“What’s the difference?” Andrew said. “Nobody else is going to drink it.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing what was going on: Andrew must have freed the liquor stash from the office.
Matt looked up at me now. “What happened to your face?” he said.
“I tripped.” I dropped my coat on a chair and went into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hello,” my mother said, voice cool.
“Jesus, what happened to you, Rox?” Andrew said.
“Watch your language!” my mother said, but then she looked at me and gasped. “Honey, what happened?”
“It’s okay, it’s nothing,” I said. “I tripped and fell, it looks worse than it is.”
“That’s almost never true,” Andrew murmured to me, which was correct. I met his eye. He flicked his glance at the source of all the present trouble, the Midleton bottle on the table, and I nodded.
My mother turned back to the stove in a huff. “Did you see a doctor?” she said.
“No,” I said, impatient, “it’s just a cut.”
“Just a cut,” she said, “Roxie, you could need plastic surgery!”
“No one needs plastic surgery,” Matt called from the living room. “That’s a total vanity procedure.”
“What, are you going to med school now?” Andrew called back. “Shut up.”
“And where did you fall?” my mother said. She turned around again, brandishing a wooden spoon at us. “And didn’t you try to catch yourself?”
Matt appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Were you drinking, when this happened?” he said, watching as Andrew poured the Midleton into a rocks glass and passed it to me.
“No.”
“Sure.”
“Matt,” I said flatly. “Don’t worry about it.” I brought the glass to my lips.
“Are you sure you want to drink that?” Matt said. “Because you never have to take another—”
“Jesus, shut the fuck up,” Andrew snapped.
“Language!” my mother said.
“Thanks, all, for your concern,” I said, downing half the whiskey, “I was out for a hike and I tripped on a branch, okay? The subject is now closed.”
“A hike?” Andrew said.
I spun at him. “Please, don’t you start with me too,” I snapped.
He looked a little shocked. I never snapped at Andrew. I held up a hand in silent apology.
My mother made ham and green beans and crescent rolls for dinner, one of the five or so meals in heavy rotation from when I was growing up. She had always wanted to be more creative in the kitchen, as evidenced by the series of ethnic cookbooks she checked out of the library all the time, but my father liked things a certain way. My mother still read the cookbooks, but to my knowledge she hadn’t cooked anything new since he died.
I didn’t blame her for not wanting anything to change where Frank was concerned—not the sink, not the food, not the liquor—but I didn’t understand it.
Like I was ten years old again, I pushed soggy green beans around on my plate and listened to the conversation going on around me. I kept hoping my phone would ring, but it didn’t. My mother reported that she’d invited Tom to dinner and he said he might try to make it later, which sounded like the worst thing possible right now. Meanwhile, my brothers argued blandly with each other, all of us in a petty bad mood tonight. “I’m telling you, Trabue Road turns into Renner at Hilliard-Rome,” Matt was saying.
“No, it’s east of there,” Andrew said. “Your sense of direction is fucking terrible—remember how you got us so lost going to Michelle Lindstrom’s party that one time?”
“I didn’t get us lost—you wrote down the address wrong because you were stoned.”
“Oh, please,” Andrew said, “I didn’t even have her address, she was your friend.”
“You were stoned.”
“It turns into Renner east of Hilliard-Rome, Matt.”
This had been going on for ten minutes. What started as a discussion on where the Test Pavements were playing that weekend had devolved into a meaningless rehash of every other argument they’d ever had.
Veronica was gone and my brothers were fighting about nothing.
“Why are you even arguing about this?” I said. “It’s objectively one way or the other. Look it up.”
“You drive all over the city, which is it?” Andrew asked me.
Matt scoffed. “She’s obviously going to agree with you,” he said.
“Did you put some bacitracin on it, at least?” my mother chimed in, still worried about the scrape on my cheekbone. “That could really scar.”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Because I have some, in the first-aid kit upstairs.”
I took a deep breath. “Mom, I’m fine.”
“I don’t even understand why you were out hiking, the weather’s been terrible,” she said.
It had not been the greatest of cover stories, I realized now.
Matt and Andrew had their heads bent over one of their phones, the former looking pissed. “Well, whatever,” he said, as if it no longer mattered now that he’d been proved wrong.
“I’m sure the Test Pavements will be so devastatingly brilliant that I’ll forget all about this,” Andrew said.
“Shut up,” Matt told him. “I don’t even want you guys there.”
“Come on, Matt,” my mother said. “We’re all going to be there. Right, Roxie?”
“Can’t wait,” I said flatly.
“Oh,” Matt said, tapping at his phone. “I talked to Danielle today.”
“Okay?” I said. How perfect it would be, I thought, if after everything, my brother had been instructed to fire me. I pulled out my own phone, thinking maybe I’d accidentally switched it to silent. I hadn’t. But I saw a missed call from Tom and dropped the phone facedown on the table.
“She’s been trying to get ahold of you, I guess. And you never called her back.”
I sighed. “It’s on my list for tomorrow.”
“Isn’t that sort of unprofessional?” Matt said. “To wait that long?”
I wanted to stab him with a bread knife. “Matt, thanks for your concern for how I run my business, but you don’t know anything about it.”
“I know that. I also know that I referred her to you and instead of helping her, you’re just getting shit-faced with people she went to high school with? She told me one of her friends met you at some party and you were practically incoherent. I should have known better. Aren’t you getting a little old for that?”
I wanted to tell him that helping Danielle was the least of my concerns at the moment. “Why did you refer her to me at all then, if you should have known better?” I said.
“Because you used to be good at it,” he said.
A tense silence settled over the table. I took another deep breath, about to let it go and continue pushing my food around on my plate. But then I couldn’t. “You know what,” I said, “Matt, you’re right. It’s unprofessional. I’m going to go call Danielle back right this minute. Thanks for dinner, Mom.”