by Megan Abbott
It hurt her eyes, everything so garishly beautiful, the entire cemetery blushing with late-spring flowers, petals scattering everywhere, gathering at everyone’s feet.
Everyone came, all the parents. A half dozen brought their daughters, the younger ones who trained under Hailey, taking them out of school, thrusting their hard little gymnast bodies into stiff dresses, shoulders straining eyelet.
Teddy and his wife, Tina, both pewter-haired, tanned, long-limbed, soared over everyone else, their eyes downcast. Grand and conspicuous, they moved like mourning royalty.
But then there was Hailey.
At first Katie didn’t even recognize her, her hair thick and uncombed, her athletic body seemingly wedged into someone else’s black dress. Her face looked raw, her freckles more conspicuous against her fading tan. Among the others—with their dark shades, the older women’s hats, all their funeral masks—she looked naked.
Through the service that followed, she didn’t cry at all, despite the large lace handkerchief that she held awkwardly, as if someone had forced it into her hand.
The small-boned woman next to her had to be Ryan’s mother, a likeness in the soft dreaminess of her features. Weeping openly, her fingers over her nose and mouth, her delicate body shook and swayed. The more she cried, the more Hailey tensed beside her, even leaning away, averting her eyes.
Katie kept hoping someone would comfort the woman. If Eric were here, he would have. If he hadn’t been so sure the car would be ready, which it wasn’t (was it ever?). He was always there for important events, dispensing appropriate words, accepting shared-sympathy hugs, letting Becca Plonski wrap those bony arms of hers around his waist, snuggling up to him like Katie had seen her do after her daughter’s coccyx injury.
Can’t you get your car after? Katie texted, her thumbs pressing so hard the letters kept repeating. Everyone’s expecting you.
I’ll try. I’m sorry. I’ll try to get there. I’m sorry.
Lost in thoughts during the sermon, Katie kept pondering that mug shot, the things Teddy had said, If you get down to the nub of it, people don’t change. But Ryan surely had.
And hadn’t Hailey? And, of course, Eric. And Katie herself, no longer that wayward girl who couldn’t sit still, who once painted her phone number on her midriff at the beach. The midnight-blue nail polish took days to crack off, fade.
By the time Pastor Matthews finished speaking, Ryan’s mother was sobbing so throatily it almost sounded like singing. Katie moved forward, touching her shoulder lightly.
But then Teddy was there, reaching out to let her take his arm as they strode up the knoll.
Turning, Katie caught sight of Hailey, wind-whipped, hair caught in her mouth and her eyes narrow. It looked like she wanted something, nearly lunging toward Katie, her heel catching on a random footstone.
“Hailey, I’m so sor—” Katie started, but in the crowds, she lost her, couldn’t get to her in time.
The Belfour house—butter yellow, rambling, sun-filled, with a massive new cedar deck that stretched through half the yard—was packed as tightly as it was for a booster event, a preseason kickoff.
As Katie moved through the rooms, everything reminded her of everything: the first welcoming party, held just for Devon, with Teddy singing a karaoke “Welcome to the Jungle”; all the season kickoffs and strategy sessions, Tina’s snipping terriers underfoot. That vast trestle dining-room table, where Teddy had, six years before, unfurled the flow chart, Devon’s pathway to the gold.
Now, Katie watched as the table vanished under large platters of food arriving aloft in the arms of boosters, the same macaroni salad, meatballs, and cucumber salad, Molly’s dream bars, Gwen’s no-carb lasagna brought to every other event at the house. Katie’s fruit basket, which had seemed right at the time, sat untouched in the corner, its jaunty bow and pink cellophane spattered with food.
“I knew he had a record when I hired him,” Gwen was saying to Molly as Katie sidestepped her sight line. “But I believe in second chances. It’s the American way.”
With picture windows and sliding glass doors or mirrored walls in every room, there was nowhere to hide in the Belfour house. Before anyone could see her, Katie ducked into the hallway, where she found Ryan’s mother, wandering with a soggy, tilting paper plate.
