Deep Down True (43 page)

Mary Ellen came back and held out the camera to Alder. Then she arranged the children in front of the fireplace, with the toddler on her hip and Dermott next to her. “Say ‘Gobble, gobble,’” said Dana. But the older boy and Laura began to fuss with each other, and the toddler reached down and grabbed a handful of Laura’s hair. A look of despair came over Mary Ellen’s face as she tried to quiet them.

It could be the last picture of them all together,
thought Dana, wondering desperately how to help.

“Hey!” yelled Jet, a bit more loudly than necessary, but it caught the children’s attention. “Say ‘Barbecued monkey guts’!”

The kids burst out in giggles, and Dermott with his arm around his wife’s waist gave her a quick tug toward him. Her chin went up as she laughed. The camera made its synthesized snapping sound over and over as Alder held down the button.

 

 

When the three of them returned home, Connie was taking the eggplant out of the oven, and though the soy cheese on top had browned in an unnaturally uniform manner, it smelled wonderful. “That’s it,” she said. “Everything else is already out.” She rested the pan on top of the stove for a moment, and Alder hugged her.

“Whoa!” Jet called from the dining room. “What the f—!”

“What’s the matter?” Dana hurried into the dining room with Connie and Alder close behind.

“There’s freaking marshmallows all over this orange stuff—it’s awesome! What twisted mind thought of
that
?”

By midafternoon the meal had long been over, but the four of them still sat around the table, slouching back in their chairs. They sipped decaffeinated coffee until it grew tepid and cream circles formed on the surface. Connie and Dana laughed about holiday meals of years past, when the kids were little and ruled by uncontrollable impulses to tip over the gravy boat, stand on their chairs, mold their food like Play-Doh, or strip down to their diapers during dessert. Jet was uncharacteristically quiet, sitting sideways with her legs over one arm of her chair, occasionally fingering the last vestiges of sweet potato from the casserole dish. She listened with a surreptitious intensity, as if she could somehow absorb these stories into her own history.

The doorbell rang, and they all looked at each other for clues. It rang again, and Dana got up to answer it. On the front porch stood a young man in khakis and a slightly wrinkled button-down shirt with a brown spot on the breast pocket. His hair was dark and shaggy, and he flipped the bangs away from his forehead when he saw her coming through the window beside the door.

“Uh, hi . . .” he said when she opened the door. “Is Alder here? Happy Thanksgiving, by the way,” he added quickly. “Hope I’m not . . . Are you still . . . like, eating?”

At first Dana thought he might be a member of the Wilderness Club—maybe a boy who was just full enough of warm holiday feelings to get up the nerve to approach her niece. But the voice was familiar somehow.

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!” she said, holding the door open for him to enter. “We’re just finishing up—come on in.” She followed him through the mudroom, and it wasn’t until they were in the hallway by the dining room that the realization hit her like a sucker punch. She wanted to reach out and grab him, to yank him by his stained shirt right back out the front door.
No!
she wanted to say.
Not one more step!

By then he was standing in the archway to the dining room, and all sound stopped. Then Jet said, “Who’s
that
?” and Connie said, “Ethan, you little shit,” and Ethan said, “Alder,
please.
Can we
please
just go somewhere and talk?”

Alder’s gaze was fixed on Ethan. “Why would I
ever
want to be alone with
you
?”

His eyes darted to the other women, then back to Alder.
“Please,”
he whispered.

Alder crossed her arms. She glanced at Connie and Jet. “Is it okay if you guys go?” she asked. “Dana can stay.” It was the slightest possible concession to him—one onlooker instead of three.

Connie stared at Dana momentarily, and there was anger at not being chosen and a sort of pleading to keep on top of things.
“Don’t rehydrate,”
she muttered as she rose. She took Jet by the arm and led her toward the living room. Dana was fairly certain they would listen in and just as certain that Alder didn’t care. She took a seat by her niece.

The girl looked at her former best friend. “How did you even know where I was?”

