My Life Next Door(14)

“Thanks—yes, and when will this be sent out?” Nan says into the phone just as Tim wanders into the room, hair sticking up in all directions, wearing a ratty pair of tartan flannel pj bottoms and an Ellery Prep Lacrosse T-shirt. He doesn’t look at us, just roams over to the Hummel Noah’s Ark display on the window seat and rearranges the figures in obscene combinations.

He’s just finished putting Mrs. Noah and a camel into a compromising and anatomically difficult position when Nan hangs up.

“I kept meaning to call you,” she says. “When do you start lifeguarding? I’ll be at the gift shop starting next week.”

“Me too.”

Tim yawns loudly, scratches his chest, and places a couple of monkeys and a rhino in an unlikely threesome. I can smell him from where I sit—weed and beer.

“You could at least say hi to Samantha, Timmy.”

“Heyyyyy kid. I feel as if we spoke only a few brief moments ago. Oh, that’s right. We did. Sorry. Don’t know where the fuck my manners are. They haven’t been the same since they shrunk at the dry cleaner. Want some?” He pulls a vial of Visine from his back pocket and offers it to me.

“Thanks, no, I’m trying to cut down,” I say. Tim’s gray eyes are in need of the Visine. I hate it, watching someone smart and perceptive spend all their time getting blurry and stupid. He collapses on his back on the couch with a groan, draping one hand over his eyes. It’s hard to remember what he was like before he started auditioning for Betty Ford.

When we were little, our families spent a lot of summer weekends together at Stony Bay Beach. Back then, I was actually closer to Tim than Nan. Nan and Tracy would read and sunbathe, dabble their toes in the water, but Tim was never afraid to wade out and pull me with him into the biggest waves. He was also the one who discovered the riptide in the creek, the one that zoomed you down and whipped you out to sea.

“So, babe—gettin’ any these days?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me from his supine position. “Charley was going nuts because you wouldn’t go for his nuts, if ya know what I mean.”

“Hilarious, Timmy. You can stop talking now,” Nan says.

“No, really—it’s a good thing you broke up with Charley, Samantha. He was an asshole. I’m not friends with him anymore either because, strangely enough, he thought I was the asshole.”

“Hard to imagine,” Nan says. “Timmy—just go to bed. Mommy will be home soon and she’s not going to keep buying that you took too much Benadryl because of your allergies. She knows you don’t have allergies.”

“I do so,” Tim says loudly, all out-of-proportion indignant. He pulls a joint out of the front pocket of his shirt and waves it at her triumphantly. “I’m allergic to weeds.” Then he bursts out laughing. Nan and I exchange a look. Tim is usually stoned and drunk. But there’s a nervous, jacked-up energy about him now that hints at harder stuff.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say. “Walk downtown.”

She nods. “How about Doane’s? I need some chocolate malt ice cream.” She grabs her purse from a puffy flowered chair and leans over, giving Tim, who is still chuckling, a shake. “Go upstairs,” she says. “Now. Before you fall asleep.”

“I’m not gonna fall asleep, sis. I’m just restin’ my eyes,” Tim mumbles.

Nan nudges his shoulder again. As she moves away, he grabs her purse so she jerks to a stop.

“Nano. Sis. Nan, kid, I need something,” he says urgently, his face all desperate.

She raises a pale eyebrow at him.

“A shitload of jelly beans from Doane’s, okay? But no green ones. They scare me.”





Chapter Seven



On the porch, I grab Nan’s hand, squeeze it.

“I know!” she says. “It’s so much worse since he got kicked out of Ellery. He spends all day like this, and God knows what he does at night. My parents are completely and totally without a clue. Mommy buys all his lies—‘Oh, that’s catnip in that bag, Ma. Oh, those pills? Aspirin. That white stuff? Just salt.’ Then she busts him for swearing—by making him put money in the swear box. He just swipes more from my purse. And Daddy? Well.” She shrugs.

Mrs. Mason is the most relentlessly cheerful person I’ve ever met. All her sentences begin with exclamations: So! My! Well! Goodness! By contrast, Mr. Mason rarely says anything at all. When we were little, I had this windup toy, a plastic chick from an Easter basket—and I thought of him sort of like that. He remained virtually unmoving in a plaid armchair from the moment he got home till dinner, then resumed his position after dinner until bedtime, wound up only long enough to get to and from work and to and from the table.