Between You and Me (6 page)

Kelsey nods as she takes another mouthful. We all eat for a few cricket-filled moments. Kelsey drops her head to Delia’s shoulder.

Andy pushes his chair back. “I’m gonna watch the game.”

“But we haven’t had a proper meal at an honest-to-goodness table in weeks,” Michelle says. “Kelsey, how funny was that camel?”

Kelsey straightens up. “
So
funny. Logan, you will not believe this.” As Andy resumes eating she launches into the story at full throttle, complete with voicing the thoughts of the camel, until I’m holding my sides from laughing. And yet, despite the empirical intimacy, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still watching her on a screen.

A few hours later, I startle awake to Delia nudging me. I lurch to sit, squinting at her in the darkness. “What’s wrong?”

“I was thinking, since you’re leaving tomorrow, maybe you’d want to bring breakfast in to Kelsey so you two can hang out.”

“Um.” I inhale. “Sure. Just . . . get me in the morning.”

“Or how about now?”

“Now?” I fumble to turn the clock. “What time is it?”

“Five-forty-something. Angela’s got the tray ready to go. Want to come get it?” She steps leadingly backward.

“Sure. Sure.” I pull on my jeans as she hovers at the bedroom door. On the staircase I hear
Good Morning America
’s Robin Roberts welcoming viewers back from commercial. Michelle stands behind Andy, who sits with his elbows on his knees, head dropped as if his team just fumbled on fourth and goal.

“So, have you picked a location, or is that a secret?” Robin Roberts smiles warmly at Eric Lamont and his girlfriend, who has just parlayed being a VJ into a judgeship on
American Idol.

“We hope to keep it that way.” He grins, setting off his famous dimples. “Our wedding’s just for family.”

“Oh!” I say, my hand going to my mouth. Michelle wipes her eyes.

Delia tugs me to the kitchen, where Angela silently hands off a tray replete with crystal-vased rose.

Andy turns off the TV and tosses the remote with disgust. “What’s that?” He points at my tray but directs the question to Delia.

“Just a little something to get Kel going.”

“That’s sweet, Dee,” Michelle says, blowing her nose.

Andy circles the couch to us in two long steps. “She has wall-to-wall press—the tickets for Asia go on sale this weekend, this is our
only promo, and now every question’s gonna be Eric, Eric, Eric. We can’t let this suck her under.”

“Oh, I know,” Delia says lightly, nonetheless steering me to the stairs. “I just thought she could use a little extra TLC before she gets in front of those cameras.”

The four of us start up.

“Telling her right now is ridiculous,” Andy says.

“It’s almost nine in New York,” Delia counters. “It’ll be online in a matter of minutes. I still think we should’ve kept her schedule clear.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Andy spits. “She’s tough as nails. We can’t bench her every time you hear a rumor. What, was she not going to work this whole week?”

“My friend at MTV isn’t a rumor.” Step by step, all four of us, and one enormous tray, are jockeying up the stairs like a carnival stall horse race. “I told you this was coming—”

“But Eric hasn’t even known that VJ girl a year,” Michelle cuts Delia off in a tone that implies that this is not the first round of this conversation. “She’s so uppity—I thought he was just getting her out of his system. I’ll do it.” Michelle takes the tray from me as I put together the timing of my invitation.

“Logan,” Andy whispers as we approach Kelsey’s door, “You should just go right on back to bed—”

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Delia calls as she pushes inside. For a moment, no one moves. I peer around Andy to see Kelsey on the pink carpet in her T-shirt, her forehead dropped to the floor.
Good Morning America
drones on the screen over her fireplace. “Kelsey.” Delia darts past Michelle. Kelsey pushes her contorted face into Delia’s waist, her frame shuddering. Andy turns off the TV.

Michelle flips on the chandelier. “Do you need a cold washcloth? Logan, get her a washcloth.”

I hustle into the bathroom where I take in the wall-size case displaying Kelsey’s ribbons and trophies, first ice skating and then the talent contests, from Little Miss Cornstalk to Miss Honeybee, and on to the big leagues, the statewides, the regionals, the nationals, the ones that led to real opportunities, to this.

