Instead of listening to them I tuned out and listened to the water trickling into the fish tank. It sounded like trying to pee in the middle of the night, when only a little bit comes out at a time. Marcus’s sheets were bunched up in a corner of the couch. My mom and Daryl got louder, and Marcus said, “Let’s go outside.” I didn’t talk to Marcus that much, but he was always nice to me.
My mom’s face was stony when they finally emerged. She swung the door hard, but Daryl caught it before it slammed. I was propped on the edge of the truck bed with the back flap folded down, swinging out my newly smooth legs to kick Marcus, because I felt like kicking something, but only softly. I also wanted someone to notice. The mosquitoes were humming around my thighs, whining and buzzing close to my ears.
I sat on my mom’s lap in the front of the truck, seatbelt stretched over us both. Marcus didn’t come. Sometimes he rode his motorcycle with us and sometimes he stayed home. We were just picking up pizza from Little Caesars, anyway. All four of us ate outside, on the picnic table that swayed whenever anyone stood up.
When my mom and Daryl started arguing again, Marcus got up and motioned for me to come with him. He took me around to the back of the trailer and showed me the ladder that led to the roof. I’d never seen the ladder before. The rubber coating on the roof was smudged and dirty, but Marcus lay down on it, so I did too. “Look up,” he said. There were hardly any trees in the park, and no big buildings close by. “The sky is so clear tonight. You can see Venus. There!” he said, and pointed to a brighter dot in the sky, sounding more excited than I’d ever heard him before. I didn’t know much about Marcus even though it felt like we’d known him and Daryl forever. He didn’t talk much, except for when his girlfriend Kelly was over. But while my mom and Daryl fought, the sound of their voices but not the words themselves carrying up to the roof, Marcus showed me constellations, drew his finger in the air and made imaginary lines so I could understand how every star connected. We stayed up there until we couldn’t hear them anymore.
Back at our apartment later that night, I sat on the lid of the toilet and ran a finger lightly from my ankle to my thigh. My mom hadn’t asked about school. I climbed onto the lid, high enough to see my legs in the mirror, and executed a shaky twirl, eyes glued to my reflection. Tanya and Jeremy’s apartment felt like a dream, or a memory from years ago. In bed, I slid my frictionless legs back and forth, back and forth, under the blankets. I swam between the sheets. I fell asleep on my back, trying to burn the image of the night sky into my head.
04
I couldn’t stop thinking about Marcus and Kelly after that night. Kelly was a hostess at the restaurant he managed. She wore her hair in a French braid like it was part of the uniform. The morning after I’d met Kelly for the first time, I’d tried to teach myself how to French braid using a makeup mirror angled to face the bathroom mirror so that I could see my handiwork from the back. I couldn’t get all the wisps from the front to stay in the braid, and I took it out before I left for school.
Kelly always looked like she’d come straight from work, and mostly she had, in her black skirt and button-down, and she always smelled faintly of garlic, complaining about it as if it were much worse than it was, laughing about how she’d have to shower before they went out if they decided to go to a bar after dinner. Just like so many of the other women I knew, I wanted to be like her, but Kelly I wanted to be like because I couldn’t figure her out.
Maybe it was the way Marcus reacted to her. He didn’t talk much in general, but around Kelly he was chatty, he made jokes, he put his hand on her shoulders or knees when they were really into a conversation. But when he did it, it didn’t seem like they were about to kiss or anything. It just made me feel like maybe I hadn’t understood what they were talking about, after all. Like there was another layer to the conversation I couldn’t yet unlock, something that would come—when? When I was a little older? I wanted to know it now. I got straight As in school. I knew what all the words they were using meant, or most of them, anyway. But it was like you got to be a certain age and then you could say something that sounded normal to everyone else in the room and became a secret code to the person you really wanted to be talking to. I sensed it, but I didn’t know how it worked.
It was different than the way my mom and Daryl talked. I knew when they were trying to keep something from me—they were sloppy, loopy, laughing hard or, worse, doing that whisper-shout thing that was more frightening than an actual fight. My mom and Daryl always sounded like they had something to prove to each other, like every conversation was something you had to win, points you racked up to use against the other person later on. Listening to Marcus talk was different.
Dinner had been fun until suddenly it wasn’t anymore. Marcus had brought aluminum trays of lasagna and spaghetti and Caesar salads from work, soda in Styrofoam cups. Daryl bought beer and we brought rum from home and Kelly was there too, even though she hadn’t brought anything. I ate until my stomach hurt. I loved lasagna. The bottle of rum had been half-empty when we brought it over, and both Kelly and my mom had been pouring it into their Styrofoam cups all through dinner. So I wasn’t surprised when my mom tipped the bottle over her cup again and poured out the last of it. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, we sure made quick work of that,” she said.
“Probably a good time to switch to beer, anyway,” Daryl said, beginning to stand up. “Here, I’ll get you one.” I could see what he was trying to do but I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew better than he did just how stubborn she could be.
“The liquor store’s just a couple minutes away,” she said, trying to make her voice calmer than she felt, her clenched jaw giving her away. “I’ll be right back.”
“Really, Jeanne, we’re good for tonight,” Daryl said.
“It’s my fucking weekend tomorrow and I’m going to enjoy it,” she said back to him, as if they were the only two people at the table. “Anyone need anything while I’m out?” She got up and started walking fast to the car. Daryl followed right behind her.
A couple minutes later, she peeled out of the parking lot, Daryl in the passenger seat. She’d won this time.
Marcus stood up, putting the tops back on the half-eaten trays of food, gathering our plates and napkins into an uneven stack. “Be right back,” he said, and walked inside. Kelly followed after him.
I sat alone at the table for a minute, then decided to bring in the rest of the trash from the table. Kelly had left the door ajar, which I noted with a little satisfaction. Mosquitoes got in when you left the door open. I always closed the door. Before I could push it open further to go inside, I heard Kelly’s voice, whiny and insistent, and I froze right where I was. “Come on,” she said. “Your brother’s gone. We have time.”
Marcus sighed. “I was just bringing in the dishes,” he said. “Let’s go back outside.”
“You sure?” Kelly asked, dragging out that last word in a way that made me uncomfortable. She giggled.
“Kelly, you know I want to,” he said. “Not now. We can’t just leave Cal out there alone.”
“You shouldn’t have to be responsible for her,” Kelly said.
“Yeah, well,” Marcus said. “Someone should be. And it’s not her mom, that’s for sure.” I blushed, stinging with embarrassment, but a small thrill ran through me at the thought of Marcus taking care of me.
I kept listening, but neither of them spoke for a minute. Then, before I could move, Kelly pulled open the door and almost walked straight into me. “I was just bringing these in,” I said quickly, but she didn’t look at me like I’d been eavesdropping. It was as if I couldn’t have even understood their conversation,