Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  Hallie brightened, but her face quickly fell. “I’d have to miss school for that, though. It’s only weekdays, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “My mom wouldn’t go for it.”

  “Why not?”

  Hallie didn’t answer. “Thanks again for your help,” she said. “I’ll let myself out the front.”

  Izzy watched her go, feeling a pang of guilt that she would have been more likely to call her back, to try again, if Paul hadn’t been here. With a mixture of reluctance and relief, she waited until she heard the door shut, then went to see how he was managing.

  “What was that about?” he asked lightly.

  “Some school project. I don’t think I was much help, unfortunately. How’s it going?”

  He swung open the gate. “Ta-da!” The little door-shaped lock was perfectly in place, the giant key inside. He turned it both ways to demonstrate that it worked.

  “That was too easy,” she said, grinning sheepishly. “Like asking someone else to open a jar after I’ve, uh, loosened it myself.”

  “You did drill the holes right,” he said. “But this thing is ridiculously heavy to hold in place. It could be like its own fairy-sized gate instead of a lock.”

  “Exactly!” she said, clapping her hands together happily, and he laughed.

  “Well, you’re right that it was too easy. I’m here now, so what else you got?” He eyed the table she was about to assemble.

  “Oh, you don’t have to—”

  “I mean it sincerely when I say that I have nothing better to do,” he said. “Let’s pretend that’s not pathetic, okay? Plus, is that lemonade?”

  “When life gives you lemons…”

  Paul wound the cord around her drill and gathered the random tools scattered in the grass, and she unplugged the extension cord and went to retrieve the pieces of packaging, hiding a smile. As much energy as she’d spent telling herself that she was perfectly capable of doing these sorts of projects alone, she had to admit it was nice to have company.

  “You know, most people buy outdoor furniture in the spring,” he said, crossing to her patio and throwing the tools in the box.

  “Ah, but it’s on sale in the fall.”

  “Fair point. But it’ll need to be moved inside for winter. Sure you want to assemble it now?”

  “You know how it is, when you’re trying to get settled, to put your own stamp on a place. Plus, I’m trying to have a thing for my family.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  She was combing her fingers through the grass, on her hands and knees now. “Wasn’t there a second key? To this lock?”

  “I only saw one.”

  “I could have sworn there were two.”

  He crossed the yard and dropped to his knees outside the gate, patting around on the other side of the fence. “It’s not as if they’re small,” he said. “Only in Yellow Springs does a lock sized for fairies come with a key sized for giants.”

  She laughed. “One of the few benefits of being single is that I get to pick out my own stuff. Don’t ruin it for me!”

  She poked her head around the corner, and pain clouded her vision in a way that made her realize where the expression seeing stars came from. Paul moaned from the force of their head butt, and they lay curled on the grass, like football players downed on a field.

  “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” she groaned, hands to her head. “I don’t know how goats do it.”

  “They eat sweaters too,” he mumbled. “Dumb animals.”

  He crawled to where she was still in the fetal position and swiped her hair out of her face. “Let me get a look at that forehead,” he said softly. She looked up into his eyes—she’d thought they were hazel, but up close, she could see flecks of deep green. She’d read that it was the rarest eye color, the hardest to find.

  “You’re handy to have around, aren’t you, Doctor?” The thumping pain was subsiding a bit. She tried to smile. He ran a fingertip across the throbbing spot on her forehead, and for a fleeting second she thought he might kiss her. Instead, he touched his own.

  “We’re going to have matching goose eggs,” he said.

  “What will the neighbors think?” she joked.

  His eyes clouded, and she realized her mistake. She’d broken the spell. One wrong joke, and he was no longer a back-on-the-market man helping a single new neighbor in her garden. He was an estranged husband, a hurting father, a subject of neighborhood speculation, with an empty shell of a house filling the space where his home used to be just across the street.

  She supposed she should let the awkward silence descend, send him on his way.

