She flicks her ashes into her cupped hand, and then glances at me. “So were you? Fighting?”
Oh my lord.
“We were chatting,” I say. Then I grimace, because never in my life have I said the word chatting.
“Huh.”
“Huh, what?”
“Looked like more than that, is all.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” I say. If I could shut down this conversation right here and now without opening myself up to future mockery, I would. Since I cannot, I say, “He’s just —” I stop and sigh, and then I begin again. “He’s not exactly my favorite person anymore.”
Eleanor gives me a strange look. I immediately worry that she overheard some of my conversation with Owen in the driveway. That she’s starting to put it all together. That it’s only a matter of time before she figures it all out.
Twenty
When Faith calls the landline the next morning, I’m lying on the couch reading, all tanked up on Diet Coke and ibuprofen, my back feeling quite a bit better. Faith starts speaking as soon as I pick up, steamrolling right over my hello. “Grace! Thank God. I thought nobody was home,” she says, presumably because I let the phone ring about fifteen thousand times before I bothered to answer. “Is Rusty home? He isn’t picking up his cell.”
“That’s because he’s asleep,” I point out. I know this not because I actually saw him sleeping but because I know Rusty. If he has the chance to sleep in — like, say, if nobody bangs a cymbal in his ear — he’ll do it.
“Of course he is,” Faith says. She has a smile in her voice, as though she thinks Rusty’s laziness is totally charming. “Anyway, I hate to bother you but I have sort of an emergency. I think I left my work keys in Rusty’s bedroom. Which I did not realize until I got to work and couldn’t find them in my purse. And currently I have a dozen very young children standing behind me, and half of them have to pee. If you could just check for me, I would owe you big.”
Phone in hand, I make my way to Rusty’s room, where I stand in the doorway and look around, remembering why I’ve always avoided it. The place is a dump. There’s a landslide of moldering clothes spilling from hamper to floor, a thick layer of dust over everything, and what appears to be an old abandoned sandwich on the dresser. In some quiet corner, cockroaches are probably hanging themselves.
And yet Rusty is sleeping soundly in the middle of it, starfished on the bed, snoring like a bear. Curled up next to him is Lenny, whose expression translates roughly to Get the hell out of here.
Keeping one eye on the cat and propping the phone between my shoulder and ear, I step carefully into the room. I skirt a pair of tighty-whities — which, for the record, appear as though they’ve been neither tight nor white for quite some time — and, yes, yes, find Faith’s keys on the nightstand. I snatch them up and yell-whisper, “I found them!”
At which time two things happen simultaneously: Rusty lets out a loud snore, and the cat jumps up, arches his back and hisses at me.
Whoa. This cat.
He’s half O. J. Simpson and half O. J. Simpson.
I jerk backward, knocking a stack of papers off Rusty’s dresser. They’re a mess of to-go menus and expired fishing licenses. I’ve picked up probably half of them when I see it.
The pamphlet for Dad’s funeral.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe. It’s strange how just a simple sheet of paper can hit you with enough force to hurl you back in time. How all of a sudden there I am, devastated and alone and broken, sitting on that pew, staring at the box that holds my father.
Dad’s death — it’s still so fresh sometimes.
And I don’t think I’ll ever get all the way past that. Because grief isn’t something you can walk through and come out on the other side. You can make it maybe seventy percent of the way, and the other thirty percent, well, that’s the portion you have to live with.
This. Right here. Right now. This is part of my thirty percent.
Rusty didn’t go to Dad’s funeral, so I don’t know how he got this pamphlet. Did someone give it to him?
If so, who?
I let the question hang in the air for a moment. The room is desperately quiet. Finally I swallow and open my eyes.
“How did you get this, Rusty?” I whisper.
It isn’t Rusty who answers, though. It’s Faith. Her voice comes through the phone, which I completely forgot I’m holding: “What did you say, Grace?”
