Isa said. “It’s tasteless.”
“That’s why I love it,” Patrick said. “It’ll sell.”
As the lid had opened, a string of pin lights that were nestled in the seams of the fabric had flashed on inside the coffin. But I didn’t know that then. I thought they were talking about the material.
The phone rang again.
I felt the cushioned fabric inside. Satin. Soft as clouds. My fingers brushed against Ray’s hands, which flitted about, but I didn’t feel the pin lights.
“Fine,” Isa said. “Sell them around here. We’re not driving this to Florida.” Her voice shifted to her phone politeness: “Hello?”
“The carvings feel great,” I said to Patrick, “but you can’t take this to her dad. It’s rotten luck. He’s not dead yet.”
“What the hell do you know?” he said.
“Quiet!” Isa boomed. “It’s Daddy!” Her voice turned to sugar: “Don’t say that, Daddy. You’ll be fine.”
We could all hear the tinny voice of the old man raving: “The steroids they’ve got me on. Plugged up. Jesus!”
“We’ll be there soon,” Isa said. Her voice was thin now, precarious.
“It’ll be too late!” he said. “You’re always too late, Isa.”
What a bastard, I thought.
“We got you a casket like you wanted,” she offered. “It’s beautiful.”
“I won’t have those metal boxes!” he said. “I need something that rots, goddamn it. I’m going to buy it myself.”
“It’s handmade, Daddy,” Isa said. “Wooden. Daddy!” After a moment, I realized she was sniffling. “Why does he always hang up?” she said.
Patrick didn’t move; I could hear him breathing next to me. I wanted to walk over and hold her, but how could I, with him there? Instead I felt with my foot for the bulge in the kitchen linoleum. Then I beelined to my room and shut the door on them all.
Over the next week and a half, I kept up the facade of working for the newspaper, which was easier than I had expected in a house of distractions. Most of the time, Ray stayed at the Boys and Girls Club a few blocks away, where he could play basketball and air hockey with kids his age. Patrick was either on the phone or making the rounds to funeral parlors in Betsy, his old Taurus wagon, with the foot end of the casket sticking out the back. For several days, he tried to sell his one-of-a-kind coffins; then he tried to place them on consignment. He found the funeral industry to be a tight bunch.
Devon slept mornings; most afternoons, he worked at Target, his summer job. At night, he started pleading with me to run off with him. “Come on,” he said in the bathroom as I was brushing my teeth one night. “You’re sick of living here too.” For months he’d been borrowing my laptop and fooling around on the Internet, meeting people online through Friendster and Myspace. He wanted to run with me to San Francisco, San Diego, or Las Vegas—or wherever his online friends claimed to live. Ray’s quick footsteps found their way along the edge of the room.
I didn’t tell Devon it was a dumb idea. Or that I’d get arrested for kidnapping. I rinsed my mouth and put my toothbrush on my shelf. “Go to Florida,” I said. “You’ll come back here, and before you know it, you’ll have your high school diploma. You’ll find out soon enough how hard it is to be on your own.”
“I ain’t going to Florida,” he said.
“Quit using ‘ain’t.’ You might like Florida.”
“I’m down with Florida; it ain’t that,” he said. “It’s getting cooped up with this family.” He shuffled into the hallway and stopped. “One day you’ll wake up, and I’ll be gone. You too, Beavis Butthead.”
“I’m not Beavis Butthead,” Ray said from the hallway.
During those weeks, Isa would go off to bed with Patrick, but in the middle of the night, she’d slip from the back room around to the kitchen. I wasn’t sleeping well either, so when I heard a chair scrape on the linoleum, I’d get up, make tea, and sit with her, both of us hunched over the table. As everyone else slept, she would grip my hand, telling me how much she needed a listener; why couldn’t Patrick listen like I could? When she clutched my palm against her belly, my fingers tingled from her warmth. I breathed the salty sweetness of her skin.
Sometimes her hands trembled, and we sat in silence. Other times she raved in whispers about owing her life to Daddy—he’d saved her so often when she’d been lost. She told me stories about growing up in Florida—being spied on by her younger brother, doing art projects with her mom, and being groped at the real estate office by Daddy’s partner. Then she’d ramble and fret about wanting to bring Daddy peace. Her anxieties seemed minor compared with her depression the winter before, when she hadn’t gotten out of bed for two weeks. She lay unresponsive that time, sullen, as I tried to get her to sit up and drink tea or eat a cracker. I wanted to help her this time too; I knew Patrick didn’t have the patience.
I met Isa almost two years ago, when I came to Channel House, and I got to know Patrick about a month later, when he was admitted. I had just turned twenty-six, was about ten years younger than they were, and was the youngest person there. I first heard the lilt of Isa’s voice in group counseling, but I first spoke with her in a hallway, where she stopped me with a soft hand on my arm. I knew who it was before she spoke; back then she wore a cheap fragrance several traces too sweet.
I turned my face to hide my scar.
“You don’t have to be shy with me,” she said, bringing my chin forward with her hand. “You’re quite striking.” I drew her hand away from my chin because I wanted to touch her fingers, which were thin and long, with fingernails bitten too short. Her palm was soft.
“Do you know me?” she said.
“Isa,” I said.
She brushed full into me, enlivening my chest with her breasts before stepping back. “You’re cute when you blush. Do you know what I look like?”
I savored the lilt in her voice and her friendly laugh, but I figured she was playing to an audience, so I waited for the chuckles of others. There were none. No sounds of people at all. But still I couldn’t let myself relax. “Is that important,” I said, “how you look?”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s more important how we feel.” She lifted my hand to her face and dragged my fingers through her hair. She let me feel her long neck and the way her throat trembled as she laughed. She traced my hand along her shoulders, arms, and thighs. Her skirt clung to my fingers as if the material were on my hand instead of her hips. My fingertips tingled, and my breathing quickened. She had on a halter top that was open in back and held her breasts like pendulums; I knew because she traced my fingers along her stomach and up under the fullness so pliable and resistant through the thin cotton—all of which made me grin like a goof.
“You’re cute,” she said again, as if surprised. “You don’t get to see anything; you might as well touch.” The way she laughed made me feel included.
I was touching the roundness of her hips when footsteps approached. “None of that at the House,” a counselor said. “There’s plenty of time after you’re clean. After you respect each other. After your graduation.”
“I respect him already,” Isa said. “Do you respect me?”
“I do respect you,” I said.
“You know what I’m talking about,” the counselor said.
Everybody at Channel House loved Isa; all the men did anyway. She liked to command attention by blustering into rooms. She and Patrick were drawn to each other as soon as they met; even I could tell. Patrick was a lot more fun back then, always making jokes. He was also more open about himself,