by Jamie Mason
“Ah. Okay. I’m sorry about today. I know it’s disappointing. This kind of sad feeling is the downside of great stuff. And I’m so glad you’ve found something new and positive. It’s good timing for that, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“It helps me—a lot—to see you happy, to see you getting out there, doing what you do. That’s the way it should be. I like you bouncing around.”
Carly stuck her tongue out and bounced on her toes, rolling her eyes.
Her mother smirked and shook her head. Carly hoped she had a smirk like that.
“And Emma sounds very nice. It’s great that you have an outlet for your drawing, and some artistic advice, too. I’m not a lot of help to you in that. You’re so talented, honey.”
“Mo-oom.”
“What I’m saying is that I’m trusting this. It seems like a very good thing. You know I’m okay with you going to the library—with Ada, always with Ada—but you don’t go anywhere else until you’ve told me. We all need to get over this, but I need to know where you are. Right? If Emma, or anyone, wants you to do something else or meet up somewhere else—any changes like that go through me first. I need that. Okay? Or call John if you can’t get me on the phone.”
Carly felt a spark of indignation at the suggestion that she wouldn’t know when to call in, but she reined it back. No one was over the thing yet. Her mom still got that look on her face all the time. John was jumpy, either too quiet or too chatty, making sure everyone was okay all the time. Ada mostly wouldn’t let Carly walk half a block by herself, then watched her on a tracking app they shared with Carly’s mom when it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t a bad thing. If they weren’t over it, it meant she didn’t have to be either. She didn’t have to be alone with it yet.
“I know,” Carly said. “I promise.” For extra points, and because it felt good to be good, she walked over to the table and hugged her mother.
Her mother tried to be cool and poke at the corners of her eyes as if they itched. “All right. Good. Glad we’re in agreement, because it’s nonnegotiable, anyway.” That smirk. Her phone rang. “And double-check with John about the picture,” she said quickly before answering the call.
“Okay.”
John was in his office, leaning against the window frame, typing into his phone.
“Hi,” she said.
John slid the phone into his pocket. “Hi!”
“Did you get a new phone?”
“What? Uh, yeah.”
“Oh! Cool! Can I see it?”
“Not right now, Carlzee. I’m kinda slammed. What do you need?”
Over the last few days, every foot closer she got to John was like walking under power lines. It seemed as if she could feel him through the walls, a teeth-buzzing hum overhead when he was upstairs.
This was the worst yet, though. He was trying so hard to look normal—a mighty thick layer of trying, too. A John mask, or a full face of TV makeup that wasn’t quite the right color and too smooth by a lot.
Carly shoved her hands into her back pockets to keep them from being awkward. It always took at least two to play the normal game. She’d gotten good at the face part lately, since all the people with their questions and comments and open stares. But her hands definitely didn’t know the rules. “Everything okay?”
“Yep.” John took his keys from the corner of the desk. “Just have to run out for a bit.”
“Where are you going?” she blurted out, then wondered about the question as it flew. Why would she care where John was going? She didn’t. She just wanted to tug on the mask. It was bugging her. There was a whole other why for that one, but she would watch first and pick it apart later.
John ticked his head to the side, a little flinch of the eyes and mouth in puzzlement that he erased as soon as it had arranged itself on his face. “I just have a few things to do. What do you need?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, you came in for some reason.” His voice had an exasperated edge that she hadn’t earned.
He was right, of course. She had come in for a reason, but a better one flared up behind her eyes. Not. Normal. Your. Move. She pulled her hands from her pockets and jammed them down onto her hips. She conjured up a look made of a slack sneer and half-mast eyes, and gaped at him like he was the stupidest person ever to take a breath. “Um, because it’s a room. In my house. And I live here, if that’s okay with you? God! What is your problem?”
Her heart pounded. Her cheeks burned. Normal John would call out not-normal Carly. She would never speak to him like that. She would never speak to anyone like that. Normal John would ask her what was wrong. Or maybe get mad. It would be worth it.
“Okay! Jeez!” He put up his hands, keys still clutched in the right one, in mild surrender. But he looked relieved, as if he’d gotten an easy out. “Excuse me for living. See you later, Grouchy.” He walked past her and called his goodbye down the hall to her mother.
She was still on her call and waved to him around the corner of the wall.
Carly hovered in the doorway to the dining room, which they never dined in. It should be the homework room. Or the wrapping-presents room. Or one-of-the-places-Mom-takes-her-laptop-and-talks-on-the-phone room. Just not the dining room. The call went on and on and Carly paced the foyer in meandering loops down to John’s office.
She listened for sounds that the conversation was winding down, but it was rolling like waves—a listening silence, her mother’s turn to talk, listening silence again. Carly lapped John’s office, looking at the books on the shelves and the labels on the row of craft-beer bottles he kept for . . . She didn’t know why he kept them. She circled as if she didn’t have a plan to open the desk drawers, which she totally did.
