by Megan Crane
The woman was a spy.
Gladys Van Eck—known, inevitably, as Mrs. Van Ick to the neighborhood kids and not a few of their parents—knew everything about everyone. She tattled on teenage parties and called the town to report derelict cars in driveways—or even more hideous suburban offenses, like chipping paint on garages and recycling in the wrong garbage bins. She clocked the speeds of cars past her house and called in reports on habitual speeding offenders, particularly if said offenders were under the age of eighteen.
She was the most hated woman in the neighborhood, and, therefore, every single neighbor kissed her ass and bent over backwards trying to appease her. Each attempt to curry favor made her more suspicious.
“Meredith McKay!” Her voice rang out like a school bell. It had the same effect, too—I winced, immediately reduced to somewhere around the age of thirteen, and obeyed. My half-formed plan to break for the back door died in infancy.
“Hi, Mrs. Van Eck,” I said as politely as possible. There had been a Mr. Van Eck and even kids, I remembered hearing years ago, but that was long before my time and I wasn’t sure I believed it.
“You’re looking well enough, Meredith.” She strode toward me. No osteoporosis for the neighborhood menace, naturally. She’d be outrunning us all for decades yet in her obnoxious pastel pantsuits and that awful little sun hat.
“Is that little Athena?” I cooed at the dog. Like her predecessors, the dog sported a droopy bow clinging to a vertical tuft of brown hair on her tiny head. The bow was robin’s egg blue. The dog sniffed, quivered, and then commenced barking as if I’d tried to kick her.
Mrs. Van Eck glared at me as if I had.
“Her name is Isabella,” she barked.
“Little Isabella,” I simpered on cue. The dog bared its teeth at me from beneath the quivering blue bow. Little runt.
“I can’t help noticing that the grass in your mother’s front lawn is overgrown,” Mrs. Van Eck snapped at me, her eyes narrowed. She clearly suspected that the overgrown grass was part of a larger plot she had yet to uncover. Her expression warned me that she was on the case. Isabella yipped in agreement.
“Is it?” I peered past her at the lawn. It looked fine to me, but then, what did I know about grass? What I did know was this: if there was a certain length suburban neighbors were supposed to keep their grass, Mrs. Van Eck would be out there with a ruler ensuring compliance.
“I know your father is laid up with that leg of his, but that’s no excuse to let the yardwork slide,” she continued. From a distance, it probably looked like she was concerned. I was closer. “I think your mother would be beside herself if she imagined that she’d left her house in such a state that the neighbors had to step in.”
Neighbors, she said. Like she was an entire coalition of the concerned, instead of a lone gorgon on a rampage.
“I’ll get my brother to mow the lawn,” I interjected, because I felt like kicking at her or the dog and that would be A Very Bad Idea. “But I’m sorry, I’m in a big rush to get some lunch for Dad . . .” Diversionary tactics were my only option. Next she’d be talking about the state of the pachysandra beds and we could be there for days.
I could practically see the steam come out of her ears. She didn’t like being foiled.
But then, the woman packed her own arsenal.
“I thought I heard you were engaged by now,” she said, looking pointedly at my notably ringless left hand.
We both stared at my bare fingers. My hand twitched entirely of its own volition, and it almost hurt not to clench it into a fist. Isabella howled with what sounded like doggy malicious laughter and danced around on her hind legs, the vicious little cur.
“I remember now,” Mrs. Van Eck said, relishing the moment. “It was that Gillespie girl you were always running around with. But then, she was always so pretty.”
When I got inside, I found Hope and Jeannie seated across from each other at the kitchen table, squared off as if they were preparing to debate.
Or possibly tear each other’s hair out.
I wasn’t sure which of the two I would find more diverting. Okay—the hair pulling, definitely. Tough as Jeannie might be, I’d long suspected that my baby sister could kick ass in the literal sense. And the truth was, after dealing with that horrible woman, I was interested in a little violence.
