The Visibles

by Sara Shepard

  A woman from across the street, Crystal, showed up for dinner, too. She was somewhere between my dad’s and Stella’s age, and wore a paunchy blue dress that draped all wrong on her bony body. “I brought you some muffins.” She handed Stella a plate wrapped in tinfoil.

  “Muffins!” Stella cried, as if they were some new thing.

  We used a slotted spoon to slop the spaghetti onto our plates. The chipped spaghetti bowl had a bunch of bloody grapes painted on the side. Flies buzzed all over the kitchen, landing on the lips of the beer cans, the edge of the butter dish, the tip of the faucet, vigorously rubbing their feelers together in a way that was vaguely sexual.

  “So, do you think he did it?” Stella said, winding the pasta around her fork.

  “Who?” my father asked.

  “O.J.! Do you think he killed that wife of his?”

  “I think he did,” Samantha said a little loudly. Stella was letting her drink a beer. “Why else would he run like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Pete answered. “He was the obvious suspect. Even if he didn’t do it, maybe he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get out of it if they took him in. Because, you know. He’s black.”

  I thought of what that Philip boy had said earlier. You’re the only white person in America who thinks that.

  “Oh, that has nothing to do with it.” Stella waved her hand.

  Pete sat up straighter. “The rest of the country thinks it does.”

  “He killed her because she was cheating on him,” Stella said. “She loved someone else. Adultery is a big motivator. Crime of passion and all that.”

  I slumped down and stared at the strip of wallpaper under the window. V was for violet. W was for watermelon. Y was for yam. Z was for zinnia. They skipped X, the cheating bastards. Part of the wallpaper was peeling. I took the edge of the alphabet wallpaper and pulled. I couldn’t help it. It came off easier than a Band-Aid. There was another layer of wallpaper underneath, fat stripes of blue and gold. The edge of it was crumbling as well, so I peeled that back, too. Boyish plaid. There was a gash in the middle of it, and I could see the next layer down. Roses. Perhaps this house didn’t have plaster or framing, but was instead held up by wallpaper, hunting paintings, and pictures of Frank.

  “So, Summer, have you had a prom yet?” Stella asked.

  “No,” I managed, dreading what I knew was going to follow.

  “Why not?”

  “Our school doesn’t have one.”

  “What school doesn’t have a prom?” Crystal piped up.

  “A loser school,” Samantha muttered, taking a healthy sip of beer.

  “We’re a private school.”

  Claire had gone to a senior prom this year with her boyfriend, Terrance, who attended public school. She, Terrance, and her friends ducked out early to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was playing at some theater in the East Village. She told me that Terrance’s friend, Seth, whom everyone called Moses, wanted to ask me to the prom, which would be great because then we could go together. I stayed home that night instead and played solitaire on my bedroom floor. “Proms are lame,” I mumbled.

  “How about you, Steven?” Crystal asked.

  “Um, I’m in college.”

  Pete pointed a breadstick at us. “You’ve got the right idea, Summer. Proms are capitalist nightmares.”

  Crystal snapped her fingers. “You know who would be perfect for Summer? That Philip kid from down the street.”

  Samantha choked up beer.

  “He’s very thoughtful,” Crystal added.

  “I’ve…” I began, about to say, I’ve met him. But then Stella piped up, “The Arab kid?”

  I shut my mouth. Steven looked up, his eyes wide.

  “Half Arab,” Crystal corrected. “His father’s from…oh…”

  “India,” Samantha said.

  “That’s not Arab,” Pete scolded.

  “His father wears one of those towels on his head.” Stella shrugged. “Isn’t that Arab?”

  That speed limit sign, on my way home: Sand Niggers Go Home.

  “The boy doesn’t wear a towel,” Crystal said, now distracted and subdued. She had an uncomfortable look, as if she was just realizing she had no idea who we really were. “Just his father. Philip seems nice. Quiet.”

  “Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean good.”

