“We’re supposed to exonerate him because you say so?” scoffed CJ. He tossed his napkin onto the table.
In the silence that followed, my heart did a little sinking.
It doesn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. It would be nice if they would accept that Daniel didn’t do it, but you don’t need their approval. You really, really don’t.
Then, Kirsten said, “I’m in.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said CJ.
“Zinny’s say-so is enough for me.” Kirsten was answering CJ, but she was looking at me. I felt so grateful I could have climbed across the table to kiss her.
“Plus,” said Kirsten. “It was high school. Remember high school?”
“I do,” said Avery, wearily.
Kirsten smiled at her. “There were also rumors that I’d had sex with the entire starting lineup of the boys’ basketball team.”
“Which was ridiculous,” I said. “Since all the cutest boys rode the bench.”
“Oh my God, Jack Maupin. And Dylan Dyer!” said Kirsten, fanning her face with her napkin.
“It was a travesty that Dylan didn’t start,” said Gray. “That kid could drive inside like a pro.”
“You’re telling me,” said Kirsten, fanning harder.
Everyone laughed. Even CJ cracked a begrudging smile. But then he said, “That’s different. It wasn’t just rumors. Daniel York was questioned by the police. He was a suspect, for God’s sake.”
“He was questioned, and they didn’t arrest him,” said Gray. “Presumably because they didn’t have a case.”
CJ made a disgusted sound and waved off Gray’s comment.
“Look. Just as an experiment,” I said. “What if we all assume that Daniel didn’t set the fire. Can we try that?”
I figured that if anyone could be enticed by the idea of an experiment, it would be CJ.
“He did it!” said CJ. “He got lucky, too, because there was that hidden fire wall between the theater wing and the rest of the school, built back before World War Two. If it weren’t for that old wall, the entire school could’ve gone up.”
“And more people could’ve gotten killed,” said Gray. “Thank God for that wall.”
“Someone got lucky that wall was there, but it wasn’t Daniel,” I said. “How do you know there was a fire wall?”
Kirsten rolled her eyes. “His stupid project. On the architectural history of the school. Remember how he couldn’t stop yammering on about that project?”
“Oh, right,” I said.
“That ‘stupid project’ found a permanent place in the school archives,” said CJ, and then added, “Permanent. For posterity.”
“I know what permanent means,” said Kirsten.
Then, in an instant, CJ’s moon-pale face went scarlet. “Uh, actually, though,” he mumbled, “I didn’t learn about the fire wall when I was doing that project. I somehow must have missed it. I read about it in newspaper accounts of the fire.”
“Ha! Shoddy research!” said Kirsten, wagging a finger at CJ. “Frankly, I’m stunned.”
“Stunned and disappointed,” said Gray, shaking his head grimly.
“We expect better, CJ,” I said. It just slipped out.
CJ slowly turned his head to look at me. Underneath the table, out of sight, my hands gripped each other for dear life. I knew—probably everyone at the table, even Avery and Evan, knew—that this was a moment of truth.
Finally, CJ said, “Great. I thought I’d have more time before you started giving me crap, too. Ever heard of a grace period, Zinny?”
My hands released each other. It was all I could do not to leap out of my chair and merengue around the room. Instead, I lifted an eyebrow.
“I’ve been here for well over an hour,” I said.
And then my old friend CJ slapped his hands onto the top of his beloved, silver-blond head and laughed.
“So getting back to Zinny’s experiment?” said Kirsten. “Assuming someone other than Daniel set the fire?”
“Fine,” said CJ. “Whatever.”
“Daniel saw someone that night. It was after the second half of the game had started. A girl in white pants and a hooded sweatshirt, and she was running out the back entrance to the building,” I said.
“Really?” said Kirsten. “A girl? For some reason, I always assumed whoever set the fire was a guy.”
“Um, isn’t that kind of sexist, Aunt Kirsten?” said Avery.
“You know what? It absolutely is! My bad,” said Kirsten.
“What kind of person would try to burn down a school?” said Evan.
“Someone angry,” said Kirsten.
“Someone with a vendetta against the school,” said CJ. “Like a student who was failing or suspended a lot or something. Or maybe someone from the Cole School, although they probably wouldn’t disrupt the game since their team was kicking our butts.”
“Someone who just liked to set fires, maybe,” said Gray. “My dad had stories about people like that. Firebugs.”
“But if that were the case,” I said, “you’d think there would’ve been a cluster of unexplained fires. I don’t think any others happened around here at that time. Or before that time. Or since.”
“So someone who hated the school, like CJ said,” said Kirsten.
“How could anyone hate school?” said CJ.
“Nerd,” said Kirsten.
“Slut,” said CJ.
“And, oh Lord, white pants? In November?” Kirsten shuddered. “A person who wears white pants in November is capable of absolutely anything.”
“You sound like Adela,” I said.
“I do not sound like Adela,” said Kirsten.
“White after Labor Day is for people who go to all-you-can-eat buffets and watch afternoon soap operas,” said Avery in a devastatingly accurate imitation of my mother.
“Wow,” said Gray.
