The Things We Wish Were True

by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

  He heard a female voice say, “Is this seat taken?” and turned his head in the direction of the voice, but it wasn’t Jencey. He frowned, explained yet again that he was saving the chair, then pulled the cooler from underneath the umbrella where he’d stowed it and added it to the towels and beach bag that were already marking the chaise as “taken,” in hopes it would make it more obvious. If she didn’t show soon, he’d have to surrender the chaise. And maybe that would be for the best. He was, after all, technically a married man. And judging from the rock she wore on her left ring finger, she was a married woman. He suspected they each had stories to tell, about missteps and miscommunication, about regret and resignation. He wanted to hear her story, and reasoned there could be no harm in that. They could be friends.

  He scanned the perimeter of the pool until he accounted for each of his children. Alec was by himself, as usual. And Lilah was sitting beside Cailey eating grapes with her. Lilah had become fiercely loyal to the poor girl, and Lance hoped that spoke of his daughter’s character. They were sitting next to Zell, who waved at him so demonstratively her visor nearly came off her head. He gave her a polite wave in return and turned back to watch the game, but the men, while back in the water, were still horsing around, swigging more beer, and leering at the women—girls, really—who’d congregated nearby.

  On the end closest to where he sat, a heavyset, balding old man he’d seen before shuffled to the opposite end of the pool and, in spite of the crowds, made a motion for the lap lane to be cleared. Lance leaned forward, anticipating the response of the volleyball players. They weren’t going to like the old man making them move their game over. Lance was drawn into the drama, such as it was. The rest of the men moved over good-naturedly, but one stood his ground, his barrel chest puffed up, a beer gripped tightly in his hand. He was wearing, ridiculously, a red, white, and blue bandana in his hair, a youthful look he wasn’t able to pull off.

  One of the guys tried to pull him out of the lane, saying something to him that Lance couldn’t hear. The man shrugged his friend off and stayed put, his chin jutting out as he waited for the old man to swim the length of the pool and reach him. When the man got closer, bandana man began yelling at him, his face red and his language definitely not appropriate for a family gathering. One of his buddies attempted to stop him again, and his attempt was met with a forceful shove. “I just want to know why this asshole has to come up here today of all days.” He gestured with his arm at the crowd. “I mean, look at this place, man. He shouldn’t ask to take up a lane on the fucking Fourth of July.”

  With bandana man distracted by the exchange, the old man saw his opportunity and veered around him in order to make it to the wall. Lance couldn’t imagine why it mattered so much that he make it all the way across the length of the pool. He suspected it was tangled up in his pride, which was understandable. But the old man was too large to just slip by, and bandana man, alerted by the churning water, turned back and jumped into his path, colliding with him. What happened next brought Lance to his feet, and stilled the entire pool as all attention turned toward the drama in the shallow end.

  The old man stood up and shoved the man, spitting water and hollering at the same time. Within seconds, James Doyle had turned from tossing coins into the water and was there, too, along with the rest of the volleyball players, jumping between the two before their punches could connect and make the situation worse. Lance, too, had automatically moved closer to the action, his blood pumping and his synapses firing as he watched the fight being contained. The two parties, now separated, pled their respective cases to anyone who would listen.

  He could hear the old man grumbling to James about his right to swim in the lane reserved for that purpose no matter what day it was. James, whose glasses had fallen off in the melee, squinted at him and nodded his understanding as he fumbled to place the glasses back on his nose. James put his arm around the old man and began guiding him away. Lance worried about the old man, whose wheezing could be heard from a distance. Bandana man was being led out of the pool, amid loud protests. Some idiot handed him another beer, and he sucked it down like a big, thirsty baby.

  “You didn’t tell me the Fourth of July was so exciting.” Lance heard the voice behind him and wondered how he could’ve ever mistaken it. He turned to find Jencey there, wide-eyed as she processed the scene. “I mean, I knew there were contests, but actual fights? That’s something to see!” She gave him a little smile, and he laughed.

