The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  KERRY, read the caller ID.

  Classy. The home-wrecker spelled her name with a K.

  Will wasn’t sure what he was thinking when he answered the call. More likely, he wasn’t thinking. He was in the midst of an emotional emergency—a five-alarm fire—and he was simply responding to the bell.

  “Stop calling here!” Will screamed. “My dad is married! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  He didn’t wait for the trollop to respond. He didn’t need to hear her justifications any more than he needed to hear her voice.

  Will had barely stabbed the End Call button before the phone began to ring again. It continued ringing as he took the box of Lindor truffles off the shelf and ate three without tasting a thing.

  Will’s eyes flashed daggers when Douglas hustled across the kitchen to answer the third or fourth missed call (“Kerry, hi. I’ve been up to my neck in clogged gutters”). He wandered out of the room, jacket dripping all over the clean floors, with an expression that was meant to look relaxed or, at the very least, not guilty. But Will knew better. Will knew his father was a cheater and a lush.

  Fourth Lindor truffle. Will popped it in his mouth all at once and felt a line of chocolate-infused drool roll down the center of his chin.

  Will remembered his mother’s words: Do you think you’d feel better after a drink, Douglas? Is that it? And he wondered, deviously, whether a glass of wine would help his father ease up on the CPS/PTSD/public school stuff. He used the kitchen step stool to take down a crystal glass. The bottle he and his mother had bought the day before still sat, half-full and corked on the counter. Will eased the cork out and sloshed the ravishing-red liquid to the brim of the glass. He left it on the counter like a wordless invitation to his dad.

  More sexist chatter on the radio. Phone-in listeners called in to report they “couldn’t live without” their bronzers, ChapSticks, and eyelash curlers.

  When Douglas returned, his eyes went directly to the full glass on the counter.

  Ebrious: Inclined to drink to excess. Or in Douglas’s case, a hiccupping, pants-pissing, word-slurring, lose-all-mental-capacity kind of drunk.

  Douglas’s mouth bent in a frown. “Will,” he said. “Are you all right? You’re not acting like yourself.”

  “What am I acting like?”

  “To be honest? It’s like watching you impersonate your mother.”

  His father’s words were like an ice cube down the back of the shirt.

  “The person you just spoke to on the phone. His name is Kerry. He’s my sponsor. Do you know what that means?”

  Will shook his head.

  “That means that I am an alcoholic. It means that I’m trying to quit drinking and lead a sober life, and Kerry is my role model, my teacher, and my bullshit detector. No one gave me an ultimatum or forced me to go to a recovery group. I’ve been going because I want to better myself and my relationship with you kids …”

  All at once, Will stopped listening to what his father was saying. Douglas’s voice receded into the background as the radio DJ revealed the answer to the poll:

  “The correct answer is … can I have a drumroll please? Thank you. A new study reveals the vast majority of women report they can’t live without … their hair dryers! What is it with you ladies and those things? My ex-wife almost set our hotel room on fire when she used one to blow-dry her panties.”

  Douglas was still trying to explain the ins and outs of his crippling alcoholism as he trailed Will up the stairs to Rose’s room.

  “Alcoholism hijacks the circuits of your brain that are responsible for decision making,” Will’s dad said, bending to sit down on Rose’s ruffled pink comforter. “This runs in your family, Will. That’s something you should know as you get older. Just a little bit of underage drinking and you might literally reprogram your brain to associate ‘alcohol’ with ‘the only thing in the world worth doing.’”

  Much as Will would have liked to tell his dad that (a) it was bad form to lecture someone else when you were trying to “hold yourself accountable” and (b) booze was about as appetizing as cat food (thanks in large part to the memories of it on Douglas’s own breath), he had something far more pressing on his mind.

  Will went directly to Rose’s vanity and pulled out one of the wire baskets he had scrounged through days earlier.

  “Look,” he told his dad, holding up Rose’s Conair 225R.

  “Look at what? The hair dryer?” Douglas snapped out of his own fugue. He seemed aware for the first time that they were in his estranged daughter’s room.

