Deep Down True

by Juliette Fay

  “Stelly! Where’s Stelly? Get your butt over here, son! Did you come to play or knit mittens?”

  “Mitten knitting” was a catchall phrase for Coach Ro, indicating anything that wasn’t football. A boy ran over, his bright blue T-shirt dangling down from under his practice jersey. That was Grady’s shirt, Dana was sure of it. Coach Ro was so busy roaring at the boys he hadn’t learned their names! Maybe Coach Ro had had his own helmet thumped a few too many times. Then it occurred to her—Stelly was short for Stellgarten.

  “All RIGHT, now.” He grabbed Grady’s face mask and positioned him next to the quarterback. “Timmy’s gonna take the snap. And he’s gonna hand it off to YOU, and you are NOT going to drop it. You are going to run like your PANTS are on fire to the end zone! You with me?” Grady’s helmet bobbed up and down. “Lemmehearyousay YES!” bawled the coach.

  “YES!” came Grady’s high-pitched howl.

  Then the play was in motion, and the disorderly gaggle of youngsters suddenly transformed into two focused, goal-driven teams. For about six seconds. And then Grady’s blockers seemed to forget they had anything else to do but ram their friends or straggle toward their water bottles. The opposing team swarmed toward Grady, who’d been running back toward his own team’s goal line. One boy yanked at his practice jersey, pulling him down from behind. Then boys from both teams began leaping on top of them until there was a pile of bodies about three feet high. With Grady at the bottom. Dana let out a panicked, “Oh, my God!”

  “Get up, you baboons! Get off him!” boomed Coach Ro, grabbing players by their shoulder pads and heaving them to the side. “Stelly, you okay? You’re fine, right?”

  Dana began to rush toward Grady but got only a step or two before a hand grasped her forearm. “You know you can’t go to him,” said the voice behind her. Dana turned to see Amy Koljian, Timmy the quarterback’s mother. “Coach will wave you over if it’s bad,” Amy said with a knowing nod.

  “But he could be hurt!” Easy for Amy to be calm. Her son was now sitting off to the side, chewing on his mouth guard like he hadn’t been fed in a week.

  “No parents on the field unless Coach says,” Amy chided. “Grady’ll be embarrassed if you go.”

  “Coach says?” said Dana. “Coach doesn’t even know his first name!”

  Amy motioned toward them. “See?” she said smugly. “He’s fine.” Grady was sitting up now, air heaving in and out of his little body. Dana willed him to look at her, to assure him of her presence. His helmet turned in her direction, and then he slowly got up. Coach thumped him on the shoulder. “All right, you knuckleheads, what the heck was THAT?” he yelled.

  “God, I hate football,” Dana breathed.

  Amy chuckled beside her. “New football moms are always so skittish.” Timmy was the youngest of Amy’s boys, and Amy enjoyed being the superior, experienced mother.

  Dana attempted a grateful smile. Grady certainly would have been embarrassed, and in the end he hadn’t been terribly hurt. His spine was still intact, his teeth still fit snugly in their gums. And yet Amy’s self-satisfaction made Dana want to wring her neck—or, better yet, mention the girls’ night out her friend Polly was throwing, knowing that Amy was not invited.

  This uncharacteristic surge of vindictiveness surprised Dana. This was not her. She never purposely hurt people’s feelings. And it was the very thing she’d drilled into her children since the formation of their first friendships: Do not discuss invitations. Do not mention that Cassandra is having you over after preschool today and you might finger-paint with chocolate pudding if her mother remembered to buy some. Do not announce that you’re going to Owen’s birthday party at Laser Tag Rumble and you thought all the boys were asked. Don’t even squeeze your host’s hand behind the monkey bars at recess and whisper, “I can’t wait!”

  Practice was over, and Grady walked toward her—was that a limp?—grabbed her thumb, and began towing her toward the car. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “That was a heck of a pileup.”

  “Yeah,” said Grady. “Can Travis come over tomorrow?”

  “Sure, I’ll call his mom when we get home.”

  “TRAVIS!” bellowed Grady across the parking lot. “WANNA—”

  Dana clamped her hand over Grady’s mouth, a lightning strike of parental correction. “What have I told you about that?” she murmured at him tightly.