  But it felt oddly safe being in the presence of someone who was even more unavailable than she was.

  23

  For Father’s Day, we hope you’ll enjoy this questionnaire where the children’s responses to oral prompts were recorded verbatim. “1. My daddy is good at: Fixing things (but only our things, because when he lets other people borrow his tools they mess them up).”

  —Laminated list from the Circle of Living, hanging on the door of Benny’s workshop (to remind him to stop being such a softie about lending people things)

  The dog seemed to sense he was auditioning for a part he hadn’t gotten yet, the way he pranced in circles, barking happily, as Thomas raced him to his tennis ball, launched it across the yard, and gave chase all over again. Clara imagined that she saw a gleam of mischief in the animal’s otherwise soulful eyes, as if he knew he was going to win her over, and when he did, he’d have a few surprises under his collar. The mischievous air should have pitted her against him, but somehow it only endeared him to her more as she and Maddie giggled and clapped from their spot sprawled on a picnic blanket in the center of the action. Today was Thursday, marking a week since Thomas had been asked to leave school, and it was a relief to see him smiling as if he had not a care in the world—which, at his age, was exactly as many as he should have.

  “Where’d you get him?” a voice called out. Clara turned to see Hallie cutting through the side yard, her backpack slung over her shoulder, and registered the rumbling of the school bus as it pulled away. Without awaiting a response, Hallie tossed her bag into the grass and jogged to join Thomas, matching his squeals of delight at the dog as if all had been forgotten. Clara sneaked a look at Natalie’s back porch, expecting her to burst out the door and call her daughter home at any moment. But until that moment came, she wasn’t about to send the girl away. Torn though Clara was between a knee-jerk dread and a genuine happiness to see Hallie, it didn’t matter which emotion would win out, because being the one to back away was akin to admitting wrongdoing—something she would not do.

  “We got him yesterday at the farmers’ market,” Thomas told her proudly. “Can you believe it? We only went for corn on the cob!”

  Hallie raised a disbelieving eyebrow at Clara, but crazy as it sounded, he spoke the truth. She hadn’t given serious, immediate thought to adopting so much as a goldfish until they’d come upon the rescue shelter booth. Clara should have turned on her heels when she saw it; the volunteers had a knack for trotting out the cutest contenders, and she and the kids had been instantly, overwhelmingly smitten. The tricolored mutt was shades of blond, medium sized and medium haired except for his head, which was disproportionately large and covered with what amounted to overgrown bangs. She’d had a stuffed animal that looked just like him when she was a kid.

  “I don’t know…” she’d told the adoption liaison, a kind-looking man whose tie-dye shirt and neat cornrows exuded an aura of calm. “Even if he’s as good with kids as you say, my daughter is only a year old. This probably isn’t the best time to introduce a pet. She might test his limits.”

  He’d waved a hand in the air. “Try him out for a few days,” he’d said. “On loan. He’s young, but he isn’t a puppy. I wouldn’t offer him to you if I thought he was more than your family could handle.” And thus Clara had found herself standing in the kitchen that ni
ght explaining the “loaner dog” to Benny.

  “Does this have something to do with how much easier animals are to rescue than people?” he had asked once the kids were out of earshot. She’d denied it, of course, though that might have had something to do with it. The rest had a lot to do with the fact that Thomas seemed to have found himself a new best friend.

  Hallie flopped onto the blanket and smiled up at her almost bashfully, a look she’d never seen from Hallie before. “I have some notes to show you,” she said. “For my next edition.” She started riffling through her backpack, and Clara stiffened, her eyes again flitting to Natalie’s house and back.

  “I’m not sure another edition is a good idea, Hal,” she said carefully. The first had brought the police storming her living room not two weeks ago—could nothing discourage the girl? Clara wasn’t sure if the emotion collecting in her chest was anger, admiration, or a little of both.

  “If I don’t do another one, it’s like admitting I did something wrong,” she said, jutting her chin out. “If that’s, like, my only edition, people are going to think I did the paper just to get that one story out. I think it’s actually better if I keep going, don’t you?”

