Bang Read online

  Barb sighs. “Well, this week I had a ninth-grader in my office for trying to strangle a classmate, so.”

  Mari flinches. Sometimes she thinks Bruce and Barb see worse stuff at their jobs than Mari and Jack. “Jesus.” She takes a chilly gulp of the slightly sour wine. “That’s terrible.”

  “No injuries,” Barb says, shrugging. “They look younger every year to me, feels like.” She gathers a few decorative napkins from the holder on the counter, fluffing the edges with a thumb. “Listen, though.” She drops her voice and comes around the counter to face Mari full-on, suddenly a different flavor of serious. “Before we go back in there, I wanted to talk to you. We haven’t really had a chance to catch up since everything happened.”

  Oh God. Mari knew it. They hate her now, of course they do. She left their son to rot in a hospital bed after getting him shot. She braces herself against the rush of guilt and shame and embarrassment, is so busy bracing herself that she hardly registers what Barb is actually saying, the tail end of which is “—to thank you for taking such good care of him.”

  Mari blinks. “I—for taking care of him?” she repeats uncertainly. What?

  “He’d kill me for saying this, but I honestly don’t know what he would have done without you,” Barb confides. “I can’t believe we kept missing each other at the hospital, but he told me how you came and sat with him, kept his spirits up. Kept things normal.”

  “Kept things—” He lied for her, Mari realizes slowly. He lied so his family wouldn’t know. “Oh.”

  “You’re just like Jack, the pair of you.” Barb laughs, mistaking the look on Mari’s face. “So taciturn. I’ll leave you alone, but honestly Mari, it really made Bruce and me feel better, I can’t even describe it. You helped us too.” She reaches over and squeezes Mari’s thighs, warm and motherly. Mari feels physically sick.

  “Yeah. It’s, uh. Good to have him finally back at work,” she manages, standing up and grabbing at the first excuse she sees: Barb’s stack of napkins, maroon with patterned birds on a line. “I’ll do this, okay?” she tells Barb. “You just relax.”

  Barb shakes her head and smiles, like Mari’s being silly but Barb is willing to indulge her. “It’s great to see you, Mari,” she says. “Really great.”

  Mari trips out of the kitchen and into the empty dining room, hands shaking. There’s a rubber tree plant in the corner, a Bless This House needlepoint on the wall. Everyone will be down in the den, drinking and chatting, being a family. Mari slides the napkins under each fork nice and slow and tells herself to get a grip. She’s here now. She’s in it. And she’s going to stay calm.

  It doesn’t work. When she joins everyone in the den, Jack catches sight of her. Right away, his eyebrows go sky high.

  Mari ignores him and starts talking determinedly to Bruce about the politics behind this year’s curriculum fair. When Jack first invited her coming here felt like a way to atone somehow, visible evidence of how sorry she is, but now she feels like the worst kind of interloper.

  She looks over at him, parked lazily on the cracked leather sofa beside his brother, jeans and his plaid button-down open at the collar so just the edge of the scar is visible, a bottle of Coors dangling from his long fingers. She feels a pull of desire so strong it’s like someone’s reached into her chest and squeezed.

  She always thought she’d lose him to another woman eventually. For as long as she’s known him, Jack has been dating almost perpetually, one skinny blonde girl after another, each on six- to eight-month rotations. Mari figured one of them would stick and that would be that. He would still be her partner, yes, he would still buy her coffee, but that something extra would be gone. When he stopped inviting her out so much after she got married, she thought it was only a matter of time.

  She’s so deep in it that she doesn’t realize Arielle’s talking to her until the blonde says her name like a question, “Mari?”

  “Sorry,” Mari says. “Spaced. Here I am.”

  Here she is.

  Dinner is a series of mismatched casseroles, from cheesy macaroni to baked ziti to green beans, plus something called King Ranch Chicken that Mari’s only ever eaten here, tomatoes and chiles and tortillas topped with shredded cheddar, a delicious tex-mex monstrosity. “My favorites,” Bruce confesses to her quietly in the serving line, looking almost embarrassed at the riches before him. Mari laughs in spite of herself. Dessert, they are told, will be ice cream cake.