  “Yes. Didn’t you hear what they just said on the radio? Most women say they can’t live without their hair dryers.”

  Will studied his dad, waiting patiently as he could for Douglas to catch his drift. Someone as image-obsessed as Rose would never run off without her favorite battered old blow dryer. Damien must have made her leave more quickly than she wanted. He’d hurried her, or else he’d lured her away. Maybe they’d had to leap at some opportunity that wouldn’t come again.

  Will waited for his father to do something. Respond. Move a muscle. Let some emotion twitch across his middle-aged features. He wasn’t expecting Douglas’s (over?)reaction when it finally came. Will’s father pitched forward and thrust his head between his chinoed knees. He cupped his ears with his palms, revealing the damp half-moons of his armpit stains. His shoulder blades shook violently. It took Will many minutes to figure out whether his stoic father was crying or dry-heaving.

  VIOLET HURST

  NOW THAT VIOLET had a plan, she was determined to find out everything there was to know about Rose and the circumstances of her disappearance. In three days, hopefully, she’d be out of Fallkill. In the meantime, she needed to know more about the boyfriend her sister had pinned every hope on.

  Violet managed another visit to the computer lab—two in one day—by claiming she wanted to check her midterm scores. That was top-shelf bullshit and the very act of fibbing made her feel like her mother was winning, but time was of the essence. It seemed pretty clear that Matt was “Damien,” and she needed to do a little background on him before the Kingston Police Department came calling, as Nicholas had assured her they would.

  There was a photo of Rose’s professor, Matt, on the geology department website. He was handsome, undeniably so. But his face had the kind of fine-drawn symmetry that makes men self-loathing and apologetic, especially in the Catskills, where people tended to value social responsibility over sex appeal—or at the very least, pretended to.

  Professor Metamorphic Rock—actually, he was an assistant professor—had downplayed his lantern jaw with sideburns reminiscent of pubic hair. His long hair looked greasy under his Indiana Jones hat. His blue-steel eyes were framed with unfashionably round glasses. But there was a certain contagious joy in his smile as he stood, pointing out something on the side of a crag. Violet didn’t trust him, but his enthusiasm leapt off the screen, and she understood how Rose could be drawn to him.

  Violet plunged deeper into Google stalking. Matt had a low-budget, low-content website, which listed various field guides he’d written, as well as a page of geology-centered dirty jokes: “What are three reasons life is more fun as a geologist? Thrusting, cleavage, and overturned beds.” Matt had assessed earthquake hazards in Morocco. He’d studied faults in the Andes. He was goofy, accomplished, well traveled, and, of course, married.

  Matt and his possibly ex-wife, Francesca, had tied the knot five years earlier. The ceremony was in their backyard beneath a homemade hops trellis. Violet knew because she found Matt’s old wedding website. Actually, it was more like a blog, and for a full year leading up to the nuptials, Francesca had obsessively detailed everything from her “conflict” about serving cupcakes instead of an old-fashioned wedding cake (“What will we do for the ‘cutting’ tradition? Do we even care about tradition?”) to her hunt for a wedding theme (“I’m throwing caution to the wind with a three-color combination of brown, pink, and blue!”). Violet
scrolled through the couple’s Williams-Sonoma registry and winced when she saw they’d registered for the same Wüsthof knife she’d pointed at her mother. She read the story of their engagement, which began with the sad and delusory words: Throughout their entire relationship, Matt and Francesca have always been very open with each other.

  An image search for Francesca showed pictures of a dimpled, toothy blonde, sunglasses on her head, cleavage that looked like it could damn near smother her. She was very pretty, even if it was a paint-by-numbers kind of beauty. Violet could only imagine how a woman like that would take the news of Matt’s infidelity. A philandering husband and his knocked-up girlfriend did not factor into princess fantasies, and Francesca had worn a bona fide tiara on her wedding day.

  And what about Rose? Violet wondered if her sister felt unique. Did it feel good to know that, even with his Barbie-doll wife, Matt had singled her out?

