Love All: A Novel

by Wright, Callie

  When Teddy yanked my comforter off me at a quarter to eight, I didn’t even try to fight it—I let him frog-march me to the bathroom, leaning against his shoulder, and I felt a little better knowing he was here.

  “Let’s go,” said Teddy. “Brush, comb. Whatever it is you do in there.” He parked me in front of our sink, a petri dish of toothpaste logs—it was our responsibility to clean our bathroom, but neither of us took this task very seriously. I ran the water and applied Crest to my brush.

  “If we’re late, you won’t be able to play,” said Teddy.

  “It’s an exhibition match,” I reminded him.

  “What?”

  I took the toothbrush out of my mouth. “It’s only exhibition.”

  Teddy rolled his eyes, then put a hand on my shoulder like he was the captain of my team. “It’s just nerves,” he said. “Channel them. They’ll keep you alert.”

  Teddy skipped down the stairs while I went to get dressed. I picked up my jeans and checked one last time for the note. If it was small enough to be lost, maybe it was small enough never to be found.

  In the kitchen, Mom handed Teddy cheese toast—a microwaved paper towel with a slice of white bread hardening under a square of Kraft—then asked if I wanted one.

  I shook my head and opened the fridge for a Coke.

  Mom frowned. “How’d you sleep?” she asked.

  “Nightmares,” I said. “My eyes feel like sandpaper.”

  Her blouse was wrinkled, her mascara smudged into two smoky lines. She should’ve left for work by now but it was nice having her here, seeing us off to school.

  “Are you coming to my match?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Poppy, too.”

  “And Dad?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Of course.”

  Maybe it was something they’d already discussed: every other weekend and holidays and see you at the match tonight. I wanted to ask her what time they’d be there, and would they arrive together? Would they sit together, would they speak? And what if I lost? And what if I won? Would we go to Gabriella’s to celebrate or was this it, the last time we’d all be in the same place at the same time?

  I stared into her eyes, trying to divine her thoughts, but her gaze was a cloudless sky, a pool so deep you could drown.

  Teddy and I raced up Beaver Street to Delaware and past the elementary school to the CHS bike path. We ran hard and soon my shirt was damp under my windbreaker and I started to pant but kept running until Teddy said, “Slow down. I have a cramp.”

  For a moment we didn’t speak. I cracked the tab of my Coke and took a sip, and Teddy waited for me to put the can to my lips, then tapped the bottom of the can, sending brown fizz over my chin and down the front of my jacket. I wiped my face on his sleeve.

  Grass had pushed up through the cracks in the path and dewy water pooled in the potholes. The school loomed close but I kept my eyes on the ground, on Teddy’s Air Jordans, which he wore laced but untied, his jeans bagging over the tongues.

  “What happened with Dad?” I asked. “Did he really kiss that woman?”

  Teddy stared straight ahead, looking older somehow, not only older than me but older than him, not the same Teddy he’d been two days ago sitting cross-legged with his baseball cards on the floor in front of him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Teddy, and it wasn’t an answer but I heard in it all that I needed to know.

  I thought of all the times he’d come to my room when we were kids, too old for babysitters but too young to go out after dark. If I was in the right kind of mood, I’d dog-ear my book and we’d play Surrey, where Teddy had to piggyback me two laps through the house—up the back stairs, down the front, with thirty-second breaks on the guest-room bed and in the laundry room—and I could still see us: me, armed with the kitchen timer; him, sweating down his pencil-thin neck. I’d squeeze Teddy’s skinny ribs with my knees, spurring him on, and he’d stagger up the last steps of the back stairs, trying not to drop me. With or without Rick Delaney’s Jeep, Teddy would find a way to keep going. Teddy was a mover, a doer—he didn’t get stuck. An eye for an eye for Teddy. He would not let us down.

