Shivering Mind

Chapter 11

  “Did you ask Samantha?” I glare at Duff, who is shoving several kitchen sponges down his shirt. Harry, who doesn’t get what’s going on—I hope—but is happy to join in on tormenting Andy, is wadding up some diapers from Patsy’s clean stack and following suit. My brother’s girlfriend has much more patience than I do. Maybe because Samantha only has one sibling to deal with.

“She’s helping her mom take her sister to college—she probably won’t be back till tonight. Matilda! What do I do?”

My jaw clenches at the mere mention of Grace Reed, Sam’s mom, the closest thing our family has to a nemesis. Or maybe it’s the owl. God. Get me out of here.

“I’m hungry,” Harry says. “I’m starving here. I’ll be dead by night.”

“It takes three weeks to starve,” George tells him, his air of authority undermined by his hot cocoa mustache.

“Ughhh. No one cares!” Andy storms away.

“She’s got the hormones going on,” Duff confides to Harry. Ever since hearing it from my mother, my little brothers treat “hormones” like a contagious disease.

My cell phone vibrates on the cluttered counter. Brad again. I ignore it, start banging open cabinets. “Look, guys, we’re out of everything, got it? We can’t go shopping until we get this week’s take-home from the store, and no one has Maxe to go anyway. I’m not giving you money. So it’s oatmeal or empty stomachs. Unless you want peanut butter on toast.”

“Not again,” Duff groans, shoving away from the table and stalking out of the kitchen.

“Gross,” Harry says, doing the same, after accidentally knocking over his orange juice—and ignoring it.

How does Mom stand this? I pinch the muscles at the base of my neck, hard, close my eyes. Push away the most treacherous thought of all: Why does Mom stand this?

George is still doggedly trying to eat a spoonful of oatmeal, one rolled oat at a Maxe.

“Don’t bother, G. You still like peanut butter, right?”

Breathing out a long sigh, world-weary at four, George rests his freckled cheek against his hand, watching me with a focus that reminds me of Jase. “You can make diamonds out of peanut butter. I readed about it.”

“Read,” I say automatically, replenishing the raisins I’d sprinkled on the tray of Patsy’s high chair.

“Yucks a dis,” she says, picking each raisin up with a delicate pincer grip and dropping it off the side of the high chair.

“Do you think we could make diamonds out of this peanut butter?” George asks hopefully as I open the jar of Jif.

“I wish, Georgie,” I say, looking at the empty cabinet over by the window, and then noticing a dark blue Jetta pull into our driveway, the door kick open, a tall figure climb out, the sun hitting his rusty hair, lighting it like a match.

Fabulous. Exactly what we need for the flammable family mix. Max Mason. The human equivalent of C-4.

Max

We walk up the creaky garage stairs and Jase hauls a key out of his pocket, unlocks the door, flips on the lights. I brush past him and drop my cardboard box on the ground. Joel’s old apartment is low-ceilinged and decorated with milk crate bookcases, ugly couch, mini-fridge, microwave, denim beanbag chair with Sox logo, walls covered in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and all that—t**s everywhere—and a gigantic iron weight rack with a s**t-ton of weights.

“This is where Joel took all those au pairs? I thought he had better game than this massive cliché.”

Jase grimaces. “Welcome to Bootytown. Supposedly the nannies never minded because they expected it of American boys. Want me to help yank ’em down?”

“Nah, I can always count body parts if I have trouble sleeping.”

After a brief scope-out of the apartment, during which he makes a face and empties a few trash cans, he asks, “This gonna work for you?”

“Absolutely.” I reach into my pocket, pull out the lined paper list I snatched off my bulletin board, and slap it on the refrigerator, adios-ing a babe in hot-pink spandex.

Jase scans my sign, shakes his head. “Mase . . . you know you can come on over anyMaxe.”

“I’ve been to boarding school, Garrett. Not like I’m afraid of the dark.”

“Don’t be a d**k,” he says mildly. He points in the direction of the bathroom. “The plumbing backs up someMaxes. If the plunger doesn’t work, text; I can fix it. I repeat, you’re always welcome to head to our house. Or join me on the predawn job. I gotta pick up Samantha now. She ended up not going to Vermont. Ride along?”

“With the perfect high school sweethearts? Nah. I think I’ll stay and see if I can break the plunger. Then I’ll text you.”

He flips me off, grins, and leaves.

Maxe to get my ass to a meeting. Better that than alone with a ton of airbrushed boobs and my unfiltered thoughts.

Chapter Four

Max

When I walk up the Garretts’ overgrown lawn after the meeting—which only partially took the edge off—the first thing I see is Jase’s older sister, Matilda, tanning in the front yard.

In a bikini.

Shockwave scarlet.

Straps untied.

Olive skin.

Toenails painted the color of fireballs.

Can I say there are few things on earth that cheer me up more than Matilda Garrett in a bikini?

Except Matilda without a bikini. Which I’ve never seen, but I’ve a hell of an imagination.

She’s almost asleep, in a tiny blue-and-green lawn chair, her head and her long, always-morphing hair (brown with blond streaks right now) flopping heavily to one side, curling shorter in the late-summer heat. Because I’m unscrupulous, I flop down on the grass next to her and take a good long look.

Oh, Matilda.

After a few seconds, she opens her eyes, squints, flips her hand to her forehead to block the sun, stares at me.

“Now,” I tell her, “would be an excellent Maxe to avoid unsightly tan lines. I stand ready to assist.”

