Deep Down True

by Juliette Fay

  “You’re welcome,” said Dana.

  “Right,” Connie snorted.

  Dana pulled in to the driveway. Connie was right in a sense—Dana’s house, snuggled in the pleasant little town of Cotters Rock, Connecticut, had seemed the embodiment of all her homey fantasies. A center-entrance Colonial, white with hunter green shutters, it had a blooming crabapple tree and a stately front door. They never used that door anymore, though. They’d used the mudroom door by the garage since Morgan had learned to walk, her little shoes always muddy, her snow boots reliably wet.

  When she went in, Dana found Alder right where she’d left her, the lemonade untouched. “Did something happen?” Dana asked, settling into a chair beside her.

  “Yeah, my whole fucking pathetic life happened.”

  “Sweetie, would you mind toning down the language just a little?”

  Alder shrugged an apology.

  “Your mom said you’ve been skipping school.”

  “She’s driving me insane.”

  No doubt, thought Dana. “Well . . . it would be really nice to have you around for a few days.” She smiled at Alder, mentally deconstructing the hair color and the sour look. Little Alder. Smart, funny, spontaneous girl. The first baby Dana had ever held. “I’ve missed you.”

  A thin trickle of warmth flowed across the girl’s face, a memory of some former happiness. “What’s Cotters Rock High like?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 3

  “SHE CAN’T STAY IN MY ROOM ,” MORGAN TOLD HER mother after dinner. Alder and Grady had gone out in the yard to throw a football around. “Look at her, Mom, she’s all goth! Or emo at least!”

  “Emu?” asked Dana.

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Mom, that’s like an ostrich or something. Emo is . . . It doesn’t matter. She looks freakish. I’ll never be able to sleep with her there.”

  Morgan had never been a good sleeper, not even in the womb, and rarely slept through the night even now. Darkness and solitude seemed to be appetizers for a full-course meal of worrying about an English test, or whether her hair would come out right in the morning, or whether Kimmi Kinnear hated her. Sleep was the trump card, and Morgan had played it.

  “All right, she can stay in the TV room. But that means you and Grady both have to watch TV in the basement. With no fighting. You understand?” Dana bit the tip of her thumb. “I hope she won’t be insulted.”

  “Insulted?” Morgan snorted. “She’s sixteen, Mom. Trust me, she doesn’t want anything to do with a stupid sixth-grader.”

  “Morgan, honey, you are not—”

  “I know, I know.” Morgan ate Grady’s unfinished steak fries, her hand flying back and forth between the plate and her lips. “It’s just an expression.”

  “Dana,” said Alder, lying on the pullout couch in the TV room. She never used the more formal “Aunt Dana,” just as she’d never called her mother “Mom.” Connie felt the terms for “mother” were archaic and limiting. She’d taught Alder to call her Connie.

  “Yes, honey.” Dana tucked the bubble-gum-pink fleece blanket around Alder’s sharp shoulders.

  “I totally don’t want to go back.”

  Dana sighed. “It’s probably not a good idea for me to get in the middle of this.”

  Alder pushed the covers back and sat up. “Dana. She’s insane. Come on, you know that.”

  “Your mother is very intelligent and perfectly . . . She can be difficult and stubborn, but she’s your mother and she loves you. That counts.”

  “I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about that freakazoid school she sent me to. It’s not even a real art school! It’s all, like, ‘free expression’ hippie stuff. I kept telling her that, but all she cares about is creative flow, whatever that is. I’ve had it with her!” Alder shook her head in annoyance. “She doesn’t get it that high school is supposed to be boring and pointless. And now I can’t go to my boring, pointless high school, because I’m Trig Girl with the insane mother.”

  “You really want to go to high school?”

  Alder sighed patiently, as if explaining the rules of Monopoly Junior to a slow-witted child. “No one wants to go to high school. It’s high school, for godsake. But when you grow up in America, it’s part of the package—like a combo meal at McDonald’s. You might not want the supersize Diet Coke, but it just comes. Deal with it.”

