1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6)

by Misty Provencher

  Emilio holds up his free hand like a traffic cop. “Kids visiting are a bit different than—”

  “If my aunt has to go to work, they’re not going to just be visiting.” Lisa’s neck is rigid. I know the stance. This is her—setting us—straight. “They’re going to be here as long as I’ve got to be here.”

  “By the way, Emilio,” Paul lifts an inquiring finger, fixing his gaze in a confused squint, “are you on Gada’s list of people who need to be here?”

  “This is my house!” I say.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Lisa says, folding up her letter and slipping it back in her pocket. “You never know if Gada meant to liquidate everything and split it up. We’ll see after Sharley reads the will.”

  I step away from Emilio. If I had my old bicycle-tire-sized hoops in my ears, I’d be pulling them out in anticipation of beating Lisa’s ass. My smooth, controlled, corporate veneer peels back, so I understand why Emilio is watching me with wide eyes. He’s never seen this snarling, Brutus side of me. Emilio probably believes I would never jeopardize my manicure, and here I am, getting ready to kick Lisa’s head off her shoulders.

  “You think you’re getting our house?” I roar at her.

  Lisa shrugs with one limp shoulder. “Gada could’ve split up her estate five ways. She thought of us as her kids too.”

  “You weren’t her kids!”

  “Maybe not, but as far as the will goes, we just don’t know until we know.”

  Before I can throw myself at her, Emilio snakes his arm around my waist, looping his fingers around my belt.

  Sheri peeks around James. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Thinga-mahling here doesn’t think you should be allowed to stay,” Lisa says, throwing a thumb in my direction. “I’m going to say it’s an ex thing.”

  Sheri wheels around on James. “Ex?” she fires at him. “You said you were never married before!”

  “May as well have been,” Eve grumbles.

  “Wait,” Paul says, tapping a finger in the air. “Before? Does that mean he is married now?”

  “No,” James says from over one shoulder, and then to Sheri, “Grace and I just dated in high school.”

  He says my name like he’d say any other name in the world, and the way he minimalizes what we had is really disappointing. It’s a strange thing that he was the love of my life and now, he says my name as if we were strangers walking on opposite sides of a familiar street. No matter how far it is in the past, summarizing our relationship in one dull sentence feels disrespectful to the incredible bond we once had. I know it’s over. We’ve both moved on, but it’s like he’s decided not only to stop laying down flowers; instead, he’s decided to kick dirt on the grave of an old friend too.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she’d be here?” Sheri whispers to James, but we all hear every word. “I feel stupid being here now.”

  “Don’t worry, James has a way of making everybody feel stupid,” I say. Emilio reaches out, pulling me back beside him as Sheri shoots me a glare. I guess it’s okay if she thinks it, but not if the ex says it.

  “He’s not the only one.” Eve throws that snipe in my direction before retreating down the hall to my old room again.

  I forget James and his girlfriend and pursue her. “I didn’t say those things about you, Eve!”

  I only make it as far as the mouth of the hallway before she spins around in front of the bathroom door.

  “I don’t know why you’re keeping up the lie, Grace,” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “I heard it. You heard it. Are you trying to say that wasn’t your voice? We all heard you say it!”

  I shake my head. “Look, I don’t know who would’ve made that tape, or why it would be here, but somebody—probably somebody we know—faked that recording.”

  “You’re accusing one of us of doing this?” Lisa growls.

  “Who else would it have been?” I return.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why would I make a tape of something I would never say?” I thrust out a hip, which was a move Lisa taught me, and it’s the move she instantly mirrors…and she does it better.

  Lisa daintily swabs her forefinger and thumb along the inner corners of her mouth. I bet the vampire venom is pooling. “Because you’ve always been a blackmailer,” she says.