Notepads, a couple of flash drives and chargers. Pens, paper clips. Her stapler that she’d been looking for. There was money in one little drawer in the hutch, and Carly tamped down that unnameable little zing of what-if that leaped up at the sight of a stack of unsupervised cash. Did everyone feel that automatically? She would never steal. That was way low.
She heard her mother laugh from the dining room, and the longer Carly went unable to ask her mother what was wrong with John, the less she wanted to. If there was something wrong and her mother knew it, what were the chances her mother would say anything but Nothing, everything’s fine? And if her mother didn’t know that something was wrong with John, the answer would still be the same and it would just give her mother a new, different kind of worried look on her face that would also be Carly’s fault.
The doorbell rang her right out of wondering if this was the wrong way to think of these things.
The pattern in the glass made a mosaic mountain of the man on the other side of the front door. Like one of the shattered-looking Picassos in the art books. All Carly could see was that he was tall, wearing a suit, and not standing like a cop.
When the police had come back to the house for follow-ups, they would always position themselves turned slightly out, maybe to keep a wider view of what was around them, or maybe just not to look so there and so like a solid wall of bad news. They put you at ease with at least a partial view of the way out. This man took up the whole door.
“Carly, who’s that?” her mother called, leaning out from the dining room with her phone still to her ear.
Her mother was right there, watching. So Carly opened the door to find out.
The man was totally comfortable standing full on at her, shoulders straight parallel with the threshold and his empty hands loose at his sides. They weren’t folded in front of him or tucked in his pockets or linked somewhere behind his back. That was just weird. Carly realized that nobody stood at a stranger’s door like that.
He stepped back, a maneuver to tune down whatever he was reading off her. But she’d seen that trick before. It didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean she was safe. She kept her hand flat against the back of the door to shove if she needed to. She’d be much faster this time.
> But the man smiled. “Hi. I’m looking for Jonathan.”
“John’s not here right now. My mother’s here, though. Do you want to talk to her?”
“You must be Carly.”
There was no answer for it that wasn’t smart-alecky, and she wasn’t feeling it at the moment. She nodded.
“He’s talked about you. Nice things.”
That feeling of NO! launched from where it lived now, somewhere right under the hollow of her throat. John hadn’t said any such thing. This guy didn’t even try to make it ring true. He wasn’t very good at making people comfortable, but he didn’t care. That was obvious. One step back, one little lie, and she’d bet everything she had that he had already run out of concern with how comfortable she was.
Carly’s mom came into the hallway behind her. The man lit up just a little, but well in control of his response to her mother’s face and everything else she had. Most men didn’t catch their reaction so fast. Carly felt her eyebrows go up in spite of herself, impressed. But the man noticed Carly’s assessment of him and she looked quickly to the floor.
“Can I help you?” her mother said, sliding a warm hand onto Carly’s shoulder.
“I was just looking for Jonathan. We were supposed to meet up, and Carly here says I’ve missed him.”
Carly’s mother pulled the door a little wider to stand fully next to her and take up most of the rest of the doorway. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
Carly fought her eyebrows this time. No one didn’t remember meeting this guy. The man flicked his eyes to Carly’s face again, ready to catch her taking the measure of that one, a small spark of humor in his eyes like a dare to be in on it with him. He knew what she was thinking, teased her about it in a glance as if it were okay for him to do that, but it went cold in her.
He put out his hand. “I’m Owen. Jonathan and I worked together a while back.”
Why does he keep calling him Jonathan? It’s just John.
Her mother and Owen shook hands, and a rush of warning swept over Carly. Her mother handled this fine. She was cool and calm in her personal space, in her words and gestures, but that’s not all there was. That’s never all there was. Carly felt small and not strong and too aware of where they were standing, knowing that luck was a thing that sometimes happened and sometimes didn’t. A crawly wave slipped through her middle and up under her shoulder blades. It didn’t match at all the polite smiles and the blue sky and the little bit of familiar street that she could see around Mount Owen.
“I’m Donna. And, yeah, I hate to say it, but you did just miss him. He left maybe ten minutes ago.”
“Hmmmm, weird.” He nodded, smiling, and it didn’t go with the puzzled noise he’d made. Owen shifted a half step to his left, just a widening of his stance more than anything, but it put him more directly in line with the gap of what she and her mother couldn’t fill of the doorway. Carly tracked his eyes across the foyer wall and up to the motion sensor that was also the camera. He swept a fast look across the hall and back, catching again on the camera and then again on the metal curlicues that John had bought for the redecorating project.
He’d seen the video, and without a good reason, it pissed Carly off. “He’s really not here.”
Owen swiveled his big head on his bull neck down to meet Carly’s looking up at him. She let her eyebrows off the chain just a little, a small, real flash of what she’d played insincerely on John. It was right there for her to use, warm in her cheeks, primed and ready. “I mean, if that’s what you’re actually looking for.”
Her mother laughed a little, unsure. “Carly! But, nope, he’s not here. Sorry. Do you want me to get him on the phone or . . . ?”
“It’s fine. I’ll just call him later. No problem. I’ll catch up with him, I’m sure.” He turned for his car. “Sorry to bother everyone, but nice to meet you.”
