Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

In Yellow Springs, good vibes bubble up.

  —Flyer Izzy pocketed on her first visit to the YS real estate office, on a whim while waiting for Penny to finish browsing boutiques for bridesmaid gifts

  The doorbell was ringing.

  Not just ringing. Insisting that she answer.

  Izzy was cocooned in bed, the blinds drawn against the midday sun, still wearing only the tank top and underwear she’d slept in. Cary Grant was on the TV screen, sexy in black and white. Her popcorn, soda, and half-eaten bag of chocolate chips were in reach on her bedside table. She’d taken more NyQuil, just for the fog of it. She didn’t want to move, had no reason to.

  It rang again. Whoever it was was not about to give up. Grudgingly, she surveyed the floor for the yoga pants she’d discarded there last night.

  She was supposed to be at work. It was Tuesday, after all. But when her alarm had pulled her crudely from sleep too early that morning, she’d been stunned to discover tears flooding her cheeks in the darkness. It had taken a moment to orient herself. She’d been dreaming that she was standing silently next to Josh high on a balcony, waves crashing onto the beach below them in the moonlight, watching the stars fall one by one from the sky into the sea.

  The world, ending. Her world, ending. That was the stuff her dreams were made of.

  For a few minutes, she’d lain sniffling into her pillow, suffocating in self-pity and trying to convince herself that her subconscious mind had developed a severely exaggerated penchant for melodrama. When that didn’t work, when she was unable to shake the dream, to quell the panic rising that her life really might be at the point of her own personal apocalypse, she’d decided that for once she couldn’t face it—not today of all days: the day of the damn pregnancy party. Pregnancy party. Since when was that even a thing? Why did Penny seem to get her own custom-made neighboring universe in which to live? She had reached for her phone, groggily called in sick to work, found a bottle of nighttime cold medicine in the bathroom cabinet, drank a double dose, and went back to sleep.

  When she came to—an hour ago? two?—the sun was high in the sky, and her shame rose with it. Her excuse for skipping work had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as excuses were wont to do—the illness of self-loathing was worse than any virus. Her head dizzy from the medicine, her stomach roiling from the emptiness, she texted Penny that she was ill and so sorry she couldn’t make the celebration tonight. Then she slunk down to the kitchen for something to right her blood sugar. She tried to make toast, but a fuse blew, and she left the bread there, defeated. Something needed to be rewired in this house. Something needed to be rewired in her life. She was ill equipped to fix any of it, in over her head. Never had it been so clear that running away had only made things worse. Funny how it had taken a dream, of all things, to finally do her in. Her eyes fell on Clara’s Talk of the Town DVD on the counter, and thus with her arms full of unhealthy choices she hauled herself upstairs to crawl back under the covers. Where she belonged.

  The uselessness, though, even now, was an unfamiliar skin; just a half day in it left her squirming, restless. How hard could fuses and circuits and whatever the hell was haywire in her kitchen really be? What would she ever gain by being this easily discouraged—especially if the house really was the metaphor for her life that it suddenly seemed to be? A tentative how-to search on her tablet led to another. Maybe this was the way to decipher home ownership woes—with junk food and old movies and a string of hours she had already committed to wasting. She wasn’t about to jump up and attempt a fix just now, but thinking on it—well, that was becoming her specialty.

  But then came this ringing, followed now by impatient knocking. It wouldn’t let up. Her pants were nowhere. Fine, then. She pulled the blanket off her bed, gathered it around her, and padded down to the front door.

  She had it halfway open before she realized her mistake.

  She hadn’t seen Josh since the day the whole family helped her move in, and seeing him now, alone on her doorstep, brought back the sense of a bad omen that she’d awoken with. The force of it hit her again, how the stars had fallen out of the sky. And what had the dream version of Izzy done? What had her mind’s conjured version of Josh managed? They’d both just watched their world come crashing down. Even in her wildest dreams, she couldn’t turn to him and make him really see her.

  She squinted and blinked at him. The sunlight was unconscionably bright.

