The Moment Before

by Suzy Vitello

  My stomach is a knot of sorrow, and it happens so suddenly. Just as quickly as the miracle of this setting seeps into my bones, I’m left empty. Drained. And it’s because of this I need to scoot closer to Connor. I need to feel the solid weight of him against me. Reassurance that the earth hasn’t deserted me. He opens an arm and locks me up tight against him. Separate:Together. Herons teeter in the rushes. The teals with their cinnamon and green heads sit on the quiet surface of the water, occasionally dipping their beaks in for a drink. More geese, overhead. We sit there for a few minutes, sharing food.

  And then, because I have to, I tell Connor about earlier in the afternoon. About Nick and what he said. I tell him about the horrible therapy session where we had to relive the accident. Talk about that day. I know I’m crying without thinking about not crying, which is a weird feeling. It just comes, the tears. The sobbing, choking blubber sounds from my throat. “I can’t stop missing her. I keep waking up every morning, and have to re-realize she’s gone.”

  “Brady,” Connor says, holding me, squeezing me, really, against his ribcage. “Do your parents have any idea about…this? About us?”

  I’m trying not to sob, but it’s not working. In between blubbery bursts I try to explain how my parents are still locked up in the idea that they have to blame someone for Sabine’s death, and it’ll take a while. Especially if we’re keeping her pregnancy and all the Nick stuff secret.

  “You do believe me, right? Brady?”

  I nod, even though I’m still not completely sure.

  He puts both his hands around my shoulders and pivots so we’re eye to eye. “I don’t want you to think less of your sister. Hear me? I mean, she is, she was, amazing. In so many ways. But underneath all that toughness, that having-the-world-by-the-balls way about her? She was fragile.”

  “Fragile? Sabine? Not a chance.”

  “Brady. There’s more to it. Sabine, and how she got caught up in a sort of game with Nick.”

  “What do you mean, game?”

  And then, Sabine’s cheer partner tells me more.

  It’s dark by the time we get back to the truck. There’s a full moon, and it’s a close one—bright white. It rises like the reverse of the New Year’s Eve Times Square ball as we drive back across the island bridge. The bank of trees on the other side of the highway is outlined by the moon, and I’m wondering how I could sketch this. It would be a study in negative space. Shades of black and gray and just tiny bits of white.

  We are quiet with each other, Connor and me. The clank of the yard tools in the truck bed is an oddly soothing sound. For the first time, my sadness for Sabine has moved away from me missing her, to me feeling sorry for her. More than sorry for her, really. I reach for an SAT word that means pity. Abject pity. With anger thrown in. Pathos? Sabine will always be my frozen-in-time teenaged sister. The milestones I’ll get to that she never will. Legal drinking age, college. If what Connor says is true, she was pretty mixed up about things. Untrusting, competitive, vengeful. I don’t want to believe those things about Sabine. I want to believe Nona’s rendition of her. The electric candle version. The Saint Agatha pureness of her. Not this Fucknerian image of a girl who would pit people against one another. A girl who would try and make her boyfriend jealous by using her so-called best friend as a … a what? A patsy? A tool? She told Nick that Connor could be the father of her baby. Could be, she’d said. And Connor, poor Connor, was caught in the middle.

  Whatever betrayal Connor may or may not feel, none of that came out when he told me that Sabine used him to get at Nick. That she wanted to test Nick’s love for her by lying about their relationship. Love? How could Sabine think that what she and Nick had was love? And how could Connor let her do that to him?

  Cheerleading, Sabine told me once, is about raising belief. Making anything possible. Down by three touchdowns? No problem. Give me a “G.” The smile never leaves. No matter what. “People want to be transported,” Sabine said. “They want hope kept alive. That’s my job.”

  Her job, apparently, was also to keep doubt alive. In the mind of one Nick Avery.

  Finally, when we’re close but not spitting distance close to my house, I move my hand on top of the one that’s working the shifter. “Thank you. For all of it.”

  Connor doesn’t really answer, but he smiles just the tiniest bit.