“Mrs. Beck, I’m Katie Knox. Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” she said doubtfully, brushing her hair from her face with her free hand. “I packed in a hurry. My dress isn’t right.”
“It’s great,” Katie said, even though the dress was very short, and something you bought quickly at the mall, its threads puckering the first time you wore it.
“I don’t even believe this is happening,” Mrs. Beck said. “He’s my little boy.”
“I know,” Katie said, but she didn’t want to imagine what it felt like. It was what all the parents did. Nearly every time Devon threw herself into the air, Katie had to fight off logic. But sometimes, still, she’d stop breathing. Like she had all those years ago, the whir and screech of the lawn mower. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Beck.”
“Call me Helen,” she said. “You knew my Ryan?”
“Not that well,” Katie replied, a twitch above her brow, “but I liked him.”
“I could tell by your face during the sermon.”
“What?” Katie felt her face warm. “I…”
“I only visited Ryan once since he moved here.”
“Airfare is so expen—”
“I don’t know anyone here,” Helen said, swiveling a little, looking around helplessly for a place to set down the plate. “This house is so big, and I don’t know anyone. And it’s not very…friendly.”
“What do you mean?” Katie asked.
Helen leaned closer, only the paper plate between them.
“I’m not sure they want me here,” she said, lowering her voice. “I—”
“Katie!” It was Molly Chu, charging toward her, Cheyenne’s little brother tangled between her legs. “I thought I saw you.”
Suddenly, Katie was surrounded by boosters—Jim Chu, balancing a plate of food, hovered after his wife. Kirsten Siefert, Bluetooth forever hooked to her ear. Becca Plonski, gesturing with the same celery-stalk wrists that plagued her daughter, Dominique, clinging to her side.
Turning back, Katie saw Ryan’s mother was gone, only the scent of hotel soap and ChapStick remaining.
“Katie! Where’s Eric?”
“I sent him two e-mails about the practice situation. Do you know if he got them?”
“We’re running on one car,” Katie said. “He wants to be here.”
The surprise and confusion on their faces struck her, confirmed that it was surprising, and confusing. Eric never missed anything.
“He’s going to try to make it,” Katie said, all eyes still on her. “You know Eric.”
There was nodding, and Jim returned to the smeary chicken leg on his plate.
“I’m going to pay my respects to Teddy,” Katie said, turning. The investigation.
The front door swung open, the sunlight tearing their eyes.
“Have you seen Teddy’s new deck?” Gwen said, sunglasses dangling from her hand. “I mean, have you seen it?”
Following the sound of Teddy’s voice, Katie made her way to the back of the house.
That Foghorn Leghorn voice, lungs filling, each word a hard push from an organ bellows.
But whenever he yelled at the girls (Stick it, lick it, no weak stuff!), which was a lot, though never at Devon, not in years, you always felt it came from love. He reminded Katie of the uncle on that TV show her mother always adored, the bachelor saddled with three kids, always rubbing his face like a weary, loving giant.
She found him in the den, in front of the gold-veined mirror tiles flanking the fireplace, his shoulders sunk, face wrung like a graying dish towel behind the perennial tan.
He was looking out the picture window, talking into his phone, his jaw clenched.
“Well
, you upset her…I’m telling you, we’ll get her there. But we’ve just had the goddamned funeral.”
Discreetly, she moved away, nearly stumbling over Tina Belfour, paper towels in hand, scooping Jell-O salad off the lemon-colored rug.
“I’m sorry, Mama T.,” heron-necked gymnast Shailee Robins said, shaking her head. “Everything’s terrible now, forever.”
“Hey,” Eric said, his voice tinny on her phone, “should I still try to come?”
“No.” Sliding open the glass door, Katie stepped onto the old back porch, empty and forlorn now. “I don’t want to wait. I knew you wouldn’t come.”
“What? Katie, I promise I didn’t know it would take so long.”