  “Guess this isn’t standard where you’re from?” he asked. He hoped the question would prompt her to tell him more about where she’d come from.

  “I told you,” she said, shutting down his hopes, “I’m from here. Born and raised in this very neighborhood.” She shifted a heavy-looking beach bag on her shoulder. “So did you manage to save me a seat?” She looked around the pool, taking in the wall-to-wall people.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” he said, and pointed toward the chairs.

  She gave a pleasantly surprised look. “Lead the way,” she said.

  CAILEY

  Lilah led me over to the tables they set up for the pie-eating contest. “I almost won this last year,” she said, then pointed at her flat stomach. “I can eat a lot more than you might think.”

  I thought of Cutter shoveling in food at our kitchen table, the way my mom always teased him about having a hollow leg. Now a machine was feeding him through his veins. I wanted to tell Lilah that she should be glad that Cutter wasn’t there or she wouldn’t have a chance. But my throat closed up and I couldn’t say it.

  “I bet you’ll win today,” I said instead. We were all friends, ever since the accident. That part was nice. Lilah gave me a thumbs-up as if she were reading my thoughts, then I realized she was referring to the contest and not Cutter. She turned to Pilar on her other side, who’d arrived minutes earlier and was still out of sorts that they’d been so late.

  “My mom got some stupid call from her stupid lawyer. I mean, it’s the freaking Fourth of July. Why is he even working?” Pilar asked, and shook her head in answer to her own question. Lilah and I nodded our understanding, even though we had no idea what Pilar was talking about. But we did feel bad that she’d missed out on both the coin toss and the egg toss. Well, Lilah felt bad. I was glad I’d had a partner for the egg toss, though Lilah and I hadn’t even come close to winning that.

  I heard my name being called and looked over to see Zell with her camera. Why she wanted to take a picture of me, who wasn’t even a relative, was beyond me. But Zell did things I didn’t understand a lot. She was a nice old lady, and I shuddered to think what would’ve happened to me if she hadn’t given me a place to stay since the accident. I’d be spending a lot of time all alone, that’s what.

  As we’d driven to the pool that morning, Zell had told me that today was Independence Day and that meant we should think about being free, free from anything that makes us feel bad. Then she was quiet for the rest of the ride, and I guessed we were both thinking of the things we wanted to be free of.

  Pilar and Lilah and I squished up together with our arms around each other and big smiles on our faces so Zell could snap the picture with her phone. “Will you send that to my mom?” Pilar hollered at her. Zell waved like she would, but I doubted that 1) she even heard her, and 2) she knew how to send a photo to Pilar’s mom. I still couldn’t imagine why she wanted a photo of me, someone who probably wouldn’t even live here this time next year. Next year I would be almost a teenager. I tried to picture a teenage me, but I couldn’t.

  The man in charge of the contests came to stand in front of me. “You ready?” he asked, and gave me a smile.

  I made myself smile back and nodded.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? You don’t look ready. You look like you’re a million miles away.”

  “I was just thinking,” I said.

  “About your brother?” he asked. I wasn’t shocked that he knew. Most people in the neighborhood had heard ab
out Cutter, the news spreading like spilled milk across a table. And the man in charge of the contests lived right across the street from Zell, to boot. I saw him sometimes when he mowed his grass, stopping to mop sweat off his forehead with a towel he kept tucked in the waistband of his shorts. Sometimes his younger brother got out of the house and he had to chase him to get him back.

  “Sort of,” I answered. “He would probably win this contest, if he was here.” I had to force the words out around the lump in my throat.

  “I’m sorry, Cailey,” he said, looking into my eyes in a way most people around here avoided doing. “That your brother’s not here.” He gave a sad smile. “So whaddayasay we make sure you win this contest for him?” He made his voice sound weird, trying to be funny.

  I smiled back and shook my head. “I never win anything.”