“Nothing,” I say, and I walk out of Rusty’s room, quietly closing the door behind me.
#
There was this thing Dad and I used to do in New Harbor, and it was usually combined with a trip to the grocery store. We’d take the long way home to Rusty’s and stop at the river to feed the ducks. Dad never lasted more than a day here without asking me to go or, else, cleverly trying to slide it past me on our way out of the grocery store (“Didn’t know what I was thinking, buying all this bread for a weekend trip!”). He did it so many times it became a running joke. “Dad,” I’d say in a fake-serious tone as we were walking down the bread aisle, “we’re in New Harbor for two days. We probably should pick up five loaves of bread.” It wasn’t that Dad particularly liked ducks; he’d just heard they were good luck. And while I was fairly certain that he’d confused superstition with the term “lucky duck,” I never called him out on it. I always just humored him and went along, grabbing a couple loaves of bread and stretching out on the riverbank with him, talking about everything and nothing, or just sitting in companionable silence and tossing chunks of bread to the ducks, hypnotized by the circular swirls they made in the water.
After my little meltdown in Rusty’s room, I figure that maybe I can balance out a crappy memory of Dad with a good one, that I can restore some sense of family, that I’d just feel better if I could get to the river. Which goes to show you how delusional I am. I pictured this quiet, serene evening, tossing bits of bread to the ducks and feeling close to my father. Instead, I find myself caught in the middle of a thunderstorm, huddled under a tree on the riverbank with a bag of soggy day-old bread, not a duck to be seen.
It isn’t unusual, this sort of weather. Summer is Florida’s rainy season, and I used to carry an umbrella in my purse, back when I had half a brain. And despite the fact that I’m basically hugging the tree trunk, the rain is starting to soak me, so I dart across a neighboring parking lot and find shelter under the eaves of a restaurant. I’m there for probably five minutes before I see Owen’s mom.
Or else, Janna’s mom.
Mrs. McAllister?
She’s hustling in my direction, her purse over her head in an effort to keep her hair dry. When her eyes snag on me, she smiles and waggles an index finger at me. “So this is where you’ve been hiding since you pulled into town,” she says, and the familiarity of her voice makes my chest clench up like a fist. I can barely conjure up an image of my own mom — just a cascade of auburn curls and a voice like syrup — so, growing up, Mrs. McAllister was the closest thing I had to a mother. She was the one who sat Janna and me down on the couch and explained periods when we were eight, the one who taught me how to cook, the one who helped me pick out a dress for my first school dance. It’s both calming and distressing, seeing her now. She gives me a fierce hug and says in my ear, “If I knew that all I had to do to see you was go out to eat, I would’ve done it ages ago.” And then she pulls away and gives me an amiable, relaxed grin. Mrs. McAllister conceals a sharp eye underneath her pleasant, friendly demeanor, so for a few uncomfortable seconds I feel like she’s looking clear through my skin, into the very darkest parts of me. Finally she says, “I haven’t seen you once since you’ve been back in town, and you’re living right next door.”
I usually like to present a happy face to the world, so I force a smile, not surprised in the slightest when I see her eyes drift down to my teeth. A dentist, Mrs. McAllister is obsessed with t
eeth in a way that would be annoying if I didn’t like her so much. I can see her standard question — “Have you been flossing religiously?” — hovering somewhere in her expression. It’s a question that has always made me snort, because I don’t even go to church religiously.
Finally I say, “Sorry, I’ve been busy getting settled.”
She waves a hand at me, unconcerned. “I’ve been basically living at work, anyway.” Then she straps her purse over her shoulder and says, “Have you seen Janna yet?”
I feel a pang somewhere in my stomach, an agonizing twist of all my problems, braided together as one. “Yeah,” I say.
Mrs. McAllister has been trying to repair my friendship with Janna ever since it unraveled, so she waits a moment, hoping I will elaborate. When I don’t, she changes the subject, her tone somber. “Owen told me that your dad passed away. Honey, I’m so sorry.”