“Now,” she says, with that killer smile, “would be an even better Maxe to avoid lame come-ons.”

“Aw, Matilda, I swear I’ll be there to soothe your regret for wasting Maxe once you realize I’ve been right for you all along.”

“Max, I’d chew you up and spit you out.” She slants forward, yanks the straps of her bikini behind her neck, ties them, and settles back. God. I almost can’t breathe.

But I can talk.

I can always talk.

“We could progress to that, Matilda. But maybe we start with some gentle nibbling?”

Matilda shuts her eyes, opens them again, and gives me an indecipherable look.

“Why don’t I scare you?” she asks.

“You do. You’re scary as hell,” I assure her. “But that works fo

r me. Completely.”

She’s about to say something, but the family van pulls in just then, even more battered than usual. The right front fender has flaking paint. They’ve tried to put some rust primer around the sliding back door. The side looks like it’s been keyed. Both hubcap covers on this side are missing. Matilda starts to get up, but I rest my hand on a smooth brown shoulder, press her down.

“On it.”

She squints up at me, head c****d to the side, rubs her bottom lip with her finger. Then settles back in the chair. “Thanks.”

Mrs. Garrett, wearing a bright blue beach cover-up-type thing and a wigged-out face, climbs out of the van.

“Everything okay?” I ask, sort of a joke since there’s nothing but ear-melting screeching when I slide open the side door. Patsy, George, and Harry are all red-faced and sweaty. Patsy’s mouth is open in a huge O and she’s a sobbing mess. George also looks teary-eyed. Harry’s more like pissed off.

“I’m not a baby,” he announces to me.

“Clear on that, man.” Though he’s wearing bathing trunks with little red fire hats on them.

“She”—he jabs a sandy finger at his mom—“made us leave the beach.”

“Patsy’s napMaxe, Harry. You know this. You can swim in the big pool for a while. Maybe we can get a cone at Castle’s after the sailing awards.”

“Pools aren’t cool,” Harry moans. “We left before the ice-cream truck, Mommy. They have Spider-Man Bomb Pops.” He stalks up the steps, his angry, scrawny back all hunched over his skinny, little-dude legs. The screen door slams behind him.

“Whoa,” I say. “Child abuse.”

Mrs. Garrett laughs. “I’m the meanest mom in the world. I have it on good authority.” Then she glances at George and leans into me, smelling like coconut sunscreen. At first I think she’s sniff-checking my breath, because that’s why adults ever get this close. Instead she whispers, “Don’t mention asteroids.”

Not my go-to conversation starter, so all good there.

But George is clutching a copy of Newsweek, his shoulders heaving. Patsy’s still shrieking. Mrs. Garrett looks back and forth between them, like, who to triage first.

Onl

“I’ll take Screaming Mimi here,” I offer. Mrs. Garrett shoots me a grateful smile and flicks open Patsy’s car seat. Good thing, since I know d**k about car seats.

As soon as she’s freed, Patsy looks up at me and her sobs dry up, like that. She still does that hic-hic-hic thing, but reaches out both hands for me.

“Hon,” she says. Hic-hic-hic.

I don’t get why, but this kid loves me crazy much. I pick her up and her sweaty little hands settle on my cheeks, patting them gently, never mind the stubble.

“Oh Hon,” she says, all loving and s**t, giving me her cute-scary grin with her pointy incisors, like a baby vampire.

Mrs. Garrett smiles, swinging George out of the car onto her hip. He snuggles his head into her neck, magazine still rumpled in his clammy fingers.

“You’ll make a good dad, Max. Someday in the far distant future.”

To cover a sudden embarrassing rush of . . . whatever . . . from the consoling weight of her hand on my back, I answer, “You better believe it. No the hell way am I adding knocking up some girl to my list of crimes and misdemeanors.”

The minute it’s out of my mouth I get that I’m an ass. Mrs. Garrett still looks pretty frickin’ young and her oldest kid is twenty-two. Could be she got knocked up and had to get married.

Also, probably? Knocking up? Not a phrase you should use with parents.

“Always good to have a plan,” she answers, unfazed.

She carries George into the house, leaving me with Patsy, who tips her teary, soft cheek against my own, nuzzling. Matilda still has her eyes closed and is evidently removing herself from this scene every way but physically.

“Hon,” Patsy says again, slanting back to plant a sloppy kiss on my shoulder, checking me out from under her dew-droppy eyelashes. “Boob?”

“Sorry, kid, can’t help you there.”

I avoid looking at Matilda, who has again untied the top strings of her bikini. She yawns, stretches. The top edges down a little lower. No tan lines. I close my eyes for a second.

Patsy grabs my ear, as if that’s a cool substitute for a boob. Could be. What do I know about babies? Or toddlers, or whatever you are when you’re one and a half. Could be it’s all about holding on to something and doesn’t matter much what you grab. I, of all people, get that.

Matilda

“Matilda?”

“Dad?”

“Recognized your Gators,” he says.

“Crocs, Dad.”

“Those. Come on in.”

I brush aside the stiff hospital curtain. Even nearly a month after the car accident, I still have to struggle to pull on the “all is well” nurse face I never dreamed I’d need with my own father. He looks a lot better. Fewer tubes, color better, bruises faded away. But Dad in a hospital bed still makes my stomach cramp and my lungs too heavy to pull in air. Before all this, I’d almost never seen him lying down, not in motion. Now the only thing that moves is one hand, stroking Mom’s hair. She’s asleep, nestled tight against him in the tiny, cramped bed.