Page 90 of Five Brothers

He keeps toying with death.

It takes a moment, but I move for the side of the car opposite him and start sanding the small mark he probably didn’t know was there. He really doesn’t need to fix my paint job, but it’s too late to say anything. He has to fix it now.

I work the paper over the small scratch, but after a couple of minutes, my arm already burns. I reposition myself, putting some muscle into it. The tips of my fingers tingle with the friction.

I look at him through my passenger-side windows, but when he glances up, I drop my gaze again. He’s not kicking me out. I guess that’s a good sign.

But the next thing I know, he’s standing over me. I look up, seeing a pair of gloves in his hand.

“I’m okay,” I assure him.

“Put them on now,” he says. “Women should have soft hands.” I cock an eyebrow. “Why? Because we’re dainty?”

Please …

But he spits out, “Because you’re mothers.”

I look up at him again, and for the first time ever, he blinks. Then he drops his gaze. “Even when you’re not.”

I don’t know what that means, but I stop in my spot. I’m not a mom. I won’t be one anytime soon.

I grind my thumb over my fingertips, taking note that they’re still soft, even though I wash them a hundred times a day at the restaurant. Paisleigh likes the smell of the lotion that Mariette puts next to the sink.

I take the gloves, then he taps the car, near the roof, showing me another scratch that I didn’t know was there.

I take that as an invitation to stay.

He buffs out the scratch on top of my roof that was from thetree branch I grazed once, and I sand the paint over the five little scratches from the Coke bottle Mars threw straight up in the air that accidentally landed on my hood. Macon starts replacing the two wheels, and I scan the car one last time for any remaining blemishes.

“High Enough” by Damn Yankees comes on, and I can’t stop smiling all of a sudden. I work a scratch a little more, lost in my thoughts.

“My dad used to listen to this music,” I say. “When I was little.”

He squats on the other side of the car, refastening the lug nuts. “He had an eighties Corvette he bought in college,” I go on, “and I wasn’t allowed to touch the car, but he bought me one of those motorized kid cars, and I would fix mine while he worked on his.” I still see everything in my head. Him in the driveway, my car parked behind his. “It was pink—mine, I mean—and I like pink, but there were like fifteen shades of pink on that car. It was hideous.” I laugh out loud, even as the tears well. “He’d have a beer, and I’d have a bottle of strawberry soda. Out in the driveway. Music cranked up. A light breeze.”

I swallow over the needles in my throat. It was perfect.

I haven’t seen him in months.

“He was different then,” I say, my voice softening. “I guess he forgot the things he loved.”

His hair bands, his Corvette, his dreams …

“I guess I’ll forget the things I love, too.” I go back to sanding. “Life takes you over like that. You lose yourself. Who you were when you were five was the real you. Before everything started to kill you.”

My father couldn’t have been obsessed with his stock portfolio when he was a kid. He wanted other things.

I see Clay’s mom out in the world now. Buying a seaside cottage. Learning to garden. Wearing jeans and eating ice cream on the sidewalk.

Regressing, my mom says. A midlife crisis, she says.

But it’s not. Clay’s mom isn’t having a midlife crisis. She’s remembering herself.

I look at Macon through the windows, seeing him just sit there, his body still.

I don’t want to sell any of me to Jerome Watson. I don’t want to lose time.

I walk over, and Macon sees me coming and starts on the tire again. He’s attached the others, now removing the lug nuts from the fourth. The one Aracely stuck her knife in. He cranks the wrench, loosening the first bolt.