The Why of Things: A Novel (22 page)

The car is parked in a patch of mottled moonlight along the side of the road, and it faces away from Eve, so she can see the collection of bumper stickers pasted to the tailgate. Momentarily distracted by these, she wanders the short distance down the road to where Saul’s car is parked. She crouches down behind it, her elbows on her knees, and lets her eyes skim over the various stickers. U.S. Sailing. I’m Going Nuckin’ Futs. Old Crow Medicine Show. Keep Tahoe Blue. Cat: The Other White Meat.

And then Eve comes to the one that she is looking for: Consciousness: That Annoying Time Between Naps. She picked this one out with Sophie at a rest stop on I-93 two summers ago, on their way back from Canobie Lake Park, where Saul and Sophie had driven Eve and her friend Debbie Wasson for the day. Or Sophie had driven; Saul slept the whole drive up and the whole drive back. Eve and Sophie and Debbie had watched him, laughing at the way his head tilted slowly forward then jerked up again, and the way when he held his head back against the seat a throaty purr escaped his slightly open mouth. At the rest stop, the girls left him sleeping in the car, and inside, as they waited in line to pay for drinks, they surveyed a rack of bumper stickers and couldn’t resist getting this one.

Eve had thought that maybe Saul might have peeled the sticker off. She thinks of the other night, and the way he had his head resting in that other girl’s lap, the way he allowed her to drag her braid across his forehead . . . but the sticker is still there, and for that Eve feels a certain triumph on her sister’s behalf.

As she crouches there, remembering, she is startled by the cluck of a car door and then another unlatching, and suddenly she finds herself bathed in yellow light streaming from the Volvo’s interior. Instinctively, she lowers her head, and briefly considers dropping down and rolling beneath the car to hide, but before she has time to act, one of the car doors has closed, and she hears a gasp above her. She looks up; illuminated by the light of the car’s interior, she can see the body of a girl in cutoff denim shorts and a T-shirt with the drop-mouthed logo of the Rolling Stones. The girl’s head is in the darkness above the pocket of warm light shining through the window, but Eve knows who it is; the end of a long, brown braid hangs down across her chest. The second car door closes then, and the inside light goes off; instead of blissfully disappearing into darkness, Eve finds herself instead still clearly visible in the moonlight, as suddenly the girl in her entirety is, too, and Saul, when he steps around the side of the car.

“Evie!” he says, when he sees her crouching there.

“You know her?” the girl asks.

“Yeah,” Saul says. He frowns at Eve, the look on his face a muddle of confusion, annoyance, and surprise. “What are you
doing
here?”

“I—” she begins, mortified to realize how unbelievable the truth will seem; no matter
what
the two of them were doing in there—and Eve hates to even consider it—they will think that she was spying. “I didn’t realize you were in the car. I swear. I was—” She sighs in defeat. “I was looking at your bumper stickers.”

Saul runs a hand through his hair.

“I know you probably don’t believe me but it’s true. I swear.” On Sophie’s life, she wants to say, but she holds her tongue.

“Saul?” the girl asks, her voice tight. “What is going on?”

Saul touches the girl gently on the shoulder. “Just hang on a minute.” He takes a step forward and extends a hand to Eve,
who had hardly even realized that she was still crouched down on the ground. She lets him pull her up, acutely aware of his hand, which is big and firm around her own. “And you were out here because . . .” he prompts her, once she’s standing and he has let her hand go.

Eve narrows her eyes, feeling suddenly defensive; why
shouldn’t
she be out here? “I was
walking
,” she says, just as Saul had said to her the other night.

Saul looks at her. “Okay,” he finally says. “Fair enough.” He gives her a slight nod.

Eve blinks back at him.

Saul turns to the girl. “Should we go?” he asks, gesturing toward the gate.

“Yeah,” the girl says, slowly, skeptically. “Let’s.”

Saul takes the girl’s hand, and the two start to walk up the road. Eve watches them flash in and out of moonlight as they go, and they have just reached the gate when Eve remembers her whole purpose for coming out here in the first place. “Wait!” she calls. “Saul!”