  “You can let me out here. And, I think I may have a client for you. For the gardening, I mean.”

  Connor pulls to the curb and eases the truck to neutral. He turns to me. “Man, I really want to get high right now.”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s something you’ve got to figure out, I guess. But, you know, Sabine was luckier than she knew. To have you in her world, I mean.”

  He leans in and I lean in, and like they’ve been doing this for years, practicing, our lips make perfect contact.

  twenty-one

  The next couple of days are a blur. Mom and I have a cold war at home. Don’t ask, don’t tell. She’s doing her realtor thing, mostly, and I come and go. I attend all my classes. I do homework, even. Study. Pass tests. Martha, if she hates my guts, she doesn’t let on. She’s her usual positive self. Even more so, because she’s got the Rose Festival thing going on. That, and she and Nick are going to Prom together Saturday, and because they’re the new “it” couple, Marnick, good behavior is a must. When I see her in trig, she practices her Rose Festival Queen smile. And, I see her sneaking her Xanax or Ativan or whatever it is under the lip of the desk. Popping pills to keep from chewing her fingernails to stubs.

  The other thing I do is I get Mrs. Cupworth to agree to consider hiring Connor for her yard. Even though Mrs. Cupworth has a crew the size of the Whitehouse Secret Service to tend her lawn and trees and flowers, I convince her that she could revitalize the herb garden alongside her portico. And the dead arborvitae in Grecian urns that surround a side patio could be swapped out for new ones. And then there’re her roses.

  “Is he trustworthy?” she asks when I call her.

  “More than anyone I know,” I assure her.

  “Saturday afternoon at two,” she says, and, before hanging up she adds, “if, you’ll also agree to consider the studio space I suggested. On a trial basis, of course.”

  Bowerman had tipped me off about this idea Mrs. Cupworth had been “bandying about in her head.” She wanted to launch an artist-in-residence program whereby aspiring artists from Greenmeadow could apply to have use of her studio—a converted pool house, actually—for each school semester, as well as through the summer. She would supply the tools of whatever medium the artist required—paint, canvas, clay—and in return the artist would spend time making art. The artist would also agree to do some public speaking in support of arts education around the city. I was the hoped guinea pig. I had to admit, the most compelling part of the offer was that she wanted me, not Martha.

  Saturday afternoon, I pack up my sketch pad and my charcoal. I’m going to “feel the space out.” But, mostly, what I’m hoping to do is get Connor a job that’s conveniently located to where I’ll be spending afternoons and weekends.

  When I get to Cupworth’s, I see the front of the beater truck already parked in the semi-circle, half-hidden behind a fountain that’s a leaping salmon made of copper. The water spraying out of its mouth is greenish. I say a little Nona-type prayer that the truck isn’t leaking oil all over Mrs. Cupworth’s driveway.

  I expect to see Connor still behind the wheel, waiting for me before meeting his prospective employer, but he’s not in the truck. As soon as I round the edge of the circle, I hear Mrs. Cupworth’s fancy old lady voice, and then Connor’s mellow boy voice. They are discussing grass length. And whether it’s too early to put in tomatoes.

  Connor’s arms are folded, and he’s attentive as Mrs. Cupworth points to various places around her garden. They both look up when they hear my footsteps on the gravel. “Good afternoon,” says Mrs. Cupworth. “Your friend and I were just getti
ng acquainted.”

  Connor winks at me and my stomach goes all liquid-mush. He’s wearing a turned-around Mariner’s cap and a bright blue shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearm. He looks like a guy ready to build something, with a Leatherman fastened to his belt and his heavy work boots. And next to him Mrs. Cupworth looks even more delicate than usual in her pale purple pleated skirt and cardigan. A strand of pearls hanging primly at her collar bone. Matching earrings. Connor is not, thank God, wearing Sabine’s earring. Even for an arts lover, that might be asking too much of Mrs. Cupworth.

  “When can you start?” she asks Connor.

  “Now?” he says.

