Chapter 8 - The Price of Staying
The Sunday cookout at Sarah’s house was an exercise in emotional survival.
Sarah’s backyard was an acre of scrubby rye grass bordering a stand of second-growth hemlock. Her husband, Wayne, had set up two charcoal grills made from split fifty-five-gallon drums, and the air was thick with the smell of charred pork fat, lighter fluid, and damp earth. Twenty-five people—cousins, uncles, children running through the sprinkler—moved between the folding tables like figures in a brightly colored pageant.
Claire sat at a picnic table beneath the awning, a bottle of hard cider sweating in her palm. Across the lawn, Daniel was standing near Wayne by the grills. He was holding a plastic cup of beer, nodding while Wayne gesticulated with a pair of metal tongs about the local school board election.
Daniel looked miserable. He had worn his good polo shirt—the dark green one Claire had bought him for Father’s Day—and every few minutes, his eyes would flick across the grass toward her, wary, checking for signs of an impending storm.
"He looks like he’s waiting to be shot," Sarah said, dropping onto the wooden bench beside Claire with a plate of potato salad.
Claire didn't look at her sister. "He’s tired. The yard had him on seventy hours last week."
"Bull," Sarah said, stabbing her plastic fork into the salad. "Daniel’s been working seventy hours since he was twenty-two. He looks like a dog that knows it chewed up the couch."
Sarah was four years older than Claire, with the same sharp blue eyes and a complete lack of conversational tact that had served her well as a freight dispatcher.
"Drop it, Sarah," Claire said, taking a small sip of her cider. It tasted sour, metallic.
"Did something happen?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Claire, you haven't looked at him once since you pulled into the driveway. When Grace asked him to get her a soda, you got up and got it yourself before he could even move. You’re treating him like a stranger who wandered into the yard."
Claire set the bottle down on the wood. The condensation had formed a dark ring on the grey lumber.
"Rebecca Sloan is transferring to Kittanning," Claire said, her voice barely carrying over the sound of the children screaming near the sprinkler.
Sarah paused, the fork halfway to her mouth. She lowered it slowly. Her eyes narrowed, the gossip fading instantly, replaced by the fierce, territorial protectiveness of an older sister.
"When?" Sarah asked.
"Monday."
"Did he...?"
"No," Claire said, lying with the smooth, instantaneous precision of a woman protecting her child’s peace. "Not all the way. But enough."
Sarah let out a long, hissing breath through her teeth. She looked across the yard at Daniel, who was now helping Grace adjust the strap on her sandal, his large, grease-scarred fingers clumsy against the pink plastic buckle.
"What are you gonna do?" Sarah asked softly.
"I don't know," Claire said. "Grace loves him."
"Grace is nine. She’ll survive whatever you decide. The question is whether you can stand to smell his skin without wanting to set the bed on fire."
Claire looked down at her hands. The cuticle on her right thumb was torn, bleeding slightly from where she had worried it with her nail during the drive over.
"If I leave," Claire said, "we have to sell the house. In this market, we’ll barely clear the second mortgage we took out for the roof. I’ll have to move into an apartment on the south side. Grace will have to change schools right when she’s starting middle school. My shift will have to go to nights full-time to cover rent, which means Sarah, you’ll be raising my kid three days a week."
Sarah was quiet for a moment. She reached over and laid her thick, warm hand over Claire’s cold knuckles. "We’d manage. You know we would."
"I don't want to manage," Claire whispered, the anger finally cracking, revealing the bottomless, terrifying well of fatigue beneath it. "I don't want to live in a two-bedroom apartment over a dry cleaner's and count quarters for the laundromat. I worked fifteen years for that garden, Sarah. I planted those raspberry bushes. I chose the tile in the bathroom. Why should I be the one who gets evicted because he couldn't keep his hands to himself?"
"So you're staying?"
"I don't know," Claire repeated. "Staying has a price too."
"Yeah," Sarah said, looking back toward the grills where Daniel was now standing alone, looking into the smoke with his hands hanging empty at his sides. "The price is that you never get to forget. Every time he comes home twenty minutes late because the alternator on a bus died, you’re gonna be standing by that window looking at the clock. Every time he buys you flowers, you’re gonna wonder who he’s trying to pay off."
"I already do," Claire said.
Across the lawn, Grace broke away from the sprinkler, her hair soaked, her laughter ringing out clear and sharp over the country music playing from the garage. She ran straight toward Daniel, wrapping her wet arms around his knees. Daniel caught her, lifting her into the air with his good arm, his face lighting up with a brief, desperate flash of genuine joy before he caught Claire watching him from under the awning.
May you like
The joy vanished from his eyes, replaced once more by that heavy, sickening humility. He set the child down gently, his shoulders slumping as he stepped back into the smoke.
***