I give her a weak smile. “Thank you.”
“I had no idea,” she goes on. “We’ve been so busy that we haven’t had a proper conversation with Rusty in years. If we’d come over to chat instead of just waving at him from our driveway, I’m sure he would have told us.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
But she just keeps on going. “I’d just figured that you were steering clear of town because of your misunderstandings with Janna, and of course whatever happened between you and Owen. I had no clue that your dad —”
“It’s okay,” I repeat. But then I feel awful, so I soften my voice and go on. “I totally understand. I know you’ve been busy. I’m sure Owen’s accident has been rough on you guys.”
She nods once, kicking back into mom mode. “Things were touch-and-go for a while. But Owen’s doing better now. He’s even been going to —”
“There’s my bride!”
Mr. McAllister is loping toward us, smiling broadly. He picks up his wife and swings her in a circle, like something you’d see in the movies, and then he whispers something in her ear that makes her blush and swat him away.
“It’s our anniversary, so we’re going out to dinner,” she explains to me, although she isn’t looking at me while she speaks. She’s smiling up at her husband.
I feel like I’m standing there by myself until Mr. McAllister turns toward me. “I heard you playing your violin the other day,” he says, a ghost of a smirk on his face. He used to tease me incessantly about the violin, in much the same way that he teased Janna about drama club and Owen about art. He’s an athlete, after all, and he feels as though everyone should be an athlete.
“Surprised he heard anything at all,” his wife mutters.
He leans toward her with his good ear. “Huh?”
She waves him off and arches an eyebrow at me, which then leads to him teasing her about the fact that one of her hands is slightly bigger than the other (“like a fiddler crab”), which then leads to her giving him crap about his back hair (“You could probably knit a scarf out of it”), which then leads to all of us just laughing and laughing and laughing. And by the time I leave to go back to Rusty’s, I realize just how much those two have always felt like family to me. And so, strangely enough, I found what I came for after all.
Twenty-One
Everything in my room is pink.
Like, the curtains, the throw rugs, the blinds, the shams, the comforter, all of it impossibly, horrifically pink — as though a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had hauled off and sneezed in there and then blown its nose on the throw pillows.
I jerk to a stop just inside my room, stunned to silence. My purse, still damp from the thunderstorm, slips off my shoulder and onto the floor. Faith is bent over my bed — wearing cropped leggings, a matching shirt and a pair of sneakers — tossing a new comforter over the sheets. When she sees me, she straightens up and grins. “Rusty sent me to find you a few things for your room.” She pauses for a moment, presumably waiting for me to reply. When I don’t, she says, “What do you think?”
“Um, it’s —” I break off suddenly as I catch sight of Owen through my bedroom window. He’s walking out of his house, dressed in khakis and a crisply ironed shirt. I glance at my watch. Six forty-five. Just like clockwork. Where does he go every Saturday night? To see a girl? That’s it. He must have a girlfriend.
“It’s …?” Faith prompts.
“Oh!” I say, my eyes shooting back to her. “It’s, um … really pink.”
She smiles, wrinkling her nose a little. “I know. When I was your age, I always wanted a pink room. They say it’s calming. Though Rusty will probably have a stroke when he sees it.” She shoots me a conspiratorial grin. “Once we transfer your old posters in here, it’ll balance things out a little.”
“My old posters?”
“The ones in the spare room?” she says offhandedly, struggling to stuff my pillow into a sham. “Why don’t you go grab them?”
My breath halts abruptly, as though she just slapped a hand over my nose and mouth. I can feel my heart slamming in the back of my throat, loud and manic. “Sure,” I finally manage, panicky sweat gathering at the base of my neck as my wobbly legs lurch into the hallway. I take maybe three steps and then jerk to a stop, heels digging painfully into the wooden planks of the floor. Terror, cold and wet, slides up my spine as I stare into the spare room.