  “Good,” she says, and then extends her fine-boned, liver-spotted hand. Don’t crush it, I think, as I watch Connor shake it in his meaty paw.

  With Connor’s weed whacker whirring in the background, Mrs. Cupworth leads me to the pool enclosure. The lap pool is still covered for the season, and might be covered all summer, she lets me know, since her grandchildren are away at boarding school in France or somewhere. At the far end of the pool—which is flanked by gargoyles and ornate hedges—stands a rock and clapboard cottage, the kind you see in photographs that feature the Kennedys enjoying their summer holidays. The little house has a forest green door and matching shutters, and like the main house, there’s ivy growing up on the side of it. I must have gasped, because Mrs. Cupworth asks me if I’m all right. If I need some water.

  I’m speechless, and for a second, can’t remember whether to shake or nod my head to let her know I’m fine.

  “I know it’s a bit crude,” she says, unlocking the heavy wood door with a little gold key, “and the lighting could be better, but the feel of the place. Well, it always spoke to me.”

  Inside, it’s two big rooms, one of which has a large south-facing window and a view of Mt. Hood. Plank floorboards, the kind that are made from old growth trees, gleam like butterscotch. An easel is set up facing the window, and there’s an enormous waist-high table in the middle of the space. It’s like an art supply showroom in here, with stacks of paper, a crock filled with sable brushes, tubes of oil paint.

  “Wow,” is all I can manage to say.

  “It does get a little chilly in here,” Mrs. Cupworth chirps. “I have a floorboard heating system, but you’ll need to dress warmly when it’s overcast or rainy.”

  There’s no way Mrs. Cupworth would know about Nona and I bundling up all those Sunday afternoons to paint on her back porch, but I say, “I’ll feel right at home then.”

  “So, you like it? You’ll try this out?”

  I feel like hugging this blue-haired angel. This benefactor. “You’d really let me work here? Sketch and paint and draw?”

  “Child,” she says. “It would give me great pleasure to see more of your work. I think about how, in our culture’s heyday, these sorts of sponsorships were ubiquitous. It was an imperative. And now, what do my peers fund? They put money in the pockets of politicians who promise to give them a break on their taxes.”

  Mrs. Cupworth pulls a long sable brush from the bouquet of them in the red crockery. “I tried, you know. I tried art school. Painting. Just because one appreciates, there’s no guarantee of talent or success. I spent decades in bitter seclusion before I realized that there was another way to bring the beauty I sought to the world.”

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s Connor, with a question about fertilizer. Organic or regular, he wants to know.

  “Shit’s shit,” says Mrs. Cupworth, and both Connor and I burst out in laughter.

  “Why don’t you settle into the feel of the place, Brady,” she says. “And you, Connor, help her move things around to her specifications.”

  And with that, Mrs. Cupworth glides out the door, leaving Connor and me alone, in the most magical art studio ever.

  Connor helps me rearrange the table and the easel and a few large canvases. We are truly on our best behavior, and it’s just the sheer awesomeness of this place that keeps me from wrapping my arms around him and burying his face in kisses.

  “So, she’s just letting you use this place to do art? Like, for nothing?” Connor says.

  I can’t believe it myself. “She wants to do this regularly. I’m her beta artist, I guess.”

  Connor runs his hand over the wood sash of the big picture window. “Clear vertical grain,” he says. “This is probably from an ancient fir. Look at those lines.”

  He turns around and puts his hands on my shoulders. “So, are we good?”

  I answer him by leaning in and touching his cheek with my lips, slow, soft. I wish I were the sort of girl who wears lipstick, so I could leave a mark. “I think you won her over,” I tell him. “You charmer, you.”

  “I do know my rose cultivars,” he says, thumbing invisible suspenders. “My mom’s been in the garden society since I could walk. She used to take me to Washington Park, and teach me the names of all her favorite bushes. The floribundas and the climbers. Turns out Mrs. Cupworth is a tea rose fan. I told her I could get her double delights free of rust and blight.”

  The sun catches his cheek and there’s a bit of peach fuzz and a tiny growth of whisker on his jawline. The play of shadow in this space is fantastic, and so I blurt, “I want you to model for me.”

