The Favour

She’d never appreciated a guilt trip, especially not from an uncle she hadn’t spoken to since she was a teenager, but as it turned out, Joey wasn’t just asking her to come and take care of Nan in her last years. He, along with his brothers, were making her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Janelle would have medical power of attorney, with limited power of attorney granting her access to Nan’s checking and savings accounts for the purposes of maintaining her grandmother’s lifestyle. There had been a lot of legal paperwork stating that she would be responsible for maintaining the house until Nan passed away. After that, Janelle would be in charge of selling it and splitting the income among Nan’s sons. Janelle would keep her dad’s share of the proceeds for herself.

Her uncles were buying her and making no real pretense otherwise. She respected that as much as Joey’s initial bluntness in telling her about Nan’s failing health. But Janelle could be blunt, too.

“Why me? You live close by. Betsy and Peter do, too, right? None of you can check in on her?”

“She needs someone there full-time,” Joey had said. “She won’t accept a nurse—we tried that. She won’t go into a home—we suggested that, too. And we all have houses and lives and families, Janelle. We can’t pick up and move in with her.”

Janelle could’ve protested that she couldn’t, either, but the fact was, it made sense. She wanted out of California. St. Marys was a four-hour drive away from her mom and step-father, Randall, and also her brother, Kenny, and his family. That was far better than a six-hour flight. And really, what else did she have in California but debts she couldn’t seem to get out from under no matter what she did? In for a penny, in for a pound was one of Nan’s favorite sayings. Janelle had listed her house and its upside-down mortgage with a rental management company, sold most of her stuff and packed up the rest. Here she was.

First things first. She’d unloaded most of her boxes from the truck. She should make the bed. Then create some order in the bathroom so she could convince her son to take a shower tonight before he went to bed. Bennett might not think he needed to face his first day in a new school with clean hair and clothes, but his mother did.

Before she could do any of that, a quavery voice came from the bottom of the stairs. “Janelle? Will you and Benny be ready for supper soon?”

Janelle went to the head of the steeply pitched staircase. “Yeah, Nan, I’ll be down in a couple minutes.”

“I have leftovers from New Year’s dinner. I’m making turkey soup with spaetzle.”

Janelle’s stomach rumbled, and she immediately headed down the stairs. “Nan. You shouldn’t be cooking anything. Let me get that.”

Her grandmother gripped the newel post with gnarled fingers. She’d always been short but pillowy. It hurt Janelle’s heart to see how frail she’d become. When Janelle impulsively bent to hug her, she could feel every one of the bones in Nan’s spine. She didn’t want to grip too hard, but found it almost impossible to let go.

Nan tutted and waved her hands. “It’s already made. I just need to warm up the rolls....”

“Nan, I’ll get it.”

For half a second, her grandmother’s shoulders slumped. Then, feisty as ever despite the weight she’d lost and the cancer nibbling away at her, she shook her head. “No, no. You go upstairs and work on putting your room together. The soup’s heating up, and I have the rolls all ready. You go. Go!”

Janelle had spent her entire life heeding Nan’s instructions. Even when she’d ignored Nan’s advice, even when she’d deliberately disobeyed her, Janelle had always at least made a show of listening. Old habits didn’t simply die hard, they rose like the undead and kept walking. Now she backed up the steep stairs, catching her heel on every one and keeping her eye on Nan, who took her time, centering herself with a hand on the newel post again before she was steady enough to move across the living room’s polished wooden floor.

As she turned and went up the stairs, Janelle heard Nan singing, the tune familiar though she couldn’t place it until she got into her room and recognized it as a particularly filthy pop song by an up-and-coming rapper. Laughing, she slotted the bed rails into the head- and footboards, then wrestled the box spring and mattress onto it. The bed itself she pushed kitty-corner under one of the dormers.

Then she looked out the window, hung with beige lace curtains, ugly and useless at blocking the light. Or the view. She could see right through them and into the second-floor bedroom of the house next door.

As she’d been able to do back then.

Just one minute. One nostalgic minute. That’s all she meant to take. The alley between the houses was so narrow that she could easily lean out her window and shake hands with someone doing the same on the other side. Close enough to string a tin-can telephone—and with the memory of that, she stood on her tiptoes to run her fingers along the top of the window frame. The piece of string was still there, stapled into the plaster, the end frayed where it had been cut years ago.

