All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  “No one is innocent in this life. Everyone’s a criminal, trust me. Except for you, I guess. You’re pretty innocent, right?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” she said, which was true.

  “Don’t ever change, kid,” he said. But he didn’t sound convincing to Avery at all. It came out as a statement rather than a command. Then he lit a cigar, and the car filled with smoke. She waved it away from her face. When he dropped her off, he said, “Let’s not tell your mother I was smoking around you.” He handed her a hundred-dollar bill. “If she asks, you know, just tell her we ran into a buddy of mine who was smoking instead.” She stared at the money in her palm and then looked up at him, silent, shocked. “You drive a hard bargain,” he’d said, and handed her another bill. He gave her an appraising look. “That’s a good skill to have.” She nodded in agreement—to all of it.

  She liked money, she guessed. Money was a thing you were supposed to like. But now Avery was a liar. Before this moment she was not a liar, and now, suddenly, she was one. Did he do that or did she?

  In twenty years, she would date a man who smoked cigars. He was not good to her; the relationship was quite fraught, in fact. They snapped at each other, and argued about politics, about the man’s employer, how Avery couldn’t understand how he worked for him, about morals, about ethics, about capitalism. They stayed together much longer than they should have, and every time he smoked a cigar Avery hated the smell, but for some reason, with all the things she gave him shit about, she never said a word about it. After the relationship was finished, she realized: I should have started there, with the cigars. The whole thing would have been over a lot sooner.

  As she approached the cabin, her bunkmates stretching and chattering on the front porch, she tried to land on a feeling. She knew there was something off about her grandfather. That at the very least she might be better off if he wasn’t around. But at the same time, she thought: Death is sad. No one should die. No living creature deserved to die. She knew it was nature. She knew there were cycles. Her other grandparents had died. (They were much better people than this grandfather, that she knew, too.) But someone, somewhere should be sad about her grandfather. And so, she cried.

  When she got to her bunk, she lay back on the mattress and pulled out a pen. Next to all the other girls’ names she wrote her own. And then, next to hers, she wrote his. Victor.

  5

  Ten a.m., and the house woke Corey before he was ready. A foundation that rattled when trucks passed nearby on Claiborne. The freeway on-ramp a half block away; traffic seemed endless. An ex-wife who put her phone on speaker for every conversation, as if the whole world was interested in her business. Never mind the three children, one just out of diapers, everyone coming and going as they pleased. Corey crashed on a couch in the second room off the backyard, formerly the office. One kid or another was always marching through, on the way to play their shows on the extra TV when they all couldn’t agree on what to watch on the big one in the front room, or when his oldest, Pablo, a teenager, went to smoke cigarettes in the backyard. Plus, they liked to spend time with him, and he loved them all a lot, laughed with them, teased them, poked them. How could he argue with his children coming to see their daddy?

  Otherwise, it was almost like a room of his own. He had moved in a clothing rack from which he hung his uniforms, his jeans, his T-shirts, all pressed, his shoes lined up underneath. A family portrait—minus Corey—hung on the wall. Three dark-haired children smiling, all with varying degrees of dental stability, no baby teeth, braces, braces-free, and Camila, with her glittering hoop earrings and rosy décolletage and tired eyes. She’d had the photo taken during the late stages of their divorce. He liked to look up at them all anyway, pretend he had been at his job that day instead.

  He was willing to work with the situation. And it was their right to go where they wanted. But couldn’t they sometimes respect that he had a late shift?

  Not my house, he reminded himself. Not my rules. He had landed there, debt-ridden, nine months ago. A few bad roommates in a row, lingering school bills, and of course, these children before him, who didn’t come for free. He couldn’t get out from under, no matter how hard he tried. Still, he was lucky to have ended up somewhere safe and solid, he knew it. The kids were in school, the house was clean. But he wanted more. He could not help but dream of living without any noise at all. He was not a quiet man, but he imagined he could become one if he had the right place to live. A silent, stable, powerful force in the world. Like a ninja.

  The only place for real quiet was Camila’s room, but sleeping with her meant all kinds of trouble, and also she liked to remind him who paid the bills around here, which made him feel less than sexual. Anyway, she hadn’t welcomed him of late. He was all kinds of trouble for her, too, he recognized that. The marriage had ended because they couldn’t stop fighting. Money being the main topic, even if it was shrouded in other subjects: sex, food, and various aesthetic disagreements. Wearily, these past few months, they had come to a calm place between them. So long as they didn’t pretend like they—as in the idea of the two of them as a “they”—could happen anymore, that this husband-and-wife thing was ever going to work, then they could still share this house. This noisy-as-hell house.

  He had a plan, though. There was a new woman in his life: Sharon. She didn’t love him, he thought. He didn’t love her yet either, but he supposed he could, or come close, anyway. He wasn’t so sure about her—how much love she had in her. Sharon was both warm and impenetrable. But he was working on it. In three days, his plan would be in play. I still got game, baby, he thought, I got some moves left.