  His eyebrows squinch. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, I mean, why not? You can be my muse.”

  He laughs a nervous laugh, “I thought muses had to be chicks. You know, goddesses and whatnot.”

  “Get with the new millennium, Christopher. This chick is calling the shots.”

  A red blush spreads across his face. “Not, you know, naked, right?”

  I think about this, truly. The beauty of this boy’s body, in the Classic sense. And then I think about something Bowerman once said about the difference between art and porn. “It all has to do with the intention,” she said. “Is it to stir the soul, or gratify a transient urge?”

  Connor, naked, well that might blur the lines. “Not naked,” I say. And then, watching him push the cap back on his head, his arm flexed, I get an idea. And for the next two hours, Connor is standing at the window, Mt. Hood and its craggy cone, its white and its shadows, majestic in the space behind him. His arms up over his head and his expression like an eagle, set on something in the distance.

  twenty-two

  By the time Connor’s arm is about ready to fall off, and my hands are black from charcoal, and Mrs. Cupworth has come and gone several times, bearing limeade and teacakes, apparently thrilled that I’ve taken to the space—that my “artistic sensibilities have been stirred,” it occurs to me that if we were normal Greenmeadow juniors instead of outliers and freaks, we’d be getting ready for Prom.

  “I’m sort of curious about it,” I admit to Connor, clinking ice in yet another tall glass of refreshment. “Are you?”

  Connor is rubbing his arm. “Nah. Not really.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t you wonder what Cathi Serge and Walter Pine are wearing? Maybe his and hers Amish outfits?”

  Conner feigns shock at my cattiness. “That’s not very Martha of you.”

  “Speaking of Martha. I’m not feeling really great about keeping quiet on what I know about her boyfriend. If anyone needs to hear what’s on Sabine’s voicemail, it’s her.”

  Connor considers this, running his hand through his hat-hair. “She made her bed,” he says. “As they say.”

  “Still. Maybe we should, you know, take a drive out there. Watch the action from afar?”

  “Where’s it at again?”

  That’s the thing about Connor. Some things he’s just clueless about. The whole school had been buzzing about the unprecedented venue, the Multnomah Country and Golf Club, in lieu of the usual converted gymnasium. This year, it was a combined deal. Juniors and seniors together, plus their dates. Tickets were $75 a piece. They were serving prime rib. And for the vegans, there would be some sort of casserole. “Made from P
arisian mushrooms,” I tell Connor.

  “Yeah?” he says. “Well, if you want to. I think the whole thing is sort of lame.”

  We bid Mrs. Cupworth adieu. Connor will return tomorrow, he tells her, with his gas-powered hedge trimmers. He’ll take care of that unwieldy laurel. And me, I couldn’t be happier with the set-up. “You’ll have to drag me out of here,” I offer, and even though I’m smeared in black like a chimney sweep, she takes my one hand in both of hers the way fancy old people do, and she tells me how happy she is to hear it.

  We’re back in Connor’s noisy truck, and rumbling down Mrs. Cupworth’s driveway before I realize that, in these past few hours, I’ve not thought once about Mom and Dad or school. And only a little bit about Sabine. It’s been an afternoon of happy normal.

  Also, I’m feeling almost like Connor’s my boyfriend, him driving all sure of himself in this big old truck and me riding shotgun, trying to tune in something reasonable on the crappy radio. We could be like that old John Mellencamp song about Jack and Diane. He must be feeling it too, because in between shifts he squeezes my knee and sort of glances over at me.

  It’s just about dark again, and if we hurry, we’ll probably be able to catch some of the prom-goers climbing out of limos, their corsages pinned neatly to their vintage bodices in keeping with the 60’s theme. I’m pretty sure Martha will be wearing some original gown proffered from eBay. A frock that might have cost the sum total of the Cupworth Prize. Or more. And for Nick, maybe she scrounged up a Nehru jacket, one of those coats with a Mandarin collar, circa British invasion.