  “Courtesy of Dairy Queen,” Meredith adds. “Dad’s other favorite.”

  It’s almost eight, so Mari calls Andre before she sits down and does Sonya’s tuck-in routine over the phone. Every night she tells a different bedtime story, which is proving more and more difficult the older Sone gets. Her smart baby girl has no tolerance for re-runs.

  Tonight’s story is about a robin who lays red eggs instead of blue. The other birds make fun of her, but come summertime, out hatch three beautiful peacocks. Mari thought it up in the car on the way over.

  “Was the daddy a peacock?” Sonya asks. She’s been asking a lot of questions about animal daddies lately. “Is that why the eggs were different?”

  “Maybe,” Mari tells her, wondering if Andre is listening over the other line. She didn’t tell him where she was going tonight. “Or maybe the robin was just magic.”

  The call means she’s the last one to sit down at the supper table, no chairs left except for the one beside Terry. Mari thinks of how cold he was at the front door and for two nasty, horribly entitled seconds, she’s actually pissed Jackson didn’t think to save her a spot.

  Then she snaps out of it. He already lied to cover up how terrible she was, he doesn’t have to babysit her too.

  “What number’s that?” she tries, nodding at Terry’s Coors. It’s an old joke, from back nearly a decade ago when Terry was living in Boston. Jack and Mari went to visit him and wound up at the diviest of all dive bars, where Ter drunkenly announced his intention to consume one million beers before the night was over, then promptly tripped over a curb and sprained his ankle. The reference is usually good for at least a smile, but tonight Terry only shrugs.

  “Just two,” he says blandly, reaching for a napkin.

  “No, I know,” Mari backpedals, embarrassed. “I just meant—”

  “Yeah, I know what you meant,” Terry says, with enough of an edge in his voice that Arielle and Jack both glance over. Mari feels herself blanch. “Good of you to come out, by the way.”

  Oh Jesus. He knows. What or how much is anyone’s guess, but he knows. “Am glad to be here again,” Mari manages, her skin gone clammy. But that part’s not my fault, she thinks. Jack stopped inviting me. Then, because Terry might as well have said it, “It’s been awhile, huh?” She raises her wineglass in Bruce’s direction. “Happy birthday, sir.”

  Bruce smiles as warmly as if Mari was his own child. He bought Jack’s story too, clearly. Hook, line and sinker. “Well thanks, kid,” he says, picking up his glass. “Thanks for coming.”

  They all toast. Barb walks all the way around the table to clink with Mari, pressing a kiss against her cheek. It’s immediately clear to Mari that she fucked up again. She should have kept her damn mouth shut. This feels too much like rubbing it in, like a dare. See? I fooled all of them.

  At first she thinks Terry is going to refuse to toast with her altogether. When he finally clinks, it’s hard enough that Mari’s wineglass vibrates in her hand.

  Jack stays in his seat. He raises his eyebrows at Mari as Barb starts dishing out casserole. Mari tells him to pass the green beans.

  Chapter Five

  Jackson doesn’t realize something is going on between Mari and Ter until Meredith gives him a heads-up after dinner. “I’m not saying he’s about to poison her drink or anything,” Mer says as they put the candles on the ice cream cake. “But I think he might be about to poison her fucking drink.”

 
Jackson mulls that over. Then he nods, reaching down to catch Rocko’s collar before he can scarf the candle that just rolled onto the floor. “Okay.”

  Mer huffs. “Fine, don’t tell me. Pass the matches.”

  They don’t have enough of any one kind of candle so instead they put together a hideous mix, all sizes and shapes plus one lone polka-dotted nine. “He’s turning a multiple of nine,” Meredith points out. “So really it’s fine.” She switches on the singing candle holder they’ve had since Jackson was ten, then picks up the cake and ushers Jackson ahead of her through the swinging door.

  Jack lets the thing with Terry lie through two slices of cake and a round of coffee, watching Mari chat with Arielle, her hands flying as she tells a story about Sone. When Terry finally goes outside for a smoke, Jack shrugs on his jacket and follows.

