The Whole Thing Together

by Ann Brashares

  “Right.”

  “So he agreed to match whatever amount of money Mom put in. Guess how much Mom put in?”

  “None.”

  “Right. Her contribution is a bean salad, she said. So Dad said fine, he’d also contribute a salad. Guess what kind?”

  “Lobster.”

  “Right.”

  “We can do the rest of it,” Quinn said. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. And you know Evie will help.”

  “Who’s going to buy the booze?”

  Quinn shrugged. “We’ll use what’s in the house.” Robert kept a fair amount of liquor and wine around, knowing Lila didn’t drink. “And I have some money saved up.”

  “Why should you be paying for it? Why are they always such babies?”

  Quinn looked at her carefully. “Mattie, I know that can’t be the reason. This is exactly what we knew would happen. They’re both brave enough to come and face each other on pretty short notice, and that in itself is some kind of miracle.”

  Mattie sighed. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  Mattie left her sandwich in the grass. “I just…don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”

  Quinn knew Mattie was struggling with something bigger than this. She had a strong intuition for what it was, but she also knew Mattie didn’t want to tell her yet. “You want to cancel it?”

  “I don’t want to hurt Emma’s feelings, and I’m worried the Hurns already bought the plane tickets. So I feel really bad about it. But I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. How could I possibly have thought it was a good idea?” Mattie put her hands on the top of her head. “So I guess it’s good nobody else is traveling for it. Wouldn’t it just be a relief not to have to do it? The truth is, I think Emma would be relieved too.”

  Quinn felt the sun on the tops of her knees. It would be a relief. But relief was not what she was looking for. Relief was a poor guide if ever there was one.

  You couldn’t deny the pain and you couldn’t avoid it. Embrace it. That was her mantra, and yet look what had been happening in her own family for almost her entire life. You let it have a voice if it needed one. What if it needed one?

  “I think we should go ahead,” Quinn said finally. “I’ll do everything, if you want.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve avoided it too long. We need to move on. All of us.”

  “You sure?” Mattie gave her a look, skeptical, with a lot of history in it. Because Quinn never showed up anywhere when she was supposed to and never dressed properly for any occasion, and could not even sit through the SATs.

  “Yes.”

  “It might be terrible.”

  “It might. But that’s not the reason not to do it.”

  Sasha/Ray,

  My alter-ego, my counterpart, my zero-sum. (I’ll be zero because you are sum.) We are never in the same place at the same time. Do we cancel each other out? Can anyone prove there are two of us? Flip sides, dark and light, girl and boy, yin and yang.

  So how about this for an idea: we are complementary rather than opposing, my friend. As contrary forces, we don’t cancel each other out, we give rise to each other.

  But what if, even once, I just want to be with you?

  Ray/Sasha

  P.S. Somewhat drunk when I wrote that. Please apply 40 oz. discount.

  —

  “Did you drive that black Audi that’s parked out back?”

  Mattie was trying to carry two large buckets full of zinnias. She kept sloshing the cold water down her legs. “Yeah.”

  Matt Reese smiled. “I think old Dana just took a picture of it.”

  Mattie rolled her eyes with extra gusto.

  “Daddy’s car, I’m guessing?”

  “No, my stepmother’s. Some jerk ran over the front wheel of my bike when it was parked in front of Dreesen’s. My dad told me to drive this till it’s fixed.”

  Matthew took one of the buckets from her. “I’m surprised you don’t have your own car.”

  She put the remaining bucket of flowers down on the counter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “ ’Cause you’re a daddy’s girl.”

  “My daddy has four girls,” Mattie said flatly, a challenge in her eyes.

  “None like you. Quinn says you’re the one who can get away with anything.”

  “Quinn said that?”

  Matthew sat down in one of the two lawn chairs they kept behind the counter. It was always slow on Wednesday evenings after the picking and sorting was done. “Sure. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. It’s a lucky thing.” There was a weight behind his words that sounded personal.

  She sat down heavily in the other chair, leaning against the stretchy green tubing that made the backrest. The strange Reeses’ farm talking serum was working again. “I guess it’s because I’m the receiver of most of the divorce guilt. Because I was so little. Because Emma didn’t need it and Quinn didn’t want it. Because Sasha didn’t deserve it.” Because I’m not theirs. She felt her eyes fill up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She was trying to keep her face from looking tragic, but he noticed anyway.

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Don’t listen to me. I’ve got nothing to say about parents. I don’t know anything about them.” He did an admirable job of keeping his voice light. “I do have a thing or two to contribute about grandparents.”

  “And I don’t have much to say about those. Except Grandpa Harrison bankrupted the family and then died and Grandma Hardy stashes silverware in her purse every time she comes to visit.”

  He laughed. “Did you know your grandma Hardy tried to hire my grandma to clean her house when they were both newly married? My grandma has not forgotten it.”

  Mattie opened her eyes wide. “Well, you should tell your grandma that the once-grand Gloria Hardy Harrison is stealing silverware now. The cheap stainless steel kind. That will make her feel better.”

  Matthew considered.

  “Maybe I’ll tell her myself,” Mattie said.