“Holy crap,” said CJ.
“Oh my God,” said Kirsten to Avery. “It was like you were possessed for a second.”
Avery blinked and looked around, confused.
“What do you mean? Wait, did I say something just now?”
Everyone laughed. Gray rumbled like a car going over a bridge. CJ slapped his hands onto the top of his head. Kirsten tossed back her head and set loose a clamor like an entire flock of crows.
And I laughed, too, because my daughter was funny and because she made my old friends Kirsten, Gray, and CJ laugh and because, if only for that one glowing moment, it was exactly as if the twenty-year chasm running down the middle of our friendship had disappeared, closed up, healed.
Chapter Seventeen
Avery
Because, for months, she had been mired in confusion and conflict regarding her father, Avery had been trying to write her way to clarity. She wasn’t a natural writer like Zinny; she wasn’t really a storyteller like Kirsten, either. But anyone, she told herself, could make a list. So she listed reasons, at least one every day, to believe that her father was a good person and/or a good father. Was it possible to be a good father and a bad person? Or a better father than you were a person? Or vice versa? In the before—prior to her father’s getting fired—Avery probably would’ve said no. A man was just who he was, whether he was at work or in a restaurant with an eighteen-year-old girl or at home cooking French toast in the exactly right way for his daughter. In the after, she wasn’t so sure. It was one of the issues she hoped the list-making would resolve, but so far, it hadn’t.
The French toast was number six on the list. He dusted it with cinnamon sugar.
Number nine was how if a stranger was rude to him or to someone else, he wouldn’t be rude back but would tell Avery to remember that sometimes people just had rough days.
Number fourteen was how mad he got when referees made bad calls, at Avery’s games, on television, at the Sixers or the Eagles games, anywhere. It was one of the few times he yelled. Maybe some people wouldn’t count this as a positive trait, but Avery understood
that his anger resulted from knowing the rules inside and out and from his strongly developed sense of justice.
Number thirteen was how, ever since she was six, he’d taken her to Sixers and Eagles games. They’d wear jerseys and would drink soda—which normally she wasn’t allowed to have—and eat soft pretzels with mustard, and they’d cheer until they were hoarse.
Number two was how they could sit in a room or at the breakfast table or in a car together and be quiet. Sometimes, the silence could get uncomfortable, but mostly Avery liked it. Her dad didn’t bombard her with questions the way her mom sometimes did. There was a generosity in his silences. They invited her to speak or not speak; they gave her the choice.
Number twenty was how, on Sundays, he’d drive to the corner near the entrance to the highway ramp and buy a newspaper from a man named Jake, whose teeth were dark yellow and who didn’t look as if he had access to a shower. Her dad did this even though they got a different Sunday paper delivered to their house.
Number twenty-one was how he knew the man’s name was Jake.
Number one was how absolutely patient he was when he helped her with her math homework. Even when she cried. Even when she threw her pencil across the room or let her gaze leave the book or the piece of paper and wander to the ceiling. He’d said (how many times over the years? Hundreds? A thousand?), “I get it, Aves. Math is a bear.” Who said that: Math is a bear? And in the calmest voice anyone had ever heard? No one in the world but her dad.
The day after the dinner party at Gray and Evan’s, Avery called a meeting. In school, they’d been learning about South Africa: apartheid, Mandela, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Avery thought that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was surely one of the most splendid organizations that had ever existed. The victims of injustice got to tell their stories, and so did the perpetrators of injustice. No matter what side a person had fought on, no matter how awful their injuries or horrific their crimes, they could speak their truths, recount their heartbreak and loss, and, if necessary, ask for forgiveness. Amnesty. Even when amnesty was refused, they’d gotten to say they were sorry in front of everyone, to put words to the shapeless, overpowering regret that must have lived inside them. Avery believed that was worth a lot.
While she didn’t tell her parents, in Avery’s mind the meeting she’d called was a convening of her family’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She needed answers. And maybe the truth wouldn’t set them free or maybe her father wouldn’t be able to tell it and maybe, if he told it, she wouldn’t be able to grant him amnesty. But she hoped.
She’d considered having the meeting at her father’s apartment instead of at the house. If it went terribly, blew up in her face, at least it wouldn’t have happened in her house. Rooms had a way of keeping what had happened in them. But then she’d decided to have it at their house after all. It was the place the three of them had lived and been a family, where they’d eaten meals, opened gifts, done jigsaw puzzles on snowy days, and watched cooking and baking shows (which her father unaccountably loved). Their dining room table was where her father had sat, sometimes until late at night, teaching her math. What had taken place between her father and Cressida was part of all that, part of their family story, however much all of them might wish it weren’t, so that house, that table, seemed to Avery the fitting and just location for their family truths and reconciliations to unfold.
Before the meeting, Avery opened her notebook and read her list all the way through, once and then again.
Whatever else he is, she thought, he is this, too.
And she tried to believe it.