Hello. Hello. Vienna calling.

“Mom?”

Janelle turned, easing onto her heels, and wiped her dusty fingertips on her jeans. This room would take more work than setting up the furniture and making her bed. “Yeah, buddy.”

“I’m hungry. Is it time to eat yet?”

“Yeah. Nan made us soup. Let’s take a break. How’s your room coming along?”

Bennett shrugged. “It’s okay.”

Which could mean anything, from he’d completely unpacked or hadn’t slit the tape on a single box. Janelle poked her head in his doorway and found the room in a state someplace in between. Books and clothes covered his bed, but the small combo television and DVD player, hooked up to his game system, had been set up on top of his dresser the way it had been in California. Priorities, clearly.

“Bennett, c’mon. Get this stuff cleaned up and put away.”

“I’m getting to it.”

“No comics or video games until this room is clean,” Janelle said. “I mean it. And it’s early to bed tonight. School tomorrow.”

Downstairs, the good smell of homemade soup was overshadowed by the acrid odor of smoke. A baking sheet of crescent rolls rested on the stove, the tops golden-brown, the bottoms burned black. Nan had opened both windows over the sink as well as the door leading to the enclosed porch, but the smell lingered. She was in the family room, setting a handful of spoons on the table.

She turned a little when Janelle came in. “Where’s Benny?”

“I’m here, Nan.” Bennett ducked around Janelle. “Something stinks.”

“Bennett,” she warned.

Nan laughed. “Oh, I burned those rolls all right. Lost track of time. Should’ve kept my eye on ’em, but oh, well. We can just tear the tops off, right, Benny? Janelle, grab that bowl of mashed potatoes and bring it in here.”

“My mom burns them all the time,” Bennett said as he sidled around the table to sit in the chair closest to the wall. “Sometimes so bad we can’t even eat them. She catches the toaster on fire, too. And once she burned popcorn—”

“Bennett! Just because something’s true doesn’t mean we have to tell the whole world.” Janelle set the ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes in the middle of the table next to the platter of cold sliced filling. Nan made the best filling and mashed potatoes in the whole world. Nan made the best everything.

“Like this,” Nan said to Bennett when he put a spoonful of potatoes on the edge of his plate. She scooped some into her bowl, where the potatoes dissolved around the leftover turkey, corn and spaetzle to make the thin broth into something thick and creamy and delicious. “That’s how you do it. But first, let’s say grace.”

Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Janelle hadn’t said that or any prayer in years, but the words rose as easily to her lips as they once had. Bennett, brows raised, looked at her, and a sudden pang struck her. The blessing and the after-holiday turkey soup with mashed potatoes mixed into it had been a staple of her childhood visits to Nan’s house. But just like the prayers she’d never taught him, when had she ever made a turkey, much less kept the leftovers to make soup? Never. The traditions of Janelle’s childhood had split and splintered after her dad disappeared for good, and after leaving St. Marys that last time she’d carried forward only the ones from her mom’s side of the family.

“It’s good.” She plopped a hefty portion of potatoes into her own soup and stirred it into a thick stew, not reaching for the salt or pepper because Nan would have already seasoned it to perfection. Janelle blew on it and took a bite before it was cool enough, suddenly eager for the familiar flavors. She burned her tongue and didn’t care.

“It’s good,” Nan agreed. “Eat up, Benny. I have ice cream for dessert.”

Nan always had ice cream for dessert. Vanilla and chocolate and strawberry. Always in a bowl, never in a cone because you could fit more in a bowl. The bowls were the same. The spoons. The laughter was the same, too, Janelle thought as Nan listened to Bennett’s silly jokes and told a few of her own.

Nan was different, but Janelle supposed she was, too. That’s what happened with the passing of time. People got older. They got sick. They died.

But not yet, Janelle thought. Please, God. Not just yet.

FOUR

Then

THOSE MOTHERLESS TIERNEY boys. That’s what people always called them, with a mixture of pity and fond disapproval. When they show up in mismatched clothes, their hair a mess, chocolate milk on their upper lips. When they miss school altogether. Or church. Blaming the fact they don’t have a mom is an excuse, it makes people feel better, that’s what Gabe figures. If people can point at them, they don’t have to pay attention to themselves.