  The conversation dried up, but Matthew didn’t get up to go.

  Mattie took a deep lungful of late-July air. “Quinn’s right, you know. Everybody does go easy on me. It’s true I get away with a lot.” She brushed at her eyes. “But things are not always how they seem. Maybe I was a daddy’s girl. Now I don’t know what I am.”

  He nodded, as though listening for more.

  Suddenly she wondered if everybody knew or at least suspected the whole time. Maybe it was a regular feature of town gossip….And poor Robert Thomas actually thinks the little blond one is his….What if all these years it had been obvious to everyone but her and her dad?

  She dunked her hand in the cold water of the flower bucket, trawling for loose leaves. “Everything I thought I knew about myself, I don’t know anymore,” she said quietly.

  —

  Later that night Mattie sat on a chaise by the swimming pool. The surface of the water was layered with leaves because the pool maintenance company quit when her mother stopped paying her half of the bills. When her father saw the state of it, he would blow a gasket.

  It was the same old thing: Robert hated a dirty pool. Lila didn’t particularly care about a dirty pool. Robert hated bailing Lila out even more than he hated the dirty pool.

  “I like it better like this,” Quinn said when she came out of the house.

  “It’s more hospitable to frogs and dragonflies,” Mattie offered.

  “I like that.”

  “Dad won’t.”

  Quinn nodded. She sat in the chair next to Mattie.

  “He’ll get out there with the net again,” Mattie predicted. “You watch. He’ll clean it up. And at the end of this weekend, he’ll put all the leaves and crap right back in.”

  Quinn laughed.

  “He doesn’t realize Mom doesn’t care
.”

  They sat together in silence for a while.

  “Do you know anything about Matthew Reese’s dad?” Mattie asked.

  Quinn shook her head slowly. “I don’t think anyone does.”

  “He doesn’t even know who it is?”

  “If his mom knew, she never said. Matthew asked his grandfather once and he told him, ‘Your father could be any damned man in this country.’ ”

  Mattie let this sink in. “Cameron probably has a different dad,” she mused.

  “Probably.”

  They fell into silence again.

  “I saw their mom once,” Quinn said in a hushed voice.

  “Really? I thought she was gone for good.”

  “Two summers ago I was tending the peaches late at night. She was sitting on the back steps of the farmhouse in the rain, waiting for somebody to let her in, but all the lights were off. She asked me if I had any money.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I said I had a twenty and I gave it to her and she left. I don’t know if she’s been back since then.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “She and Mom were friends when they were young.”

  Quinn nodded again. “Carly Reese broke her dad’s heart. Poor Mr. Reese can hardly say her name. She broke everyone’s heart, again and again.”

  Holy shit, co-person. This party is actually happening. We will be in the same place at the same time!

  I’ll see your face up close in August. Dress code is flak jackets and hazmat suits.

  Sasha read Ray’s email and read it again. She went downstairs and wandered around until she found her mother in the laundry room.

  “Is the engagement party for Em and Jamie really happening? Did Dad say yes?”

  Even in the laundry room in the company of her one blood relation, her mother was diplomatic. “Seems like it’s a go,” she said brightly.

  “Why?”

  “Because the girls asked him.”

  “It’s that easy? All these years. Why didn’t someone tell me?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Sasha. It’s unbecoming.”

  Unbecoming. Her mother said it a lot. Sasha knew it was bad, but did not know what it actually meant. How exactly did it relate to becoming? Was becoming good to do? She stifled her desire to ask, because sarcasm is unbecoming.

  “And Lila said yes? That’s even harder to imagine.”

  Her mother went back to folding Sasha’s father’s underpants. “At first she said no. From what I understand. But then she changed her mind.”

  Would she really see Ray on the evening of August ninth? She tried to imagine shaking his hand or air-hugging or kissing his cheek. Was that what they would do? Would the world allow for that?

  And what about their parents? Would they stand in the same room? Would they listen to each other’s voices? Would they shake hands? Would the world allow for that?

  “Does Jamie’s family have any idea what they’re getting into?”

  “No need to be dramatic. We’re all adults.” Her mother had that tight look on her face, like an usher in church.

  Sasha tried not to grumble audibly. “No need to pretend like our whole life isn’t a series of gyrations so Dad can avoid Lila and vice versa.”

  Her mother stopped folding and glared at her.

  Sasha looked innocent. “Or…maybe we do need to pretend that.”

  The glare ticked up to the next level of annoyance.

  Sasha shrugged. “Okay, well, you are in charge of pretending, so just, you know, give me my orders.”

  Why, oh why did she always do this to her mother?

  In anger her mother’s face finally animated. “I don’t get it, Sasha. Why are you sweet to everyone but me?”

  Sasha felt ashamed. She was officially unbecomed. Unbecame. But this was the pattern with her. She provoked and provoked until her mother said one honest thing.

  Holy shit, you’re right. I am feeling a dreadful excitement. Like when a hurricane is coming and it’s gonna level the place. It’s not even Mattie who’s pushing this thing now. It’s Quinn. ????

  Never easy to follow Quinn’s thoughts but always fun to try. Like locating a prairie dog. She disappears and pops up somewhere totally different. But this time, I’ve lost her. WTF is she thinking?

