by Rae Meadows
She slows to look at each massive house, wondering which is theirs, ruling out homes here and there, one with a swing set, one with an elderly woman pruning roses, one with a marble fountain in the driveway. The pitched roof of an imposing Tudor rises up above a privet hedge and there is something about the perfectly clean edge of the lawn and sad dark windows that makes her think, maybe. There’s nowhere to park without looking conspicuous on this street, even in her mother’s Mercedes, so she idles, looking at the house for any signs before slowly turning around in the cul-de-sac. As she rolls back out, an incoming silver SUV with a well-kept blond behind the wheel passes. Grace’s heart quickens. It’s her. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Raggatt. She looks a lot like she did as Miss Ohio, a well-preserved older version. Grace watches in her rearview as the car turns up the driveway. She imagines Charles behind one of the upstairs windows, dreaming of what freedom could mean.
It’s getting late but Grace doesn’t want to go home. She drives toward the city and turns on Prospect, the street where she and Callie would joyously point out hookers from the windows of the station wagon as they drove to the airport. They were wild-haired women in spandex hot pants, their hands balled up in the pockets of short, rabbit-fur jackets, teetering on four-inch Lucite platform heels, even in winter, even on a Sunday morning. The women would laugh and do little dances, their listless stares lifted for just a moment.
“Don’t look at them, girls,” her mother would say.
But Grace knew her dad was looking, too, at the dark equine thighs and unfettered breasts.
There are fewer transient hotels now, and no streetwalkers in the twilight glow. She finds a worn-down place with neon beer signs, wooden booths, and plastic bowls of stale yellow popcorn. Although she is the only white person and the only woman, the crowd, mainly middle-aged men, doesn’t seem to care. In her oversized sweater and saggy dirty jeans, she doesn’t arouse much interest.
Grace orders two ginger ales from the bartender, a small white-haired man who smiles a little but doesn’t say anything. She drinks one down and hands him back the glass, taking the other one with her to a table.
“Popcorn?” he says to her back.
A guy at the bar laughs.
“No thanks,” she says over her shoulder.
She sits and thinks of Charles and how it feels for him, for them, to have always known that they could never be the golden people. Like Sarah Shafer. Like Callie.
“You’re like Pigpen,” her father once teased, “but instead of dirt, you have a black cloud following you around.” He had laughed then, and kissed the top of her head.
What if Charles, in some way, had simply let it happen? If he knew something but did nothing and then she was dead. And maybe the guilt he felt for his inaction made him confess to what he didn’t do. It’s possible, she thinks.
A man sits down across from Grace and rests his chin on his clasped hands. He is younger than the others in the bar, with a look that is both lascivious and contemptuous.
“What’s up?” he says.
“Nothing,” she says.
“Come here often?” he asks.
Men snicker in the background. Despite his slight smile, the man’s eyes are hard and never waver from her. His forearms are well defined and scarred.
“No. First time,” she says.
“Took a wrong turn on the way to the ’burbs?”
She looks up and the men at the bar are looking at her, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her recognition that she is not wanted here.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to go.”
“Now hold up. You haven’t told us your name yet.”
The man sucks his teeth and licks his lips. Grace stands and he reaches out to graze her arm with the back of his fingers.
“Too bad,” he says. “You know I was just playing with you.” He waves his fingers and says, “You go on now.”
She hears whistles and laughter behind her as she pushes through the door out into the chilly night, feeling as out of place as the ridiculous Mercedes that hugs the curb, alone in the dull flickering bulb of the streetlight.
She locks the doors quickly after she gets behind the wheel, and then stares at the haze of city lights. She starts the car, and once she gets going, opens the window to keep cold air on her face.
By the time she pulls into the driveway, her hands hurt from grasping the wheel. She has clearly missed dinner; her mother would have had it ready at seven. Her parents’ bedroom is dark but her mother has left the kitchen light on.
Grace finds her dinner plate wrapped in cellophane in the refrigerator. She carries it with her to her father’s den and collapses into his chair, eating a cold string bean with her fingers.
I know about you.
She has always assumed that no one saw the accident. No one ever said anything to the contrary. Here in his chair, only the trees are visible through the front window. But what if he wasn’t in his chair? She stands up, and the view of the lawn opens up. What if he was at the window, looking out at them playing in the front yard, watching Callie run, her braids bouncing, watching Grace get angry at her for opening her eyes while she was It, for cheating, for thinking she could always get away with everything?
###
Grace wakes up in the gray light to the insistent call of turtledoves. She is cold and curled up in the chair, a throbbing ache between her eyes, cuddling an overturned plate of congealed chicken marsala.
CHAPTER 13
Caroline is fourteen and athletic and cute. She doesn’t try to be liked. She just is. And she’s also comfortable enough with herself to be earnest and cool at the same time. She is your sister and, by far, your favorite person. She is a freshman and you are a senior. When you see her in school, she always gives you a hug, regardless of who’s around. You like it even when you’d rather she didn’t. Despite your envy of the way life lets her cruise along, you love sweet Caroline because she is perhaps the only one in the world who doesn’t think you’re a loser.