Andy and Mikey don’t remember Mom, not even from pictures, because their dad threw them all away. There used to be a big photo of her and Dad on the wall in the living room, but one day Gabe came downstairs and found only a bare spot where it had hung, the paint a little lighter than the rest. The frame was in the garbage, but the picture was gone. Gabe did have a picture of her holding him when he was a baby. He had it tucked away in his drawer, way at the back, but his dad didn’t know about that one. If he did, he’d probably throw it away, too.

Gabe remembers his mom, the way she smelled and the feeling of her hair on his face when she bent to pick him up, but that was from a long, long time ago. Sometimes he thinks he might just have imagined all of it. If it wasn’t for Gabe’s picture he could believe he came out from under a cabbage leaf, just like Mrs. Moser says.

Mrs. Moser gives them cookies while they’re doing their homework. The twins hardly have anything to do because they’re only in kindergarten, but Gabe’s in the fourth grade and he’s got so much schoolwork he can hardly get through it some nights. Right now he’s struggling with some social studies maps he’s supposed to color, but all the crayons are broken or worn down to nubs. Dad said he’d bring home another box, but he’s not home from work yet. Maybe he won’t be home until it’s too late, when Gabe will be asleep. And this is due tomorrow.

“Finish up your work so you can watch some cartoons while I finish dinner.” Mrs. Moser talks in a thick German accent. She’s kind of fat and has grayish hair, and her arms are flabby, but she makes great cookies. If she was around all the time, Gabe thinks, nobody would ever have any reason to look at them with pity, because they’d always be clean and their clothes would match.

But Mrs. Moser comes in to do for his dad only a couple days a week. Sometimes she doesn’t show up for weeks in a row, because she has a bad back and has to take a break. Or because his dad hollers about something she didn’t do right, like buying the wrong kind of shampoo or getting the lunch meat sliced too thin. Ralph Tierney likes things the way he likes them, that’s what he always says.

Gabe knows for sure his dad doesn’t like him. When he looks at Gabe, his face wrinkles up as if he smelled something bad. He loves the twins, though. They sit on his lap while he reads them books. They get away with everything Gabe never could. They cry and stamp their feet and throw tantrums to get their way, and Gabe’s not even allowed to say a word. If they hit him, he can’t hit them back. If they take his stuff and break it, he’s not allowed to complain. If he does, there’s a good chance Dad will blame him for whatever happened, anyway, so he says nothing. But if he can get in a punch when nobody’s looking...

“Gabriel. Are you finished with your work?”

Gabe shows Mrs. Moser the unfinished map. “I need crayons.”

“What happened to yours?”

Andy broke them all up and mixed the pieces together, then put them in the oven to melt into a “supercrayon.” Gabe shrugs, the truth not worth saying. Mrs. Moser clucks her tongue.

“You should be more careful with your things, Gabriel. Your father—” she says it like fazza “—he works hard.”

Gabe feels his entire face wrinkle like a raisin. “I need them for school! It’s not my fault Andy broke them! I’m tired of everyone blaming me for stuff that’s not my fault! I hate it!”

Crash goes the chair. Bang goes the table when he slams it. Slap go the papers when he shoves them to the floor. Mikey looks all goggle-eyed, his upper lip pink from the punch Mrs. Moser let him have with his snack, because milk gives him a bellyache. Andy looks scared.

Gabe is a dragon, he’s a bear, he’s a dinosaur. His fingers hook into claws. He roars and stamps, and it feels good, letting all this out. Making noise. It feels good to watch his brothers cry and squirm away from him. It even feels good to run away from Mrs. Moser, because she’s too old and fat to catch him.

He’s still running around the table when Dad shows up in the doorway. Gabe runs right into him. Dad’s solid, like a mountain. Gabe hits and bounces off, lands on his butt so hard tears fill his eyes from the pain.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What’s going on in here?”

Andy and Mikey start up with the wailing while Gabe struggles to get to his feet. Mrs. Moser tries to explain, but Dad reaches down to grab the front of Gabe’s shirt and haul him upright. Dad smells like sweat and dirt and cigarettes. He shakes Gabe, hard.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I was just playing.”

“Playing like an idiot. Jesus Christ.” Dad wipes his face with one big hand. His eyebrows are big and bushy. His breath stinks like the peppermint candies he’s always sucking. He shifts one now from side to side, clicking it against his teeth.