  When the homeroom bell rang we started to run again: Teddy out in front, me hot on his tail. I forked my soda into the grass and pumped with both arms, backpack swinging, and I caught Teddy and he let me run alongside him all the way to the front door.

  “See you at the courts,” he said. He thrust his fists into the air and mock-screamed my name, Jul-ya, Jul-ya, Jul-ya, all the way down the hall to his homeroom. I listened until he was gone. I listened until I was alone in the hallway, until the final bell rang, and then I hightailed it to homeroom.

  “Cutting it close,” said Sam.

  I slid into my seat and ducked my head under my desk to scan for the cubelike note. Nothing. I glanced at Carl.

  “What?” he asked. He followed my gaze to his shirt—striped rugby—to his fly—zipped—back up to his copper curls. “What?” he asked again.

  I eyeballed the carpet in front of my locker.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Sam.

  I shook my head.

  “Nervous?” asked Carl.

  I shrugged. It was as good a reason as any to be edgy around Carl. I couldn’t explain that I’d done something far worse than stealing his exhibition match.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder. “Even if you lose, we can still hang out.”

  I spent all of math class applying formulas to the probability of the note turning up, but the problem set was infinite. Maybe the janitor had already swept it and bagged it and the note was out of my life forever. Or maybe it was on the floor somewhere, waiting to be found. It was possible that no one would find it or that someone already had, and I thought about all the weeks left in the school year, the never-ending possibility of it turning up.

  The day wound on mercilessly—math, keyboarding, English, French—and by the time Sam joined me in the cafeteria line during fifth period, my mind was white static, dead blank.

  “Everyone’s looking for you,” said Sam.

  I froze, my stomach swallowing my heart.

  “Christ,” said Sam. “Are you okay?”

  I wanted to go back, I wanted it back, I wanted the note in my hand. I would’ve eaten it. I would’ve burned it, then eaten it. I would not have written it. I would not have been the kind of person who would’ve written it. But it was done, I was who I was, and now Sam would know.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Carl.”

  “Carl?” Sam repeated. “Evan. He wants to give you a pep talk for the match.”

  I tried to swallow, but there was a sandbar in my throat.

  “Fucking hell,” said Sam. “Pull it together.”

  But I couldn’t stop the tears, and finally he took me by the elbow and steered me toward the choir room, ducking us both into the empty auditorium.

  Sam stashed me in row L, then sat in the aisle at my feet. After a minute he said, “I shouldn’t have given you the silent treatment yesterday.”

  “What?”

  “I thought that’s why you were crying.”

  I took a breath and my chest shuddered.

  “Maybe you should call Claw,” he said. “Tell him this exhibition match is filing you over the edge.”

  “It wasn’t his idea in the first place. My dad arranged it.”

  Sam shrugged, and I could tell by the way he didn’t ask any questions that he’d already guessed. “My dad pays for me to go to Bollettieri camp every summer,” he said, “which is basically the same thing. He was probably only trying to help.”

  The dim auditorium lights shone down in yellow cones, spotlighting Sam, spotlighting the stage steps and the velvet curtain stretching across the stage. I thought of Carl in the cafeteria with his red lunch bag unpacked, his peanut butter sandwich on a paper napkin in front of him. It was hard to believe we’d be playi
ng tennis against each other in a few hours and that an hour after that I might be off the team. I wondered what it’d be like when the three of us didn’t hang out every day after school, when Sam and Carl went to practice and I went home to Poppy.

  “I did something awful,” I said.

  “What?” asked Sam.

  “I wrote something.” But I couldn’t say what.

  “Are you talking about this?” Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out the note.

  Motherfucking shit. I tried to grab it but he stood and switched the paper to his left hand, holding it out of my reach.

  “Where’d you get that?” I yelled.

  “I was looking for our lunch card yesterday during gym class. I found it in your jeans.”

  “In the girls’ locker room?” I jumped up and reached for the note again but Sam raised it over his head.

  “You were outside. The real question is, why do you have it?”