  “Blackmailer?” I forget all about the hip. My arms lock down at my sides, hands squeezed into fists. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about! Like when you wanted to go to college here because you didn’t want to leave James. Gada said no, she wanted you to go to Columbia. So you told Gada you would go until you turned eighteen, and then you would cancel and get a refund, transfer back here, or just quit altogether, and be with James anyway. You told her she’d never see you again if she didn’t let you have your way! She raised you and you were a total snot until she agreed to give you what you wanted!”

  I hate that she’s right. Gada just wanted the best for me, but back then, the only thing I wanted was James. I went for the jugular by telling Gada I would walk out of her life forever, after all she’d done for me, and she’d cried for a week straight, but I’d held my ground. She finally agreed that what she wanted was my happiness, and if being with James was it, at least I was still going to college. She gave in.

  “Fuck you, Lisa,” I snarl. She’s a bitch for throwing that in my face, especially now.

  “It’s the truth,” Lisa fires back. “You were always a manipulator.”

  “And you weren’t?” I laugh. “You were the queen of manipulation!”

  “These are all emotional responses that don’t address the real underlying issue,” Emilio says from behind Lisa. “The real question is if this tape is authentic or not.”

  Lisa completely ignores him and centers all her focus toward ripping on me. “I think you did it yourself,” she says with a sneer and a nasty jab toward my chest. “You knew Eve and I were getting close, and since we weren’t going off to college with you, you were freaked out that we were going to get even closer. You couldn’t stand not being my best friend. You were jealous of anyone else taking your place. You said it yourself!”

  Omg, I had.

  There were times when I was desperate to be Lisa’s number one friend just because I admired her so much. She was independent and edgy, she always had the right answers and spoke her mind, she seemed to know the way around every problem, and she was a celebrity among the boys. She was the cool that I wanted to be, and even though it is true that I could be a jealous friend at times, Eve was more like D’Artagnan than our third Musketeer, and she never made waves between Lisa and me. Eve fit in perfectly, a mortar between our bricks, and I never, ever, ever would have outted her—even if she’d replaced me as Lisa’s best friend. That part, I know for sure.

  “I never would’ve outted Evelyn,” I say. “And if you’re trying to say that I would’ve, then you never really knew me at all.”

  Lisa slumps back with a lazy shrug. “How do you ever really know a person?”

  “Yeah,” I growl with a glare that I believe communicates everything that Lisa and James did to me that summer of ’85. “How do you?”

  Lisa pulls away with a snort. “That’s your tape. You know it is. Just say it already, and tell Evie you’re sorry. She deserves that.”

  “It didn’t sound fake to me. You sounded pretty cohesive,” Eve says. When I have nothing to say, she turns back toward my old room, goes in and shuts the door behind her.

  “I think I’ve heard enough for the night too,” Lisa says. “If anybody needs me, I’ll be downstairs.”

  “Where should I put my stuff, James?” Sheri squeaks from the front door.

  “Outside,” I grumble.

  She doesn’t hear me, even if the look James flashes me suggests that he does. He picks up her bag, carrying it into Gada’s den.

  I dream of James, lying beside me, on top of the monkey bar dome. The metal bars against o
ur backs, the sky is cloudless, blue, and bright, like on the best summer days. I’m not afraid of falling, but Lisa and Eve are down below, throwing stones up at us and singing Careless Whisper by Wham. Just like for real, their voices suck and they’re all out of tune and the only way I know what song they’re singing is because of the words. The stones they throw dig into my back and stick there.

  James and I just lay there, looking at the sky and each other and listening to them butcher the song and nail us with rocks, but then Emilio is there at the bottom, yelling up at me to come down. I don’t.

  Dream James reaches for my hand, but the whole dome begins to shake as Dream Emilio throws his shoulder against the dome. It creates a bone-jarring quake and I yell at Emilio to stop because I am slipping through one of the holes that grows larger every time he rams the dome.

  Emilio keeps pounding it down below. I panic and let go of James’s hand so I can hang onto the metal bars, but the more Emilio shakes the structure, the further I slip down through the hole.

