big trouble-free zone.
The mothers were relaxed at the summer house. Where at home, Steven would Get It if he talked back, here, my mother didn’t seem to mind as much. Probably because at the Cousins house, us kids weren’t the center of the world. My mother was busy doing other things, like potting plants and going to art gal eries with Susannah and sketching and reading books. She was too busy to get angry or bothered. We did not have her ful attention.
This was both a good and bad thing. Good, because we got away with stuff.
If we played out on the beach past bedtime, if we had double dessert, no one real y cared. Bad, because I had the vague sense that Steven and I weren’t as important here, that there were other things that occupied my mother’s mind—memories we had no part of, a life before we existed. And also, the secret life inside herself, where Steven and I didn’t exist. It was like when she went on her trips without us —I knew that she did not miss us or think about us very much.
I hated that thought, but it was the truth. The mothers had a whole life separate from us. I guess us kids did too.
chapter twenty-five
When Jeremiah and Conrad walked up the beach with their boards under their arms, I had this crazy thought that I should try to warn them somehow.
Whistle or something. But I didn’t know how to whistle, and it was too late anyway.
They put the boards under the house, and then they walked up the steps and saw us sitting there. Conrad’s whole body tightened up, and I saw Jeremiah mutter “shit” under his breath. Then Jeremiah said, “Hey, Dad.” Conrad brushed right past us and into the house.
Mr. Fisher fol owed him in, and Jeremiah and I looked at each other for a moment. He leaned close to me and said, “How about you pul the car
around while I get our stuff, and then we make a run for it?”
I giggled, and then I clapped my hand over my mouth. I doubted Mr. Fisher would appreciate me giggling when al this serious stuff was going on. I stood up and pul ed my towel closer around me, under my armpits. Then we went inside too.Conrad and Mr. Fisher were in the kitchen. Conrad was opening up a beer, not even looking at his dad. “What the hel are you kids playing at here?” Mr.
Fisher said. His voice sounded real y loud and unnatural in the house. He was looking around the kitchen, the living room.
Jeremiah began, “Dad—”
Mr. Fisher looked right at Jeremiah and said, “Sandy Donatti cal ed me this morning and told me what happened. You were supposed to get Conrad back to school, not stay and—and party and interfere with the sale.”
Jeremiah blinked. “Who’s Sandy Donatti?”
“She’s our real estate agent,” Conrad said.
I realized my mouth was open, and I snapped it shut. I wrapped my arms around myself tight, trying to turn invisible. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me and Jeremiah to make a run for it. Maybe that way he’d never find out that I’d known about the house too. Would it make a difference that I’d only known about it since this afternoon? I doubted it.
Jeremiah looked over at Conrad, and then back at his dad. “I didn’t know we had a real estate agent. You never told me you were sel ing the house.”
“I told you it was a possibility.”
“You never told me you were actual y doing it.”
Conrad broke in, speaking only to Jeremiah. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not sel ing the house.” He drank his beer calmly, and we al waited to hear what he’d say next. “It’s not his to sel .”
“Yes, it is,” Mr. Fisher said, breathing heavily. “I’m not doing this for me.
The money wil be for you boys.”
“You think I care about the money?” Conrad final y looked at him, his eyes cold. His voice was toneless. “I’m not like you. I could give a shit about the money. I care about the house. Mom’s house.”
“Conrad—”
“You have no right to be here. You should leave.”
Mr. Fisher swal owed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “No, I won’t leave.”
“Tel Sandy not to bother coming back.” Conrad said the word “Sandy” like it was an insult. Which I guess it was meant to be.
“I’m your father,” Mr. Fisher said hoarsely. “And your mother left it to me to decide. This is what she would have wanted.”
Conrad’s smooth, hard shel cracked, and his voice was shaking when he said, “Don’t talk about what she would have wanted.”
“She was my wife, goddamn it. I lost her too.”
That might have been true, but it was the exact wrong thing to say to Conrad at that moment. It set him off. He punched the wal closest to him, and I flinched.
I was shocked he didn’t leave a hole.
He said, “You didn’t lose her. You left her. You don’t know the first thing about what she would have wanted. You were never there. You were a shitty dad and an even shittier husband. So don’t bother trying to do the right thing now.
You just fuck it al up.”
Jeremiah said, “Con, shut up. Just shut up.”
Conrad swung around and shouted, “You’re stil defending him? That’s exactly why we didn’t tel you!”
“We?” Jeremiah repeated. He looked at me then, and the stricken look on his face cut right through me.
I started to speak, to try to explain, but I only got as far as saying, “I just found out today, I swear,” when Mr. Fisher interrupted me.
He said, “You are not the only one hurting, Conrad. You don’t get to talk to me that way.”
“I think I do.”
The room was deadly quiet and Mr. Fisher looked like he might hit Conrad, he was so mad. They stared at each other, and I knew Conrad wouldn’t be the one to back down.
It was Mr. Fisher who looked away. “The movers are coming back, Conrad.
This is happening. You throwing a tantrum can’t stop it.”
He left soon after. He said he’d be back in the morning, and the words were ominous. He said that he was staying at the inn in town. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to get out of that house.
