Beginner's Luck. Kate Clayborn
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of soup. I accept it gratefully, comforted by the familiarity of having Sharon here. She moved in next door three years after my mom moved out, and at first I was sort of terrified of her. She was six-foot-one and wore old baseball jerseys and jeans almost every day, and within two months of moving in she’d built a garage in the backyard entirely by herself. She and my dad argued about tools and cars and politics, but she was his best friend, and she certainly took better care of me than my own mom did.
“I’m all right. Busy there today.”
“It always is on Saturdays,” she says. “I’ll open and close tomorrow so you can stay home with him. The aide’s on the schedule for the morning, if you need to get out at all.”
“Sharon,” I sigh, once I swallow a bite of her delicious soup, “you’re saving us.”
“Don’t be an idiot. It’s just soup. Anyways I usually work Sundays.”
“Okay,” I say, because I know Sharon. If I thank her too much for this food, she’ll probably put a laxative in the next thing she makes me, just to teach me a lesson. I shove in a few more bites, set down my bowl on the kitchen table so I can grab a beer.
“Your mom came by for a bit today,” Sharon says from behind me, and I’m glad to have my face stuck in the refrigerator at that moment, so I can school my features. I saw my mom earlier this week, at the hospital, and it was awkward as all hell, as it usually is with us. My parents probably had one of the most amicable splits in the history of divorces, despite the fact that my mom left this house and moved straight into the downtown condo of the partner at the law firm where she worked as paralegal. When dad and I went to her wedding, barely a year later, my dad hugged her and shook Richard’s hand, and it was basically as if he was seeing an old friend get married, no hard feelings at all. Sometimes, when I’d have my weekly dinners with Mom, Dad would come along so they could catch up. The best thing about that was I didn’t have to do much talking.
“That’s nice,” I say, popping the tab on one of my dad’s shitty beers and leaning against the counter.
“Ben. It is nice.”
“Sure. That’s what I said.” Sharon gets along fine with my mom too. Actually, everyone gets along fine with my mom. I’m the only asshole around who holds a grudge, and even though I do my best with Mom—I call her every couple of weeks, I always see her when I’m in town—I still feel as tense and resentful around her as I did when I was a kid. “You should get out of here, Sharon. Get some rest before tomorrow.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snaps, but she’s wiping her hands on the towel, heading toward the door. “Henry!” she shouts, that big, gritty voice of hers always a surprise that makes me smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget to take the stool softener the aide left!”
I wince, and my dad shouts back, “I’ll call you in the morning, let you know if it worked!”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Good luck,” she says.
I take another drink of my beer and almost grab one for Dad but remember he’s off the stuff until he’s not taking his painkillers at night anymore. Instead, I get him a glass of water and head into the living room, where he’s sitting in his recliner, a TV tray covered in clock pieces in front of him. His left arm, heavy from the cast he’ll be in for the next two weeks, is held tight on his abdomen with a sling, but he’s tinkering as best he can with his right hand, which is shaky and pale.
“Dad, come on,” I say. “Let’s put this away.”
“Be quiet or make yourself useful,” he says, but I take the tray from him anyways, pulling it toward me before I slump on the couch. He grunts his disapproval, shifting slightly in his chair.
“You want to elevate it for a while?” I ask. In addition to the busted elbow and collarbone, Dad shattered his tibia, and his left leg from the knee down is in a thick, black boot, cushioned by some fancy inflatable bags that are supposed to stabilize the bone, which is now home to a titanium rod and a bunch of screws.
He waves me off, and I can see the effort it’s taking him to stay awake. Even in the hospital he fought sleep, wanting to stay as close to his longtime routine as possible: asleep at nine, up at five. I had the best luck in the hospital talking to him until he’d dozed off, and I decide I’ll do that here too, just to avoid an argument. If I have to carry him to bed, I’ll do it, but it’ll probably break my heart in half. Seeing my dad—my strong, unflappable dad—in this condition has been a gut check I wasn’t prepared for.
I tell him about my day at the yard, give him a report on the slate I picked up today, which, aside from the piece I broke on my call to Jasper, was in great shape, and would probably do a whole roof on a smaller house, a good profit if we get a contractor who’s interested. Talking about the yard, I guess, isn’t the best way to make him sleepy, since he looks more alert than he has in a few days. I use the conversation as the grease I need to get him up and moving toward the bathroom, talking as much for his sake as for mine. It’s less awkward helping him undress and getting him settled on the toilet when I’m talking the whole time, even when I’m standing outside the door, waiting for him to finish up.
Once I’ve got him in bed, I make him take his meds, and he leans his head back on the pillows I’ve propped up—upright sleep for the first days after the surgery, the doctor said, and believe me, I took notes. He looks exhausted by all that bedtime effort. “You’re not going to have trouble at work, being here?”
“Dad, we’ve talked about this. It’s fine.” I sit in the chair I pulled up by his bed before I brought him home. I’m not leaving until he’s asleep. I even bought a baby monitor on Thursday night, but I’ve stowed it under the bed so he won’t know.
“Don’t use the f-word with me,” he says. “I know you’re real important over there at your job.”
I think about how important I stand to be if Jas and I can get out of this non-compete, if we can break out on our own. “You had some work yesterday?” he asks.
“Yeah, I went to see a possible recruit. She was—not real interested.”
“I thought you go around throwing all kinds of money at people,” he says, but he’s smiling, teasing me a little. “She doesn’t like money?”
“I don’t think she likes me.”
“Can’t say as I blame her,” he says. “With that ugly mug you got.”
“Jealous, old man?” I tease, and he huffs a laugh. I find myself telling him about my meeting with her, but I’m not even focusing on any of the right things. I skip right over the part where I insulted her by assuming she was someone else. Instead, I’m describing her—I’m talking about the goggles she wore over her black-rimmed glasses, the way I could still see the dark, rich color of her eyes right through them. I’m talking about how she was barely as tall as the steel frame she was cleaning, how she wore a too-big lab coat that had the sleeves rolled up into thick cuffs. I’m not saying anything that has to do with a plan.
“Mad scientist,” my dad murmurs, and it’s good—he’s getting sleepy.
“Yeah,” I say, but her lab—it was clean, almost freakishly so, when most labs I visit seem in a constant state of disarray. “She’s working with lots of old equipment, which she wouldn’t have to worry about if she came to work for us. She broke one of her old cabinets while I was there. The thing looks like it was manufactured during the Manhattan Project.”
Dad perks up, rolls his eyes toward me. “What’d she break?” Typical, that this is the detail my dad would seize on.
“Storage cabinet, a steel one. Broke the handle off. She seemed used to it—had a piece of rope as a handle for two of the other doors.”
“I got handles for one of those at the yard, probably. Those cabinets are a dime a dozen.”
I think about this, wondering what Averin would think if I showed