  “No one cares, Mom,” he insisted, squirming away from her.

  Everyone cares, she thought. Even if they don’t want to go, everyone wants to be asked.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE STORY OF DANA’S DIVORCE BORED EVEN her. The lack of originality embarrassed her, and she would roll her eyes to hide her humiliation when people asked for details. “Younger woman,” she would say. “Ohhh,” they would reply knowingly.

  Of course, no dissolution of a fifteen-year marriage could be dismissed with such a simple explanation. Yes, he had been unfaithful, but Dana had forgiven him for countless things over the years, and she would have taken him back. It was Kenneth who had pushed for the divorce, saying that his love for her had never reached the same intensity he now felt for this new person. “It’s my best chance for happiness,” he’d told her.

  Even so, he seemed disappointed in Dana’s resignation to his leaving her for his twenty-nine-year-old hairdresser. Dana had exploded quite vehemently, she thought. But it soon became clear to both of them that her fury was more on behalf of their children than herself. How would they go on to have healthy, trusting relationships, she worried, if the king of their little suburban feudal system left the castle? Who would protect them from the advance of the Huns?

  Dana knew all too well about living in a kingless castle, and she had promised herself it wouldn’t happen to her children. Deep down she knew she had no control over the vagaries of life, but it had been comforting to pretend she had the power to keep this one heartbreak from Morgan and Grady.

  Her marriage had not been completely loveless, Dana was almost certain of that. There had even been potential for the You Are the One kind of love she’d read about so often in the romance novels she couldn’t get enough of. She had waited for that feeling, tried to nurture it however she could: romantic getaways, for instance, with different, yet tasteful, sexual procedures. Kenneth seemed to enjoy that very much. And she did, too, though her mind tended to wander when it involved some unusual position on her part.

  And she had listened so carefully. To everything.

  In the relationships she admired, both real and fictitious, the lovers were also the best of friends. They never stopped listening and offering excellent support and advice. She tried to do that. And she looked for evidence of it in Kenneth, reminding herself to be appreciative when he scolded her for not wearing a warm enough coat or suggested she might read something more literary from time to time. He was thinking of her. Offering counsel in his own way. More than she’d ever seen her own parents do for each other.

  One night when she was feeling cranky and he was being particularly oblivious, she had gotten up the nerve to tell him he was not meeting her needs. His reply had been, “What needs?” Dana wasn’t sure which ones, exactly, but she had them and they were unmet.

  “Sorry, honey,” he’d said, giving her a little one-armed hug. “I’ll try to do better.” Then he’d gone off to pluck a hair that had grown out like a tentacle from his otherwise smooth eyebrow.

  Dana was, of course, achingly sad when the divorce papers were signed. Kenneth had insisted on taking her to lunch at a French restaurant afterward, and she’d been too dazed by the yawning abyss of her official aloneness to decline. Her hand held the fork as if it were an unfamiliar object, a tool for which she hadn’t been properly trained. It slipped into the greens, the herbed tang of the olives drifting toward her, a foreign, assaulting smell. “No,” she wanted to tell that smell, “go back.”

  She rested the fork on the plate and soothed herself by running her hand across the table linen, brushing at the sharp crum
bs that had flaked from Kenneth’s slice of buttered baguette. Her skin felt cold and papery brittle, as if the bread shards might pierce her and draw blood. In the manufactured dimness of the restaurant, Kenneth’s face looked shadowed and bleak, as if he, too, might be contemplating the things that could cut him open.

  He cleared his throat, a barely perceptible gargle accompanying the brusque cough. His allergies were acting up, and Dana almost asked him if he’d taken his antihistamine pill. But it was not her place to listen for this sound anymore, or to remind him to take his medicine. Better for her to start listening to her own sounds: the dull, unwilling thud of her pulse, the high-pitched shame of having failed at something so important and so public.

  “Promise me something,” she’d asked over her salade niçoise. “Please don’t bring your girlfriend when you see the kids. Let them have all of you for the next couple of months at least.”

