All That's True

by Jackie Lee Miles

  Secondly, Amy is coming over and Jeffrey, Alex’s best friend when he was alive to have a best friend, is coming with her. Amy is about my most favorite person in the world, after Bridget, who used to be after Alex.

  Alex met Amy when he first started college and was planning on pinning her as soon as he qualified to have a pin to pin her with, and then he was going to be engaged to her, and then get married, which would make her my sister-in-law, and someday they would make me an aunt. Alex didn’t say all that; he only said the part about pinning—I thought up all the rest on my own, but they are reasonable assumptions.

  Amy calls right after dinner and speaks with my father.

  “Amy’s coming over with Jeffrey,” he explains to my mother. “Something about they need to speak with us—”

  “Is it about Alex’s trial?” I jump in.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” my father says and picks up the newspaper. “They’ll be here within the hour.”

  I don’t know why the hair on my neck stands up, but if it were The Twilight Zone, that weird music would be playing.

  Then, I remember something that happened after the funeral and it all starts coming together. Rosa fixed this enormous buffet and all the neighbors sent over dishes so—picture this—the entire dining room table is loaded with the most delicious food you can imagine and people start lining up in droves to make their selections. Others are mingling and whispering how sad it is about Alex, and a few are sharing happy memories of being with him. My parents are in the front hall greeting the new arrivals. I’m sitting in a chair nearest the dining room, next to one of the large columns that divides the sitting room from the dining room, but I have a good view of the food. I’m thinking about fixing myself a plate—there is a large platter of macaroni and cheese that looks particularly appetizing. That’s when I see something out of the corner of my eye that catches me off guard: Amy is standing in line next to Jeffrey—who is not only Alex’s best friend, but has been since forever—and of course goes to Vanderbilt, as does Amy, who followed Alex there.

  Amy has on black pumps and a short black dress with three-quarter sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, demure and appropriate. I mean she’s sort of like Alex’s widow and I’m admiring how beautiful she is, which she is—she looks like Jennifer Aniston—and the next thing I know, she is slipping her left hand quietly into Jeffrey’s right hand and then just keeps it there.

  Doesn’t that grab you as being very strange? That’s my reaction, but then I tell myself they are probably hanging on to each other to grieve, and let it go.

  And now they want to meet with my parents. They have something to discuss. It’s probably about the grieving process, or maybe Alex’s trial.

  Sure—and the Pope is really a Methodist.

  Chapter Nine

  I’m upstairs on my bed, face down, waiting for Jeffrey and Amy to get here. I’m thinking about when I was five. The unthinkable happened. My mother lost me. She’d taken me to Lenox Mall and while she was preoccupied with a fitting, I wandered off. The story is she went completely hysterical when she realized the dress she’d chosen for an important fundraiser was divine, but in the interim, her daughter had vanished. They had the entire store personnel scouring the mall. Of course, I’d been taught never to talk to strangers, so instead of picking out someone—like a lady with small children or an elderly man with a seeing-eye dog—and asking for help, I went into the first bathroom I could find that had the lady figure on it and hid in the very last stall. I’m not sure how long I was there. I remember chanting the alphabet song sixteen million times. The reason I chose the last stall in the bathroom was simple. Whenever we were shopping, eventually my mother would say we needed to find a restroom and do so quickly. Something about her kidneys not being what they used to be; they were about to explode, which made me wonder what they used to be like and would they please not explode, at least not while I was there to see it.

  Mother always used the last stall.

  “Less people use this one, Andréa. Always use the last stall.”

  I went there knowing eventually she and her kidneys would find me.

  Not so. It was a policeman who did. I was curled up in the corner beneath the toilet and this head popped under the stall.

  “There you are,” he said, a wide grin on his face. He had large even teeth and generous cheeks with a dimple parked in each one.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you,” he exclaimed.

  “Where’s my mother?” I whimpered.

  “Well, she’s—she’s—” He opened the stall door and reached in to get me.

