The Boy Most Likely To

“You get what you get and you don’t get upset,” I say to him.

“But I do. I do get upset. This is nasty, Alice.”

“Just eat it,” I say, clinging to patience with all my fingernails. This is all temporary. Just until Dad gets a bit better, until Mom doesn’t have to be in three places at once. “It’s healthy,” I add, but I have to agree with my seven-year-old brother. We’re way overdue for a grocery run. The fridge has nothing but eggs, applesauce, and ketchup, the cabinet is bare of anything but Joel’s protein-enhanced oatmeal. And the only thing in the freezer is . . . a dead bird.

“We can’t have an owl in here, guys.” I scramble for Mom’s reasonable tone. “It’ll make the ice cream taste bad.”

“Can we have ice cream instead of this?” Harry pushes, sticking his spoon into the oatmeal, where it pokes out like a gravestone on a gray hill.

I try to sell it as “the kind of porridge the Three Bears ate,” but George and Harry are skeptical, Duff, at eleven, is too old for all that, and Andy wrinkles her nose and says, “I’ll eat later. I’m too nervous now anyway.”

“It’s lame to be nervous about Kyle Comstock,” Duff says. “He’s a boob.”

“Boooooob, ” Patsy repeats from her high chair, the eighteen-month-old copycat.

“You don’t understand anything,” Andy says, leaving the kitchen, no doubt to try on yet another outfit before sailing camp awards. Six hours away from now.

“Who cares what she wears? It’s the stupid sailing awards,” Duff grumbles. “This stuff is vomitous, Alice. It’s like gruel. Like what they make Oliver Twist eat.”

“He wanted more,” I point out.

“He was starving, ” Duff counters.

“Look, stop arguing and eat the damn stuff.”

George’s eyes go big. “Mommy doesn’t say that word. Daddy says not to.”

“Well, they aren’t here, are they?”

George looks mournfully down at his oatmeal, poking at it with his spoon like he might find Mom and Dad in there.

“Sorry, Georgie,” I say repentantly. “How about some eggs, guys?”

“No!” they all say at once. They’ve had my eggs before. Since Mom has been spending a lot of time at either doctors’ appointments for herself or doctor and physical therapy consults for Dad, they’ve suffered through the full range of my limited culinary talents.

“I’ll get rid of the owl if you give us money to eat breakfast in town,” Duff says.

“Alice, look!” Andy says despairingly, “I knew this wouldn’t fit.” She hovers in the doorway in the sundress I loaned her, the front sagging. “When do I get off the itty-bitty-titty committee? You did before you were even thirteen.” She sounds accusatory, like I used up the last available bigger chest size in the family.

“Titty committee?” Duff starts laughing. “Who’s on that? I bet Joel is. And Tim.”

“You are so immature that listening to you actually makes me younger,” Andy tells him. “Alice, help! I love this dress. You never lend it to me. I’m going to die if I can’t wear it.” She looks wildly around the kitchen. “Do I stuff it? With what?”

“Breadcrumbs?” Duff is still cracking up. “Oatmeal? Owl feathers?”

I point the oatmeal spoon at her. “Never stuff. Own your size.”

“I want to wear this dress.” Andy scowls at me. “It’s perfect. Except it doesn’t fit. There. Do you have anything else? That’s flatter?”

“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. Alice! 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 time 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 time.

“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 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. Tim Mason. The human equivalent of C-4.

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 – tits everywhere – and a gigantic iron weight rack with a shit-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 anytime.”

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

“Don’t be a dick,” he says mildly. He points in the direction of the bathroom. “The plumbing backs up sometimes. 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 pre-dawn 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.

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

Chapter Four

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, Alice, 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 Alice Garrett in a bikini?

Except Alice 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, Alice.

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 time to avoid unsightly tan lines. I stand ready to assist.”

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

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

“Tim, 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, Alice. But maybe we start with some gentle nibbling?”

Alice 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 for 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. Alice 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 cocked 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 naptime, 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.