“What’s going on?” I looked from one to the other. “Is Dad okay?”
“Your father is fine,” Jeannie said, never taking her eyes off Hope. “Little Miss It’s All About Me—”
“I think she means me,” Hope contributed in an exaggerated stage whisper. I fought the urge to laugh.
“—and I were just having a little talk about family responsibilities,” Jeannie continued as if Hope hadn’t spoken.
“Meaning our family, not her own,” Hope drawled, and smiled up at me. “Would it be rude of me to point out for the eight trillionth time that Jeannie isn’t actually a member of my family just yet?” She turned her smile on Jeannie, and it went wide and fake. “I’m making the most of my last few weeks of freedom, you know.”
“It’s obviously unfair to you that Hope lives here and refuses to help out with your father,” Jeannie carried on in her teacher mode, the one that paid no attention whatsoever to Hope’s comments and yet—make no mistake—heard them, filed them away, and planned to use them later.
It occurred to me that Jeannie, having been the Mean Girl Supreme when we were in high school, was probably an excellent teacher for that very reason. She could see those teenage girls coming a mile away. It was an interesting concept.
“Did I miss something?” I asked, getting back to the task at hand. I took the chair at the end of the table, placing myself between them. Like a mediator. “When did the two of you declare yourselves mortal enemies?”
“When I was born,” Hope said at once. I recalled that Hope, unlike the rest of the family, had never been overly impressed with Jeannie. It must have been the years of unjust torture at her hands. That kind of thing was only forgivable from a blood relative.
“Jeannie’s always been jealous of the fact that while she wanted to be the other sister in this family, I actually am that sister,” Hope continued merrily. She batted her lashes at Jeannie, leaned forward a little, and mouthed, Sorry!
Jeannie’s eyes narrowed, and Hope smirked. It was about to get ugly.
“I just saw Scotty Sheridan in town,” I said abruptly, hoping to forestall the bloodshed.
As bombshells went, it rated pretty high on the shock and awe scale. They both quit trying to stare down the other, and stared at me instead.
“We had coffee.” I shrugged. And wished I hadn’t said anything.
“With Scotty Sheridan?” Jeannie looked lost. “Why?”
“Scotty Sheridan is a hottie now,” Hope said. “Hard to believe, but true. My friend Katie says that guys who were geeky in high school almost always end up hot. They have so much more motivation to use their twenties to their advantage.”
“Are we talking about the same Scotty Sheridan?” Jeannie asked. “The Scotty Sheridan? The one who lived across the street?”
“It’s just Scott these days,” I told them both. Then I glared at my sister. “And what possessed you to tell him about Scotty Sheridan Sucks? Are you insane?”
Hope looked blank, and then laughed. “Oh yeah. Oops.”
“No one needs to hear that they were the butt of jokes for years,” I told her with a bit more heat than necessary. “How do you think hearing about that made him feel?”
“Aren’t you going a little overboard?” Hope shook her head. “The man is what? Thirty years old? What does he care what we said about him twenty years ago?”
“No one likes to hear something like that,” I repeated. Stubbornly. “It was mean to tell him about it, pure and simple.”
“And if he does care,” Hope continued, “he should do some more work with his therapist. Because who comes out looking like the asshole in this story?”
She leaned back in her chair. “Not Scott Sheridan, let me tell you.”
“I can’t process this,” Jeannie moaned. She looked at me. “Are you standing up for Scotty Sheridan? Did you actually have coffee with Scotty Sheridan? And he’s hot?” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I knew something was weird when I woke up this morning. Silly me, I thought it was too much cheese before going to bed last night.”
“Maybe it’s just you,” Hope suggested. Jeannie rolled her eyes, but didn’t respond.
“He’s cool,” I told Jeannie. I didn’t want to get into the ‘hot’ thing, or even near it. It was too disturbing. Obviously, that left only a good offense. “He’s a lawyer now. Which should worry you, in case the statute of limitations hasn’t run out on being a teenage drama queen at his expense.”