  “I need to wait here for her,” I insisted, and burrowed deeper into the corner. “Her kidneys will be exploding any minute now.”

  The officer let out a howl, then reached in and gently pulled me towards him. Once I was free from the stall, he lifted me into his arms.

  “Come on, little lady,” he said. “Let’s go find your mama.”

  It turned out I was missing all of three hours, which to me was at least three days. The worst part was at the very end, before the nice officer found me. I had this strange agitation going through my heart, like it was going to beat itself out of my chest, but mostly I had this newfound awareness, that life was no longer the safe haven it had been just hours before. Bad things could happen. I realize now I was experiencing a serious case of anxiety. All these years later, it feels just as deadly.

  I’m watching the clock, waiting for Amy and Jeffrey to show up at our door. Whatever it is they have to say, I’m pretty sure I won’t want to hear it. My stomach thinks it’s a washing machine. It’s spinning and twisting what’s left of my dinner—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fried okra and cornbread—into one big soggy heap. Then anxiety walks in and takes over like it owns the place. My heart is beating too fast. I can feel it pulsing even in my ears. I go downstairs and curl up on the sofa in my usual spot, hugging my favorite throw pillow, the burgundy velvet tapestry. I close my eyes. It feels like I’m huddled in that bathroom stall, waiting for my mother to appear and make everything right again. Only this time, she won’t be able to. No one will.

  Chapter Ten

  I’m right. Always trust your instincts, Ann Landers says. And she’s right, too. Amy and Jeff are a couple. It all happened rather quickly they say. They want us to be the first to know. She’s having a baby. They want to do the right thing—the old-fashioned way—a modest ceremony, no fanfare, only their parents there and perhaps a few friends. Would we like to come? “You see…” she continues, but my ears have lost their ability to hear.

  I jump up from the sofa and toss the pillow onto the carpet as hard as I can. I want it to hit the floor like a brick and smash into thousands of pieces, but it’s a pillow, so it just drops where I toss it and plays dead. I run up the front staircase. It twists and turns in spirals and is longer than I ever remember it being. Finally I reach my room. I slam the door and fall onto my bed, face first.

  “Oh, Alex,” I’m sobbing. “She’s a little slut—a slut—a slut! Didn’t you know?”

  There’s a tap on my door. I answer with dead silence. The door opens. It’s Amy.

  “Can I come in?” she whispers.

  I sit up and stare at her. She’s gained a bit of weight, not enough that I would have suspected she’d gotten herself knocked up, just enough to take away some of the sharp angles of her face. And her cheeks have a tad more color in them. She has always been beautiful. Now I see what the magazines have been saying all along is true. Pregnant women glow. At least Amy does. That’s it. That’s the last straw. Alex is dead, Alex has been betrayed, my life sucks—and she’s glowing. Life isn’t just unfair. It’s full of crap, too.

  Amy walks over to the bed. She sits on the edge and takes my hand.

  “Andi—”

  She says my name like my father says Beth’s—like it’s a treasure that’s just been discovered. My heart leaps! Why? Why? Why?—I’ve loved you just like a sister, it wants to say. Instead,
it breaks in two.

  “You cheated on Alex. You said the baby’s due in May, which means you were cheating on Alex in September, it means that while he was alive and loving you—” I’m counting on my fingers one more time to make sure. Yup!

  Amy wraps one arm around my shoulder and pulls me close to her.

  “Andi, Andi,” she croons like I’m a baby. “You’re wrong, sweet girl. You don’t understand.” She brushes at a loose strand of my hair, soggy with my tears, and tucks it behind one ear. She’s still the same attentive Amy. She smells the same, too—Estée Lauder’s Beautiful. It was Alex’s favorite. Everything about her was Alex’s favorite. How can I hate her? She’s as special as ever, so there’s no way around it. I have to find a way to forgive her. I have to. No matter what she’s done, she’s still part of Alex. It’s so confusing—

  “So wrong, sweet girl,” Amy repeats. She takes hold of my shoulders and leans back and stares at me straight on. “Don’t you know what this means?” she asks.