The three of us stood around in the kitchen after he was gone, none of us saying anything. Least of al me. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. For once, I
wished I was at home with my mother and Steven and Taylor, away from al of this.Jeremiah was the first to speak. “I can’t believe he’s realy seling the house,” he said, almost to himself.
“Believe it,” Conrad said harshly.
“Why didn’t you tel me about it?” Jeremiah demanded.
Conrad glanced at me before saying, “I didn’t think you needed to know.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “What the hel , Conrad? It’s my house too.”
“Jere, I only just found out myself.” Conrad propped himself up on the kitchen counter, his head down. “I was at home picking up some clothes.
That real estate agent, Sandy, cal ed and left a message on the machine, saying movers were coming to get the stuff they packed. I went back to school and got my stuff and I came straight here.”
Conrad had dropped school and everything else to come to the summer house, and here we’d just thought he was a screwup in need of saving.
When in actuality, he was the one doing the saving.
I felt guilty for not giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I knew Jeremiah did too. We exchanged a quick look and I knew we were thinking exactly the same thing. Then I guess he remembered he was pissed at me, too, and he looked away.
“So that’s it, then?” Jeremiah said.
Conrad didn’t answer him right away. Then he looked up and said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Wel , great job taking care of al this, Con.”
“I’ve been handling this on my own,” Conrad snapped. “It’s not like I had any help from you.”
“Wel , maybe if you’d told me about it—”
Conrad cut him off. “You’d have done what?”
“I would have talked to Dad.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Conrad could not have sounded more disdainful.
“What the hel does that mean?”
“It means that you’re so busy being up his ass, you can’t see him for who he is.”
Jeremiah didn’t say anything right away, and I was real y afraid of where this was heading. Conrad was looking for a fight and the last thing we needed was for the two of them to start wrestling on the kitchen floor, breaking things and each other. This time, my mother wasn’t here to stop them. There was just me, and that was hardly anything.
And then Jeremiah said, “He’s our father.” His voice was measured, even, and I let out a tiny breath of relief. There wouldn’t be any fight, because Jeremiah wouldn’t let it happen. I admired him for that.
But Conrad just shook his head in disgust. “He’s a dirtbag.”
“Don’t cal him that.”
“What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer?
What kind of man does that? I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me sick, playing the martyr now, the grieving widower. But where was he when Mom needed him, huh, Jere?”
“I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”
The room went silent, and it felt to me like the air was almost crackling.
The way Conrad flinched, the way Jeremiah sucked in his breath right after he said it.
He wanted to take it back, I could tel , and he was about to, when Conrad said, conversational y, “That’s a low blow.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said.
Conrad shrugged, brushing him off like it didn’t matter either way.
And then Jeremiah said, “Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to hold on to al the shitty stuff that’s ever happened to you?”
“Because I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they real y are.” He said it in a way that made me wonder who he was real y talking about.
Jeremiah bristled. He looked at me and then back at Conrad and said, “You’re just jealous. Admit it.”
“Jealous?”
“You’re jealous that Dad and I have an actual relationship now. It’s not just al about you anymore, and that kil s you.”
Conrad actual y laughed. It was a bitter, terrible sound. “That’s such BS.”
He turned to me. “Bel y, are you hearing this? Jeremiah thinks I’m jealous.”
Jeremiah looked at me, like, Be on my side, and I knew that if I did, he’d forgive me for not tel ing him about the house. I hated Conrad for putting me in the middle, for making me choose. I didn’t know whose side I was on. They were both right and they were both wrong.
I guess I took too long to answer, because Jeremiah stopped looking at me and said, “You’re an asshole, Conrad. You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are.” And then he walked out. The front door slammed behind him.
I felt like I should go after him. I felt like I had just let him down when he needed me most.
Then Conrad said to me, “Am I an asshole, Bel y?” He popped open another beer and he was trying to sound so indifferent, but his hand was shaking.
“Yeah,” I said. “You real y are.”
I walked over to the window and I watched Jeremiah getting into his car. It was too late to fol ow him; he was already pul ing out of the driveway. Even though he was pissed, he had his seat belt on.
“He’l be back,” Conrad said.
I hesitated and then I said, “You shouldn’t have said that stuff.”
“Maybe not.”
“You shouldn’t have asked me to keep it a secret from him.”
Conrad shrugged like he was already over it, but then he looked back toward the window and I knew he was worried. He threw me a beer and I caught it. I popped the top off and took a long drink. It hardly even tasted bad. Maybe I was getting used to it. I smacked my lips loudly.
He watched me, and there was a funny look on his face. “So you like beer now, huh?”
I shrugged. “It’s al right,” I said, and I felt very grown-up. But then I added, “I stil like Cherry Coke better though.”
He almost smiled when he said, “Same old Bel y. I bet if we cut your body open, white sugar would come pouring out of you.”
“That’s me,” I said. “Sugar and spice and everything nice.”
Conrad said, “I don’t know about that.”
And then we were both quiet. I took another sip of beer and set it down next to Conrad. “I think you real y hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”
