by Ann Packer
Lauren nodded. That afternoon the two of them had gone to get Lauren an outfit for this occasion, and she looked pale but pretty in the long-sleeved lacy black dress she’d chosen, in the pointy-toed pumps Liz had bought despite the high price and the fact that they looked like something Carrie Bradshaw would wear.
Liz’s father commandeered Joe for a raid on the refreshments, and when they were gone, her mother said to Lauren, “Grandpa’s so glad you’re here, dear.”
What was she thinking, saying something like that? Why not I’m so glad you’re here? Liz glanced at Brody, but he seemed not to have heard. He saw her looking, though, and he leaned close and murmured that he was going to get some air. “Go for it,” she murmured back. Since Sunday at the beach, things had seemed better between them. They’d decided to leave for Tahoe on Thursday, which—their having made a decision together—had felt like a step in the right direction.
She told her mother this now.
“But that means you’ll have to open the house,” her mother said.
“I think we can manage.”
“But Dad and I were going to drive as far as Auburn Thursday night and then get up there Friday morning to open it for you.”
“Is that your preference?”
“Well, no, but I thought it would be yours. You always used to like to come into a house with heat. You said it was hard to arrive with kids and groceries and presents and have to get the house in order before you could do anything else.”
“That was when the kids were little,” Liz said, and then she stopped herself: there was no point to this. “Festive sweater,” she remarked.
“Isn’t it fun?” her mother said with a big smile. “There’s a wonderful shop in Los Gatos that has all kinds of things like this. I could go back and see if they have one in your size.”
“That’s OK,” Liz said. “I mean thanks, but I seem to have a ton of holiday clothes already.”
They stood for a long moment without speaking. Lauren looked bored, but also as if she didn’t dare venture away.
“So we’ll be ten,” Liz said.
Her mother looked surprised. “I thought eleven.”
“Where’d you get eleven?”
“Isn’t Sarabeth coming?”
Liz felt Lauren looking at her. “Actually, I hadn’t invited her.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “No? After Thanksgiving I would have thought—”
She broke off talking, and Liz smiled at Lauren in what she thought was an encouraging, don’t-mind-her way, but Lauren remained impassive.
“The goods are good,” Liz’s father said, rejoining them with a plate of treats in one hand, a Styrofoam cup of cider in the other. “Cookie?” he said to Lauren.
“No, thanks. Actually, I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Liz said.
“Mom,” her father said, and he elbowed Lauren for a smile she didn’t give.
Liz watched as Lauren navigated her way through the crowd, then she forced herself to turn back to her parents. They were old: they were old and grief stricken and trying. At the moment, however, she could not spend another minute with them.
She said, “I think I’ll check out those goods myself.”
Plunging into the crowd, she squeezed past white-haired singers and well-dressed men and women her own age and doted-upon young children with sticky fingers and the kind of excitement that would make bedtime difficult.
At last she reached the food. There were thick squares of dark molasses-heavy gingerbread, butter cookies decorated with red and green sprinkles, powdered-sugar pecan balls, and fudge with walnuts. Someone had made tiny Christmas-tree cakes, iced in green and finished with silver dragées, and Liz helped herself to one of these. She took a big bite: the cloying sweetness of canned frosting. How poignant it was to think of these elderly people providing treats for their families and friends. She thought of Esther, the old woman who brought Sarabeth bad cookies and old postcards. Last year at Christmas Sarabeth had made dozens of little books to give as gifts, each with a loop of golden thread so it could be hung on the limb of a tree if the recipient desired. She gave them to Esther and her other listeners at the Center, to her friends, to her clients. She used scraps of lampshade paper supplemented by several sheets she went out and bought for the occasion. Liz’s was in the shape of a leaf, the cover cut from red leather. When Liz opened it, she saw that each page was made of a different color of tissue paper, reds going to oranges to yellows, to lovely spring greens at the very end.