“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 dick 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 shit, 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, Tim. 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. Alice 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 Alice, 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.

Pats 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.

Chapter Five

“Alice?”

“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 crimp 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.

“Shh,” Dad says. “She’s beat.”

She’s totally out, for sure. One arm hooked behind his neck, one wrapped around his waist.

“You too, hmm?” His voice is still faintly slurry, but gentle, the same steadying sound that got me through kid-nightmares, mean teachers, and Sophie McCade in eighth grade spreading rumors I’d had boob implants during the summer.

“I could ask you the same, Dad.”

He makes a scoffing sound. “I lounge around all day.”

“You have a broken pelvis. Not to mention lung damage from a pulmonary embolism. You’re not exactly eating bonbons.”

He peers at me, shifting aside Mom’s hair so he can look me more clearly in the eye. “What are bonbons? I’ve heard it and I’ve never known.”

“I have no idea, actually. But if I figure it out and bring you some, will you eat them?”

“I will if you will. We could make a contest of it. ‘My boy says he can eat fifty eggs . . .’ ”

“No, God. No Cool Hand Luke. What it is with that movie? Every male I know has, like, a thing with it.”

“We all like to believe we have a winning hand, Alice,” he says, dragging up the pillow behind him one-handed and giving it a hard punch to fluff it up.

“Say no more.” I reach for the cards in their familiar, worn box, next to the pink hospital-issue carafe of water, the kidney-shaped trough to spit into after tooth brushing, the clutter of empty, one-ounce pill cups, and the roll of medical tape to re-bandage his IV shunt. Nothing like home, his nightstand piled with wobbly, homemade, clay penholders and mugs, heaps of sci-fi books, the picture of him and Mom in high school, big curly hair on her, leather jacket on him.

“I haven’t the heart to break your streak,” he says with that grin that crinkles the corners of his eyes before overtaking his entire face. “The painkillers gave you an unfair advantage.”

“I’m six for seven, Dad. Is it your painkillers or my raw talent?” I smile.

“Well, I’m off ’em now. So we’ll see.” He edges to one side a bit and his face goes sheet-white. He looks up at the ceiling, his lips moving, counting away the pain, taking deep breaths.

“Pant, pant, blow,” I murmur. Labor breathing. Everyone in our family knows it.

“Whoo, who, hee.” Dad’s voice is tight. “God knows I should have that one down.”

“And yet Mom says you still don’t.” I try for another smile but it slips a little, so I focus on the cards, shuffling them once, twice, three times. “Do you want me to call your nurse?”

He reaches out for the cards, takes them, and does his famous one-handed shuffle.

“Only if she’s got bonbons. Look, they’re kicking me out of here soon,” he says abruptly. “Not enough beds, I’ve outstayed my welcome, I’m all fixed now. Not sure what the latest explanation is.”

“And then –?”

“Home,” he says on a sigh. “Or a rehab facility. They’ve left it up to us.” He glances down at Mom, smiles, the same grin as in the SBH photo, tucks the hanging-out tag of her dress under the neckline. She nestles closer.

“Rehab’s covered by our deal with the devil,” I point out. Our devil may be a tall, blond, conservative state senator, but facts are facts.

“You can’t think of it that way, Alice.” He shakes his head, winces.

Still in pain, no matter how often he says it’s not a problem. The last of his summer tan is fading, the line of his jaw cuts sharper, his shoulders locked in rigid lines. He looks at least four years older than he did four weeks ago and it’s all that woman’s fault. However often she sends fancy dinner salads and gourmet casseroles over with Samantha, I can’t forget. I can’t drive past reality without even stopping, the way she did.

“Grace Reed did this, Dad. She wrecked us. She –”

“Look at me,” he says. I do, trying not to flinch at the shaved part of his scalp where they drilled the hole to relieve pressure from his head injury. Duff, Harry, and George just call it “Dad’s weird haircut.”