  Violet took a deep breath and sent Francesca a Facebook request so she could snoop a little deeper and find out whether Matt had left her. Then she scrawled Matt’s phone number and office hours into her sketch pad, and e-mailed him at his dot-edu address:

  Hi Matt,

  I just wanted to formally introduce myself. I’m Rose’s sister Violet. I just wanted to thank you for taking such good care of my sister, and helping her get out of my parents’ house. I’m really looking forward to meeting you. Hope we can make it happen soon!

  It was forward, but she consoled herself by thinking about what Sara-pist had said about working on her fear of intimacy, trying to be more open and assuming even a little better of people. Also, she remembered what Nicholas from CPS had said: It was worth looking into Matt, taking precautions to make sure he was an okay guy (not a sex fiend, not a serial killer).

  If Matt was a decent guy who’d left his wife for Rose, then he might want to know a little more of Rose’s family. Violet included her phone number at Fallkill and told him to call if he was ever in Poughkeepsie.

  After computer lab, Violet and Corinna found Edie in the dayroom. She was sitting, stone-faced, on the love seat beside the dead palm tree no one on staff thought to either water or remove. The day nurse sat beside her, eating the Krause’s chocolates out of the open box in Edie’s lap.

  “Like takin’ candy from a baby,” Corinna scoffed, lifting the box out of Edie’s hands. “Proud of yourself, boss lady?” This was what she called all the nurses.

  The nurse licked a splodge of caramel off her thumb. “She didn’t want them.”

  “It was really nice of you, Violet. But my stomach is knotted. She’s welcome to share,” Edie said. Her blue eyes still had that haunted look, and Violet sat down and put a soft hand on her shoulder.

  Corinna picked up a chocolate-covered cherry, considered it, and dropped it back in the box. “Edie, hon? You okay? We’ve been worried, Violet and me. Well, everyone’s worried, really. You know what it’s like around here. Dominoes and shit. One person has a bad day and we all fall down.”

  “It’s true,” Violet said. “Jocelyn’s been curled in the fetal position ever since computer lab.”

  “The Tourette’s lady has gone racist,” Corinna added. “She’s going around calling all the doctors street Arabs.”

  Edie had a look like sustaining eye contact required conscious effort. “I’m okay,” she said. “Today is always hard for me. I always feel really vulnerable, like something bad is going to happen. Like I’m going to be targeted. I just try to get through it.”

  “You’re trying to get through your birthday?” Violet asked.

  Edie gave a mortified nod.

  Corinna shook her head in disbelief. “We should be exploiting this to your advantage. Extra cigarette breaks. More snack room visits. I could have persuaded Dr. Shrink Wrap to go buy us pizza.”

  “It’s her choice,” Violet whispered. “If she doesn’t want to celebrate—”

  “It’s stupid,” Edie said. “It’s just a trigger. Being the center of attention … Birthdays … When I was a kid, my mom always used them as a way to guilt-trip or embarrass me. Sometimes she’d pick a screeching fight with the party magician. She’d mope around, pretending to be sick, or she’d scowl in all the party photos.”

  Edie’s eyes had lost their focus again, and it occurred to Violet for the first time that talking about her mother wasn’t a conscious choice Edie made. The childhood confessions were like hemorrhages she couldn’t stop. Edie’s scar was healing, but she was still bleeding out.

  They left Edie in the dayroom in front of a marathon of House Hunters International; Corinna swore it was just the right combination of catty and cathartic without the emotional triggers of other guilty-pleasure TV like Law & Order.

  Violet and Corinna raided the art room’s supply of markers, glitter, and Scotch tape. The party “theme” (Violet was still thinking of Francesca) was a trifecta of festivity, insanity, and irony. They were loopy, stringing banners out of toilet paper squares. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! they wrote, and WE LOVE EDIE! They made their friend a “cake” out of curly ribbon and tiers of generic lemonade cans; they were Edie’s favorite beverage from the vending machine and said ZERO PERCENT JUICE in big letters down the side. Corinna scrounged up money from who knows where, and Dr. Shrink Wrap shoved it into the front pocket of his scrubs, promising pizza and hot wings from Gino’s.

