Unaware of it, Tara gloated when Brooke staggered home only forty minutes after she left. The back door slammed off the kitchen wall. Tara was upstairs watching a documentary about a boy who videotaped his truly embarrassing parents.
[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]
Their house was rickety but Brooke was causing a ruckus. So that while little Chester on TV told his bickering parents, “You guys are golden,” Tara visualized Brooke opening and closing the refrigerator and crashing into furniture.
Then Brooke tromped upstairs and stalked noisily in Tara’s vicinity before falling into a stuffed chair. Her face was wet and streaked with dirt and her long sleek hair was one huge tangle. She expelled breath toward the ceiling and tugged her turquoise top, twisting the loose material into her fists. “So did anybody call while I was gone?”
“Call?” Tara stifled out right laughter and snorted. “Like who?”
“Well,” Brooke was up now and pacing, “did anybody stop by? Ring the doorbell? Was there a message for me?”
“The movie star stood you up, huh?”
“Stood…me…up.” Brooke hiccupped between the words and sat on the floor. “Yep. He did. Stand me up.”
Tara stopped watching TV to watch Brooke who was hiccupping and swiping at tears. It wasn’t funny anymore. “That’s too bad, Brooke. But it’s one night. One thing. I mean, come on. Calm down.”
Curled on the carpet, she stared at her marching fingers. “How am I gonna make it through a whole night?”
“Um, you know what? I’ve got some whiskey. Stole it from Dad.” Their father worked in a bar forty miles away. Last Sunday, Tara was supposed to wait in the car while their dad popped inside before hours.
Brooke was still on the floor, hiccupping. She rocked on her spine—until Tara grabbed her elbow. “Get a grip. Jeez, Brooke. You’re such a baby.”
She brought the bottle of Maker’s Mark from her bedroom, expecting Brooke to take a sip and settle down and watch TV with her. But Brooke gulped down a lot. She swung her legs in front of her and stood up, no more hiccups. “Okay if I take this to bed with me, Tara?”
It didn’t occur to Tara to say no.
Hours later, just before Tara was ready to go to bed, Brooke stumbled into the living room, stinking of vomit. She said, “I can’t walk, Tara,” except she couldn’t exactly talk either.
“Shit,” Tara said. “You’re shit-faced.” Brooke dropped into the couch, unconscious. Tara knew that when someone was shit-faced you shoved them into a cold shower.
But it wasn’t easy. She had to get in the shower with Brooke and shampoo her stinking hair and soap her smelly body.
Tara took care of the whole horrible mess. Got Brooke showered, dried, and back to bed—except it was Tara’s bed. Brooke’s sheets needed washing. Tara stuffed Brooke’s clothes in the washing machine and cleaned her room. Afraid all the while she would puke too—from the smell—she wiped up the puddle on the bathroom floor. She even washed the towels and ran the dryer.
Finally, she took another shower. And burned incense, which her mother used for meditating. That’s where their mother was now. Every other week she meditated all night with her jewelry-making group.
In four hours Tara and Brooke would be getting ready for high school and Brooke would pretend she didn’t know Tara. For three years Brooke would ignore Tara in public because she was a year older and a year cooler.
Now, however, Brooke loomed in Tara’s face, shaking her awake, where she’d fallen asleep watching TV. “I’m really sorry, Tara. And really, thank you. I mean for everything. ’Cause getting drunk like that helped. I’d never have made it through this without you.”
Yawning, Tara stretched her arms. “Did you have sex with him or something?”
“Nothing like that. I was just shocked that he would leave me hanging like that. I thought he liked me.”
“But you know people do that all the time. Men especially.”
“For no reason?” Brooke asked.
“Of course for no reason.”
“I think he was scared of me. Like, I’d ruin his reputation.”
“Brooke, please. He did it because he wanted to—everybody’s reason for everything.”
(Click here to read the next episode)
