Love All: A Novel

by Wright, Callie

  I thought of all the girls who would’ve killed to be sitting across from Teddy in his room and I looked around, trying to see what they’d see, but it was just my brother’s room: Michael Jordan posters on the walls; a bed with a bare comforter; a bureau covered with trophies that were strung with ribbons and medals.

  “How much is my Oddibe McDowell worth?” I asked.

  Teddy smiled. “Look it up.” I reached over his leg for the book and lugged it back to my lap. “1985 Donruss Highlights,” he reminded me. “Mint.”

  I checked the table of contents and moved off to the Donruss section. Teddy kept my rookie Oddibe for me in the back of one of these binders. “Fifteen cents?” I read. “I thought it was my best card.”

  “He hasn’t done a whole lot in the last ten years.”

  “Would you really get rid of all these?”

  “Maybe. No point in just keeping them.”

  “I guess,” I said. I’d sort of thought that was the whole point. “Why do you need the money?”

  Teddy studied me and I sat up straighter, trying to appear worthy.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’m buying a Jeep.”

  “Did Mom and Dad say you could?”

  “It’s my money,” said Teddy.

  “Right,” I quickly agreed, although I wasn’t sure if that mattered.

  Teddy said, “I’d let you drive it, except I saw you outside tonight.”

  I watched him for a moment, then said, “Can I ask you something? If you’d had a friend who liked Kim before you did, would you still have gone out with her?”

  “I have like eight friends who like Kim,” said Teddy.

  There was no point in asking Teddy for his advice about Sam and Carl. He’d tell me to do whatever I wanted: take the exhibition match, play, win—maybe Sam would want me more in the end. Or maybe he wouldn’t.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said.

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad about the Jeep.”

  “I won’t,” I promised, and pulled the door shut behind me.

  In my room, I peeled off my clothes and yanked on a T-shirt, then turned off the light and climbed into bed, feeling for my journal under the covers with my toes.

  It was true that I’d taken an exhibition match that rightfully should’ve been Carl’s, but Carl had taken something from me, too. By laying claim to me, he’d drawn a line in the sand that Sam couldn’t cross. Now both of my friends were aligned against me, and I needed Carl out of the way if I had any hope of getting Sam.

  Thinking about The Sex Cure, I opened my journal and flipped to a clean page. All the narrow lines—between truth and fiction, want and need, friendship and love—seemed suddenly traversable: Elaine Dorian had done it. By the stroke of her pen, she had roiled and rippled the town with one story, a story everyone believed, so much so that she may have made it true. Roman à clef. A novel with a key. I uncapped my pen and wrote:

  CARL’S MOM TRIED TO KILL HERSELF.

  Like Misty Powers in The Sex Cure, divorced, lonely, raising three kids on her own—in the middle of the night, she’d dialed the drugstore’s emergency number to renew her prescription for something called Nembutal, planning to take a few too many because her boyfriend wouldn’t marry her.

  CARL’S MOM TRIED TO KILL HERSELF.

  At Cooperstown High School there was only one Carl, and even though his mom was nothing like Misty Powers, it was still true, so I tore out the page and folded it into eight equal pieces until I had a white cube like a Chiclet, which I slid deep into the back right pocket of my favorite jeans, where the fabric was worn thin.

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

  OF

  ANNE COLE OBERMEYER

  59 SUSQUEHANNA AVENUE

  COOPERSTOWN, NY 13326

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 1994

  1:57 A.M.

  1 Declaration

  1.1

  I hereby declare that this is my last will and testament and I hereby revoke, cancel, and annul the will and codicil previously made by me jointly with my spouse, Hugh Obermeyer. I declare that I am of sound mind to make this will, though admittedly a bit tipsy [see: one (1) bottle of 1988 Pétrus, a present from Dale for the Trevor-Moreland settlement, totally insufficient as a bonus but more than adequate as a nightcap].