I’ve walked past this room every day since I moved in several weeks ago. Even glanced at it as I’ve made my way down the hallway. I’ve become reasonably adept at keeping myself together each time. But I haven’t stood in the entry. Haven’t really looked at it till right now. Haven’t stared at the tiny nightstand scattered with Dad’s lucky sand dollars or the whitewashed dresser or — Oh God — the blue quilt on the bed. Seeing it now feels sharp and shocking and severe, a bone unexpectedly snapping in half.
I take a staggering step backward.
I turn toward Faith.
I try to look very, very calm.
So calm.
And then I tell her that I’ll be right back, that I need to run outside for something, and I rush out the back door and into the yard. I don’t inhale until my feet hit the grass, and then I bend over and suck air into my lungs as though I’ve been trapped underwater.
I’m not having a breakdown.
That’s not what this is.
I just don’t know how to move beyond what happened that night.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I walk slowly across the lawn. The seats of the swing set are still damp from the rain as I free them from the poles that have held them captive for so long. Collapsing into one of the swings, I try to figure out what to do. Because I can’t live like this.
I can’t.
I think about Owen’s shocked expression when I confronted him in the driveway. Would he lie to me about something like that? What if he wasn’t lying? What if —
“Hey.”
I look up. Janna is crossing the space between her house and Rusty’s, her bare feet silent on the damp grass. Her hesitant smile is a white flag of surrender, a clear indication that she’s thought about my apology and decided to accept it. I feel something warm and grateful crack open inside my chest. “Hey,” I say, as casually as I can muster, as she sits down in the swing next to me, her fingers curling around the rusty metal chain and her feet kicking out in front of her.
“What’re you doing out here?” she asks.
I root around in my head for a reasonable lie but can’t find one. I can’t find anything at all, actually, which is probably why I’m sitting out here to begin with. I tell her the truth. “Escaping.”
Janna arches an eyebrow at me, an unspoken question: From what?
Life, actually. But I don’t say that. Instead, I say, “Rusty has a new girlfriend. I just had to get away from her for a minute.”
Not a lie. Not really.
Janna looks at me dubiously for a second. But in the end, she lets it go, as though we h
ave an unspoken agreement to keep things simple as we try to navigate through our first real, honest-to-God conversation in two years. “Ah,” she says. “I guess Rusty hasn’t changed much.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, just one maniacal bark. I’ve been trying not to feel betrayed by Rusty. It doesn’t always work. “No. He hasn’t changed a bit.” I pause for a moment, glancing at Rusty’s house and then back at her. “Which is probably why it took him so long to sign my guardianship papers.”
Janna stares at me, long and hard. “I don’t get that.”
I feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment. I hide it by bending down and waving off a mosquito. “He told me he was too upset to take care of me. Dad was his only brother. Rusty took it pretty hard. I guess he was drinking all the time, a mess. It’s — whatever. It happened,” I say with a shrug.
She frowns. We sit there in silence for another minute. I know that she wants to ask me about foster care, and what it was like. That she wants to know exactly what happened to Dad and what happened to me after he died. That she won’t stop till she knows it all, because that’s how Janna operates. But when she finally opens her mouth, “I landed the lead in Grease,” is what she says. It’s as though she can still read me after all this time, and she knows how badly I need a change of subject.
Relief spreads through my body. “That’s great,” I say. Janna has been a drama diva forever. I’ve spent more afternoons than I can count lying on her bed, a thick script in my hands and her cold feet in my lap, helping her practice her lines.
Community theater, Janna goes on to tell me, leaning back in the swing so far that the ends of her coppery storm of hair skim the grass. Her costar is a college guy — a dark-eyed, dark-haired Greek god.
“How very,” I say, grinning. Janna has always had a thing for guys with dark hair. Actually — scratch that — Janna has always had a thing for guys in general. By middle school she already had a list of boyfriends as long as my arm.
The Leading Edge of Now Page 9