“It’s Betsi, isn’t it?” Mom asks.
My father refuses to confirm what she already knows.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” he tells her, zipping his duffel bag closed. I slip into the bathroom and shut the door before he passes so I won’t have to watch him leave us once again.
On Saturday afternoon, I meet Jack for burgers at Telly’s and tell him about the latest exchange between my parents. We take our usual counter seats, and Jack asks for refills on our Cokes.
“Are you mad?” he asks, licking a drop of ketchup off his thumb.
“At who?” I take a bite of the bacon cheeseburger, the juice running across my fingers.
“Your dad, I guess.”
“No. Sort of? I can’t really blame him right now.” I wipe my hands off on a napkin and begin attacking my fries as though it’s been days since my last meal. “Mostly I just feel bad for my mom.”
“She’s still talking to Betsi, right?”
“Yeah. Sends a letter every week, sometimes a package with books and magazines and stuff. My mom says she’s going to make the drive for a face-to-face visit next month.” This time around, the treatment facility is two hours farther away than the last one, and much more rigid. “They allow visitors now,” I add. “I’m sure my dad will be thrilled to hear that.”
“Are you going to go with your mom?”
I take an extra-large bite of my burger to avoid answering. Jack does the same, and we chew in silence for a while before he moves on to the next question.
“So what do you think he expects? That your mother will never speak to her own sister again?” he asks, and I don’t think he necessarily disagrees with the idea.
“In a perfect world, probably.” On the other side of the diner, I spot some of Barry’s old football teammates crammed into a booth. “Those guys keep looking over here.”
“Let them look,” Jack says.
“Don’t you know them?”
“They were more Barry’s friends than mine,” he admits. “Hey, Pres?”
“Yeah?” I say, reaching over to help myself to Jack’s fries.
“I don’t think it’s possible.”
“What’s that?” I ask, wondering if I can sneak in another order of fries.
“A perfect world.”
Despite Betsi giving me permission to tell all, she was the one who ended up confessing to my parents. As soon as they saw the wine bottles, my father set his grocery bag down on the hood of Betsi’s Jeep. “Go inside,” he told me, “and get into a hot bath before you get frostbite. Go on, now.” My mother shooed Peter away to a friend’s house down the street and started helping Betsi out of the car.
“Not again, Betsi,” I heard my mother say. “Not again.”
I followed his orders and filled the tub with too much bubble bath, sitting in the mountain of suds and listening to the sounds of their voices crashing into each other behind the closed door of the den. I waited for one of them to emerge, letting my skin prune as the water turned from nearly scalding to barely lukewarm. Once the bubbles had all disappeared, I gave up, but as I wrapped myself in towels, I heard the den door open and the sound of bodies shuffling around downstairs. Their voices were silent now. I moved into my bedroom, running a comb through my wet tangles with little impact until someone appeared in my doorway.
It was my father.
“How long have you known?” he asked. I heard the front door slam and the family car start up in the driveway. I imagined for a moment that Betsi had convinced my mother to drive her to Graceland, and I toyed with the idea of sprinting from the room to join them.
“A while.” I wasn’t sure if he was mad or just wanted a timeline. He sat down next to me on the bed. I couldn’t look him in the face or control the tears spilling out of my eyes.
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” I choked on my words but managed to cough up a few more. “I should’ve said something sooner.”
My father grabbed both of my arms and pulled me close, hugging me harder than he had in my entire life. “This. Is. Not. Your. Fault.” He made each word its own statement. “None of it. No one is angry at you.” I stayed buried in the cave of his shoulder for a while, his hand anchored on the back of my head, holding my wet hair.
“Does anyone else know?” he finally asked, interrupting our moment of silence.
“I don’t think so,” I lied, thinking about Jack.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to say—to Uncle Tim or anyone else—or if we’ll say anything at all. Sometimes there’s a good reason for keeping secrets. I hope you can understand.”
Yes, I can, I thought, deciding right then that I would never tell anyone about Barry’s note—not my parents or Uncle Tim, certainly not Betsi. Not even Jack. No one.
Later that night, Peter, our mother, and I gather around the dinner table for pizza from Giacomo’s. My father’s chair remains empty, but at least Mom has stopped filling in the spaces with her chatter about sixteen-hour sales and sightings of neighbors at the grocery store.
“Going to Hannah’s again tonight?” Mom asks, passing me the Greek salad that had been dumped from the take-out container into a glass bowl to make it look better.
“Not tonight,” I tell her, giving myself a generous second helping.
“Oh, are you babysitting? I keep getting my weekends mixed up.”
“How come guys never babysit?” Peter asks out of nowhere. “I don’t remember us ever having a guy babysitter.”
“That’s because we never did,” I say, throwing my napkin at him. “No, I’m not babysitting tonight. I thought maybe I’d just stay home and we could watch a movie or something.”
My mother sets her fork down on her plate and forgets her usual manners, asking with a full mouth, “You mean with me?”
“If that’s okay.”
She tries to swallow quickly so she can speak before I change my mind. “That’s a great idea. We can go to the video store after we’re done. Is there something in particular you want to see?” She wants so much to please and set things right.
I try to make it easier for her. “Why don’t we see what’s on TV? I bet there’s some old Joan Crawford movie, or Katharine Hepburn.” She sits quietly. “You like both of them, right?” I check.
“Right,” she says. Her eyes begin to well—just slightly.
