by Rae Meadows
You run your hand over your hair, gelled to a crisp.
“Nothing,” you say. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Later,” he says, as he launches the empty Gatorade bottle into the trash.
Once outside, it takes a minute for you to notice. You don’t see anything until you’re in the car and look in your rearview to pull out. Something on your back window. White and foamy. Letters. Words. You walk around you car.
Raggatt
=
Faggot
The shaving cream has started to melt and the letters are running together, but they may as well be carved into you. You look around. You fake a laugh in case anyone is watching. Your face is hot and swirling. You swipe your sleeve across the window and shake your arm off onto the parking lot. You get in the car. There is shaving cream in your hair.
To get home you drive north along the western edge of town and the sixteenth hole of Hunter Country Club’s golf course. Breathe. Ignore it. Pretend it’s all a joke. The shorn, deep green of the course is opulent in the dusk light. You turn onto Lily Pond Lane, where the large houses are set back from the road by huge lawns and clusters of oaks and maples and evergreen hedges.
Do not think about it, do not see those words.
As you pull up your sloped driveway, the late afternoon sun is setting and the colors of the yard are saturated. You sit in the car a long time, watching the light change around you.
Inside the house you go upstairs hoping to find Caroline, but no one is home. In the corner of the room, you see the bunny’s eyes reflect the light.
Fucking soft fur and innocence. You are flooded with shame and despair and fury. Make it stop. Make it better. Something slips, too deep to ever reach and put back in place.
You jerk the animal out of the cage by its ears as it shimmies and works its legs in a frenzy. It makes a slight mewing sound like a cat, which makes you even angrier. You stun it by whacking it hard against the wall in the hallway. You like the power of the pulsing life and small bones in your hand. You like the feral smell of fear. The rabbit pees on the kitchen floor before you make it outside.
From the pile of bricks for your mom’s garden pathway, you take a jagged chunk in your free hand. Your body feels taught and electric and with one swift bash, you crush the rabbit’s skull between brick and dirt. Stop. Just stop. It spins its leg for a while and then is still. You pound its head again and again until all that remains is torn and bloody fur.
It is quiet and cool amidst the pine trees. You throw the piece of brick as far as you can and kick the carcass down the embankment and into a pile of leaves and moss. You feel better. You feel calm. For the briefest of moments. Until you feel awful, cold to your toes, inhuman. You will never tell Caroline.
You push it down and down and down.
———
The Emeryville College student charged in the murder of a classmate is under suicide watch in a jail psychiatric ward today as his lawyer said he was busy preparing a psychiatric defense. The lawyer, Robert Dubno, said that he would pursue a defense that Charles Raggatt, 19, “is certainly not legally responsible for his acts.”
———
CHAPTER 14
Over the past few days, Grace’s father’s motor skills have improved, and he has come home from the hospital. In the mornings he seems more like himself, even though it’s still an effort to get words out. By midday, his frustration at his body usually leads to sullen withdrawal. He spills his tomato juice down his chin. He takes the stairs slowly, one foot and then the other, leaning heavily on the banister, refusing help to get up to the bedroom. Grace found him standing at his bar last night, trying to get the top off a bottle, which she takes as a sign that he is becoming his old self again.
Today her mother has taken him to physical therapy so Grace drinks her coffee and walks through the empty house, infiltrated by the muted sounds of a lawnmower, birds, and hammering from the Coopers’ new construction. She leaves a message for Brian that she will need more time off and she hopes it’s okay and the number here if he needs to reach her, knowing of course that he won’t. She sits on the carpet against a newly re-covered couch in the rarely used living room and warms her feet in the sun. Charles has received her letter by now. Her head feels wooly. It’s the third day she hasn’t had a drink.
She remembers the empty bottle of Bordeaux she has in her room from the first night, currently under the bed, which her mother will discover soon if she doesn’t sneak it out.
The phone rings and her heart skids, but it’s only the dentist’s office with an appointment reminder for her dad.
“I think he has to cancel,” Grace says.
With the bottle in her fist, she walks out to the curb in her slippers and robe and nestles it discreetly beneath a bulging bag of grass clippings. Three different lawn crews are parked along the street, cutting, trimming, mulching, and watering almost every house in the neighborhood. At the mailbox she sifts through the garden and golf catalogs, investment statements and credit card bills, searching for that telltale handwriting. Nothing.
The phone rings again.
“I’ve got it!” she yells, running back up the driveway, even though no one is home.
She bursts through the door and knocks the phone off its cradle.
“Hello?” she says, panting. “Hello?”
“This is a recording. You have a collect call from an inmate of the Nassau County jail. Will you accept the charges?”
“Yes! Of course, yes.”
There is a whirring sound and then a click.
“Hello?” she says.
“Hello. Hi. Is this Grace?”
“Yes,” she says, trying not to blurt everything out at once.
“Um, hello,” he says slowly. “This is Charles. Charles Raggatt. Thank you for your letter.” His delivery is halting and formal, yet underneath he sounds young, not yet a man.