  It was an uncomfortably sound argument, but even so, another edition was the last thing Clara wanted. No, what she wanted was to be off of her neighbors’ minds, and that meant being out of their mailboxes.

  “That might be so, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be involved,” she said.

  “Last time I didn’t run it by you and got us both into trouble. This time I’m trying to stay out of trouble. Please.”

  Clara had to hand it to her: If she was old enough for the debate team, she should definitely join. Hallie placed a notebook in Clara’s lap, and Clara sat staring at it, as if an alarm bell might ring if she touched it.

  Thomas plopped down next to them, dragging the dog by his collar. “Gentle,” Clara told him, noting that the animal did seem remarkably unfazed. She reached out to pet his head, and he licked her hand happily and panted softly.

  “Can you do reporting on our new dog, Hallie?” Thomas asked her. “He doesn’t have a name.”

  “That’s because he’s only visiting,” Clara reminded him.

  “If you were going to keep him,” Hallie began, looking slyly at Clara, “what would you call him?”

  At that moment, the phone in Clara’s pocket chimed several times, and she took it out to see a string of photos from Randi: a colorful braided leash, a hemp chew toy, even a crocheted canine sweater. “Moondance is now offering free delivery to favorite neighbors…” the text taunted her, and Clara laughed. If it was obvious to everyone else that the dog wasn’t going anywhere, she’d get Benny’s official sign-off tonight. She knew if he was truly against it, he’d have already said so.

  “How about Aloha?” Clara asked, trying to act as if she’d only just begun giving it any thought. She and Benny had honeymooned in Hawaii, and she loved how three melodic syllables could not only mean hello, good-bye, and love, but also could conjure a sense of hanging loose, of no worries. She could already see herself calling it out the back door, maybe even getting a little tiki-style sign to hang on the wall over the dog bed.

  “I like Pup-Pup,” Thomas announced. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking ahead.

  “Well, that’s rather … I mean, that could be any dog. Shouldn’t we choose a name that suits this dog?”

  He nodded gravely. “Pup-Pup,” he repeated.

  Clara’s mother had admonished her about turning decisions over to the kids, even before Clara had been confronted with the opportunity to do so: “I’ll never understand how people let their children rule the roost these days.” She’d been pregnant with Maddie, Thomas was a baby, and they’d just announced that Benny had accepted the offer to partner at the Yellow Springs firm when her mother had initiated one of their sporadic and generally irritating phone calls. The comment seemed to come out of nowhere, and Clara had mistaken it for a judgment of her decision to leave her job and stay home after the move.

  “Far more women stayed home in your generation,” Clara had pointed out.

  Her mother scoffed. “I’m not talking about the decision to care for the children. Of course you have to care for them. I’m talking about letting them call the shots. Melissa’s grandchildren were just visiting the complex last week, and I’ll tell you…”

  It should have come as no surprise that it wasn’t really about Clara. As a child, she’d spent evenings and weekends being dragged along to the step aerobics classes her mother taught to keep herself occupied around her father’s workaholic schedule. While her friends were taking ballet or playing soccer, she’d spent countless hours under protest in the corners of mirrored studios, reading her way through stacks of library books while trying to drown out the reverberations of eighties pop. If you’re looking for a physical outlet, you are welcome to join the class, her mother would say when she complained, missing the point entirely. She supposed that was part of what endeared her to Hallie: She recognized in the girl a familiar loneliness, a solidarity shared among only children with varying degrees of absentee parents.

  Clara reached over and rubbed the dog’s soft belly. Her mother also never would have allowed any kind of pet, so the question of who would’ve been granted naming privileges was too far-fetched to contemplate. Sorry, pal, she told him telepathically. No island style for you.

  Hallie shrugged. “I think Pup-Pup is a fine name.” She patted Thomas on the shoulder. “If you keep him, I’ll take his picture and put it in my paper. He’ll be famous.”

