Shallow Pond

by Alissa Grosso

“Well, for one thing, there was you and Gracie,” she said. And Cameron, I thought but didn’t say.

  “So, you’re saying it’s our fault you didn’t go to school.”

  “Not at all, but somebody needed to take care of you.”

  “But Daddy was still alive then.”

  “That he was.” Her voice trailed off as she said the words. She stared into the bowl of batter. “Come here and help me roll this out.”

  I helped Annie to get the batter rolled out, and then we began to cut out biscuits using a glass to make perfect little circles. I didn’t for a second buy the idea that fear of the big bad world and the need to help take care of me and Gracie were the only reasons she didn’t leave home. Those were excuses, not real reasons. Maybe that’s what she’d told herself, and maybe after years and years of telling herself this she actually believed it, but it sounded like a load of crap to me. The reason my sister was still stuck in Shallow Pond was Cameron Schaeffer. Yes, she may have been scared to leave town, but that’s because she was scared it would also mean losing Cameron. I wanted to ask her a thousand different questions about Cameron, but I couldn’t.

  Instead I said, “Our parents were really in love, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.” Annie said. “Yes, I suppose they were. What makes you say that?”

  “I was just thinking about the way Daddy was. How he always was so unhappy and upset about things, but he probably wasn’t always like that. It was probably just because he was really in love with Mom and he missed her so much.”

  “He was very much in love with her,” Annie said. “Sometimes, when someone is so in love, they lose all sight of everything else. They can think of nothing else.” Was she talking about our father, or was she talking about herself?

  “I don’t know why anyone wants to fall in love,” I said.

  “Because love can be a beautiful and magical thing.”

  “Yeah, until it comes to an end. Then it’s ugly and painful.” Annie nodded in agreement with this observation. “I’m not going to fall in love,” I said. Annie began to laugh. “I’m not,” I repeated, angry that she thought I was making some sort of joke.

  “It’s not like you have much say in the matter,” Annie said. “Love is one of those things that just sort of happens.”

  “Yeah, but you can prevent it from happening,” I said.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  We lined the biscuits up on the cookie sheet and put them into the oven. There were way too many of them. Annie said every time we made the recipe that we should cut it in half, but then she always forgot when it came to actually making the biscuits.

  There was an old, faded picture of our mother in one of those magnetic frames on the refrigerator. It was taken wherever our parents had lived before they’d moved to Shallow Pond. There were three dogs in the picture, golden retrievers, family pets who’d died before I was born. They were all girls from the same litter, and Annie said our parents had trouble keeping them straight so they had the dogs wear different-

  colored collars. Rose, Tulip, and Crocus—those were the names of the dogs.

  My mother had a big huge grin on her face as she sat on the ground with the three of them. The picture was so faded that her hair and the dogs’ fur were about the same drab peach color. I wished I’d known her. It was not hard to see why my father had been in love with her. She looked like such a happy, free-spirited person.

  The back door opened with a bang and I jumped, but it was only Gracie home from work, rushing into the house.

  “Smells good in here,” she said. “Hope you didn’t make any for me.”

  “Of course there’s some for you,” Annie said.

  “Not eating with you,” Gracie said as she walked past, grabbing up a lump of leftover biscuit dough and sticking it in her mouth. “I’ve got a date tonight, and I’m late. I’ve got to go get ready.”

  “With whom?” Annie asked. I looked at Gracie in alarm.

  “Just, um, some guy, from, um, work.” Gracie didn’t bother to elaborate and headed upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  “We’re going to have way too many biscuits,” Annie said.

  “We could eat some for breakfast,” I said. Annie didn’t know that Gracie was going out with Cameron, and it was better that she didn’t find out. Why did Gracie have to be such an idiot? What was she doing going out with Cameron anyway?

  “And perhaps lunch as well,” Annie added. “We’re going to have a lot of leftover chicken too. You know anything about this guy she’s going out with?”

  “Like she would tell me anything.” I forced a laugh. Maybe it would be possible to keep Annie in the dark for however long it took for this stupid romance to run its course. I prayed that it was as short-lived as nearly every other relationship Gracie had ever had.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “That must be her date,” Annie said.

  “I’ll get it!” I yelled, but Annie was closer to the door.

  “I’d like to get a look at this guy,” she said.

  No you don’t, I thought.

  Annie opened the door and stared at Cameron standing there. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

  “Hi, Cameron,” she finally managed. “How are you doing?”

  “About as good as a down-on-his-luck guy who’s back living with his mother can be, I suppose.”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked. If Cameron had any brains at all he would make up some excuse that would set her mind at ease, but he was an idiot.

  “Is Gracie not ready yet?” he asked. “I guess I’m a few minutes early.”

  There was a second or two of dead silence as Annie finally realized what Cameron was doing at our house. She waved him into the living room graciously.

  “Gracie’s upstairs getting ready,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll be down in a couple of minutes. So, did you get a job at Mr. K’s?”

