John Saul: Black Creek Crossing

“Eighty-five thousand,” Joni repeated as Angel came back up from the basement with the can of WD-40. “And I think they’ll come down. Way down. And we both know Marty can fix anything he sets his mind to, as long as he—” She abruptly stopped again, but the last two words—“stays sober”—hung between the two women as clearly as if Joni had spoken them aloud.

“It’s all right, Joni,” Myra said as the silence threatened to get uncomfortable. “We both know what you were going to say. The sad part is, you’re right — not only about what you said, but what you didn’t say too. If he really wanted to, Marty could fix up the worst house you could find.”

“Myra, I’m telling you, this is the house!”

Myra paused as the words sank in. Joni had been calling her about houses for almost a year now, and she had actually gone to look twice. But the houses they could afford — assuming they could qualify for any kind of mortgage at all — were even worse than the duplex they were living in now. And the ones that Joni had described as “perfect” had always been so expensive that Myra hadn’t even bothered to go see them, certain they would only make her feel envious.

“It can’t hurt to look,” Joni said, as if sensing Myra’s reluctance, and Myra wondered how many times her sister had spoken those exact words to hesitant buyers, only to sell them houses a few hours later, whether they felt they could afford them or not. It wasn’t just persistence that had made Joni the most successful agent in her office; she also had an uncanny ability to sense exactly what a customer was looking for, and then find it for them.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “It just seems like it’s not the right time.”

“It is the right time,” Joni Fletcher assured her. “I always know these things. I have a sixth sense about them. And I know this is the right house, at the right price. And I’m telling you, this one’s perfect for you. It’s not huge, but—”

“I’ll think about it, all right?” Myra broke in, knowing that once her sister got started, she could go on about a house for ten or twenty minutes. “I’ve got to get Marty’s dinner ready.”

“Okay,” Joni agreed reluctantly. “But if you don’t call me in the morning and tell me when you’re coming, I warn you — I’ll drive you crazy!”

“As if you don’t do that already!” Myra shot back, and hung up before her sister could get in another word.

She was rummaging in the pantry for something that might pass as dinner, and wishing for once she’d ignored her conscience and splurged on some steaks for Angel’s birthday, when she heard her daughter utter a frustrated yelp. “Can’t get it out?” Myra asked, not turning around.

“I–I broke it off,” Angel stammered, her voice quavering. “Daddy’ll—”

Abandoning the pantry, Myra hurried to her daughter and took the broken end of the key from her. “Your father won’t do anything at all,” she promised. “I’ll just call a locksmith and…” Her words died away as she saw that Angel’s body was shaking and tears were streaming down her face. “For heaven’s sake, Angel, don’t cry! It’s only a broken key — it’s not the end of the world.”

“It’s not that—” Angel began, her voice catching on a choking sob. “It’s just—” Her voice caught again, then she threw herself into her mother’s arms and her words tumbled out in rushing torrent. “I can’t do anything right! And I don’t have any friends, and I’m fat, and I’m ugly, and I hate everything about my life! I just hate it!”

“You mustn’t talk that way,” Myra told her, holding Angel away so she could look into her eyes. “You’re not fat, and a great many people love you.”

“Who?” Angel demanded, her voice muffled as she again pressed her face to her mother’s breast.

“I do, and your father does, and Aunt Joni and Uncle Ed, and—”

“They’re my family,” Angel moaned. “They have to love me. But the kids—” She stopped abruptly, and Myra felt her stiffen, as if she’d suddenly decided she didn’t want to say any more.

“What about your friends?” she asked. “Did something happen at school today?”

Angel pulled away from her mother, shook her head, and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. What good would it do to try to tell her what had happened when her mother didn’t understand that she didn’t have any friends?

“What is it, Angel?” Myra pressed. “It’s all right — you can tell me. I’m your mother.”

But Angel only shook her head again. “Nothing happened,” she insisted. “I just feel like—” She fell silent, then shrugged. “I’ll be okay.” But as they heard the front door slam, followed by Marty Sullivan’s slurred voice as he shouted for Myra, Angel bit her lip. “I’ll set the table,” she said, and by the time her father staggered into the room a moment later, she was already pulling the silverware out of the drawer next to the sink.

“I quit,” Marty Sullivan announced, his face red and his voice thick from the half-dozen drinks he’d had before he came home. “Won’t work for that son of a bitch O’Donnell anymore!”

As her husband’s words echoed in the kitchen, Myra Sullivan’s heart sank.

Once again, her husband was drunk.

Once again, her husband had been fired.

And this time she doubted there would be a new job, because she was fairly sure Jerry O’Donnell was the last man left in Eastbury who would give Marty Sullivan a chance.

Maybe, after all, it was time to go talk to Joni.

ETH BAKER WAS SO FOCUSED ON THE COMPUTER screen that he didn’t hear his father’s first rap on his bedroom door. The image that had captured his attention for the last ten minutes was one of almost a hundred photographs he’d taken that day, wandering around Roundtree after school with the digital camera his mother had given him for his birthday last week.

“A camera?” his father had groused when Seth ripped the paper off the box. “For God’s sake, Jane — he’s fifteen! What does he want with a camera?”

“All I know is that he said he wanted one,” his mother had replied. “I didn’t ask him why he wanted one.” Then she turned and smiled at him, but it was the same kind of smile he’d seen her put on a million times before, when she was pretending to be interested in something but really wasn’t. “Did I get the right one? It was the most expensive one I could find without going all the way to Boston.”

Seth had given her the nod he knew was expected. “It’s cool,” he’d said, though he hadn’t even looked at it yet.

But that night, he read the instruction manual and decided that the camera was, indeed, very cool. The biggest problem was that though it would take pictures at very high resolution, the memory card it came with wasn’t big enough to hold more than eight pictures at full resolution. And ever since taking a class in photography at summer school, he’d been taking dozens of pictures a day.

His father had been grumbling about that too. “For God’s sake, Jane,” he’d said when Seth’s mother told him about the class. “What’s he want to spend the summer in a darkroom for? He should be out playing baseball with his friends.”

Seth had said nothing, knowing there wasn’t any point in trying to explain that not only did he hate baseball, but nobody wanted him to play anyway. That was one of the things he loved about photography — in the darkroom, nobody paid any attention to what anybody else was doing, and no one was choosing up sides, and no one was yelling at him because he wasn’t very good at sports, which was about all anyone else seemed to care about. For as long as he could remember, he’d always been the last one picked when they chose up sides for football or baseball, and though he could sort of swim, he wasn’t good at it, and though he could dive off the low board, the high board terrified him so much he couldn’t even bring himself to climb up the ladder. It seemed he managed to fumble every time someone threw a football at him, and strike out every time at bat in baseball.