You start up the stairs, two at a time, but midway you slow to a walk, your sneakers leaving bearlike prints in the wheat-colored carpeting. Caroline’s door is closed. You knock with the same code—the beginning of Bewitched—that you two have used since you were small, and you push the door open.
“You’re supposed to wait until I say it’s okay to come in,” she says. “What if I was naked or something?”
“Like I would give a shit,” you say and jump beside her onto her big, pink-duveted bed.
She holds her pet lop-eared rabbit on her stomach. Its deep brown bunny eyes twitch. You don’t like how vulnerable it is. It makes you nervous.
“Buns has a brain the size of a pea,” you say.
“Shut up! I know she’s super-smart,” she says.
Your mother calls you for dinner.
Charles Sr. is already at the table, sipping his Glenlivet, scanning the Wall Street Journal. He is gray-templed and fit, and his reading glasses are parked halfway down his nose.
“Hi, kids,” he says. “How was school today?”
He turns back to the paper before either of you answer.
“Fine, Dad,” Caroline says in a phony chipper voice, making googly eyes at you.
You know your father doesn’t think that highly of you, that he is confused by your lack of friends, by your ineptitude in sports, by your refusal to fit in. He was thrilled when it became clear that Caroline was normal and liked what other girls liked and didn’t spend hours alone, locked in her room, trying to fuse the different parts of herself together.
“Sweetheart,” your mom says, “it’s dinner. Enough of your paper.”
He dutifully folds it and tosses it back onto the counter.
“What will you be doing in Denver?” she asks him.
He says, chewing, “Uh, looking to close some financing with a group out there.”
You have no idea what your dad does. You’re pretty sure your mom and Caroline don’t know either.
Aside from forks and knives against plates, it is quiet. You want to ask him if he is really your father. You have the same nose and the same shaped face so there’s probably a biological connection, but he is so far from understanding anything about you it’s comical. You wonder if he wishes you would become someone else or if he would rather you just go away.
Caroline kicks you under the table.
“I read this article that said that the French make their appliances in the spirit of telephones and Americans make theirs in the spirit of cars. Isn’t that so true?” your mother asks.
“I don’t get it,” Charles Sr. says.
“Mom,” Caroline says, “I’m going over to Jen’s tomorrow night after field hockey.”
You never have anywhere to go.
Your mother cuts a prawn into tiny pieces but lets them sit in the buttery sauce on the plate. Both of your parents lob comments into the space above the table, hoping someone will come to the rescue and scoop the words up, to keep the conversation afloat. They pretend that they are talking because if they drop the ruse, they will have to admit their discontent. For having enough money. For always wanting more. For not being soothed by new cars and fresh flowers and filet mignon. For not being able to keep the deer from munching on newly transplanted shrubs. For eventually keeping them all away.
After dinner, you quickly eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked while Caroline disappears to talk on the phone. You slink to the cocoon of your room, slip off your shoes, and fall back on the bed, exhaling fiercely. It’s worse at night sometimes, the feeling that things might never change. You press the heels of your palms against your eyelids to keep the thoughts away.
###
You’ve had a crush on Hadley Jameson for years, ever since she sat next to you on the bus in fifth grade on a field trip to the symphony. Her hair is longer now but still caramel-streaked and, you imagine, as soft as the underbelly of your sister’s rabbit. Hadley always smiles at you in the halls and she says your name when she talks to you. Despite her kindness to you, she is extremely popular. She is followed by chatty girls and pursued by muscular boys. Her skin is allover dewy like she just came back from a chilly morning jog. Her small breasts press firmly against the navy blue and orange stripes of her cheerleading sweater.
You gave her a ride home last week and she touched your thick forearm when she said goodbye. Maybe, you think.
Mr. Phelps talks about sunk costs and you are glad to be in the back row so you can ponder Hadley. In your daydream she is herself but you are thirty pounds lighter and clear-skinned with sun-touched cheeks. You are at ease.
“Hey, Raggatt.”
Randy is a soccer player with a lean torso and slightly bowed legs. When he sweats during practice, his black hair curls up around his face like a servant boy in your mom’s Caravaggio coffee-table book. He kicks your chair.
“Hey, Raggatt.”
“Yeah?”
“So what’s up, man?”
“Nothing much.”
“We’re thinking about getting together tonight after practice. Drinking some brewskies.”
“That sounds good,” you say, knowing what is following before you can put a stop to the words. “I could pitch in some, if you want.”
“Yeah. Okay. That would be cool. Give me like twenty bucks. That should do it. I’ll let you know where we’re meeting up.”
“Okay,” you say, thinking that maybe this one time you will have things to say to make the guys laugh and slap you on the back.
You pull out your wallet and hand some crumpled bills behind you. It may have been forty instead of twenty. It doesn’t matter.
“Thanks, man. I’ll catch you later,” he says.
You wish you had lips like his, dark and full and wanted.
You are the one with the money. It is your only way in. It’s no secret and you don’t fool yourself. Hey, you think, at least you have that. What if you were you and you were poor on top of it? That gives you something to like about Charles Raggatt Sr., CEO, Remsfield Capital.