  Dana pondered this as she smoothed the pink fleece. There was an unfamiliar edge to Alder that seemed recently sharpened against something jagged. The girl had never been cynical—if anything, Connie had indoctrinated her with a belief that her destiny was squarely up to her; conforming to the status quo was giving up. Might as well put on an apron and bake cupcakes for the rest of your life. “Cupcakers,” Connie would sneer about women whose lives revolved around their children’s oboe lessons, their husbands’ business-travel schedule, PTA fund-raisers, and hothouse yoga at the health club. Women not so very different from Dana.

  Dana now felt pinpricks of concern at the sound of Alder’s resignation. It could be any number of things—rebelling against her mother, or maybe some teenage hormone was joyriding around her brain, telling her to do something uncharacteristic. Maybe, thought Dana, she was just tired. Being different, constantly blazing a new trail through the obstacle course of adolescence must be exhausting. “Alder, honey,” she said tentatively, “are you all right?”

  Alder squinted at her in a show of bafflement. “You’re worried about me because I think I should be in high school? Are you all right?” Her teasing was a relief to Dana, who squinted back and gave her niece’s hair a playful tug.

  After sending Morgan and Grady off to school the next morning, Dana went to check on Alder. She was still sleeping, knees curled up, arms wrapped protectively across her chest. The delicate hollows beneath her eyes were a faint purplish blue, like faded bruises. She looked like she hadn’t slept well in months, and Dana didn’t want to wake her. She wrote a note on a pad of stationery she had from before the divorce. It said THE STELLGARTENS in jazzy script across the top, with their names—Kenneth, Dana, Morgan, Grady—written over and over as a border around the edges. Though it now gave a false impression of unity, it was handy, and Dana couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it.

  “Walking with Polly, back around ten. Cereal in the cabinet. Love, D,” said the note.

  The air was dry and cool, a classic October day in New England, as Dana strode down her driveway. She and Polly hadn’t been friends at first; they’d simply lived on the same street. One morning Dana had taken baby Morgan for a stroller ride, crossing Polly’s driveway at the same moment Polly had come barreling down, arms swinging, having been stood up by an unreliable friend. “No commitment,” Polly had huffed as she slowed to accept Dana into the current of her stride. “Everything else in her life comes first.”

  Well, yes, Dana had thought. What could be less important than a walk? Of course, she hadn’t expressed this thought. “Disappointing,” she’d said, heaving the stroller along a little faster, trying to prove worthy of this unexpected invitation. She hadn’t lived in the neighborhood long, had quit her job as an office manager at a Hartford law firm, and was feeling friendless and bored.

  “You’re pretty good with a stroller,” Polly had said. “The kid has a future in space travel if she gets that kind of ride every day.”

  Dana’s brain crackled with pride, thankful for any sign she was doing something right. Motherhood, she was finding, was devoid of those little indicators of accomplishment and appreciation: being commended at a staff meeting, or complimented on a new pair of earrings, or invited to lunch by co-workers. None of these things, or anything remotely like them, happened now. She found herself wondering if she were any good at it.

  How am I doing? she’d occasionally whisper to baby Morgan. Are you happy you hired me?

  Dana had soon become Polly’s most reliable walking partner, and eventually they started getting together in the evenings. Kenneth and Polly’s husband, Victor, had
clicked right away, and the four of them often had dinner together, commiserating about the trials of parenthood, chuckling over the antics of eccentric neighbors, their friendship growing more deeply rooted in the terra firma of their lives with every passing season. Ten years later, when Kenneth asked for the divorce, it had hit Polly and Victor almost as hard as it had Dana. Victor and Kenneth’s friendship survived; Polly’s loyalty was squarely with Dana. What would I do without her? Dana now wondered as she strode toward her friend’s house.

  Polly came down her driveway, windmilling her arms as if she were practicing the backstroke. “What a day!” she called. Though she was six inches shorter than Dana and pixielike in the delicacy of her features, she was a tough little walker, pressing their pace to the edge of comfort. Dana liked to ask Polly a philosophical or multipart question just as they reached the rise of a hill. Let Polly talk as they climbed. It was all Dana could do not to pant.

