HICKEY Read online

  “I’m a gifted multi-tasker,” she said sweetly.

  I kind of wanted to pour my soda over her glossy hair.

  Maura nudged me. “You know Bran, don’t you? Kevin said something about you guys having a history but he said Bran wouldn’t give details.”

  Dorrit’s smile dropped and she gazed at me curiously. “Really?”

  “We knew each other a long time ago, grew up together. I hadn’t seen him in years,” I said, hoping that would make the topic go away.

  Dorrit tapped her fuchsia fingernails on the table. The idea that I had a leg up on her next conquest seemed to have knocked her down a little.

  “Small world,” she said. “That’s quite a coincidence that he showed up here. He’s not exactly your typical freshman.”

  “I don’t think he’s planning on sticking around long,” Maura piped up.

  My head snapped in her direction. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just stuff Kevin says. I guess Bran misses the Army or something.”

  “I don’t think he’ll go back to the Army,” I said quietly and stared down at my salad. Bran had given me the impression that he was done being in the military. That didn’t mean he was going to stay at CAU though. Suddenly the idea of Bran exiting my life as abruptly as he’d reentered it filled me with anxiety.

  When I looked up I saw Dorritt was watching me. She seemed on the verge of asking a question but then Maura stood up and gathered her scarcely touched food tray.

  “Kevin just texted to ask if I wanted to go grab some food so I think I’m giving up on the salad.” She looked my way. “Unless you want me to wait around and walk back with you, Cecily?”

  “No, go ahead. I’m pretty sure I can find my own way back.”

  Dorritt slung an arm around my shoulder. “She’s fine. She’s got me.”

  I waved to Maura and then as soon as she turned her back I edged my chair away from Dorritt.

  Dorritt didn’t seem to care. She sipped her soda and gave me a sly smile. “So tell me more about this connection you have with the mysterious Branson.” She laughed. “You’re such a closed book. I was starting to believe you were a former nun, Cecily.”

  I balled my napkin up. “What the hell are you doing, Dorritt?”

  “Right now? I’m eating dinner and talking to a colleague.”

  “I mean, why are you screwing around with these kids? You’re no hapless teenager.”

  “Kids?” She glanced around in mock horror. “There are no kids here, Cecily. But I can see how it seems that way to you since you’re so ah, mature.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m completely ancient. And I seem to recall you mentioning your prom was six years ago so you’re not much younger.”

  Dorritt took another sip of her drink before responding. “What are you being so pissy about? We’re all adults here.”

  “And some of us even act like it.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dorritt fumed, glaring at me. “Why are you shitting morality all over me? Is this because I asked you about Branson? Get a grip, I hardly know the guy.”

  “This is not about Branson,” I said testily.

  But it might have been. Just a little bit. The idea of Dorritt trying to sink her skinny claws into my ex made me want to crush something with my bare hands.

  And yet I could hardly deal with being in the same room with him.

  I was officially nuts.

  “This is not about Bran,” I repeated. “That girl who just walked away from the table a minute ago happens to be in love with your new boy toy. I know you were in his room last night.”

  “Kevin?” she laughed. “So what? That was nothing.”

  “His girlfriend won’t think so.”

  She was incredulous. “Is that my fault?” Then realization dawned on her face. “You were the one at the door last night, looking for Branson.”

  “Yeah, I was looking for Branson,” I grumbled and I got to my feet. Not that Dorritt’s opinion mattered much to me but I was tired of keeping secrets. I was tired of pretending that the most significant event in my life had never happened.

  “We were married,” I said, a little louder than I needed to.

  Dorritt’s blue eyes widened. “What?”

  “Branson Hickey is my ex-husband. We got married when we were eighteen. We split up less than six months later.”

  “Holy shit.” Dorritt shook her head. “Damn, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Now you do.” I started to walk away.

  “Hey, Cecily,” Dorritt called and when I looked back she was frowning. “Do you want to talk?”

  “No thanks; not right now. And not to you,” I said.

  Then I doubled back, reached across the table and grabbed her unopened bag of potato chips off her food tray. I ate them hungrily on the walk back to my room.

  In the solitude of my room I sat on quietly on the edge of the bed. The picture I’d painted for Bran so many years ago, the picture that had born witness to much of the best and worst of our short time together, was rolled up on my desk.

  Impulsively I whipped out my phone. I listened to it ring twice and then a familiar voice said, “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Cecily!” She always seemed shocked to hear my voice. Perhaps that was because I didn’t call very often. It wasn’t because we fought. But we’d never been one of those loving mother/daughter pairs. Anyway, these days she was busy with her new husband, her new life. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year.

  “I had a question for you,” I said.

  “Honey, is it okay if I call you back later?” she said impatiently. “I want to hear all about what’s new with you but Mark will be home for dinner in about five minutes.”

  “This won’t take five minutes.” I swallowed. “Mom, you never tried to stop me from marrying Bran.”

