No One Tells Everything (12 page)

“Were you trying to make a point by not waking me?”

“Grace,” she says. “We’ll go back this afternoon. He’ll be glad to see you.”

That she’s not so sure about.

“I’m going out for a bit,” her mother says. “I need to pick up your dad’s shirts and get some more soil. Did you see the tomatoes I’m putting in?”

“I did. Impressive.”

“I need to finish. And get the stakes in.” She sponges away the brown dribble Grace’s coffee cup has left on the table. “It’s almost too late. It’s been so warm.”

Grace doesn’t know when it happened but she feels like her mother has become someone to be careful with.

“Okay,” Grace says. She wants her to sit. She wants her to stop. “Mom. Why don’t you give me some things to do for you?”

“No, it’s okay. I’d rather keep busy. You know this Saturday will be the first tee time your dad has missed in probably thirty years? We’re lucky, you know. He’s going to be okay.”

“Sure he is,” Grace says, feeling like some lame television character.

“So your job is good?” her mother asks, cleaning the coffee pot.

“No, Mom, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think I’ve ever said that.”

“Well, I just thought—”

“What?”

“I thought you liked your life in New York. I don’t ever hear you complain about it.”

Her mother dries her hands and slips back on her diamond ring.

“It’s fine. Forget about it,” Grace says.

“Maybe when you get married you won’t have to work anymore.”

“Sure, Mom. Keep up the positive thinking.”

Her mother smoothes her hair and picks up her purse from the counter.

“I’ll be back at two,” she says. “And we’ll go see your father.”

G
race stands in the starkly lit hospital hall feeling woozy. Ever since the accident, when the three of them sat pie-eyed in the molded pea green plastic chairs, waiting for the official pronouncement that they already knew, hospitals have made her feel faint. After a minute, her mother motions for her to enter the room.

He is propped up in bed, his once-blond hair now white, thinning in front and sticking up in back against the pillow. His face has uncharacteristic sallowness and sag, making the broken blood vessels of his nose more prominent. He looks small in the faded gown tied around his neck like a baby bib, the fabric worn around the collar from innumerable washings in boiling institutional machines. A pulse monitor is clamped to his index finger and he is connected to an IV.

“Hi, Dad,” she says, approaching the bed, trying to sound peppy.

He looks from his wife to his daughter. His eyes go blank and then narrow in what looks like anger. He grunts.

“Nice to see you,” Grace says.

“Jack,” her mother says, “Grace is home for a visit.”

The nurse says quietly, “It’s natural for stroke patients to be angry and frustrated. Sometimes they can be aggressive. Don’t take it personal. He’s just acting out a bit.”

Grace stands woodenly and, not knowing what to do with her hands, buries them in her pockets.

“Don’t let him fool you,” the nurse says, marking something on his chart. “He’ll behave and be ready to go home in no time.” She winks.

“Thanks,” her mother says, allowing the woman a chilly smile.

Her father says something indecipherable. He says it again and Grace hears him say “bitch” while looking at her.

“What’s that?” her mom asks, patting his hand.

“I know about you,” he says with immense angry effort, lifting his arm in Grace’s direction. Breathing heavily his head lolls toward the window.

She shrinks smaller and smaller.

###

Hunter is one town over, similar to Cuyahoga but wealthier and more exclusive. The Raggatts live on Lily Pond Lane, an immaculate street with a large pond at its end, home to big new money, including a rumored mafia family, a grocery store magnate, and a part-owner of the Cavaliers. The ladies at the club would say it’s a tad gauche. Grace takes her mother’s car and, encased in its chestnut leather interior, drives into the enclave.

She slows to look at each massive house, wondering which is theirs, ruling out homes here and there, one with a swing set, one with an elderly woman pruning roses, one with a marble fountain in the driveway. The pitched roof of an imposing Tudor rises up above a privet hedge and there is something about the perfectly clean edge of the lawn and sad dark windows that makes her think, maybe. There’s nowhere to park without looking conspicuous on this street, even in her mother’s Mercedes, so she idles, looking at the house for any signs before slowly turning around in the cul-de-sac. As she rolls back out, an incoming silver SUV with a well-kept blond behind the wheel passes. Grace’s heart quickens. It’s her. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Raggatt. She looks a lot like she did as Miss Ohio, a well-preserved older version. Grace watches in her rearview as the car turns up the driveway. She imagines Charles behind one of the upstairs windows, dreaming of what freedom could mean.