  I nod my head that I certainly do!

  “It means—the baby is Alex’s, you silly goose. That’s what we came to tell you,” she says, and beams like she’s part of the sun.

  “And Jeff is going to stand by me. And we’re always going to have a part of Alex with us.”

  If my face were in a cartoon, my eyes would be triple their normal size. Jeff is going to stand by me. Sort of like what brothers were told to do in the Bible. I’ve died. I’ve died and gone to heaven. I sit on my bed like I’ve been hit with a stun gun. I can hardly believe it. Just when I think I have everything figured out, and when I’ve had about all that I can take, life pulls a fast one on me. Just up and throws me another curve. Stands right up in my face and says, So, Andi, how about this? And I brace myself for another bad hit—and what do you know?—it hands me a rainbow.

  Chapter Eleven

  My mother announces at breakfast that she has exciting news for me. Whenever my mother has made similar announcements in the past it has been something totally gross, like the time she enrolled me in a foreign language class that had me conjugating verbs every Saturday morning at 8 a.m. I got out of that by convincing her I’d hang myself.

  I’m sure she has something equally disturbing to share with me now, but have no idea of the extent she will go to make my life miserable, regardless of her intentions to the contrary.

  “You have been selected to be an altar server!” she exclaims, like I’ve just been named America’s Junior Miss. She stops stirring her coffee and waits for my reaction. The look on her face tells me she expects me to dance around the room while hugging myself.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she says.

  About as wonderful as having a terminal case of acne, I want to tell her. My father clears his throat and nods at me, a clear signal I’m to show my gratitude; I’m to thank my mother profusely, like a good daughter.

  “You start your training on Saturday,” my mother continues, her cheeks glowing. “Over one hundred candidates were considered and only six were chosen, Andi. Isn’t it exciting?”

  Absolutely—all my life I’ve wanted to dress up like a Cossack and be an altar boy. When Gloria Steinem burned her bra, did she give any thought to the Catholic Church, and what it might lead to? Obviously not—but then, I think I read somewhere that she was Jewish, so what did it matter to her that altar boys would eventually no longer be boys, but girls, as well.

  “Just think,” my mother is babbling. “You will be carrying the cross during the processional and ringing the bells during the Eucharist Prayer. Can you imagine?”

  I can imagine, I assure her. I can see it all so vividly that I have to get up and leave the table.

  “Where are you going, Andi?” my mother calls after me.

  “I’m going to throw up!”

  “Oh, dear,” she says. “I had no idea you’d be this excited.” She tucks her napkin neatly at the side of her plate and quickly follows me.

  Chapter Twelve

  We are doing okay with the holidays. It’s our first without Alex, but it’s not nearly as depressing as I thought it would be, which I should find disturbing, but really, I’m happy for the grieving to be less intense and so relieved to find that it is, and say Hail Marys and Our Fathers all day in gratitude, hoping it will stay that way.

  My father has the entire house decorated inside and out by At Your Service, just like always. They bring and store all the items and obviously take very good care of everything. The lighting is as beautiful and shiny and opulent as ever. Our home looks like a hotel. Even the iron gates leading up to our front door are covered with piles of greenery. The smell of fresh pines is everywhere. I breathe in deeply. It sticks in my nose for hours.

  Rosa is singing and baking. She’s like Mary Poppins, bouncing around the kitchen. She is extra happy this time of year. Her family is coming to visit from Mexico and will stay through the holidays. My mother insists that she take home some of everything that she makes.

  “So make plenty,” she says, opening up another bottle of wine.

  Rosa barely rests, working from morning through dinner. Heavenly smells spread like fire to every corner of the house, filling the rooms with cinnamon and nutmeg and yeast bread and cookie dough. My mother is busy shopping and wrapping gifts in shiny foil paper with elaborate bows. They’re for the less fortunate, so that’s good. No one in this house needs another thing for at least twenty years. My mother’s a bit tipsy all day long, so Mr. Porter, the gardener, drives her when she goes shopping. She gives him a large tip for doing so.

