“I’m happy to be helping you, even though we’re not related by blood,” Margo told Liz as she stacked hand-me-down linens in the bathroom of Liz’ new apartment.

Luckily, Liz was facing away from her; Margo didn’t see the look that flew across her face.  Liz busied herself with making the bed.  The sheets that Papa and Margo had given her were hideous mod things that hadn’t seen the light of day since she was a toddler.  The colors were okay–chartreuse and yellow–but they smelled of mothballs, and the curly, swirly pattern would have been better suited as the background of a Jefferson Airplane video.

Of course as soon as Papa offered to spend Monday helping her move in, Margo had dropped what she was doing to come along.  It had been barely three days and Margo was already so jealous of the minimal attention Ted paid Liz that she could barely sit still.  Liz had heard Margo enthusiastically fucking her father every night, and had the feeling that the show had been put on for her benefit.

Or, maybe not.  She had been sixteen when her mother and father had divorced, and although Margo hadn’t been in the picture then, Liz couldn’t help transferring a bit of her own confusion and anger at the breakup of her family onto Papa’s new wife.  But at least she knew she was doing it.

Margo was still gabbing on as if they were girlfriends chatting, as if she hadn’t sent Papa off to the store to buy her some groceries almost as soon as they’d walked in the door–Liz couldn’t buy her own food?  But Margo had insisted.  Anything to keep Ted and Liz from spending too much time together.  Now they were putting away hand-me-down linens in an apartment that was empty except for a now neatly made bed, a pale blue armchair that had been in Papa and Margo’s basement, a dinged-up coffee percolator from the same source, and a telephone.

“I’ll bet they think you’re a student,” Margo said, “because you’re Oriental.  We’re really close to EMU, you know.”

“Yes, I know, it’s three blocks away,” Liz said wearily.  She hated the word “oriental,” and hated even more the reflexive reply of “HALF-Oriental!” that sounded in her own head whenever Margo said it.  How did this woman manage to make her ashamed of what she was, simply by mentioning it?  Did she know she was doing it?   It was just one more thing she knew she should let go.  A couple of hours and she wouldn’t have to deal with Margo any more.  Just a couple more hours.  “And beyond it is the hospital, and if you keep going west you’ll come to downtown Ann Arbor and U of M.”

“Oh, that’s right.  Silly of me.”  She gave a little ‘tee-hee’ laugh as she came out of the bathroom, turning out the light behind her.  “Sometimes I forget that you grew up here in Michigan, too.  It was your mother who grew up in Vietnam.”

“Japan.”  Beating Margo to a quivering, crying mess might be an interesting distraction, but she could never hurt Papa that way.  She didn’t have to like Margo, but she had to acknowledge that the woman was important to Ted.  If nothing else, being really pissed off was making her head hurt less, because she didn’t think about it.  “Specifically, Hiroshima.  You know, the city your great-uncle blew up.”  She knew that would annoy Margo, who was proud to have an ancestor who’d been on the Enola Gay and at the same time filled with a healthy dose of white guilt over any injustice ever committed by an American (not counting those that could be attributed to “crazies” or “extremists” of course).  Confronting her with the fact that she was cozying up to her stepchild, whose family tree lacked most of a branch because of her own proud heritage, was a sure way to make Margo snippy.

“That didn’t need to be said,” Margo replied coldly.  She went into the kitchen, which was about five steps from the “bedroom,” opened and closed a few cabinets, then came back.  “I hope your father remembers to get Pine-Sol.  It smells terrible in here.  I’d open a window if it weren’t so cold outside.”  The way she said it implied that the smell was somehow Liz’ fault.

Where the hell was Ondrew?  He had insisted on taking a day off to help her, too.  She had called and given him directions, and he’d promised to be there by eleven, but it was almost one.  “I can’t smell anything but that bedspread,” Liz said.

“It doesn’t smell bad, does it?  It was in a cedar chest, it can’t possibly smell bad.”  Margo strode quickly to the bed and put her nose to it.

“I didn’t say it smelled bad.”

“It doesn’t smell bad at all.  It was packed in cedar.”

Liz considered saying that it reminded her of a hamster cage, but didn’t.  “Either way,” she said as diplomatically as she could, “I can sleep here tonight.”

“I’m so sorry that the bed in the guest room wasn’t comfortable enough for you,” Margo said, sounding anything but sorry.

“Better than me staying there for months on end,” Liz said.

“Well…”  Caught between lying just to disagree, or agreeing and as much as admitting that she wanted Liz out of the house, Margo got that far and stopped.

The verbal thrust and parry of thinly veiled hostility went on for another twenty minutes.  Liz stayed out of it as best she could–it took two to argue, after all–but after four days without a drink her body was beginning to hint that if she was miserable now, the worst was yet to come.  The aches and pains of a few days ago hadn’t abated.  Her teeth hurt, too, because she’d been grinding them.

