by Holly LeCraw
Toni said, “Is Callie okay?”
“She’s fine. Just tired.”
“I can’t imagine having to wake up in the middle of the night like that all the time. If it were me, I’d look like shit.”
The answer was obvious: No, you wouldn’t. So he didn’t answer. Chunks of tangled vine fell to the ground around him. He finished everywhere he could reach and climbed down. “Excuse me,” he said, and when Toni had backed away he moved the ladder to a different vantage point and climbed back up.
“Aren’t you cutting kind of a lot?” Toni said.
“You can’t kill this stuff,” Jed said. “In Atlanta, this is a weed. Pulls down trees. If I didn’t prune it, it would take over the whole patio.”
“So why do you have it here?”
“We didn’t plant it. It’s always been here.” He reached through the vines and shook the peeling white wood of the arbor. “This thing is going to fall apart before too long.”
“Does it bloom?”
“In the spring sometime.”
“So you never see it?”
“No. My parents saw it once, I think. My mother always said someday she’d be here in time to see it bloom again.”
Toni said hesitantly, “But she never was?”
Inwardly, he cursed. “Nope.”
He didn’t look down at Toni. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself get into the maudlin zone. He knew what the expression on her face would be—he had seen it before, in all the girls who thought a grieving man was romantic, that he was in need of tender care, like a puppy. Marcella wasn’t like that. She seemed more wounded than he. He had never considered this before. He lopped off a long trailing twist of vine and a hole opened up in the thick tangle of green. “If you want to be useful,” he said, and tried to grin cheerfully without meeting her gaze, “you can go get that wheelbarrow over there.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Toni scurry away.
When she came back he glanced down and saw her bent double, moving fast, gathering the clippings from the ground. He was more used to her languid. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“No, it’s all right.”
“Well, I’m done, anyway.” He climbed down and began to help her. “I’ll just go dump it in the woods.”
“I’ll go,” Toni said.
“There’s a lot of poison ivy back there.”
“I know what poison ivy looks like.” She trundled away, wobbling, with the barrow. Poor kid, he thought. He made himself think of her that way. It felt good to feel sorry for someone else.
The sweat was in his eyes and he wiped it away again, and then walked over and dove into the pool. The sudden cool was bliss, it was rebirth; he wanted to stay under water forever. He did a long slow lap but then saw Toni was back, and got out of the pool. He didn’t want her watching him swim. He didn’t want her there at all. But she lay down on a lounge chair and it seemed to Jed that though she flopped down on it casually enough, she then arranged herself with some care. Finally she was still, her legs crossed, her eyes closed to the sun. Even with her self-consciousness, her body had a freedom to it that Marcella’s didn’t. She exuded energy, expectation. He said, “Isn’t there some laundry to fold or something?”
“I did it all,” she said, not opening her eyes. “And I did the dishes. But I’ll leave if you want me to.”
He let silence fall. “No, that’s all right.” He lay facedown on a chaise and closed his eyes, guiltily aware that both kids were gone and he was glad for the break.
“So,” she said, “how’s Marcie?”
“People are awfully interested in Marcie,” he said. Toni did not respond to this. “She’s fine.” He made his mind blank, a cube of air, the pictures of Marcella invisible.
“Do you know what Callie told me?” Toni said. “She told me you were a bad bet. She said you haven’t ever had a girlfriend for longer than two months.”
“That may or may not be true.”
Toni considered this for a moment and then said, “It’s, like, one or the other.”
“Callie likes to keep track of these things,” he said lightly. Like some callow Casanova. Danger! Stay away! “But I don’t.” He did not ask why the hell Callie had been discussing him with Toni to begin with.
“You better not wait too long,” Toni said. “For the right one, or whatever. You’ll get all shriveled up.”
He laughed and turned his head to look at her. “How old do you think I am?”
