sorry.” His voice softened. “I don’t mean to pressure you. I just…it’s hard to think about dealing with the business and the boys without you. Casey’s not the only one in this house who didn’t realize how good he’s got it.”
She laughed, as much from relief as mirth. “You keep thinking like that. And see when you can get away to come see me.”
“I’ll do that.”
They said their goodbyes, then she dressed and made her bed, and went to get her father ready for his first therapy appointment.
What she hadn’t been able to say to Tom was that she needed to stay here right now as much for herself as for her father. She needed to see if being forced together like this, they could somehow find the closeness that had always eluded them before.
That afternoon, Casey lay on his bed and tossed a minibasketball at the hoop on the back of the bedroom door. If he aimed it just right, the ball would soar through the hoop, bounce off the door and sail back to him, so that he could retrieve it and start over without changing positions.
Matt was in the shower in the bathroom next to the bedroom they shared. Casey could hear the water pounding against the tile wall, and smell the herbal shampoo Matt liked. He was getting ready to go on a date with his girlfriend, Audra. Were they going to have sex? Casey knew they’d done it because he’d caught Matt hiding a box of condoms in the back of his desk drawer, where he thought Mom wouldn’t find them. Casey had given him a hard time about it. “You’re nineteen, for Christ’s sake,” he’d said, while his older brother’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato. “You shouldn’t have to hide something like that.”
Matt had shoved the box back in the drawer. “Right. Mom would have a cow if she knew.”
“Mom’s always having cows. She’ll get over it.”
He smiled and tossed the ball again, remembering the exchange. The trick to handling Mom was to smile and nod and let her go on for a while, then give her a hug or a kiss and continue as you always had. She was really pretty easy to handle once you knew the secret.
She’d sounded all worried and sad on the phone this morning. Maybe she was upset about Grandpa. That would be pretty rough, seeing your dad in the hospital, all helpless and old. That had probably freaked her out. Mom pretended to be all tough sometimes, but she was still a girl.
He caught the basketball on the rebound and launched it again. What would it be like to have a stroke? Mom had said Grandpa couldn’t use his left side. Casey lay back and stiffened his left arm and leg, pretending they were useless. He imagined trying to walk, dragging his paralyzed leg behind him. If you tried to eat, would you get food all over yourself?
He relaxed and let his mind drift to other topics. Mom had said she’d talk to Dad about the lifeguard job. That was cool. He knew he was a disappointment to his dad, who wanted him to be more like Matt. Matt was the perfect son. He was going to college and would take over the business someday. Cool, if that’s what he wanted, but couldn’t they see Casey didn’t want anything like that?
Trouble was, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Still, he was only sixteen. He had plenty of time to figure it out. Whatever he ended up doing, it wasn’t going to require going to school for years and years. Maybe he’d be a musician or an artist. Or he’d invent something fantastic that would make him tons of money.
Maybe he’d be a writer. He’d like that. For as long as he could remember he’d kept notebooks full of his writing—stories, poems, even songs.
Matt came out of the bathroom and threw a wet towel at him. “I need to borrow your hair gel,” he said.
“For a dollar.”
“What?” Matt glared at him.
“You can borrow my hair gel for a dollar.”
“You’re crazy.” Matt turned away.
Casey didn’t argue. The problem with Matt was that he carried the honest, upstanding young man thing too far. If it had been Casey, he would have used his brother’s gel without asking and chances were, Matt never even would have noticed.
“Here, loser.” Matt turned back and tossed a dollar bill toward the bed.
Casey reached out and caught it, smiling to himself. He knew big bro would pay up. He probably hadn’t even thought long about not doing it.
Mentally, he added the dollar to the stash in his backpack. He had almost two hundred dollars now. Not bad for a guy without a job. He made money other ways, like writing love notes to girls for their boyfriends, or blackmailing the jocks who smoked out behind the gym. Dangerous work, but so far he’d managed to charm his way out of harm.
It was a gift, this ability to smile and talk his way out of tricky situations. A man with a gift like that could go far, no doubt.
“So are you going to work with us this summer?” Matt studied Casey in the dresser mirror as he rubbed gel through his hair.
“No, I’m going to get a job as a lifeguard at the city pool.”
“You can’t make a career out of being a lifeguard.”
“Why not, if I want to?”
“For one thing, what’ll you do in the winter, when the pool closes?”
“Maybe I’ll move to Florida, or California, where the pools never close.”
“You are such a loser.” Matt pulled a shirt over his head, sneered at his brother one last time, then left.
Casey sighed and lay back on the bed again. Why did people think if you weren’t just like them, you had to be wrong?
He thought about Mom again. Had she sounded so sad on the phone because she was worried about him? He’d tried to tell her she had nothing to worry about, but she probably couldn’t help it. Worrying was a mom thing, like the way she told them, every time they left the house, “Be careful.”
“No, tonight I think I’ll be reckless,” he always answered. She pretended not to think that was funny, but her eyes told him she was laughing on the inside.
He missed her. She’d sounded like she missed them, too. He sat up, put the dollar in his pocket, and decided he’d take a walk downtown, to see what was going on.
While Martin worked with the occupational therapist, an energetic young woman named Lola, Karen took inventory of the refrigerator and pantry and made a shopping list. When the nurse’s aide came this afternoon, Karen could slip out to buy groceries and refill Dad’s medications.
She was disposing of half a dozen petrified packages of frozen food in the outside trash can when a red minivan pulled into the driveway. As she waited with her hand on the garbage can lid, a plump blonde in pink capris and a pink-and-white striped sleeveless shirt slid from the driver’s seat. The blonde propped her sunglasses on top of her head and waved.
Karen broke into a run, laughing as she embraced Tammy Collins Wainwright. “Look at you, girl!” Tammy drew back and looked Karen up and down. “I guess living up there in the mountains and working at that landscape business is keeping you young and trim.”
“Denver