“Mom.”
“Right!” she says, shifting her tone. “I think that sounds perfect.”
Peter falls asleep before the opening credits ofWhatever Happened to Baby Jane? finish rolling, and our mother isn’t too far behind him. We’ve all seen the movie before, but I stay glued until the scene when Bette Davis serves Joan Crawford the dead bird—even the sight of the covered tray can give me nightmares. I slide the remote out of Peter’s hand and turn off the TV, slipping an afghan over each of them and leaving before the bird scene comes on.
I shut my bedroom door gently behind me, wandering over to my bookshelf and flipping through the stack of Betsi’s records. Mom gave me temporary custody of the music and player, saying it was too fragile to try and ship to Betsi right now. I run my hands over the worn covers, studying the evolution of Elvis in the photographs. There are other records too, and tonight I choose one of my favorites, eyeballing the grooves in the record to find the song I want. I set the needle down in the right place on the first try, and the music quietly fills the room as I remember Barry twirling me around his kitchen.
I walk over to my closet, kneeling down and reaching through the hanging clothes until my hands find the small duffel bag. I pull it out carefully so I don’t disrupt anything around it, placing it in my lap and unzipping it to make sure the jacket is still tucked inside. I look back over my shoulder, but even with the music playing, there are signs of stirring coming from downstairs.
“Just once more,” I tell myself again. The jacket still has traces of Barry, his woodsy scent, and I am afraid of wearing it all away. But I slip my arms into it anyway, swimming in the l
argeness and wrapping the excess around my body like a blanket. The pockets are completely empty now—I hid all of those things away so no one would ever find them—but the varsity pins are still attached. I crawl under my sheets, listening to Elton John and falling asleep into Barry. Tonight for the first time, it’s not anger that takes me there.
Sunday morning I come downstairs just before 10A.M. and the house seems quiet, as if it’s still asleep. I wander into the kitchen and open the refrigerator, then drink large gulps of juice directly from the container.
“You know that makes your mother crazy.”
My father’s voice shocks me, causing the juice to dribble down my chin. I turn around and find him seated at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and reading the Business section of the paper.
“Jesus, Dad! You freaked me out. I didn’t know you were here,” I snap, wiping my chin.
“Sorry,” he says, smirking.
“Are youlaughing at me?”
“You are so busted.” The words sound completely out of place coming from his mouth, and I can’t help but giggle.
“Yeah, well…” I sit down across from him, admitting defeat. “Maybe we can keep this just between us?”
“You’ve got a deal,” he says, passing me theParade magazine. “Let’s call a do-over and try this again. Good morning, Presley.”
“What did you just say?” I ask.
“Good morning?”
“No. Before that.”
“Oh. A do-over. You know what that is, don’t you?” he asks, sipping his coffee.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I know exactly what it is.”
I stand up and pour myself a mug, waiting for him to object, but he simply mentions, “There’s creamer on the table.”
“Where did everyone go?”
“Your mother got an overwhelming desire to make chocolate-chip pancakes, but of course we didn’t have all of the ingredients. Peter insisted on going with her to make sure she got the right ones—”
“Bittersweet dark,” I say, finishing his sentence. “What’s the occasion?” Chocolate-chip pancakes are usually reserved for birthday breakfasts.
“I think the occasion is that thereis no occasion.”
I nod as if I understand, flipping through the pages ofParade and listening to my father shake his section of the paper into place. From the view out the kitchen window, it looks like it might storm soon, and I wonder whether it will pass over us without breaking or if the temperatures will drop with the rain. I want to ask my father when he got here and how long he’s staying, but instead I pretend to concentrate on a crossword puzzle, ignoring the definitions and clues provided and filling in each space with whatever letters come to mind.
My father stays for two rounds of pancakes, a light lunch of crackers and cheese and grapes, and even dinner, breaking out the charcoals and grilling bratwurst and corn on the cob. The rain holds off, and we are all still pretending it’s later in the year than it really is, drinking fresh iced tea from the plastic tumblers we use for picnics at the Pier Park. After the table is cleared and the dishes are tucked into the washer, I ask to be excused, mumbling something about English homework before I escape to my room.
I sit at my desk, placing my textbooks underneath the glow of the table lamp. Forty-five minutes pass as I stare at the faint blue lines on the piece of paper, trying to remember the order of words.
Dear Betsi.I write it for the seventh time in cursive, but it looks too formal and elegant. I decide to switch back to block printing, crumpling the piece of paper into a ball and tossing it toward my wastebasket. I expect it to fall onto the carpet with my other misfires, but I make the shot, earning two points. It’s a start.
I pull out a fresh, clean piece and begin again.
About the Author
Sarah Grace McCandlessis a Midwest native and a graduate of Michigan State University. She is the author ofGrosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence. After spending eight years in Portland, Oregon, she currently lives in Washington, D.C., and writes for several publications, includingDaily Candy, Venus, andMudsugar .
Also available by
Sarah Grace McCandless
In Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the new girl in town
discovers that social rank is determined by the age
of your money and the dryness of your martini.
“Sarah Grace McCandless writes with humor and compassion and honesty about the most embarrassing time in all our lives, those terrible years between the first crush and the first orgasm. No matter which side of the tracks you come from,Grosse Pointe Girl will hit you where you live.”
—Pam Houston, author ofCowboys Are My Weakness
Available at bookstores everywhere or atwww.simonsays.com
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 15
