Page 56 of We Fell Apart
just because he cleans up when no one else will,
and takes the dog to the vet, and
just because he asks questions that other people don’t,
that doesnotmean I want to be wrapped in his long arms and feel his whole strong body pressing so close to mine that I can smell the dish soap on his hands and the meringue on his breath.
Because Tatum is a very sullen taxi-van driver.
And he’s judgmental. And critical. And secretive. And untrustworthy.
And very irritating a lot of the time.
Also, he does not want me here on his territory. Or in his boys’club.
So he’s not allowed to hug me, even though it would feel really, really good to be hugged by him right now.
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He doesn’t tryanyway. He puts soap in the dishwasher and starts it up.
To avoid the awkwardness, I go into the dining room, where I find yesterday’s breakfast dishes, and this morning’s, shoved to the side of the table to make room for a pile of what looks like Kingsley’s clean laundry. The clothes are jeans, stained with paint despite their trip through the washer, and a number of linen shirts, likewise paint-stained. They’re wrinkled and should have been hung to dry.
Kingsley has been gone three weeks at this point, and June’s doing his laundrynow. What does that mean? Is he coming home soon?
There are flies buzzing around the room. The breakfast dishes are sticky and the milk in the cereal bowls has gone curdled and lumpy in the heat.
“Ugh,” says Tatum behind me. He’s looking at the dishes. “I thought we’d done them all.”
I begin stacking plates. In terms of her personality, June doesn’t seem the type to leave messes like this. At one time, she coveredthe castle with labels and suggestions, written out meticulously. Also, she’s so industrious. She makes weavings, does the indigo, makes tinctures, bakes bread and makes jam. She spends almost all of every day up in her workshop. But at the same time, there’s the unmowed lawn, the dirty bathrooms, the growing piles of dishes, the dog crap on the living room rug, the beautiful round swimming pool choked with rotting leaves.
“It’s disgusting in here,” Tatum mutters. “I wonder if there’s a fly strip somewhere in the pantry.”
We head back to the kitchen with our hands full of dishes. “June used to be a nurse,” I say as I run hot water into the bowls. “I think of nurses as orderly. And therearethings about her that are very orderly. But—”
Tatum calls from the pantry where he’s hunting for fly strips. “She wasn’t a nurse. She told you that?”
“She said it was a long time ago. Maybe before you knew her?”
“She’s forty,” he says. “I’ve known her eighteen years. She was my mom’s best friend from high school.” He comes out of the pantry with a cardboard box of flypaper.
“Was she somethinglikea nurse?” I ask. “I don’t know, a medical technician?”
“No. When June took up with Kingsley, she had just dropped out of college. She was waitressing in Brooklyn.”
I swallow. “But she injected me with something, because my hands got cut.”
“What? When?”
“The day after we went to Beechwood Island.”
“What did she give you?”
“I don’t know. An antibiotic.”
Tatum bites his lip and closes his eyes for a moment. Then his dark lashes flutter open. “What did it do to you?”
“I passed out again, I think. I was really tired?”
