No One Tells Everything (25 page)

“What are you doing here? I thought you went back to New York,” he says.

“I did something terrible,” she says.

She can no longer hold herself up. She sinks to her knees next to him.

He squints at her.

“It’s late. I must have fallen asleep.”

He looks at his watch but can’t read it in the dark.

“I did it,” she says.

“You did what?” he asks. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

“Callie.”

“Come now, Grace. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“It was my fault.” Her voice is someone else’s, low and parched and sober.

His eyes are glossy in the low light. He puts his feet on the floor and sits forward, hands on his knees, preparing to stand. But she grasps onto his arm and won’t let him. He settles back. She waits in the hallucinatory semi-darkness. She feels like she is melting.

“You were just a child,” he says. He speaks slowly, his speech still thickened. “It was a terrible accident.”

“No, it wasn’t, Dad.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” he says. He places his palm gently on her head. “Go on up to bed.”

“She didn’t trip.”

“I remember that day so well. You in your shirt with the big cherries on it.”

He smiles and meets her eyes.

“I’m telling you,” she says. “I pushed Callie into the street,” she says.

“No you didn’t, Grace. She lost her balance and she fell.”

“I pushed her.”

The first waking birds twitter just outside the window. Her father looks down at her upturned face, worn and raw, and then turns away to the window, up at the moon. He rubs his bristled chin. He shakes his head. He reaches behind the chair for a stashed bottle of bourbon and opens it, drinking fast, before putting the cork back in.

And then, finally, he says softly, “I saw what happened.”

Grace feels like she can’t get enough air.

“You saw?” Her words are hoarse.

“I loved watching you girls play.” He takes a breath, steadying himself. “My hands were on the window to open it, to tell you to move away from the street. Everything seemed to just slow down.” He coughs and tries to clear his voice. “The sound of those car brakes.”

His hand reaches to his tremulous lips.

“I can still hear that awful sound,” he says.

Grace loved that shirt. She’d gotten it earlier in the summer at the Spring Blossom Festival—the flea-bitten carnival manned by long-haired, bearded men in coveralls that rolled into the nearby town of Maple Hill every year. She poured her saved-up allowance into the rigged games, particularly intent on the one where she tossed rings to catch the top of milk bottles. She played until she won. Her prize was a choice between a stuffed duck, a feathered roach clip that she didn’t know the use of, and a cherry T-shirt. A well-earned reward.

Callie coveted the shirt, and that August day Grace not only discovered her wearing it, but also saw grape juice spilled on the front. She demanded Callie take it off. Her sister refused. They were about the same size—Grace a little taller, Callie a little stronger—and when they went at it, they were pretty well matched. Grace wrestled her down, trying to get the shirt over her head until her mother discovered them and restored order. Grace got her shirt back, and promptly put it on. They continued the battle on the floor of the living room over a game of Monopoly, which soon escalated to accusations over houses and hotels and mis-moves.

“Enough,” her mother said.

Something had happened the night before with her parents. They didn’t seem to be speaking that day. He, holed away in his study, and she, on her fifth cup of coffee, looked tired and drawn. Grace had remembered doors slamming after she was already in bed, some vitriolic exchanges downstairs.

“Outside. Both of you,” her mother said. “I do not want to hear a peep or see a hair on your heads until lunchtime. Do you hear me? Grace, would you please try to set a good example for your sister?”

Callie scrambled to the den. Their dad’s face was pale and bloated.

“Daddy, come outside,” Callie said, pulling his hand, the parental discord and his raging hangover unknown to her. “Let’s play tag. Come on, you promised.”

He smiled at her and tugged on her hair. Grace stood back in the doorway.

“Sorry, sweetie, not today. Your dad needs some quiet time. I have a headache.”

He stirred his Bloody Mary with his finger.

“Please, please, please?”

“Come on, Callie,” Grace said. “Stop being such a pest.”

Outside the day was steaming up, an old-fashioned Midwest summer. They’d learned in school how the cicadas this year were from a special brood, underground for seventeen years, and how large numbers of them would blanket the area. The cicadas were there all right, buzzing and whining, big-bodied and everpresent, weighing down tree branches, clogging up the grills of cars. In bare feet, the girls had to be careful not to step on the molted shells.

