“Well,” I said. “Are you going to be friendly or not?”
On the table, my phone buzzed. I picked it up, figuring it was some all-caps missive from Ginny, desperate to recount something stupid at her party.
But it was not.
It was from Tate.
happy new years
I put down my phone. There was, of course, no response I could give. Was there?
Kit Marlowe mewl-growled, then grudgingly rubbed his back against the edge of the sofa and lifted his chin. I scratched it.
“See,” I said. “Maybe this is the year you’ll stop being so stuck-up.”
He hissed, but for once, did not run away.
School recommenced, and with it, a flurry of nervous activity. At the Gregory School, college application was a personal, private process, so, naturally, a massive blue SENIOR COLLEGE CHOICES bulletin board dominated the biggest wall in the front hall. It was bigger than the rotating display of uninspired student projects from Foundation of Art; it was even bigger than the oil portrait of Amos Coffin Gregory, our illustrious muttonchopped founder, whose small brass plaque neglected to mention that said illustrious founder did not himself attend college, probably so as not to diminish his illustriousness. The COLLEGE CHOICES bulletin board was—ostensibly—a mechanism for congratulation, with all attendant good intentions, but it more often served as an immediately arresting selling point for affluent young couples touring the campus in search of a suitably prestigious kindergarten for their children, or—more often—as a social leaderboard. As soon as anyone made a final commitment to matriculate somewhere, the name of his or her chosen alma mater to be was immediately affixed beneath their school photo. Photos could not change, of course, but upon our January 2 return, the beaming smiles of those lucky few with a secure future seemed to beam brighter than the rest.
Absent a definitive financial-aid decision, Ginny’s photo remained unlabeled. So, of course, did Charlotte’s; one of the Lilys had been plucked for Stanford (her mother was an alumna), and Ava Kestenbaum was bound for Brown. The rest were all still fair game, still on the market, and a restlessness overtook the hallways that even those of us not yet at the age of college majority could sense. It vibrated in the air, a palpable anxiety comingling with the universal dread of midterms coming the following week.
There was, however, a new development in the college courtship process, as we learned that evening.
“Interviews,” Ginny declared.
“Interviews?” Mom said. We were around our ersatz kitchen table, eating noodles Jefferson. Noodles Jefferson is the only dish that Ginny can cook, which she had adapted from a book of our childhood called the Kidz Can Cook Anything Cookbook, where almost every recipe began, ironically, with “find an adult to handle the knife and/or boil the water.” Kidz, it would seem, could not, in fact, cook anything. The dish consists of pasta with cheese and nothing else, which was convenient, seeing as that was what we had in the pantry: pasta, cheese, and nothing else.
“Yes,” Ginny said. “Well, not, like formal interviews. But you know. Ava and Lily were talking about it today. You just meet with someone your father knows who’s an alumnus or a trustee or whatever and they ever so coincidentally help bump you to the front of the line. For admissions, financial aid, a good dorm room, whatever. So that’s what I need. But at this point I’m sure their dance cards are all full.”
I twirled more noodles Jefferson onto my fork. What it lacked in nutrition, it made up for in tasting appealingly like something a four-year-old would eat.
“I couldn’t ever do interviews,” Mom said. “I break out in panic splotches. It’s why I use that goat’s milk lotion. But you”—she indicated Ginny with her glass—“should absolutely do one. Learn the skill soon. Any job worth paying involves an interview. Do you know how I got my first teaching job?”
Ginny hissed out an exhale and looked at the ceiling. “You ran into the—”
“I ran into the director at an art show,” Mom said, “and ended up smoking hashish in his apartment with a group of alternative circus performers from French Canada. And do you think any of those people ended up with a paying job with dental benefits?”
Ginny and I exchanged a look.
“No,” we said at the same time.
“And do you know why?”
“Because they never got into the University of Pennsylvania with adequate financial aid,” Ginny said.