“Like you’re one to talk!” Jeannie fired back at once. “You would have thought dancing with him at the prom was a freaking virgin sacrifice, the way you carried on about it.”
“You danced with him at the prom?” Hope asked me, looking delighted. I frowned at her, but returned my attention to Jeannie.
“You were the one who told me that being seen dancing with him would be the same as dating him,” I reminded her. “You told me it would be like ‘social suicide,’ and I did it anyway, didn’t I?”
“Oh please,” Jeannie scoffed. “You take selective memory to a whole new level. Like anyone cared who you danced with.”
“Was the high school a John Hughes movie when you guys went there?” Hope asked. “Because when I was there, it was just a high school.”
“You certainly had a lot to say about who I danced with,” I threw at Jeannie.
“Here’s a news flash, Meredith,” Jeannie snapped at me. “I wasn’t as obsessed with you as you were. If Scotty Sheridan had asked me to dance—”
“As if he’d dare. You’d have ripped him into pieces for daring to talk to you in public.”
“—I would have just said no!”
There was a small silence as Jeannie and I glared at each other, broken by Hope’s amused chuckle.
“I can’t believe you guys are fighting about the senior prom,” she said. “I’m not sure I can even remember my senior prom.” She frowned. “Actually, I don’t think I went to my senior prom.”
Jeannie looked away and I took a moment to reflect that Hope was frighteningly right: it was embarrassing that I was even discussing the senior prom. It was one thing for Jeannie—she taught in a high school; she had to deal every day with teenage drama and it no doubt reminded her of her own.
I had no such excuse.
This was obviously the sort of horrifying thing that happened if you were foolish enough to move back home with your parents. You reverted back to yourself at seventeen, with everything that entailed. On the one hand, I wouldn’t mind fitting into the jeans I’d worn at seventeen. On the other, it’s not like there was a call for high-waisted, tapered-leg jeans in today’s world of low-cut, boot-legged denim, and anyway, who in their right mind would ever want to be seventeen again? I’d barely survived being seventeen the first time around. What was next? Fights with my father about curfew? Prank-calling boys? Where did it all end?
“I just think this is a tense time,” Jeannie said, snapping me out of rising hysteria. “Your father’s accident, your mother’s trip, the fact that you uprooted yourself to move all the way up here because Hope is too wrapped up in herself to take any responsibility for her family . . .” She let her voice trail away.
“Make sure you get that last part in there,” Hope said with a sigh. “It might distract attention from the fact that you want to be in this family and yet there’s been no sign of you around here since Meredith came home.”
“I have a wedding to plan,” Jeannie said, giving in and responding directly to Hope.
I, meanwhile, had a strange out-of-body moment. I could feel the part of me that felt seventeen again respond to Jeannie, making me want to join in and snap at Hope. But the other, older part of me took a step back and wondered. Neither one of them was helpful, really, but at least Hope was around the house. The last time I’d seen Jeannie she’d stormed out of my room and slammed the door. There’d been no sign of her or my brother since then. I might want to kill my little sister, but at least she was here.
I opened my mouth to say something about that, to take a stand for once instead of doing my usual routine, which was to run away and live in another state or—over holidays—to pretend everything was hunky-dory. But before I could say anything, the phone began to ring.
I told myself that I was annoyed at the interruption as I hurried to answer it, but I knew better. I was relieved.
Things to talk about with your mother on the telephone when she’s cavorting about Europe with her sister while you are trapped in the house, taking care of her husband and driving yourself crazy having arguments about events that were meaningless ten years ago:
“Oh!” I said merrily. “The weather is all right, actually! The humidity hasn’t been too bad, and today’s just beautiful! Hot, but beautiful! August will probably be a different story!”
Exclamation points again! I could actually taste them.
