The Stories We Tell

by Patti Callahan Henry

  I drop the dish towel and enter the living room. I sit next to Cooper on the couch. “We have to be a team, Cooper. I can’t do all of this alone.”

  “All of what?”

  “Willa, Gwen, the Fine Line, the house, your parents.…”

  “What do you mean by my parents? Is there something to be done about them?”

  “No … I just meant … I don’t know what I meant. I feel like they need something from us, from me, that I’m not giving.”

  “They always want more time with me than they have. It’s not your fault.”

  He places his arm around me and pulls me close. The sportscaster drones on about a record being set. There is always a record being set. Cooper mumbles into my hair. “It’s been a long week. I’m exhausted. And darling, you don’t need to do it all.”

  I relax into his shoulder. This is what I’ve always wanted: someone at my side, a partner. I rest in this.

  Then he speaks again. “Sometimes you just have to pick your priorities. Right now, I think that’s at home with Gwen. And me. Then Willa.”

  The Fine Line hasn’t made the list of priorities. I close my eyes and exhale. Maybe he’s right.

  “I love you,” he says. “You know that, right?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I know.”

  “Our family, it’s the most important thing of all. It’s why I do what I do. It’s everything.…”

  “I know,” I say, repeating myself.

  “Listen, I’m swamped tomorrow. Could you and Gwen go pick up my car from the body shop? It’s ready.”

  “That was quick,” I say.

  “We’ve been good customers through the years. They’re prompt with me.”

  He kisses my forehead and his attention returns to the baseball stats. My attention returns to Gwen and Willa, to the cottage, and then wanders down the dirt road to the studio. But my body remains on the couch, still and quiet.

  eleven

  Again, there’s an envelope on the project table with my name in block letters. There’s no return address and the stamp is crooked. It takes me a long time to decide whether to open it, but of course I do, because an unopened letter will eventually have its due. This I know.

  What I try to do—what I’ve always tried to do—is bring something good with my work. Now someone is using this goodness to bring fear. I want to open the envelope. I want to burn it. I’m curious. I’m scared.

  Finally, after what seems like ages, I lift the cotton envelope. I rip the flap quickly, like a Band-Aid from skin. There it is, another card from the Ten Good Ideas line. This time, the Search for the True card—number four in the series. The design shows the world, blue and floating amid the dark night. Stars are set as sparkled dents in the universe.

  I brace myself for the anonymous note, but this time—nothing. There’s just blank space where words should be. Something is inside, though. A small business card falls out and lands on the painted concrete floor; it stares up at me with block letters, e-mail and a phone number for the Anglers.

  I leave it there, this offensive business card on cheap paper. I stand and use my foot to push the card under the table, toward the trash can on the far side, and I turn away.

  If there’s a truth to be known or told or written, I want to know. Who wouldn’t? But to hint like this is perverse. I wish I had a wineglass to throw again. I wish I had something to smash and hurl and splinter, but I don’t.

  I’ve come here to print wedding invitations and I’ll focus. We have a huge order—four hundred invites using both a polymer plate of two tiny birds facing each other on a tree branch, which Francie had designed for the bride, and also our carved-wood fonts, which are set and tied into a metal chase. Setting this card took Max and I the better half of a day. I lift the large platen top, placing the first sheet of cotton paper.

  A meditative calm comes over me, as it often does when I’m alone and printing. Four hundred invitations. My God, who invites four hundred people to witness the exchange of vows? Does this make them more binding? Cooper and I married in front of a small crowd in a downtown chapel. My family couldn’t pay for a large wedding and Cooper didn’t want one, although his mother begged us to please let her have a cathedral wedding and she’d pay for it.

  For this invitation’s design, I met with the new bride for hours over a month’s time. When I asked about her groom, she flushed. She loved him so much and she told me, she couldn’t believe her luck. He’d been her best friend, and then love showed up.