  “So what’s the verdict on middle school these days?” asked Polly. “Is she settled in now?”

  “Pretty much,” said Dana. “Did Gina ever have Ms. Cripton?”

  “Kryptonite?” said Polly, her short black hair bouncing rhythmically. “Yeah, she’s awful. Gina couldn’t stand her. Huge collection of plastic bead necklaces. Lots of pop quizzes.”

  “Morgan’s going to burst a blood vessel one of these days. She studies constantly because she’s so worried about those stupid quizzes.”

  “Tell her to relax. It’s only sixth grade.”

  “You tell her.”

  The women smiled at each other. Who could tell kids anything? And who was less worthy of airtime than the child’s own creators? Polly knew this. Her two children, Gina and Peter, were older and had wrung several more years of worry and fury out of her. Dana envied the fact that Polly never seemed to second-guess herself as a mother. She fought with her kids, interrogated them, followed them into the high-security areas of their bedrooms, demanding access without proper clearance. She occasionally threw food at them when she was annoyed.

  And for their part, Gina and Peter seemed to withstand this barrage with surprising nonchalance. Or they roared back at her, awful things that Dana hoped she would never hear from her own children. Dana had once been witness to Peter’s calling Polly “a screeching bitch” right to her face. Without so much as flinching, Polly had yelled back, “And how do you think I got this way? You think I was like this before kids? Not on your ungrateful little life!”

  While Dana could never be that kind of mother, she was impressed that none of them seemed too bothered by it. “Gina hates me,” Polly would occasionally mention, as if commenting on a passing patch of bad weather.

  As they powered down the street toward Nipmuc Pond, Dana said. “So my niece, Alder, showed up yesterday.”

  “Your sister Connie’s girl.”

  “Right. Sixteen, driving some beater car I had to get towed. Knocked over my mailbox.”

  “Nice.”

  “She’s a good kid. A little out there, but it’s not her fault. Connie isn’t exactly Carol Brady.”

  “What does she call us again?”

  “Well, not us specifically,” qualified Dana. She never liked to be the source, even secondarily, of hurt feelings.

  “Yes, us specifically,” said Polly with a smirk.

  Dana smiled. What was she worried about? Polly didn’t care what Connie thought. “Cupcakers.”

  “Love it,” Polly said wryly.

  Dana told her about Alder’s wanting to move in. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you want to take her.”

  “I do not! I would never interfere like that!”

  “Not to interfere, just to . . . I don’t know . . . It’s like you want to get your hands on her.”

  Oh, my gosh, she’s right, thought Dana.

  “You feel bad about how she’s been raised,” Polly went on, “and you want to make it up to her.”

  “How could I possibly do that?” Dana asked, knowing it didn’t matter, knowing she loved Alder and would do anything to make her happy.

  “I don’t know.” Polly grinned. “Cupcakes?”

  After the walk, Dana called Connie on her cell phone from the driveway. She didn’t want Alder to overhear the conversation in case it went badly. “So it’s the beginning of second quarter,” she began carefully. “What if she just stayed here until the end of it? That would be January. She’d be back for the next semester at Peak . . . Artistic . . .”

  “It’s not about chronological time, Dana, it’s about being in an environment that allows the integrity of the work to flow.”

  “Okay, so if Alder gets . . . flowing . . . while she’s here, she can scoot right back up to the Berkshires. She’d be home in an hour.”

  Connie was silent. Dana knew she wouldn’t acquiesce—she’d determine a way for it to make sense on her own terms. “She’s blocked,” Connie said finally. “Change of venue could be just the thing. Maybe she’ll come up with some visual commentary on the soullessness of suburbia.”

  “Great,” said Dana, slumping in relief. “And can you send some clothes? Because she only brought two pairs of undies.”

  It wasn’t hard to get Alder registered at Cotters Rock High; in fact, it was surprisingly easy.