  Violet was hole-punching “confetti” when a nearly mute girl the ward called Helen Keller stuck her head in the door.

  “Violet, there’s someone on the phone for you.”

  Corinna, who had never heard Helen speak before, glanced up, aghast. “Another phone call. Damn, girl,” she told Violet. “I don’t know where you get off calling yourself an introvert. You get visited more than John Edward.”

  “The politician?”

  “No dummy. The psychic.”

  “I would have returned your messages, regardless. You didn’t need to go and friend my wife.”

  Matt’s was not the authoritative teacher voice Violet was expecting. There was a whiny bite to it, like a little dog yipping.

  Violet fought a stammer. Confrontation found her more than most people, and yet she hated it, deep down.

  “I’m asking you if you’ve contacted my wife.”

  “No. I just friended her. I didn’t send her a message.”

  “You’re the last thing Francesca needs right now. We’re just beginning to get back on track. Everything that happened with Rose …” Her name was long and drawn-out on his tongue, a special treat he allowed himself. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t mean that I don’t love my wife.”

  Violet felt confused, then protective. So Matt hadn’t left Francesca for Rose.

  The line went dead, and Violet realized she was shivering like a wet dog. She hadn’t been prepared for an argument. She’d expected to find a boyfriend who was glad to make her acquaintance—a boyfriend who, perhaps, wouldn’t mind if Violet came to stay with him and Rose until she landed on her feet.

  Violet had barely placed the phone on the receiver before it rang again.

  “Sorry,” Matt said. “It’s just that, whatever lecture you’re hoping to give me … I can guarantee you I’ve heard it a million times over. I’ve spent the past year staring, point-blank, down the barrel of divorce. Do you honestly think I don’t feel guilty?”

  “I don’t care what you feel.” It wasn’t bad-ass the way Violet said it. She was still confused, embarrassed.

  “Fair enough. I was selfish and greedy and weak. But you’re all those things and worse if you think you’re going to blackmail me. I need my job. I need my health insurance. My wife has lymphoma.”

  Violet thought of Beryl and softened. “I’m not blackmailing you. I just thought you and Rose were still together.”

  “We’re not!”

  There again was that toddlerish note of complaint. It was clear enough why Matt (who was thirty-three, according to his wedding blog) had started an affair with twenty-year-old Rose: even on th
e phone, he was a study in arrested development. Before, Violet had guessed Matt appealed to Rose as a father figure to make up for their own withdrawn dad. Now, just the opposite seemed true. Maybe Rose had wanted a man she could baby and reassure, someone more like needy Josephine. Even Violet felt mature by comparison to Matt.

  “So you don’t go and visit Rose in the city?”

  “New York City?”

  “Yes, New York City.”

  “No.” For a split second, it seemed like he was going to say more.

  “Are you lying?”

  “No! It’s just—I’m surprised, that’s all. Rose told me she liked living by the mountains. She always said they give a person perspective. Whenever you’re feeling too full of yourself, you only have to look out the window to see how little you really are.”

  Violet couldn’t help noticing the way he spoke about Rose in the past tense. “Did you and Rose ever visit the city together?”

  She could feel him hesitate. “Fran and I have a place there. A little rent-controlled studio in the West Village.”

  Not so far from the Chelsea UPS store, then.

  “So the last time you spoke to Rose—”

  “I ended it. It was a relief to both of us, I think.”

  He thought. Violet exhaled sharply. “I’m sure it was a great relief, huge, when Rose had an abortion. Yet you didn’t even bother to go to the appointment with her.”

  “Rose didn’t want me there! She didn’t want help paying for it. She said she didn’t want anything from me, and I believed her. If it was some head game—some test—then that’s not my fault. I’m not a mind reader. I can only go off what people tell me.”

  “Can I ask you one more thing? And then, I’ll get lost … How did it start?”

  “What? Me and Rose?”

  “Obviously, you and Rose.”

  “Well, we met for a tutoring session before a research paper.”