I Mean You No Harm by Beth Castrodale

Author:Beth Castrodale [Castrodale, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Imbrifex Books
Published: 2021-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

I-44, West of St. Louis

Never interrupting her phone conversation, Bette zipped around a Civic-driving feather-foot, then returned to the center lane.

“Listen, Jake. I don’t want to hear from Auntie M that you’ve been hurting her feelings. If you really can’t stand what she’s making for dinner, you say, ‘Thanks very much, but I’ll have a PB&J.’ And then you make the PB&J. Yourself. All right?”

As Bette and Jake carried on with their call, Layla thought of what she’d learned of Marla since she and Bette had hit the road, how she’d stepped up to be a second parent to Jake after his father bolted. “Things weren’t great between us before Jake was born,” Bette said. “When he learned about the Down syndrome, that was pretty much the nail in the coffin. But it all turned out for the best for me and Jake, and I think for Marla, too. We’ve become a real family. A happy one, mostly.”

Apparently, Marla had encouraged Jake’s interest in art from the time it surfaced, making sure he never ran out of markers, crayons, or any other supplies he requested.

Layla turned her attention to the scenery beyond the truck: rolling green expanses on either side, ending in stands of trees. She looked toward a distant sign, waited for the words to get big enough to read: Mark Twain National Forest, Exit 208.

How many things had been named for Mark Twain? And what would he have thought of the various tributes?

Layla guessed he’d be honored by a connection to acre upon acre of natural beauty. But a connection to her old high school? Incubator of inchoate aspirations—good, ill, and indefinable; of twenty-plus varieties of boredom, insecurity, and hostility; of thirty-plus varieties of sexual longing, confusion, and shame; of enduring, ineradicable miasmas brewed from all these things plus sweat, hormones, pheromones, and lingering cafeteria essences? She couldn’t begin to guess his reaction to this. But he’d have to be at least a little bewildered.

“We’ll be home in a week, give or take a day. … Yes, we’ll have all the art stuff.” Bette listened to Jake’s response, then handed Layla the phone. “He wants to ask you something, about a drawing he’s working on.”

Layla put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Jake. What’s up?”

For a moment, she heard nothing but a hoot-tooting like calliope music.

“You sound like you’re at a circus,” she said.

“No, I’m in my room. I listen to music when I’m drawing.”

Layla did, too. “Your mom said you have a question for me.”

Another pause. Then, “How do you make people look real? I mean, even when I trace him, he looks fake.”

“Who’s him?”

“Grandpa Vic.”

It was still hard for Layla to think of Vic as a grandpa, but maybe Jake saw a different side of him. Maybe he got traces of the Vic that Bette had seen in that old picture of him and his brother.

“You mean real like in a photograph?” Layla guessed he was working from one of Vic.

“Yeah.”

Layla wished that she were with him, that she could see whatever he’d got down on paper so far.

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