  Everyone jumped at the volume of Steven’s voice. His face had a galvanized glow. “And India definitely isn’t innocent,” he went on. “There was an explosion just last year in Bombay’s stock exchange building. And tons more bombs that same day. There are all kinds of religious terrorist cells in India, and the father’s turban might mean he’s Muslim. How old did you say this boy was?”

  “Nice,” Samantha whispered, excited.

  And Stella said, “Crystal, I can’t wait to eat those muffins!”

  “He’s about Summer’s age,” Crystal said, not getting it.

  “You guys should watch him.” Steven grew a few inches in his seat.

  “Watch him?” Pete repeated.

  “Absolutely. We’re all caught up in this O.J. thing, but O.J. is the least of our problems. There are a lot more dangerous people in this country right now—a lot of them impressionable teenagers.” Steven stood up halfway. “In fact, if you want me to—”

  “Steven.” My father put his hand on Steven’s arm. “Stop.”

  Steven bent his shoulder away from him. His eyes were glassy. “Nobody’s paying enough attention. You guys probably don’t even remember that the World Trade Center was bombed. Or it probably was just something in the news, Oh, that’s too bad, and that was it. You had no connection to it.”

  “Steven,” my father warned.

  He kept going, his voice arcing higher and higher. “People want to blow themselves up for crazy ideas. They walk into a market square with people they don’t even know and just…do it. And here we are, watching O.J., la la la.”

  “Why would anyone want to blow themselves up?” Crystal looked so lost.

  “That’s not something that’s going to happen here.” Stella made a tsk sound. “It’s something that happens in those crazy countries. The ones where people are still riding camels.”

  “It did happen here,” Steven interrupted sharply, and Stella cowered back. “You don’t know what it’s like. You just don’t know.” Steven groaned painfully, scraped back his chair, and stomped to the living room.

  There was a long, tense pause. Outside, two squirrels rolled around in the grass, then chased each other up the tree. Finally, Stella said, “Well!” with a flourish, but nothing else. I poked my tongue into the gap in my mouth where an adult tooth never came in.

  “Meredith worked in the World Trade tower that was bombed,” my father explained in a low voice. “She resigned long before it happened, but I think that’s why he’s worried about—”

  “That’s not why!” Steven screamed from around the corner. “That’s not why at all!”

  He stomped up the stairs and slammed a door. Pete’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Everyone looked at us with sympathy, as if they absolutely understood what we were going through.

  “Not that it matters,” I said loudly, breaking the silence, “but I don’t want to go out with that boy down the street, anyway.”

  eight

  There was one funeral home in all of Cobalt, called the Grinsky Family Funeral Home. It was in the downtown area—the downtrodden strip we’d driven past yesterday, with the Mister Donut and the murky river and the Knights of Columbus—in a house that looked similar to my grandmother’s. In other words, it was an actual home, with a driveway, a porch, an upstairs, and a rotting wooden hatch that led to outdoor basement stairs. I made the mistake of asking Pete what happened in the basement. He said, in a spooky voice, “That’s where they prepare the bodies.”

  The home was done up in rose-patterned carpet, heavy dark green drapes, and bulky, imposing couches. We all went in very slowly. My father and Steven
wore jackets and ties, and Stella had on a teal dress made of featherweight silk. Her orange cat-eye glasses clashed. I wore a corduroy black skirt from the winter and a sleeveless black shirt. Samantha hadn’t changed out of her dingy jeans.

  An older man with a hooked nose, buglike eyes, and a jowly face greeted us. He could have been a new puppet on Sesame Street—some reptilian character, perhaps a lizard. “You might not remember me,” he mumbled to my father. “I’m Leon Grinsky. I went to church with your mother.”

  “Of course, of course,” my father said. He pointed to us. “This is Summer. And this is Steven. My kids.”

  “Lovely.” Lizard’s smiles were more disturbing than his frowns. “And your wife? Your mother said you were married…”

  My father looked down. “I’m…we’re separated.”

  I felt like he’d punched me. I tried to catch Steven’s eye, but he was checking out an empty urn. The front door was still wide open, and a snub-nosed little kid circled the sidewalk on a bike. A water gun dangled from his right hand. When he passed again, he turned his head, took his remaining hand off the handlebars, and gave me what I guessed were devil horns. “Naaaah,” he said to all of us, pointing to the doorway. “Naaah.” He waved the gun threateningly.

  Grinsky the Lizard led my father and brother through a long hallway to a room at the end filled with more overstuffed chairs, little end tables, a mantel with a painting of pastel roses in a basket. The coffin was at the end of the room. And all the flowers. Luckily, the rest of my family had lined up down the casket, so I couldn’t immediately see my grandmother’s body.

  I noticed Lizard lurking in the doorway. Stella twisted around from the casket and raised an eyebrow. She retreated toward me, the ends of her dress floating behind her.

  “Do you want to come up?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I turned away. “It’s weird.”

  She petted my arm. “Honey.”

  I peeked at Lizard, then curled farther into her. “That guy won’t stop looking at me.”

  Stella glanced at Lizard, too. “Oh, he’s hideous, isn’t he? C’mon. Let’s go outside. I could use a smoke, anyway.”

  Out on the porch, I felt my head fill with blood again. Stella sat down on the glider and patted the seat next to her. We tried to swing, but the old glider was too rusty. Stella hummed when she took a cigarette out of her leopard-print case.

  Separated. We’re separated.

  It had been a year and a half and I’d never said it out loud that my parents were separated. I’d never heard my father say it, either. But maybe he had. Why, after all, would he decide to tell the funeral director first?

  “That Grinsky put on Ruth’s makeup,” Stella interrupted my thoughts. “It makes her look like a hooker. Then again, in some ways, it’s nice to see her with makeup on at all.” She took a drag. “She never wore makeup. Never any sparkle. Same with her clothes, and definitely the same with her hair. When I was working at the salon, I told Ruth that Samuel—he was the hairdresser—would style her hair for free. And she refused! Said she was happy with her look! Slammed the door on me and everything, like I’d just insulted her!”

  I rubbed my ankles together. After the Trade Center bomb, a counselor visited our school. I was curious, so I made an appointment. The secretary at the front desk gave me a form in a sealed envelope for my parents—I peeked at it; it asked a lot of questions about my mental health. “We need this signed by both parents,” the secretary explained.

  I told her that my mother wouldn’t be able to sign the form. “Why?” the secretary asked, raising an eyebrow. “Are they divorced? Is your mother…” She looked up at the ceiling, as if heaven were up there. I gave her the packet back, telling her that never mind, I didn’t need to go to a counselor after all. It was too hard to explain.

  Stella was still complaining. “And that woman was such a germophobe, especially after your father left. Everything had to be spotless. One time, she wouldn’t let me in because my shoes looked too filthy! And they were perfectly clean. Nothing wrong with them. She even tried to clean after her first stroke, but finally I said would you stop? Life isn’t all about cleanliness. Life isn’t all about having the dishes stacked perfectly and all the pictures straight on the walls.”

  But don’t you miss her? I wanted to ask Stella. I couldn’t think of anything bad to say about my mother, even though I knew the things were there.

  Then Stella looked at me. “Did I ever tell you I almost cheated on my husband?”

  I stared at her, slack-jawed at the inanity of the question. “Uh, no. I can’t say you have.”

  “Skip and I were fighting. We fought all the time.”

  “Over what?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, you know. Things. It’s hard to be married. There was one time, though, when I really thought things were over. I stormed out of the house and got in my car. I didn’t know where I was going. I just drove. I ended up at this bar, the Crest. I don’t know what it’s like now, but it used to be that you didn’t go into the Crest. Not if you were a nice girl, or any kind of girl, for that matter—the median age in that place was about fifty. I was only twenty-three or so when this fight happened. I pulled into the parking lot and slammed the door and just walked right in there. Most of the guys nearly fell off their seats when I walked in. There was this man sitting on the last stool, nearest the back door. I walked right up to him and sat down and I ordered a whiskey sour.” She chuckled. “Have you ever had one?”

