All These Beautiful Strangers

by Elizabeth Klehfoth

  “I’m not a baby,” Clementine said, slamming her fork onto the table.

  “Stop that,” Aunt Grier said, picking up the fork and handing it back to Clementine.

  Rosie’s Diner was always busy on Sunday mornings after church let out, but it was especially busy today with most of the alumni still in town for homecoming weekend. I spotted at least half a dozen people I knew from school and their families, all with the same idea to have one last meal together before everyone hit the road.

  I sat on the outside of the booth only half listening to the conversation. I couldn’t get the text conversation I had had with Greyson out of my head. I had turned his suggestion over and over in my mind last night. It seemed so obvious. Why hadn’t I thought of it before as the best place to start? I had questions, and somewhere in some dark, dusty storage closet, there was a box full of answers.

  “He should be fired,” Grandfather said. “I’m going to give Fred Eakins a call when we get home. He’s on the board. I’m sure he’s already heard about it.”

  “Don’t give yourself an aneurism,” Uncle Teddy said. “When it comes down to it, it’s really just some spray paint and a balloon and some kids having some fun. We got up to much worse in my day.”

  He winked at me across the table.

  “Teddy, please, they’re going to think we condone this type of behavior,” Aunt Grier said, wiping at the corner of Clementine’s mouth with a Wet-Nap.

  “Getting into some trouble is good for your complexion,” Uncle Teddy said. “Leo, Charlotte, I want you to know that if you don’t call me sometime before your teen years are up asking me to bail you out of jail, I’ll be a little disappointed.”

  “Teddy,” Aunt Grier said.

  “Get it all out of your systems before it goes on your permanent record,” Uncle Teddy said.

  “No proselytizing at the breakfast table,” Eugenia said.

  “Yes, Mother,” Uncle Teddy said, just to annoy her.

  Uncle Teddy excused himself to go to the restroom. I waited a moment after he had left and then crawled out of the booth and followed him. Rosie’s Diner had only one unisex bathroom, at the back of the restaurant. So I waited, leaning against the back hall wall. I heard a toilet flush, then the sound of the sink running.

  I told myself not to be nervous about asking him. In many ways, Uncle Teddy was like a second father. If there was anyone within the family I would confide in besides Leo, it was him.

  The door to the washroom opened and Uncle Teddy flipped the light switch off.

  “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there,” he said. He took a step back and held the door to the washroom open for me, flicked the light back on. “It’s all yours.”

  I took a step forward, held the door.

  “Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” I said.

  “Okay, what’s up?” Uncle Teddy asked.

  “It’s about my mom,” I said. I swallowed nervously. “I know that’s not anyone’s favorite subject.”

  Uncle Teddy’s smile wavered for a moment, but then he said, “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, first, Eugenia mentioned something strange the other day,” I said, tucking an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “She said that my mom hit you once. That she almost broke your nose.”

  Uncle Teddy looked past me, as if he were remembering something and was someplace else altogether. After a moment, he seemed to recover himself. “Your mom has a mean right hook,” he said, feigning a smile.

  “So it’s true?”

  “Listen, all of that is ancient history,” Uncle Teddy said, slightly irritated. “I have no idea why my mother is even bringing that up.”

  “She found out I was at the house on Langely Lake the other week,” I said.

  Uncle Teddy frowned. “What were you doing down there?”

  I hesitated. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to bring it up to my father?”

  “Charlotte—”

  “I can’t tell you if you’re going to talk to him about it. He made it clear he didn’t want him involved.”

  “Who made that clear?”

  I hesitated. “Promise my father doesn’t find out about this?”

  Uncle Teddy sighed. “Fine. You have my word.”

  “My uncle Hank—do you remember him? He’s my mom’s oldest brother?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “Well he came to see me the other week,” I said. “He told me he had to talk to me about my mom—about what happened to her. And he showed me these photographs he found in the lake house. These photographs—Uncle Teddy, if you had only seen them. He thinks they have something to do with what happened to my mom. I don’t know.”