“Your, uh . . . your mom gave me the number. And when you weren’t home, I figured maybe you were still . . . You talk about your aunt sometimes, and I remembered her name, and—”

“You
Googled
my
aunt
?” Her lip curled in disgust. “All right, whatever you came for, just get it over with.”

He took a breath and held it, as if he were about to leap from a high dive into a kiddie pool right there in the dining room. “First off, I am totally and maximally
sorry.
” The air came out of him then, his apology staggering him just a little. “Everywhere I go,” he continued miserably, “I, like,
reek
of regret.”

Dana glanced at Alder. The stress around her eyes had lessened, and her jaw had unclenched. “Why,” she said.

“I know, right?” he concurred. “Why would I screw things up so badly with the
one person
. . . Christ, Alder, I barely even get it
myself.
”

She looked away, eyes half lidded in dissatisfaction.

“Wait,” he said, anxiously. “I think it’s . . . I couldn’t get, like, normal after that. It was so . . .
much.
. . . All these feelings that totally freaked me out. I almost didn’t want to go to college anymore! I just wanted to stay and be with you every second and be, like,
married
or something. I’m eighteen years old, for chrissake—I’m not ready for that. Developmentally, I’m an idiot!”

There was a subtle snort of air from Alder, an agreement, a softening.

“Also,” he ventured warily, “you know me so well . . . It’s, like,
too
well.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“It kinda spooked me out sometimes, like you could almost read my mind—and believe me, most guys do
not
want girls to know what they’re thinking.” He stopped for a moment, his eyes softening with remorse. “I knew I owed you an explanation for leaving without . . . But I just kind of figured ... you knew.”

“Well, I
didn’t
know!” Alder flew forward in her seat, pointing at him. “I don’t read your mind like a freaking
comic book,
like all I have to do is flip the page to know you’re going to screw me and take off!” Hot tears sprouted from her eyelids. “I trusted you more than
anyone,
and you
used me for sex
! I thought you were good, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’re just a
user!
”

A groan came out of him, and the muscles around his spine seemed to disengage. Dana wondered if he might collapse. “Alder,” he said, “if there’s one thing in my life I wish I could take back, it’s
that.
”

Alder closed her eyes and turned her head, tears flowing freely down her face. Dana took her hand. It was loose and weak in her own.

“I miss you
so much,
” Ethan murmured. “College sucks. There’s no you. I thought that would be a good thing—like, it’d be a relief to be anonymous. And it was. For about a week.” He slumped against the doorway. “But then I got so lonely. I kept waiting for it to pass, like a sinus headache or something.” He gave a listless shrug. “Got a little better after I made some friends. But, Christ, I forgot how much
talking
you have to do. So much
explaining
about who you are and what you’re into.

“It used to make me nervous how well you got me—but I never realized how exhausting it is to have to
tell
people stuff! To have to say out loud that you hate ham and have everybody
comment.
Like, they agree and they have to tell you what nasty thing
they
think it tastes like, or they disagree and have to make some lame joke about it. Who fucking
cares
! It’s all this tidal wave of stupid words, and I just keep thinking, ‘Alder doesn’t talk like this. She just paints, and we hang out, and it’s all good.’ It’s all so good, it, like,
hurts.
”

Alder was crying silently, shoulders shaking. Dana pressed a dinner napkin into her free hand, and she used it to wipe her chin.

“I just wanted to tell you . . .” Ethan sounded so weary that he might actually lie down on the shiny oak boards of the dining-room floor and slip into unconsciousness. “I just want you to know that I know what I did. I know how much it hurt you. And I’m so sorry.”

After a moment Alder’s shoulders went still, and she inhaled a sniffle, pressing the napkin against her eyes to dam her tears. “Okay,” she breathed.

Ethan revived a little. “Yeah?” he said, only half believing.

Alder shrugged. She gave Dana’s hand a squeeze, released it, and stood up. She walked toward Ethan and motioned him into the hallway, following him out. The front door opened and shut. Dana went to the kitchen window to watch, deputized as she was to monitor the situation. They stood there talking for five minutes or so, each with their arms crossed tightly over their chests to keep out the cold, eyes cast down mostly, but blinking up at each other from time to time. They never touched. Then Ethan walked down the driveway and drove off.