  My parents claimed to have a great love—one that lasted through thirty-six years of marriage. So tied together that they died together. It was an accidental carbon monoxide death. Usually when you hear about this kind of dying—the slow, in your sleep death—it’s suicide. But not my parents. Suicide would have meant an eternal hell, and no matter what they feared here on earth, they feared damning separation from God more so. What I’ve learned since is that carbon monoxide poisoning is the number-one reason for accidental death.

  There are some things you don’t want to learn.

  They’d gone to bed that night and closed their Bibles—Mom’s with the pink quilted cover and Dad’s with the leather so cracked, it looked like dried mud. They’d turned off the lights, let Buster, the mutt, jump onto the bed, and together closed their eyes. They were lost in their own worlds, asleep when the ancient furnace, which they’d sworn to replace, started to leak. Sleep, I think, is the only time we can live entirely in our own world. And this time, for my parents, it was an eternal sleep.

  The church secretary found them the next day. She had said that the worst part was the way they looked alive, curled in repose, as if they didn’t know they were yet dead. Buster, too.

  But the worst part for me, the terrible part, isn’t that I wasn’t the one who found them; it was the reason I didn’t find them. Two weeks before my parents passed away, we had a disagreement about why I didn’t regularly take Gwen to church, why I myself had stopped meeting them at the front steps. I’d tried to explain, but because I didn’t fully understand my motivations, I couldn’t rightly explain it to them. My decision then was vague and unformed. Dad yelled at me, telling me that I would destroy my family and my life. I said a terrible and hurtful thing when I told him that church hadn’t exactly saved his family, that it wasn’t the catchall insurance card he’d wanted for us, was it?

  I was sick for days after this fight and I’d spent hours forming an apology. But Mom and Dad died before the gap was healed. A simple ending, a terrible ending, and one I couldn’t undo.

  My dad was an old-fashioned “father knows best” kind of dad. But there was more to it than that. At least for Willa and me. There was this dad, this charming and gregarious man who made people laugh and cry, who enriched their lives. Then there was the man who would only appear at home—the moody, angry man frustrated at the daily goings-on of any life. The rages came from unexplainable sources: a barking dog across the yard; a pair of shoes left in the middle of the kitchen; crumbs in the beanbag chair in the den. And there he’d be, his forehead scrunched up like a wrinkled sheet, his eyebrows drawn together, screaming.

  God, the screaming.

  The weird part (the part Willa and I would discuss under the bed) was how the screaming usually wasn’t prompted by our disobedience or back talk. It would usually be something random and unpredictable that would set him off. That’s what made it all so terrifying. There was the night I came home crying because I’d been excluded from a club my friends had created. The Cool Clique, they’d called it, an uninspired and dull name for a club that didn’t invite me, and I told them so. “Stupidest name for a club ever.” It hadn’t gone well, and for days, until it became boring to them, the girls shunned me, closed gaps at the lunch table, refused my phone calls, and turned away when I approached. I wept at the dinner table, wanting solace or comfort or anything parents should offer when a child is hurting. But instead, I was rewarded with a lecture about “not being of this world” and how I c
ared about the wrong, wrong, wrong things. When Willa piped up and told Dad to have a heart, he exploded with a lecture and rant so severe, it rang in my ears for a week. So, no matter what it was, the irritating circumstance reminded him, again, that his daughters were disobedient and willful. Mostly, we were. Although we tried very hard not to be.

  And yet my favorite phrase had been “That’s my girl.” I always wanted to please my dad, even in my rebellion. If he gave me a compliment, I would repeat in my head over and over like a poem or love song. “You look lovely today, Eve.” “Great report card; that’s the Wetherburn way. You got the brains in the family, for sure.” Then the big smile and “That’s my girl.”

  But that was only part of it. I hated him too. I hated the smell of his aftershave as he came down the stairs; his black hair combed sideways across his head; his loafers left in the exact spot at the front door; his change of voice when he believed other people were listening. I hated it all. Yet I needed him to approve of me.

