Nothing Real Volume 3

by Claire Needell

  The party was in the “ballroom” of the hotel, but Ellen felt a pang of disappointment at the familiarity of the decor. Had this once been a cafeteria-style restaurant where she split tuna sandwiches with her sister after preschool? There were cheap oil paintings on the walls, some modernist-style landscapes with heavy dark lines like the outlines of forms in coloring books, and others that were more like the depictions of the French seaside that Ellen remembered seeing in art class in a lesson on cubism, only these landscapes clearly depicted the Hudson River, and the main streets of the nearby villages, with their drab, flat-roofed buildings.

  The room was stuffy and, Ellen felt, smelled of the old people who occupied it. Servers came around with pieces of toast and pâté and caviar. At least in that way, it was a fancy party. There was a whole table of shrimp cocktail. Kenneth looked underdressed in jeans and a button-down shirt—the shirt itself a concession, put on in place of the Yellow Jackets T-shirt he’d worn throughout the day and, probably, the night before. Kenneth’s father was wearing a dark suit that was a size or two too big, as though he had lost weight that he had determined ahead of time to regain. His mustache was waxed, and Ellen had to fight the impulse to reach out and touch it. Although she’d met him before, Ellen had yet to form an opinion of the man. In general, she disapproved of men who made their children miserable. But then again, Kenneth was capable of making her miserable, so perhaps the causing of suffering was an inheritable trait, and not the fault of the man. This mustache, however, was a trickier business. She couldn’t imagine the person behind it. Sandy, Kenneth’s stepmother, wore a white, backless dress with no bra. Her ass jiggled under the thin material.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Kenneth’s dad greeted her. “Don’t you look nice.” He took her hand in both his own, a gesture of warmth she could feel struck Kenneth as phony.

  Prematurely, Kenneth found his name card at the table and sat. He refused the shrimp Sandy offered but took a glass of champagne and drained it, even though the football coach was strict about staying in training, and Kenneth was usually proudly dutiful in this regard.

  Naturally, they were sitting with Sandy and Kenneth’s dad. Kenneth’s uncle gave a toast. Then Sandy did. They were both jokey in a way Ellen could not understand—alluding to mysteries of grown-ups outside of her limited experience with her own parents, their friends, and a few teachers who deviated from lesson plans and tried to “reach” their students. The toasts mentioned golf swings, bridge hands, and vows to give up smoking that Ellen thought were hopeless clichés of adulthood. She suspected, but couldn’t be sure, that these adults were Republicans. She felt, for a moment, that she and Kenneth were in this thing together.

  She tried to take Kenneth’s hand, but he didn’t grasp hers back. Then he got up and left the table.

  When she found him, he was outside sitting on a bench in the carpeted foyer beneath a painting that seemed to be of the exterior of the Hilton in the old pre-Hilton days, when it might have been a fancy river house.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “It’s not like he gives a shit if I’m in there.”

  “Of course he does. He and Sandy were both asking about you. They were worried you’d miss the chicken-or-beef.” She thought she was being funny.

  “Just keeping tabs on me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. So I don’t ruin anything for him. That’s what he’s always doing. Trying to make sure I don’t blow up. Say something he doesn’t want to hear. Like how before last year he lived three thousand miles away.”

  Ellen sat down next to Kenneth. Suddenly, she was tired. She could see why Kenneth couldn’t stand his father, but did the whole night have to be awful? He hadn’t even glanced her way, said nothing about her hair or dress, not even a knowing glance acknowledging what he could plainly see. She felt an overwhelming need to retaliate for this oversight.

  “Can’t you just let him have his birthday? There’s the rest of the time to be pissed.”

  “That’s how you would see it, Ellen. Get your hair all done up, put on your dressy thing and makeup. It’s a party, so you don’t say a fucking word that you actually mean. Just play princess. Wanting to be bowed to. Played with.”

  “I’m being the normal one. There’s a time and place for throwing a fit.”

  “You sound like a manners book. Maybe there’s a time and a place to be a father.”