It was too warm in this room. Brody had been right: air was what was needed. Liz chucked the cake and made her way to the door, pulling her coat on and rearranging her scarf to swathe her neck and throat. The church was in south Palo Alto, just off Middlefield. She followed a path to the front but didn’t see Brody. The neighborhood was festooned with Christmas lights—on trees, fences, rooflines, several herds of wire reindeer. She took her cell phone from her purse and turned it back on. She had bought a very snazzy new one for Lauren, and for a moment she rued her own, twice the size it needed to be, scuffed from sharing space in her purse with keys, pens, the metal clasp of her wallet.
She found the number and pressed CALL, and the phone rang three times and then switched to Sarabeth’s recorded voice. Was it the same message as ever? The words were the old words, but they seemed different somehow: tinged with dullness.
After the concert, Joe went to his room to do homework while Lauren lay on her bed and did nothing at all. She had some assignments for school, but there was no hurry. That there was no hurry was actually how she felt a lot these days. Time was surprisingly slow.
She pulled up the left sleeve of her dress and moved her fingertip along one of her scars. She was worried about Jeff Shannon, worried and freaked out about seeing him, no matter what Dr. Lewis said about how you never knew what another person was thinking. She wondered if she could hide from him somehow once she was back at school, and if she could successfully make herself hide if that was what she decided to do. It would be just like her to decide to hide and then change her mind at the last minute, or not even really change her mind—more change her feet, her legs, go where she hadn’t intended to go. She was worried about school in general, and as she stroked the next scar she thought of it: the first view you got of the main building facing the street, the loadies and other class cutters hanging out on the curb, already gone; then the inner terrace, where the jocks and cheerleaders stood near the big oak tree, all of them smiling all the time, like they were in some group toothpaste ad; then the library, the science wing, the gym. She didn’t want to go back, didn’t see how she could when she was so ugly. She stroked the next scar: she was so ugly. Her mom had bought her this dress and it was like, why bother when she was so ugly? She was so ugly and she was such a loser. Such a loser, such a loser: it was like a line from a song, and she hummed it over and over as she stroked the last scar. The scars all felt the same, almost silky, the only difference their lengths. The third one was the longest. She didn’t know which cut she’d made first, but she kind of thought it must have been the third one. She touched the scars again and thought of: Jeff Shannon, school, how ugly she was, what a loser. The Jeff Shannon scar was about an inch long, starting at the base of her thumb and angling diagonally down her wrist. The school scar was a little longer. How ugly she was—that was the third one, almost two inches long, more sideways than diagonal. The last was barely half an inch, but at times it had been the most painful because the cut was so deep. They went: Jeff Shannon. School. How ugly she was. What a loser. The scars were raised and paler in color than they had been. She stroked them again and then switched hands, pulling back her right sleeve to expose what she’d done there. Not as much—just the two cuts, and with her already damaged left hand, so they weren’t very deep or long. She ran a finger over the first scar, then the second. She pushed the sleeve back over them. She touched the scars on her left wrist again, keeping her fi
ngertip slow, keeping the pressure light. Jeff Shannon, school, how ugly she was, what a loser.
She heard the dishwasher go on downstairs: her mom was heading for bed. Soon, when her mom was asleep, her dad would sneak out to play tennis. Lauren heard him almost every night: leaving or returning, the sound of the garage door, his steps in the empty kitchen. Her mom didn’t know about it, she was sure. Her mom, who had always known about everything. She never went to yoga anymore, never talked on the phone. Joe hardly talked at all. She wondered again: Had he been like that before? Leaving the church tonight, he’d said, “Bye, Grandpa,” and for some reason it had made Lauren want to cry.
She sat up slowly. What she knew now was that she had low blood pressure. Well, that was one thing. She had low blood pressure, so she couldn’t stand up too fast. She thought of it as a kind of secret, a valuable secret she’d keep hidden from anyone who might enjoy the sensation, that spinning, the yellowy light.