It’s getting late but Grace doesn’t want to go home. She drives toward the city and turns on Prospect, the street where she and Callie would joyously point out hookers from the windows of the station wagon as they drove to the airport. They were wild-haired women in spandex hot pants, their hands balled up in the pockets of short, rabbit-fur jackets, teetering on four-inch Lucite platform heels, even in winter, even on a Sunday morning. The women would laugh and do little dances, their listless stares lifted for just a moment.

“Don’t look at them, girls,” her mother would say.

But Grace knew her dad was looking, too, at the dark equine thighs and unfettered breasts.

There are fewer transient hotels now, and no streetwalkers in the twilight glow. She finds a worn-down place with neon beer signs, wooden booths, and plastic bowls of stale yellow popcorn. Although she is the only white person and the only woman, the crowd, mainly middle-aged men, doesn’t seem to care. In her oversized sweater and saggy dirty jeans, she doesn’t arouse much interest.

Grace orders two ginger ales from the bartender, a small white-haired man who smiles a little but doesn’t say anything. She drinks one down and hands him back the glass, taking the other one with her to a table.

“Popcorn?” he says to her back.

A guy at the bar laughs.

“No thanks,” she says over her shoulder.

She sits and thinks of Charles and how it feels for him, for them, to have always known that they could never be the golden people. Like Sarah Shafer. Like Callie.

“You’re like Pigpen,” her father once teased, “but instead of dirt, you have a black cloud following you around.” He had laughed then, and kissed the top of her head.

What if Charles, in some way, had simply let it happen? If he knew something but did nothing and then she was dead. And maybe the guilt he felt for his inaction made him confess to what he didn’t do. It’s possible, she thinks.

A man sits down across from Grace and rests his chin on his clasped hands. He is younger than the others in the bar, with a look that is both lascivious and contemptuous.

“What’s up?” he says.

“Nothing,” she says.

“Come here often?” he asks.

Men snicker in the background. Despite his slight smile, the man’s eyes are hard and never waver from her. His forearms are well defined and scarred.

“No. First time,” she says.

“Took a wrong turn on the way to the ’burbs?”

She looks up and the men at the bar are looking at her, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her recognition that she is not wanted here.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to go.”

“Now hold up. You haven’t told us your name yet.”

The man sucks his teeth and licks his lips. Grace stands and he reaches out to graze her arm with the back of his fingers.

“Too bad,” he says. “You know I was just playing with you.” He waves his fingers and says, “You go on now.”

She hears whistles and laughter behind her as she pushes through the door out into the chilly night, feeling as out of place as the ridiculous Mercedes that hugs the curb, alone in the dull flickering bulb of the streetlight.

She locks the doors quickly after she gets behind the wheel, and then stares at the haze of city lights. She starts the car, and once she gets going, opens the window to keep cold air on her face.

By the time she pulls into the driveway, her hands hurt from grasping the wheel. She has clearly missed dinner; her mother would have had it ready at seven. Her parents’ bedroom is dark but her mother has left the kitchen light on.

Grace finds her dinner plate wrapped in cellophane in the refrigerator. She carries it with her to her father’s den and collapses into his chair, eating a cold string bean with her fingers.

I know about you.

She has always assumed that no one saw the accident. No one ever said anything to the contrary. Here in his chair, only the trees are visible through the front window. But what if he wasn’t in his chair? She stands up, and the view of the lawn opens up. What if he was at the window, looking out at them playing in the front yard, watching Callie run, her braids bouncing, watching Grace get angry at her for opening her eyes while she was It, for cheating, for thinking she could always get away with everything?

###

Grace wakes up in the gray light to the insistent call of turtledoves. She is cold and curled up in the chair, a throbbing ache between her eyes, cuddling an overturned plate of congealed chicken marsala.