“Forget it. It’s just…sad here. And strange,” she said. “I’m leaving soon. The Hargroves are driving Devon from practice. I’ll see you at home.”
After she hung up, she stood for a moment, the babble and hum of the reception muffled behind the patio doors, looking out onto the swimming pool, its magnificent opal surface. No one knew how Teddy could afford such an opulent addition to his already opulent home. It was probably a tax write-off for BelStars. He’d always understood the importance of show. Smile, smile, smile at those judges. Devon, you do know how to smile, don’t you?
Besides, the pool was how Hailey had met Ryan. He’d been working for Deep End Pool Service, the prelude to digging the BelStars pit and, finally, the job with Gwen.
Diving to the bottom, he’d rescued Hailey’s infinity-knot necklace from the drain.
Thinking of the gesture reminded her again of that time Ryan reached up from the depths of the foam pit and handed Devon her lost retainer. How shy Devon had been, her legs shaking.
Just then, it began. Katie felt it under her feet first, the redwood planks of the porch.
The low rumble came from inside the house.
Turning, she caught a glare off the sliding glass door.
On the other side stood Hailey, her arms tugging at the handle, the door shaking.
Mouth open wide as a trumpet bell, lips moving, she seemed to be trying to get her attention, frantically.
Katie reached for the door handle, struggled to drag the door, stuck on its track, open.
“Mrs. Knox,” Hailey said, voice smothered by the glass, both of them yanking now, on opposite sides, “I thought you were my friend. Are you my friend?”
At that moment, Teddy appeared behind Hailey.
“Mrs. Knox!” she was shouting, her arms bulging as she pulled on the door, her face gray behind the tinted glass. “Mrs. Knox, I know what’s happening—”
“What?” Katie shouted, wrenching the handle.
Behind the glass, Teddy took Hailey by the shoulders, flipping her around the way he had dozens of crying gymnasts, their bodies wilting toward him, his thick, strong Coach T. arms.
Katie watched as he buried her against his chest, her face seeming almost to slip away into the dark of his blazer. Her arms pinned to her sides, her body started shaking wildly.
“Hailey,” Katie said, the door finally popping open, a surge of warm, cloying air, “what is it?”
But Hailey didn’t hear and Teddy didn’t seem to see, instead spiriting his niece away as a squall of guests entered, the kitchen swelling with mourners ready for cake.
“She got hysterical when the detective called,” Teddy explained, standing with Katie in the kitchen, his hand on his meaty brow. “She just lost it.”
“Detective?” Katie asked. “Do they have some kind of lead?”
She couldn’t guess why they kept needing to talk to Hailey.
“They just want to ask more questions. Routine, I guess. I don’t know.” He turned before she could meet his eyes.
Upstairs, they could hear Hailey, a sob throbbing through the floor for a few moments, then ceasing, replaced by Tina’s calming voice.
“I should go up and see her,” Katie said. “She wanted to talk to me.”
“About what?” Teddy’s tufted brows lifted.
“I don’t know.”
He paused for a second.
“She was just confused. Mama T.’ll calm her down before we head over to the station.”
A flinty voice sounded out, “Maybe you should take Ron.”
It was Gwen, standing in the kitchen doorway, her abalone earrings glinting under the incandescents.
“No, no,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “That’s not necessary.”
“Lawyer Ron?” Katie asked. “To sue somebody?”
“Teddy,” Gwen said, fiddling with her earring, rubbing the shell, “he’s the gym’s attorney and he’s in the living room right now eating your chili, drinking your beer. Why not take him?”
Gwen insisted on attorneys for everything—booster tax issues, liability protection, contractor squabbles, labor disputes, for her attenuated divorce, five years of litigation and a million-dollar settlement.
Teddy kept shaking his head. “Hailey has enough to handle now. She doesn’t need Ron Wrigley peering over her shoulder too.”
“She may need someone to protect her.”
There was a pause, Teddy staring down at the kitchen floor.
“Protect her from what?” Katie said. “That’s ridiculous. Why—”
“Hailey has her family,” Teddy interrupted, looking up at Gwen, her mouth just beginning to open. “She doesn’t need any more protection than that.”
