Kat, who was standing now, looked suspiciously at me.
Dad said that was too bad, but clapped his hands together and said to Kat, “Come on, Kiddo. I get you all to myself today. Let’s hit it and grab some breakfast.”
He told Kat to go brush her teeth, and I followed her into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Where does that kid live? The one that’s picking on you,” I asked. I wet a tissue and wiped a glob of toothpaste from the lip of the sink. Some of it was on her sleeve, and I held her wrist and tried to clean it.
“I can do it.” She wrestled away from me and stuck her arm under the water.
“You mean Smelliot?” she asked, and I nodded.
“I dunno. He gets on before me and doesn’t take the bus home. Why?”
“I thought you said he was Peggy’s son.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Peggy left a dish here last night. I’m going to drop it off.”
“No she didn’t.”
“What?”
“Mom gave me the job of taking pocketbooks and coats to the bedroom. She had a big, floppy bag, but that was it. If she had a dish in her hands, I’d have seen it.”
Who knew if this was true? Maybe it was; Kat’s memory was incredible. She was known for it in our family. Forget what Dad gave Mom last Christmas? Or where we went to dinner after the beach that day last summer? The answer was always the same. Ask Kat; she’ll remember. And she would.
I grabbed her by the arm and pushed her down until she was sitting on the closed toilet seat.
“Do you trust me, KK?” I asked. It was Grandma’s nickname for her, and she let her jaw relax.
“I want to find out what that kid said to you about the divorce. I lied to you because I knew you’d want to come, and you can’t.”
She started to argue, but I shushed her.
“Just go with Dad, please,” I said in a hushed voice.
“Only if you tell me what he says.” She held up her pinkie. “Swear it.”
I sighed but stuck out my little finger. She wrapped her little finger around mine, and we pinkie swore. She made me hold it longer so she could double-check that my fingers weren’t crossed behind my back.
After she left the bathroom, I went back to the dishes in the kitchen. I was halfway through the pile in the sink when I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder, his breath on the side of my cheek.
“Stop, Jess,” he said in a whisper. “That’s not your mess.”
He shut off the water. “I meant to do them last night. Leave them.” He rolled up his sleeves, took the sponge from my hand.
“Mom’s in there,” I said, pointing to Kat’s room. He followed my finger with his eyes.
I waited, but he didn’t speak.
“Kat thinks you didn’t come home last night,” I said.
“I’ll talk to her,” he replied, avoiding my eyes, and I nodded, even though I knew he wouldn’t.
“What happened?” I pressed.
“We had a little . . . disagreement.” He fumbled over the word, his voice trailing off.
“About what?”
“Nothing important, honey,” he said wearily, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’m not a kid, Dad. You don’t have to pretend like nothing happened.”
“You are a kid, Jess,” he said, his voice thickening. “You’re my kid. And nothing happened other than your father being a jerk. I was a jerk. That’s all.”
“You always say that.”
“Say what?” he asked, tilting his head at me, his eyebrows squished together.
“That it’s your fault. You always take the blame. Like Mom is always right.” I crossed my arms in front of me.
“Well, statistically, she is,” he joked, trying to making light of it. He saw the scowl on my face and walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulders. He smelled like cigar smoke, and I wrinkled my nose at him and stepped away.
“See,” he said, “another thing your mother’s right about. The smoke does stink.”
In my whole life, I’d never heard my father say one bad thing about my mother, not even when he was joking around. He gave me a lopsided grin until I gave in, my scowl fading away. He went back to the dishes, and I left him there, knowing that was the end of that conversation.
I was walking through Kat’s room when I heard my name. I turned, and my mother was propped on her elbow, looking at me from Kat’s bed.
She squinted at the clock. “You’re up early,” she said, her voice hoarse with sleep.
“Kat woke me up,” I muttered.
Kat came in the room and skipped over to my mother, talking a mile a minute about going on the boat with my father. I went in my room and shut the door, not caring that it slammed behind me.
Several minutes later, there was a knock on my door. My mother’s head appeared in the doorway, a forced smile on her face.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I knew about the fight. About her throwing my father’s shoes out the front door. About him telling her she was killing him. About him sleeping on the boat last night.
But I waited, wondering if she would tell me the truth.
“Sorry that Kat woke you,” she said. “She asked me to sleep with her last night, and I didn’t hear her get up. Are you going on the boat with Kat and Dad?”
I felt my insides flip, a trembling in my arms and legs.
She was standing in front of me pretending everything was fine.
And my father was in the kitchen, with his angry eyebrows and serious eyes, and a crazy, too-large smile plastered on his lips.
“I’m babysitting all day,” I told my mother, lying straight to her face, a sense of satisfaction running through me.
Not even the slightest waver in my voice.
?5
Jack
Kat was quiet on the boat. She put on the life jacket I handed her without her usual grumbling and scooted on her hands and knees over the cushioned seat at the bow, a half-eaten doughnut hanging from her mouth. Sprinkles dotted the corners of her mouth like misplaced freckles, and they fell from her face when she pitched the last of her doughnut over the rail to the seagulls hovering in the sky above.
The drone of the engine filled the air as we left the dock and turned east to where the bay opened into the mouth of the Atlantic. Kat was on her knees, her hands on the rail and her body pitched forward. A spray washed over her when we hit a small wave, and she looked back at me and laughed. I winked at her and stretched my arms up to the sky, my lungs on fire, the tightness in my back not giving an inch.