  Morning

  6

  Alex, in New Orleans. Things had shifted, things were in motion; a long-iced-over river thawed inside her, and the rapids were running. Now, though she would never utter it to anyone, Alex couldn’t wait until her father died, so at last she could learn the truth about him. Victor Tuchman was lying unconscious in a hospital bed three miles away, uptown from her hotel. Death was surely upon him, so what did it matter if it was now or later? As a doctor gave her what others might view as bad news about her father’s much-shortened life span, she had nearly said, “Do you promise?”

  Alex had arrived in the city two days ago, and there had been a great deal of rushing about, phone calls with various relatives and a few former business associates from his building developer years, an insurance company, a bank. She also had a long conversation with a hospital administrator about necessary next steps should her father pass, including a vague mention that her father’s body would have to be sent to the coroner for a post-mortem examination, a detail that Alex considered briefly—she knew from her year in the public defender’s office that a coroner’s exam was required only if there was a criminal investigation—and then filed firmly away, except to say to herself: Trouble even to the end, Dad? Really?

  Through all this she had periodically tried to meet her mother’s distant, misty gaze, just to let her know that time would soon be up; her mother would have no one to hide behind, nor a reason to keep any secrets from her any longer. Her mother had been loyal all these years, often acting more like her husband’s consigliere rather than like his wife, and Alex knew Barbra wouldn’t say a bad word about Victor before he passed. But now Alex felt certain that someday, perhaps soon, she could make her crack. Maybe even before the funeral. Maybe even today. Alex knew there was so much more to the story of their lives together, and she was determined to get it.

  Pathetic as it was, she knew! Oh, she knew. Really, rationally, why should she care so much? Once she was deeply fascinated with her parents. She had craved knowledge about them. As a child she fiddled with locked doors and drawers, got down on her knees and dug through closets, lingered outside her father’s study during business calls until her mother shooed her off.

  Fifteen years ago, she had at last recognized the pointlessness in trying to uncover the truth from a man who had never actually been convic
ted of anything, and a woman who had sealed shut her emotions decades ago. And, of course, Alex’s own real, adult life had begun: there was that first job (of many) in Chicago, and then marriage to a handsome, imperfect man, followed by the birth of a clear-headed, pretty, loving child who was terrible at math but otherwise quite bright—in general, an existence that she would not necessarily call rich or vibrant but was definitely full. Who had time to chase after people who were highly skilled at not getting caught? Why bother with that when there was plenty to worry about right in front of her?

  But suddenly there was this possibility, this opportunity that had arrived three days ago, at a time when she had just enough emotional space available to give a shit again about these people. How did Barbra feel about Victor? Why had she stayed with him? And was he even worse than Alex thought he was all those years?

  She needed some allies in this quest. She tried now to obtain at least a little support from her sister-in-law, Twyla, who was lying next to her on a deck chair. They were at Alex’s hotel, on the roof, at the pool, suffering through the fog of heat, sweating beneath two enormous umbrellas. Gary’s estimated time of arrival was still unclear, so she had invited Twyla to spend a few hours with her, a break for the two of them from all the stress surrounding her father. “Hell yeah, hotel pool,” she’d said when Alex called her. Twyla then spent the first forty-five minutes after her arrival agonizing about whether or not she should get a drink that early in the day, until Alex had finally ordered one for her, which Twyla was now sipping with great contentment, as if she had made the decision all by herself.

  “Do you think once my father dies, Barbra will spill the beans?” said Alex.

  “What do you mean?” said Twyla.

  Twyla had a husky voice and extremely blond hair, heaps of it, not styled in any kind of particular way, instead casually relying on its blondness and size to get by in life. She reeked of lipstick, which she kept reapplying; her purse was full of cheap tubes of the stuff, which she told Alex she purchased compulsively every time she was in a drugstore, always on the hunt for a new favorite color. She was wearing a tie-dyed bikini, and enough sunblock that her skin had rejected some of it, leaving a thick layer all over her body. Alex probably could have scraped it off with a fingernail.

  “What I mean is,” Alex said, “she never complained about him, really their entire lives, not much that I ever saw, and it was always so abstract when she did it—‘Your father,’ and then she’d sigh, and that was it. But there’s got to be things stored up in there. Almost fifty years of truth. And feelings.” She added, with an innocent tone, “And maybe it would make her feel better to say it out loud.”

  “I don’t think that’s your mother’s way,” said Twyla. She slurped her margarita. “She just wants everyone to be calm. And satisfied.”

  “Is that true?” Alex asked. She wanted him to be satisfied, and that’s it, she thought.

  Twyla shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand and looked across the bright, white cement pool patio. “God, I wish I had a cigarette. Do you think it’s OK to smoke out here?” Then she turned her attention to her phone and began to furiously text. Over her shoulder, Alex could see she was trying to get the attention of someone named Sierra, while unleashing a varied, high-pitched selection of emojis from what appeared to be a vast digital arsenal.

  Gary had been in Los Angeles having meetings, trying to get his career in shape, and their daughter was away at some kind of nature camp for two months, and, in their absence, Twyla had apparently regressed, and Alex was enjoying this version of her. Pliable, easygoing, mildly decadent, more like that good-time southern girl her brother had married fifteen years ago. Meanwhile, Alex’s daughter was away for the summer, too, in Colorado with her father (supposedly hiking, likely in front of an array of screens), and Alex had planned on enjoying the time apart from her, but then her father had had the heart attack, and instead it made her more her, the version she didn’t want to be.