“A little battered maybe. But definitely not wrecked. Accepting rehab, on top of all the hospital bills – charity.”

“Not charity, Dad. Justice.”

“You know as well as I do that it’s time to get on with things, Alice. Suck it up and get on home. I’m needed there.”

I want him there. I want everything back the way it was. Coming in late at night from a date or whatever to find him watching random History Channel or National Geographic documentaries, baby after baby, Duff, Harry, then George, then Patsy conked out against his shoulder, clicker poised in his hand, nearly dozing himself, but awake enough to rouse and say, “Do you know the plane Lindbergh flew to Paris was only made of fabric? A little glue brushed over it. Amazing what people can do.” But I’m enough of a professional to look at his vital signs and translate his medical chart by heart. No matter how amazing it is what people can do, bodies have their limits.

“You know better,” I say, “about what’s needed. What you have to do.”

A muscle in Dad’s jaw jumps.

How much pain is he in? He should still be on those pills.

I wipe my expression clean, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand. Game face.

The things Mom and I traded off doing, today alone. I did breakfast, while she did morning sickness and talked on the phone setting up everyone’s back to school doctor appointments. I drove Duff to the eye doctor, she took Andy to the orthodontist, then the little guys to the beach. Then we all went to the sailing awards. Mom cheered up Andy in the bathroom after Jade Whelan said something stupid to her, then took her to get frozen yogurt. I hauled the little kids to Castle’s for hot dogs. Mom ferried the gang to Jase’s practice, then dropped them off and came to visit Dad – and dozed off. I stayed home until everyone crashed except Andy, then came here, chugging a venti Starbucks on the way. And I’m only Mom’s stunt double. I’m not Dad.

“If you leave here for home, you’ll be picking up George and Patsy, toting them to the car. You’ll be driving Harry and Duff to soccer. Taking Andy to middle school dances. Relieving Jase at the store. You’ll be on, all the time, Dad. You can’t do that yet. It’ll only set you back and make things worse. For all of us.”

He scrubs his hand over his forehead. Sighs.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the child I’m imparting all my hard-earned wisdom to, Alice?”

Mom shifts in her sleep, pulling her arm from his waist to rest on her stomach.

The new baby. Right. I almost always forget about that. Her. Him.

Dad reaches his good hand down to cover hers. He never forgets.

I rest against the windowsill, put my head down on my crossed arms. Cloudless night with, I don’t know, crickets, locusts, whatever, making sounds in the high grass the Garretts wait too long to cut. You can even hear the river if you listen hard enough.

When my eyes adjust to the dark, I see her.

Alice is tipped back against the hood of the Bug, looking up. Not at me. At the sky. Full moon, a few clouds. Stars. She’s darkly silhouetted against the white car, all curves, one foot on the bumper, moonlight shining off a knee.

Jesus.

A knee.

Oh, Alice.

Chapter Six

Early the next morning, I jolt out of bed so fast my brain practically sloshes against my skull. Where am I? The familiar feeling – the burning, dizzy oh shit of it – makes my temples crash and bang.

I got drunk last night.

Or something.

Because, if not, why am I so freaking disoriented?

Then I remember, assisted by the twelve girls in twelve different improbable contortions staring at me. I rub sweat off my forehead, fall back on the hard-as-hell couch I crashed on after too much quality time with the Xbox, and listen to the emptiness.

I never realized how freaking quiet it is when you’re all alone in a building.

Then I’m up, yanking one poster off the wall, then the next, then the next, until the walls are bare and I’m breathing hard.

Running – isn’t that what Jase does when he doesn’t want to think? I rummage around in my cardboard box for gym shorts I can’t find. Just lame gray slacks. Who packed those? And my Asics – nowhere to be found. I pull on the only workout option, a faded pair of swim trunks, and head for Stony Bay Beach. I read once that Navy Seals train by running on sand. Barefoot. It’s harder, a better workout.

I’ll jog to the pier. Gotta be like a mile or something. Good start, right?