  “What’s up?” Terry asks as Jackson walks over to join him underneath the neglected basketball hoop. It’s chilly now that the sun’s gone down, that true fall bite in the air that smells like woodsmoke and cold. Then Terry’s lighter flares, and everything just smells like cigarettes.

  Jack wrinkles his nose and holds out his hand. “Pass it.”

  “You start up again?” Terry asks. When Jackson doesn’t answer he hands it over anyway, some vestiges of little-brother obedience left. Jackson remembers being five and convincing him to eat worms. “How you feel?”

  “Feel fine,” Jack says, which is the truth at this particular moment, or at least close enough that he trusts his brother to fill in the blanks. “Look, I need you to lay off Mari.”

  Terry snorts. “I’m not laying on Mari,” he says, taking the cigarette back. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Jack shakes his head. “You said enough.”

  “She shits all over you,” Terry says, so mildly that his actual words are a shock. “You realize that, don’t you?”

  Jack blinks. “The fuck?”

  Terry shrugs, sucking on the cigarette. The other dudes on the track team used to call it his blowjob face. Then, in a rush like he’s been waiting to let it out, “Look, I know Mom and Dad buy her whole partner-of-the-year routine but at least one person in this family needs to say it. You and I both know she wasn’t sleeping on the floor in your hospital room, or whatever the hell fairy tale you’re telling.” He blows out smoke. “I get how you feel about this woman, Jack, I do, but she’s bad news. She’s always been bad news. And you’re mush.”

  “And you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack argues, fur on his back bristling—know how you feel about this woman, Jesus. He’s never said it out loud before, to Terry or to anyone else. Was years before he could even say it out loud to himself. “You have no idea, so—”

  “Hey, assholes.” That’s Mer, standing at the sliding door with her skinny arms wrapped around herself. “We’re doing presents.”

  Jack glances over at his brother, then away again. “Coming!” he calls. To Terry, “Just lay off, okay? I don’t need this right now.”

  Terry shrugs, grinding out the cigarette. “Like I said,” he tells Jack. “Wasn’t ever laying on.”

  After presents it’s a nightcap of Crown Royal for his dad and another beer for Jack and Terry and Arielle. Mari shakes her head when Barb offers—it’s an old pattern of theirs, him and Mari, so that somebody’s always sober enough to drive without them ever having to talk about it. It’s a good thing too, not ’cause Jack’s drunk but because he’s exhausted all of a sudden. Since the shooting, he gets tired way more than he did. “You kids want to stay?” his mom asks, when she catches him hiding a yawn behind his hand.

  “Nah, we’ll head out soon.” Jack looks at Mari across the family room. “You’ve gotta get back to Sone.”

  “Andre has her,” Mari reminds him. She keeps her dark eyes locked on his. “Up to you.”

  Jack thinks about that. It’s ten thirty. Even if they leave right now they won’t get back until midnight, all those dark empty roads.

  “If you’re fine with it,” he tells Mari. This is an old pattern too, or at least it used to be, back when they were still kids in their twenties and Mari came over here all the time. “Set up your old bed.” After she got engaged, Jack was embarrassed by it and how transparent it was, her sleeping on the camper in the living room and Jack lying awake and hoping. She hasn’t stayed over in six years.

  Mari nods. A little while later, he notices her get up and pour herself another glass of wine.

  Everyone stays until well past eleven, getting bogged down in a game of President that Mer insists they start. Their parents had strict TV limits, so the Ford kids grew up playing a glut of board games and cards, week-long tournaments of Risk and fifty different versions of Battleship.

  After a while Jack’s mom heads up to bed, then Jack’s dad. Terry starts making noise about taking off after the next hand. He’s been quiet since he and Jack came back inside, talking to Arielle and no one else, a red flush to his neck that makes Jack think he probably snuck an extra beer in there somewhere. Meredith notices too.

  “Okay,” she says, setting down her cards. “Ter, I’m gonna drive you guys home, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Terry sets his hand down too. “Might as well.”

  Jack looks down at his cards, the highest of which is a ten. He’s been Asshole for six straight rounds. “Yeah. Let’s call it.”