  He took a step back. “Oh,” he said, holding his palms out. Don’t shoot. “Sorry. I had this crazy idea you weren’t really sick.” She followed his eyes to her hand, clasped around not just the blanket but also, to her surprise, a wad of soggy tissues. Oh, God, what must she look like? As her eyes adjusted to the light, she registered the wild mess of hair in her peripheral vision.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” she said. “Better keep your distance.”

  Josh must have come already dressed for tonight’s festivities. She recognized his light zip-necked sweater from the rehearsal dinner. His hair was artfully misarranged, his khakis ironed, his shoes shiny. Obediently, he took a step back. But he kept his eyes on hers, his head cocked to the side, as if debating whether to speak.

  She’d been down with the worst flu of her life when Josh and Penny had gotten together. They’d both been concerned, taken turns checking in at her apartment when she grew too feverish and lethargic to even answer her phone. She still didn’t know exactly how it had started. Only that when she came out of her fever-dream state, forty-eight hours later, something had already shifted between them.

  Between all of them.

  She wondered if he was remembering the same thing.

  “Penny was upset, when she got your message.” he said. “I figured the least I could do was—”

  Izzy raised an eyebrow, and his voice trailed off. She wasn’t sure what was worse—that he had suspected she was feigning sickness, or that she looked so awful that he believed her to be ill after all. But given that the unflattering truth was saving her from the horrific lie …

  “Iz,” he said finally, “am I imagining it? That you’ve been avoiding us?”

  She looked down at her feet.

  “Maybe I’m imagining the Penny part,” he said. “I know you’ve been tied up with the move. But I’m not imagining the me part. I miss you.”

  Helpless tears welled in her eyes, and she coughed into her tissue-filled fist, trying to hide them.

  “I wish I’d known this would be … I mean, I suppose I can understand, things getting weird between us. I guess I don’t know many people who hang out with their siblings’ significant others. Maybe it’s not … I don’t know, is appropriate the word?”

  She swallowed hard and reluctantly lifted her chin to even her gaze with his. “Some people might say that’s the word,” she said quietly.

  “But I thought we were different. We were friends first. Not just friends. We were … us.”

  The words were the ones she’d wanted to hear, but the tone was off, a sidestep to the left of the center she’d had in mind. It was a variation of the conversation she had both most longed for and most dreaded, with every pathetic ounce of her being, since the moment he’d started up with Penny. But everything about it was wrong. She didn’t just look awful, she didn’t just feel awful, she was in shambles—unable to look him in the eye without a deep and self-conscious shame clouding her vision, triggering her fight-or-flight response until it was all she could do not to slam the door and run back upstairs.

  And Penny was pregnant.

  She couldn’t think of a single thing that seemed safe to say in response.

  “I didn’t think I’d be losing you as a friend,” he said. His voice was a soft apology, barely more than a whisper, and in it she could hear a familiar note—in the same key of the hurt she’d been feeling these long months without him. “I thought I’d be gaining you as a sister.”

  He was almost begging, but he forced a laugh, an invitation to join in or maybe to correct him, an unvoi
ced Can you believe how foolish I was? or maybe a Can you tell me I wasn’t? and she thought she detected a whiff of bitterness beneath its olive branch exterior. Maybe, though, it was just sadness. She kicked at the doorstep, where the crushed pieces of her heart had been spread to be trampled anew. “I honestly thought it would be better,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “You were already my sister. But now you really are—and now you’re really not. I can’t say I understand why it has to be this way. Does it, Iz? Can we fix it?”

  She licked her cracked lips.

  She had no choice but to speak. “I…”

  Josh looked at her, expectant. Waiting.

  “I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you,” she choked out. “On the baby.”

  It was not the right thing for her to say in this situation, but it was a right thing for a person to say, at some point, and so it came to her, stupidly and all bent, in a moment when every other possible response seemed unequivocally wrong. Her voice didn’t sound congratulatory—more like one of those robotic assistants that come programmed into cell phones. He looked at her with disbelief. That’s how you’re going to play this? As if I didn’t say anything at all?

