All These Beautiful Strangers

by Elizabeth Klehfoth

  The only okay thing about the evening was meeting Teddy’s brother, Alistair. Seeing him was like seeing a familiar face in a crowd of strangers, which was odd, because I’d never actually met Alistair before—I had only seen his picture and heard Jake talk about him. But, I don’t know, he felt familiar to me, like we were old friends picking up where we had left off after a long time apart. It felt easy, comfortable, dancing with him, even talking to him about Jake.

  I got through the rest of the evening the same way I had gotten through those last two years in Hillsborough after Jake died: I drank more than I should have until I felt a little bit brave, I laughed at things I didn’t understand, and I smiled when I really wanted to cry. I was who I thought everyone around me wanted me to be, and I hated it.

  After it was all over, a car drove us from the city back to New Jersey and Teddy leaned over and put his head in my lap in the backseat. He was the slightest bit drunk himself. I ran my fingers through his hair and I tried to memorize the lines of his face even though it was nearly too dark to see.

  “Did you have a good time?” he asked, looking up at me.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “My mother really liked you,” he said.

  “I could tell she really loves you,” I said. And that was true.

  If it were just me and Teddy all the time, like it had been, I could do this, I thought. There wouldn’t be a doubt in my mind about us. But it wouldn’t just be me and Teddy in our own little world. There would be his world, too, sooner or later, and I didn’t think I could do that—feel so out of place and small all the time. I couldn’t go back to the very thing I had run from in the first place—pretending to be someone other than who I was, pretending to feel a way I didn’t really feel, to make other people comfortable. There was a gap between us I didn’t know if we could overcome.

  When we got to my apartment, Teddy walked me to my door. He leaned against the door frame as I searched my purse for my keys.

  “Can I stay over?” he asked. “I’m a little drunk.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, not quite meeting his eyes.

  “I probably shouldn’t drive myself home,” he said with a sloppy smile. He took my glove off and kissed the bare skin at my wrist.

  “You’re not driving yourself home,” I said, tugging my wrist away. “You have a driver.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, taken aback that I wasn’t playing along like I usually did.

  I bit my lip and forced my eyes up to meet his. “I just don’t think we should prolong the inevitable, that’s all,” I said.

  The backs of my eyes stung and I hated myself. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

  “Prolong the inevitable?” he said. “Grace, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Come on,” I said, my voice hitching and betraying me. “I know you see it, too.”

  “See what?” he asked.

  “We’re just—we’re different. Too different.”

  “Is this about tonight?” he asked. “I thought you said you had a good time.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t have a good time. I felt like some—like some—I don’t know. And I didn’t like it.”

  He reached for me and wrapped his arms around me and I stood there stiffly, refusing to let myself sink into his touch or be consoled.

  “Grace,” he whispered into my hair as he held me. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He drew back, his hands on my shoulders, and he was shaking. I thought maybe he was upset about our breaking up; it took me a moment to realize he was laughing.

  “What on earth is so funny?” I asked, a little pissed.

  “It’s just . . . ,” he said, and then he laughed some more. “I only brought you tonight to impress you. I didn’t expect—I didn’t expect you to hate them as much as I do.”

  “You’re really drunk,” I said.

  “No,” Teddy said. “I mean, yes, I am. But that’s because that’s the only way to get through an evening with those people.”

  I chuckled despite myself. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s kind of true.”

  “They’re awful,” Teddy said. “The whole thing—the food, this suit, the vain look-at-me conversation, and whoever the hell Francisco Trivoli is.”

  “Only the chef-patron of the Ivy,” I said, mimicking the haughty accent of the woman who had not been able to shut up about Francisco Trivoli all night. “Apparently, he’s got three Michelin stars.”

  “Fuck him,” Teddy said.

  I laughed.

  “Please let me come in,” Teddy said, burying his hands in his coat pockets and bouncing from one foot to the other. “My balls are shriveling it’s so cold.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But don’t get any funny ideas. You and your balls are sleeping on the couch.”

  “Scout’s honor,” Teddy said, holding up one hand. “Cross my heart, poke my eye out, that there won’t be any funny business.”

  I laughed. “That’s not quite how that goes.”

  In the end, I let him in. We polished off an old bottle of Pinot I had in my cabinet, and Teddy, true to his word, slept on the couch. Only, I slept there too, snuggled in his arms, the glow of my old television set lighting my living room like some adult night-light as we both faded from consciousness. And as I drifted off to sleep, I felt the faint stirrings of something I hadn’t felt in years—not since Jake had passed away. It was the feeling that maybe—just maybe—there was actually someone out there who saw me, and got me.

  Thirteen

  Charlie Calloway

  2017

  Homecoming at Knollwood Augustus Prep was practically a Calloway family reunion. Grandfather and Eugenia came up, as did my uncle Teddy, who had gone to Knollwood for a bit when he was my age, and my aunt Grier, and their daughters, Piper and Clementine. My father would have come, because Knollwood was his alma mater, but at the last minute he had decided to visit Seraphina instead, since it was her homecoming that weekend as well and he didn’t want her to feel left out, or so he told me over the phone. I was disappointed, of course, but part of me was also relieved.