  “You didn’t ask my permission, Cecily,” she said with surprise. “You were eighteen, technically an adult. I couldn’t have stopped you.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “But I was so young. I was still crushed from what Dad did to us and I went out with Bran for only a short time before we ran to the altar. It must have occurred to you that marrying Branson Hickey at age eighteen wasn’t the best life plan. But you never said a word. Why?”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end. Then my mother let out a thick sigh.

  “Bran was what you wanted,” she finally said. “He made you happy and after all the misery you’d suffered you deserved to be happy. That’s all any mother wants most for her child. And it seemed like you loved him. My god, you two were so head over heels you could barely keep your hands off each other.” She paused. “Weren’t you in love with him?”

  “Yes,” I said, almost too quietly to be heard. “I was very much in love with him.”

  “What’s going on with you?” my mother asked and now she sounded concerned. “I can’t even remember the last time you talked about Bran. That’s something I’ve always admired about you, honey. You know how to move on without looking back.”

  “I want you every night until forever, Cecily.”

  My mother was wrong about me. But then, I’d been wrong about myself. I never did really learn how to move on. I was hopelessly stuck in the past.

  “Yeah, Mom. Everything’s fine. I’m sorry I interrupted you. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay, sweetheart. You have a good night.”

  Once the call disconnected I kept thinking about what it had felt like to fall asleep in Bran’s arms and wake up in the same place. That had been such a brief season and yet it still occupied so much space in my heart.

  “I did love you,” I growled. In a burst of violence I threw my phone and watched it bounce off the wall.

  “You son of a bitch,” I whispered, sinking to the floor. “I loved you more than anything.”

  But the room was still empty. There was no one around to answer me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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  Cecily

  The only winter of my short marriage was the coldest in nearly half a century. Bran set up some space heaters in the apartment but it was mostly for me. He never seemed too bothered by the cold.

  As the months wore on, the close quarters of the apartment started feeling oppressively tight. I’d get annoyed when he’d spill milk on the small kitchen table and forget to clean it up. He’d complain when his razor was dull because I’d used it to shave my legs.

  Those were small things but small things had a way of adding up. Bran wasn’t always to blame. I’d given about half a second of thought to what being married would mean, to what living with a guy would be like.

  I didn’t know when I’d lost my optimism but thoughts of the future started weighing on me. I could picture us fast forwarding to age thirty five, still living above Bran’s father’s garage with some unhappy kids running around and wiping their noses on shabby furniture. We’d already had one pregnancy scare and it was enough to make me realize I wasn’t even slightly ready to be a mother. I wasn’t even ready to be married.

  These were not things that we talked about. We should have. If we had, things might not have become so ugly.

  I was starting to recognize something I should have understood from the beginning. Bran and I had fallen in love but we were kids, two aimless kids playing a game of House. And games never lasted forever.

  We still had sex all the time and it was rough and furious and felt so damn good. Yet the second it was over I felt a little hollow. Maybe it was because he often tasted like alcohol or because we’d started to turn away from each other as soon as our bodies separated.

  Bran started hanging out more with guys like Becker and the other members of the old high school crowd who still lurked around Hickeyville. He always asked if I wanted to come along but I rarely accepted, preferring to take an extra shift at Berto’s or else stay home wrapped in warm layers, reading my latest library acquisitions.

  I was worried about Bran, about how much he was drinking and how it seemed like we didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore. Once I asked him if he saw Kayla around much and just shot me a baffled look and shrugged.

  As for Kayla herself, I had no idea what she was doing with her days. She’d been kicked out of school so she was living next door in Bran’s old house where she didn’t appear to do much except sleep until mid afternoon and take off at night to go party somewhere until dawn. We’d cross paths now and then but we’d either ignore each other or wave stiffly and move on.

  Kayla made me uneasy. Sometimes I’d leave the apartment only to catch a glimpse of her hovering on the front porch of the big house even though it was frigid outdoors. There was something eerily watchful about her and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was waiting, biding her time.

  “Kayla and Becker came in the restaurant today,” I told Bran one evening as we ate bowls of macaroni and cheese on the couch. “I didn’t know they were together.”

  Bran took a long swallow of beer and changed the channel on the television. “News to me,” he said in a bored tone.

  I forked a bite of macaroni even though it tasted like melted rubber in my mouth. “Neither of them mentioned it?”

  “I don’t give much thought to Kayla,” he said gruffly and rose to go dump his bowl in the sink.

  “Well, she gives a lot of thought to you,” I grumbled.

  Bran was still at the sink, facing away. “Why do you say that?” There was an edge to his voice.

  Because of the hungry way her eyes chased him.

  Because of the fact that I kept seeing her staring at our apartment door like a cat itching to pounce.

  Because she and Bran had a thing ages ago and she’d made it clear she intended to pursue him again.

  Because I sensed that Bran and I were slipping away from each other a little more each day.

  “No reason,” I said and walked over to the sink to toss my own bowl in. The momentum was a little too forceful and the cheap ceramic broke in half.

  “For fuck’s sake, Cecily,” Bran snarled, picking up the pieces and ramming them into the plastic trashcan.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I snapped. “It was an accident.”