  She looked back at him helplessly. And she could see the Josh she loved shutting down, replacing himself before her eyes with a polite stranger who’d married her sister. Which was exactly what she’d treated him as. How else would she have him act?

  “Thanks,” he said finally.

  “I really am sorry I’m sick. I hate to miss the party.”

  The polite stranger nodded and took another step back. “Best not to force it. The doctor did warn us that Penny’s immune system would be compromised right now.”

  Compromised. Their continued friendship was not necessarily inappropriate, but it was definitely compromised. That was the word he’d been looking for. No point in saying so now.

  As he turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of his mouth—and it gave him away, called her back. Because it didn’t belong to the stranger. It belonged to Josh. And it was twitching the way it always did when his mind was busy working over a problem. She had a flash of him studying on the floor of her dorm room, his baseball cap turned backward. Driving in bumper-to-bumper rush hour, late for a sold-out concert they’d paid too much for. Sitting in the hospital waiting room the night his grandmother had a stroke. Watching those stars fall in her dream.

  “Come back,” she said, her voice tortured. Breaking.

  He turned, slowly.

  She faltered.

  “You and Penny should come back. Once I’m well. We can go to the glen—” She caught herself. They both knew Penny didn’t really hike. “We can … get drinks at the tavern. Before it gets too cold to sit outside.”

  “Penny can’t drink anymore, but—”

  Izzy closed her eyes. How much more ridiculous could she get? “We can go to brunch!” She sounded like her mother, who had a habit of clasping her hands together joyfully and blurting out things no one wanted to do. Wouldn’t it be lovely to drop in on Mrs. Sims? Her son doesn’t visit much, you know. And she’s got that gorgeous parlor that never gets used!

  “Yeah.” He looked around, and she cringed as she saw his eyes fall on her car parked in her driveway. Her taillight was gleaming new, but the area around it looked to have been in a fight with a tiger. “Yikes. Were you in an accident? Everything okay?”

  The longer he stayed, the worse this was going to get.

  “It was just some dumb thing.” He was staring at her. “Just a flesh wound,” she managed, one of their favorite movie quotes, and he rewarded her with a small smile.

  “If you say so. Almost forgot.” He held out a bundle he must have grabbed from her mailbox—junk envelopes, catalogs, some sort of rudimentary-looking newspaper she hadn’t subscribed to but would probably get billed for. It was defeating, how things you didn’t want to deal with could show up at your doorstep anyway.

  She didn’t linger to watch him leave. She closed the door and retreated to the kitchen, the bundle of mail still warm from his hands. She hugged it to her ferociously as she gave in to the fresh tears that had been threatening. Then, with a flick of her arm, she dropped it in the recycling bin as if it were on fire.

  16

  Most courts use the “best interests of the child” test to determine whether to award a stepparent requested visitation. Courts review whether continuing the child’s relationship with a stepparent enhances the child’s life and improves his or her welfare. If the answer is “yes,” visitation is awarded.

  —Passage highlighted by Paul Kirkland in a “Rights of Stepparents in Custody and Visitation” brochure, with a question mark doodled in the margin

  “I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Clara whispered. Benny kept on as if he hadn’t heard her. He dashed through the darkness, closing the gap between their yard and Paul and Kristin’s with a few long strides, and ducked behind the Kirklands’ detached garage, motioning impatiently for her to follow. She stole a glance through the narrow gap between the trees and out toward the street, where reporters, copies of The Color-Blind Gazette in hand, were too slowly packing up their vans in the wake of a stern admonishment from Detective Marks. “There is literally nothing to see here,” Clara had heard her booming. “You can do your reporting without further distressing these families.” Beyond them, Izzy’s house was dark save for a single upstairs window, and Clara couldn’t help wondering if Izzy was hiding up there—possibly even from her. She had no idea what any of her neighbors were going to think of this, what they were going to think of her, though she’d received confused, alarmed, “What the hell?” texts from Randi and Rhoda and promised to fill them in later. First, she had to deal with Paul.