  “I’m seventeen,” I reminded her.

  “They’re delicious,” she said. “You should try one. Maybe I’ll make you one, when we go home. Anyway, the bartender said they didn’t have any sour mix. He poured me a glass of whiskey, without me even asking. I drank it down. I was so mad at Skip, I remember. So mad. And some man was just staring at me, and he asked what my name was and I told him and then I…I slipped my wedding ring into my pocket. It was the craziest thing. But this man stood up and he offered his hand and I stood up, too. And we just…walked out the bar. He opened his car door. I got in. No words at all. He drove to the Amity—it’s not there anymore, because it burned down in the seventies, but it used to be this motel near the bridge. I just followed him into a room.

  “The whole time, all I could think of was my wedding ring in my pocket.” Stella took a breath. “I was sure it was going to roll out and under the dresser and I’d never be able to find it. And then someone else would find it, and they’d see my initials and Skip’s initials and our wedding date and they’d know it was mine.”

  “How would they know?” I asked.

  “Cobalt is small,” Stella explained. “People know.”

  “But what about the guys at the bar? Don’t they know?”

  Stella shrugged. “None of them would ever say anything. They probably weren’t supposed to be at that bar in the first place. It was the middle of the day, after all.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette on the porch rail. “The ring was fine, though. Still in my pocket. And I didn’t go through with it, anyway. The man had to pee as soon as we got there. When he shut the bathroom door a little, I left.”

  “Did you ever tell your husband?”

  “Good Lord, no. I don’t even know what we were fighting about. Probably nothing.” She chuckled, then sighed. “Marriage can be such a bitch, Summer. It really can. It’s hard for people to be truly happy together. Some people just can’t take it. And that’s okay.”

  I stuffed my hands underneath me. “Do you think people that leave their families are despicable?”

  “Predictable?” She tilted her ear toward me. “What’d you say?”

  I swallowed hard. “Never mind.”

  The same devil-horns kid whizzed by. Truthfully, I was a little astounded to see any kids in Cobalt. The town seemed more like an island of old ladies, all of them as candid and batty as Stella. Then again, there was Samantha. And the kid down the street. The Arab that wasn’t an Arab.

  I stared at
the dirt between the porch’s wooden slats. “So is that kid Crystal was talking about really weird?”

  “Kid?” Stella looked at me blankly. “What kid?”

  “That…” I searched for his name. “That Philip kid.”

  Stella leaned back, thinking. “That father of his was getting out of his car once. I was right there, and I was so tempted to ask how he puts his towel thing on. I’m dying to know. Is it a hat, or is it a big long scarf? Does it ever fall off?” She looked off in the distance. “And why does he wear it all the time, anyway? Someone told me it was because of his religion. But what kind of crazy religion makes you do that?”

  “So what’s Philip’s family doing here?”

  “The father has some job, but I’m not sure where. The mother’s white. She’s a substitute teacher. Her family’s not too far away, I don’t think. It probably has something to do with that.”

  “Have you ever spoken to them?”

  Stella ignored the question and stood up so abruptly, the glider swung violently back. She glared at me, her face sprouting thousands of new wrinkles. “Get up.”

  I cautiously stood. She took my hands and started swinging them around. Then she started bending her knees and knocking her hips back and forth. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Don’t you hear Elvis?” she demanded.

  I stared at her. She pointed to her temple. “It’s here. It’s inside of you, too. I know it is. Dance with me.”

  “I don’t think we should dance at a…a wake,” I whispered, peeking inside. My father was still talking to the Lizard. I didn’t see Steven. Maybe he’d slipped out back, yelling at some black people he’d mistaken for terrorists. There was a dead person I was related to inside the house.

  “You’re way too young to be so miserable,” Stella scolded, still dancing. “You’re too much like Ruth. She hated Elvis, you know. Thought he was obscene. And look where that got her!” She pointed through the funeral home door toward the coffin, her movements growing more pronounced. If she swung her back end a few inches to the left, she’d take out one of the potted plants. “Come on,” she urged.