  “Mr. K’s? No, why?”

  Annie gave a phony laugh that made me cringe. “Oh, just something Gracie said.” Then she called up the stairs in a completely false sing-songy voice, “Gracie, your date is here.”

  I heard something drop on the bathroom floor and Gracie swore.

  “Hey, Babie,” Cameron said to me. “How’s it going?”

  “Barbara,” I corrected automatically. “I’m fine.”

  Gracie came running down the stairs. She smiled at each of us in turn. “Cameron!” she said, as if surprised to see him in our living room. “What an unexpected surprise.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m a few minutes early.”

  “Oh, I … ” Gracie stammered, aware that her cover had been blown.

  “I better go check on the biscuits,” Annie said, and she escaped into the kitchen.

  “Let me just grab my jacket,” Gracie said to Cameron, her voice so quiet it was practically a whisper. She sprinted up the stairs and was back down again in record time. She grabbed Cameron’s arm and dragged him out the front door. He waved over his shoulder at me as the door closed, and I waved back.

  Annie came out of the kitchen. She didn’t say anything to me, just walked over to the window and watched Gracie and Cameron get into his car and drive away. She kept standing there long after they left. The air became thick and unpleasant, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it was the biscuits burning. I ran into the kitchen and rescued them from the oven. I began removing the biscuits from the cookie sheet. Their bottoms were charred black.

  Eight

  Shallow Pond seldom got rain in the winter, but it began raining sometime between second and third period and kept up all day. I hadn’t brought an umbrella with me, and I wasn’t looking forward to getting soaked walking home. Normally I would ask Jenelle, but she and Shawna and Dave and Frank were going to drive to the mal
l after school. I’d been invited, but declined. It would have been one of those weird fifth-wheel situations for me, and extra awkward as I’d have to share the back seat with Shawna and Frank. Last time that happened, I found myself with my face pressed against the window trying unsuccessfully to ignore the two of them sucking face and groping each other beside me.

  I tried calling home, but I only got the voicemail. Where could Annie be? Was she asleep? Maybe she was vacuuming or watching television or doing something else that prevented her from hearing the phone. I tried two more times before giving up.

  I pulled my jacket’s hood up before stepping outside into the miserable afternoon. I slipped on the sidewalk and nearly did a faceplant into the concrete. Apparently the rain had turned to sleet. It was going to take forever to get home, and I was going to look like an icicle when I got there. I trudged along, my hands in my pockets, my head down so that the ice pellets didn’t sting my face.

  It had been a weird weekend at my house, and I’d been relieved that morning to go to school. Annie claimed that she was fine with Gracie dating Cameron, but she didn’t act fine. Instead she spent pretty much the entire weekend lost in daydreams, barely aware of what was going on around her, and trying to cover for this weird behavior by laughing at things that weren’t funny and saying things that she thought sounded bright and cheerful but just made her sound like she was trying too hard. Gracie acted like the cat who’d eaten the canary and kept making defensive comments like, “Well, it’s not like it was my idea,” or “Well, he’s going to date someone, right? I don’t see how it matters who he dates,” even though no one was criticizing her. It was almost like she was asking Annie to make some critical remark. I just tried to avoid both of them, but our house wasn’t that big.

  I heard a car pull up beside me and assumed it was Jenelle, yet even as I thought that I realized the engine was too deep and rumbly for her car. I looked over and there he was, that smile turned up full blast. The car, even in this weather, glistened and shone the way no car that old had any right to.

  “Need a lift?” Zach asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I kept walking. Zach just rolled along beside me. The car looked warm and inviting and I wanted more than anything to get in there, but I knew that I shouldn’t.

  “There’s ice raining from the sky,” Zach pointed out.

  “It’s called winter,” I said. I tried to add a bit of chipper to my tone, but I feared I sounded creepy and slightly demented, like Annie and her forced happiness.

  “Get in the car,” he said. “I really don’t want your death from pneumonia on my conscience.”

  “It’s not that far,” I said.

  “Good, then I won’t have to charge you for gas. Now would you get in already?”

  At that a big gust of wind tore up the road and bit right through my jacket. Zach stopped and popped open the

  passenger-side door. I sat down, relieved to be someplace dry and reasonably warm.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Are you always this stubborn?”

  “I’d been planning on walking.”

  The car looked as perfect inside as it did outside. Either the thing had spent the first thirty-some years of its life locked up in a museum somewhere or somebody had spent a lot of time and money meticulously restoring it to its former glory. I wondered how someone like Zach Faraday got his hands on it.

  “Nice car,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It was a gift.”

  “Kind of puts the sweater I got for Christmas to shame.”

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “You need to make a right here,” I told him.

  “I got a better idea. Let’s go to the diner. They have great pie and spectacularly awful coffee.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “Well, you can at least keep me company then. I hate eating alone.”

  I reasoned that it would be rude to demand that he take me home, but honestly? I wanted to go to the diner with him. I wanted to go anywhere and everywhere with him.