“I knew I could count on you, sweetheart,” Mom said from across the ocean. “But I do worry that you left Travis on his own like that. Men don’t like to come second best, Meredith. You’ll learn that you have to put them front and center, or they’ll find someone who will.”
Apparently, that was what you talked about when you were cavorting about Europe with your sister while your daughter abandoned her life to live the one you left behind in New Jersey. I rubbed at my temples. I never could seem to understand my mother. Why should that change now?
“Travis will deal,” I said, with perfect confidence I didn’t actually feel. “He’s completely supportive of my being here.”
What Travis actually was, I chose not to say, was frustratingly incapable of talking on the telephone. He could discuss football teams for hours on the phone with his college friends, but talking to his girlfriend? Forget it. It was one thing to lounge about in comfortable quiet on our couch together. It was something else entirely to have to work so hard at conversation on the phone. He was such a . . . guy.
But I wasn’t about to tell my mother that.
“If you say so, dear,” Mom said.
As if she suspected otherwise, but was too well-bred to say anything.
I wanted to scream. Instead, I asked about Italy.
“I only have a few minutes,” Christian said in his phone voice, the one that reminded me that some people probably didn’t think it was weird that he was a lawyer. “Jeannie’s really down about the wedding, Meredith. She thought you and Hope would be honored to be such an integral part of our special day, and instead it’s like neither of you can even be bothered about it.”
“The wedding? What’s going on with the wedding?” I stared at the phone. Was he kidding? Of course he wasn’t kidding. He never used his Speech Voice when he was kidding, because probably he didn’t know how silly it sounded. “I offered to help about a thousand times when you got engaged, but—”
“Jeannie asked both of you to be in the wedding party,” Christian cut me off. “You’ve been her best friend since we were three years old! I can’t believe you aren’t more into this!”
How to even begin answering that?
“Well, Christian,” I began. “I’m surprised that all of a sudden you’ve forgotten that ever since, oh, sophomore year of college, Jeannie and I have kind of stopped—”
“You have no idea how stressful the entire process is!” Christian interrupted fiercely. “Jeannie wants the bridesmaids’ stuff all taken care of as soon as possible—and let me tell you something, Meredith, I think you should ask yourself what kind of person makes her own sister-in-law cry while she’s getting ready for what ought to be the happiest day of her life!”
There was a small pause while I inhaled and told myself that I wasn’t touchin
g that one with a ten-foot pole. After all, the first thing that came to mind was to reiterate what Hope had said days before—that Jeannie wasn’t my sister-in-law yet, and let’s not rush into anything.
But this, I was pretty certain, was not what my brother wanted to hear.
I opted for: “I’m sorry that Jeannie’s upset.”
Christian heaved a sigh. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “Jeannie’s just freaking out, usually on me. It’s not your fault.” Nor was it his, he didn’t say, but I inferred from the sigh.
“I was calling to tell you that dinner tomorrow is at seven,” I said, powering through. “You’re still planning to come, right? You seem to have disappeared on me,” I couldn’t help adding.
“I’m busy, Meredith.” Christian’s tone was ever so slightly patronizing. “I can’t be there every night.”
“You’re not here any night.”
Petty? Perhaps. But also true.
“Do you have any idea how tough this is for Jeannie?” Christian continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “All she asked is that you try on a stupid dress you already own. How hard can that be?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Jeannie is actually really bad at standing up for herself when it comes to personal shit,” Christian informed me.
In direct contradiction of everything he or I had ever known about Jeannie Gillespie since we were all in preschool. Who was he kidding?
“I want the dress thing dealt with, Meredith.”
And he hung up.
“Oh yeah,” Hope said later when it occurred to me to ask her. “Jeannie did call.” She looked up from the television and smiled. “I tuned out when she mentioned the word ‘salmon’ again. Like I don’t know that’s pink, and no way am I wearing pink, which I told her a million times when we tried on all those dresses at Christmas.” She finally noticed that I wasn’t reacting, and was in fact just staring at her. “What?”