Saul turns around, and Eve takes a few steps in his direction. “That’s not really why I was out here. I wasn’t really just walking.”

Saul waits.

“I—” Eve glances at the girl, then looks back at Saul. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Saul takes a breath, then nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Hang on.” He turns to the girl; they exchange words in low voices. Then he helps her over the gate and watches for a moment as she disappears down the path toward the quarry. Finally, he faces Eve, beckons her over, and she obeys.

“So why were you out here,” he asks, but without the inflection of a question.

“I was looking for you,” she says.

“And why were you looking for me?”

Eve frowns; whatever thought process propelled her out here with such urgency seems suddenly jumbled and unclear. “I—It’s kind of hard to explain,” she begins. “But the other night . . .”

“Yeah?”

“After it was raining and you snuck up on me in the woods?”

“I didn’t sneak—never mind. What about the other night?”

“Remember I was telling you about the quarry? The guy that drove in? Or supposedly drove in?”

“Yes,” Saul says. “I remember.”

“And the T-shirt I told you I found?”

“The T-shirt?”

“The Vic’s T-shirt?”

“Oh, right. Yeah?”

“And you said Vic’s was a dump.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which means you’ve been there.”

“Once, maybe twice.”

“But, so, what was it like?”

“I don’t know. Nothing special.”

“That’s it?”

Saul shrugs. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’ve been to Vic’s, it wasn’t great, I probably won’t go back.”

Eve sighs. “But you
could
.”

“If I was so inclined.”

“And you’re not twenty-one.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You got into Vic’s, but you’re not twenty-one.”

“There are a lot of bars in this town that don’t really care about that,” Saul says.

“Do you have a fake ID?”

“Eve, did you really come out into the woods at night to ask me this stuff?”

“Yes, actually. I did. Do you have a fake ID?”

“I do, yes.”

“Did you have to show it to get in to Vic’s?”

Saul lets out a breath that suggests growing impatience. “You’re not going to like my answer, Evie, but I honestly don’t remember.”

“Well, anyway, I need you to take me there.”

“To Vic’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Evie, first of all, even if they didn’t card me, I don’t think they’re going to let you in. Second of all—”

“I don’t even need to go in! You can go in and just ask a couple questions for me!”

“Second of all, I already
have
plans for the night.”

Eve does not answer. She slaps at a mosquito on her arm, wishing, too late, that she had not come out here at all. “Dammit,” she says, studying the smear of blood on her palm. Saul, she can tell, is watching her closely; she looks at him, hard. “What?” she demands.

“I don’t know what this is all about, Evie. I don’t know exactly what you’re after, but I hope you’re not going to get yourself into any trouble.”

Eve flattens her mouth, feeling suddenly foolish, lonely, and deeply misunderstood. But then again, here in the woods, part of her isn’t sure what she’s after herself. She looks at the ground, noticing the way the pebbles are casting shadows in the moonlight. She kicks one in Saul’s direction, then looks up. “I’m not
going to get myself in any trouble, thank you very much,” she says. “Anyway, forget about it. I shouldn’t have come and bugged you. And your
girlfriend
.”

Saul frowns. “Evie.”

Eve shrugs. She looks off into the woods, letting her eyes blur. She takes a deep breath, in and out, then refocuses her vision. “Anyway,” she says, blinking. “Like I said. Forget about it. I should go. And
you
should go.”

“I should,” Saul agrees. He hesitates. “You okay, Eve?”

“Fine,” Eve says shortly.

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

“All right,” Saul says. He puts an arm around her, pulls her to his chest, which is solid and warm and makes Eve want to shut her eyes right there and go to sleep, and the uncomfortable realization dawns on her that maybe it was
this
that she was after, not a way into Vic’s at all, which she now sees as the hairbrained idea that it is. “I’ll see you around,” he says after a moment, letting her go.

“Yeah,” Eve says, glumly. She swallows. “See you.” She watches as he vaults over the gate. “Saul!” she calls after him, and he turns. “I really was just reading your bumper stickers. I swear it.”

He nods, and half smiles in the moonlight. “I believe you,” he says. He turns away again, disappears down the path.

Eve stands in the road, looks up through the leaves and branches, which are black against the sky, and beyond them at the moon, whose face looks distinctly as if it is laughing at her. “Who cooks for
you
!” the owl hoots in the distance, and she thinks of Sophie, and suddenly she thinks with a sinking feeling of Eloise, asleep at the house alone. “Who cooks for
you
!”

S
omewhere up in the attic Joan is certain there is an old typewriter, which she has decided to search out to see how the process of writing might change if she cannot so easily press delete; this week alone she’s generated countless pages that all have vanished with the swipe of a finger. It is early—not yet seven o’clock—but she has been up for hours, unable to sleep for the yammering of starlings gathered in the trees outside and the oddly empty racing of her mind, so she’s decided to give in, get up, and start the day.

It is the first day of what is forecasted to be a heat wave; when Joan pulls down the attic’s hatch door, she can immediately sense the sweltering air above, which makes the hallway seem cool by comparison. She extends the rickety folding ladder and carefully climbs up; her heart falls when she emerges through the hatch and looks around. She can’t recall the last time she was up here, but it is more crowded than she remembers. What used to be an attic at their house in Maryland was converted into a bedroom by
the people who owned the house before Joan and Anders moved in seventeen years ago, and so everything of theirs that one might keep in an attic is kept here, and the space is filled to capacity. Trunks and boxes are piled in the middle of the room, where the ceiling is highest. A narrow path leads around this pile, lined on its other side by the smaller items that are stored in the space where the sloped ceiling meets the floor, and against the back wall, shelves are filled from top to bottom. Joan has no idea where among all this stuff the typewriter might be.

A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling just beyond the hatch; Joan pulls the string attached, and is unsurprised to find that the bulb has burned out. She doesn’t bother to go down to get a new bulb to replace it; there are pie-shaped windows at the attic’s either end, which are scratched and somewhat clouded, yet still let in a haze of light that is enough for her to see by. She wanders down the narrow path, scanning the labels of boxes in the center of the room to her right and peering into the low shadows at the loose things piled on her left.

There are several boxes of old clothes, one that contains suits of Anders’ from the eighties, one that contains baby clothes, and one labeled Winter Stuff. There is a box labeled Shoes, and another Grad School Stuff, whether Anders’ or her own she isn’t sure, nor does she bother to find out. There are all sorts of items tucked beneath the low slope of ceiling to her left. A pair of roller skates. Rusted cross-country skis. A folded stroller. A cardboard heart covered in purple velvet, which Joan made for Anders when he had surgery to remove a benign tumor from his lung before they were even married. A pair of tennis rackets so old that they resemble lollipops, with long, thin necks and small, round heads. A castle made of cardboard (Sophie’s), and another made of sponge (Eve’s). These were third-grade social studies projects done while the class studied
medieval times—an assignment partially for parents, Joan thinks, remembering the hours Anders spent on both girls’ castles, the girls themselves the slightly distracted scissor holders and glue passers and snack getters. Eloise, it occurs to her, will be in the third grade this year; soon another castle will join these castles’ ranks.

When she reaches the back of the attic, she spies the typewriter on the topmost shelf against the wall, between a dusty swivel-necked fan and a lamp that is missing its shade, and she is grateful, given the attic’s stifling heat, at how easy it was to find. The typewriter is not quite beyond her reach, but it is high enough that she worries it might topple as she tries to coax it down, so she looks around for something to stand on, opting in the end for a metal box that she recognizes as Anders’ old tool kit, which sits on the floor beneath the window. She goes to get it, pausing at the window to gaze out at everything below. It is early enough that the trees still cast shadows like fallen versions of themselves across the grass, on which dewdrops glint in the sunlight. The shape of the quarry looks different from this height, less like a rectangle, as she usually thinks of it, than a lima bean, but with sharp contours. The water’s surface is glassy still, though suddenly, as Joan is looking, slight rings of ripples start to spread from the nearest corner—the disturbance of a turtle, Joan thinks, or a frog leaping in from the edge.