph wasn’t feeling well that day. We didn’t know as we hopped on that blue bus and headed past the Woodman building, that Joseph was lecturing over at the community college, and starting to feel a headache coming on, and that, as we pulled our chairs up to the computer, he was thinking about cancelling his afternoon classes so he could go home and rest. There was no way we could’ve known as we put change into the vending machine for a bag of chips, that he was packing up his stuff in his black backpack to go, or that, as we later settled down in the engineering aisle to peer through the books and to kiss, Joseph was in his car, driving home.
The house was quiet when we came in, the cold wind all but pushing us through the front door. Matthew was talking about his mother, about Miriam, about how, if he was ever a vegetable like her, he’d just want someone to shoot him, to take him out of his misery.
I was stunned, staring at him with my mouth gaping wide, so that I didn’t see Joseph parked on the edge of the corduroy recliner, gazing at us with his hawkish, hostile eyes. He was unmoving, still like a statue. Matthew froze in the doorway, and that’s what made me freeze, too, made me turn to see Joseph, with a lamp base in his hands, the flocked lamp shade tossed to the ground beside his big, heavy boots.
What happened next, I could hardly explain. Joseph’s words were eerily calm as he asked us where we’d been.
“A walk,” Matthew said, and Joseph said nothing, twirling that lamp cord around and around in his hand, giving it a slight tug to check the tension.
And then Joseph wanted to know where I’d gotten the clothes, the clothes Matthew hung onto between visits so that Joseph wouldn’t see.