  “No one’s arguing about that.” Ellen slumped. There wasn’t a party anymore. The party had dissolved around them.

  “No one talks about it either. You know what that fuckhead wants to give me for my birthday? He wants to buy me a car. He wanted to come back up here after all this time, Mom and me just hanging in the fucking apartment, and then he wants to buy me a car. You know what I said?”

  “No.”

  “Sure, Dad, that would be great. Like we were the fucking perfect family. We’re supposed to go this week to pick something out.”

  “Is that the worst thing in the world?”

  Kenneth looked at her. “Yeah. It sort of is. Because it makes me a piece of shit.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on him. And yourself.” Even as she spoke she knew there was something wrong with what she was saying. She felt, somehow, that if Laura were in her place, she would have said something that would have made Kenneth laugh, a bitter laugh, but still. Laura had patience for these sorts of outsize emotions.

  “You would think that,” he said. He shook his head and looked away.

  Ellen walked back into the dining room, blinking back her tears. It seemed odd to find everyone just as she had left them. She told Sandy she had to leave, that she was feeling sick. She was sorry she couldn’t stay any longer. Sandy started to say something, but Ellen turned away and walked quickly, almost jogged, to the exit. She wasn’t worried about Kenneth coming after her; she knew he wouldn’t, but she thought Sandy might, or someone she didn’t even know would spot her tear-streaked face and try to hold her back.

  The night air was cool. She started the car and put it into gear. She was crying now, but not hard. There wasn’t any way she could take back what she’d said. She’d said what she felt, even if it sounded unfeeling. Kenneth would be better off if he could just get over this stuff with his father. Didn’t he see people couldn’t undo what they’d done? Why keep punishing him if he wanted to do the right thing now?

  It was a dark night, and Ellen had difficulty finding the ramp to the highway. Then she realized she was heading north instead of south, and she had to drive all the way to the next town before she could exit. Getting off the Saw Mill at Ardsley, she had an odd flash of memory. She was a little girl, driving with her dad in his convertible Fiat, a car he’d owned only a few months. It had been a compromise, Ellen recalled, because what her father really wanted was a motorcycle, a purchase her mother had forbidden. She had few memories of childhood that did not include Laura, and the ride in the Fiat was one, memorable because the car broke down just as her father had made the turn off the highway, and he’d had to call her mother from a pay phone on the street. Ellen had cried when the car broke down, frightened that they’d have to abandon it, as her father had threatened. Her father, perplexed at her emotion over the car, had treated her to a black-and-white cookie. He couldn’t have known that what she liked best about the car was that it was the one place where there wasn’t any room for Laura.

  Laura was still awake when Ellen got home, standing in the kitchen in her gray sweatpants and yellow track shirt, making a cup of hot chocolate. Their parents had gone to the city for the evening, and Laura, still moody, had not made any plans, choosing to stay home.

  “You’re back early,” Laura said. She had her hair pulled up and twisted in a bun with the lightened ends clipped like a tassel.

  “Not a great success.”

  “What happened?” Laura stirred her hot chocolate on the stove, not turning to look at her sister. Ellen had the odd feeling tha
t Laura and Kenneth were somehow united against her.

  “We had a fight, and I left. He got mad at me for saying there was nothing wrong with his dad getting him a car.”

  Laura was wearing Ellen’s sweats, she now saw, but Ellen didn’t say anything. “He thinks his dad is trying to bribe him back into his life, and I said maybe he should just cut him some slack.”

  “So you just left him there?”

  “You didn’t hear what he said to me. It was pretty inexcusable. Really hostile.”

  “Oh God, Ellen, I can’t listen to this right now. I have enough on my mind. Maybe you should at least go back there and give him a ride home.” Laura seemed to be trying to get rid of her.