  “What do you mean, all of me?” he’d said, not insulted yet but ready to be. “You think I don’t give the kids my full attention?”

  “No, it’s just . . . I want them to have as much time with you as possible.” Dana was afraid that Grady and Morgan would lose their father completely, as she had lost hers. Perhaps Kenneth would be swept away by this new person, as her own father had been swept away.

  “I’m only moving to Hartford,” Kenneth muttered. “It’s not Mars.” The waiter returned to ask if they cared for dessert. Kenneth declined for them both.

  Dana had muddled through those confusing, elongated months since the divorce. She found herself squinting a lot, a vain attempt to bring into sharper focus this new life of single parenting. And she noticed an edge of sharpness creeping into her tone these days. Stay positive, she told herself, gunning the motor of her minivan a little harder than necessary on her way to the dentist. But that barest glint of serration remained ready to strike nonetheless.

  They’d been going to Dr. Sakimoto for nine years, since Morgan was three. On her first visit, Morgan had been too frightened to climb up onto the big vinyl chair by herself, so Dana had sat in it and held the shaking girl on her lap. As soon as Marie the hygienist touched her instrument to Morgan’s teeth, Morgan threw up.

  “Okay, sweetie, okay,” Dana had soothed Morgan while trying to clean up the mess.

  Dr. Sakimoto had appeared in the doorway with a roll of paper towels. “Not a problem,” he’d said. Dana had expected a high, nasal voice to match his short, slightly pudgy form, but his voice was low and solid-sounding, as if it came from the heels of his shoes. “Happens all the time, doesn’t it, Marie?” Marie hadn’t seemed so sure of that, walking quickly from the room with her hand over her nose.

  Dana kept apologizing as she cleaned and comforted Morgan.

  “Just a few tossed cookies,” he assured her, wiping down the chair. “A minor problem in the scheme of things. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Dana had sighed. “You’re right.”

  Morgan was almost twelve now and no longer wanted her mother anywhere near her in the dentist’s office, Dana mused as she reclined in the very same chair, a paper bib clipped around her neck.

  “Any change in health status?” Dr. Sakimoto asked as he studied Dana’s chart, propped against his stomach. He reminded her of a birdbath: short and squat, yet with an almost visible reservoir of good humor. “New medications? Rapid weight loss or gain?” he asked.

  “Yes to that last,” she answered.

  He glanced at her—at her face, she noticed, not at her body, where he might have tried to gauge for himself whether she’d gotten fatter or thinner. “Yes?” he said. “Loss or gain?”

  “Both. I lost fifteen pounds very quickly, but I’ve gained back about ten.”

  “Were you sick?” he asked. “I hope it wasn’t some fad diet.”

  “The Divorce Diet,” she joked humorlessly. “Not a fad, exactly—more of an epidemic.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said gently. “How are you?”

  “Okay, I guess.” It appeared he was waiting for more, so she added, “I’m still flossing.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because nothing’s more important than proper dental hygiene when life starts throwing punches.”

  He’s right, she thought. I should be taking better care of myself. I should work out more. But then she saw his commiserating smile. He was kidding, of course. She might still be flossing and loading the dishwasher and baking muffins for her children’s class parties, but Dana knew what was different now. She’d always been able to connect with others, laugh at their quips, make them feel funny even when they weren’t. These days, however, she never seemed to get the joke.

  That afternoon Dana was backing her minivan out of the driveway, with Grady in the backseat bobbing his head to his favorite inappropriate music station. “Getcha, getcha down on the floor, beggin’ for more . . .” the singer chanted over synthesized percussion. Dana hoped her second-grader didn’t really know what he was hearing.

  Suddenly there was unexpected motion in her rearview mirror. A large object—a car?—was slicing across the driveway behind her. Because its direction was reversed in the mirror, she swerved the wrong way to avoid it, then overcorrected and swerved back. Grady’s football-helmeted head banged against the window as they zigzagged backward down the driveway. “Ow!” he screamed.

  Dana slammed on the brakes and wrenched around in her seat. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he muttered, rubbing his elbow, one of the few un-padded parts of his body.

  Dana looked through the back window to see a rust-speckled orange hatchback parked by her fallen mailbox post.