She slides her back along the wall, down to the floor.
“You’re welcome. Hi. How are you?”
“Oh,” he says. There is an angry exchange in the background. “Well, I’m okay. How about you?”
“I’m pretty good,” she says, smiling. “Thanks for calling.”
There is a pause on the other end.
“So I don’t know what you want to know about me. I’m not really used to talking about myself.”
“I want to hear anything,” she says. “Anything you feel like sharing.”
“There’s this quote I have. It’s one of my favorites. I thought I could read it to you. Do you want to hear it?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“It goes, ‘I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them.’”
“Who said that?” she asks.
“Someone named Spinoza.”
“He was a philosopher, right?”
“I don’t know. I copied it from a book. I have a book of famous quotations that I like to flip through.”
“It’s a good one,” she says.
He doesn’t respond.
“Charles?”
“I don’t know what to say,” he says.
“Tell me about your life. I want to try and understand.”
“It’s not that interesting.”
“It is to me. I don’t believe what I read.” She squeezes her hand into a fist, waiting out his pause. “Maybe you can tell me about your family.”
“Okay. I guess I can do that,” he says. “My parents are Kathy, well Katherine, and Charles Raggatt Sr., who I’m named after. People think my mom is pretty nice. Decorating the house is real important to her. She’s kind of a nervous person. She’s always looking around at what other people are doing. She’s tense even when she tries to seem relaxed. I mean, even when it looks like she’s relaxing she never is. She was a beauty queen after high school. She showed me her Miss Ohio sash once. It’s white satin with cursive blue writing. She keeps it folded up in her jewelry box. She li
kes to say that she didn’t win Miss America but she won a husband, because a friend introduced her to my dad the night of the pageant.”
Charles stops talking. Grace presses her ear into the phone. Someone yells, “Hurry it up, yo!”
“What about your dad?” she asks.
“My dad. Well, um…He’s successful in business. He makes a lot of money. He really likes the Indians. His company has a loge at the stadium every season. When I was young I went with him a few times. I liked the snacks and the big chairs. But I didn’t care about the games so he stopped taking me. He bought me a rowing machine a couple years ago. It just showed up in my room. I guess he wanted me to lose weight. But I never used it.”
“Did you get along with you parents?”
He pauses and sniffles.
“I got along with them okay, I guess. It’s not like we had big fights or anything. My mom didn’t like that I was, I don’t know, different from other kids. She tried to pretend it was going better for me than it was and that it would get better if I tried harder to fit in. My dad gave up on me pretty early on,” he says softly. “I preferred to be by myself. And, I don’t know. He wasn’t mean or anything. We just kind of did our own thing. One time I was having a hard time and I tried to tell him. They never knew how it was.”
Charles sounds listless and monotone.
“Have you seen them since…”
“Did you know I didn’t talk until much later than other kids?” he asks.
“No, I didn’t know that,” she says, smiling to herself.
“It’s not like I couldn’t. I mean, I knew how to talk and sometimes when I was alone, I would talk to myself.”
He is quiet.
“I know it wasn’t how they are saying,” she says.
“I can’t talk about that.”
“That’s okay.”
“I heard someone say one time that people have kids to find themselves. I don’t think my parents liked what they found.”
There is commotion on the other end.
“Charles?”
“But I don’t blame them for how I turned out or anything.”
“Okay,” she says.
“It’s confusing here sometimes. And loud. I’m sorry if I ramble.”
“No, you’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Grace strains against his long delay, trying not to jump in and fill the silence.
“So you’re in Ohio?” he asks, momentarily brightened.
“Yeah, for a little while.”
“I haven’t been back there in a long time.”
“It’s spring. The dogwoods are in bloom.”
“I’m allowed to go out a little bit but I don’t. I get two and a half minutes in the shower and I go when everyone else is outside. It’s not like I don’t have plenty to think about.” His voice catches.
“You have a sister, right?” Grace asks.
“I have a little sister. Sweet Caroline, like the song. We get along great. She’s a sophomore in high school. Everybody likes her.”
“Do you two talk?”
“I got a letter from her at the beginning but I haven’t heard from her in a while. It’s a great letter though. She got a new kitten.” His voice trails off.
“Charles?”
“I have to go now.”
“You’ll call again?”
“Goodbye, Grace.”
“Charles,” she says, but the phone is dead.
###
Grace tracks down Hadley Jameson, Charles’s crush from high school, at Ohio State, who sounds genuinely saddened about him and willing to talk about the boy she remembers. Grace drives to Columbus and meets her in front of the McDonald’s in the student union, amidst a throng of kids and fast-food smells. Hadley is the embodiment of perky. Thick, sandy-colored hair pulled back in a bouncy high ponytail, small nose, dimples. She is sporty and girlish in a short denim skirt and it’s easy to imagine her at home in a cheerleading uniform. As she sits, she mouths, “Hi!” with exaggerated excitement to someone who passes behind Grace, and then turns back with rapt attention.