  He cocked his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. You look like a winner to me.” He winked and turned to address the horde of kids who’d assembled around the table, laughing and pushing and eyeing the snack cakes piled on the table. Behind us, all the parents gathered to watch and take pictures and cheer their kids on. I knew better than to look for my mom. She was sitting in a hospital room, and though I wished she could be here, I understood she was where she needed to be.

  The lump in my throat grew, and I swallowed a few times, trying to make it go away. I caught the man’s eye, and he nodded. He believed I could win this contest, and that counted more than he knew. I looked down at the lone snack cake sitting on my plate and swallowed a few more times, willing the lump to go down enough for me to swallow around it. There was no reason I couldn’t win this. I would do it for Cutter. Maybe if I won he’d open his eyes. Maybe I could still somehow make everything OK.

  When the whistle blew, I dove into that cake, inhaling it without even really chewing. I could feel the barely chewed cake collecting in my esophagus (thank you, fourth-grade health class) as I inhaled snack cake after snack cake. The spongy, thick mass seemed to swell and it hurt, but I welcomed the pain. Deserved it. I thought of Cutter’s damaged lungs. I kept eating and swallowing, adding to the mass until it felt like I would choke to death.

  The world fell away, and it was just me, the plate in front of me, and the cakes as they came and went. I didn’t think of Pilar and Lilah, also trying to win the contest. I didn’t think of Zell, snapping pictures of a kid who wasn’t hers. I didn’t think of my mother, who wouldn’t be there to see if I won. I just thought of Cutter, of him getting better, and that somehow I was making that possible in this moment, eating snack cakes on the Fourth of July at the same pool where he nearly died.

  I heard a whistle blow and felt someone tug my arm into the air. The man looked down at me, my arm aloft as I struggled to swallow what was in my mouth. “Water,” I managed to gasp, and he handed me a water bottle as if he’d known I was going to ask.

  “You won,” he said. “I told you that you would.” I didn’t answer him. I was too busy gulping the water, thinking as I did how weird it was that something that nearly killed my brother could also be the thing that was saving me.

  ZELL

  Zell watched as James handed Cailey her trophy for winning the pie-eating contest. (She didn’t know why they called it a pie-eating contest, as the kids weren’t really eating pies—they were eating Little Debbie Snack Cakes. But that’s what it had been called for as long as she could remember. And who was she to call attention to it?) She’d been surprised by Cailey’s fierceness, the way she tore into those little cakes one after the other, her body hunkered over the plate, her intensity visible.

  James gave Cailey a hug that went on a second too long, if you asked Zell—not so much that anyone would notice it, but enough that Zell felt her guard go up. She’d known James since his family had moved in. He’d been attending college then, coming and going like young men do, not really connected to his family or the neighborhood. But in his senior year of college, his father had suddenly dropped dead. James had quit school and come home to assume his role as man of the house: earning a living, mowing the grass, and chasing after his mentally delayed brother, Jesse, when he got loose. Living across the street from the Doyles, Zell could attest to the orderly way James kept up the house, to his comings and goings from whatever job he held, and the way he cared for both his mother (who had dementia and was little more than a shell of a woman anymore) and Jesse. She was sure it wasn’t an easy life for him, and she did feel sorry for him at times. But . . .

  One time she caught him outside her daughter Melanie’s window trying to look in. At first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, and she stood and watched for just a moment, wondering what was happening. It took her mind a second to catch up, to register that she was witnessing a Peeping Tom in action. She hollered out his name, “James!” and he turned toward her voice with a look of horror and guilt on his face. “What are you doing?”

  She marched over to him. He began backing away, and before she could get to him, he broke out in a run. She hollered at his retreating figure, disappearing in the gathering dark. “I better not catch you around here again!” She’d stood there for a moment, listening to her heart pounding as she caught her breath enough to go back inside. She watched as a light went on in the Doyles’ house, signifying James’s successful escape.