  “Shit!” the driver snarled through the open window, a curtain of tar-black hair obscuring the face.

  Dana had a moment of fear. A curse-spewing stranger had careened onto her property. Should she even get out of the car? But Grady was already climbing out the sliding side door, heading straight for danger, as usual. Dana scrambled out after him.

  “You piece of crap!” the driver, a female, was hissing at the car. She appeared to be trying to shake the steering wheel loose from its metal column. “Uhhh! My life sucks.” Dana still couldn’t quite see her face, but the voice was familiar. . .

  “Alder?” said Grady, leaning against the dirty car.

  Dana’s niece deflated, her shoulders slumping forward in defeat. “Hey, G,” she muttered.

  “Alder, are you okay?” fussed Dana, reaching to open the door. “Does anything hurt, sweetie? Here, let me . . .” She took Alder’s elbow as the girl extricated herself from the ripped vinyl interior of the car. Alder’s gray T-shirt was printed with the vague red outline of a building consumed in flames. The scribbled lettering spelled out TORCH THE HOUSE.

  Dana hugged her, and Alder let herself be hugged. It had been more than a year since they’d seen each other. August, Dana remembered. Ma’s funeral. The difference in Alder’s appearance was startling. Her gingersnap-brown hair had been dyed black, and her clothing was bleaker than Dana ever remembered. Alder’s style had always been a multihued, eclectic look. Unconventional but appealing. Now she had a wispy listlessness to her, so unlike the sturdy, straight-backed girl Dana had always adored.

  “Can I live here?” Alder asked as they walked up the driveway. Dana’s worried smile fell.

  “Yes!” Grady said. “Definitely! Right, Mom? Right?”

  Alder gave him a slow shove that sent him sideways onto the lawn. He threw himself out for extra yardage, the plastic sections of his shoulder pads clacking against each other as he landed. “Oh, man!” He laughed as he lay on the grass. “This is so awesome!”

  Dana left Alder in the kitchen with a glass of sugar-free lemonade and drove Grady to practice. On the way back, she called her sister.

  “I should’ve known she’d go to you,” muttered Connie. “She blew off school again.”

  “The . . . uh . . . that creative . . .”

  “The Summit Creativity and Awareness School. I practically had to
prove she was the second coming of Salvador Dalí to get her in.”

  “Are you positive it’s the right school? I’m sure it’s great, but maybe it’s not the best fit.”

  “Okay, enlighten me,” Connie said. “What did you have in mind? Deerfield? Williston? Because she’s done at Hamptonfield High. That place is for single-cell organisms.”

  Dana bit the tip of her thumb. “I heard about the trig incident.”

  “Trigonometry! Trigo-freaking-nometry! Like she’d ever have use for that. Like it matters!”

  “Yes . . . but I don’t know if it was best to force a discussion about it at Back-to-School Night.”

  “When else would I force a discussion about it?” demanded Connie. “All the parents and so-called teachers were there, Dana. The whole paramilitary establishment!”

  “Well, then, uh . . .” Dana mumbled. Her sister’s rants were implacable and exhausting.

  “Well, then, uh? ”Connie mimicked. “You sound like Ma! If you start using bobby pins and Charlie cologne, I’ll do an intervention on you.”

  “I’ve always thought a bobby pin or two might come in handy.” Dana smiled, enjoying the rare opportunity to poke at Connie a little.

  “Don’t antagonize me—I’m in crisis!”

  “All right,” Dana acquiesced. “Does Alder say where she’d like to go to school?”

  “Like she knows. And who says high school is the key to happiness anyway? It was the key to a four-year stupor for me. Besides, Alder has talent. If she’d ever spend more than ten minutes in the studio, she could probably have a gallery opening by the time she’s eighteen!”

  “Mm-hmm,” Dana sympathized without actually agreeing. “Maybe it might make sense for her to stay here for a few days, until the two of you cool off.” She rolled her eyes at the unlikelihood that Connie would ever cool off.

  “Fine,” said Connie. “Let her stay. Let her live out her little suburban Abercrombie & Fitch fantasy. She’ll come to her senses—all six of them—soon enough.”