Twitching aside Sam’s pony tail, Reuben cups the back of his son’s neck. “Wrong,” he says. “About whose fault it is, you’re wrong. It’s the man’s who did it. Not yours. You’ll make mistakes enough in your life without taking on guilt that’s not yours. And don’t sell your bike yet. It’s crossed my mind a couple of times—maybe Lord or Deanie’s mother has some insurance coverage that includes her. The other route is suing the bastard to recover damages.”
On the way to the house, Reuben stops Sam again.
“I’ll see about getting Deanie emancipated. I need to talk to Pearl about her staying before I go along with it. You two are going to do what you’re going to do whatever happens, but I still don’t think living together, here or anywhere, is a wise thing. It may still be possible to find another place for her to live where she has people looking out for her and she doesn’t have to leave Greenspark and you can do what you feel you have to, taking care of her. You give some thought to that idea, Sammy.”
Sam’s relief at having this interview over is so huge, he would consent to nearly anything. Reuben has met him more than halfway. They’ll work it out.
35
Nose ring glinting in her left nares, for the first time since she was hurt, eyes huge with mascara, Deanie waits by the door. She is already headragged and coated and holds his breakfast wrapped in waxed paper. Sam’s stomach cramps as he falls violently in love with her again, or else, he decides, it’s sheer hunger. He takes her arm, to steady her across the icy yard.
“What’s going to happen?”
He waits until she closes her seatbelt before he lets a smile slide and explains about emancipation and how it means she could stay with them.
“Stay with you? Until when?”
“Till you’re ready to go out on your own.”
She closes her eyes. “Oh ‘god.”
“Or until you find someplace you like better.”
“What about you and me?”
Sam finds her hand on the seat between them and squeezes it. “Oh, he’s ripshit about it but he knows he can’t stop us whether you live with us or not. He has to talk to Pearl, make sure she’s copacetic, about you staying.”
“It’s none of their business,” Deanie protests, “what we do.”
Sam moves his hand back to the wheel. “It’s their home too—they pay the bills and he is my father. They’ve got every right to say what they like and don’t like.”
“They shacked up together before they got married—you told me they did.”
“Sure. And they were adults when they did it, and they did get married. We can’t get married. You’re only sixteen. You got a lot of shit to work out.”
Deanie fumbles in his cassette dump. “Yeah, and you’re seventeen and stupid, that’s another good reason.”
“Eighteen in two months. You don’t need to shit on me. I’m just saying it was different for them.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I couldn’t believe it when you came back into the house and neither one of you was bleeding. I thought we’d wind up spending the rest of the winter in the Mill.”
Sam looks at her with interest kindling in his eyes. “If it comes to it—”
“Oh my ‘god,” she giggles, rolling her eyes.
“If I’d known they were already involved, I would have made arrangements for her to stay with someone else immediately,” Reuben tells Pearl.
In the cab of his truck on the way to the diner, the baby squirms in her carseat between them.
“I’m supposed to be looking out for this child and my boy’s climbing into bed with her,” he continues. “Or she’s climbing in with him. Whatever, they could both get hurt. And she’s a mess to start.”
Pearl sighs. “She’s tougher than you think. You see a victim. I see a gutty kid who got herself out of an intolerable situation and into a safe place. Give her credit for picking Sammy. She couldn’t have done better, could she? Give him credit for seeing past her self-defenses. Maybe they just need a little time to find their way.”
Reuben looks at her. “Oh hell, the oatburner’s out of the barn.” He smiles. “From here on out, they’re going to make their own decisions about what goes on between them. I just wish they weren’t so damned young.”
“There’s something to be said for not knowing any better. Who’d do anything if they knew all the consequences?”
“It’s a lovely question but it’s irrelevant. We have to work with what we have,” he points out.
“Sometimes we have more than we realize,” she retorts.
“Indeed,” he agrees. “Indeed. Sometimes we get more than we bargained for.”
In the meeting hall before anyone else but she and Sam arrive, Deanie masks herself for the first time. Tight against her face, the mask feels stiff and impervious as an exoskeleton. She tugs at the straps. Even with the attention to ventilation, there is an immediate sensation of heat building up underneath it. And there is pressure, her facial bones reading the weight. Weirdly, the mask telegraphs back the topography of her face, the sweep and shape of her bones and the ridge of the scar.
Because the mask touches the lobe of her nostril, she has to remove her nose ring, which she replaces with a stud she made from an ornate old tackhead. She wraps her headrag tighter, over the straps, to make them a little more secure. It makes her whole skull feel heavy and tight. Blinking, she turns her head from side to side.
“This frigging thing cuts into my peripheral vision!”
Sam fans his fingers over her hipbones and presses back. “Open up. Head up. This is going to be fine. You’ll get used to it.” And if wishes were horses, he reflects to himself, the whole world would be knee-deep
