The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

“Can you not right now? It’s her birthday. Can’t she have a little peace?” Jordy said. It was pretty clear that she hated him.

  Brock looked at me. “If no one’s gonna introduce me, I’ll do it. Brock Hazlett.” He shook my hand like we were engaged in a grip-strength contest. Without the winter garb, I could see that he was muscular through the shoulders but soft at his middle, his hair dishwater-blond and looking a little thin on top. He gave off the air of a jock who had peaked in high school.

  “So what do you want?” Elise said. “Since you did interrupt, and are continuing to do so.”

  “Oh. Uh, the Wi-Fi isn’t working.”

  Jordy cackled into her palm, and Elise just stared. “Okay, and…?”

  “And, could you fix it? It never works when I try to fix it. Please?” He looked around at the three of us and winked. “Pleeeeeeeeease?”

  Elise looked annoyed, but he didn’t notice or didn’t care or both.

  After the Hazletts had gone upstairs, Jordy unfolded herself from the love seat and said, disbelieving, “I can’t wait for her to get sick of his shit someday.”

  * * *

  I brought hot chocolate for Addison’s roommate in the hopes that it would make her like me more, but it just seemed to make her more suspicious. “Do you have any idea how much sugar is in these?” she said. She didn’t throw it away though, instead carrying it up the steps. She gestured with the cup at the closed door of the first room at the top of the steps. “So Addison’s room is here. And the extra bedroom is kind of hers too, it’s that one.” Now she pointed down the hall, past a small, pink bathroom, to a door that stood partially open. “But the stuff in the closet is mine. Jordy said you’re not here to look through my stuff, just Addison’s.”

  I smiled. “I won’t look through your stuff. Pinky swear.”

  Carlie took a small sip of hot chocolate. “Thanks.”

  The upper level of the apartment was sort of gloomy with the doors closed. “So can I just go in?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Call for help if you get trapped.”

  “Trapped?”

  She brushed past me and headed downstairs. “You’ll see.”

  I opened Addison’s door. Even though the room had windows, there were light-blocking curtains that prevented any of the outdoor world from coming in and brightening the place up. Still, in the dark, I could see that Addison and I had similar housekeeping styles, which is to say, we didn’t exactly do housekeeping. I flipped the overhead light on and took in the extent of the mess: unmade bed with a hump of fleece blankets in the middle in lieu of a proper comforter; a mountain of unfolded laundry in one corner; a desk piled high with odds and ends—a bottle of Aleve, a glass prayer-style candle with an image of Mariah Carey in place of a saint, three Sharpies tangled in a white earbud cord, metallic blue nail polish, a stack of notebooks, a Starbucks gift card, and a dollar twenty-nine in loose change. There was a clear space in the center of the desk where, I assumed, a laptop usually sat. The desk had one drawer, and it was jammed full of more random junk like batteries, lightbulbs, stamps. I flipped through the notebooks—mostly empty except for a smattering of poetry, or maybe song lyrics, written in purple ink.

  All the magazines in Barnes and Noble

  Look at you all glossy-eyed like you’re in trouble

  Like you’re stuck

  Like you’re trapped

  Like you need a magazine to tell you that

  Not bad, though maybe a little melodramatic. I moved on to the nightstand, which had a collection of crystals arranged around the base of a lamp. I picked up a chunk of rose quartz. It was heavier than it looked, with a smooth finish that seemed to indicate Addison had touched it, often. The nightstand drawer contained a clip-on book light, half a dozen different body lotion tubes, a prescription in Addison’s name for hydroxyzine—an antihistamine that either treated allergies or anxiety—a dog-eared copy of The Language of Letting Go, and a small photo album.

  IN MEMORY, the front said.

