He looks directly from Cherish’s father to me, and his expression softens.
It’s like watching another face slide over the last. Like beneath his asymmetrical dreaded fringe, there’s been a polyhedron, and it can swivel and swap out one face for another, the same way mine can. Only Tariq has never seemed the type.
He can’t be. I wouldn’t have missed it all this time.
He gestures almost imperceptibly with his head, but I keep hold of Cherish’s hand and sit her down on the opposite side of the table before asking what she wants on her burger. I make both our plates and go back inside to retrieve ice for our drinks, making sure to keep the trip brief when Tariq unsubtly follows me to the kitchen.
When I take my seat beside Cherish again, and she’s taken a series of small bites that only serve to keep anyone from noticing the way she’s not eating much at all, Brianne is on the phone.
“Hey, Nicki,” she says, like it’s good to hear my mother’s voice, and she looks over at me. They all do. All three of the Whitmans cast their eyes on me like I’m Nichole Turner’s avatar. “Everything’s good. How are the two of you?”
It’s like choreographed silence. Knowing she’s on the other end of the call, we all pause in conversation and in eating, as though we don’t want her to know we’re here.
“The girls are good!” Brianne exclaims suddenly, beaming over at us. She’s seeing us at the top of the staircase again, I’m sure, our arms tangled around each other in a scene that doesn’t betray the tension of the moment before.
Suddenly Brianne is standing, edging between her seat and the table without scraping the patio with their movement.
“Sure, I’ll go check,” she says through a smile, and she winks at me before she carries on chatting to my mother while she wanders into the kitchen and farther into the house.
She’s going to look for me. Obviously. I was sitting directly across from her, an arm’s length away at most, and when my mother asked if I was there—the way I know she did—Brianne said she had to check.
That’s how well she knows me already. She’s been my best friend’s mom for most of my life, but it’s only been a few weeks that Brianne’s been like one to me, and she can already read me the way she can read Cherish.
I must have given some glint of hesitation. Communicated with a gaze the way my mother does sometimes that I don’t want to talk yet. I haven’t listened to the voicemail or responded to the text messages, and Brianne Whitman can’t have known that, but she must at least know how I feel. The way she knows all the other things that by rights she shouldn’t. The way she knows how to care for Cherish, and how to see the world—the real one—even though because of what she looks like, she doesn’t have to. She’s always doing the impossible. Reading my mind isn’t too great a feat to believe.
Jerry Whitman smiles at me before he takes his first bite of a gratuitously stacked double burger, and I giggle at how wide he has to open his mouth and the way Tariq has competitively crafted his own, and look at Cherish to share in my amusement. Instead I find her face blank.
She’s watching me, and for a moment it’s almost possible that she sees me.
“So?” Jerry begins, wiping his mouth before taking a swig of his drink to make room for words. “What do you kids have planned, now that summer is upon us? Tariq? I’m sure the judge’ll be taking some time off to spend time with you boys?”
Tariq nods big.
“Yeah, me and Dad are gonna sail.”
“That’s awesome. I know he’s been wanting to do that for a while,” Mr. Whitman replies, full of vicarious enthusiasm and boring follow-up questions about crew sizes and charts and whatever else people arrogant enough to take on the open ocean say.
“Doesn’t Kelly have his sea legs?” I ask at an appropriate opening in their exchange.
Tariq flexes his right hand, but I only notice because I always do. Everyone else just echoes the subtle smile he puts on.
“He wants to hang out with his little brothers this summer. It’s cool. We’ll catch up when Dad and I get back.”
“It’s great he makes time for them,” Jerry Whitman says, a bit more sober. “It’s gotta be a tough line to walk, being a big brother and a stand-in dad at the same time.”
“Yeah,” Tariq agrees. “If he didn’t take care of them, who would?”
“That’s because of your dad,” Jerry says, tipping the mouth of his bottle toward the young man like an invitation.
“I know.”
“If the judge hadn’t stepped in . . .” And he trails off like he’s quieted by the memory. Like he was in the courtroom the day Kelly came before Judge Leslie Campbell. Like he witnessed the moment of transformation that was in reality a much longer sequence of events, involving a still hard-shelled young Kelly continuously running away from their home. And the Whitmans would’ve witnessed at least some of that, as close friends of the family. They would’ve seen the hard moments and all the ones in between, the way Jerry Whitman’s friend made space in his family for a boy the system is set up to flay and forget, and the way the judge never blamed Kelly for the way he fought back.
Their conversation’s passed me by. Mr. Whitman and Tariq carry on, talking more about Judge Campbell than anyone else, and I keep seeing Kelly’s face the night he and Tariq fought.
Maybe Kelly isn’t going sailing because Judge Campbell’s finally come to his senses. Or if he’s still not ready to turn Kelly away, maybe Tariq’s hands are bruised because his father decided that at the very least Tariq should be able to defend himself.
The one thing I don’t understand is the grill gleaming inside Tariq’s mouth. I’m not convinced I can trust the new side of him that’s on display today—but I know who can explain it.
Beside me, Cherish reaches toward the oversized bowl of her mom’s fruit salad, and I grab the silver spoon and heap another serving on her plate before reapplying her store-bought coleslaw to my own.
“Yeah, you were right,” I say, before turning the spoon over in my mouth and pulling it out clean. “Literally cannot tell the difference.”
“Right?” she says, and even though it almost sounds timid and she’s only looking at me through the side of her eye, it’s something.
“Don’t tell Mom I said that.”
I’m crunching on the shredded carrots and cabbage that are a delicious mix of tart and sweet, but my peripheral vision is enough to see the slight expression drain from Cherish’s face.
“I am having another burger,” I announce as I stand a bit to reach the still smoldering pile at the center of the table.