“Where’d you come from?” Zack asked her. Because obviously she’d been upstairs all along.
“We covered that this spring in health, actually,” she told him. That was the other unnerving thing about her granddaughter. Ruth could never be sure when she was joking. A lot of what the girl said was funny, but her delivery was always deadpan, and sometimes when Ruth laughed, she looked blank or even hurt. “For two whole weeks.”
“I must not’ve heard her come in,” Zack said, clearly embarrassed to have told Ruth earlier that she wasn’t in the house.
At this Tina winced. “We had a conversation, Grandpa.” She had a special affection for her grandfather, Ruth knew, and she clearly hated to throw him under the bus. “You asked me why I was home early. I said because of the holiday.”
“Oh,” Zack said sheepishly, “right. Memorial Day. What else did we talk about?” He was scratching his stomach again, genuinely curious.
Tina wrinkled her nose. “It smells in here,” she said. Her bad eye, the one that had been operated on half-a-dozen times, obedient when she’d entered the kitchen, now wandered off as if in search of what stank. When she was tired or upset, it seemed to have an agenda all its own.
“That’s your grandma’s fault,” Zack told her, his loopy grin widening. “She shouldn’t never feed me rice.”
“I shouldn’t feed you at all.”
“You also asked how school was,” Tina said. “I lied and said good. Like always.”
“Can we skip this today?” Ruth suggested, drying her hands on a dishcloth. “About how much you hate school?”
“Summer school will be even worse. Do I really have to go?”
“Yes. So you can graduate. On time.”
“I’d rather come work for you.”
“You already do.” After a fashion. She helped out in the kitchen for a few hours on Saturday mornings during the rush, scrubbing pots, loading and unloading the Hobart.
“Out front?”
“To be a waitress, you have to talk to people.”
“Why?”
“That’s what they come in for, most of them. You can’t just drop plates down in front of customers and walk away. Especially the wrong plates.” Which she’d done when Ruth had let her wait on a table or two.
Tina shrugged. “They just switch their plates.”
“They shouldn’t have to.”
Also you’d have to look people in the eye, Ruth thought, and was immediately ashamed. Whenever she allowed herself to contemplate her granddaughter’s future, it was always the physical disability she focused on, and that wasn’t remotely fair. It reminded her of that story kids still had to read in school, the one where the guy kills an old man because of his “vulture eye,” then chops him up and hides him beneath the floorboards. That’s what people wanted to do with abnormalities: put them somewhere out of sight. Under the floor or back in the steamy kitchen, where people wouldn’t have to see them. This sweet, slow girl? Hide her away so she won’t get hurt. Hide her well enough and long enough and maybe she won’t ask the question you don’t know how to answer: Who will ever want to love me?
“I could bus tables.”
“You want to clear people’s dirty dishes for the rest of your life?”
“You do.”
“Exactly. You want to end up like me?” Because wasn’t she herself an object lesson in how hard it was, even if you kept your wits about you, to arrive at the right place when you started out in the wrong one?
“Besides,” Zack said, “if you work for Grandma, who’s going to be my helper?”
Which she’d been, on weekends during the school year, and also summers and vacations, for the last several years. Together they made the rounds of local yard sales and flea markets. Mostly they were looking for broken small appliances that could be easily repaired if you knew how, but also for items people didn’t know the value of, which you could buy cheap and sell dear to the right buyer. For all the problems Tina had at school, she always remembered where her grandfather put things and would go fetch the item in question if someone expressed interest. Either that or she’d say, “You sold that last week, Grandpa. To the woman with the pink hair?” And she was always right.
“I meant a paying job,” she told him now.
“Hey, don’t I pay you?” Zack said. “What about the Tina Fund?” Each week he gave her a few bucks for spending money, but also made a contribution — he was pretty vague about how much — to what they’d originally designated as her college fund, until it became clear that college wasn’t in the cards.
“How much is in it?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” he told her, his standard kidding reply.
“How can I find out, if you won’t tell me?”
“You’re richer than you’d guess, is all I’m sayin’.”
Ruth cleared her throat. “Does your mom know you’re staying with us tonight?”
“She doesn’t care.”
“Of course she does.”
The girl shrugged.
“She’s your mother. She loves you.”
“She’s always yelling at me.”
“That’s normal. When your mother was your age, she and I fought every day.”
“You still fight every day.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Ruth said. “I am.”
She wasn’t, though. Not really. In truth, the years of conflict with Janey had taken their toll. Now, with Roy back in the picture, it was even worse. That there was no end in sight to their bickering was beyond exhausting to contemplate. Gregory, her son, had been the smart one. He’d joined the military as soon as he was old enough and never came back. He called on Christmas from wherever he was living, but that was about it.
“Am I going to see my dad soon?”
Ruth wasn’t surprised by the question. In fact she’d been expecting it, but she still didn’t know how to answer. “Do you want to?”
Again, the girl shrugged.
“Because you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
A third shrug.
“You know what a restraining order is?”
She nodded.
“You know why your mother got one?”
She nodded, so shrugs and nods were evidently synonyms. “I’m not supposed to let him in.”
Ruth and Zack exchanged a glance.
“If you want to see him, tell me. Or Grandpa. He can visit you here.”
Her eye wandered off. After a minute she said, “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Fighting? You and Grandpa?”
As usual, no transition. Follow the bouncing ball. “We’re trying to decide,” Ruth told her, offering Zack the kind of grudging half smile he could regard as a truce, if he chose to.
Which he did. “She’s trying,” he told his granddaughter. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
Ruth had to swallow hard at that. Had it been a decade? Pretty close. He was right, though, about not being much of a fighter. He’d made the mistake of confronting Sully once, early on, and though half his size Sully had backed him down.
“It’s really hot in my room,” she said. “Can I have a fan?”
“What’s wrong with the one in the window?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Is it plugged in?” Ruth asked. Because while Tina might be smarter than people gave her credit for, she did often overlook the obvious.