Family Law by Gin Phillips (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

Rachel

I.

As I pulled into our garage after leaving Lucia, I saw Mr. Cleary next door watering his pansies. I waved, hoping that would be enough, but when I checked the rearview mirror, he’d put down his hose and stepped onto our driveway.

I was going to have to say hello, and I dreaded it. The tears had dried on my face, and I was drained and empty and also I’d rushed over to Lucia’s house wearing cutoffs that Mom thought were too short even for yard work, and everything was wrong and it was hard to fake rightness.

“Hey there,” Mr. Cleary said, as I slammed my door.

I tugged at my shorts. “Hey, Mr. Cleary.”

He wasn’t normally social; I couldn’t remember him ever going out of his way to speak to me. His wife and their little son used to live with him, but after the divorce Mrs. Cleary and the boy moved in with her parents, while Mr. Cleary kept the house. Mom thought that was inexcusable.

“You have a wasp nest,” he said, pointing. “I thought you’d want to know. Winter’s a good time to take care of it.”

I looked up, and there it was: a big, cardboardish honeycomb globbed on to the eave of the garage. Someone should spray it, but that someone would have to be me. So actually, no, I did not want to know. If Mr. Cleary wanted to be helpful, couldn’t he have taken care of the nest without ever telling me?

The hose was laying there in his yard, gushing. His sweatshirt was too tight, and his jeans were too loose, and he was the kind of not-tall man who puffed out his chest to compensate.

“Thanks,” I said.

I was aware I didn’t sound thankful.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Over his shoulder, through his chain-link fence, I could see the turquoise rectangle of his swimming pool. It was the only interesting thing about his house, which was red brick, flat, and long, decorated only with gray shingles and white gutters. Compared to it, our stone cottage with its brown-and-white Tudor top looked even more charming. Instead of a cheap fence, we had a stone wall that ran from our garage to the side of the house, blocking off our backyard entirely.

I liked the solid castle feel of our house. Stone was good, too, because it did not need repairing. Even my mother could not worry about rotting or peeling or termites.

Mr. Cleary’s pool was too turquoise, and I turned away from it. I imagined once upon a time he had thought his boy would enjoy swimming and now there was only a boy in the house for four days out of the month. I had never seen him or Mr. Cleary or anyone else in that pool. It was a waste, having a pool when you didn’t even swim, and it was more of a waste to spend time scooping out all the leaves and bugs, and why would anyone keep their pool filled up in December?

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

“You keep pulling at your shorts,” he said. “It’s not a wasp, is it?”

“You’re a little obsessed with wasps,” I said, and he seemed to think that was funny.

“At least I don’t have one up my shorts.”

It was a stupid joke.

“I don’t have a wasp up my shorts,” I said. “They’re just too short, and if Mom sees me wearing them in front of you—”

“In front of me,” he repeated. He nodded once, and then he turned away, reaching for his garden hose.

“I just mean my shorts are too short,” I said.

I was aware that I had implied something I didn’t mean to imply, and I wasn’t even sure what it was.

“I’m not what you would call a fashion critic,” said Mr. Cleary, drawing up the slack on the hose and looping it over his hand.

“I know,” I said. “Mom just thinks—”

“I know what she thinks,” he said, not looking at me. “She thinks you should be careful. Like every mother before her. And you think she’s unfair and doesn’t really love you, like every teenage girl before you.”

“I don’t think that,” I said. The man didn’t even know how to work a garden hose.

“No?”

“Did they teach you that in grown-up man school where every man your age sits in a row and thinks exactly the same thing?” I said. “The seven commandments of girls? No teenage girl shall trust her mother? All teenage girls shall have the same brain?”

It was not, actually, me who said any of that. I was sure of it as soon as the words left my mouth. I yanked at my shorts.

“Were you just referencing Animal Farm?” Mr. Cleary said.

“No,” I said. “Kind of.”

“Well, you’re right. I was unfair.”

I backed away, feeling for the latch on the iron gate. Overhead, I thought I saw a movement in the wasp nest.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had—I didn’t mean to be rude.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it rude as much as—”

I didn’t hear the end of his sentence, partly because he took a long time finishing it—if he ever did finish it—and partly because I had hurried through the gate, waving over my shoulder. I was full of too many things, and I wasn’t sure what might come pouring out next.

The gate clanged behind me, and then there was no more Mr. Cleary. There was only stone wall and crispy brown grass and ivy. The cobblestones stretched from my feet to the back door, and I leaped across them. For as long as I could remember, I’d made a point to avoid the grass growing between the cracks. I landed on stones and only stones, and I avoided the far right one that had split down the middle. I reached the single brick step, and I stood there with my hand on the screen door. Even on the best of days, I felt a shift when I took the first step inside our house: