Authors: Unknown Author
She replaced the phone, brought one bent arm to her forehead.
It’s just four days
, she told herself for the hundredth time.
Before she could repeat the words to herself again, she fell into a deep sleep permeated by dreams of submarines descending into the black depths of the Pacific, and waves breaking around rocks too small for her to balance on.
“Honey?”
Kathryn’s bedside lamp fell palely across Philip Parker, sitting on the edge of her bed. Her room was dark and she glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand: almost 5
p.m.
She had slept for almost ten full hours. Her dad was dressed in a pale blue oxford and dark trousers. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back from his high forehead, his wide-set chestnut eyes staring at her expectantly from behind his invisible-frame glasses.
She managed a smile, and he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’ll get ready,” she mumbled, propping herself on her elbows.
“Don’t worry. Linda and Dale won’t be here for another hour.”
When she saw her mother, her arms crossed over her chest, her top lip covering her lower one as if standing in Kathryn’s doorway had become too time consuming, Kathryn felt a stab of dread. Her parents’ positions and posture reminded her of another moment, months earlier, when they had awakened her with news she didn’t want to hear.
“We didn’t want to hit you with this right away,” Philip began.
“You’re getting divorced.”
Marion’s laugh didn’t make it much past her throat. She recrossed her arms and leaned her hip against the doorframe. Her father bowed his head with a slight, forced smile. “I got a phone call at the office a few days ago,” Philip tried again. “Have you ever seen that show,
Cover Story?
It’s sort of a news-type show. Kind of like
Dateline
but—”
“It’s trash,” Marion said from the doorway.
Philip’s face tightened, but he kept his eyes on his daughter. “A producer from the show called me. Apparently, they want to interview you for a story they’re doing.”
“About Jono?” Kathryn asked. Her voice sounded deflated and dead.
“Frankly, I’m surprised the media didn’t pick up on the whole thing earlier,” Philip said.
“There was an article in the
Chronicle
,
if I remember correctly,” Marion cut in, her tone implying that her memory rarely failed her. Kathryn took bitter note of the fact that Marion still acted as if she had shouldered the bulk of the trauma Kathryn had been through.
“The woman’s name is Heidi Morse.” Philip continued. “And the only reason she called me is because she was looking for your phone number at Atherton. The school refuses to give out student phone numbers, but from what she said, it’s only a matter of time before she gets her hands on a copy of the directory. Now, we have several options here—”
“Your father’s leaving out that this show is repugnant. It’s paternity suits and white trash in trailer parks.”
Philip grimaced at his wife, who wasn’t deterred by her husband’s anger. At least some things don’t change, Kathryn thought. She pushed herself off the bed and went to the window, looking for solace from the dark gulf of the Golden Gate passing under the spotlit towers of the bridge.
“This
woman
may have told your father that they’re determined to do a balanced piece, which is what your father is about to tell you. But it doesn’t change the fact that the show is lurid, sensational, and cheap, and you should distance yourself from all of this as much as possible.”
“This is exactly what we agreed not to do, Marion.”
“This isn’t about what
we
do,” Marion retorted.
“This is your mother’s roundabout way of saying it’s your decision.”
Her parents’ gazes were both on her, her father’s slightly pleading and distressed, showing the wear and tear of having to bring steadiness and composure to a situation that had threatened to tear away at his only child’s mental fabric, her mother’s etched by the irritated impatience that had been her sole defense against the specter of losing her daughter ever since she had first learned of Jono Morton’s existence that previous May.
“No doubt this producer woman’s tried to get in touch with all the girls. It’s probably why Kerry’s been calling so much,” Philip explained.
“Kerry’s calling because she wants to know if I’m sick.” Kathryn was surprised by the steadiness of her voice.
Her mother’s eyes dropped to the floor.’ She shook her head. Philip shut his eyes briefly as if to say, Perish the thought. Seeing how her words had bruised them, Kathryn regretted opening her mouth.
“I’ll be downstairs,” Marion finally muttered, leaving the doorway.
Kathryn and Philip listened to her heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“What do you think, Dad?”
“I think I’ll get shouted out of this house if I say what I really think,” Philip told her, rubbing his forehead gently with open palms.
“She’s downstairs,” Kathryn said.
Philip lifted his gaze to her, smiling slightly at the prospect of being coconspirators against the woman responsible for the clatter of dishes in the kitchen.
“You have to talk to someone about it,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not going to be us.”
“I don’t need any more counselors asking me why I’m so angry. After listening to what happened, how can anyone honestly ask me why I’m still angry?”
“Of course, but you only went to a psychologist. Not a psychiatrist. Not a real doctor—”
“What would be the point? Ritalin?”
“Kathryn. Please,” Philip chided, without anger. “I’m not saying you need therapy, or that you have to make your pain public with this TV show. I’m saying that you have to find some way to let this out of you.”
Kathryn considered this as she examined the carpet. “Do you have this woman’s phone number?” she finally asked.
Philip got up from her bed and disappeared into the hallway. He returned and handed her a piece of paper, then left. Heidi Morse. Kathryn read the number as she crossed to her old desk. Eight one eight was an area code she didn’t recognize. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out
The Chronicle
article from the pages of an old notebook.
BAY AREA DRUG DEALER INFECTS TEN WOMEN WITH HIV
She set Heidi Morse’s phone number on top and closed the drawer on them both.
“Is this turkey?”
Marion looked at her younger sister’s husband as if he had just hawked a loogie onto the dinner table. “Duck.”
Kathryn watched her uncle shovel a forkful of creamed spinach into his mouth. “Did you shoot it yourself?” he asked, between chews, then guffawed.
“I don’t shoot things,” Marion told him, sinking back into her chair after fifteen exhausting minutes of sawing meat from the bird.
As a little girl, Kathryn had suffered from a powerful crush on Dale, her aunt’s husband. A former Stanford linebacker turned corporate real estate agent, he had first earned her adoration by deeming her worthy of learning the intricacies of that time-honored backyard game that males around the country treat with a reverence that only adds to its allure: catch. By the time she turned fifteen, sexual experimentation with her boyfriends had added a creepy dimension to her previously innocent crush, and she had set about snuffing it out. Now Kathryn saw her uncle for what he was, a blowhard who laughed at his own bad jokes.
Next to her, Kathryn’s Aunt Linda had barely said a word since they had sat down to eat, but whenever her husband’s mouth opened, her head snapped to attention as if she expected a shotgun to go off. Linda’s career had always been her excuse for not having children. Kathryn guessed the real reason was that Dale would be their father.
The meal had gotten off to a start with a discussion of Linda’s good friends, victims of the dot-com fallout who had just been forced to sell their two-million-dollar home for seven hundred thousand. Then the conversation had bottomed out into silences punctuated by long looks at Kathryn from every side of the table.
“Someone just ask me how school is so we can get it out of the way,” Kathryn said.
“How’s school?” Dale asked, with the bravado of a third grader shouting out the right answer. '
“Great!”
“Have you picked a major yet?” Linda asked, her eyes on her plate in front of her.
v
“Animal husbandry,” Kathryn answered.
Philip laughed into his napkin.
“We’ve decided to leave Kathryn alone on that front,” Marion spoke up. “I’m sure she’ll steer clear of whatever we suggest, so we’re actually improving our chances by keeping quiet and hoping she doesn’t pick something preposterous.” Marion’s note of wry humor had deteriorated steadily as she spoke.
“It’s been months since someone’s talked about me like I’m not in the room,” Kathryn remarked to a forkful of duck she didn’t have the stomach for. She ate it anyway.
“I read an article oh Atherton the other day. Well, skimmed it really,” Linda said. “I didn't know Michael Price went there.”
Kathryn groaned. Linda continued, “The guy’s like one of the most popular architects in the world and he’s done three projects for Atherton at half off. He must have loved the place.”
“I thought you said you skimmed it,” Dale said.