  It was full of pictures of Addison and her mom: in front of a Christmas tree, eating sushi, at the beach, in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. In some of the pictures, Addison was no older than six or seven, while some of them appeared to be shortly before her mother passed away. In the twenty years in between, Addison’s look changed a lot. Her hair was black, magenta, bleached blond with dark roots. Her clothes went from punk to preppy to grunge. Her weight fluctuated too; she was a chubby kid, an athletic-looking preteen, heavier in high school, becoming scary-skinny in some of the late teens and early twenties images where the rest of her look was at its most severe, the dyed hair and black, torn clothes. At the end of the album was a dried rose, white, pressed flat.

  Her closet was full of jeans and hippie blouses—the present-era Addison a size twelve and a fan of the boho-chic style—and canvas bags adorned with enamel pins. The top shelf had a suitcase-sized gap in the center, which made me turn around and look at the carpet leading toward the door. Although I’d just stepped all over it, I could still make out the marks from suitcase wheels.

  Maybe carpet marks were the Midwestern equivalent of tracks in the snow.

  I laughed a little at myself. Silly, but still potentially useful: Addison had packed a bag at some point. It wasn’t necessarily on Thursday morning, but it wasn’t necessarily not.

  I kept looking through the room. Under her bed, I found a bag of Taco Bell wrappers, seven socks, a blister tray of NyQuil caplets, a hairbrush, and a Capital One statement; her Visa was maxed out. Behind the door I found a stick vacuum still in its box. And tucked into the frame of the mirror on her dresser, two cards. One was a glossy postcard showing Skógafoss in Iceland; the back of it said Raddish, Next summer, you and me, here. You’d love it. Fresh air, fresh fish, few people. Karen says hi. Love you, Dad.

  The date stamped in the postmark said 2016. I wondered if her father had really taken his daughter to Iceland the following year and guessed probably not.

  The other one was white cardstock printed with DEPRESSION SUCKS in big black type. I flipped it open and read the handwritten inscription:

  Don’t believe anything it tells you. (You still owe me a new hat though. You better not try to get out of buying me a new hat.) XO, Wyatt

  That one was a little harder to parse, but it sounded like a joke between friends—or more than friends, considering the XO. No one had mentioned a Wyatt when we talked about people Addison might know. But the card was meaningful enough that she saved it.

  I looked in the extra bedroom—avoiding the closet—but it only contained a keyboard, an amplifier, and what appeared to be some recording equipment—the famous mixer her father had gotten for her, I assumed, and a tangle of microphone cords. The chair was occupied by a box of CDs in thin plastic cases, on which Addison had written DJ RADDISH-Numinosity. I examined the mixer, which was a flat console with two CD drives and a whole bunch of buttons. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, let alone how to make it play anything.

  I pocketed one of the CDs and went downstairs, where I found Carlie at the dining room table, still poring over the same psychology book. “Do you know who this is from?” I said, showing her the card I’d found.

  She took her pen out of her mouth as she looked at the inside of the card. “Wyatt? No.” She looked at the front of the card and her expression softened a bit. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  I had no idea what to think, but there was little value in telling Carlie that.

  * * *

  Addison’s father was Jason Stowe, a senior manager in a defense contracting firm based in Texas. I called his work number and left a message with a secretary who called me dearheart and advised that Mr. Stowe was currently visiting the UAE and would be stateside again in a day or so. On my way to pick up Catherine for dinner, I popped Addison’s CD into the stereo at a red light. The first song was a strange hush of electronic strings over a meandering, trip-hoppy beat that sounded like it came preloaded into GarageBand, plus sni
ppets of people talking, the sizzle of a match being lit, the cracked warble of Billie Holiday’s “Trav’lin’ Light.”

  “Addison,” a man’s voice said, loud and clear. “You have nothing to lose.”

  On the contrary, I thought.

  TEN

  Sometimes you dread something so much that when it actually arrives, it winds up being only a fraction of how bad it could be.

  Tonight was not one of those times.

  From the second Catherine and I walked into the Whitney House from the frigid Worthington street, it was clear that Tom and Pam had been arguing. The worst kind of argument, too—the one where no one’s mad or yelling because both parties know it’s already over.