  We got a booth in the back. Zach ordered a slice of apple pie à la mode for himself and a coffee. I tried to beg off from ordering anything, but Zach told me I should at least try a slice of pie. I relented and ordered the cherry pie and a glass of water.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said when the waitress walked away. “The coffee’s atrocious.”

  “Then why did you order it?”

  “I’m a glutton for punishment,” he said.

  “Speaking of which, what brought you to Shallow Pond?”

  He laughed at this, then scratched at his temple as if deciding whether or not he felt like telling me, or maybe just figuring out which lie to spin.

  “It’s a long story,” he said. Apparently he had a few of those.

  The waitress returned. She set down a gigantic slice of pie in front of each of us along with my water and Zach’s atrocious coffee. The pie was pretty good. The filling had just the right amount of sweetness. The crust was perfectly flaky.

  “So,” I said, “you were going to tell me how the fates of the universe brought you here.”

  His hair was already perfect, but he ran a hand through it and made it even more perfect.

  “It’s almost absurd,” he said. “Very nineteenth-century.”

  “You weren’t kidding about it being a long story,” I said.

  “I mean, it has the feel of something from a nineteenth-century story or play or something. Like the Importance of Being Ernest, but not as funny and without the cucumber sandwiches.” He’d lost me on that one. “The play,” he clarified. “Oscar Wilde.” I shrugged, to let him know it was fine to continue. “Right, well, the thing is, I was raised by a bunch of nuns. I was left in a basket on their front step. There was a blanket wrapped around me with a note clipped to it. It told them my name and thanked them for taking care of me.”

  I laughed. He sat back and waited patiently for me to finish laughing.

  “You think it’s a joke. You think that what I know about my origins is a tale to amuse you.” I thought this might be more of the joke, but there was something about his look that told me I might have jumped to conclusions.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You were abandoned on the front step of a convent?” He nodded. “That almost makes my family look normal.”

  “If it’s any consolation, mostly people have a hard time believing my story.”

  I thought about this. It all did seem highly improbable, and then there was the matter of his nice clothes and nice car. Orphans raised by nuns did not drive cars like that.

  “What about the Mustang?” I asked, “And all your clothes?”

  “Ah, well, if the whole left-in-a-basket thing isn’t enough to strain your credulity … ” He shoveled another forkful of pie into his mouth and chewed it all before he continued. “I have a wealthy benefactor.”

  “A wealthy benefactor?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s very Dickensian, isn’t it?”

  “Who is this benefactor?”

  “Well, that’s the ten-thousand-dollar question. He or she has supported me over the years with gifts of money and material goods sent to the convent. Sometimes there are notes with the gifts, but they’re never signed.”

  “And you’re not at all curious that you have this mysterious sponsor?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not. It all seemed a bit far-fetched. There was a good possibility that he wasn’t even an orphan at all, just some ordinary guy who was especially good at making up stories.

  “I was pretty much obsessed with the idea of finding out when I was younger,” Zach said. “I would read my benefactor’s notes over and over, again hunting for clues. I would try and make sense of the different postmarks on things. The truth is, it’s probably either my mother or my father, who
feels a terrific amount of guilt for abandoning me like that and thinks this is the way to pay their penance. Maybe I was some inconvenient love child, or maybe my parents were dirt poor and then through some twist of fate became suddenly wealthy after abandoning me or something. Anyway, I guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that whoever he or she is, they don’t really want to be found out, and I guess I can live with that.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t feel there was anything I could say. The story was ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly be true, but the ho-hum way in which Zach told it made me wonder. If he was making up the whole thing in order to get attention or create an air of mystery or whatever, I would think he would work a bit on his delivery. I ate my pie, stealing glances at Zach while I did so. I waited for him to break, for a smile to creep over his face or for him to add one last completely ridiculous detail to the story that would push everything over the edge—an alien abduction, perhaps, or the curious fact that he had no reflection when he looked in mirrors.

  “Okay,” I said. “What percentage of that story is true?”

  “All of it,” Zach said. He scraped the remaining pie residue from his plate, avoiding looking in my direction while he did so. I kept staring at him, waiting for him to come clean. He didn’t. Then he looked back up and said, “I don’t normally tell people the whole story. I learned early on that it’s easier to just keep my mouth shut.”

  “Then why did you tell me?”

  “Because we’re friends.”

  “Cut the crap,” I said.

  “Okay, the truth is, because I thought of all people, you might be able to understand.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, but Zach didn’t get a chance to answer.

  “Babie! Hey, how’s it going?”

  I looked up to see Cameron Schaeffer standing there.

  “Hi,” I said, because please leave me the hell alone and don’t call me Babie again unless you want to lose a testicle might have come out sounding kind of rude.

  “This must be your cousin,” Cameron said, giving Zach a nod of hello. “Hey, sorry I can’t stay and chat, but I’ve got to go pick my mother up from the beauty parlor, and I’m running late.”