“And probably smoked too much hashish,” I said, although I did not know exactly what hashish was. Ginny glared at me.
“I mean, it might have worked out anyway,” I offered. “They do about a dozen shows a week in Vegas.”
Mom swallowed a mouthful and shook her head, earrings smacking her in the neck. “Not Cirque du Soleil. The other ones.”
“I don’t think there are other ones,” I said.
“There were,” Mom insisted. “Or there were until they had that incident with the trapeze.”
“That’s what’s going to happen to me,” Ginny said. “I’m going to end up in an off-brand French-Canadian circus troupe risking my literal neck for no health insurance. Cripes.” She dropped her fork into the middle of her noodles Jefferson. “And we’ve been eating pasta for eons because no one has gone to the market. I see you found time to go to the liquor store, though.”
Mom drank more wine.
“Here.” I pulled out an envelope with all my tutoring earnings, which I had been keeping on my person at all times. “I have some grocery money. We can go after school tomorrow.”
“Oh, Plum.” Mom pulled the end of my braid so she could kiss me on the cheek, which left a tawny smudge where her free-sample lipstick had grazed it. “You’re an absolute angel.” She stood up. “All right. I had two critiques in studio today and then I had to solicit donations for this silent auction all afternoon, and I have to lie down or I’ll faint.”
“Fainting is lying down,” Ginny said. “And what about my interview?”
Mom lifted her arms and sagged dramatically. “Ginny, my darling dove, do I look like someone who can scare up a University of Pennsylvania graduate on short notice?”
Given that our mother was wearing a Philadelphia Folk Fest T-shirt over ballooning purple pants that cinched at the ankle, the answer was both implied and obvious.
“I see where you get your fashion sense from,” I said, as Mom retreated upstairs, with Gizmo clicking after.
Ginny wasn’t paying attention. She was twisting her napkin, which was actually a paper towel, into a tight coil, and staring hard at the table, as if she expected it to rearrange into our father’s face like in a Disney movie and whisper some words of wisdom.
“I have to get an interview, Plum.” Wisps of paper frothed out between her fingers. “I have to. I have to.”
“You will,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I won’t. They’re all gone, and the only ones left are left for people who know someone. And I don’t know anyone. I don’t know an-y-one.” She dropped the napkin and slammed her palms against the table. “Ugh!”
“Ginny,” I said. “Calm down.”
“I can’t.” She jumped out of her chair. “This is the rest of my life, Plum. I’ve already screwed it up enough by not having any money. I’m not going to make it worse. I can’t.”
“The money isn’t your fault,” I said. But Ginny had started pacing.
“It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. I can’t do this.”
“Ginny,” I said, as patiently as I could stand. “You’re being hysterical.”
“Hysterical?” Ginny whirled on me. “What do you mean, hysterical?”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said. “You’re freaking yourself out.”
“You mean I’m crazy,” Ginny said.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“No,” Ginny said. “But you’ve been thinking it. You’ve been thinking I’m crazy and annoying and that you just can’t wait to get rid of me.”
&nbs
p; “I haven’t,” I said, even as the guilty recognition that I had wormed down into my stomach.
“Well, congratulations!” Ginny threw her hands into the air. “How’s it feel to be right?”
Her eyes shone, and her chin was juddering up and down. I sat stock-still in my chair, not sure how to move. Ginny hugged her arms around her chest like she was trying to warm herself up—which she could have been, given how cold it was in the kitchen.
“Everyone’s going to go somewhere,” she said. “Everyone but me. I don’t even know what’s going to happen to me.”
“Ginny . . .” I got up, not sure what to do. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Ginny threw me a wild-eyed glance and stalked past me and to the couch. She lay upside down, so that her ankles were on the backrest and her hair streamed down onto the floor.
“Take a deep breath,” I said.
“I can’t,” Ginny said. Her face was bone white. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
She screwed up her eyes and wailed.
