Chapter Eighteen
Monday, December 6th
“Kate, what do you think?” Dad asks Mom, trying to make her play the bad guy.
“I know it’s a lot of money, but this is what I want,” I say, before Mom gets a chance to speak. “Dad, if you go back to work next year like you think, then it won’t even be an issue.”
“Carson, you know because of Caitlin that—” she starts, but I don’t want to hear it.
“Let me go to California over Christmas break. Give this to me as a combo Christmas, birthday and graduation burrito,” I plead. I hide my balled up, frustrated fist under the kitchen table, the location for serious talks like this.
“How much is the plane ticket?” Dad asks again. Like him, I’ve had no success at finding a job. It seems no one in Fenton wants to hire someone with no experience who needs two to three nights a week off so they can cover sports. What kind of world is that?
“I checked online. It’s four hundred and fifty dollars from Detroit to San Diego,” I explain, trying to sound confident and mature. “I’ll leave Christmas night and come back Wednesday midday.”
“I know your sister would like to see you since she can’t come home for Christmas,” Mom says. She, of course, doesn’t know Carol isn’t the only sister I plan to see in CA.
“We could drive. What about that?” Dad asks. “You and your old man on a road trip?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have time.” I feel guilty about lying so much. This is what Caitlin did—lied about money, lied about where she was going and where she had been.
“Carson, I just don’t know about you making a trip like this alone,” Hover Mom says.
“Look, I’m not Caitlin. I’m Carson. You can trust me.” The furnace clicks on, loudly.
“But you’d be missing part of Christmas with us,” Mom says.
“Mom, we all know Christmas has never been the same since—” I start.
Dad cuts me off. “It’s not about trust, Carson. It’s about the money. We don’t have it.”
“I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important. I just need to get out of Michigan. Get away from this cold weather. Get away from everything going on at school.” Truth. Lie. Lie. Lie.
“Carol said it was eighty degrees in San Diego on Sunday,” Mom says. Mom’s melting but Dad’s lips are frozen shut.
“Look, if you do this, Mom, Dad, I won’t ask for anything again.”
“I don’t understand why this is so important.” Dad says. He actually scratches his head to communicate his confusion. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.” Or, in other words, everything.
“Then what is it?” Mom wants to agree, but Caitlin busted all trust in this household.
“I know it’s hard. I don’t ask for much. Mom, you know what’s it’s like to dream big.”
They stare at each other, then at me. I look for eye or hand signals. Someone will blink.
“Fine,” Dad says after a pause that seemed to last hours, not seconds. “Now, how about watching Monday Night Football with your dad like we used to?
“I’d love to, but,” I start, thinking about plans already made with Gabby for tonight, as well as my need to finish writing the next part of Autumn’s Fall.
“But?”
“But I gotta run over to Tim’s first,” I lie. “I’ll catch the second half.”
“By the second half, the Lions will be down by twenty,” he says. “Come on, son.”
They just gave me a big thing—this is a small thing I can do, even if for this family, I’m about to do the biggest. “Okay, maybe you should try to get a job coaching the Lions,” I suggest.
“No, that’s a broken machine even your old man can’t repair,” he says as I head upstairs. He doesn’t know that in a few weeks, when I bring Caitlin home with me, the Banks family will be fixed.
* * * *
“I got some good news and bad news,” I tell Gabby as I hold the phone tightly. I lie on my bed, eyes closed, the image of her face in front of me.
“It’s always something with you, Carson Banks, always something,” she says.
“Bad news is I can’t see you tonight. I have to spend time with my dad.”
“Having suffered through eighteen years of father-daughter bonding, I feel your pain.”
“Amen,” I say, then laugh, but I’d rather ask Gabby about her mom and why she barely mentions her. I’d like to ask a million things about her life, but it seems whenever we’re together, we don’t talk much. We can’t seem to keep our hands off each other.
“Okay, I don’t like it, but I accept it,” she says. I wish I could feel the same about sex—or lack thereof. Maybe Gabby’s one of these ‘everything but’ girls. I don’t know because she won’t talk. She’s like an artist. She just draws lines.
“You know my birthday’s coming up.”
She laughs. “I’ve heard something to that effect, like every day for a month.”
“Maybe I could have something special for my birthday.”
“What do you have in mind?” she purrs back.
“Maybe we could strip down to our birthday suits.”
She sighs, laughs, I hope with, not at me. “The good news?”
“I’m going to California over Christmas. Isn’t that cool?”
There’s a pause. Awkward. Sad? Angry? “You’ll be back for my holiday tourney?”
“I’m leaving Saturday and back on Wednesday. I wouldn’t miss you winning the finals of the holiday tournament for anything in this world. I want to see that trophy held high over your pretty face.”
“I wish I could go with you,” she says in that vulnerable voice that always gets me.
I don’t say anything.
“But because of the tourney, I’d better not even think about it,” she concludes.
“Okay, I understand,” I say, feeling like I dodged a bullet.
“Some other time, maybe,” she says. “You know that’s my dream—to go to California.”
“You know what my dream is?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
“My face between your legs,” I whisper. More silence. “Well? What do you think?”
“What do you think that would be like?” she whispers. “Paint the scene, writer boy.”
I start talking, but my breathing grows heavy. She responds in kind. I keep talking softer, she keeps breathing louder, unlike when we’re in the car or on the sofa at her house. Pretty soon I’m holding the phone with one hand. I wonder if she’s doing the same.
“Let me hear it, Carson.”
It takes less than a minute more of vocal inspiration. After a few seconds, I return to the phone, but before I can speak, she says, “Feel better now?”
“And how.”
“I’ll see you soon,” she whispers, then kisses me through the phone.
“Well, maybe then it will be your turn, Gabby,” I purr.
“I don’t know about that.” That makes two of us. I’m clueless how to return the favor or even if she wants me to. My pants end up at my ankles, hers remain locked at her waist.
“Gabby, I’d be happy to lend a helping hand.”
She laughs, but it sounds different from normal. Maybe a nervous laugh. “Like I said, I don’t know about that.”
We talk a little more about nothing, but each second with her seems like everything. I want to say ‘I love you’, but instead I just say goodbye. I wonder what she wants to say to me. She just talked dirty through phone sex, but in person, she rarely makes a sound. Is it her or me?
But mostly I wonder what she wants. Before I head downstairs to bond with Dad, I jump online. I kick past the lies of porn sites and look for some truth about how to make Gabby happy.