  “So what’s good here?” Pam said brightly once I’d ordered a whiskey for me and a cabernet for Catherine. “I heard great things about the boozy ice cream floats. Spiced rum and orange soda! Would you judge me if I had ice cream for dinner? It’s been one of those days!”

  “No judgement from me,” I said, trying and failing to read Tom’s expression.

  Catherine said, “I already had ice cream for dinner, so I’ll probably just get steak for dessert.”

  I laughed a little, but the opposite side of the table was silent.

  Pam went on, “Maybe we could start with the duck confit appetizer? To split? Or we could get two orders, or if you guys want something else, or, um, we could just order a bunch of small plates to share? Sometimes for dinner girls just like to nibble on a little bit of everything, right?”

  Pam continued reading items off the menu to the table. Her face held the mechanics of a smile but it wasn’t fooling anyone. I ran my tongue along the edge of my whiskey glass, racking my brain for something to say to her.

  “You know what? I’m getting the salmon and the duck. The least you can do is buy me dinner.” Pam nudged Tom in the ribs, a playful gesture that he nearly recoiled from.

  Under the table, Catherine gripped my hand.

  We suffered through two rounds of drinks and a truly delicious spicy shrimp plate before the precise nature of the problem between them revealed itself.

  “Look,” Pam said as she rolled her wineglass between her palms, “I need you gals to referee this discussion we were having before dinner.”

  “Maybe we could finish the discussion later,” Tom said. He had a dark beer in front of him, untouched.

  Pam laughed. “Oh, we will. Trust me. I just want to get another lady opinion.”

  Tom propped his chin up in one hand, his eyes on the table. He wore jeans and a black sweater over a blue-and-white-checked shirt, but he still looked like a cop. He always did. But it had been a long time since I had seen him looking quite so miserable.

  Pam was saying, “I just wanted to see what the options are. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t talked about it.”

  I said, “Talked about what?”

  “Because we have. And it’s not 1960.”

  “Talked about what, Pam?”

  “A ring! It’s common for a couple to pick out a ring together. Right, Catherine?”

  I almost choked on my whiskey.

  “Well,” Catherine said, “I suppose it is—”

  “An engagement doesn’t have to be a big surprise, a big thing.” Pam sipped her wine. Her eyes were bright, lively.

  “So you’re, um,” I said, clearing my throat, “getting engaged? Or are engaged?”

  “Things are progressing,” Pam said, and at the same time, Tom shook his head, his jaw bunching up.

  He said, “I really think we can talk about this later.”

  “All I’m saying,” Pam said, “is that I suggested on the drive up here that we stop in at Worthington Jewelers. Just to look. And someone acted like that was just too much. Didn’t you?” She nudged him playfully again, clearly not able to see that Tom’s discomfort was the real deal. “A little forward momentum never hurt anybody. Roxane, did your mom ever tell you the story of when she and Frank got engaged?”

  “Excuse me?” I said, setting my glass down a bit too hard. Beside me, Catherine stiffened, and Tom looked away altogether.

  “Genevieve said that they’d been dating for almost three years, and every time she tried to talk to him about it, he just shut right down. So finally she said, ‘Francis, do what you want, but I’m going to be engaged by Christmas. I hope it’s to you, but who knows?’ Two weeks later, he bought a ring. And they were together for how long?”

  Tom sat back, his arms folded over his chest. “Pam.”

  “When exactly did my mother tell you this story and in what context?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, a few weeks ago. We text a lot.”

  At this, the table fell dead silent. Tom looked like his soul had actually died. I finished my drink and made desperate eye contact with our waiter.

  “This has all been very illuminating,” I said. I knew that my mother adored Pam—she randomly mentioned how she thought Tom should propose to her almost every time I saw her—but it was news to me that they had entire conversations via text message.

  “I need to run to the little girls’ room before the food comes,” Pam said. She nudged her empty wineglass. “Order me another? Catherine, Roxane, want to join me?”

  I shook my head, but Catherine slid out of her chair and followed Pam down the hallway next to the bar. As soon as they were out of earshot, I said, “Jesus Christ, what is happening? You’re at the looking at rings stage?”