  Oh, and the drinking. I hated the havoc alcohol wreaked upon my family. It wasn’t the drink’s fault: it was the excess. When Willa started drinking in high school, she didn’t drink a beer or two like the rest of us at the bonfire; she drank a six-pack and then a twelve-pack. She didn’t get drunk; she got hammered.

  By the time Willa met the boy from Colorado on Tybee Island one summer afternoon, she was that other person all the time: alternating from hilarious and witty to sarcastic and sad. She left on a Sunday afternoon after church. We’d come home and she’d walked upstairs to take a nap, she’d said. Later that afternoon, we realized she was gone. A note said that she couldn’t live with the hypocrisy and ridiculous faking; she was gone to live a “real life.” Sadly, I knew “real” for her mostly rested in a bottle.

  I wanted out of the family house as badly as she did, but I’d been biding my time. When she left, she was eighteen years old, had graduated from high school only three weeks earlier. I was working at Soapbox then. Willa’s absence throbbed with pain in that small house, like a missing limb taken in a brutal accident.

  She “got sober” a few times through the next years, but ten years ago, after a DUI in Boulder, she quit, or so she said. Her abstinence lasted for weeks and then months and now coming up on ten years. Sobriety wasn’t so good for a love affair that was based on dependence. When drinking ended, so did his love. That’s how she came to live with us.

  Dad didn’t often drink, but when he did, he drank until he passed out, wherever he happened to be: the shower twice, the garage, the living room couch, the kitchen table. He never took a sip of alcohol outside the house. He kept his vice private, for our enjoyment.

  “Eve.” Willa’s voice startles me. Sunlight surrounds her and forms a halo around her hair and body, a ring of fire as she steps into the studio. I see her as she’d been in those days we hid under the bed during our summer of heresy, a summer that was now being turned into a card line, into something good: one thing again made from another.

  “Good morning,” I say. “How’re you feeling?”

  She bites her bottom lip and steps closer, speaking in almost a whisper. “I’m scared.”

  I set down the pile of thick paper in my hand and wrap my arms around her, hugging her tightly. “It takes time.”

  She gives me a look. “Dingle.”

  “Sorry.”

  She tries to smile. The sliding doors open again, and Francie and Max enter. They see Willa, and loud greetings erupt; hugs are given all around. Max touches Willa’s swollen eye and Francie cries a little bit before turning on the music. Johnny Cash sings “Folsom Prison Blues,” proving that Max last used the iPod.

  Francie tosses a pad of paper on the table. “Welcome back to work, Willa. Today we work on number seven.”

  “Yes,” I say, “but we also have that appointment with the accountant this morning and then I have to finish this wedding run. So let’s spend the afternoon with number seven. And I have to pick up Cooper’s car.”

  “Cooper can’t pick up his own car?” Francie asks.

  I don’t need to answer Francie, because the resounding bell that signals a guest outside rings through the studio and Max opens the door for our client.

  Framed in the doorway, she appears small. She carries a large satchel, hugging it to her chest like a kid running away from home. She strikes me as nervous and afraid.

  “Come in.” Max waves her in.

  “Thanks,” she says, and stops for a moment to listen, and then looks at me. “I love Johnny Cash.”

  “Good,” Max says. “So do we.”

  “I’m Mary Jo,” she adds.

  Francie walks toward her. “Nice to meet you. We have some ideas and concept boards to go over with you.” She points to the project table.

  “Are you Eve?” she asks Francie.

  “No.” I step forward and hold out my hand for her to shake. “I am.”

  She stares at me for the longest time—or what seems the longest time, although it might have been only a few seconds. Finally, she holds out her own hand, clutching her satchel, so that her elbow is bent up. “Nice to meet you,” she says.

