“I’m going to have to clean her up a bit,” I said as I grabbed her and the house keys.
“You’re incredibly lucky no one else got to her,” Patrick said, and I knew he was right.
The way everyone in my family treated that statue—making the sign of the cross whenever they walked past it, even just when driving by the house—had always made me a little bit scared of it, like it held some special power. I’d been posed in front of it for pictures I was too little to remember taking, like at my baptism and my first communion. And I’d spent hours of my youth tending the weeds around her, or fighting with Grace about which one of us was going to do it. All because Great-Aunt Eleanor had brought the statue home from Italy at the end of World War Two, having purchased it in Sienna on the day victory had been declared in Europe, aka “VE-Day.” We weren’t supposed to worship idols as Catholics, but my family had obviously missed that catechism lesson or thought the VE-Day angle bought them a pass in this one case. Throughout my childhood, I’d occasionally prayed to the statue myself, but I prayed less and less the older I got. Not because I felt my prayers had gone unanswered—though they mostly had—but because my own pleas had become so petty, at least when you put them into words.
Please, God, can you make him like me?
Please, God, just one more cup size?
Please, God, Georgetown!
Please, God, shut me up!
Up the porch steps we went and then I fussed with the door and we all went inside, where it smelled strongly of old lady—like dust and cheap shampoo and old sock–drawer potpourri. Despite my family’s best efforts, we still hadn’t entirely emptied the house. Bags and bags of trash and recycling had already been hauled out, but there was just so much stuff.
“Okay,” I said, setting Mary down by the kitchen sink, and pulling out some cleaning products.
“You really don’t feel bad taking stuff from a dead woman?” Winter asked, and I said, “She won’t know the difference.”
“I don’t know, Mare,” Winter said, eyeing Eleanor’s doll collection, an army of small porcelain girls wearing clothing meant to represent their home nations, like some kind of bizarro Miss Universe pageant. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“She was sort of scary,” Dez said as he started rummaging through kitchen drawers. I’d given everybody assignments in the car the way Dez had done for the Deep.
“Well, I liked her,” Patrick said, and he took the steps two at a time, heading for the upstairs bedrooms.
That makes one of us, I thought, but I didn’t say it, I just set about cleaning up Mary. “Ten minutes and we’re out of here,” I said, and shouts came back from different rooms to say, “Okay!”
Great-Aunt Eleanor had died that past fall and I hadn’t been that sad about it initially, a fact that had me sort of worried about my character. I wondered whether it was just because she had been very old and very sick and also just not that nice of a person on account of her sharp tongue and rigid ideas. Patrick agreed that it was probably because she was so old but he put a better spin on it, taking it as a sign of some kind of emotional maturity on my part.
“Well, we’re all going to die,” he’d said. “And when you’re as old as Eleanor, it’s not that tragic so that’s why you’re not upset.”
I think he was giving me more credit than I deserved but I went with it.
For a while, anyway.
But then Eleanor, who’d served in the army as a nurse during World War II, had gone and gotten buried at Arlington National Cemetery. She’d retired with the impressive rank (especially for a woman) of lieutenant colonel and so had been given star treatment as her bodily remains were ushered to their final resting place. A band. A firing guard. A 21-gun salute. Even horses that pulled the caisson down to the gravesite.
I hadn’t cried at all during the wake and the funeral in Oyster Point, but Arlington was an entirely different story. My mother had designated me as the person to accept the flag during the service. So I had been assigned a certain folding chair to sit on, on a small patch of Astroturf laid on the ground by the hole for the casket, and after six soldiers folded up the coffin flag into a tight triangle, one soldier—barely older than I was—kneeled in front of me and looked right at me with eyes deeper than seemed right and handed me the flag, reciting some speech about “a grateful nation.”
I’d lost it.
Completely.
I didn’t even know why.
Except that the whole thing had made me feel small and selfish and alone.