  1.2

  This last will and testament expresses my wishes without undue influence (under the influence!) or duress, though I’d take a little duress, frankly, an out and out screaming match with my husband. In lieu of information, my imagination is running wild. I’m up at two in the morning reallocating my assets, for Christ’s sake. You have to talk to me, Hugh. You have to tell me what’s going on.

  1.3

  Let’s start with tonight: Were you really at work late; if so, why didn’t you pick up the phone when I called; and what about this meeting with Barry Klawson; was it really in re my parents’ stone foundation, damp, according to you, along the west wall, possibly requiring the installation of a French drain; if so, why didn’t you mention this alleged leak on Monday, when you supposedly found it; and what about Julia’s fortuitous exhibition match, dropped in her lap like manna from heaven just before your French-drain meeting with Julia’s coach; was it really Barry’s idea; if so, why would her coach extend himself like that? He wouldn’t, is the point. It’s fishy, Hugh. Your story lacks credibility.

  2 Family Details

  2.1

  My mother, Joan Elizabeth Cole, died last week while my father was asleep in his plaid pajamas next to her. Dr. Brash insisted she went quickly, which was more than Dad could offer, being hard of hearing and under the influence of no fewer than twelve medications. In fact, Dad didn’t notice she was dead until he woke around 6:30 A.M. to ask for a glass of water. In death as in life. I suppose I should be grateful she didn’t die while getting him the water.

  2.2

  My father, Robert Murray Cole, wears prescription-strength rose-colored glasses that actually sharpen his myopia so that he’ll never be at risk for seeing anything he doesn’t want to see. Like Mom’s mortification at the beauty parlor in 1958 when she overheard the new stylist telling Regina Fratelli about the Cooperstown man she’d been going with in Oneonta? It was me who found Mom crying in her bedroom with her rollers in, and I helped her the only way I knew how.

  2.3

  From the time I was a little girl, I knew my marriage would be different. There would be no children as foot soldiers, for example, and my husband and I would be faithful to each other. All I’d ever wanted was someone to grow old with, a partner in this life, a husband who desired only me, but from the beginning there has been a third person in our marriage, and her name is Cooperstown.

  2.4

  I was pregnant with Teddy when Mom called to announce that Dad was about to retire. “You don’t know what a grandchild would mean to him,” she said, and it was late but I knew by the volume of her voice that she was alone. “He’d want to be with that baby day and night,” she said, “right here at home.” I was well versed in my mother’s way of asking for things. First it sounds as if she’s confiding in you, then you realize her need is so great you will ford oceans to save her, and it will sink you again and again.

  2.5

  No doubt Hugh was confused—why had I moved us here if I didn’t want to be here?—but I was confused, too: Why did it seem my husband loved Cooperstown more than he loved me? As soon as we arrived, the familiar feelings from my childhood—the stomach-lurching discomfort of being stared at in the A&P, the ear-burning embarrassment of being gossiped about at Withey’s—came racing back. Hugh thought I was being paranoid, but he hadn’t lived through the sixties here.

  2.6

  At some point between the time I graduated from high school and the time Hugh and I moved back, Mom forgave Dad, and I think there’s a lesson here: The Sex Cure, my mother’s silent vessel for confrontation, was now buried under the bed and out of sight, and if Mom can forgiv
e Dad for all that, Hugh and I can get through anything.

  2.7

  But we are up against a very big “anything.”