Kelsey cries soundlessly into Delia’s lap. I put the washcloth to her inflamed cheek. She lets it drop to the floor.

“Kelsey.” Michelle swipes it up, looking miserable. “You have to let it go, sweetie. I mean, if we’re all honest, you’re the one who cheated—”

“Ep,” Andy cuts her off. “Logan, this here is a private matter,” he says sharply.

“Sorry, I’ll um . . . ” I cross toward the door, having just gotten the confirmation of Kelsey’s infidelity that’s eluded the tabloids.

“Kelsey.” She doesn’t respond. “Rambo.” Andy invokes the nickname he coined for her because she was so strong on the ice for her size. “You need to be in downtown Los Angeles. In exactly two hours. Looking like you could give a flying shit.”

She pushes herself to sit.

“Delia, I want five minutes when y’all get home.” He walks out.

Michelle wriggles a piece of toast from the sterling rack and butters it. “And I’ve got to beat those costumes into shape. They didn’t come back like how I wanted. Don’t tell him,” she says quietly as we hear him clomp downstairs. She takes a bite. “Just get him all riled up again. Logan, Andy’s right. We didn’t need to get you up at this obscene hour on the last day of your vacation.”

Delia doesn’t meet my eyes.

“Really, go on, now,” Michelle repeats emphatically, and, not knowing how else to help as Kelsey stares into the carpet, I do.

A short time later, I
peer through the rolling mist from my bathroom window as Kelsey and the team climb into cars. I spend the rest of the morning sidestepping the growing cast of staffers, who circle the house talking to one another and their phones about the pending tour. I take a sandwich to my room and curl up on my balcony to field calls from Lauren, Charlotte, Rachel, and Sarah, in which I find myself saying, “Oh, really, he is?
Engaged
? No, no talk of it here. She must not care.” Then I divert their attention by revealing nothing details that feel like something tidbits. Kelsey Wade’s carpet is . . . pink! In her bathroom, she has . . . washcloths!

But no call from Jeff. For the first time, I find myself wishing I’d
told him I was related to her. Because indulging in dead-end banter would be better than ruminating on this. Delia obviously thought my being here would help—but how?

Later, I hear the car return and stand, waiting to see if I might be summoned. Instead, I see Kelsey appear on the lawn below. She hurries to its wooded periphery and, glancing over her shoulder, slips out of sight.

As this may be my last chance, I quickly make my way downstairs and across the grass where I discover a worn path into the shaded overgrowth. I arrive at a clearing of moss-covered rocks. Kelsey sits on one, smoking, her grief making art of her face as black rivulets from her eyes catch the coral of her cheeks and seep with her sprayed tan into her white tank. She has a leather-bound notebook in her lap, its spine cracked through from use.

I turn to leave, snapping a twig underfoot.

“Shit!”

I spin back. Kelsey has dropped the cigarette.

“Sorry,” I say, yet again.

“You scared me.”

“Do you want to be alone? I mean, obviously, you do. I just thought—”

“Just working out some lyrics.” She holds it up so I can see a scribbled poem riddled with cross-outs and ringed with musical notes in the margins. She slaps it shut and drops it between her ankles. “Whatever.” She produces a pack of American Spirits and taps one out for me.

“I’m good.”

“Really?” she asks skeptically, lighting another for herself.

“I quit.”

“Impressive.” She takes a deep inhale, leaving a metallic pink ring on the filter.

“My last was the September after graduation at three-fourteen
AM
after a nothing call from a nothing guy. I was ashing in a toilet, and it just hit me that every time I smoked, it was because I was pissed at a guy. I’m so jealous of the people who can just do it socially, but I craved one every time I got frustrated, which was, I discovered, a lot.
So I had to go cold turkey. But I still dream about it, think about it, am inhaling vicariously as we speak.”

She cocks her head before exhaling a stream of smoke to the skylight made by the thinning canopy. “Thanks. I don’t feel like an asshole at all now.”

“Oh, no! That’s not what I meant. Sorry. After this morning, you deserve to smoke American Spirit headquarters. Was the event okay?” I ask the safest question.