  “I can’t go back. That’s ridiculous!” Ellen shook her hair out of her braid and let it fall in its crimped waves along her shoulder. She could picture Kenneth at the long white-clothed table. They’d all be eating cake and drinking champagne by now. Sitting at the kitchen table, Laura looked like a little kid, with her sweatshirt and the cocoa. Ellen felt world-weary and, as she often did, like her twin’s older sister.

  “You don’t exactly seem heartbroken,” Laura said. Was she jealous? “You go out with a guy for five months, and he starts to have some issues, and that’s it, you just dump him?”

  “I didn’t say I was dumping him.”

  “I don’t get it. One minute you’re practically going crazy because he doesn’t want to go to this party, and you’re all getting done up in that wedding dress thing, and the next minute you ditch him over something you can’t even begin to understand. How is that?”

  “Jesus,” Ellen said. “I don’t know why I even told you anything.”

  Ellen picked up her shoes and went upstairs. For years she and Laura had shared a bedroom, even though there was a spare bedroom that sat empty except for the occasional visit from their grandparents or their aunt. But a few months before, they finally separated. It had been Ellen’s idea, but Laura went along with it readily. There had been times, once Ellen and Kenneth had gotten together, that Laura had walked in on the two of them in their shared room. There was a part of Ellen that still wished they shared a room. It was impossible for them to stay angry at each other in the days when they’d lived together, and she worried now that a rift like the one that had opened up tonight might widen.

  It was a week later when Ellen went with Kenneth and his dad to pick out a car from the used car lot in Yonkers. There were little colored banners all around the lot, and the cars had prices written across the windshields with soap. Ellen liked a brown Toyota that Kenneth said looked like a turd. He test-drove a pea-green Camaro that his dad called a “muscle car,” but Ellen couldn’t tell whether this was disparaging or not. Kenneth’s dad twisted his mustache and contemplated a review by Consumers Digest on his iPhone. Ellen couldn’t quite picture herself in the Camaro, and Kenneth’s choice of car made her feel a bit like Laura’s haircut had. Neither fit with her image of herself, but then again, neither choice was her own. She was just grateful that Kenneth had seemed to snap out of his funk, that they were back on level ground.

  After the car lot, Ellen drove home and picked Laura up to take her out to lunch. Ellen had proposed the idea as an icebreaker. For the entire week after Ellen’s spat with Kenneth over the car, Laura had been haughty, avoiding Ellen at school and cross-country practice. Even their friends had commented on the uncharacteristic lack of warmth between the sisters. Ellen thought it would help matters if Laura would start practicing again for her road test, but she showed no interest in taking it. This went back to Laura’s obsession with Tom Kelly. It was as if the whole dirt bike incident with Tom had given Laura the excuse she needed never to try to drive a wheeled vehicle. “I just can’t stand the thought of being responsible,” she told Ellen, “for anything going that kind of speed.”

  “But you don’t mind other people driving you places,” Ellen replied. “That’s not much of a principle.”

  “Who said anything about principles?” Laura said. “It’s just something I can’t do. How is that beyond your comprehension?” Their parents advised Ellen to just ignore Laura, that she would come around, but it frustrated Ellen to see Laura acting like a cripple. Everyone needed to learn to drive.

  Ellen tried to stay off the subject, at least long enough for a full reconciliation, so on the way to lunch she asked Laura about other things—how she did on the physics test, was she sure she wanted to apply to NYU? Ellen didn’t think the two of them would be the sort of twins who went to the same college, though the idea of living completely apart, so far that their friends wouldn’t even know the other, troubled her. She felt increasingly different from Laura—Laura was neurotic, she worried about things she could not control, and she, Ellen, was the opposite. But still, she felt her sister helped to define her for herself. How could she be her opposite without her?

  At the diner, Laura ordered a BLT but then let it sit there on the plate, until the greasy bacon gained an unappetizing sheen.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Ellen asked.

  “I had something before. I’m not really hungry,” Laura said.

  “Why’d you order anything, then?”

  Laura didn’t reply, but to Ellen’s astonishment, her eyes reddened, and her mouth crumpled into a half sob. “What is it?” Ellen half whispered.