  The next day, after double-checking the locks on Melanie’s window, she went outside to see if he’d left footprints, debating whether she should call the police and report him. It was in looking for the footprints that she saw a soccer ball, and remembered that Jesse had been in the front yard kicking a soccer ball as far as it could go just before she found James by the window. One of her sons had remarked that it was too bad Jesse was mentally delayed because he sure could kick the hell out of a soccer ball. She’d picked up the soccer ball and carried it to the Doyles’ front porch. She left it there for Jesse, but she never apologized to James for accusing him. She still wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Now, watching him hug Cailey, those same concerns returned.

  Cailey skipped over to her, holding her trophy aloft. “I won, Zell!” she crowed, and Zell clapped her hands together, managing, she hoped, to look happy and not concerned.

  “That is just amazing, Cailey! I mean I’ve seen you chow down, but never quite like that.”

  Cailey grinned, her first real smile of the day. “I can’t wait to show it to Cutter.” She inspected her trophy. Then quieter, she added, “I’m going to tell him I won it for him.”

  “I think that’s a great idea.” Cailey handed over the trophy, and Zell tucked it into her beach bag for safekeeping.

  Cailey dug into the cooler for a water and took a long pull from it. “I’m so thirsty. I can still feel that cake stuck in my throat.” She took another drink.

  “I saw you met Mr. Doyle,” Zell said.

  “You mean the guy doing the contest?” Cailey asked. “The one who lives across the street?”

  “Yes, I’ve known him a long time.” Zell weighed her words carefully.

  Cailey thought about it. “His mom’s in a wheelchair. I’ve seen him push her around. What’s wrong with his brother?”

  “Well, now, I don’t rightly know. That family has just had its share of hardships.”

  Cailey looked thoughtful again. “Kind of like mine,” she said.

  It was not the direction Zell had wanted this to go. She didn’t want Cailey identifying with James, sympathizing with him. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “But he’s a lot older than you. He’s an adult, and he’s got adult problems,” she added.

  Cailey gave her a “duh” look. “I know,” she said.

  “Well, I just saw him talking to you, and I wanted to make sure you knew that he is not really someone I’d want you to . . .” She had run out of words.

  Cailey raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

  Zell waved her hand in the air. “I’m just being silly. Worrying like old ladies do.”

  Pilar called to Cailey, and she hopp
ed up from the chair. “I’m gonna go swim,” she said, already forgetting Zell’s warning.

  “Sure thing,” Zell said, relieved that the conversation was over. But before Cailey could walk away, she called out to her. “Just don’t ever go in his house, OK?”

  Cailey gave her a quizzical look. “Like I ever would,” she said, then shook her head and scampered away.

  EVERETT

  The fireworks terrified Christopher. He shrieked so loudly that Bryte scooped him up and ran out of the pool area, stumbling over chairs and mumbling “Excuse me” multiple times as she hastily made her exit. Everett watched his wife and child leave. The darkened pool area was packed, making it hard for Bryte to move with ease, much less while clutching a screaming child. Every few minutes, the lights of the fireworks illuminated a path while simultaneously setting Christopher off again, his shrieks ringing out over the tinny patriotic music playing through the speakers.

  Everett, embarrassed by the spectacle, wondered what he should do. Did he wait for her to settle their son down and return? Did he go after her and create another disturbance? He surveyed the various items he would have to collect in order to leave. There was no way he could accomplish that in the dark. They’d spent the whole afternoon at the pool and had participated in the potluck dinner there that evening. All around him were dishes and clothing and towels and several bags strewn about the area where they’d set up camp. He turned his attention back to the fireworks, reasoning that he’d just wait until the show ended, gather up their things, and leave. It had to be close to over, though down by the lake, he could see James and his buddies still lighting fuses and scurrying around.

  Everett wondered idly just how much money the man had invested in fireworks, only to see it all go up in smoke. Literally. He smiled at his own joke. He felt someone’s eyes on him and turned to see Jencey looking at him. She smiled back, and he wondered guiltily whether she thought the smile was for or about her. Jencey turned her attention back toward the fireworks, but he didn’t. In the dark, he could make out her blonde hair, and the two blonde heads on either side of her, leaning into her.