  “What’s in the photographs?” Uncle Teddy asked.

  “Some pictures are of my mom with a strange guy in a diner,” I said. “And then there are other pictures of me and Seraphina and my mom from that summer. Like, creepy stalker photographs. As if someone were following us around Hillsborough that summer.”

  Uncle Teddy’s brow creased in concern. “Do you have the photographs with you? Can I see them?”

  I shook my head. “Uncle Hank has them. Listen, I know our family and theirs haven’t always seen eye to eye, and I don’t know what to make of the photographs, but I have to admit they’re strange,” I said. “I know this is a huge favor to ask, but do you think you could get me whatever information my father’s private investigator found on my mother? I need to know the whole story. Or, at least, what there is to know.”

  Uncle Teddy was quiet for a moment.

  “I can get you the PI case folder,” he said. “It’ll be our little secret.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Teddy,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief.

  “Of course,” Uncle Teddy said, and he put his arm around my shoulder as we headed back to our booth. “What’s a little secret between blood?”

  Fourteen

  Alistair Calloway

  1996

  In late December, my family gathered at my parents’ house in Greenwich for the holidays. As usual, Eugenia outdid herself. The whole house smelled of evergreens. A twenty-foot Christmas tree stood in the entrance hall near the grand staircase; the banisters were wrapped with holly and ribbon. Festive garlands dripped from every mantel, and paintings of snow-covered landscapes hung proudly on the walls while white lights twinkled from every bough of the trees on the front lawn.

  We all brought someone home with us for the holidays because we Calloways would go crazy if we stayed cooped up with just ourselves. I brought Margot, as I had the Christmas before last. Olivia invited her friend Porter from Vassar, who wore argyle sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses and liked to talk in long run-on sentences about art and Sartre. I figured Teddy would show up half-drunk the day after Christmas with one of his eating club cronies in tow; instead, he showed up three days before Christmas with Grace.

  Margot and I had been out at Bergdorf’s all afternoon making our wedding registry and so I didn’t see my brother and Grace until that evening when we all sat down together in the parlor.

  There was a fire lit in the hearth; Teddy and Grace were sitting next to Margot and me on the large sofa, and Eugenia was getting us drinks from the wet bar.

  “When was the last time you had your hair cut?” Eugenia asked, fussing over Teddy as usual as she handed him his scotch.

  Teddy ran a hand subconsciously through his hair, patting at his unruly cowlick. “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “I’ll give Robert a call,” Eugenia said. “He can come by and give you a proper cut and a shave.”

  I leaned forward and ran the sharp wire of the cheese cutter through the pale rind of the Parmigiano-Reggiano that Eugenia had laid out on the coffee table. I imagined the block of cheese was Grace’s pale slender neck as I sliced it.

  I was irritated that Grace was there. In our last conversation, it was like she had picked at a scab that had long ago healed over, and now I had to deal
with it all over again. I was having this recurring dream now where I was standing atop a tall ledge in the dark. It was so dark I couldn’t really see anything around me—I just instinctively knew where I was, and what lay below me. Every time, I tried to navigate away from the ledge. I’d be sure it was in front of me, so I’d take a step back. Or I’d be sure it was behind me, and I’d move forward. And every time, I was wrong. I fell—down and down and down until I hit the water. It engulfed me, cold and dark, and I’d try to swim out of it, but I could never reach the surface in time. No matter how hard I tried, how fast I swam, I could never find my way out of it. I’d wake up gasping for breath, drenched in a cold sweat.

  Twice, Margot had been sleeping next to me when it happened. She was alarmed enough that she urged me to see a doctor. I scheduled an emergency appointment with my physician, Dr. Carmichael, and he ran a full physical, countless blood tests. Everything came back normal.

  “You have a perfect bill of health,” Dr. Carmichael had told me at our last appointment.

  “Then why do I wake up at night drenched in sweat?” I asked.