At her closet she took off her new dress and hung it back on the store hanger. She peeled her nylons over her hips and butt and thighs. She hated the way nylons looked after you’d worn them, lying on the floor with all the roundness of your ass preserved. It made her want to throw them away.
She did love her new shoes, though. She pulled on a nightgown and then sat in front of her closet and brought one of the shoes to her face. The smooth black leather, the beautiful new-leather smell. They were so pointy. They totally squished her toes, but that was OK. They had straps and narrow, high heels—they were actually very Sex and the City, though she hadn’t said that to her mom.
On her way to brush her teeth she paused outside Joe’s room. His door was ajar, and she could hear his pencil tapping on a book. She pushed the door open a little. She thought he’d notice, thought he’d say something, but he didn’t—probably too into his homework, maybe even listening to his iPod. She pushed it a little more. Just a little more after that, and she could see his feet at the end of his bed. She waited. It was weird that he hadn’t said anything. She pushed it open all the way, thinking she just wanted to see what he was doing, just wanted to see if he was reading or what, listening to music or what, and he was sitting there staring right at her.
“Oh, sorry.”
He shrugged. A textbook was open on his lap, and the pencil he’d been tapping was still in his hand.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Math.” He sat there for a moment, then he held up the book for her to see.
She remembered when she was in eighth grade, when she’d had that algebra book. Sitting at the kitchen table, her dad trying to help her, and how she couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t get it. “I hate math,” she said.
Joe kept his eyes away from her. At her grandparents’ concert, coming out of the bathroom a little before her dad found her and said it was time to go, she saw Joe standing by himself across the room, hands in the pockets of his khakis, looking like he could stand there forever if he had to.
He’d changed out of his nice clothes, into sweats. His hair was long for him, dark.
“Are you going to ski?” she said, though it was a stupid question; of course he was.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess. Are you?”
“I guess. Kelly and Mom won’t.”
“Probably not.”
Ski mornings in the Tahoe house, everyone walking around in long underwear and sweaters, waiting until the last minute to put on their wind pants. Her mom and her aunt in their bathrobes, holding cups of coffee. And her grandma, too. Her mom and her aunt used to ski, but not her grandma. She would stay at the house and make stew for dinner, or layer cakes because the twins loved them. It was going to be weird to see her aunt and uncle and cousins after what had happened. She wondered what they’d done for Thanksgiving instead. If they were mad at her.
Joe had the same look on his face as earlier, at the church: he could sit like this forever. He wouldn’t have to say anything. He wouldn’t care if she did. She wasn’t like that at all. She had to say something, felt it as if the words, whatever they might be, were accumulating pressure inside her, until she—or they—would burst. This made her think of Lucas, and she wondered, for the zillionth time, what was going to happen to him. “What are you giving Dad?” she said.
“I don’t know. A sweater.”
“I’m giving him a tennis shirt.”
Joe tapped his pencil once, then two more times. Still his face was blank. She felt ridiculous all of a sudden. Left his room and went into the bathroom, where she closed the door and turned on the water. Why was she here? She stared at the mirror as the water began to warm and steam. She couldn’t figure out if she looked like herself or not.
It was hard for her to get to sleep. Dr. Lewis had said it could be the Prozac, but it had been hard before. She lay in bed and listened as the nighttime sounds came. Joe in the bathroom. The TV downstairs. Much later, the click of the garage door.
Falling asleep was letting go—Dr. Lewis had said that, too. Letting go of the wish for sleep. Sometimes she felt she was close, but then she would notice she was close and that would wake her. “Ah, yes,” Dr. Lewis had said with a smile. “That old trick.” Yesterday, for the first time, she’d seen him at his office in Burlingame. Mondays at four-twenty—that was going to be her regular time. She would also see him Thursdays at three-fifty. His office was in an old house, and she’d sat on a nice leather chair and talked to him across a blue rug, and it had been stranger than strange.