“It is so disturbing,” Hadley says, making her blue eyes big. “My friend Rebecca called me from UVA—her mom had told her—and I totally couldn’t believe it. Not Charles. Well really, not anybody, but Charles? He seemed like such a child in a way. Innocent or something.”
“Were you friends?” Grace asks, curious as to what she’ll say.
“Kind of. I mean we were friendly. He gave me rides home sometimes. I’ve known him since the fifth grade. We met on the bus going to Severance Hall. You’re from Cleveland, right?”
“Cuyahoga. I’m home visiting my parents.”
“Oh, that’s awesome. I love being home. I still get way homesick. I’m going back to Hunter for the summer. To be a lifeguard.”
“Was Charles picked on a lot in school?” Grace asks.
“I don’t think so. Not that I know of. I don’t know what high school was like when you were young, but it really was pretty unified at Hunter.”
Grace passed through four years of high school in a fog of detachment, smoking pot alone in her room, blowing smoke out the window and spraying Love’s Baby Soft to cover it up. She had some casual friends, but she never revealed much. Surface was easy. Especially when everyone else was looking for someone to listen.
“But there were cliques, right?” Grace asks. “Some kids who were outcasts?”
“I don’t know. People were nice to each other. There weren’t, like, bullies or anything.”
“I thought there was some incident with a note,” Grace says.
“Oh. You heard about that? That was a prank that got out of hand. I guess those guys can kind of be jerks. I didn’t know about it until after. I felt bad about it but Charles said it was no big deal.”
Hadley’s face has lost a bit of its life. She bites her lip.
“I assume it wasn’t a big secret that he liked you?” Grace asks.
“Yeah, I knew he liked me, but what was I supposed to do? Stop talking to him? Tell him I wasn’t interested?” Hadley says, with a trace of impatience. She pauses and regroups. “Have you heard about the party he had senior year? His parents threw this over-the-top bash for graduation and invited everybody. They must have spent thousands of dollars on it. There were tables of food everywhere. Caterers running around. A DJ and a dance floor put in on the lawn. Carnival games. The whole thing was so weird and kind of mortifying, especially because it was for Charles. His parents were there greeting people—it looked like they were hired actors, smiling and pretending that their son was popular. The football players were plastered, knocking things over and laughing. No one even talked to Charles. I found him up in his room. That was the last time I saw him. He was really excited about leaving for college, that whole ‘I can’t wait to get out of this town’ thing. He seemed really psyched.”
Grace imagines his unwavering belief that he could start over as someone new.
“I loved high school,” Hadley says. “But I know it isn’t as fun for some people. It’s sad, you know?”
###
By the time Grace arrives home, the day has dipped past dusk and the afterglow of the sun hangs pinkish behind the woods, deepening to blood orange down near the horizon. The house is all lit up.
“Nice of you to join us, Grace,” her mother says, already seated in the dining room.
It is the first time in years that the three of them are sitting down to dinner. Her father is in his head-of-the table spot, still commanding despite his frailty. He has dressed for the occasion in a French blue oxford shirt, and Grace wonders if he fastened the buttons himself.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “There was some traffic.”
Her father lifts his drink shakily to his lips and her mother adjusts the napkin in her lap.
“Looking good, Dad,” Grace says.
He smiles and winks at her and there he is, the old charmer whose fickle attentions she has always coveted. His sp
eech is thick and strained.
“Thanks, sweetie,” he says.
She hasn’t heard this from him since she was a child.
The plate in front of her is filled with steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans. There is a wineglass set at her place but she doesn’t fill it. She will go another day. She thinks about Charles, adrift in high school. She wonders what he thinks about for all the hours.
“A celebration dinner,” her mother says. She has lipstick on, and her pearls. “We had a good day today. The therapist says it’ll take some work, but your dad will be as good as new. Back to normal.”
“That’s great,” Grace says, her enthusiasm forced.
Her father picks up his knife and fork and fights to separate a piece of steak. His frustration mounts and his utensils clang against his plate. Her mother nudges her under the table and Grace looks away, taking a bite of potatoes.
He gets a piece of meat free. They eat for a while in silence.
“So, Grace. Are you seeing anyone special these days?” her mother asks.
“No,” she says. “I was for a while. A literature professor from City College. But we broke up.”
Her father chews and stares at her without comment.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” her mother says. “It seems much more difficult nowadays. But you’ll find someone.”
“It’s okay. It’s not my goal in life. I’m not waiting to be completed,” Grace says.
It falls quiet again.
“What were you up to today in Columbus?” her mother asks.
“I have a project I’m working on.”
“For the magazine?”
“No. On my own.”
“What kind of project?” she asks.
“I’m investigating a murder.”
“What? What do you mean?” her mother asks, cocking her head to mask her pained expression.
Her father makes an odd, high-pitched sound like a wheeze and starts coughing.
“Jack!”
“Fine,” he says putting his hand up, regaining his breath. “I’m fine.”