  “Mum’s the word,” she says, placing one finger over her lips, like no one will ever know she’s half-smashed if he doesn’t mention it.

  My father is gone long hours as usual, but passes out hundred-dollar bills to Beth and me like there’s no end to them.

  “There isn’t, silly,” Beth says. She’s home from Vassar and driving everyone nuts with her wedding plans. She has six months left so I don’t understand the problem, but she’s frantic every other hour, checking things off her list and rechecking with my mother to make sure the right cake was ordered; she changed her mind again, remember? She hasn’t once made plans to see Parker. This is the guy she’s marrying. You’d think she’d be crazy to call him. Oh no, she’s worried about the gifts for the bridesmaids—have they arrived? And if they have, where in the world are they? On and on she goes, so I leave the house and go see Bridget, who is busy packing for school. She leaves right after New Year’s, so for once I don’t want it to show up. It hurts to see that she is excited. Of course, I don’t really want her to be miserable—she’s my best friend in the whole world. Still, it would feel really good to walk in her room and find her lying on her bed sobbing—at least for, say, a half-hour.

  The door to her bedroom is open, so I walk in.

  “Hi,” I say, trying to sound cheerful.

  “What do you think?” she says, holding up Westwood Academy’s uniform.

  It’s a navy blue jumper with short pleats at the bottom of the hem, and has a fancy gold crest on the right breast pocket. Bridget is beaming.

  I suck in my breath, let out a deep sigh, and offer a weak smile. Finally, the sobbing starts, but I’m the one doing it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  All those Hail Marys and Our Fathers have paid off big time! The most amazing thing has happened and I have my mother to thank for it. I will never second-guess her decisions again, ever. This is in stone.

  I am now an altar girl, thanks to my mother adding my name to the list of those to be considered. I started the classes at St. Lucy’s, and just as I figured they are a zero. Then the first Saturday after New Year’s, Father O’Malley says we have one more addition to the class, Anthony Morelli. His family has just joined our parish, having transferred from Our Lady of St. Catherine’s.

  “Anthony has been an altar boy there for over three years,” Father O’Malley explains proudly, as if he had something to do with it, which is okay by me if he did,
because who do you think walks in the door? My future husband is all! And he is the most gorgeous creature God has ever created. He has black hair and black-brown eyes the size of quarters and olive skin. Obviously he is true Italian, and a magazine article in Cosmopolitan said Italians make the best lovers, which doesn’t concern me yet, except to say that I do get a warm feeling down there a little bit, when I think about it, but that is for much later—I don’t want to be a slut, so I remind myself to keep my thoughts pure. Basically, I can hardly breathe when I think of Anthony, and when he accidentally brushes up next to me, like when we are passing the cruets of wine and water for Father to put in the chalice, I can hardly remain standing. Somehow the floor is no longer under my feet. If that isn’t proof that Anthony and I are meant to be man and wife, what is? All this is unfolding directly under the crucifix. It’s a totally holy and incredibly sacred moment. All because I am an altar girl. And to think I was mad at Gloria Steinem.

  My mother is right: It’s best not to draw conclusions and much better to reserve judgment. You just never know who you will be grateful to.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’s eight o’clock. I’m doing homework when the phone rings. I’m convinced it’s Anthony and my heart flips right out the window.

  “Hello?” I say as whispery as I can.

  “Andi? Is that you?”

  It’s Bridget, who I am very happy to hear from, yes, but I was prepared to hear Anthony, so it takes me a moment to get my real voice back.

  “Ah, yeah, it’s me—”

  “You sound funny,”

  “Oh, I was, just, just deep in—into my homework, is all,” I lie.

  “Well, you will never guess. Listen to this,” she says.