  And what would her summer have looked like otherwise? She would have slept in on the weekends but worked later on the weekdays. She would have dated, perhaps, and had some sex, hopefully, which would have left her both fulfilled and vulnerable. And Alex would have spent a few days seriously contemplating how to be the next version of herself post-divorce, something she hadn’t even begun to consider yet—she had been so busy getting divorced and managing her daughter’s happiness that there had not been a day to just be. She hadn’t had time to work on her friendships either; people had disappeared, or perhaps she had, too. She had actually marked that down in her calendar for the end of July: “Figure your shit out.” Although she had written it in pencil.

  “What if knowing all the dirt made me happy, though?” said Alex. “Hearing her be honest just once. She’s my mother. Shouldn’t she want to make me happy?”

  Twyla put her oily hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Death is hard on everyone,” she said.

  “Twyla! You don’t want to know the truth yourself?” Alex was desperate for commiseration.

  For a moment, Twyla was quiet and calm, a slight breeze pushing at her hair. She opened her mouth to say one thing, and then another, and then finally she landed on a thought. “No offense, but why should I care?” she said. “They’re not the ones who fucked me up.” She sucked her drink dry. “What do you think,” she said. “Should I have another?”

  * * *

  In the hotel room, Alex immediately missed the roof, where she’d been cut off from the world. She glanced out through the window at the abandoned construction site next door, a building in exile from the rest of the city, unloved, unfinished, for life, and then gave in and turned on the television set. It was how she was raised: televisions in practically every room in the house. Kitchen, living room, everyone’s bedrooms, her father’s study, one on the back patio, just out of reach of the pool water. The only place that had been TV-free was the dining room, but often the kitchen set was left on during meals, in sight of where her father sat at the head of the table, so he could lean back and catch the sports scores. Clarity of thought was dangerous in their home. The background hum was what made the house run. Then no one had to articulate their words; conversation just gave way to the rumble from room to room. Low-level noise was what her father desired. Except when he wanted complete fucking silence, of course. Whatever soothed him, he got.

  There was nothing soothing about television these days. All the news was bad. Our president was a moron and the world was falling apart: she thought this every single day. Alex sprawled stomach-down on the bed and watched the talking heads anyway. What horrors awaited? She took no pleasure in the knowing, yet being informed satisfied a part of her. One could be both satisfied and unhappy simultaneously; she had known this for a long time. Which side of the scale was being tipped at any given moment was up to her. She had chosen unhappy lately. It seemed easier, in a way.

  But she was still a mother, a job title that forced her to act at least a little satisfied. Her iPad beeped: it was her daughter, Sadie, FaceTiming from Colorado. Alex muted the television set but turned on the closed captioning. Just in case.

  Alex and Sadie waved at each other, Sadie’s smile a metallic gleam of the most expensive, longest-running batch of braces in history, like some well-loved, sentimental Broadway musical. Sadie rolled onto her back and took the iPad with her. Her hair splayed around her on the bed. Look how pretty my daughter is, thought Alex. Her father all over her. One quarter Korean, one quarter Swedish, one half Russian. Anything could have happened. Lucky her, she skewed daddy.

  “How’s Grandpa?” said Sadie.

  “Still sick,” said Alex.

  “Like still sick like, get better sick, or sick like, die sick?”

  “I don’t want to be casual about this. He’s very sick, and he’s not awake, and he’ll probably die.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “I don’t know about sad. It’s a different feeling than I’ve had before,” said Alex. “Are you
sad?”

  “I didn’t really know him, so I’m only going to feel bad if you do, because I love you,” said Sadie.

  My heart, thought Alex. “You’re a great kid,” she said. “How’s it going there?”

  Since Sadie had arrived in Denver, her Instagram feed was full of pictures of the exteriors of pot dispensaries, and Alex had complained to her ex-husband about it, and he had said, “What do you want me to do? They’re everywhere. It’s not as if she’s smoking pot. I can’t stop her from taking the pictures when I’m not around.” And then she’d had to have the conversation with her daughter: “Are you smoking pot?” “Mom, no.” “You can tell me if you are.” “Mom.” Alex steeled herself for the worst, every time they spoke.

  “Well, Daddy has two girlfriends,” said Sadie.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because one girlfriend I met, and we went to dinner with her, and her name is Natasha—she’s fine—and the other girlfriend we ran into at the mall.”

  “Maybe she was just a friend of his.”

  “No, she squeezed his hand really tight. I saw it.”

  “OK,” said Alex. This guy, she thought, he’s probably dicking it up all over Denver. Well, Bobby can do as he pleases. He always has.

  “And then she said that she had called him last night, and he said he’d had the phone off because he was at a movie with me, and he wasn’t at a movie with me because he was at a movie with Natasha. Like he didn’t even think twice, he just totally lied to this woman, and I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to lie too or not.”

  Alex put her hand to her head.

  “One second, honey,” she said, and moved the iPad away from her head so Sadie couldn’t see her full physical response, which was a complete thrust of her face into disgust.