  “Wow!” Thomas said, throwing his arms around the dog’s neck. “You have to stay, Pup-Pup. You’ll be a star!”

  “Staaah!” Maddie yelled. “Wo!” Clara had to laugh. True, kids shouldn’t run the show, but there was no denying that the whole show was for them anyway. She’d grown used to going without sleep, trading in her alternative playlists for sing-along songs, and monotonizing her dinner menu. Why should it make her feel like she was letting go of something to hand over naming rights to a dog, of all things?

  She turned her attention back to the notebook and reluctantly opened the cover.

  At the top of the first page, she saw that Hallie had added a tagline. “The Color-Blind Gazette: Where No News Isn’t Good News.” “Get it?” Hallie asked hopefully.

  “I get it,” she assured her. “Clever.” It was.

  The first article, “Moondance Pays It Forward,” was about a new display of Damask weavings Randi and Rhoda had for sale, where proceeds would support Syrian refugees. “The first story came to me,” Hallie said importantly. “Rhoda stopped me on the street and asked if I was going to do another paper, She said they could use a way to get the word out. That’s when I knew I was definitely going to do it again.” Skimming the article, Clara could tell its reporting had been a good education for Hallie. She’d covered the history of the patterns in Damascus and beyond, and how the fine craftsmanship was a worldwide luxury, often imitated but never duplicated in the detailed beauty achieved by hand.

  The second was a little piece on the fall festival at Young’s Jersey Dairy and how much money it brought in for the farmers before the slow winter. Hallie had quotes from several workers, and Clara had to admit she was impressed. The third was called “Up to Date with Second Date Update” and talked about how one of Yellow Springs’s newest residents was the producer behind the segment, which did occasionally manage to produce a happy ending—though Clara had to hide a knowing smile at how conspicuously sparse the details were.

  “I told you there was good news to report around here,” Clara said when she’d finished skimming. “Nice job, Hallie. Has your mom seen this?”

  “Not yet, but I promised to show her. She isn’t too happy about me doing another one, but once I found out she’d enrolled in ‘Censorship in Literature,’ she had a hard time rebutting my freedom of expression.”

  Hallie was al
most too smart for her own good. All she’d have to do was cry “censorship” anywhere within a generous radius of Antioch’s activist-filled campus, and troops would assemble behind her as if she’d gotten hold of the Pied Piper’s flute.

  “Well, you’re doing great. You don’t need me after all.” It was a relief, really. “And it would be disingenuous to put my name on this. It’s wholly your effort.”

  She jutted out her lip. “You’re just saying it’s good because you don’t want to help me make it better.”

  “Not true.” Clara shook her head. “If you’re really fishing for feedback, just one thing—and for this no credit needed.” She landed her index finger on the last paragraph of the article about Izzy. “I don’t think it’s necessary to point out that the show’s producer happens to be ‘beautiful and single.’ I’m sure she’d appreciate the compliment, but aside from that, she might prefer you didn’t.”

  Hallie’s chin raised in a defiant posture that was becoming too familiar to Clara. “It’s not like it’s a secret,” she said. “I’m trying to help. Maybe someone will see this and ask her out.”

  “I’m sure she’s doing fine with that on her own, honey.”

  “No. She’s not.” Hallie’s statement was so firm that for an instant Clara worried someone had mentioned Izzy’s problem with her brother-in-law in front of the child.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked, hand on her hip.

  “Paul.” Hallie spit out the word as if it were a mouthful of gristle, and an uneasiness overtook Clara.

  “What about Paul?”

  “He was there the other day,” she said.

  “At Izzy’s?”

  Hallie nodded. “Helping her fix something. I think he likes her.”

  Clara could not recall ever having seen the two so much as exchange a word. “I’m sure he was just being helpful,” she said. “That doesn’t mean he likes her.”

  “I think it does. I could tell. He seemed kind of nervous.”