  “Anxiety,” Dr. Carmichael said. “Has any stressful event occurred in your life lately? Anything out of the usual?”

  I thought of Grace. We were dating when it happened, she had said.

  “I’m getting married,” I said instead. “In September. At the Vineyard.”

  “That would do it,” Dr. Carmichael said with a chuckle. “Classic case of prewedding jitters.”

  He prescribed me Xanax; I popped that shit like candy, just so I could get some fucking sleep.

  And now there Grace was again—sitting in my family’s parlor like she was a member of the goddamn club. It was annoying, to say the least. What was she even doing there? Was Teddy still playing that stupid game of his?

  “It’s called Two Truths and a Lie,” Eugenia was saying to the group. “It’s a little game we like to play.”

  “I want to go first,” Olivia said, perching on a chair near the fireplace.

  “We need to explain the rules of the game first,” Eugenia said, settling into her armchair with her glass of red wine. “And Grace should get to go first, since she’s our guest.”

  Olivia leaned back in her chair and sighed. “That’s hardly fair. Since we know practically nothing about her, she has a huge advantage.”

  “Do we have to play this?” Teddy whined. “Can’t we be normal and play charades or something?”

  “You’re just saying that because you always lose,” Olivia said. “He’s not very good,” Olivia said to Grace.

  “Well, considering this game champions pathological liars, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Teddy said. “It’s no wonder you’re so good at it.”

  Olivia stuck her tongue out at him.

  Olivia and Teddy always fought when they played this game. Last time, it had ended with Olivia throwing her glass of wine in Teddy’s face—the whole glass, not just the wine.

  “Each person makes three statements—two of them are true, and one of them is a lie,” Eugenia explained to Grace and Porter. Margot had played with us before. “The rest of us have to guess which one is the lie.”

  “And we can ask you things to try and figure it out,” Olivia said. “And you can lie all you want to try and trick us.”

  “If we guess wrong, you remain in the game,” Eugenia said. “And if we guess correctly, you’re out. Everyone takes a turn until there’s only one person left.”

  “And the winner gets a prize,” Olivia said. “It’s always something good. What’s the prize this time, Eugenia?”

  “The prize,” Eugenia said, “is my watch.”

  She unclasped the white-gold band from around her wrist and held it up for all of us to see. It was a Rolex with a pavé-diamond dial.

  “Oh, let me see,” Olivia said, reaching out her hands to take the watch. “It’s beautiful.”

  “So, Grace,” Eugenia said. “You get to go first.”

  “Okay, three things,” Grace said, clutching the stem of her wineglass.

  “You don’t have to play, if you don’t want to,” Teddy said.

  “Yes, she has to play,” Olivia said. “Why wouldn’t she have to play?”

  “It’s fine,” Grace said, putting her hand on Teddy’s knee. She bit her lip for a moment, deep in thought.

  “The first thing is, I used to swim competitively in high school, and I won a state champion title,” she said after a moment. “The second thing is, I never finished college. And the third thing is, I have four brothers.”

  “What did you swim in high school?” Margot asked.

  “Breaststroke,” Grace said.

  “Funny,” Olivia said. “Teddy was also a champion of stroking breasts in high school.”

  “Shut up, Liv,” Teddy said.

  Margot tilted her head and considered Grace. She fingered the band of her engagement ring, as she often did when she was thinking. “Could be true,” she said. “She’s short, but she does have somewhat of a swimmer’s build.”

  “Yeah, no chest,” Olivia said.

  “What the hell, Olivia?” Teddy said.

  Grace’s cheeks reddened.

  “What are your brothers’ names?” I asked.

  Grace turned her eyes on me. It took her a moment to answer. “Lonnie, Will, Phillip, and Hank,” she said.

  “Jeez,” Olivia said. “Are your parents Catholic or something? Do they not believe in birth control?”

  “Mother, can’t you, like, muzzle her or something?” Teddy complained. Teddy was the only one who could call Eugenia “Mother.”