“Ginny,” I said softly. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring me, Plum.” Ginny opened her eyes. “What’s wrong with me? Am I going crazy?” She rolled her legs over and down, so that she was lying properly on the couch. With her hair loose over the pillows, there was something Pre-Raphaelite about her again, like Ophelia tossing dead bouquets to the wind, or Persephone graying away in the underworld. She was beautiful as ever, but hollow.
“God. I want to throw up. I want to throw. Up.” She covered her face in her hands, and when she pulled them back, there were tears on her cheeks.
“We’re going to have to move, Plummy. We’re never going to be able to stay. Even if I leave, you and Mom will have to go somewhere else. And it’s my fault. It’s my fault for having to go to college.”
“Okay,” I said. “One thing at a time. You’re catastrophizing.”
“No. No, I’m not.” Ginny breathed out hard, and sat up. “Quit being useless, Plum. I need that interview. And unless you’re actually going to help me, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
She stalked out, leaving nothing but me, Doug, and a tableful of rapidly cooling noodles Jefferson.
So I was the one who cleaned the kitchen. And once I had cleaned, I wandered.
The fact is, 5142 Haven Lane is not just anywhere. It is not a polished, asbestos-free, renovated-kitchen playground of a house. It is an existence.
I walked, and I touched something in every room: a banister, a doorjamb, a nonfunctional switch plate with a button like a flattened pearl that used to ring a servant’s bell, a framed painting of the Five Little Field Mice twirling around a tiny maypole. At the edge of the library door, I heard a floorboard creak and peered through the doorframe to see Mom, draped in a shawl and her hair loose, running her hand up and down the edge of one of the bookcases. That was it—just rubbing it like it was a genie lamp.
I knew from touching it many times before that the wood was strangely soft, that it had been so finely sanded and expertly stained that there were no splinters or bubbles of finish, all seamless and mitered and exact and strong. It existed and was useful in a way that other things in our house were not. It was something we needed.
I followed Kit up the stairs, up to the second floor, repeating that thought with every floor creak. On the landing, the sconces gleamed into the glass of the office doors, bouncing back, so all I could see was empty shine. Opposite the glass, the muffled sounds of Ginny’s TV show bled through the walls.
Kit jingled upstairs, and so I followed, and padded into Ginny’s empty bedroom, where Kit had situated himself on the windowsill to peer out at his domain.
I lay on Ginny’s bed and stared up.
The sky part of the mural was doing the worst. A water stain like a spilled mug of coffee bloomed in one corner, and the paint was flaking off in sapphire-colored shreds, revealing what had to have been lead paint underneath. I breathed in deeply, probably lowering my IQ with every inhale, and turned onto my side, facing the dent where Ginny’s shoe had left a hole in the tiny mural universe. Her bedroom was sloughing itself to bits, and whether we sold the house tomorrow or died in our beds and turned it over at an estate auction, it would get painted over or disintegrate on its own or otherwise get lost.
I hated thinking like that—or, really, I hated feeling like that. The feelings coursing through me were so stupid and useless I just wanted to burn them and sweep them out of myself like ashes. I wanted solidness and sense even as I saw things pulling themselves into pieces.
And yet, even then, some part of me was peering at the corner of everything, wanting to see what would come next. I could not help it. I have a reader’s tendencies.
Four
Long have I known a glory in it all
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart . . .
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
The following day—Tuesday—I was due back at Tate’s. And Tate was late. More than late, he was not there.
I stood on the back porch for almost fifteen minutes, holding my books, wrapped in the ancient wool coat of Patience Mortimer’s that I had finally swapped out for the Amazing Wonder Jacket™. It was a green plaid and smelled equally of lavender perfume and mothballs.
I pulled out my phone, debating a text message; maybe he was upstairs, or somewhere else too far to hear the doorbell. But on my phone was Tate’s most recent message to me.
happy new years
He had somehow, incorrectly, combined Happy New Year with New Year’s Eve, and neglected the apostrophe to boot. It would take either a miracle or a traditional TGS parent intervention for him to earn above a C on this midterm.