“I know how old you are.” She looked back at him frankly, not even flirting. She was simply laying herself out for him. Offering. “I mean”—and he could swear she blushed—“not your body shriveling. Your—your happiness.”
Jed thought how little Toni knew him.
“Like my parents,” she continued. “I don’t think they’ve dated a single person since they split up. Either one of them.”
“So why did they split up?” His breath was coming too fast.
“‘We’ve grown apart. Blah blah blah.’ I don’t know,” she said, with sudden vehemence. “Just ‘That’s it, it’s over, you’re going to boarding school.’”
He swallowed. “That’s tough.” But why? What happened? Any hunches?
She sighed. “Whatever. My dad is sort of tough. I guess. I mean, I love him. My mom is beautiful, though,” she said abruptly. “Do you remember her?”
He turned his head away again. “No. Not really.”
“Well, she is. But I guess it turns out beautiful people get divorced too.”
He wondered if he made Marcella happy. He was suddenly ashamed: he hadn’t even wondered that before now. “Do you see her much?” he said. “Your mom?”
“Some.”
“You don’t get along.”
“We get along fine,” Toni said. “She’s not that fun to be around. She’s always so depressed and moony and out in her fucking garden.”
He lay there, his eyes closed, barely breathing, waiting for something—for the picture of Marcella to coalesce. She was walking across her own lawn. Far away. The grace of her stride was almost palpable, if he just reached out a hand—
Toni said, “Did your parents ever have any trouble?”
Jed was so surprised he didn’t answer for a moment. The picture of Marcella flickered and vanished. The subject of his parents was taboo with so many people. But Toni didn’t know that. How could she? He shifted his head on the pillow of his arms. “No,” he said. “Not that I ever saw.”
“That’s nice,” Toni said, and her tone touched him unexpectedly, how wistful it was. “Nothing? No fighting? Nothing?” She paused. “They really loved each other?”
Jed’s eyes were open now, staring away from her, into the denuded arbor. It seemed the strangest kind of betrayal, to lie like that, except that it wasn’t a lie; he hadn’t seen any trouble. The things he could have told her—that his parents had been college sweethearts. That in the photos that had hung in their hallway in Atlanta, the Kodachrome had faded to a candy-colored flatness that made the bubble hair, the skinny ties, the orchids around his mother’s wrist, all the more perfect. That his parents had always looked perfect. That he had never even heard them raise their voices.
Why had his father done it? It. A different it. Had cared nothing for those pretty pictures. His head swam, his father was before him, hazy, less guilty than before, now merely an ordinary, unremarkable asshole. Jed clenched his hands, dangling off the end of the chaise, into fists. He didn’t want his father. He wanted only Marcella, alone.
“Jed?”
He started. Toni was crouched beside his chair. She put her hand on his bare shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said.
If he just turned over, right now, Toni would be there, her mouth close, her full breasts inches from his touch. Things would take another path entirely, the normal, red-blooded path they were supposed to take, and he would never have to think of Marcella, of his father, again—
He felt a sudden rush of sorrow. He wanted to th
ink of Marcella. God, God, he missed her. And he had no right.
He said, “Please don’t,” and the hand went away.
“I’m sorry,” Toni said again, and then he heard the whisper of her feet moving away across the dry grass. He did not watch her walking, did not watch the sway of her hips or the light on her hair, did not breathe until he heard the slap of the screen door.
Then he turned over and sat up.
He looked at the pool and tried to see his father in it, standing at the side, his bare chest above the water. Sliding in, doing one of his slow, long-limbed laps. And his mother beside him, her head turning mechanically, her compact athlete’s body slicing through the water—
But he could not make the picture come. His parents side by side. That picture was gone.
He saw other pictures instead, different altogether. He did not want to remember, but he couldn’t stop. He had been wrong about so many things.