When Dad lets him go, Gabe stumbles. His butt still hurts, bad. His back, too. It will hurt for almost a week, and when he twists to look in the mirror later, a huge bunch of bruises will have blossomed there.

“I don’t understand you, Gabe. I swear to God, I don’t.” Dad shakes his head. “Go to your room.”

“He hasn’t finished his homework,” Mrs. Moser says.

Dad looks at her. “Well. That’s his own damn fault, isn’t it? Go to your room. Where’s my goddamned dinner?”

Gabe goes to his room. He’s not tired, but he gets into bed, anyway. There’s nothing else to do. His teacher will be mad if he doesn’t do his work, but he can’t make himself care. He can’t finish the project without crayons, so what difference does it make?

He sleeps, finally. Wakes a little when Mrs. Moser brings the little boys up and oversees them getting into their pajamas, brushing their teeth, tucking them into their matching twin beds in the room across the hall from Gabe’s. He keeps his eyes shut tight, his face to the wall, so she doesn’t know he’s awake. He drifts back to sleep amid the whistling snores of his brothers, who both have colds.

He wakes again when the stairs creak, and once more keeps his eyes shut tight, his face turned to the wall. Maybe tonight those footsteps will move past his doorway and not come inside. Maybe not.

The floor also creaks. It makes music. It’s like the school chorus Gabe didn’t try out for, but had to participate in, anyway, for the Christmas show. Every voice blends together to make a whole song. Each step on this creaking, squeaking floor has a different voice, but most every night it sings the same song.

Tonight the footsteps don’t stop across the hall. They keep moving toward Gabe’s bed. His eyes squinch tighter, tighter, his fists clutching at the sheets. He doesn’t dare move or breathe or shift or so much as let his eyelids twitch.

A big hand brushes over his hair. Gabe braces himself, but the hand retreats. The floor creaks, the song changes. When at last he dares to open his eyes and look to make sure the bogeyman has indeed retreated, he sees something on the dresser that wasn’t there before. He has to sit up in bed to make sure. The light in the room is dim, so he also has to touch it. But when he does, he takes the offering into bed with him, lifting the lid and breathing in the best smell in the whole world, over and over.

A box of brand-new crayons.

* * *

Gabe thought of those crayons, that fresh and brand-new box of crayons, when he saw what the old man had left him on the kitchen table. He poked it with a fingertip, his lip slightly curled. Couple packs of cigarettes, his brand.

“What’s this for?” he asked from the living room doorway.

The old man didn’t even look up from the TV. “Had Andy bring ’em home for you. What, you don’t want ’em?”

It wasn’t that Gabe didn’t want the cigarettes. Smokes weren’t cheap, and if his father wanted to gift him with a couple packs, he wasn’t going to complain. But the old man’s gifts never came without a price, and Gabe wanted to know what it would be before he accepted.

“What do you want?” he asked evenly.

His dad still didn’t look at him, another sign he was working up to something. “Nothing. Why do I always have to want something?”

“Because you always do.” Gabe came into the room to look him over. “Shit, old man. You stink. Why don’t you take a shower once in a while?”

“Why don’t you shut your pie hole,” the old man muttered, shifting in his recliner. The flickering light of the television reflected in his eyes for another few seconds before he finally looked at his son. “I need you to take me to the doctor tomorrow.”

Gabe didn’t say anything for a long minute, during which his father shifted uncomfortably.

“What time?”

“I have an appointment at four.”

“Jesus.” Gabe sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “You couldn’t have asked me this a week ago? A couple of days, even? How long have you known about it?”

“Language,” the old man reprimanded. “I knew you’d say no, that’s why.”

Gabe rubbed his tongue against the back of his teeth until it ached. “I didn’t say no. What’s the appointment for?”

His father gave him a shifty glance. “It’s private. I just need to go. Can you take me or not?”

“I have two jobs going on tomorrow. I can maybe juggle the second one, yeah. But you know, you have to ask me this stuff ahead of time so I can make it work. I can’t just be at your beck and call.” Gabe paused, eyeing him. “You sick?”

“No.”

“So what’s wrong with you, then?”

“I got piles, okay?” The old man scowled. “Hurting something fierce. Is that what you want to hear? Fine, I’ll tell you!”