  Finally, I’m dangling by my red-knuckled hands. I think my arms are going to rip off at the shoulders. James holds onto my collar and begs me to let go, that he’ll haul me up with just one hand, but I’m sure my shirt will rip. Or I’ll drag him down with me through the holes too.

  Weirdly, when I look down, the ground looks tiny and Emilio looks like an ant. James is huge, a blow-up version of himself.

  My hands slip and—

  I wake up with a shake and Emilio, still asleep, rolling onto his other side, away from me. He pulls Gada’s church bazaar quilt off me as he goes. I grip the side and yank back on the edge. Emilio grunts, but doesn’t wake. I roll away from him with a sniffle. I don’t know why I feel like crying, but then I remember last night’s mess.

  The tape.

  Sheri.

  Lisa’s smug face and Evelyn’s angry brow.

  I don’t have any idea how I’m going to make it through the rest of the week. I don’t know that I can give Gada her final wish, for all of us to reconnect.

  I hear my voice downstairs and shoot up, stick-straight, on the bed.

  What the hell.

  I get out of bed and wrap myself in my satin nightgown, leaving Emilio, asleep. I curse my robe as it swirls around my feet, threatening to trip me as I go down the stairs.

  My voice is coming from the kitchen. The couch is an empty nest of pillows and quilts and Paul’s clothes—he’s still a raging slob. I hope to God he’s not running around naked—that was a thing for a while with him too—but when I enter the kitchen, there he is at the table with a coffee cup in hand, fully dressed and listening to the tape alongside Lisa and Eve. He reaches over and clicks off the boom box, perched on the counter beside the sink and beneath the window looking out on the backyard.

  Fabulous. The jury has assembled.

  They glance up when I walk in. Paul hits a button on the recorder and the tape squeaks as it rewinds.

  “We’ve been listening to the tape all morning,” Eve says.

  What do I say to that? Great? Or maybe, what’s the verdict?

  “There might be something wrong with it,” Paul says.

  “You think?” I snap.

  “But we’re not sure,” Lisa says, not bothering to collect the extra special glare I send her way.

  “You know what?” I traipse over to the cupboard and get down a cup, thunking it a little too hard on the counter. “I don’t even care what you guys think anymore. Sleuth on it all day, if you want. I know I never said that stuff.”

  “No, she didn’t,” James says, walking into the kitchen with Sheri close behind. He holds up a tape in his hand, wiggling it in the air. “I found this last night.”

  He tosses the tape on the table. It’s got a green sticker on the top that says Jones/Cult Jam Sleepover 8/85 in my writing. I always labeled our tapes with who was present and the date.

  “What’s on it?” Lisa asks dully.

  “Listen to it and find out.” James strides past me without a glance and takes down two cups from the cupboard. Sheri keeps as close to him as soup skin, wrapping her arms around his waist. They’re inches from me, but I won’t back up. I was here first. She kisses his cheek as he pours. God, she always releases from their kiss like a lamprey. Who does that?

  I move to the end of the counter, standing between it and the table as Paul loads the tape into the player. He hits play and Lisa’s voice rolls through the speakers.

  “Ok, you call Header.”

  She was talking about Heather Martens. Heather was the captain of the girl’s basketball team and a friend of Evelyn’s. She was nicknamed Header way before I knew her and I’d only met her once at one of Eve’s sleepovers.

  “No way,” I say. “She’s a dyke!”

  My eyes go wide. It’s exactly what I’d said on the other tape. I look around the room, pointing smugly to the boom box as I motion for Paul to boost the volume.

  “Fine,” Lisa says. “I’ll call her myself then, ya big baby. Did we forget anybody?”

  “Does Evelyn’s mom even know yet?” I ask.

  I set my jaw as I jab my finger at the speaker. “That was when we planned the surprise party for Eve’s sixteenth birthday!” I hiss. Eve shushes me with a hard swipe of her hand through the air as my words continue to stream out.

  “‘Cause somebody’s got to tell her. She’s going to go ape shit when she finds out…you know how she is. It’s not like Evelyn’s doing it on purpose, but her mom is still going to be pissed. She’ll think it was all Evelyn’s idea—not ours.”