Avery hadn’t seen her father in almost two months. After Christmas, she’d felt more and more uncomfortable around him, until she could barely stand to be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes. In late January, he’d asked her if she thought some time away from him might be good for her, and she’d told him yes. Now, as he walked into the dining room and sat down across the table from her, she noticed he was thinner. Not in a wasting-away way. He looked healthy, younger. Her mother had told her that he’d gotten a new job at a company that manufactured and sold medical technology, including robots that could perform exquisitely delicate surgical procedures. At another time, Avery would have been eager to talk to her dad about the robots, but now, with things as they were, she had Googled them instead.
Her mother offered her father coffee, and he said no, so Avery’s mother sat down next to her father and clasped her hands on the tabletop. Avery noticed that neither of them wore their wedding ring anymore. Avery’s own hands were in her lap, holding on to the hem of her oversize sweatshirt. She focused on steadying her breath and on not jiggling her legs, and she tried to channel Zinny standing on the lip of the quarry.
Just do this, she instructed herself silently, just jump.
“I met Cressida,” she said.
Her mother sighed. “Oh, honey.”
Her father began turning pink, the flush starting in his neck, the way it did, and traveling upward.
“I—I’m sorry,” he said. “I hoped you wouldn’t have to run into her.”
“I didn’t,” said Avery. “I got in touch with her. I asked if we could meet. And talk.”
Her father slumped, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “Oh” was all he said.
“You did that?” said her mother. Avery had expected her mother to react with worry, because that’s so often how she reacted to anything that might be difficult for Avery. But instead she sounded proud.
“There have been a lot of really ugly rumors going around about her,” said Avery. “At first, I liked hearing those rumors because if people believed them, they wouldn’t believe bad things about Dad. But rumors aren’t the same as the truth, no matter how many people believe them.”
“No, they’re not the same,” said her mother.
“So I thought it was only fair to hear her side of the story, Cressida’s side.”
“I see,” said her father, in a tired voice.
“That took courage,” said her mother.
“And now that I’ve heard it, I need to ask you if it’s true, Dad.”
Her father tensed.
“You shouldn’t have to bother with all this,” he said. “You’re too young. Just please go to school, have fun and live your life, and let us handle it.”
“I’m sixteen, now,” said Avery. “I’m not a little kid. This involves me. It’s part of my life, too. And I need to know the truth.”
Her father stared stonily down at the table.
“We need to listen to her, Harris, to whatever she has to say.” She nodded at Avery. “Go ahead, baby.”
Avery took a long, slow breath and then nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
She said “you,” addressing her father directly, the way she’d planned. She took her time, recalling Cressida’s exact language, beginning at the beginning with Cressida getting the internship. She told them how Cressida had said that things got weird slowly, how she hadn’t wanted to believe what was happening. Avery told her father that Cressida said he’d email her at all hours and bring her little gifts and would tell her that he felt a deep connection with her and seemed to be thinking about her all the time. As she spoke, her father sat completely still, staring at the table. She described the wild rumors about Cressida’s dad and the blackmail plot. Her mom put her hand over her mouth and said, “Oh God.”
Once Avery got to the part where her dad and Cressida had gone to the vegetarian restaurant, she faltered and almost allowed herself to edit what Cressida had told her. But she knew that if she didn’t follow through with her plan to tell the entire story, she would regret it. A truth commission wasn’t one if you smoothed the truths over and made them prettier than they were. So she pushed through her embarrassment. She sat at that table across from her father and recounted the story of how he had professed his love for Cressida and of how he—and his proposition that they
meet once or twice a week—had humiliated her. Before she’d quite finished, her father pushed his chair away from the table.
“I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation to be having,” he said.
“Dad, don’t leave,” said Avery.
“Harris,” said her mother, in a warning voice.
Her father left his chair where it was, a few feet from the table, but he stayed in it. When he finally met Avery’s eyes, she saw that he’d lost his healthy glow and his new youthfulness. One conversation—Avery’s words, her insistence on telling—had taken it away. The sight of him old and weary hurt her heart.
“What do you want me to say?” he said.
“I want to know if Cressida’s story is true,” said Avery.
Her father leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table, and pressed his palms to his forehead.
“And Dad?”
“What?”
“You need to know that whatever you tell me I will believe. When Cressida told me her story, it sounded true, most of it anyway. I’m sorry to say that but it did. But if you tell me it didn’t happen how she said it did, I will believe you because you’re my dad. And I need to have faith in my dad. So please, please, whatever you do, don’t lie to me.”
“Oh, baby,” said Avery’s mother, her eyes filling with tears.
“Yes,” he said. “That story is accurate. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I hadn’t been feeling like myself for a long time, and even though what I did was very, very wrong, I didn’t quite understand that at the time. But that lunch, what I said to her, it was me hitting rock bottom. As soon as I saw Dale Pinckney watching us across that restaurant, it was as if I were seeing myself through his eyes. It hit me like a ton of bricks that what I was doing was terribly wrong. I felt so sick and sorry about how low I’d sunk and how close I’d come to doing something even worse.”
Then, he added, “I didn’t, though. I didn’t get involved with her. I stopped in time.”
“Dad,” said Avery. “She wouldn’t have anyway.”
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