  After everything Claire had told me the other weekend, I wasn’t sure I was ready to face my father. I knew I would measure every look, every gesture, every breath he took, terrified that I might see something hiding in the shadows of his features—something I hadn’t noticed before, or maybe, something I hadn’t wanted to notice.

  That was the thing that got me, the dark thought I turned over and over again in my mind at night as I lay, unsleeping, in my bed. Was it that my father was incapable of the things Claire claimed, or was it that I didn’t want him to be capable of those things?

  “I can’t for the life of me understand why Sera chose Reynolds over Knollwood,” Piper said, craning her neck to see over the tall man sitting in front of her in the bleachers. “Knollwood is superior in every way that matters—academics, extracurriculars, good-looking boys.”

  It was Friday afternoon of homecoming weekend, and the whole school had turned out to see the Knollwood Lions take on our rivals, the Xavier Panthers. Piper sat next to me. On my other side was Eugenia, who had brought her own blanket and cushioned seat and wine and cheese basket. Every few minutes, she’d call down the row to my aunt Grier or my uncle Teddy, who sat on the other side of Piper with my cousin Clementine in his lap, and ask whether they would like a slice of Brie on a wheat cracker. At halftime, she took a full bottle of wine out of her designer wine carrier bag and poured herself a long-stemmed glass. When I said under my breath, “Eugenia, you can’t drink on school property,” she just smiled at me and said, “No, darling, you can’t drink on school property.”

  Grandfather did nothing to stop her, but then, Grandfather could never really tell Eugenia to do anything she didn’t want to do, and so he rarely tried. Besides, he was in
good spirits because Leo was quarterback, and he was having a good game. There were just two minutes left to go, and we were ahead by seven points.

  “Well, Reynolds has a stable on campus where Seraphina can keep Peppermint,” I told Piper. “And for Seraphina, that trumped everything.”

  Piper tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder. She was a Calloway, through and through, from her bright blue eyes to her tall forehead.

  “Mama made me look at Reynolds, and Andover and the Putney School, but I told her not to hold her breath.” Piper was twelve, and next year she would start at boarding school. That was the reason why Piper and her parents were here now—they were considering Knollwood.

  “Ah, my little fish,” I said, leaning into her shoulder.

  “Fish?” Piper said, scrunching up her face like she smelled something bad.

  “Yeah, you know, fish. Like freshman. The little fish in the big pond.”

  “I’ll never be a fish,” Piper said. “I’m a Calloway.”

  The Knollwood Lions scored again, with Leo carrying the ball triumphantly into the end zone, and we were all on our feet, cheering.

  After the game was over, Eugenia suggested that she and I wait for Leo to shower and change, and everyone else would head to Falls Church to grab a table at Fiona’s. Fiona’s was the only nice restaurant in town, and so there was always a mad rush to get a table on weekends when families were in town, like homecoming or graduation. As they were leaving, Uncle Teddy pinched my arm playfully and said under his breath, “Don’t let the old broad drive.”

  When everyone was gone and it was just Eugenia and myself, I buried my hands deep in the pockets of my jacket and braced myself for the inevitable. Eugenia was always very direct and she didn’t shy away from prying into the particularities of our lives. For the past several years, she had taken a keen interest in my and Leo’s dating activities. Freshman year, I had made the mistake of teasing Leo about Drew in front of Eugenia, and Eugenia had somehow proceeded to gather Drew’s entire family history, and when she discovered that Drew’s aunt played tennis at the same club, she invited her and her husband to play doubles. A few weeks later at a family dinner, Leo was forced to admit to Eugenia that his relationship with Drew was short-lived, and Eugenia had told Leo, in front of the whole family at dinner, that Calloways did not engage in dalliances and it was not becoming for a man to appear loose. I had nearly choked on my tomato bisque and Leo went red in the ears and stared down at the table. We’d vowed from that point on to keep our lips sealed when it came to who we were dating (or more, I promised not to let slip who Leo was involved with, since I didn’t date).

  So it took me by surprise when instead of asking about my romantic endeavors, Eugenia folded her box of crackers neatly back into her wine bag and said, “Your father told me you were at the house on Langely Lake last weekend.”

  “How did he—?”

  “The groundskeeper phoned him,” she said. “It’s been a while since anyone’s been at the house. You and your friend gave that poor gardener quite the scare.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  She didn’t ask me what I had been doing at the lake house, or what I had been doing in Hillsborough, even though there was only one reason I would ever go to Hillsborough: my mother.

  “Your mother’s family—they’ve always wanted to control the narrative,” Eugenia said. “They don’t want to believe Grace is the type of person she turned out to be. It is a great tragedy to lose a child, and an even greater tragedy to lose your good opinion of your child—and so the Fairchilds told themselves a story they could live with. I don’t blame them for that. But I do blame them for trying to drag you and everyone else down that twisted, delusional path with them.” Eugenia sighed. “Charlotte, there is something you have to understand,” she said. “Your whole life, people will try to tell you who you are and what to believe about yourself. Don’t let them.”