To say nothing of her shaking hands.  Sometimes the tremors crept all the way to her shoulders.  Telling herself it was all in her head wasn’t working as well as it had been.  She was also forgetting things.  Nothing big, but little stuff.  She couldn’t remember when Mr. McIntyre had told her payday was.  There had been something she wanted to remember to borrow from Papa, too, and she’d forgotten it.  She didn’t think she’d been so absent-minded in the past.

Liz threw herself into the armchair (which smelled of dog) and watched Margo pace the kitchen.  She had brought a broom and mop to help clean up, but there was no need to sweep the kitchen a fifth time.  Liz just watched her, her face perfectly neutral.  She knew she was making her stepmother uncomfortable, and resisted the urge to smile.

“Are you angry with me?” Margo asked.  “I haven’t done anything but try to help you, because Ted wants me to.”

Liz shook her head slowly.  “I’m not angry at all.  Just tired.”

“Your father does that too,” Margo said with a nervous laugh.  “Just sits and stares.”

“It’s an Eastern European thing.”

“It’s creepy, is what it is.”

“Believe it or not, I learned it from a friend.  Wasn’t till I picked it up from her that I realized Papa did it, too.”

“Is your friend Croatian, too?” Margo asked.

“I have no idea.  I don’t think so; she’s too tiny.”

Silence fell.  Liz resumed staring in Margo’s direction, although she wasn’t looking directly at her.  She was looking at the avocado-colored refrigerator.  The door had a big dent in it.  Figured.

Before the facade of civility could drop completely, a quick knock at the door announced Ted’s return.  He squeezed through the door with an unnecessarily large armload of groceries.  “Look who I found,” he said proudly.  Andrew followed him with an equally preposterous number of bags.

“Ondrew!”  Liz flew out of the chair and almost knocked Andrew off of his feet in a high-speed collision hug.  She ruffled his shaggy blond hair with her fingers and kissed him on the mouth, just to keep him completely off-balance.

“Holy shit!” he said.  “What do I have to do to get greeted like that every day?”  He looked around the apartment.  “Nice place.  I would set all of this on the table,” he raised his arms slightly, indicating the eight plastic bags he was carrying, “but there isn’t one.  We ought to take care of that.  I brought my truck.  Figured you’d need it.”

“Since when did your truck run?” Liz asked with a skeptical frown.

“Oh, I got rid of the Dodge.  I have a new one.”  He squatted and released the bags carefully onto the kitchen floor.  Liz took one, moved it to the counter, then a second, and then her arms started to ache.  Still weak.  Dammit.  She watched as Papa put the rest of the bags up and Margo started emptying them.  Everyone seemed to be moving much faster than she was.

“Did you have to get so much, Ted?” Margo asked.  “It’s only for one person!  She’ll never eat all of this!”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Bahti, she owes me dinner,” Andrew said.

Liz squeezed his shoulder.  “Get me out of here,” she whispered.  “Now.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Have you eaten today?  You look like this squirrel my dad ran over with the tractor once.”

“No, I haven’t.  I feel sick.  Sicker now, thanks.”

“Because you haven’t eaten, prolly.  Would you consider Arby’s?”

He remembered her favorite guilty pleasure.  Liz smiled.  Andrew made her feel stronger, just by being nearby.  Funny how much power she drew from her friends.  There’s nothing inside me, I guess, she thought bitterly.  “Arby’s is tempting,” she said.  “But we need to shop for furniture first.  I was thinking Salvation Army.”

Andrew started toward the door.  “Would you consider Arby’s if I told you I already had it in the truck?  Oh, and I brought you my old TV, too.”

“I’d consider that you were working way too hard for a guy who knows he isn’t getting any,” Liz said, on the verge of an outright giggle.

“Hey, I can always hope.”  It was on the tip of his tongue to joke about getting her drunk first, but he swallowed the comment before he could put his foot in his mouth.

Liz called to her father and stepmother, “I’m going to get some furniture and dishes.  Be back in a couple of hours.”  She knew her father already had his own key to her apartment.  She didn’t like it, but now wasn’t the time to complain.  She was in debt to him for the car he’d bought for her ($960, for the record), and she really wanted to be able to pay him back this time, and that meant staying in his good graces for a while longer.  “No nookie on my new bed, please,” she added, just to piss Margo off, and then they were out the door.  The air outside was cool, and seemed to have more oxygen in it somehow.  As they descended the steps to the first floor, she told Andrew, “The great part of it, Ondrew, is that I’ll get my BAC checked for free when we come back.”

“Ah, but it’ll come up negative, and Ted will have that much more reason to trust you,” Andrew said.  The hallway smelled of sweat and elderly pizza, and the floor of the building squeaked under the thin carpet.  The building was a shithole, but there was no reason to point that out to Liz, who no doubt had noticed long ago.  She looked thin and worn out and sick–she had to have lost forty pounds in the three years since he’d seen her–and he hated to see her stuck in such crappy campus-apartment surroundings.  Until she had some money, though, it was going to have to do.  The last thing Liz needed right now was to feel like her best wasn’t good enough.

When he had pulled up, Ted had seen him, recognized him, and they’d talked.  Liz’ scary state cop of a father had grilled him about keeping her away from alcohol, and evidently been satisfied with his answers.  Ted had never cared much for Liz’ friends, and the few times Andrew had seen him had been marked by thinly veiled contempt.