  “That is not the real question. And anyway, it’s true.”

  “So? It’s nobody’s business. Why’d you write it?”

  We were so close I could smell his skin, his face moisturizer, and I felt dizzy.

  “He was being a jerk,” I said.

  “You stole his match,” said Sam.

  “Because you ditched me for tennis tryouts!”

  “I ditched you?”

  Couldn’t he see? The words in my mind were palpable, breakable, and I handed them to Sam. “You kissed Megan. You let Carl have first dibs on me. You knew you were going to make the team, but what about me? Did you even think about me?”

  Sam slowly dropped his arm, and I could’ve grabbed the note but I didn’t move. We were face-to-face. The tan line on Sam’s forehead had started to fade, but his eyes were bright green.

  Sam closed his eyes first, then I closed mine. For a second I thought he might leave me standing there but soon I felt his lips on mine and they were papery and dry and warm. A line of soft stubble brushed my upper lip and my heart bass-drummed my chest. Sam’s tongue gently pushed into my mouth and I touched his teeth, his gums. Our bodies were board straight, our hands at our sides, and I smelled the collar of his shirt and tasted bubble gum.

  When it was over Sam opened my hand, then closed my fingers around the note.

  “Are you going to tell Carl?” I asked.

  “About what?” He smiled and held out his hand. “Lunch card, please.” I handed it over.

  “Sam?” I asked. “Am I a swelfare friend?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Hardly ever.”

  When the auditorium doors clicked shut, I ripped the note into eight pieces, then went across the hall to the girls’ bathroom and flushed three times, watching the paper swirl down and away, thinking about how all stories ended—folded up or abandoned, lost or forgotten—making room for things that were just beginning, and I headed back to the cafeteria to join Sam and Carl.

  * * *

  In the car after school, no one spoke. Sam didn’t even try to make me drive. I sat in back and stole glances at Sam in the rearview mirror, and at least once he looked up at me and smiled.

  He dropped me off first, then drove Carl across town to get his stuff. My mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway and a note on the kitchen counter said that she’d taken Poppy to a doctor’s appointment: I had the run of the place. I downed a glass of OJ and ate three gingersnaps, then went upstairs to change.

  Carl and I didn’t have the CHS team uniform, but I had plenty of team-looking shirts from my lessons at the country club. I laid out a navy collared shirt alongside a pleated white skirt, then quickly showered and shaved my legs.

  On the porch, I ran into Dad coming home from work.

  “Hey, old girl,” he said.

  I stepped back, retreating until I was a foot above him with the rail between us. In his right hand was the briefcase that Teddy and I had given him for Christmas; in his left, a giant legal folder like the kind Mom sometimes carried.

  “Are you heading to your match?” he asked.

  “It’s not till later.”

  “I’ll be over in a couple of hours to watch you play.”

  Sunlight reflected off his glasses, hiding his eyes, but I could tell by the tilt of his chin that he was looking at me. On Beaver Street, an ambulance crawled through the intersection on its way to Bassett, and we waited until it had gone by.

  “Jules—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I pictured Sam and me in the auditorium that afternoon, his lips on mine. I didn’t want to think about Dad having done the same thing with some woman we didn’t know.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Dad started to let me pass but at the last second he collected me in a hug, and I let myself be held.

  * * *

  The day was sunny, cool, and I ran up the hill to the courts, falling into step with Carl on his way back from the bathroom with the water cans.

  “Nice outfit,” said Carl, handing me a can. I jounced in my pleated skirt while Carl T’d his arms to model his own uniform. “What do you think?” he asked.

  I rubbed the hem of his shirt between my thumb and finger—a soft striped Fila with snaps at the collar—then admired his matching shorts—white with a faux-grosgrain belt. “Where’d you get it?” I asked.

  “The attic,” said Carl. “My dad’s.”

  I sniffed: cedar.