“You’re It,” Callie said.

“You can’t play tag with two people,” Grace said.

“Let’s play kickball.”

Grace rolled her eyes.

“No.”

“Let’s play Charlie’s Angels.”

“That’s not a game.”

“Let’s play…I am the queen and you are my servant.”

Her laugh was honey-sweet. They skipped across the lawn. Grace did a cartwheel, and then Callie did one. Grace picked errant dandelions. Callie taunted the Millers’ Irish setter, who rooted around the ivy across the street.

“Come here, Rusty, come on you old dumb dog,” Callie sang out between her hands. “Hey, how about Marco Polo?”

“You can’t play that with two people either. There’s no point,” Grace said. But then she relented, because what else was there to do? “Not It.”

Callie closed her eyes and held out her hands.

“Marco.”

“Polo.”

“Marco.”

“Polo.”

Callie moved right to Grace with some overacted double-backs.

“Close your eyes, Callie. I can see your eyeballs.”

She laughed.

“They’re closed! Okay, now they’re closed. Marco.”

“Polo.”

They were near the road. Callie moved in her direction, but Grace quietly ran around behind her.

“Marco.”

Grace heard tires on the sticky, hot pavement. The impulse was whip-quick. She didn’t think about her sister dying. She just saw her in a perfect, unsuspecting position.

“Polo!”

Grace’s hands hit Callie’s bony girl-back and her sister’s head jerked and the toe of her sneaker caught the edge of the asphalt and she flew headfirst into the street and then the old wood-paneled cinnamon-colored car was upon her and scooped her up—the thud of the body against the car and the screech of brakes and the finality of crushed glass as Callie bounced up into the windshield.

Her sister’s face was untouched, and at first, Grace thought she was going to climb down and tell on her. But then her eyes didn’t move and there was blood, as if on time-delay, pouring from her head. Mr. Jablonski was making choking sounds and moans, reaching for Callie but then pulling his hands back. Her father appeared. Her mother. Dr. Miller ran toward them. Another neighbor called an ambulance.

Screams and screams and screams.

Grace was frozen, terrified. She wanted to believe what her dad was saying. Callie fell. It was an accident. Go inside, go inside.

“You never said anything,” Grace says.

The tears run in rivulets and hang off her chin.

“What was there to say?” her father says. “I didn’t want to make it real. I thought you might forget. I don’t know. Maybe it was the wrong thing.”

“I killed her.” The words are acid on her tongue.

“No, you didn’t,” he says wearily. “That’s not what I saw. You were a child playing a game. It was an awful mistake.”

She crawls into his lap. She cries and cries until, for the moment, she is empty.

“Grace,” he says, patting her hand, “it doesn’t matter anymore. It was so very long ago.”

They sit in silence and the minutes linger on. His eyes flutter closed. She takes her father’s hand and holds it against her cheek.

“You’re not going to climb back up into the tree, are you?” he asks.

###

In the morning, Grace finds her dad at the kitchen table drinking coffee with an unsteady hand. He is momentarily confused by her presence, but then something clicks and he goes back to reading the paper. He doesn’t say anything about last night and she knows he will never mention it again. Maybe he thought it was a dream or maybe he has forgotten. Maybe he knows there is nothing else to say.

“There’s more coffee,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says, pouring herself some. “Have you gotten all your slides sorted out?”

“Almost,” he says, smiling a little. “Maybe next time we’ll have a show.”

“I’d like that,” she says.

He goes back to reading.

“I better go say hi to Mom.”

“In her tomatoes,” he says without looking up.

The plants are now staked and three feet tall, bent with the weight of their green yield. Her mother kneels between rows and all Grace can see is the back of her pertly bobbed hair.

“Nice plants,” Grace says.

“Gracie,” her mother says, rising from the dirt. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Surprise,” Grace says.