  “Olivia, try to be civil,” Eugenia chastised.

  “Tell us something about each of your brothers,” my father said.

  “Well, Lonnie is the youngest,” Grace said. “He’s sort of the family clown. And Will is the middle one. He’s always been the brave one, the adventurer. Phillip is the brains of the family. He’s in law school. And Hank is the oldest—he’s sort of rough around the edges but has a good heart.”

  “Which one’s your favorite?” Olivia asked.

  “I love all of my brothers,” Grace said. “But I guess I’m closest with Hank.”

  “Why didn’t you finish college?” Porter asked.

  Grace shrugged. “For a lot of reasons,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t have a clear sense of what I wanted to do. And I don’t think a classroom or a degree can teach you the things you really need to know in life. I guess I wanted to be out in the world, living.”

  “Those are stupid reasons,” Olivia said.

  “Okay, I think we’re done playing,” Teddy said, clapping his hands together. “Charades, anyone?”

  “What?” Olivia said. “If someone gives a stupid answer, I’m allowed to say so. It’s part of the game.”

  “She’s right, Teddy,” my father said. “Don’t be so sensitive.”

  The tips of Teddy’s ears reddened and he stared down at the coffee table.

  “What were your brothers’ names again?” my father asked Grace.

  Grace was quiet for a moment. “Lonnie, Will, Hank, and Patrick,” she said after a moment.

  “You said Phillip before, dear,” my father said. “Not Patrick.”

  Grace’s eyes widened slightly. She looked down at her hands. “Did I?”

  “Who votes that that was the lie?” Olivia said to the room. “Grace doesn’t have four brothers.”

  We all raised our hands except for Teddy.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Grace said with a small smile. “That was the lie. I guess I’m out.”

  “Don’t give up so easily next time,” Olivia said, clearly annoyed. “You could have tried to convince us that Dad just remembered things wrong.”

  “Not likely,” our father said, giving Grace a wink. “I have a mind like a steel trap.”

  “My turn now,” Olivia said, sitting up in her chair like a proud peacock.

  Grace was mainly quiet for the rest of the game; Ted
dy silently seethed beside her. When it was Teddy’s turn, his three things were: “My sister, Olivia, is an asshole; I hate my sister, Olivia; and I do not hope that Olivia dies a horrific, painful death.” In the end, my father won the game, and he picked the gold wristwatch out of Olivia’s claws and gave it back to my mother.

  Later that evening, I meandered down the hall and into Teddy’s room. I sat casually in the armchair next to his bed and watched him unpack.

  Teddy didn’t acknowledge my presence, so I picked up the small rubber stress ball on his nightstand and threw it up in the air, caught it, and threw it up again.

  “What?” Teddy finally asked when he could no longer ignore me.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . a surprising choice of guest, is all,” I said, setting the ball back down. “Is it really taking you this long to fuck her?”

  Teddy stopped unfolding his shirts. His back was rigid; his ears went red.

  “It’s not like that anymore,” Teddy said, not looking at me. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “So you’re what? Serious about her?”

  “Would it be so terrible if I was?”

  “Teddy, she’s a poor choice,” I said. “She’s very . . . average.”

  Teddy gave a dark laugh. “Average. You say that like it’s the worst possible thing a person could be. And you’re wrong. You don’t know her like I do.”

  “Listen,” I said, standing and clapping my hand on my brother’s shoulder. “You may think I’m being unfair, but I’m just trying to look out for you. You can be many things and make it in this family. Be stupid, be rebellious, be frivolous, be vain. But you can’t be average. And Grace is average. She won’t survive us. So do everyone a favor, and just fuck her and get it over with.”

  It happened very fast: one moment I was standing there with my hand on my brother’s shoulder, and the next, he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and slammed me up against the wall. He was red in the face and breathing all heavy, and I saw the fury in his eyes.

  I laughed.

  “Careful, Teddy,” I said. “Your feelings are showing.”