  “And,” said Carl. He handed me his second can of water, then fished a red sweatband out of his pocket and pushed it up on his forehead, ringing his mop of curls.

  Carl and I walked down to where Sam and Evan were warming up while the Sauquoit players changed inside Bassett Hall. The rest of our team ran laps around the outside of the fence, Claw yelling at them to keep up the pace.

  “Water,” I announced, placing Sam’s can near the net on Court 2.

  “Water,” Carl repeated to Evan. “Let us know if you need refills.”

  Evan waved and Sam said, “Thanks, Jules. Nice skirt,” and I felt my pulse speed up.

  Carl and I sat on our racket covers on the hill overlooking the courts and noted the order of the warm-up: forehands, backhands, volleys—in a few hours it’d be us, and we’d need to know what to do.

  “When do we practice serves?” I asked.

  “I think serves are last,” said Carl. “It’s baseline, then net, then overheads.”

  I thought about that for a second. I wasn’t sure if I even knew how to feed an overhead to Carl without hitting the ball over the back fence.

  “Do you want to practice overheads?” I asked.

  “No, that’s okay,” said Carl.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s okay for me, too.”

  I glanced at Carl. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but he didn’t yet know what for. I loved him, but I couldn’t say that, either. He was my best friend, and I prayed not to lose him.

  “I could let you win,” said Carl.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t.”

  Carl shrugged. He wanted to win, too, but he’d needed to offer.

  By five o’clock, the hill was a checkerboard of quilts and blankets and folding chairs, and at least some people were there to see Carl and me. Teddy and Kim huddled together under the comforter from Teddy’s bed, and when Mom arrived she crossed the lawn to join them. I watched her reintroduce herself to Kim, then softly pat Teddy’s head. I looked for Dad but he wasn’t with her.

  Mom called me over and pointed up the hill to where Poppy was seated on a wooden bench by himself.

  “He came to see you,” she said.

  “Who invited him?” I asked, but she put a hand on my shoulder and steered me up the hill.

  I walked to Poppy’s bench and sat beside him. A blanket from our linen closet was folded over his lap, a hat on his head. He looked frail but he smiled and I scooted closer to my grandfather, wanting to feel his warmth.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He started to touch my hand, then
seemed to change his mind and pulled on the hem of the blanket instead. “Did I ever tell you about the time I won five dollars in a third-set tiebreaker in 1924?” asked Poppy.

  About a hundred times.

  “Play every point like it’s the last one, and don’t even think about the possibility of losing.”

  “I’m not,” I lied.

  “Yeah, you are.” He reached out for my hand again and this time took it. “Is this your racket hand?” He opened my palm and felt for calluses. “Don’t let the racket move around. Hold on tight. You hit topspin?” I nodded. “Backspin?” I shrugged. “Use the whole court,” said Poppy. “Bring him in. Send him out. Is that Carl?” Poppy squinted and I pointed out Carl in the crowd. “You can buy him a drink when you win. Still friends, but not till after the game.”

  I smiled and Poppy said, “I’m sorry about the other day. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” He kissed my head and I leaned against his bony shoulder. “Nonz would’ve loved to see you play,” he said. And I thought it was true, so I pictured her here on the bench next to Poppy, and I could almost see her: blue apron, yellow dress, the smell of cinnamon in the air. I looked at Poppy and he smiled and said, “Play hard.”

  Threading my way through the crowd, I passed Evan and Danke Schoen; Teddy and Kim and most of Teddy’s friends; Em and her little sister, Maggie. Dad showed up just before I stepped onto the court, waving to me, mouthing the words, Good luck.

  “Let’s go,” said Carl.

  But I was waiting for Sam.

  “One second,” I said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  In the dim office hallway I walked to the boys’ bathroom, stopping outside the door to listen to the voices: maybe Sam, definitely Doug and Alan. How long could I wait before Carl came looking for me? I counted to thirty, then counted to thirty again.