“Charlotte, come here, will you?” John’s voice rings out from the front hall. “Charlie?”
David and Katie look over at their mother.
“Coming,” she says. “Start clearing up, you two.”
Katie puts down her cutlery and scoops up the plates, running them under the faucet and slotting everything into the dishwasher. Her body is in a sudden dichotomy: though she is slipping knives and forks into their plastic baskets, every fiber of her being is attuned to what is going on in the hall at the front of the house.
People standing on wooden floors, footsteps, a shifting of weight that makes the floorboards creak. Multiple voices, one low and steady. At one point her mother cries out. Undergirding it all is the even tone of her father’s voice, like a steady drum rhythm in an experimental modern tune.
Katie goes over to the doorway that leads to the vestibule.
A policeman, in uniform. The swell of his stomach rests on a wide black leather belt from which hangs a nightstick, a pistol in a holster, and a large flashlight. His hands are clasped together in front of his groin as though protecting himself from an oncoming soccer ball, and from his fingers hang a pair of silver handcuffs. Charlie is talking with the other policeman, who stands by the door. Young, with short-cropped brown hair and a baby face. His posture defensive and uncertain.
The older policeman reaches out with one of his soft white hands, grasps John’s elbow.
Something is at Katie’s side: David. He puts one arm around her waist and leans into her. He squeezes her hip hard with his hand, and she frowns at him as though to say, I have no idea!
John nods at the older policeman, and this must lead to some agreement, because the man nods back curtly. The two officers follow John onto the front porch. “I’ll call you as soon as I can,” he says over his shoulder to his wife. “No need to worry.”
The door slams shut.
“Mum? Where are they taking Daddy?” David calls out, propelling himself toward the door, his voice high pitched.
Katie grabs him, fights the urge to press him tightly to her chest. He isn’t a baby anymore, but his face betrays an innocence he hasn’t yet outgrown. Why is her father leaving, during dinner, with two policemen? Why is her mother not going with them? David starts to cry.
“Get back into the kitchen, and clear the table,” Charlie says in an uninflected voice. “Everything’s fine. Dad will be back in an hour.” There is a familiar finality in her voice. Her guarded manner warns the children not to ask questions, and they remain silent all that night and many more to come. The questions are powerful—they want to be heard, and they do not stop insisting on it—but the kids tamp them down with force, one after another, like swallowing bitter pills that lodge uncomfortably somewhere in the windpipe, not that far from the heart.
Reasons. Explanations. Logic. What fits where in her mind, or in reality? Katie lies in bed. This is when she begins learning to deflect, to shift to another idea, another image, to head somewhere that feels safe. She tells herself that this probably has to do with some jock from one of the teams her father coaches, some hoodlum who got in trouble. There is always drama going on with those kids. It is no big deal.
But she can’t go to sleep until she hears a car in the driveway, close to two o’clock in the morning. It is the police cruiser, inching its way up the incline. It stops in front of the house, and John Gregory steps out. He heads toward his front door, holding his arms stiffly by his sides. He left without a jacket, and it is still snowing. Katie can see the bald spot on his head but cannot read the expression on his face. The cruiser door slams shut, and her father enters the house without looking back. Katie can do nothing other than crawl back into bed.
When she wakes up the next morning and sits at the breakfast table, everything is so normal that she can’t bring herself to ask a single question—it will tip the balance, bring them bad luck. Her father says offhandedly that it was all a mix-up, and then he gets up to pour himself another cup of coffee to take along on his commute into the city. His navy suit is a little wrinkled at the elbows and the thighs, but he’s got good color. He smiles at his family, tucks the paper under his arm, and grabs his briefcase.
It’s easy to accept his explanation. Asking gives life to fear—it’s better to be silent.
