“Oh right,” I said, trying to somehow get across both deep disinterest and blind fury.
“Did you want to talk to her? I could call her down—” he started to say.
“Nope, I have to go now. Love you.”
—
Graduation is tomorrow, and I’m coming home after choosing a new lipstick from the drugstore a few blocks over. It’s not easy, choosing a color to complement navy crushed velvet and gold tassels, and I’ve been gone awhile, but I’m still surprised to see Drew’s car is on the front drive already when I approach the house.
As I step into the hall, I hear my mum’s voice.
“Everything gone to shit,” she’s saying, “…dragging us down with you!”
I run up to get changed in my room and when I come back down it’s quiet.
“Hey,” I say, as I step into the kitchen. My mum has her back to me, her hands gripping the side of the big sink, dangerously near the waste disposal. Her hair is held back with a headband and she’s wearing gym clothes. She’d normally have been and come back by now and would be washed, dressed and fully made up. She doesn’t turn around. “Hi, Sarah,” she says.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“No, Sarah. No, it’s really fucking not,” my mum says, swearing like the old days. Before she held dinner parties.
I notice Drew is sitting nearby, his elbows on the table. His collar button is undone, and his tie is in a little heap in front of him. He’s perfectly silent, just raises his eyebrows to acknowledge me and then looks back down at the table. It’s only five o’clock and he has a thick band of whiskey in a cut-glass tumbler. From the redness of his eyes, I think it’s not his first.
“What’s going on?” I start to ask, but my mother cuts me off with “Drew’s lost his job.”
“Oh no,” I say, and I look back at my stepdad. “Why?”
“Yes, ask him,” my mother snaps. I say nothing so she adds, “Ask him about his ‘indiscretions.’?” She uses her fingers as quote marks.
I look at Drew again; he shrugs and one elbow slips off the table. “It’s a misunderstanding,” he sighs.
My mum puffs out her breath as if his words have just punched the air from her.
“I’m going to the gym,” she says, to neither of us in particular.
I sit down next to him. “Do you want a coffee?” I ask.
“Thank you anyway, angel,” he says, turning to me and patting my hand. “But it’s definitely a Scotch day.”
“What will happen now?” I ask. “Where will you work?”
He looks up at me slowly, pulls his hand back onto his lap. “I don’t know,” he says, his eyes sad and droopy. “My card’s marked here now. Total misunderstanding, but I’m done in this town.”
I don’t know what to say, but he likes it when I just listen, so I try to look attentive.
“You know what though? My angel? My beautiful angel?”
Oh God, he’s so much drunker than I realized. I humor him. “What?”
“I’m so proud of you.” He jabs at my chest. “And you know what else? We’ve had a good run at it here, but now you’ve finished school and I’m out of that hellhole of a company, I think it’s time we went back home. Don’t you? Back to England, where you can get a decent drink and a good roast dinner. Wouldn’t that be nice? Eh?” He squeezes my knee when I don’t agree quickly enough. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say, and flash him a smile. I guess it would be good. I’d love to see my dad more at least, though I push thoughts of Robin away. I’m still hurt by how easily she could take out her frustrations on me.
“Where will we live though? There are people renting our house.”
“We’ll sling ’em out. We’ll be able to buy a better house when we sell this place anyway.”
I try to look happy. “Yes,” he says, growing more emphatic, “this is a good thing. Couldn’t have come at a better time.”
I make us grilled cheese sandwiches and we eat them in silence. I try to imagine myself at an English university instead, maybe the one in Reading. I’d spent so long visualizing my new start at Georgia State that the idea of a different new start makes me feel incredibly tired.
“Can I try some?” I say, gesturing to the whiskey. I’ve drunk alcohol a little before, some wine at home, warm beer in red cups at the few parties I’ve been to. But I’ve never tried hard liquor. It’s what people have for shock though, and the longer I sit here, the more shocked I feel.
He grabs another tumbler from the set and pours a generous sloop out of the decanter. I sip it and a burning sensation spreads from between my eyes and through my head.
“It suits you, sipping that,” Drew says. “Very Wild West. Very cowgirl-esque. ‘Cool,’ as you young women say.”
Pretty sure I don’t say that anything much is cool, but I don’t burst his bubble. I don’t really want any more sips but I don’t want to waste it, so I try to swallow while bits of sandwich are still in my mouth to soak up the whiskey and mask the taste. When we were little, Mum used to hide medicine in a teaspoon of jam so we wouldn’t taste it. Robin would always gag on it anyway, but I tried to find the pleasure in the sharpness, knowing I’d done the right thing. Been the grown-up.
We’ve drunk a little more. I’ve taken over the decanter for portion control, but I still feel heady and a bit sweaty. A bit stumbly on my feet.
“Let’s go into the den,” Drew says. “I need to lie down.”
We flop onto the couch, and I tuck my feet under me and try to stare at something so I can practice looking in a straight line. The room tilts like a ship.
“You remind me so much of your mother,” he says, as he often does. “Would you do something for me? Something she used to do?”
“What?” I ask nervously.
“Would you just rub my shoulders a bit? I’m so tensed up after today and I just want to shake it off, try to rest.”
I don’t want to, not really. I’ve never done this before, but I think, Okay.
After a bit of clumsy rubbing and kneading, he lets out a long sigh. “Your touch is wonderful, Sarah,” he says. I freeze, his shoulders in my hands. The whirl of the room, tilting like it could slide into the sea.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been frozen. Long enough to think, I’ve frozen, he knows I’ve frozen, what do I do? or thoughts to that effect. Eventually I start to say, “Thank you,” but the words are lost somewhere and he’s reached behind to where I’m leaning on the sofa and is rubbing my arms.
“Come round here,” he says. “It’s your turn.”
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “Thank you anyway.” But he pats the cushion next to him, so I comply.