Free Don't Fail Me Now by Una LaMarche Page A

with right now. I step across the threshold into the steamy, grease-tinged air of the kitchen and try to regain my composure. I might not ever be able to close the door on Buck metaphorically, but at least right now I can let it slam literally, with a satisfying
thwack
, in Tim’s face.

FOUR
    Tuesday Night, Part 2
    Baltimore, MD
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Denny asks on the car ride back to Aunt Sam’s.
    â€œNothing,” I say. I turn up the radio, which is playing “Daddy’s Home,” by Usher. Of course it is.
    â€œYou look weird,” Denny insists.
    â€œThat’s just her face,” Cass says.
    Fifteen feet ahead, the light turns yellow, and I have to make a split-second decision whether to speed up or slam on the brakes. I choose brakes. We screech to a halt.
    I was seven when I found out Leah existed. It wasn’t that Mom tried to keep it from me for a year, it was just that it took her that long to say it plainly instead of using grown-upcode I couldn’t understand. “Knocked up” sounded violent, which confused me even more, because despite his many failings, Buck didn’t hit us. (He was even big into Gandhi for a while and interpreted passive resistance as a good excuse not to get a job.) I didn’t ask questions because back then, when it was still new, anything could make her crumble. I knew he’d left, and I knew he wasn’t coming back, and I poured all of my anxiety into making sure I didn’t do anything to make my mother cry.
    One day, in late summer, we were sitting on the stoop in the early evening, trying to cool off, because somehow it was hotter in the house than outside no matter how many fans we had running. I remember I was blowing bubbles, barefoot, as Cass tried to catch them between her palms before they burst against the pavement. Mom was leaning against the house, talking to one of our neighbors and smoking a cigarette, when a four-year-old girl whizzed by, topless, on a scooter. Mom turned after her and stared.
    â€œWhat is it?” the neighbor asked.
    â€œBuck’s other daughter would be about that age,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Every time I see one, I just . . .” She shuddered.
    I had just released an enormous bubble when she said it and can still remember seeing the world reflected upside down in its shimmering skin as it bobbed lazily down toward the weeds lining the basement wall.
    I got up the courage to ask her later, while I was brushing my teeth and she was struggling to give Cass her nightly injection. “Why did you tell Mrs. Wilson that Daddy has another daughter?”
    â€œBecause he does.” She finally landed the needle, and Cass howled.
    â€œIs she my sister then?”
    â€œNo,” Mom said softly, kissing the top of Cass’s head. “Don’t worry about her. She’s nobody.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Back at the house, I take a much-needed shower while the kids watch one of those cooking-nightmare shows on TV. Aunt Sam’s working a late shift, so I stand under the spray for fifteen minutes, ignoring the Post-It on the door reminding us that hot water isn’t cheap. Despite her stinginess, though, the shower caddy is packed full of upscale shampoos, scrubs, and body washes (mostly for “mature skin,” or “color-treated hair,” but whatever—Devereaux rule #2: Free is free), and I use a tiny bit of everything, luxuriating in the sweet botanical smells as they wash down my body in a sudsy waterfall. What is it about water that’s so healing? I remember reading in a magazine that some women have their babies in tubs and that even though it seems like they would drown, they know not to breathe until they break through the surface. Mom says when I was a toddler, I would lie on my back in the bath and let the water cover my face. She said it didn’t scare me. She said I could smile and hold my breath at