And, furthermore, why had he even sent the message? Probably, since the party had evidently been here, he was high or drunk. Perhaps he meant to send it to someone else, someone he recently texted or someone else whose name began with a P. Perhaps it was a prank to tease me into responding—which only made me gladder that I had not.
However, I was still on the porch, and cold. I rang the doorbell one more time, and this time, got an answer when Benji loped in, looking confused.
“Hello?” he said, pulling open the back door.
“Hello,” I said. “Is Tate home?”
Benji looked back over his shoulder. He had stubble on his face, which I supposed was to be expected for a boy who was at least seventeen. Still, it gave him a distinctly rough-around-the-edges look that clashed with his salmon-colored button-down shirt.
“Dunno. I guess you can come in.”
I did, decorously removing my shoes and hanging the mothy coat as far from the rest of the Feingold-Kurokawa outerwear as possible.
“So are you his girlfriend, or something?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m his tutor. For English. We’ve met before. Plum. Plum Blatchley.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Benji nodded and grabbed a green plastic water bottle from the countertop. “You’re the sister.”
I stood up straight. “I’m Ginny’s sister, yeah. Yes.”
“She’s hot shit, right?”
I didn’t know what he meant. “I . . .”
“Isn’t she in, like, everywhere?” Benji swigged from his water bottle. “That’s what her friends have been saying. Just refusing to commit until she knows who’s going to give her the most money.”
My mouth fell open, and I quickly snapped it shut.
Someone clomped at the back steps. Tate, coming in through the back door, shedding a jacket, pulling socked feet out of boots, dumping a lumpy bag of some type of sports equipment on the floor. Tate, and Stevie, and Tommy.
Tate stopped, and Stevie and Tommy slammed into him like he was a doorstop.
“Yo, what the hell?” Stevie said.
“Hey,” he said. “Peach.”
Under the coat he was wearing a white collared shirt with the TGS crest over the heart, white m
esh shorts, white socks, white sneakers, white everything. Stevie had plastic goggles dangling from a strap around his neck, and Tommy was swinging three plastic Wawa bags.
Instantly I was in fourth grade again, cowering, burning up, stomach clenching, hating that I’d ever thought to put anything down in writing. Even if they didn’t remember—they didn’t, of course—I did. The muscle memory was there.
“I have squash until five,” Tate explained.
“Of course,” I said.
“I let her in,” Benji yelled, retreating up the stairs. “You left her on the porch to freeze like an asshole.”
“Thanks.” Tate nodded at him. “Sorry, Peach. Well, uh, I guess I can . . .” His hair was sticking in every direction, and his face was still red. Even the small space of throat between his opened collar button was a little red.
“’Sup, girl?” Tommy, all six foot million of limbs and elbows, threw himself onto a barstool.
Stevie put his hands on the counter and leaned in, grinning. “You and T, huh?” He bobbed his head up and down. “I can see it. Yeah. The freaky stuff.”
“Hey, guys.” Tate had his hands in his pockets. “I should probably . . .” He looked at me. “I forgot. My mom’s paying her to tutor me.”
There it was again: the clench in my stomach. Tommy, oblivious, burped.
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “All right.” He grabbed his plastic Wawa bag and shouldered his pack of athletic equipment. “Come on, Tom, let’s bounce.”
Tommy slunk to standing and gave Tate a salute. “Later.”
“Bye,” Stevie said, and jerked his head upward in my direction. “Spank Tate hard for me.”
Tate smacked his hands to his sides. “What the fuck, Steve?”
Stevie shrank. “Sorry,” he said. “Jesus.”
They slammed the door and lumbered away.
Tate rubbed the back of his neck. He was, I had to notice, the shortest of the three. Four, if you counted me.
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