  I looked out at the now empty football field. The sky overhead was shot through with pink and orange. It was the kind of sky that came at the end of summer; the kind of sky that marked the end of days where there was more daylight than darkness; the kind that announced the cool chill of autumn.

  “The truth is, your mother was unhappy,” Eugenia said. “She was always unhappy. A quiet, reserved, skittish thing. Prone to moods and outbursts. She struck your uncle Teddy once, you know. Nearly broke his nose,” she said, shaking her head.

  “She hit Uncle Teddy?” I asked. I had never heard that story. I couldn’t recall my mother and Uncle Teddy ever being hostile toward one another. In fact, I barely remembered them interacting with one another at all. “Why?”

  “There’s hardly a provocation that could justify physically assaulting someone in public,” Eugenia said, waving away my question. “I sometimes wonder if your mother had some sort of chemical imbalance that made her act the way she did.”

  This new sliver of information dropped like a pebble into the pool of my mind, creating a ripple through the memories I had of my mother. Was what Eugenia said true? For a moment, it seemed to obscure everything I thought I knew about my mother, casting every image in a slightly different light.

  I remembered one morning at the lake house, going to my parents’ bedroom door and finding that it was locked. It was a weekday and my father was away in the city. I stood there for a long time, twisting the knob and calling for my mother, but she never opened the door. After a while, Claire showed up. I remembered her telling me that my mother wasn’t feeling well, but that she was there to take me and Seraphina out for breakfast.

  Were there other things that happened that I hadn’t really understood at the time?

  “For years your mother was very withdrawn with the family,” Eugenia said. “And those last couple of months before she left, she even became distant with Alistair. It nearly killed him, what she did.”

  At that moment, Leo came out of the field house with one of his teammates. He raised his hand and waved at us in the distance. Eugenia stood and adjusted the wine bag on her shoulder.

  “I’ve kept my mouth shut about your mother for years out of respect for your father. But I thought you deserved to know the truth,” Eugenia said before turning away from me.

  Yael leaned over the porcelain sink next to me toward the mirror and concentrated hard as she drew the liquid black liner across her lower lid. Then she leaned back to admire her handiwork: a perfect, thick black line.

  “Do mine next,” Drew said. “You always do the best smoky eye. Somehow mine always end up making me look like the walking dead.”

  “That’s because you put way too much on,” Yael said. “Less is more.”

  I stared blankly at my wan complexion in the mirror and my damp, freshly washed hair. Usually I enjoyed getting ready for the homecoming dance and spending time with the girls, but today I was having trouble feeling anything but this suffocating weight on my chest. Ever since Eugenia had told me those things about my mother, I couldn’t really think about anything else. My mother may have had some sort of manic-depressive mood disorder. My mother’s family was spinning the narrative about her disappearance because they couldn’t accept the person she’d turned out to be. Surely some of what Eugenia said was true—but which parts, and how much?

  “Earth to Charlie,” Stevie called out.

  “Hmm?” I asked.

  “Are you using that?” she asked, pointing at the tube of red lipstick balanced on the lip of the sink in front of me.

  “Oh, no, here you go,” I said, handing it to her.

  “You okay?” Stevie asked as she reached for it. “You’ve been kind of in a funk all day.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Yael came over and put her arm around me. “It’s okay, Charlie,” she said, leaning her head on my shoulder and glancing meaningfully at my reflection in the mirror as if she understood. “You don’t have to hide it from us. I know what’s going on.”

  She knew?

 
I had never talked to Yael or Stevie about my mother. I had almost talked to Drew about her once—on one of our first Saturday nights at Knollwood as freshmen. The subject sort of thrust itself upon us. Drew and I had gone to the grocery store in Falls Church with our roommate, River. We were loading up on junk food for a movie night in our dorm room, which was supposed to be a fun bonding experience but was proving instead to be a tortuous crash course on a subject Drew and I would become begrudging experts on over the rest of the semester: Things River Could Not Eat. (Throughout the rest of the semester, Drew and I would also become reluctant experts on other subjects, like Things River Found Misogynistic and Things River Left Lying Around the Room That Looked Like Trash but Were Not Trash So Why Did You Throw That Away?) I had made the mistake of plucking a bag of gummy bears off the shelf when we first came into the store, and River had batted the bag away from the cart like she was a goalie defending her net.

  “What gives?” I asked.

  “Gummy bears are made of gelatin,” River said, her face puckered in disgust.

  “Yeah, okay, so?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. I looked at Drew, who looked as confused as I felt.

  “Is that like super fattening or something?” Drew asked.

  River scoffed. “Gelatin is made from collagen, which comes from ground-up animals.”

  Drew and I looked at each other.

  “Okay, so that’s a no for gummy bears,” I said. I eyed the other candies on the shelf and picked up a bag of M&M’s. “Are you more of a chocolate girl?” I asked, hopeful.