I’d gone and toured Georgetown’s campus the next day—my parents hadn’t wanted to travel down to D.C. twice, so we’d scrambled to make arrangements for college visits—and I’d fallen in love with D.C. and the Georgetown campus and everything and anything I heard about the bachelor’s of science degree in Foreign Service—an undergrad program that prepared people for lives of diplomacy and humanitarian work across the globe. I hadn’t even known that such a degree existed, but it suddenly seemed possible that I could do something that would change the world, maybe be an ambassador or work for the UN. I wasn’t cut out for war, no. But maybe I was cut out for diplomacy? I could make my life, my self, bigger—the way Eleanor had. When my parents told me, some months later, that Eleanor had left me enough money to pay for my entire college education that had sealed the deal.
“She lived quite a life, your aunt,” Patrick had said one day that winter, after I’d told him he could have the old cameras of Eleanor’s that he’d found when we’d first started trying to clean out the house. Long after I thought he’d gone home that day, I’d found him out front with an old Polaroid, photographing Mary on the Half Shell in the snow. The photos were instantly old looking and cool—a little bit white-washed and blurry, like the Mary statue wasn’t really a figure carved out of stone but was some sort of unearthly apparition.
“She was ahead of her time,” he said, and his breath was fog. “Getting her own mortgage. Getting her degree through the GI bill. Going for a master’s on top of nursing. Most women back then were barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”
I laughed and pulled my hood up and said, “You have a funny way of looking at things. And you know way more about my great-aunt Eleanor than you are required to know as my friend.”
He shrugged inside his red parka. “I just listened to the eulogy is all.”
“Well, she was certainly driven,” I admitted, blowing on my frigid hands. “And she didn’t really seem to like men much, so barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen wasn’t likely.” Eleanor had never had a kind word for her father—a great-grandfather I’d never met—who apparently drank too much.
“You’re a lot like her, you know.” Patrick was taking another photo.
“I like men!” I protested.
He was amused and shaking his head. “Calm yourself, Mare. I just mean that you’re really driven. And independent. And focused.”
“All right, Harvard,” I had said, because really, who was the driven one?
“I just don’t think there’s anything you can’t do if you put your mind to it,” he said.
And for a while, anyway, at least until I’d been rejected by Georgetown, it had felt true.
“I found a silver bangle,” Winter called out from one bedroom.
“I’ve got a flag,” Dez said.
“Is it folded into a triangle?” I called back. “In a wooden box?”
“No,” Dez said. “It’s on a six-inch plastic pole.”
“Perfect!” I said. Because I would not mess with the Arlington flag, not for a measly 25 points.
“Hey, check these out,” said Dez, coming into the room and holding up two folksy black dolls with x’s for eyes. “Creepy shit.”
“They’re handmade in Appalachia,” I said, a little bit defensively. I actually wasn’t sure whether the dolls were somehow racially offensive or not, and I crossed the room to take them from Dez and put them back on the shelf in the living room. Most of the knickkna
cks remained because there was the lingering question of whether they were worth something and whether anyone would buy them at a garage sale or on eBay. There were bells made in Mexico and shamrocked vases from Ireland, small wooden gondolas from Italy, tiny silk slippers from China.
Seriously. Was there any place the woman hadn’t been?
“The three-hole punch binder is in the closet in the second bedroom down the hall,” I said as a way to try to get us all moving again. “And I’m pretty sure there’s a snow globe in a box in the credenza with some Christmassy stuff.”
“I’ll get the binder,” Winter said, and Dez headed for the credenza after mockingly saying, “I’ll check the credenza.”
“What?” I laughed. “That’s what she called it.”
“Bingo,” Dez said, and he shook the tiny half-sphere and set it on the dining room table where we watched white flakes settle slowly around an old version of the New York City skyline, one with the Twin Towers set behind Lady Liberty. Something about the towers there, towers I couldn’t remember ever seeing, though there were pictures, made me feel small like I had at Arlington, too. Small enough to climb into that tiny globe and catch snowflakes with my tiny tongue.