JED WAS IN THE KITCHEN, in Atlanta, a few weeks after his mother had died. He and his father and Callie were sitting around the kitchen table. It was during the time when it seemed like they were always sitting around the kitchen table, about to decide something terribly important, only no one knew what it was. It seemed like it was always night. The alcove where the kitchen table stood had been designed for breakfast, for sun, and the bay of naked windows around them shone cold with the darkness outside, superimposed with the glare of the kitchen lights and their own distorted reflections. It was the end of December. Spring semester would start in a week. “I think you should go back to school, Callie,” his father was saying.
“No,” she said.
His mother’s body had been in here, in the kitchen. Jed didn’t know where. It felt unnatural to think of the physicality of his own mother, her body, the thing he had touched. Her humanity, her helplessness. He scanned the floor now as he always did: there? there? As usual he could find no trace, but it seemed that if he kept looking he would detect something. A scrubbed dullness, indicating the removal of blood. A malevolent glow. Someone had decided that he and Callie shouldn’t see the crime scene—that is, their house—until the police were finished and the place was washed clean. About this he felt both gratitude and fury.
“Dad,” Callie said, more gently, “I’m sorry. But we can’t go back. We’re going to transfer to Georgia State. We’ll stay here in the house with you. We’ve already decided.”
“Jed?”
“I’m staying, Dad.” His voice came out in a croak.
“It’s not what your mother would want. It’s your senior year, sweetie—”
“Dad, come on,” Callie snapped.
Jed flinched at the impatience in her voice, but kept his eyes on his plate. It wasn’t really contempt, only ferocity, the Callie-ness magnified to an almost unbearable level. How could his father think they cared about school? About Callie’s senior fun? He seemed to need them to be, alternately, either much younger or much older than they were.
“I’ve already paid for this semester, you know.” Jed glanced up. His father was smiling weakly, defeat already on his face.
“Then you can just call them and tell them you want the damn money back,” Callie said. “Or I will. And if they won’t give it back then I’ll just say, fine, that is my first and last alumni donation, and if you ever ask me for money again I’ll sue you faster—”
“Callie, honey—”
“Daddy, I’m sorry. But I’m not going.”
His father looked down at his own folded hands, like foreign objects, on the table. “Well. It seems you two know what you want.”
Jed heard his own voice. “It isn’t what we fucking want.”
“Jed,” Callie said. “Jesus.” Their father just looked at him, stricken.
Jed didn’t say any more. Dinner lay half-eaten on the plates in front of them. He didn’t know who had made it; the fridge was stuffed full of the food people had cooked for them. Shirley Barnes, who had been with Betsy the night she died, who had dropped her off at the house—empty, they had thought—after a movie, brought something several times a week, like she was trying to cook away her guilt. But at least now they were alone more. Not always—not even half the time; people still seemed to think they could fix everything with the balm of their presence—but every now and then, like tonight, they had an evening to themselves. Jed knew his father hated it, wanted people with him all the time. It didn’t even matter who they were. But Jed welcomed the quiet. It was stark and bleak but it was the truth. His only wish was to grab truth by the shoulders and look it straight in the eye, but he could not seem to get hold of it. He knew his father did not have the same wish.
The phone rang and Callie gave a harsh sigh.
It rang again and she made a halfhearted rising motion, but their father put out his hand and went to answer it himself. He walked so slowly that Jed thought he wouldn’t make it before the answering machine picked up, but his father reached the phone on the last possible ring. “Hello?” he said, his back to them. “Yes. Hello, Detective. Fine. Thank you.”
They no longer snapped to full attention when the police called, but Jed saw Callie’s back stiffen. For himself, his ghost of a hope—They have news, they caught someone—had been replaced by sickening dread. They have what they need now. They are coming here to get him. To get Dad. Although, of course, they wouldn’t have called first.
“No, no problem. We’re just finishing. Hm-mm. Yes, well”—their father turned away, walked toward the door, the old-fashioned phone cord stretching, but his voice was still audible—“I’d rather come to you, if you don’t mind.”