19
It was well after midnight before Katie exhausted herself cleaning the kitchen. She slept only fitfully, dreaming wildly. Nonsensical dreams that ended with her lying in her father’s arms on a prison cot. This image flooded her with a sense of warmth as she woke to the new day, as though she’d opened an oven to check on the bread. Even though the testimony she’d read the day before was shocking, today she was less rattled—after all, it had also been inconclusive. In the end, Jack hadn’t seen much of anything, at least nothing that proved her father’s guilt. He could have simply been mistaken about it seeming “weird.” He’d been upset—hadn’t Katie also been confused that night, uncertain about people’s motivations, about what was actually going on?
In the cabin, the joy and mayhem of golden summers had leached away, leaving an emptiness she couldn’t fill on her own no matter how hard she tried by putting on music or buzzing around cleaning. The place had always been full of people and signs of life—her brother and his friends, damp towels draped over the rattan, Charlie in a caftan, smoking a cigarette and leafing through the New Yorker. Lulu jumping from the bunk, the thud of her feet a minor earthquake, or singing in the bathroom, her voice with its lilting, weightless tone, so different from her speaking voice. And her father always deep into some project.
Hovering at the periphery of all this, just out of sight, was the specter of Lulu. Katie had never allowed herself to be curious about what had happened to her. Was she in LA singing in a lounge, dressed in cheesy red velvet? In Nashville, tucked into some recording studio, having swapped her dirty sneakers for cowboy boots? It would be so easy to find out; it was all just a click away—but the thought of opening that door and letting in that reality made her shrink into herself.
Her phone pinged with a text and an attachment from Zev. He was giving his talk the next day, and he’d been sending her various quotes he was considering using. In quick succession he’d sent her a Nietzsche quote, “We have art in order not to die of the truth,” followed by “All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” from Toni Morrison, and the contrast made her laugh. Now he sent what looked like a pastel drawing. She tapped the image to make it bigger.
It was a rough sketch of a woman in strong colors, a slash of bright yellow for hair, dark-brown eyes that seemed to pop from the page. It was a picture of her, she realized with a start; that was what he’d been drawing on his napkin when they’d been at lunch together. It was fascinating to see how he saw her, this woman with the guarded expression, a strong, sensual mouth, flyaway hair.
You’re supposed to be working, she texted back, leaning up in bed on one elbow.
It’s helping me concentrate ☺, he wrote.
Katie headed into Blackbrooke to pick up more paper towels and a new broom. It was almost midday on Saturday, and the streets were empty, as though everyone were still sleeping off some epic hangover. It wasn’t hard to see ghostly images of herself and Lulu wandering the deserted streets looking for fun and trouble. Here was where they bought a bottle of Jack Daniels one day with one of the older boys. That alley was where she’d had her first puff of a cigarette. The two of them had spent so much time at the lake and so little in town that she could probably list every single instance they’d set foot in Blackbrooke together. But of course, this was where Lulu had lived—this place had been her home. She’d haunted these streets all her life, and for all Katie knew, she might still be there. At that thought a wave of nausea rolled over her. She climbed back into the Datsun, slinging her purchases onto the back seat.
With both hands, she clutched the steering wheel. She needed to finish cleaning the cabin and setting it up for her father. Find out what Jac
k was up to, why he wasn’t answering her texts or calls. Maybe she would take Monday off work so she could go back to the courthouse and finish reading the transcripts; she wanted to see what her father had said about that night.
When she peered into the future—into the moment of her father’s release, into the still unknown happinesses and ordinary sadnesses that awaited her as she aged—her vision was obscured in some profound way. It was as though she were wearing blinkers, could only see part of the picture. And that was a sensation she didn’t like, that sensation of partial blindness. Because it was voluntary, and who in their right mind would willingly remain blinded?
No matter how hard it was, she had to keep digging. She was going to have to go to the source. She started the car and headed toward the street where she thought Lulu Henderson had once lived.