  “You have her birth certificate?” asked the elderly secretary in the main office. “Records from the previous school? Medical forms?”

  “No, I—”

  “Well, just get them in when you can.”

  Dana filled out paperwork while the secretary pecked slowly at her computer keyboard. “She’s in the system now,” said the secretary. “Tell her to come to the office when she gets to school tomorrow, and I’ll give her a schedule. And don’t forget to get me those records.”

  “She can start tomorrow?”

  “Don’t you want her to? Most people can’t wait to get them out of the house.”

  When Dana got home, she told Alder, “You’re all set. You start tomorrow.”

  Alder stared blankly out the window at the falling leaves and said, “Great.”

  CHAPTER 4

  DANA MADE PASTA FOR DINNER. FOODWISE, IT was the canvas upon which all three of them could paint their own individualized palate-pleasing pictures. Dana would heat up some marinara and a few meatballs for herself and steam a vegetable to use as a partial pasta substitute. She tried to reduce her carbohydrate intake wherever possible. Morgan would slather hers with butter and dump little snowdrifts of parmesan cheese onto it. Grady would mix his with one spoonful of peanut butter and one of ketchup.

  “Whoa! What are you—the Jackson Pollock of penne?” Alder slid into her seat, wearing a black T-shirt printed with the image of an upright guitar. Its neck ran up between her breasts, ending abruptly at the top of the shirt. It was as if her face were the guitar’s head.

  “No,” said Morgan, “he’s just a pig.”

  Grady turned to her and opened his mouth, a wad of food sitting on his tongue.

  “Gross!” yelled Morgan. “Mom! He’s disgusting.”

  “Enough, you two,” said Dana. She turned to Alder, trying not to imagine her mouth as a guitar fret and her eyes as tuning knobs. “What would you like with your pasta?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Alder. “I’ll just have some sauce and meatballs.”

  “Are you sure? I thought . . . Your mother’s such a strict vegetarian . . . I assumed . . .”

  A wicked grin lit Alder’s features. “It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Alder, your mother wasn’t terribly thrilled about this arrangement to begin with. I certainly don’t want to antagonize her by sending you back as a . . .”

  “Carnivore?” Alder popped a meatball into her mouth.

  “I want one, too.” Grady wagged a ketchup-smeared finger at the meatballs. “What’s in it?”

  “It’s cow.” Alder pushed the bowl toward him. “Crushed cow.”

  Grady stabbed a meatball with his fork and
studied it at eye level. “This is just like Survivor,” he murmured. He contracted every muscle in his face as if to avoid some great threat.

  “G-Man, G-Man, G-Man,” chanted Alder, thumping her palm on the table.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” said Dana.

  “Just eat it, for godsake!” said Morgan.

  Alder’s beat on the table picked up speed. Grady inhaled as if it would be his last breath and jammed the meatball into his mouth. Everyone froze. “Grady,” Alder murmured, low and serious. “Do not—I repeat, do not—blow that thing out your nose.” Morgan started to giggle, and Dana had to smile. “No kidding, dude. You have to chew it and swallow it, or it’ll crawl right up into your nostrils. I’m telling you, it’s not pretty.”

  Grady’s jaw began to move, a look of amused horror on his face. He grabbed at his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. After a dramatic show of swallowing, he smacked his lips. “Not bad!”

  Alder stabbed another meatball and waved it at him. “Round two?”

  “Nah, I’m full.”

  Dana shot a smile of thanks at Alder. “I’m going down the street to Polly’s after dinner,” she told them. “She’s having a little get-together.”

  “Do you have to?” Morgan groaned.

  “Can I stay up?” said Grady.

  “Well, no, I don’t have to, but I want to. It’s nice to have a little grown-up time every once in a while.” Grown-up time was in drastically short supply since her divorce. She no longer had a husband to go out with, and it soon became clear that invitations from other couples had evaporated as well. Gatherings of women seemed to be the only social interaction she was entitled to anymore. “And no, you cannot stay up. I’ll tuck you in before I leave.”

  “But I need help with homework,” Morgan insisted.