Gabe laughed. “If you got off your ass once in a while, maybe you wouldn’t have that problem.”

His dad raised a trembling finger, his lower lip pooched out. “You can just shut your mouth. Disrespectful son of a bitch.”

It was an old insult, one that no longer stung. Gabe shrugged. “I’ll take you. Thanks for the cigarettes.”

He pocketed both packs and went out back to smoke. Light spilled from the Decker house next door, golden and somehow warm even in the frigid January chill. From this angle he couldn’t see inside, but shadows moved in the square of light from the kitchen window. Janelle, he imagined. Washing the dishes, maybe. Standing at the sink, looking out into the snow-covered backyard.

The light upstairs went on, snaring his gaze. From here he couldn’t see inside any more than he could into the kitchen, but more shadows shifted up there. He imagined her pacing. Unpacking a box, making the bed.

Dancing.

“When I dance,” she says, “I feel like I can do anything.”

A shudder rippled along his spine that had nothing to do with the cold outside. Gabe drew again on the cigarette, but it made him cough unexpectedly, burning his throat and the inside of his nose with smoke and frigid air. Above him, a figure appeared in the window. Staring down at him? Maybe, if only at the cherry tip of his cigarette. Surely she couldn’t see the rest of him, tucked away in the shadows. Still, he dropped the butt into the coffee can of sand on the porch railing and stepped back from the edge, making sure there was no way she could even glimpse him.

The swing of lights in the street alerted him to Andy’s return. His brother laughed as he got out of the car that had brought him home, and he was still laughing when Gabe met up with him inside the house. Andy waved a fistful of lottery tickets in Gabe’s face.

“Got the winner this time, I know it.” He pinned them up on the corkboard next to the fridge, where they kept the calendar and his work schedule and messages from Michael.

There were a few there now. He called every other day on the house phone to talk to their dad, though he couldn’t be bothered to visit more than a few times a year. Somehow, the only person this seemed to bother was Gabe.

“What would you do with that money if you did win, anyway?” Gabe asked.

Andy looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “Take you and Dad and Michael on a trip. He went on that cruise, remember? He said it was fun. Maybe I’d buy some new video games.”

“What if you won really big?” Gabe looked over the tickets. His brother spent hours analyzing the numbers, certain he could figure out the next big hit. “Wouldn’t you want to get out of here? Wouldn’t you want to leave?”

Andy had been rummaging in the fridge, but now turned. “Where would I go?”

“Nowhere,” Gabe said with a shake of his head. “Never mind.”

FIVE

JANELLE HAD NEVER wept when Bennett started school, not even kindergarten. And Bennett hadn’t been one for tears, not even as a baby. Today, with his breath puffing out in the frigid northwestern Pennsylvania mountain air, his cheeks red and lips already chapping, he looked as if he might break down, and that was enough to send Janelle’s heart surging into her throat.

“I’ll be okay, Mom.”

“Sure. It’s going to be a great school for you.” She nodded firmly. “I know it won’t be like the academy, but it’ll be great.”

“Don’t cry,” Bennett warned.

She’d always driven him to and from school. Montrose Academy had limited bus service, and Bennett’s after-school activities would’ve meant she needed to pick him up, anyway. Music lessons, sports and art classes, in addition to what the academy provided. No dance lessons; he’d never been interested in that. She’d spent hours ferrying him from one class to the next. Thousands of dollars, all to make sure he had every possible opportunity.

“And you get to ride the bus,” she told him. “That’ll be fun.”

His expression told her he didn’t believe her. The bus appeared at the end of the street and stopped at the intersection. For a moment it looked as if it would continue without turning onto Dippold Street. The first day of her senior year of high school, Janelle had had to run for the bus. She’d lost a ballet flat, had to go back. Everyone had been laughing at her when she got on the bus, red-faced and panting, the carefully tousled hairdo she’d spent an hour fixing a mess.

This time she’d called the school four times to make sure of the stop location so they’d be at the right place on this first day, but her heart still pounded uncomfortably until the bus made the lumbering turn and headed toward them. It screeched to a stop on the opposite side of the street with that distinctive braking noise. The lights flashed and the red sign flipped out to prevent the nonexistent traffic from passing. Bennett headed for the bus without a backward glance.