“I never want to get old,” Winter said, sinking into a couch hidden under a teddy bear collection.
“Beats the alternative,” I said. Because that’s what my parents always said.
Winter was waving the tiny American flag absentmindedly. “Sometimes,” she said, “but not always.”
An awful mix of tinny music had begun to cascade down the house’s main staircase. Patrick was up there and had apparently found Eleanor’s music box collection. Amid the cacophony I heard a sort of “Jingle Bells”/”Rock-a-Bye Baby” mash-up and I headed upstairs for more treasure, feeling hotter and sweatier now that the idea of Christmas had flashed through my brain.
“You’re avoiding me,” Patrick said, from his position in the middle of the floor in the sewing room. He was surrounded by music boxes, most of which had, blessedly, stopped playing. He picked one up then—a small yellow piano with butterflies and dandelions on it—wound it, and “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” started playing in earnest.
I forced a sort of Ha sound from my throat. “How could I be avoiding you? We’ve been together for”—I looked at my phone—“an hour.”
“You know what I’m talking about.” He started looking through a box of sheet music then, presumably for a show tune. “Not today, but this week. I mean, I’ve barely seen you since prom.”
I felt caught out; I’d actually found myself ducking around corners in school all week, avoiding Carson and Jill, yes, but also Patrick. I wasn’t proud. And maybe it was the music but I felt, suddenly, full of rainy-day melancholy.
I said, “Well, I’m here now,” and sat down on the brown carpet facing him. “You want to talk about prom, let’s talk.”
He handed me half the sheet music pile, and I started to flip.
“Here’s how I see it,” Patrick said, putting his sheet music stack down. “We’re going away in a few months. And I’ve realized that I want to be with you during that time. I mean, really be with you.”
I froze.
It was the moment I’d been dreading without ever realizing I’d been dreading it because I never thought it would happen. We were pals, Patrick and me.
Buds.
Super close ones, but still.
“Here’s how I see it,” I said, my voice vibrating like I was being physically shaken. “It seems sort of dumb to start something now, when we might mess up what we already have.”
But that came out wrong. It implied that I would consider the idea.
Which I wouldn’t. I was in awe of Patrick, yes, but it was not the right kind of awe. Like whenever I went to church and listened to the folk band Patrick played in—which was awesome, like sixties rock for Mass—I had to work hard to not look at him because it pained me to see how intense he looked. I wondered, every time, whether that was what it felt like when you had a kid and he or she had a recital or a speaking part in a play and it all went horribly wrong and right at the same time. When you wanted to just cry out of pride and embarrassment all at once. I felt a million emotions around Patrick, pretty much on a daily basis, but I’d simply never had the urge to touch his face or hold his hand. I’d never felt desire.
“But I’m saying we’ve already started it.” Patrick’s voice seemed a little shaky, too, and when I looked up she saw that his eyes also seemed to vibrate with intensity. “I feel it.”
It had to be said. No pussyfooting.
“I don’t think I do,” I said sadly.
“But why not?” he pleaded.
“I don’t know.” I sighed and thought, I wish I did!
“I just don’t.” I put down the sheet music. “We’re wasting time here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He came closer.
“No,” I said. “I mean, with the sheet music. It’s not worth enough points to spend all this time looking for it.”
He hadn’t stopped coming closer.
“Patrick, come on,” I said. “Let’s just forget about prom, okay?”
“I don’t want to forget,” he said.
And then I wondered what sort of stuff I didn’t want to forget, then wondered how much of any of this I would remember in the end. Like if I lived to be as old as Eleanor. I sort of hoped that I’d forget most of what I’d already experienced of life. Not because it was so bad, but because it was so ordinary. I hadn’t ever left the country, or made love, or gotten married, or skydived. Not that I was sure I ever would skydive but if I did—if life presented the opportunity and motivation—I hoped I’d remember that when I was old—the feeling of flying, of free-falling, of total liberation—and not this awkward conversation with a boy who was once my best friend. I wanted to remember Italy and Paris, rip cords and parachutes. Love, too. Even loss.