  He set his palms on the edge of the sink, leaned forward and took a couple of deep breaths. “I can’t sit in here and do this tonight.”

  I crossed my arms. “Then don’t.”

  He looked at me. “Get your coat, then. Let’s go out.”

  “Bran, it’s like ten degrees out there.” I slowly walked to him, reached out a hand to touch his back but then stopped short. “We could watch a movie or something.”

  He shook his head and swiveled his head to stare out the window. “We’ll just fight.”

  I withdrew the hand had been about to tentatively touch him.

  “Then leave,” I said icily.

  “You want me to leave, Cecily?”

  I didn’t want that at all. “Yes.”

  He was silent. I stalked into the tiny bathroom and slammed the door. A moment passed and then the front door slammed, like a belated echo.

  The quiet was terrible. I flushed the empty toilet just to make some noise and left the bathroom.

  What’s wrong with me?

  What’s wrong with us?

  I didn’t have any answers and I couldn’t think of anyone I could call to get them. My mother would wring her hands and talk about my father. Antha would say sympathetic things but she wouldn’t know what to tell me. Maybe it was my fault that I’d made Bran my entire world before I even knew him very well.

  There was nothing on television and I couldn’t get interested in a book so I did something else. I retrieved the art supplies Bran had rescued from the trash months ago. Storage space in the apartment was minimal so I’d had no option but to stuff them back under the bed. At least I hadn’t thrown them away again.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at all the pencils, paints and sketch pads. I knew better than to believe that I was an unusual talent who would be celebrated worldwide. But I could hold my own. People paused to look at my work and I was good enough to get a scholarship to that Chicago school. For so long it was my dream to someday teach what I’d learned to kids who were searching for a reason to be hopeful even if things sucked in their lives.

  Once I put pencil to paper I didn’t want to stop. The sketch started out being the empty bed. There was no reason, other than the fact that it was right in front of me.

  Then I started outlining a figure sitting on the edge of the bed. His broad shoulders were slumped and his elbows rested on his knees, the picture of dejection.

  I didn’t realize the sketch was Bran until my pencil started filling in the face. Faces were always tough for me. I wasn’t quite skilled enough to get the essence of an expression correct. But by the time I pulled the pencil away there was Bran’s unhappy stare watching me from the paper. It was the same look he’d given me as he stood there by the sink earlier. It was a little too real.

  Seized with a sudden panic, I scrambled for my phone and fired off a text.

  Come home. Please.

  The moments ticked by as I waited tensely but no answer came. When Bran finally walked through the door two hours later I was in bed but wide awake.

  “You’re still up,” he commented when he saw me propped up on a pillow, blinking at him.

  “Did you have fun?” I asked.

  Bran slid out of his leather jacket. “Not really.”

  “You smell like a damn bar,” I huffed, rolling to my side.

  “I wasn’t drinking,” he said defensively.

  “Sure you weren’t. You must have gotten your aftershave confused with the tequila bottle.”

  He grunted and I saw his jacket sail over the bed and land in a corner. “Becker spilled half his damn bottle all over me. Not my fucking fault.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed briefly. “You were hanging out with Becker? So was Kayla there, too?”
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br />   “In the end, yeah. We were just at Beck’s house. She showed up already wasted or high or both. She and Beck started dry humping and then went to another room to fuck.”

  “Charming.” I cleared my throat. “I texted you.”

  “Did you? Shit. I don’t know where my phone is.” He sat down and I heard him pulling off his boots. “What did you need?”

  I need you. I need us.

  “Nothing,” I said, rolling to my back so I could see him.

  Bran yawned and stretched, then discarded his shirt. My nose wrinkled. I wasn’t kidding when I said he smelled liked a bar.

  “You should know better,” I mumbled, not really intending for him to hear me. But he heard.

  His head swiveled my way. “Better than what?”

  I sat up straight. “Better than the average idiot. You drink too much and you don’t seem to care about consequences. Did you forget the car accident that took your football career away? Even worse, did you forget how your own brother died?”

  All the air went out of the room. I’d never regretted any words more than those. I knew how Caden’s death haunted Bran. He looked positively stricken for a moment and then his face hardened.

  “Fuck you for saying that, Cess,” he said, his voice tight with anger.

  I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to reach for him, feel his hands on me, get lost in the oblivion of passion. But the words got stuck and I was made of stone. I didn’t move or breathe or say anything.

  Bran glared at me, waiting. I pulled the covers up to my chin and looked away.

  He let out a hiss and stormed through the curtain into the living room. There was the sound of the refrigerator opening, of a bottle being removed, his angry weight landing on the sunken couch. He was going to sit out there in the dark and the cold and drink alone. Just to spite me, just because he could.

  There were a million reasons for me to leave that bed and go to him. Instead I buried myself under the covers and fell into a fitful sleep.

  That was the night the factory burned. I was startled awake by the sound of screaming, my thudding heart trying to catch up to my brain’s awareness that the screams were not human, but the wail of emergency vehicles.