C
aroline is fourteen and athletic and cute. She doesn’t try to be liked. She just is. And she’s also comfortable enough with herself to be earnest and cool at the same time. She is your sister and, by far, your favorite person. She is a freshman and you are a senior. When you see her in school, she always gives you a hug, regardless of who’s around. You like it even when you’d rather she didn’t. Despite your envy of the way life lets her cruise along, you love sweet Caroline because she is perhaps the only one in the world who doesn’t think you’re a loser.

You start up the stairs, two at a time, but midway you slow to a walk, your sneakers leaving bearlike prints in the wheat-colored carpeting. Caroline’s door is closed. You knock with the same code—the beginning of Bewitched—that you two have used since you were small, and you push the door open.

“You’re supposed to wait until I say it’s okay to come in,” she says. “What if I was naked or something?”

“Like I would give a shit,” you say and jump beside her onto her big, pink-duveted bed.

She holds her pet lop-eared rabbit on her stomach. Its deep brown bunny eyes twitch. You don’t like how vulnerable it is. It makes you nervous.

“Buns has a brain the size of a pea,” you say.

“Shut up! I know she’s super-smart,” she says.

Your mother calls you for dinner.

Charles Sr. is already at the table, sipping his Glenlivet, scanning the Wall Street Journal. He is gray-templed and fit, and his reading glasses are parked halfway down his nose.

“Hi, kids,” he says. “How was school today?”

He turns back to the paper before either of you answer.

“Fine, Dad,” Caroline says in a phony chipper voice, making googly eyes at you.

You know your father doesn’t think that highly of you, that he is confused by your lack of friends, by your ineptitude in sports, by your refusal to fit in. He was thrilled when it became clear that Caroline was normal and liked what other girls liked and didn’t spend hours alone, locked in her room, trying to fuse the different parts of herself together.

“Sweetheart,” your mom says, “it’s dinner. Enough of your paper.”

He dutifully folds it and tosses it back onto the counter.

“What will you be doing in Denver?” she asks him.

He says, chewing, “Uh, looking to close some financing with a group out there.”

You have no idea what your dad does. You’re pretty sure your mom and Caroline don’t know either.

Aside from forks and knives against plates, it is quiet. You want to ask him if he is really your father. You have the same nose and the same shaped face so there’s probably a biological connection, but he is so far from understanding anything about you it’s comical. You wonder if he wishes you would become someone else or if he would rather you just go away.

Caroline kicks you under the table.

“I read this article that said that the French make their appliances in the spirit of telephones and Americans make theirs in the spirit of cars. Isn’t that so true?” your mother asks.

“I don’t get it,” Charles Sr. says.

“Mom,” Caroline says, “I’m going over to Jen’s tomorrow night after field hockey.”

You never have anywhere to go.

Your mother cuts a prawn into tiny pieces but lets them sit in the buttery sauce on the plate. Both of your parents lob comments into the space above the table, hoping someone will come to the rescue and scoop the words up, to keep the conversation afloat. They pretend that they are talking because if they drop the ruse, they will have to admit their discontent. For having enough money. For always wanting more. For not being soothed by new cars and fresh flowers and filet mignon. For not being able to keep the deer from munching on newly transplanted shrubs. For eventually keeping them all away.

After dinner, you quickly eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked while Caroline disappears to talk on the phone. You slink to the cocoon of your room, slip off your shoes, and fall back on the bed, exhaling fiercely. It’s worse at night sometimes, the feeling that things might never change. You press the heels of your palms against your eyelids to keep the thoughts away.

###

You’ve had a crush on Hadley Jameson for years, ever since she sat next to you on the bus in fifth grade on a field trip to the symphony. Her hair is longer now but still caramel-streaked and, you imagine, as soft as the underbelly of your sister’s rabbit. Hadley always smiles at you in the halls and she says your name when she talks to you. Despite her kindness to you, she is extremely popular. She is followed by chatty girls and pursued by muscular boys. Her skin is allover dewy like she just came back from a chilly morning jog. Her small breasts press firmly against the navy blue and orange stripes of her cheerleading sweater.