But not this.
Because right then, Patrick leaned in, like he was going to kiss me, and I turned away.
I thought about how he wouldn’t even want to kiss me if he knew how I felt about Carson. Then thought about telling him how I felt about Carson for that very reason. It seemed cruel.
“You guys having any luck?” Dez said from the hall, then he poked his head into the room.
“Patrick found the music box,” I said, “but we’re striking out on movie sheet music.”
“Wait,” Patrick said. “I got one.” He pulled out sheet music for “The Rose,” from the movie by the same name, starring Bette Midler, and handed it to me.
Winter called out, “We should get moving, Team Lame-Oh! I boxed up the loot that’s down here.”
Patrick picked up the “Raindrops” music box and threw me an I’ll-deal-with-you-later sort of look, and we hurried downstairs and out the door.
We left with a silver bangle [10], an ice-tea spoon [10], a stapler [2], the snow globe [20], the music box [80], the sheet music [20], the flag [25], a yellow leaf (silk, but still) [40], a remote [10], a three-hole punch binder [5], an ice-cream scoop [10], a bottle of shampoo (to be emptied later since we ran out of time) [5], a divided dinner plate [10], a stack of Dixie cups (for Patrick’s icosahedron attempt) [potential for 65], an unopened cable bill [50], a recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Bread [5], and a cleaned-up Mary, shucked from her Half Shell [100].
For a whopping total of 402 actual points.
Which, when added to the Home Depot loot, meant 587.
Like taking candy from a baby.
I locked up behind us and pocketed the keys, which I’d put back later, along with Mary.
“Isn’t your mom going to be mad?” Patrick asked, then. “About the statue?”
I adjusted a few weeds as we left, so that the grotto was obscured from sight again. “They’ll never know she was gone and if they do, they’ll never know it was me.”
Then I turned and headed for the car and saw Tigger and Bounty and Stars an
d Stripes.
Barbone again.
“What are you, following us?” Dez said as the car pulled in and idled at the curb.
Barbone just looked out from the driver’s seat, across Fitz in the passenger seat, and said, “As if there weren’t enough virgins on your team already.”
Of course Barbone knew the statue was there, weeds and all. We’d all been stuck in this town a long time. But did he have to know I was a virgin? I just looked at my friends and said, “Let’s go, guys.”
“Didn’t appreciate your dad dicking us around, Daphne,” Fitz said.
“Yeah, well,” Dez said. “Them’s the breaks.”
And Barbone’s car took off with a grunt.
“Where to?” I asked after we’d loaded in all our stuff and gotten back in the car, this time with Dez riding shotgun.
“My house?” Winter said, beside me in the backseat, then she accidentally kicked Mary, who was by our feet, so I picked her up and moved her to the little shelf behind our headrests.
“Houses are boring,” Dez said.
“Houses are easy,” Winter said. “But we’d have to sneak in through my window since my mom thinks I’m at the movies.” This was probably wise, but the truth was Winter’s mother barely noticed her when they were in the same room.
“Lamest. Team. Ever,” Dez said, then he started to flip through the list.
“I’m heading for Flying Saucers,” Patrick said, “unless anyone’s got any better ideas.”
“Let’s talk through some of the list,” I said, pulling mine out but then taking a minute to text Winter: PATRICK TRIED TO KISS ME.
“Seriously. My house is a no-brainer,” Winter said, looking up from her list in the backseat. “But we should go later tonight, I think, so the goldfish doesn’t die before final judging.”
Her phone lit up (she’d obviously finally had the good sense to silence it) and she read, then looked over at me, wide-eyed.
The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life Page 5