Her mother takes off her gloves and hugs her daughter daintily, and Grace is once again reminded of her fragility, the smaller she seems each time she sees her. Her mother touches the purple rim of Grace’s eye but doesn’t say anything about it.

“What’s the occasion? Not that you need one to come home.”

“Nothing, really. I just felt like it.”

Grace sips her coffee.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?” her mother says, narrowing her eyes as if to better see inside her daughter’s inscrutable heart.

Grace nods.

She knows her mother wants to say, “You are thirty-five years old, Grace. What are you doing with your life?” But instead she tucks a lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear.

“I know why you’re here,” her mother says, wagging her finger.

“You do?”

“You couldn’t bear to miss the fireworks.”

“Right,” Grace says, and smiles. “You got me.”

“We’ll leave here around 8:30. You can make the deviled eggs.”

###

Dear Charles,

I think that I understand now, as much as I am able to. Whatever happens with the trial, know that I believe in the you that I have come to know.

I went home again to Cleveland to see my parents. Tonight we are going to watch fireworks from the golf course of the country club like we haven’t done since my sister was alive, and we will remember how it used to be. But we might also reconcile ourselves to how it has turned out and be okay with that. We shall see.

Be well, Charles.

Your friend,

Grace

###

They situate themselves on the velvet green of the sixth hole of the club course, the air soft and warm, the twilight a violet haze behind the trees. They are quiet and gentle with each other, passing the food between them. Children run around, antsy to be awed. Harvey Chenowith’s raucous laughter cuts through the growing darkness.

When the fireworks start, the three of them look up, lost in thought and light. Grace pulls the little flag out of her cupcake and licks the frosting as the lights twirl and dance in the sky. In the dappled reflection of the explosions, she steals a glance at her parents’ upturned faces.

The finale is never enough, never quenching—no matter how many colors, how expansive the cascading lights, how intricate the designs, how loud the booms and whistles, how quick the successions, it always leaves Grace wanting, not quite satisfied. But as the family walks away, she holding onto her father’s arm and her mother taking his other hand, stepping carefully in the sultry dark toward the lights of the clubhouse, Grace feels the possibility of a tenuous repose.

———

September 15, 2003. Charles Raggatt, 19, of Hunter, OH, fidgeted and twitched his head during a brief court proceeding before Nassau County Court Judge Richard Castiglione. Raggatt told the judge he understood the ramifications of entering a felony guilty plea.

———

J
ust before jury selection was scheduled to begin, Charles made a deal with the prosecutors to plead guilty to one count of second-degree murder for a lesser sentence. In the note about it in the Post, his defense attorney said the Raggatts had not attended the proceeding because of a previous commitment. Sarah’s parents sat stoically in the front row of the courtroom.

Grace drives out to Long Island to attend the sentencing hearing, to see Charles in person. The day is warm but not stifling, incongruously beautiful for the proceedings. Inside the drab courtroom the windows are open wide and a fan blasts above the judge’s bench. The lawyers from both sides are here, and in the gallery there are a couple of reporters. Sarah’s parents, seated in the front row, stare straight ahead with swollen, glassy eyes. The Raggatts are absent once again. One of the bailiffs fans herself with an empty legal folder.

There is a small hush when Charles, in prison orange and white sneakers without laces, is brought in. His body looks deflated from when she first saw him months ago. Above all, Grace is struck by his youth in a way that she had lost sight of. He is just a teenager, not even fully formed. She aches at the sight of him, unable, in the end, to do anything for him.

He does not look up from the floor as he is led to the defense table. She thought he might look for her, but as far as he knows, she could be anyone. Once seated, he hangs his head and closes his eyes.

The judge sentences him to twenty-five years to life, which gives Charles the possibility of parole when he is forty-five years old.

Charles, never lifting his eyes, apologizes to Sarah’s parents in a stilted, incoherent speech. He is nervous and rambling, unable to make the words mean all the sorrow he wants to communicate. He tries to wipe his tears with his shoulder. Her parents refuse to look at him, her mother facing the window as he talks, her father watching the clock. When Charles stops making sense altogether, the judge orders him to wrap it up.