  Meredith and Terry both live close by, Meredith down the block five minutes in one of those vinyl-siding townhouses that was thrown up as part of the new subdivision, and Terry a little farther away in an apartment near the edge of the city. Jack watches as Meredith’s taillights head down the darkened street. She honks twice at the end of the block, then turns the corner and disappears.

  Jack heads back into the house and finds Mari hovering in the door to the kitchen. She’s been quiet all night too, that haunted, hunted expression on her face that makes him want to protect her—from his brother, from every other fucked-up thing in the world. Jack clears his throat. Now that it’s just the two of them standing here, staying feels like a mistake, like they should have made the drive back to Stockbridge. Jack doesn’t know exactly what to say. “You tired?” he asks finally, and Mari nods at him from across the living room. “You want me to set up the pull-out?”

  Mari shakes her head.

  “Okay,” he says slowly, watching her in the half-dark. She looks like she’s waiting for something. She looks like she could destroy him with a word. “You wanna come upstairs?”

  Mari nods.

  So.

  Jack’s old bedroom’s at the far end of the hallway, away from his mom and dad; still, the old staircase creaks, their two discrete sets of footsteps unmistakable. He thinks of being in high school, trying to sneak girls in and out of here after curfew. He’s over thirty fucking years old. His shelves have got medals from track meets he won back in high school, a poster of No Doubt on one wall. Mari’s been up here lots of times, since she first started coming to his parents’, but she never misses the chance to make fun of him.

  Until now. “Hi,” she says quietly. She sounds unsure.

  “Hi,” Jackson tells her.

  There’s a long silence. Jack sits down on the bed because he isn’t sure what to do. Mari stands in front of him and frowns.

  “So, Terry definitely hates me now,” she says finally. Then she swallows. “You didn’t have to lie to your mom.”

  Jack doesn’t say anything. After a minute Mari pulls off her shirt and there’s no more talking.

  They make out in silence, Jackson’s back against the pillows and her in his lap. Her mouth tastes like wine and ice cream cake. He puts both hands in her hair and hangs on, feeling the bones of her jaw move. She’s a more aggressive kisser than he thought she’d be, Mari. She’s sloppy. After a few minutes she reaches back to unhook her bra and Jackson has the pleasure of feeling her up in his childhood bed. Her
nipples are like stones under his palms, hard and brown. When Jackson rubs them the right way she pants in his face.

  “Okay,” she says, lips glancing off his cheekbone. “Okay, we need to, like—Jack.”

  “Yeah,” Jack mumbles. He has a mouthful of breast, one tight nipple and then some. She’s heavy and soft and Jackson wants to suck as much of her as he can, eat her flesh right off her bones. He feels almost dizzy with greed.

  “Jack,” Mari repeats, nuzzling at his ear. But instead of following it up by moaning or sticking her hand down his pants, she says, “Why did you invite me?”

  That stops him. He looks up at her, dazed and blinking, hooking a finger in her belt loop in case she gets any ideas about climbing out of his lap. She smells like kissing, like skin. “You asked to come up,” he says dumbly.

  Mari shakes her head. “No, like, to the house. To the party.”

  “Wanted you here,” Jack tells her, because he’s tired and because it’s the truth. “Always want you here.”

  “Yeah, but—” Mari traces a finger along his jawline, gentler than he’s used to from her. “You didn’t have to lie to them,” she repeats, so quiet he can hardly even hear. “You lied to everybody. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Jack shakes his head, dropping his face until they’re close enough that he can feel her eyelashes scraping his face. Her body is warm against his. “It wasn’t their business,” he says. “That was shit between you and me.”

  Mari doesn’t answer for a minute, and when she pulls back she looks sadder than he’s ever seen her. “It was my shit,” she says finally. “Not yours. And you covered for me.” Her voice sounds like she’s reading a rap sheet, these are the crimes this individual has committed.

  “Mari.” Jack doesn’t know what to say. He wants to tell her it’s fine, but the truth is he doesn’t know if he believes it himself. “I wanted to be with you,” he hears himself tell her. “I wanted be with you, and that’s why I brought you here. You know that.”