Lauren dipped and rose, dipped and rose. It seemed that she would never sleep, but with each dip she lost consciousness, first for just a few seconds, then for longer and longer. She didn’t know that she slept, and so her sleep was not restful. It felt like no sleep at all.
Liz’s was the opposite, a sleep so deep she didn’t stir when Brody came in. She was far gone, dreaming of little girls in Christmas dresses. He was chilled from sweating in the cold night air, and he showered, but still she didn’t know a thing. She didn’t know when he got into bed, didn’t know when he turned from one side to the other, his shoulder aching, his mind restless until he took himself to the top of Keyhole and pointed his skis down the mountain.
Joe was thinking of skiing, too, or dreaming of it. Not a specific run, more the swoops and jumps, the fine tailspray of powder. He might wake—he often did lately—and if that happened he’d bolt upright and then get out of bed. Waking in the night was new, though he recognized something very old in it, and whenever it happened he half expected the hall light to go on, his mom or dad to hurry in, tying the belt on a bathrobe, saying, Shh, shh, what is it, you had a bad dream, it’s OK. Or not saying that, not saying anything. Sometimes he remembered things he wasn’t sure had ever happened.
If he woke, he would turn on his desk lamp and open his astronomy book. It was a textbook, kind of dry, but he liked it, liked reading it, especially at night. He had another astronomy book, about the constellations, but the constellations didn’t interest him; they were too much like fairy tales, myths, fantasies of the kind Trent read. Stars were just stars, as far as Joe was concerned. Not parts of stories.
26
She parked at the end of the block, in front of a house where a party seemed to be ending: people spilled down the walk calling goodbye, happy holidays, see you in the New Year. She’d been at a party, too: her book group’s annual gift exchange. Locking her car, she could feel the glass of wine she’d drunk, a band of warmth across the bridge of her nose and onto her cheeks.
It had been a strange evening. For the first time in weeks she’d known exactly what Liz was doing, and because she’d known, she’d been unable to stop picturing it: Liz in a church in Palo Alto; Liz and Brody and Lauren and Joe, lined up in a pew; Liz in a dressy top and maybe her diamond earrings, holding a program in the way she always held programs, with both hands, her thumbs forming a triangle on top of the paper; Liz waving at people, nudging Brody to wave, waving some more.
It was on Sarabeth’s calendar
was how she knew. “Rbt & Marg concert.” Of course it’ll be boring, Liz had said back when she first told Sarabeth to mark the date. You should come.
The night was cold and damp. Sarabeth walked past the Heidts’ house, which was decorated with colored lights along the rooflines and a grove of giant candy canes at the edge of the front yard. Last Christmas they’d gone away for a week, and she hoped they were going away this year, too.
She turned up the driveway. She’d forgotten to leave a light on, and her house was almost invisible. Back from the street, hidden from the moonlight by trees, it was little more than a dark mass. She passed the Volvo, slowing as the light from the street ebbed. She was just a few yards from her steps, picking her way along the walk, when a figure loomed up before her, someone on her porch, and she screamed.
“It’s me, it’s me,” Mark said, stepping toward her. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how not to scare you. I knew this was going to happen.”
Her pulse raced, and she turned her back on him and burst into tears.
“Sarabeth, I’m so sorry.”
She sobbed into her hands. She heard someone call her name, and she looked up to see Rick Heidt standing in his kitchen doorway, the room lit behind him.
“Oh, Rick,” she called. “I’m sorry. I’m OK.”
“We heard a scream.”
“I thought I saw something. But it was nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
On her porch, a creak suggested some movement by Mark—deeper into the darkness.
“Yes, I’m fine. But thanks so much.”
He waited a moment before moving back into the kitchen. “Anytime, you know. We’re here.”
Once his kitchen light was off, she turned around. She could see Mark now, his tall body outlined against her front door. She said, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
She found her keys. Taking a deep breath, she stepped up onto the porch, then stood next to him as she unlocked the door. Inside, she groped for the light switch. He was still outside, and she flipped on the porch light and gestured for him to come in.