The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [74]
Courtney has done this before. It’s a school night. She’ll be in just before her 9:30 curfew, claiming Andrea knew she wouldn’t be home for dinner, doesn’t Andrea remember? She had that project she was working on at the library with Jen or Jessica or one of the other J’s, all of her friends having J names, or so it seems. Picking up the phone, Andrea hits the speed-dial for Courtney’s cell. The voice mail kicks in. Andrea hangs up.
John won’t be here until after ten. Andrea stands in the kitchen for . . . she doesn’t know how long.
From the front comes the slam of a door outside, the sound of a car moving off. Then, nothing. The silent taunt of Courtney standing in the yard, not moving, knowing Andrea is waiting for her. With her heart thundering in her ears, Andrea strides through the hallway, flings open the door.
On the lawn, beside the tree festooned with its white ribbon, Courtney sits with her legs splayed out in front of her, jacket and schoolbooks flung around her in a haphazard circle. “Hi, Mom.” Her head bobs with silent laughter. She reeks of liquor and smoke.
“You’re drunk.” Andrea is visited by an image of her own drunken nights years before, her own sit-downs on various lawns, heedless of the books and sweaters and purses strewn on the grass or in the mud or atop the snow. At first, she can’t manage anger.
Then she can. Anger seeps through her like white heat. She was much older than fourteen in her own dissolute days. Eighteen. Twenty. Old enough to know what she was doing. She forgives herself her youthful excesses. She does not forgive Courtney. She hauls her to her feet.
“Ouch!” Courtney yells as Andrea marches her toward the door. “Ouch, I’m not kidding!” Courtney inclines her head toward the arm Andrea holds in her grasp. The child is wearing a sleeveless tank. It’s mid-November, not freezing, but cold enough. Looking down, Andrea expects goose bumps. What she sees, wrapped like a bracelet around the flesh of Courtney’s left arm just below the shoulder, is a series of tattoos.
“Oh my God!” She drags Courtney through the doorway, through the hall, into the bright kitchen. Courtney squints. Andrea examines the outlines of purplish stars etched into her daughter’s skin—purplish rather than blue because of the bloom of inflammation spreading out from each of the little lines.
“Jesus Christ, what a mess! This was done with a sewing needle and ink, wasn’t it? Not regular tattoo ink. How long have you had this?”
“Not long,” Courtney whispers, shaky. “I got it today.”
“Got it where? Who did this to you?”
Courtney shakes her head.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Courtney. You can’t legally get a tattoo unless a guardian signs. Can’t you see it’s getting infected? Who did this?”
Although Andrea is no longer touching her daughter, Courtney flinches. “I don’t know.” Her breath is rank, more bourbony than beery, more cigarettes than liquor.
“Oh, I see. You had a couple of shots of liquor to get up your nerve and then got tattooed by some butcher with no license, no disinfectants, no . . . And now you don’t know who it was?”
“Some guy Jessica’s boyfriend knows.”
“Some guy?” Andrea’s circle of concern shifts. There’s Neosporin in the medicine chest, antibiotics they can get tomorrow from the doctor. But some guy?
“Some guy who also gave you the liquor? Some guy who also drove you home? Did you sleep with him, too?”
Courtney stonewalls. Andrea stares her down. She senses Courtney is finally about to answer when, instead, the girl goes dead white. “Oh shit!” Courtney claps her hand over her mouth and sprints to the bathroom. Instead of following her to wet a washcloth and hold her daughter’s forehead, for once Andrea sits at the table and listens to her daughter retch.
Courtney is still so ashen afterward that Andrea postpones the who-what-where inquisition for another time. Or never. What difference will it make, once they’re in California?
“You had to do this right now, didn’t you? Smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.