  2.8

  There is literally no way Hugh could know about Dale. There’s nothing to know. Dale tried to kiss me and I turned away. This was four months ago, just before the Trevor-Moreland settlement, when Dale and I both knew it was in the bag. We’d been celebrating, a bottle of Dom for each of us. Dale called me his “work wife,” and I said I don’t need another husband, like, ha! one is already too many, ha-ha! What I’d meant was, sometimes it’s hard being married. What Dale heard was Hugh-Schmu, and then his lips were on mine, and I was sorry it had come to that, sorry to see Dale in that position. I like Dale, but when he pulled back, flustered, blushing a deep shade of Bordeaux, and I looked away to spare him further embarrassment, and he said, “Are you fucking kidding me, Anne?” I no longer felt sorry for him. I felt like I’d picked up a script for General Hospital. It was too ridiculous, too silly—as if I would ever sleep with this guy when my husband was so sweet and cute, when Hugh had a full head of hair and Dale looked like a bearded pear. No, no, it was absurd, it was something Hugh and I would laugh about later, but later I didn’t know where to begin.

  2.9

  After the settlement, I did not immediately renew my caseload. I’d been billing 100+ hours a week, and I’d missed my family. Also, I thought Dale and I could use some time apart. It was the week before Hugh’s forty-seventh birthday, and I decided to do something special—February in Cooperstown can be long and dark and cold, and a surprise party sounded like the right antidote to our respective hibernations, a good excuse to come together over a few bottles of wine.

  2.10

  I spun through my Rolodex, skimmed the country-club directory, even paged the phone book—then I remembered I have no real friends. As a child, I had my parents’ undivided attention, making playmates inessential, and by the time I was in junior high and could’ve really used a confidante, I was too apprehensive to reach out. Every one of my eighth-grade classmates read The Sex Cure, whether their parents knew it or not, and even though I could never find my father on the page, I was terrified someone else would.

  2.11

  So Hugh’s birthday surprise was me. Mortifyingly, I bought a Cosmopolitan in Oneonta and skimmed it for ideas. I’m not a prude. In twenty years together, Hugh and I have tried everything at least once, but I was looking for something new. All the suggestions, however, were silly, involving chocolate syrup, crushed mints, or equipment we didn’t happen to own. I skimmed a sidebar on threesomes—why and why not to have them—then made a dinner reservation for two at the Horned Dorset, the nicest place I could think of near home.

  2.12

  And that was where I saw it, our “anything”: the vast span between us, Hugh’s terrifying remoteness at his birthday dinner with his wife. What should’ve been romantic—white tablecloths, full wineglasses, duck confit on the way—was instead extremely awkward. I felt as if we were on a first date that wasn’t going well. This Hugh was nothing like the Hugh I’d met at a law school party twenty years ago. He barely seemed to notice me, laughing instead with our waitress about a water spill that coated one sleeve of his shirt, then spending the entire appetizer course studying a partially visible man on the other side of the dining room to determine if he was indeed Burt Schlessinger from Hugh’s fast-break basketball league. With my wineglass empty and Hugh neglecting to refill it, I realized suddenly that in tiny increments, over hours and days and weeks and years, while we were busy shuttling Teddy and Julia to their millions of activities and tending to our own overstuffed work schedules, that old Hugh had gotten away from me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the man he’d left behind.

  2.13

  By nine o’clock we were home, in bed, drunk, and I forgot everything I’d read in Cosmo. I wanted only to reconnect with my husband, but while I was watching Hugh, he was somewhere far away, with his eyes closed and his cheek turned toward me, and I thought, wasn’t it enough that I had to watch out the window for my father’s car hours after he should’ve been home from work? Now am I going to have to watch out for my husband’s, too?

  2.14

  It was over in ten minutes. I never even had time to put in my diaphragm. I’m forty-five years old and if you ask me the best thing Hugh and I ever did together was make children. But a third wasn’t meant to be.

  2.15

  I have the following children:

  2.15.1

  Theodore George Obermeyer. Teddy is eighteen (18), of legal age to buy cigarettes and to act as his younger sister’s guardian but constitutionally incapable of both. Teddy is fiercely protective of his health: He stretches after running, ices after throwing, rests after starting, decompresses after winning. He wants everyone around him to share his passion for baseball and he is a dedicated teacher, placing fingertips on phantom seams to elucidate curveballs and miming batting stances at mock home plates to demonstrate swinging through the ball. Just last week, Teddy put his hands on my hips and turned me left to right, rotating me through a make-believe pitch, powering my bat—a baguette—with my legs, and I felt the thrill of knowing what it is to be at the center of Teddy’s world. Many girls will feel it, but few will have the staying power of Mom. Which is one thing Teddy is most definitely not ready to be—if Hugh and I were to die, I’d have to find a suitable guardian for Julia. Last week, this guardian was my mother. Today, I have no idea.