Walking to her car, trying to unravel everything, Katie heard footsteps behind her, the skim-skim of espadrilles.
It was Tina Belfour, sailing toward her, serving apron still on, the bright white of her perennial crisp oxford shirt like a flag.
“Katie,” she said, moving very close, in the way she liked to talk, a woman’s woman, a Southern expat, crinkle-eyed, always a flicker of a smile no matter what words came from her mouth, “did Hailey say something to you?”
“She was trying to. She seemed very upset.” Katie paused. “She seemed angry.”
“Don’t pay her any mind,” Tina said, walking alongside Katie, even increasing their pace. “The doctor gave her some pills and she’s not herself.”
“I understand,” Katie said as they arrived at her car. “Give her my love, okay?”
Tina smiled, those white teeth, perfect and even, like the former beauty queen she was.
“You got it, hon.”
Driving home, radio loud, muffler scraping the pavement, Katie tried to shake it off, but there was no shaking it off. Everything had been so exaggerated, stretched like in a carnival mirror—that jagged mouth, those slit eyes, the heave of those swimmer’s shoulders smeared against the smoked glass, Hailey’s muscled arms jerking, head knocking back as she tried to pull the door.
It reminded Katie of the time her stepdad raged on the front lawn after her mother locked him out. Howling and shouting for hours, chucking pebbles and gravel at all their windows, snagging the screens. Running around looking for something—anything—larger to throw.
And there was something else she’d never seen on Hailey’s face before.
A kind of intensity that reminded her, in some small way, of Devon.
“But Dad,” Devon was saying, her voice high, “look at it.”
Katie found them in the garage. Eric was standing outside his car, apparently back from the shop, leaning over Devon as she sat in the front seat, legs shaking.
“You picked her up from practice?” Katie said to Eric. “I told you she was getting a ride with the Hargrove girls.”
They both turned and faced her in the same moment, their matching gray eyes.
“It’s my hand again, Mom,” Devon said, rising, holding her wrist. “That same spot.”
“Okay,” Katie said, head aching from garage smells—solvent, or aerosol, the epoxy they used on the floors. The musky shrimp smell from Drew’s science project. “Let’s go inside.”
Under the harsh glare of the kitchen light, the wrist looked pink and puffy, a doll’s.
“Can you f
eel that?” Katie rested her fingers gently on Devon’s skin, hot to the touch.
“It’s not broken,” Devon said. “I know the difference.”
“Did you have your Tiger Paws on?”
“I told you they make my wrists weaker.”
“But for the vault—”
“Mom, no,” she said, pulling her wrist away, holding it against her flat, hard chest. Looking at it made Katie feel extravagantly bosomy, fleshful. Obscene. “I just need to ice it.”
“Dad thinks you’ve been overdoing it too,” Katie said, in case that might matter more. “We both agreed.”
“What kind of box did they put him in?” Drew asked. “Ryan.”
“A nice one,” Katie said, taking a breath. “Help me set the table.”
Drew was the only one who’d asked about the funeral, wanting to know how deep they had to dig. And if it would be quiet down there, and if Ryan would like it, even though he was dead.
“He likes it, sweetie. I’m sure of it.”
She grabbed the forks, pricking the heel of her hand. She was still wearing her black dress. It felt wet inside.
“Like how beetles are,” Drew decided. “They make a hole in the wood and stay there.”
From upstairs, she could hear Eric moving. From the basement, Devon.
“Sometimes it’s for years. All by themselves,” Drew said. “Do you think they get lonely?”
Katie looked at him, half hidden behind the stack of dinner plates he carried.
A rush of heat pushed under her eyes.
The thing you try never to think about when you go to a funeral is the thing that’s really happening. The body in the box going into the ground.
But now, with Drew there, his chin resting on the plates, looking at her gravely, talking more about beetles, all she could think of was Ryan Beck, in a box in the ground, all alone.