“That’s my car,” Liz said when they got outside, pointing to a rusty Subaru coupe of an uncertain color parked on the street.  Its hideaway headlights were stuck in the open position and gave it a frogeyed appearance.  “One of Papa’s friends dragged it out of a pole barn someplace and sold it to me.  Or, rather, Papa loaned me a thousand dollars to buy it off this guy.

“Is it four-wheel-drive?”

“Huh?”

“Most Subarus are four-wheel-drive,” Andrew said.  He led the way to his truck, a bright red Ford, two years old.

“Everyone went and bought new trucks while I was gone,” Liz mused.

He opened the door for her.  “Ted’s got a nice truck.  He was showing me the shock setup he’s got.”

“Shit, don’t be in a hurry to rescue me or anything.  I’m stuck inside with Papa’s stupid teenaged Swedish goddess, and you’re outside talking hardware.”  She found the Arby’s bag on the front seat, pulled out the beef & cheddar sandwich that he had brought her, and wolfed half of it down without even looking at it.

“Men and their trucks, Lizzie baby,” Andrew said with a grin.  “It’s a beautiful thing.”  He started the Ford; it burbled to life.  “Big difference.”  As they pulled into traffic, he asked her, “So?”

“So, what?”

“So how are you doing, behind that big-mean-chick false front?”

Liz looked down at her breasts.  “These are not false.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied.  “But that’s not what I meant, you know.”

“I know,” she sighed.  “I’m avoiding the question.  For now, I guess I’m going to work, and…dammit, Ondrew, don’t make me say I’m going to ‘take it one day at a time,’ or any such Hallmark garbage.”

He smiled.  “Okay, I won’t.  I guess what I want to know is how much you want me around, what kinds of things you want to do.  I’m assuming you won’t want to go out to the bar.” 

“Not without my mouth and nose sutured shut,” she replied, looking out the window.  Goddamn, if she didn’t hate Ypsilanti.  She didn’t even know why, she just didn’t like the way the town looked.  It was like a small, dirty version of a college town, without the life that usually infused such places.

“So, what should we do, then?  I brought you the TV, figured you’d be watching a lot of that.”

“You know what crossed my mind, as a wild idea?  I was thinking about taking aikido again.  I took it for a long time when I was younger, and just kind of stopped.”

“I never knew you took aikido,” he said.  “Do I have to take classes with you?”

“Of course not.  I’ll just beat up on you whenever I get the chance,” she said with a smile.

They hit every Salvation Army and thrift store within a forty-mile radius, it seemed.  They didn’t stop until the shops began to close, around five.  Liz spent almost two hundred dollars (an advance from the fish market) and got a full complement of dishes, glasses, pots and flatware, a nightstand, a tremendously unattractive kitchen table with three chairs, a cheap TV stand, and a cat-torn sofa for $30 from a garage sale they happened across.  The red pickup was piled high with merchandise when they returned to the apartment.

“You look wiped out,” Andrew said.  “Go and lie down.  I’ll get your dad to help with all of this.”

“I can help,” Liz said stubbornly.  Her hands had started shaking again, but she got out of the truck and reached into the bed for a box anyway.

“Bullshit.”  He went around to her side and took the box away from her.  “You know how hard it is to find an electric wok at a Salvation Army?  I’m not going to let you drop this damned thing!  You’re going to make me stir-fry with it.  Now go.  Shoo.”

She swore at him in Japanese.  Well, he wasn’t certain that she was swearing, but judging by her tone, whatever she had said wasn’t nice.

“The same to you,” he said.  “Go.  Let someone take care of you for a while.  It’s going to get harder, you know.”

Liz blew air out through her nose.  “I’m not a whiny little damsel in distress, you know,” she said.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I can carry a goddamned box on my own.”

“Not if you don’t have to, Ms. Malnutrition.  You couldn’t carry a kitten.  Go upstairs and lay down.”

“Fucking dick.”  Liz spun on her heel and stomped into the building.  She immediately felt bad for being a bitch to him.  Although she’d never admit it, it was nice to be able to yell at Andrew and know he wouldn’t be upset with her.  She had the feeling he knew that, too.  Spent by the outburst, she went up to the apartment and sulked on the bed while they moved her stuff in.

After they were gone, she forced herself to go for a walk, to get to know the neighborhood.  It was almost eleven.  She wanted to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, but it felt too early to fall asleep–body still on California time, probably.  So she walked. Found a party store. 

The cashier didn’t even card her.  Liz wondered if it would help to write “NO ALCOHOL” in permanent marker on her ID.  It might be a good idea.  She thought about ways to make it harder to buy alcohol while she worked on the bottle.  If she’d thought about it she might have been ashamed of herself, drinking from a paper bag while walking home, but no one paid any attention to her, and she wasn’t entirely aware that she was drinking it anyway.  Not until she got home, and it was a quarter gone by then.  She called herself a few names, finished the bottle before two, and when she got up in the morning her hands weren’t shaking any more.