  Tom covered his face with both hands. “No. I don’t know. No.”

  “I can still see you.”

  “Dammit.” He dropped his hands and leaned back in his chair. “What was I supposed to do? Wander around the jewelry store with her and say nothing at all? I’m not trying to be an asshole but this kind of came out of the blue. I feel like I missed a crucial conversation, except I’m pretty fucking sure I didn’t—” Tom stopped midsentence, as his phone started to ring from his belt. He looked at the screen and frowned. “My sergeant,” he said. “I need to take this.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He finally smiled. “No, it is. Word of honor. I’ll be right back.”

  He left me sitting at the table alone. I slurped the melted ice from my glass and I watched Tom step out through the front door and into the cold, his expression hardening as he listened to someone on the other end of his phone call.

  He was still out there when they returned from the restroom. Catherine perched on the edge of her chair while Pam dropped into hers somewhat dramatically. “Roxie,” she said, further proof that she’d been talking to my mother—no one else called me that. “Did you talk some sense into him?”

  Through the front window of the restaurant, I saw Tom turn around and motion at me, a come out here sort of gesture. His expression was still serious as a heart attack. “Um,” I said, “I’ll be right back.”

  I went outside without my coat and regretted it. Tom was pacing under a streetlight, hands in his pockets. “What’s going on?”

  He turned to look at me. “Yesterday morning,” he said, “when you asked me about Mickey Dillman.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, my case—”

  “I know, but why, specifically?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m trying to find this woman, someone Andrew knows. When I went to her apartment, her roommate told me that Dillman had been there a week ago, looking for her.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Why? What’s going on?”

  He let out a heavy sigh, his breath making a soft white cloud in the night air. “Because they just pulled his body out of the river.”

  I leaned against the cold brick façade of the building. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened? And when?”

  “They don’t know yet. Maybe a while ago. It’s been so cold out, so it’s hard to, you know, tell.” He stopped and looked up at the thick grey sky for a moment. “Do you ever feel like—you k
now what, never mind. I need to get going down there. Until we know what happened to him, this is going to be all hands on deck. Can you come downtown tomorrow, first thing? To talk about this woman you’re looking for.”

  “Yeah, of course. But, Tom, what were you going to say? Do I ever feel like what?”

  He shot me a quick smile and brushed past me into the restaurant.

  I followed him and sat down, my hands shaking, and not just from the cold. But Tom remained standing and picked his wool coat up from the back of his chair. “I’m so sorry, but I need to go.”

  Pam said, “Tom, no, if this is because I was teasing—”

  “No, it’s—there’s been an incident. Downtown. We’ll have to do this again,” he said gamely, as if we hadn’t just endured the most awkward dinner in history.

  “But, Tom, I’m—we rode together,” Pam said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Pam, we’ll give you a lift home.”

  “Thank you,” Tom said. He squeezed my shoulder. “Catherine, nice to see you. We’ll have to get together again soon. Pam, I’m sorry. This really has nothing to do with earlier. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He bent down and kissed her cheek.

  Then he left.

  We sat in silence for a while. Through the window, I saw two police cruisers sail past with their lights swirling, and I could hear sirens somewhere in the distance.

  Pam picked up her empty wineglass and rubbed at the pinkish imprint from her lipstick on the rim. “Well, it’s just us girls for dinner, I guess,” she said.

  When the waiter came back, I ordered a strong cup of tea.

  Later, after dropping Pam off at her house in Grandview, Catherine and I drove along Neil Avenue in silence, her head on my shoulder. It was only ten o’clock, but it felt like the middle of the night. The Arena District was quiet, everyone in the city hibernating for the winter.

  “Your mom really never told you that story before? The ultimatum?” she said after a while.

  I’d never felt especially close to either of my parents, but after two revelations in as many days, I was downright confused. “Really. I mean, she never has a bad thing to say about him, ever. Even though it was hardly a romance for the ages.”