  “It’s everything,” Laura said. “It’s you and Kenneth and your fake problems and your fake relationship. It’s me and not being able to drive a stupid car. And . . .”

  Ellen knew what her sister was going to say. “What is it about Tom Kelly that has you so freaked out, for God’s sake?” Ellen was willing, for the moment, to overlook the insult to her and Kenneth. She knew, in a way, what her sister meant.

  “I just don’t understand why the one real thing that has happened in this town, happened to someone we know, doesn’t matter to anyone. Why doesn’t anyone ask the simple question? Why put a chain across a path that people ride dirt bikes on?”

  “To keep them from doing it.”

  “But how does the chain keep them from doing it? I’ll tell you. There are two ways. One is they stop the bike, get off, and take it down, which isn’t very effective, and the other is, they don’t. Get it? And you know what, Ellen? I was down there for cross-country, when you had the flu. It was Julie Gross who said this is supposed to be up, and she fastened the chain across the path. She said this is supposed to keep those assholes out. And no one said anything.”

  “Stop it, Laura. Just stop.” Ellen was furious now, furious at her sister’s lack of reason, her convoluted story about how it was somehow the girls’ cross-country team’s fault that Tom Kelly had been foolish enough to be speeding down the Aqueduct on his dirt bike.

  Laura let a tear fall down her cheek and land on the toast of her BLT. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that we all jumped it like a hurdle. I caught my ankle and fell down, and there was just this red mark there, and Mary Nakado helped me up. She said, ‘You’re such a klutz, Laura. I don’t know how you beat me every meet.’ That was it. That was the sign right there. What if you get a sign, and you don’t listen? What does that mean?”

  “There are no signs, Laura. It was his own fault.”

  “I know that. But I can’t believe it.”

  Laura used her napkin to wipe away her tears and took a sip of her milk shake. At least, Ellen thought, she was drinking that. She had already finished her own chocolate shake, and the fullness it gave her was soothing. It was possible that her sister would be fine, and they could finish with their lunch and head downtown. Maybe go to the bookstore, or browse, like they often liked to, at Twice Around, their favorite thrift shop.

  “Tell me,” she said to Laura, “when you’re ready to go.” But Laura just toyed with her french fries and stared down at her plate. Finally, Ellen simply got up, and Laura followed her sister out to the car after paying the check. But Laura paused when she put her hand on the door.

  “I guess I
’m just as big a faker as anyone else, since what did I ever know about him? I sat behind him for three years. All I ever saw was the back of his head.”

  “I can see why that’s disturbing,” Ellen said jokingly. She could picture Tom Kelly’s too-large, greasy-haired head looming in front of her. But to her surprise, she felt choked up at the thought, as if Laura’s unhealthy obsession had been transmitted to her by the image of Tom Kelly’s head. It was strange that death would bother to assault such a homely thing. It was strange that Tom Kelly on his dirt bike could be possessed by such an awesome power. It occurred to her with a shudder that if something as significant as death by near decapitation could come for just Tom Kelly, what might that mean for the rest of them?

  The Theory of Reward

  Dean was a cat-eyed boy who’d moved to our town from Chicago in the fall of my sister, Lu’s, senior year of high school. He had green-blue eyes, with long, fringe-like blond lashes, and he never seemed to blink. He was unlike anyone I had ever met, and I fatalistically believed the entire reason he had moved to town was to meet Lu—to complement her own beauty, and to confirm for me that Lu’s life would forever be a dauntingly complex but completed puzzle, a symbol for me of what would, in my own experience, remain forever out of reach.

  “He didn’t say a word. Just wore this flannel shirt buttoned all the way to the top, and an army jacket, and all the girls were talking about him and all the boys pretended he didn’t exist,” Lu told me after Dean’s first day. She thought he might be a poseur, someone who dressed oddly, just for the attention. So, “for kicks,” Lu asked Dean to go with her to see a band at the community center the Friday after he’d moved. It was kind of a dare on her part, to see if he’d step up.