A black girl with braids ending in a cascade of plastic baubles drew on the road with chalk, jumping at the sight of Katie’s car. At the corner of Dempsy and Hart Streets, a man wearing a Steelers hat was walking with a pronounced limp, holding a crocheted bag in one hand. An old couple sat on a porch, both wearing ragged slippers and drinking Pabst. So this was where the people were, in the side streets. A sense of life lived in the shadows, away from the eyes of the drivers along Main Street, eyes that calculated and pitied and made assumptions. Katie inched along, driving like an old lady without her glasses. When she reached Mission Street, she pulled into an empty spot.
The old building where Lulu’s place had been was just as Katie remembered it, down to the uneven yellow brickwork at hip height. It was a squat building with an open-air corridor running along the front on both levels. She’d only ever been there once, but she thought Lulu’s apartment might have been the second to the left on the top floor. Katie played out a scenario in her mind: storming up there, rapping on the door. Her stomach was sour and tight, and she told herself to stay calm, to think clearly. The likelihood that Lulu would still be there was incredibly slim. On the second floor of the apartment building, a man emerged to throw a ball down to a kid on the street. A few minutes later, the door of Lulu’s old apartment opened, and a woman came out, leaning over the railing and lighting a cigarette. Languid movements, either relaxed or bored. Puffs of smoke dissipating into the air. The woman had a round face, open. Her hair was brown and slicked back as though she’d just stepped out of the shower. Katie stared at her, astonished. For Chrissake, it couldn’t be, and yet it was; it was Lulu’s mother.
There was a time when Katie was about ten that she had insisted on staying the night at Lulu’s. They’d been spending a few weeks together for the past two summers at Eagle Lake, but Katie had never seen where her friend lived. Like a lovestruck girl, she was infinitely curious about Lulu’s life: the color of her bedspread, the size of her desk, what kind of backpack she used for school. It wasn’t her family she wanted to know about (the lack of a father at home only registered vaguely, partly because, of all the stories she told, Lulu never talked about her father, or her mother’s boyfriends). It was her environment Katie wanted to observe, touch, smell. What did a life like hers look like close up?
When John dropped the girls off that night, a dirty gray area rug was hanging over the railing outside Lulu’s door. “You’ll call me if you need me, okay, honey?” he’d said, his tone alerting Katie that something wasn’t quite right. He started to climb out of the car.
“I’m good,” Katie said in a rush. “I’m fine. You don’t have to come with us.”
Lulu was already on the other side of the street. “He wants to meet my mom,” she said. “He thinks we’re poor.”
“Honey, that is not true,” John said. But he got out of the car all the same and went with them to the door.
Inside the apartment, the curtains were drawn, and The Price Is Right was playing on the television. When Piper Henderson clicked the TV off, the silence afterward felt thin and precarious, as though in a second there’d be a bang on the wall or a car misfiring in the street. Katie and her father hovered on the doorstep. Just a second earlier his face had been drawn and serious, and now as his eyes sharpened, his mouth slackened. Before he even spoke a word, she knew he’d noticed too: Lulu’s mother was beautiful. Katie had only seen her a few times before and always from a distance. Usually it was Charlie who picked Lulu up and dropped her off. Katie’s own mother was lovely in a regal way, wiry and poised, a distant look on her face, her accent a barrier that didn’t invite people in. In contrast, Mrs. Henderson’s face was unformed and round like a young woman’s.
Her movements were quick, as though she only decided to move or talk a split second before she did it. Even then Katie recognized this quality as unusual in a parent. Her expression was open and uncomplicated, her skin pale as skim milk and nothing like her daughter’s. She had dark eyes that moved restlessly from Katie’s father to Katie and back to her father again. When they shook hands, John’s face broke into a toothy smile that made Katie cringe.
Later, when Mrs. Henderson leaned over to hand her some brownies as they sat watching movies in the living room, her breath—sweet with the smell of alcohol—grazed Katie’s cheek like a light kiss that was familiar and comforting. The brownies were gooey in the middle, and she ate them ferociously, as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Mrs. Henderson cracked another wine cooler and sat facing the girls in a large armchair, taking off her nail polish.