“
Y
OU WERE GREAT THIS AFTERNOON, CONNIE,” Dana said as they settled into bed that night.

“What’s your point?” Connie rolled over, yanking blankets and sheets with her as she went.

“You let Alder talk about Ethan when she was ready—it was just what she needed.” Dana tugged back a few inches of covers and sighed. “Before I had kids, I never realized how much self-restraint it takes to be a mother.”

Connie punched her pillow once or twice and burrowed down like a bear getting ready to hibernate. Her breathing slowed, and Dana thought she might have fallen asleep, but then she said, “Why’d you call Dad ‘absent’?”

“What are you talking about?” Dana grumbled, hoping to sound sleepy.

“This morning when I asked you if you’d ever had nightmares about Dad, you called him an ‘absent father.’”

“Well, he is. I don’t see him around, do you?”

“Don’t get touchy.”

“I’m not
touchy,
I’m
tired.
It’s been a long day, and I don’t need to dredge up ancient issues when I’ve got plenty of current ones to deal with.”

Connie was quiet. After a moment she said, “You know Dad’s dead, right? Tell me you’re not still cutting out those articles on amnesia and international kidnapping like you did when we were teenagers.”

“Oh, my
God,
Connie, can you just zip it? I have to work tomorrow—I need sleep!”

“You think he’s still out there,” Connie murmured. “Don’t you?”

Dana sat up in bed. She’d had it with Connie—she always knew what bothered you most, and poked at it until you couldn’t stand it anymore. Anger crackled across Dana’s brain like heat lightning. “Well, we aren’t absolutely sure
where
he is,
are
we!”

Connie propped her head on her hand. “We know he went to Swampscott and left his clothes and wallet on the beach.”

“Right! So a guy can’t go back to his hometown and take a swim?”

“In the middle of the night,” said Connie. “He got up in the dead of night, drove twenty miles, and left everything he owned in the sand.”

“He was low! He needed to take a drive!” It suddenly felt important to defend him, to hang tightly on to the remote possibility, however irrational, that he hadn’t . . .

“He was clinically depressed,” said Connie quietly. “And he killed himself. His body was probably washed out to sea, they said. Or he could have weighted himself down with something. Suicides do that sometimes.”

Dana grabbed for the closest thing at hand—a pillow—and threw it at Connie. “Why do you do this!” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Why do you have to be so fucking mean!”

“Well,” said Connie, “I guess because ‘fucking nice’ was already taken.”

“GODDAMN IT! I really HATE you sometimes!”

She sat there, chest heaving in and out, the pulse in her neck throbbing as if it might burst.
Dad.
The word skipped over and over in her mind, like a flat stone out to sea.
Dad, swim back!
she wanted to say.
Get your wallet and put your clothes back on and drive home!

But he hadn’t. And he never would. He’d never seen her children, hadn’t held their faces in his hands, hadn’t marveled at their wondrousness like grandpas were supposed to do. He might have held her own face when she was little, but it was quite possible that in her desperation to matter to him she had concocted the image, cut and pasted it from a TV show or a magazine.

Dad killed himself. He had a choice between life with a family who loved him, and death
. . .
and he chose death.
Of course she knew this—always had. It was only that she wanted so much to
un
know it.

“I don’t think you ever told me you hated me before,” remarked Connie. Dana rolled her eyes in annoyance. “It’s kinda weird,” Connie continued, “coming from you, I mean.”

Dana slid down into the covers, yanking them from Connie and tugging them up over her shoulders. Of course Connie had never heard her say “I hate you.” Dana had never actually said it before, to anyone. She took a deep breath and let it slide out slowly.

“You know, the thing about you is,” said Connie, “you seem so normal, nobody gets how screwed up you are.”

“Just shut it, Connie.”

“You should embrace your own psychosis more.”

“How about if I embrace my own violence and sock you one? Will that shut you up?”