  2.15.2

  Julia Anne Obermeyer. Julia is fifteen (15) going on seventy going on eight. She is braver, smarter, stranger, and sillier than her brother, which is both delightful and annoying, provoking, and comforting. People either get her or they don’t. She has a discerning eye for friends, and when she finds them, she keeps them. Right now she has a crush on her friend Sam (which he’d have to be blind not to see), but that darling little Carl is forever in the way. It’s sweet to watch, but I do worry someone will be hurt. Three is not a good number. It certainly didn’t work for my parents and it won’t work for Julia and her friends. I wish I could talk to her about it, but it’s hard for me to open up in that way. I never so much as had a date in high school, much less a boyfriend. Really, what do I know about anything? Less and less every day.

  3 Beneficiary

  3.1

  I bequeath the whole of my estate, property, and effects, whether movable or immovable, wheresoever situated and of whatsoever nature, to 1974 Hugh. That’s the Hugh I want back. Who else would have followed me home after that party, held my briefcase while I fumbled with the keys, and not said a word about the kind of girl who brings a briefcase to a party; not said a word about the tidy one-bedroom apartment with a stuffed rabbit on the bed; not said a word when I pointed to the rabbit and intoned, “My roommate’s,” rolling my eyes? Who else would have stayed the whole night, then the weekend, then the week, going out to the corner store for toilet paper and milk when he noticed we were low on both; never mentioning the phantom roommate again; instead becoming the roommate, moving in with me not slowly—a shirt here, a toothbrush there—but all at once, with a duffel bag full of socks and underwear, a garbage sack stuffed with wool sweaters, and a single baseball card that said more about Hugh’s childhood than he ever did?

  3.2

  And then I was pregnant, and even though we were unmarried he said okay: okay to moving home to Cooperstown with me; okay to Teddy, okay to Julia; okay to my job, okay to my career; okay to my plans while eventually making his own plans—Seedlings—until he began to belong in this town more than I ever felt I did, until he fit here with our children in a way I never will; and I began to begrudge him the ease with which he makes himself happy. He watched his brother drown and it should explain him, but it doesn’t even inform him, except perhaps to remind him to strive to appreciate the good things and to let the bad things go.

  3.3

  Is that what’s happening to us, Hugh? Are you letting me go? I admit that I’ve been dis
tant. Maybe I work too much. Maybe I believed that this marriage would take care of itself, but we haven’t done anything we can’t undo. Nearly nineteen years. We can figure this out.

  4 Alternate Beneficiaries

  4.1

  Should my 1974 spouse not survive me by thirty (30) days, I direct the whole of my estate, property, and effects, whether movable or immovable, wheresoever situated and of whatsoever nature, be divided between my children named above in equal shares. Don’t fight, kids. Don’t tease each other. You’re on the same team. Teddy, look out for Julia. Ask her questions. Get to the bottom of her. She needs more than she’ll ever let on. She doesn’t have the whole world figured out, and she still requires her mom and dad. Julia, look out for Teddy. Make sure he does his homework. Life’s not all about baseball, and it’s not all about girls. Try to keep them at bay, if you can. Teddy needs to learn to believe in himself without a thousand hands clapping him along the way. Both of you: Speak up for yourselves; ask for what you need; call each other at least once a week, even if you’re busy, even if you have nothing to say; and be brave, leave this town. Teddy, I’m talking to you now: The world is big, so go, try everything, and don’t listen to me if I try to call you back; I love you, but go.