“Wanna do my nails?” she asked Lulu.
“Ugh,” Lulu said, not moving her eyes from the television. “Do it yourself, Mom.”
“I’ll do it,” Katie said. Her hair stuck to her face; the apartment had no air-conditioning, and she needed a shower, but their one bathroom had only a plastic shower stall tucked in the corner, and it was small and dirty.
“Lu,” her mother said sharply, “I’m talking to you.”
“Mom, I said I’m busy,” Lulu whined. Her expression stayed blank, but her mother’s face transformed instantaneously: something gathered behind her eyes and her lips.
“Don’t talk to me like that when you’ve got your fancy friend here!”
Lulu and Katie straightened up. “I didn’t mean it that way,” Lulu said. “It’s just—this show? I love this show.”
Her mother lurched forward, and her hand shot out so fast there was no time to anticipate the slap. “Thankless little hussy.” A vein crossing Mrs. Henderson’s neck cast a pale-blue shadow, the faintest river of blood pulsing under her white skin.
The air trembled with unpredictability. This was not what Katie had expected, and she felt the urge to protect her friend in some way. She thought about the next day, when they’d both be heading back to Eagle Lake; they only had to get through this one night, and they’d be back on Katie’s turf. She had never before heard a parent talk that way to a child or strike one in the face, or anywhere else for that matter. Mrs. Henderson tipped her head back and drained her pink sunset cooler. She seemed cold, when just minutes earlier she’d been so warm.
Katie stood up, her legs uncertain under her, and went over to the side table, where there were a few sticky bottles of polish along with a file and some cotton wool. “Here,” she said, her voice ringing out in the silence. “Let’s try this color, okay?”
The girl and the woman sat side by side on the couch. Mrs. Henderson’s nail beds were narrow, the skin on the backs of her hands soft, as though she never washed dishes or cleaned bathrooms. Lulu had once said her mother brought in extra money as a hand model. “Um, your hands,” Katie said. “They’re so pretty.”
But Mrs. Henderson said nothing. The color in her cheeks faded back to normal, and her eyes seemed to fade too. The nail polish bled over the edges onto her skin, and the more Katie tried to wipe the excess off, the messier it became. When they’d arrived, Piper had promised them a macaroni casserole, but Lulu and Katie went to bed that night hungry. They didn’t stay up to talk or play cards. It wasn’t until the next morning when they climbed back into the Falcon—after John Gregory had kissed
Mrs. Henderson on both cheeks, the sharp odor of his aftershave cutting through the smell of brewing coffee—that they could hold each other’s gaze again.
Without saying anything, Lulu was telling her friend, Don’t ask. The dull shuttering of her eyes underscored that Lulu badly needed Katie to play along. That she knew Katie saw her for who she really was, and that was okay, but only if no one said it aloud. Lulu needed her, and feeling needed was amazing.
Katie never asked to stay over there again. Later, when Lulu was at Eagle Lake, chatting mindlessly about whatever came into her mind, Katie would think back to that night, to the slap and all that hadn’t been articulated. If she was honest with herself, it might have been then that she stopped entirely believing everything Lulu said. She’d started to understand there was a chasm between how people saw their lives, how they wanted others to see them, and how they really were. A chasm that was too deep and dark to explore.
20
There was nothing else for her to do other than climb out of the car and head toward Piper Henderson. When Piper saw her approaching, she cocked her head and clattered down the stairs. Katie couldn’t take her eyes off the woman; she was girlish, but there was something off about her. Velour leggings revealed long legs and bagged around her knees. A white sweatshirt bore the logo of Manchester Community College, the collar cut off. Her body was still slim, but her eyes had settled back into the folds of her face, which was puffy like the face of a child in the early morning. Pulling fiercely on her cigarette, Piper let the smoke stream out of her nostrils as she approached.
“You who I think you are?” she asked, not hostile but not friendly either.
The Forgotten Hours Page 14