When the bell rings, you go where you always go for lunch: upstairs to the drama room. Sometimes Ms. Burnes is up there and sometimes she isn’t, but she always lets you and Steve hang out within her domain. You don’t want to like Steve, he’s effeminate and his idea of fun is renting Oklahoma or going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but you tolerate him because he tolerates you. He would say you guys are friends, and that is something in itself. Sometimes Kelly comes by when her goth friends have cut school and she has nowhere else to go. She pierced her own nose last weekend and now it’s swollen and crusty so you aren’t surprised to see her, slumped in a corner beanbag chair, coloring her fingernails black with a marker.
“How come you’re so happy, preppy? Did you get another car or something?”
Kelly’s nose is disgusting. One nostril is twice the size of the other and there is a greenish discharge where the ring cuts through the skin. You must wrinkle your face in distaste because she laughs and touches it lightly with her forefinger.
“Hello to you, too,” you say, tacking up a corner of a Renaissance Fair poster that has slipped from the bulletin board.
Steve throws a piece of celery stick at Kelly. His bangs hang low across his face so he constantly flicks his head to shake them from his eyes. He pretends he likes girls but you know he doesn’t.
You sit on the floor between them, take out your lunch from your backpack, and start in on a large bag of Doritos. Kelly reaches quickly for a handful, leaving a trail of bright orange cheese dust on her shelflike chest. She is, as usual, in head-to-toe black—leggings, skirt over the leggings, T-shirt, big-soled shoes. She redraws a fake rose tattoo on her ankle with colored markers every day. You know she’s not so tough or she would have a real one already. She pops her headphones on, the music audibly tinny and angry.
“Are you going to the dance on Friday?” you ask Steve.
“Are you kidding?”
“It could be fun,” you say.
Hadley will be there. It will be dark and romantic and you will look good and Hadley will be there.
“I’d rather eat glass,” Steve says, flipping his hair.
“I don’t know,” you say.
Steve blinks. “What are you talking about?”
You reach for a pack of slightly crushed Ding Dongs.“Whatever,” he says, visibly miffed but not altogether dismissive, and for that you are grateful.
He crosses his arms and whistles a tune you don’t recognize, staring up at the miniature model of the Old Globe Theatre next to Ms. Burnes’s desk. Steve is always on a diet and he has already finished his small bag of celery and carrot sticks. You tilt the bag of Doritos in his direction and he takes one daintily between two fingers.
“Just forget it,” you say.
You have to pull your pants up a bit under your gut when you get to your feet. Kelly’s eyes are closed but she gives you the finger as you leave.
You are sitting in the front seat of your car, a BMW, blue, just two months old. It’s September but still hot and humid. You’re parked in the lot behind the Home Depot, your air conditioner on high.
You wipe your palms on your chinos and breathe through your nose. There is a humming sound just beyond your perception that gnaws at the edge of your concentration. You believe it and you don’t believe it. That someone could like you, that Hadley Jameson could like you.
“I liked the cheer you guys did at assembly last week. It was really cool how you got flipped in the air,” you imagine yourself saying to her. You squeeze your eyes closed as hard as you can to keep in focus, to not lose the thread. You feel as though it is starting to loosen from the spool and fall in soft loops.
You drive to the 7-Eleven near school again, hoping to run into Randy or one of his cohorts. It’s already five and no one has told you where to meet for the party.
You hold a cup under the cola Slurpee spout and watch the ice froth billow out in soft mounds. You drink it down fast,
welcoming the cold headache that blots out all thoughts. You pretend you’re looking for something between the Blistex and the shoelaces because the pimply kid behind the counter saw you in here earlier and watches you a little too closely, like you are about to stuff a corn dog into your pocket and flee. A muted ding-ding signals the front door opening behind you, but you don’t want to turn too quickly and expose your eagerness or your reason for browsing, for the third time today, in the 7-Eleven.
Randy jerks his head a bit in greeting like the other soccer and football players do as he glides in from outside. Once, after a round of practicing in the bathroom mirror, you tried doing this head flick to Steve, but he laughed so fast the coffee yogurt he was eating came up through his nose.
“Hey, bro,” you say, with a quick glance Randy’s way before going back to gazing intensely at a bottle of WD-40. He goes straight for the Gatorade. “So, uh…What’s up?”
“Just got out of practice.”
Randy drinks half the bottle before reaching the counter. His legs glisten with post-scrimmage sweat, an outline where his shin guards were.
You wait, scraping the skin around your thumbs with the nails of your forefingers. You wait, even while Randy rips open the Velcro of his wallet. You wait as he fishes a couple of ones from the billfold.
“Hey,” you say, hoping you sound laid-back, even though you fear you sound pinched and whiney. He doesn’t respond as he drains the rest of the yellow-green liquid. “So, Randy.”
You can feel the heat of his skin through his jersey before your hand reaches his shoulder.
“Huh?”
You want to ask him where the party is, why you keep paying for beer for gatherings where you’re not wanted, why you aren’t—and won’t ever be—one of them, why it’s so hard to keep trying from day to day and not be any closer to what you think it is you want.
“Dude?” Randy asks, clearly impatient to make his exit. He stands in the open doorway.