“No problem,” her mother called back. “And nice car.”
“Thanks. It is,” he said from the driver’s door. “And the mechanic’s bills never let me forget how nice.”
They laughed to each other, everyone ending on even ground. Because that’s what you do when you’re grown up and in charge of the everyday world and everyone pretends that everyone else is the same amount of strong, but only when no one wants or needs anything at the moment. Carly, in her own contribution to the dance, slammed the door over the end of it.
“You okay?” Her mother reached for her.
“Uh-huh.” Carly slipped past her, getting out of reach with just a glancing arm rub.
Owen and his fancy car hadn’t been gone five minutes before John came screeching into the driveway.
Carly and her mother converged in the foyer at the sound of too-fast tires on smooth concrete. The door swung wide. John was sweating. It was warm outside, but not that hot.
“Hi!” said her mother with the questions already right there in the greeting, stacking up at the slightly electrocuted look of him. “You okay?”
Carly was beginning to think that was the question of the day. Maybe of the week.
John glanced around and pulled himself together like a costume change in front of their eyes. “Yeah. You okay?”
“Yeah,” her mother said. “But you just missed your friend Owen. He was here looking for you.”
“I know. I saw him on the system.” John wheeled his finger around in a vague circle of everything. “You know, from the text alert. So I came back. Uh, you know, try to get here before he left.”
Her mother nodded. The security system was still a sore subject, but after the thing, she’d wanted it left on. For now. “Why didn’t you just call him?”
“I did.” John dropped his shoulders and the tension slid from the rest of his posture in a ripple that went all the way down his arms, his legs, out his shoes, into the floor. Carly felt herself relax with it, like yawning because someone else had done it. She stopped when she realized it and wound the springs back tight in her. Still not normal.
“I just got ahold of him. We’re going to maybe get in a game of racquetball. So I need my stuff.”
Carly’s mother stifled a giggle. “You’re going to play racquetball with that guy?”
John smiled back. His smirk was more artful than her mother’s, less nice, but it was the cutest face he had. “Why is that funny? Because he’s bigger than me? Nah. Big doesn’t help you in racquetball. It can be a disadvantage, really. Big and slow. I’m fast.” He swung at an invisible serve, all smiles now, loose in the joints, putting on a show. “And you should know—I’ve never been beaten at racquetball on my home court.”
Say racquetball again and I am totally going to lose it, thought Carly. Nope. Not. Normal. “Hey, can I get a ride to the library?”
Her mother turned to Carly. “I thought you said Emma couldn’t today.”
“No, it’s just me and Ada this time.”
“I really gotta fly, Carly. I’m late already,” said John. “Sorry.”
“But it’s on the way,” said Carly.
“Can you just please walk?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Carly said with sunshine in her voice and no trace of her earlier sass, wanting him to comment on her reversal of attitude. He could applaud it or give her some crap about it, just something. Just notice it. Because he did. She knew he did.
“Thanks, kiddo.” John went to get his gym bag.
“I just need to get something out of the car,” Carly told her mother.
She texted Ada on her way to the door: I’m coming to your house in ten minutes.
In the driveway, Carly opened the door to John’s car, silenced her phone, and slipped it into the seatback pocket.
Back in the house, John wasn’t in his office as Carly walked by. She crept inside one step, trying to hear where everyone was over the sound of her own breathing, loud in her head. She listened through two more careful steps. She would never take money, but she would also never mouth off to John or to a stranger bigger than their refrigerator. Except
that she had. Just if I need it. Why would you need it? I don’t know! And that train of thought got her all the way across the room and to the desk.
She opened the little drawer, peeled four bills off the top of the stack, and was back in the foyer, shaking all over, before she talked herself out of it.
She heard John rounding into the hall from the far end, but he was all in silhouette as he turned into view—the light from the front door and window panels couldn’t get to him. The glow was bright at the glass, green in the open foyer, fading to gray down the funnel to the focal point. John, looking back to her, would be just as blind to her details as she was to his. Very artsy. Emma would approve of Carly’s eye. Not-Normal Man with Gym Bag.
She grabbed a sketch pad and one of the art boxes at random off the bench.
“Bye, Mom!” And she was out the door before she would have to look John in the face where they both could see.
• • •
“But you texted me from your phone,” said Ada.
“I know. John was going to give me a ride, but then he was a jerk and he didn’t, and I didn’t get all my stuff out of the car. I forgot it in the seat pocket. Let’s just double-check that he’s at the Y and we can go get it.”
“I don’t want to walk to the Y.”
“It’s five minutes from the library.”
“I don’t want to go to the library either. Besides, it’s more like ten.”
“Fine! I’ll go get it and meet you there, then.”
“You’re obsessed. And a freak. We don’t have to do art every day. Can’t we just stay here and play my ukulele and make cookies and chill?”
The disappointment that Carly was not in the mood for any of it showed on Ada’s face. Carly sighed. Ada sighed back and pulled her phone from her pocket. “Fine!” She tapped the tracking app to life. “He’s not even at the Y.”