  I wish I could tell you. Nobody takes it harder, feels it stronger than her. Nobody wishes for peace and suffers more when it never comes.

  Well put, sister. (I mean, not my sister. Quinn’s sister.) I can’t stop thinking about what you wrote. How true, how true. It’s fucking looonacy isn’t it?

  We never talked about it. That was what her mother said when Mattie asked if her father knew.

  Mattie sat at the end of the dock, dangling her feet into the pond. There was late-day, sweet sunlight. The sky and the pond were both perfectly pink and smooth as a pearl, except for her kicking it. Her dad and Evie and Sasha would arrive any minute. She wanted to know when they got there, but she wasn’t quite ready to see them.

  It was sick, but sadly believable. Her mother hatches a blond, blue-eyed baby after her affair with her Californian surfing instructor, and she and her Bengali-born husband, according to her, at least, never talked about it.

  Did they ever talk about the affair? Did he know? Based on her dad’s reaction to hearing Jonathan Dawes’s name, it seemed he must have known something. But how much? She’d been figuring it was the cause of their split—the timing and the general feeling of outrageousness supported it—but now she was getting the sense it was just a part of the larger disaster.

  Sometimes Mattie wondered if the absolute most important things were the things they never talked about.

  She heard the car on the gravel. She could tell her father was driving, because the car was going too fast. Her heart thumped along, accelerating as the car slowed down and stopped.

  She’d never been worried to see him before, never felt like she’d had a real secret from him. Not even when she’d come home from camp, bursting with self-conscious importance for having gotten her first period. He was mostly easy and fun with her. He teased, but not too much.

  Maybe he really didn’t know.

  Then again, he was pretty good at not knowing the things he didn’t want to know.

  She sat there frozen, listening, her toes still in the still water. Car doors slammed. Gravel crunched under shoes. Her father threw open the front door of the house with his usual ease of ownership. She imagined it more than she could hear it.

  It didn’t matter that it was a house bought by the grandfather of his bitterly hated ex-wife, renovated by the father of that ex-wife, and inhabited half the weeks of the year by the very woman herself with her newer husband. When her father was there he occupied the place fully, happily, and without compunction.

  “Anybody here?” he called. “Mattie?” He knew Emma was with Jamie staying with friends on Shelter Island tonight and Quinn was working. All the sliding-glass doors were open; he knew someone was home.

  She heard him in the kitchen. She couldn’t make out the quiet footsteps of Evie or Sasha, but she could count on hearing every stomp of her father’s shoes.

  “Matt?”

  She kept her eyes on the line where the pond met the ocean. Would he know when he saw her face? Would he sense something had changed?

  How could she go in there? What would she say? Should she just stand up and walk inside? She couldn’t, but what would they think if she didn’t?

  It turned out she didn’t need to walk in there. There was her father throwing open the sticky screen door of the living room, stomping out onto the damp grass.

  “Mattie, is that you out there?”

  She felt like crying. She couldn’t even figure out how to open her mouth. She turned around and nodded, not sure whether he could see her gesture in the falling light.

  He walked to her, right onto the dock, out of place in his fancy London suit, his shiny work shoes, arms ope
ning early. “Hey, honey. What are you doing out here?”

  Nothing was amiss in his face, his walk, his voice. If there was in hers, he didn’t seem to notice. He stomped out to the end of the dock and put his arms around her.

  He would always come out and get you. He wasn’t complicated; he didn’t check you before he committed himself. He didn’t hold back.

  He was strikingly brave in this way. After all he had been through, all he’d lost and had to lose, she couldn’t understand it.

  Would it change if he knew? Would she lose this? She prided herself on her own rebellious spirit even when it turned reckless, but unlike him, she suspected she was really a coward if it meant losing.

  Her heart ached at the mental picture at Ditch Plains, the treasonous thought.

  He hugged her and then pretended to throw her off the dock. That was their old thing. It was easy to go right back to it. She squealed, she laughed, she tried to throw him in. He pretended to stagger off the end of the dock. But he was big and strong and clever, and she knew by now he never went in unless he wanted to.

  He put his arm around her shoulder as they walked back toward the house. “We’re making hamburgers on the grill. Evie got some kind of special spices. How’s the farm? Did you bring home more yellow peaches?”

  She rested her head against his shoulder as they walked. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but he didn’t notice.

  He was always easy on her. It was easy to love him, easy to be loved.

  He didn’t know, did he?

  And how would it be if he did?

  —

  Within a week or so of the engagement, Jamie’s mother had written eager notes of introduction and congratulations to both of Emma’s parents, and the difference in their responses told an unhappy tale.

  Lila still hadn’t answered hers. “God, I shudder when I see a handwritten note on engraved stationery,” she had erupted when Emma asked about it. “Bane of my childhood. And Mrs. Stewart Hurn? Seriously? Does she not have a name? Em, tell me the truth. Are they country club people?”

  “You could still answer it,” Emma pointed out darkly. “Before they get here for the party.”

  And then, on the other hand, there was her father, who’d not only sent a jubilant note in return but the case of champagne along with it.