“Well, I just picked it up in the waiting room .. .” Linda trailed off.
“The waiting room of what?” Marion asked in her best big-sister voice.
“The doctor.”
“She missed her period,” Dale added.
Linda set her fork down on the edge of her plate. “Out of all the adults we know, Dale, do you think any of them would say ‘period’ at the dinner table?”
Dale shrugged at Philip as if to say, There she goes again.
“I’m not pregnant,” Linda added, returning to her meal.
“Either way’s fine with me.”
“Noted, Dale.”
Philip cleared his throat. “The duck's great, honey.”
“Thanks,” Marion responded distantly. “I hope our daughter eats some.”
Kathryn stabbed at a piece of duck the size of her hand and bit it in half. Linda shook with silent laughter. “Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant,” Marion said.
“
Cigarettes?
”
Dale asked incredulously. He shook his head at
Kathryn, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I thought Atherton was a smart school.”
When she leveled her gaze on her uncle, Kathryn was reminded of how, growing up, she had often tried to move objects with her mind. There were, after all, only five feet between Dale’s chair and the plate glass window, and from there a thirty-foot drop down the hillside.
“It could be worse, I guess,” Marion mumbled.
Kathryn felt her father bristle. Even Linda, the expert at ignoring her own husband, shifted in her seat uncomfortably. Dale was, of course, clueless. Marion attacked her duck with renewed vigor, feigning ignorance of the reverberations her flippant comment stirred in the others.
When she met her mother’s stony eyes across the table, Kathryn felt removed from it, spun into a private place inhabited only by her mother, a place where the woman could finally ask the question that was hardening her face: How could you have been so stupid?
Maybe it would take a few more years before Marion would ask herself what lessons she had neglected to teach her daughter, what she could have done to keep her from a man like Jono, or at least wise her up to what he really was. But for now, Kathryn saw that Marion’s attitude had not changed in almost six months. Kathryn could bathe in her pain and betrayal all she wanted, but Marion considered her daughter’s self-pity to be a useless distraction from the more pressing question. How could you have let yourself come so close to death?
“Excuse me,” Kathryn whispered as she rose from her chair.
Halfway to the stairs, Kathryn looked over her shoulder. Philip’s eyes had followed her out of the room, but her mother had braced her forehead on her palm while Dale sympathetically held her other hand. .
The sight of Marion accepting solace from a relative she despised was enough to tighten Kathryn’s chest With anger. But the scene also forced her to reassess her real reason for not wanting to return home. At Atherton, she had enjoyed being something more than the survivor of a tragedy narrowly averted by a stroke of good luck that her own mother suspected she might not have deserved.
In her desk drawer, she found her old address book, the one she had left behind in hope that once she was swept up in her new life at Atherton, she would never have cause to call any of the numbers in it. She could think of only one person in San Francisco who wouldn’t treat her like a near miss.
Pier 39 was clogged with a jungle of late-afternoon tourists. Kathryn was early, so she walked slowly amid the din of shutter-clicks and the voices of parents urging their children out of one last gift shop. The Friday afternoon sunlight parted the clouds over the bay, revealing patches of blue that would soon be lost to night. Increasingly cold gusts of wind off the water hinted at the impending dusk.
She found an empty bench in front of a kite shop and took a seat, puffing on a Camel as she watched a group of Asian tourists have their pictures taken with a blonde, blue-eyed little boy who to them was an exotic, Aryan wonder. His mother stood close by, her fixed smile nervous and wary.
When they were little girls, Kerry’s father, Ernest, had begrudgingly taken them to the pier every Saturday afternoon, all the while grumbling about the mini-conglomerate of tourist traps that made up a false city within a real one. She and Kerry usually managed to lose Ernest to an empty bench and a copy of the
Guardian
while they made their way down the pier to an old dress shop buried at the end. There they would nominate choices for their wedding gowns under the supervision of the elderly proprietor, who was thrilled to have two females in her store who hadn’t yet lost their taste for marriage. Kathryn wondered if the shop was still there.