“Oh, sure. I love nothing more than spending my quote
break
driving two hours round trip to spend three hours standing in some high-rise business brunch while people talk Japanese around me but never to me, like I’m an ice sculpture.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Well, the sushi was good.” She smiles then drops the stub in a pyramid of similarly disposed. She hops up. “Come on.”

“It’s okay if I join you?”

“You already have.” She doesn’t mask her resignation as she resumes pushing through the trees, the sun dappled across her back. At one point, she looks over her shoulder to check that I’m following, and it’s like her perfume spot. Which I saw at a Days Inn in Akron while snarfing down an Egg McMuffin before some conference and remembered our summers spent weaving between corn stalks in search of a spot to play.

“Ginger! Ginger bear,” she starts calling, speeding up. I duck under a low branch. “Ginger!” she sing-songs. I step over a decaying tree stump and then out from behind a kennel. Clapping, Kelsey jogs around the building, while, off in the distance, I can see a series of gardens bordering a hulking mansion that makes Kelsey’s look like the guest house. “Holy sh—”

A howling interrupts me, announcing the arrival of a large caramel-brown dog. Kelsey lets herself inside the fence, and it wags excitedly. “What breed?” I ask.

“Rhodesian ridgeback.” Kelsey crouches to embrace Ginger, her false blue lashes grazing the short hairs of the dog’s neck. “Yes, hello! Hello! Where’re your babies, Ginger? Show me those sweet babies.” Kelsey rubs the flat of the dog’s head and opens the door into the
kennel. She drops her knees to the newspaper-strewn linoleum, attracting the tussling tan puppies like metal shards to a magnet. “Hey, guys, hi!” The glow in her cheeks puts whatever top-of-the-line product was airbrushed there to shame.

“They’re adorable.” I crouch to ruffle the nearest puppy.

“The owners are never around. It’s so sad. Ginger’s my girl. Ginger and her snaps here.” She flops a puppy onto its back and rubs its tummy. “It’s her third litter.” She gazes over the brood in consternation. “It looks like she’s already had two taken.” Ginger leans her nose down to Kelsey’s. “I’m sorry, Momma,” Kelsey murmurs, stroking Ginger’s ears. “I know what you need.”

She leads the dog out to the lush grass of the bordering garden.

“So they let you just come and play with her?”

“What?” she asks as she weaves in front of Ginger.

“Sorry, nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Your neighbors?”

“Never met him.” She claps at the dog. “I just talked to the breeder a few times. Ginger!” Kelsey takes off, and Ginger bolts after her. Kelsey laughs with delight as she darts around the garden statues, conjuring the old videos of her dad bolting for the touchdown. Ginger faithfully follows her every move, forgetting her swaying belly, racing as she was bred to.

“Is that a . . . ?”
I venture.

“Yup,” Kelsey says a while later as she slows to a stop in front of the bench where I’ve parked myself, a panting Ginger at her heels.

“Ah,” I say, having been staring at the topiaries and mentally trying to match their shapes to various long-nosed animals without success. She pivots and points down the line of hedges closest to us. “Dick. Big vag. Boobs. Balls. Balls with a dick.”

“This guy sounds charming.”

“Come on.”

“There’s more?” I stand.

“Yeah, super fun. This way.”

Ginger and I follow as we pass a trampoline, an infinity pool, a trapeze, a skeet-shooting hut, a life-size chess set, a garden with a strippers’ pole at its center, and finally stop at—“Shuffleboard?” I take in the two triangles of numbers facing each other on a stretch of flower-bordered pavement.

“You say that, but I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“I haven’t played this in forever.” I take the pole she offers me while Ginger plops down under a looming cypress. We all learned together, at Grandma Ruth’s retirement home. “You’re going to have to give me a refresher.”

“Delia always goes second.” She lines up a set of disks. “You try to score and shove each other out. You remember.” She glances at me.

“Vaguely.”

“Hottest place you ever hooked up.” Kelsey pushes into the pole like a janitor with a broom, and it takes me a second to realize she’s asking a question.