  “Come on!” Benny hissed. She was trying his patience. She’d called him at work and given him the short version of her afternoon with Hallie, Natalie, and Detective Bryant, but that hadn’t padded his shock at arriving home to the chaos assembled outside. The reporters had yelled questions at him as he slunk up the walk in a posture that broke Clara’s heart with its un-Benny-ness. All she could do was watch helplessly through the window. “Mr. Tiffin, were the Kirklands clients of your accounting firm?” “Mr. Tiffin, what do you make of your wife’s involvement with the case?” “Is it true that your wife was with Kristin Kirkland the night before she disappeared?” “If she wanted to be a whistle-blower, why this neighborhood newspaper? Why not do an interview with us?” “What else does she know?”

  Clara took a deep breath, patted her jeans pockets to be sure the baby monitors were snug, and leaped ungracefully across the grass, knocking into her husband behind the garage wall and breaking her fall with a fistful of his shirt. “Too bad the cameras didn’t get a shot of that,” he muttered. “It would lay to rest the questions of your stealth.” She punched his arm. Benny would do this, forcing jokes to pretend he wasn’t upset when he really was—and usually, his going through the motions would stick. He wouldn’t be upset anymore. She wasn’t sure about this time, though. He hadn’t said he held her responsible for getting them pulled into this, but he hadn’t said he didn’t, either.

  A distinctly autumnal chill had descended at sunset, and Clara’s shiver of anticipation doubled in intensity. The last of the summer’s locusts chorused as she and Benny peeked around the corner toward the sliding glass doors to Paul’s kitchen. The new back window gleamed, its pane standing apart from the weathered tone of the others, and the effect was one of someone trying too hard to blend in, failing to recognize that nothing about perfection was normal.

  He was seated with his back to them at the table, alone, a lowball glass in front of him filled with ice and a brownish liquid. Bourbon, maybe. Clara didn’t want to be here. She knew it had to be done—Benny was right about that. But still …

  She didn’t want to be here.

  “I don’t feel right about sneaking up on him this way,” she said, stalling.

  “It’s not like we can knock on the f
ront door.”

  “But maybe over the phone…”

  He gently pressed her forward, out of the shadows into the expanse of grass illuminated by the lights of the house. She untucked her hair from behind her ear and let it fall over her face, a futile attempt to hide behind it somehow, and headed toward the low back porch with Benny half a step behind her. The wooden stairs creaked, and Paul turned and caught sight of them before they could knock. Quickly, he stood. He was wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants and had swapped his contacts for glasses. Though he wasn’t exactly disheveled, it was so foreign to see him dressed down that she felt a bit taken aback, as if they’d come upon him in an intimate moment.

  Which, of course, they had. Sometimes solitude was the most intimate thing of all.

  His face registered nothing—not surprise, not displeasure, not dread—as he crossed to the door and slid it open. He and Clara stared wordlessly at each other.

  “Hey, man,” Benny began. “We can’t tell you how awful we feel about this. We wanted to clear the air—” Paul stepped aside and gestured toward the kitchen table. Benny filed in obediently, and Clara followed.

  “Join me for a drink? Scotch? Beer?”

  “No thanks,” Benny said. “Long day at the office tomorrow.”

  “Clara? Come on, it’s bad form to let a neighbor drink alone.” She understood that this was a test of some sort. She also understood what he might have added but didn’t: Don’t tell me you have somewhere to be tomorrow. You’re right over there. All day. Right next to me.

  “A beer would be great,” she managed, and as Paul made for the fridge, Benny shot her a look. She flipped her palms open in a way that she hoped conveyed, in the subtle language developed over years of marriage, that she had no fucking clue what he expected her to do.

  “What the hell,” Benny called after him. “Make it two.”

  Paul opened the bottles and handed one to each of them. “I have cookies, casseroles, you name it,” he said, tilting his head toward a cluster of Tupperware on the counter. “Any takers?” They shook their heads, and he slid back into his seat. “I went back to work yesterday and today. Only half days, but better than just sitting here. The nurses don’t know what to do but overfeed me. Then again, depending on what they make of that little gazette, this may be the last of the meals on wheels.” His voice was casual but pointed.