  Behind me, there’s a small sound like a cat’s weak meow or the squeak of the printer before we oil her cog. But it’s Willa. She’s stepped underneath the overhead hanging work light, so she looks like she’s under a stage spotlight. Her bruise is greenish blue against white skin. Her lips are bloodless and thin, pulled across her face in a line. As pretty as Willa is, she looks anything but at this moment.

  Mary Jo drops her satchel and it lands with a loud clunk it as it slams onto the floor. “Oh,” she says.

  Francie calls from the project table. “Over here.”

  Willa, Mary Jo, and I stare at the satchel on the floor. Finally, I speak. “Sounds like something broke.”

  Mary Jo grabs her bag, again clutching it to her chest. And she steps backward, so I see her clearly. She is small, and not only because she is thin but because her bones seem made in miniature. Her eyes are round, two stormy worlds floating in her pale face. I’ve never seen eyes so blue. Does she wear blue contacts? I wonder. Her hair is not quite blond and not quite brown, and it’s pulled back in a loose knot that rests on her neck and falls a bit onto her right shoulder. Cute would be the right word for her if she didn’t look so pathetically nervous.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Nothing broke.” Her voice is lovely, with the sugary southern accent I’ve tried in vain to master.

  We all move to the project table and Max brings the concept board, where our ideas and Francie’s sketches are displayed in overlapping squares and rectangles. Mary Jo settles into a chair and squints at the board, staring. “Tell me about this.”

  Max launches into his normal introductory speech. “We listen to your story about how and why you started your company and then we dig into the symbolism we hear. This is our first concept, and then we move onto concept two after we hear your thoughts.”

  Francie walks to the board, touching the top right corner. “This is the color palette we chose, since you said that “the numbers tell the real story.” We’re all about words and image here, so your take on numbers really inspired us. We started with green, but of course that was way too obvious, so we moved on from there and eventually ended up with these shades of blue and gold. Blue because it’s expansive and positive. And gold because,” and at this Francie laughs, “it’s gold!”

  Mary Jo’s face takes on a new expression; the childish nervousness is disappearing and turning into something more mature. “This is great. Go on.”

  “Well,” Francie says, “you talked about your connection with nature and with Savannah, so we’ve incorporate sea grass and, here, a wave.” She points at her sketch.

  Max stands on the other side of the board and continues to talk about their vision for her logo.

  Then Mary Jo holds up her hand and looks directly at me. “And what do you do?”

  “Excuse me?” I lean my elbows on the
table.

  “I mean, do you help with the logos or just … what is it that you do? Just curious,” she says.

  Max takes a few steps, until he is standing behind me. “Eve owns and started this studio. She is brilliant with fonts, printing, and layout. We”—he points to Francie and then himself—“are the graphic designers and artists. But nothing is complete without Eve. Nothing.”

  “I was just asking.” Mary Jo licks her lips and her eyes move rapidly from one face to the next. “So what font do you think we should use?” she asks me directly.

  “I usually wait until I see a more concrete design.” I take a deep breath. “Fonts are a language all their own. I can’t choose one until I know what we need to say.”

  “Does that part really matter all that much?” Mary Jo asks.

  Max walks away and returns with two poster boards—one for a rock concert and another for a sweet sixteen. “This is why font is important. Imagine if we switched them.”

  Mary Jo shrugs. “I get it. Whatever. But it’s the image that’s the most important to me.”

  Max, Francie, and I glance at one another and smile—another kind of private language—and we continue explaining our process.

  “Well, this has been interesting and I can’t wait to see the next version. I’ll email you my thoughts.” Mary Jo gathers her things and stands. “Where did Willa go?”

  I search my mind, nudge words and sentences around, trying to remember when we’d introduced Mary Jo to Willa, but it’s Max who says it. “Do you know her?”

  “No. She was just standing here when I came and now she’s gone. I thought maybe she worked here.”

  “How do you know her name?” Francie asks.

  Mary Jo squints, as if Francie were made of sunlight. “Because,” Mary Jo says slowly, “you said it.”