Callie got up and began clearing the dishes, loudly, but Jed still heard Yes, nine-thirty, thank you. When Cecil hung up he walked out of the kitchen without looking back at them.
“All they do is keep asking him the same questions,” Callie said at the sink. “He told me. Sometimes that red-haired one, sometimes other people.” She thrust the faucet handle open, and the water shot out full force. “Over and over. Like they think something’s going to change. They know there have been other break-ins. They haven’t caught anyone. Why don’t they leave him alone?” She looked at Jed, waiting for him to agree, for him to declare allegiance. Fidelity.
He brought his dirty plate to the sink, dropped it in the soapy water, and walked away without speaking.
II
There were times when Toni and Jed had everything under control and Callie found herself with nothing to do. She knew that this had not been her plan, that Toni and Jed were supposed to be merely her lieutenants, but she felt powerless to insert herself. In the past she would have constructed an elaborate schedule so that she would not have to make continuous decisions about how to spend her time; but this summer she had listened to the notion that she would want “relaxation,” “downtime,” “freedom.” Freedom from what? She felt anything but free. At any rate, one day, feeling superfluous, she managed to rouse herself enough to make a plan, or at least a move. She took Grace, put her in the car, and began to drive.
It was a hot day and being in the air-conditioning was a relief. That was a good thing, she thought, trying to make a mental list of good things. She was vaguely aware that once optimism had been habit, even a reflex, but now the mechanism eluded her. She drove down Route 134 and got onto the Mid-Cape, driving east toward Provincetown, and then glanced in the mirror: Grace had already fallen asleep. Billy had attached a mirror to the back window, pointing toward the baby, who faced backward, so that when Callie looked in the rearview she could see her. The wonderful car. The sleep machine. That was what she and Billy had called it when Jamie was a baby. That was when Billy had rigged up the mirror. They had thought they were so clever. Thinking of those times, Callie felt she was on a high mountain, the air too thin, looking down toward a lovely promised land she had been forced to leave.
She looked in the mirror again and observed that Grace was adorable, exquisite. She waited to feel a bloom of appreciation or joy. There wa
s nothing.
Instead she concentrated again on the road, on the heat waves rising from the asphalt. She could drive forever through this wavering light, if Grace would keep sleeping. She would drive and drive, and eventually she would be in Provincetown, bouncing down the planks of some pier, then the car would be angling, falling, sinking fast till they were at the icy-cold bottom.
Well.
Just go. A destination would arise. And Jed could manage at home anyway. Jed, her self, her surrogate. Jed was the only one she didn’t worry about, who made her own worry ease. She had convinced him to come here. She hadn’t realized she was doing it—she remembered asking, but when he appeared and said he had left his job for a while, she’d been baffled—had she asked for that? Surely not. She should be angry at him; it was a ridiculous, irresponsible thing to do. But she couldn’t summon up any outrage. She needed him. It was one more thing to think about later.
And then, when they were almost to Orleans, Grace began to fuss. Callie felt a prickle of panic but tried, automatically, to soothe herself: look at the clock, almost three hours since the last feeding. And she needed a task. If she could not tell herself what to do, her baby could. “Good girl,” she said, but Grace’s cries grew louder. She was at the rotary, and pulled into the first parking lot she saw.
As she nursed Grace in the backseat, she realized she was at the old Army Navy store. It had been here forever. Maybe she would go in when Grace was done. A purpose. That was the way things worked— you drove your car toward a goal. She would buy something for Jamie, she decided. Maybe even a tent. There was an idea: see, she could have them. He and Jed could camp out in the yard. She could picture them there, how much Jamie would love it—would Jed? Well, he would do it, probably, if she asked. She could buy them flashlights and mess kits. The kind with the collapsible cup and the plate that turned into a frying pan. Happy, happy childhood. She had had one of those kits, aluminum, in an olive-drab case. Her mother had bought it for her—bought it here. Callie had been going to Girl Scout camp. A long time ago.