  “Skipping stupid Saturday night church?” Lisa laughs. “They go Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays too…I think her mom can bite it, if her kid just misses one night out of three, for a goddam birthday party!”

  “Look, they need to know what’s going on! If nobody else is going to say something to her, I will. Otherwise, she might mess up the whole thing…”

  Paul reaches over and turns off the recorder.

  “I think I deserve an apology,” I say.

  Lisa snorts. “Where did this tape come from, James?”

  He points to the same cupboard the first tape had fallen out of yesterday night.

  “There were about a dozen more tapes in the back of that cupboard, so I went through them last night after everybody went to bed,” he says.

  Sheri weaves herself tighter to him, like a boa constrictor. “Except me. We stayed up together.”

  As if anyone needed to know that. Even Lisa rolls her eyes and gives another snort.

  I move my cup in a circular motion in front of me, but I keep my eyes on Lisa.

  “The question now,” I say, savoring the words, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer, “the question is which one of you made the tape to screw with me and Eve?”

  “Which one of us?” Lisa explodes. “Isn’t it really interesting that your ex-boyfriend was the one to dig up the tape, just like that?”

  Here comes the corporate, cold version of me that Lisa’s never seen. She helped sculpt it, but she’s never gotten a taste of me like this before.

  I narrow my eyes on her and drop my voice to a cold, calculated octave that could turn anti-freeze into igloos. “James and I haven’t been together for seven years. And considering what happened, why would you think he’s going to bust his ass to do anything for me?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me and Grace,” James agrees, dropping his arm around Sheri, who is spread around him like a resistant fungus. “I did it because it didn’t sound right and I wanted to know the truth.”

  “It’s because he’s a good person,” Sheri adds, going up on tiptoe with her lips puckered, waiting. He gives her a peck.

  “I would’ve thought you’d all want to know if it wasn’t the truth,” James says.

  “Unless it was one of you that made the fake tape,” I add, gluing my glare to Lisa.

  She matches it, flicking her chin at me. “You got something you want to say to me, Jones?
”

  “Niiiice,” Paul croons. “Girl fight! Get the popcorn, Evie!”

  “God, you’re still such a little bonehead,” Eve groans. She turns to Lisa and I, still locked in our death stare. “You two need to quit wiggin’ out. Gada brought us all here because of this kind of crap. We were The Band. Don’t you remember what that was like? It used to be a pretty insane connection between us, back in the day.

  “And Gada spent her last wish making sure we don’t throw away what we had. She wanted us stuck in this house together so we would have to air out everything that happened with us and maybe even get over it. I don’t know if anyone else is up for that, but I am. The least we can all do is honor Gada by giving it a shot.”

  All through Eve’s speech, one thing rises up for certain: Lisa’s not going to look away first.

  And neither am I.

  “Oh, come on,” Eve says, grabbing Lisa’s arm and dragging her away from me. It still doesn’t tear Lisa’s eyes off mine. She’s like a skanky little terrier. Eve gives her a shake, but it doesn’t change anything. “Look, if I can get over this, so can you two. I don’t even care if you did it, Cult Jam.”

  Lisa’s gaze cuts away from mine as she wrenches her arm out of Eve’s grasp. “If I did what?” she rages. “I didn’t make that tape!”

  “I don’t even care. Whatever happened, happened,” Eve assures her.

  “What happened,” Lisa hisses, “was that Grace ran off to her hoity-toity college and you stopped talking to me in a red hot blink! All this talk you’re doing about The Band—but Jones was the only one that really meant anything to you! We all knew you were crushing on her! I’m starting to think you made that tape, Evie. You were ruined when Jones left and I think you were looking for sympathy and something that would get back to Grace…so you made a tape.” Lisa stalks across the floor, pushing Eve back with only her presence. “Did you run over and tell Gada all about it? Did you play it for her so she would tell Grace and Jones would have to know how in love with her you always were?”