Page 128 of String Boys
Kelly had thought he should go down and see if the drapes were drawn or if there was a two-inch gap in the front that showed him enough to be scarred for life.
At first the thought had made him chuckle, but then he’d think about his father and about those moments with Seth and about how badly his mother deserved something, anything at all that made her happy, and he decided he wouldn’t go look after all.
“She left the kids home alone?” Matty asked, frowning, and Kelly rolled his eyes.
“I’m about to turn twenty-one, dickhead. The twins are fifteen. Hell, Agnes is twelve and can stay here by herself if she wanted to. You got four people here who can watch your daughter for you—don’t fuckin’ worry.”
Behind him, he heard Chloe getting excited. “Set? Set? Set, where are ’oo?”
Seth talked to her at least once a week over Skype, and Kelly was pretty sure his sisters called him up when Kelly was at night school too. Not that Kelly didn’t have his own ways and times to talk to Seth, but he had to admit, he always felt a little jealous when he got home and his niece was asleep in her crib, hugging the latest stuffed animal Seth had sent her, humming to herself.
It wasn’t a warm pair of arms—no. But Seth’s face, his voice, his smile, on that little screen, had started to take on an enormous role in Kelly’s dreams. Sometimes after Seth signed off, he’d stroke the screen with his fingertips and remember the summer when even for a short time, they’d been able to sate themselves on skin.
But Matty heard his daughter’s voice, and his face closed down like a thundercloud. “Is he here?” he asked, trying to shoulder his way into the apartment. Kelly stood his ground, blocking with his shoulders. Sure, back in high school Matty had the advantage—he had been muscular and quick. But Kelly was horny and lonely, and he had access to the gym and a sand bag, and he could beat Matty on his worst day in his sleep right now.
“No, he’s not here!” Kelly had to laugh at that one. “Oh my God, ifonlyhe was here.”
“My own daughter barely even talks to me, and you let her be in the company of that psychopath? And you think that’s funny?”
“He’s in Italy right now,” Lulu said, coming up over Kelly’s shoulder. “I dare you to find him. And she doesn’t talk to you because you show up once a week and try to get in her face. She’s got to know you before she likes you.” Lulu wrinkled her nose. “But not now. God, Matty, take a shower.”
Lulu disappeared, and Matty was left, bewildered.
“Isela wouldn’t let me hold her. She said she was the mom, it was her job. I don’t know how… I don’t know how to hold her. Italy? Did you say Italy?”
“You can’t hold her when you’re like this.” Against his better judgment, Kelly felt his sympathies stirring. God, Matty. They’d grown up loved. They’d grown uploved.He wasn’t sure what had made Isela, her circle of friends, her church, so attractive, but the puzzlement in Matty’s eyes right now was killing him. “Think about Dad, Matty. He left for a month to go to rehab because he didn’t want to be around us drunk. Remember that? That was his own free will, you know? He only wanted to be his best self for us.” Kelly used his shoulder to gesture. “Is this really how you want your kid to see you?”
“I… I don’t know what to do,” he rasped, scrubbing his mouth with a hand that looked like he’d been chain smoking his whole life. “Isela… just disappeared. I hear about her, this guy, that guy, and I’m all alone in the apartment. I got nobody. Nobody, Kelly. Remember us, growing up? All the noise, Mom and Dad talking, us kids raising hell, and I thought, ‘God, I just want some quiet in my own fucking head.’ But it got quiet, and it’s awful. It’s fuckin’ awful. And I’m all… I’m all alone.”
Fuck. Oh fuck.Kelly took a deep breath and held up his hand. “Wait there.”
He closed the door behind him and saw his sisters looking at him with varying degrees of skepticism.
“Thoughts?” Like they wouldn’t tell him what they were thinking.
“Hell no.” That was his Lulu, but Lily grimaced.
“He’s all alone, Lu. I mean… he used to be a real person and everything.”
“Yes,” Agnes said, but then her shoulders slumped. “I just don’t want to be here when he’s here. And he’s so weird with Chloe. And now he’s just gonna be weirder. Never mind. No. Yes. Darn.”
Kelly half laughed and reached into his pocket to pull out the key to downstairs. He’d never given it back—still, in fact, used it two or three times a week. If things got too loud, if his sisters were making him crazy, if he needed a quiet place to study, there was always Seth’s apartment, where Seth’s room held more of Kelly’s clothes and books than Seth’s things, and where Seth’s dad was always happy to see his son’s boyfriend, and not just because of the connection to his son.
“I want this back,” he said soberly, and the girls nodded back. Even Chloe, who had ceased to wiggle in Agnes’s arms. “Pack a bag for Chloe. Lulu, bring the porta crib—set it up in Seth’s room. Craig’s got groceries and cable. I’ll get him showered, get him sober, kick him out in the morning. Deal?”
The girls all nodded, and Kelly turned back and opened the door, prepared to give Matty sanctuary and a little bit of home.
But Matty was gone. Kelly could hear his feet clattering on the bottom stair even as he called out his brother’s name.
“Never mind,” he said softly, closing the door. He expected his sisters to all look relieved, but they didn’t. Lily wiped her eyes on the inside of her flowered shirt, and Agnes’s lower lip wobbled.
And to Kelly’s horror, his own eyes burned.
With a terrible little sound in his throat that wasnota whimper, he opened his arms and they all rushed in, hugging hard and deep, not one of them talking about the cut in their hearts that kept bleeding, the death that recurred daily, the loss they couldn’t lose.
THREE DAYSlater, Kelly’s phone buzzed as he walked down L Street on Saturday night. He checked it, thinking Vashti and Edgar weren’t usually so impatient, and saw Seth’s name instead.
Are you having a good birthday?
