Everything We Ever Wanted (13 page)

B y dessert, Charles had downed five more gin and tonics. His face was flushed, and he was starting to slur his words. Rob was talking about the Craftsman-style house they’d just bought for a steal in Narberth. Nadine told Charles and Joanna that they should check their birth blog for a weekly progress report. After they hugged, Charles kept the smile pasted on his face for exactly one block. Once they were out of sight, he dropped Joanna’s hand and wordlessly passed her the car keys. He staggered to the car, dropping his canvas bag on the sidewalk. “I think there’s a bottle of water on the back seat,” she instructed. Charles grunted and reached for it. His cheeks flared red.

She started the car and backed out of the space. Charles drained the whole water bottle, sloppily screwing the cap back on when he was finished.

“What was that, back there?” he said as she paused at a traffic light. “What was what?”
“You know what. Do you guys haze?”
“I was just curious.”
“Yeah, well, it’s probably not the right thing to bring up right now.” She sniffed. “It’s not like they know. They didn’t even ask about

Scott! They don’t even care!” They’d talked about Nadine’s brother, Christopher, and Rob’s sister, Camille, and a whole slew of other people who’d gone to that school—and, of course, Sylvie—but not a word about Scott. Joanna couldn’t recall a time they’d ever talked about him. He was a nonissue, just like she was.

Charles rolled the water bottle between his palms. He lowered the window, then changed his mind and rolled it back up. “I know no one knows.”
“Then what is wrong with you? Why did you get so angry?” “I didn’t get angry.”
Joanna groaned. “You did. And …” She took a deep breath, considering if she should really say this. “And you think Scott’s guilty. You’ve made that pretty clear.” She peeked at him, almost positive she should’ve kept her mouth shut.

“Well, yeah. Maybe I do,” Charles murmured after a moment. She waited. They were merging onto I-76 now, the lights watery blurs. “Is it because he’s adopted?” she blurted.
Charles stared at her in horror. “Jesus. No.”
“I don’t mean you think that. I just mean … is it what other people think? Is that why other people are assuming he’s …”
“I should hope not.”
She pressed the brake. The rain obscured the windshield. They passed a car that had pulled over to the shoulder, its hazard lights blinking. A shapeless man sat in the passenger seat, seemingly just staring out into the inky night. And swish, he was gone.
“Scott beat me up once,” Charles said in barely more than a whisper. “In the middle of this party we were having. Like he enjoyed it. It just … worries me.”
She kept her eyes on the road. So here it was. He was going to tell her about the fight after all. “When was this?” she asked, halfheartedly feigning ignorance.
He shrugged. “Years ago. When we were in high school. A lot of my friends were there. Many people saw it.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did he beat you up?”
“I don’t know.”
“He just started beating you up for no reason?”
Charles didn’t answer. Joanna felt her pulse against her throat. Headlights streaked down the highway, leaving an imprint on her retinas long after they’d passed. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she said quietly, trying to control her anger.
“I don’t know. It’s not something I like to think about much.”
He was turned away from her, so Joanna couldn’t see his face. She slowed at the turnpike gate, waited for the EZ Pass sensor to detect her car.
“I mean, maybe I deserved it,” Charles broke the silence.
“Why would you say that?”
Charles bit his lip, as if considering saying something more. Then he shrugged and slumped down in his seat.
“I wish that headmaster had never called your mom,” Joanna muttered. “It’s just getting everyone worked up. And it’s dredging up things that are irrelevant. I think it’s criminal to start this kind of panic over rumors. Like that thing with that Schuyler girl and your debate coach—it’s just bored people looking for conspiracy theories, making assumptions before actually getting the facts.”
“Sometimes assumptions are right.”
“And sometimes they aren’t.”
Charles went quiet, picking at a loose thread on the seat. Joanna breathed in. Her stomach jumped into her heart for just a moment before she spat it out. “Why don’t you tell me anything, Charles? Why don’t you share anything with me?”
“Huh?”
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know a thing about you. Your friends know much more about you than I do. Your mother knows way more. Is it because I didn’t go to Swithin?”
“Joanna …” He blew out through his nose. “You’re being ridiculous.”
But now that she’d started she couldn’t stop. “Tonight, for example. With your friends. They didn’t ask me a thing about myself. They asked about you, they asked about your mom, but they didn’t ask about me. And you didn’t bring me into the conversation.”
“They asked about you!”
Pressure rose up in her chest, higher and higher. “They didn’t. And you ignored me around them. I got the impression that you would have preferred it if I hadn’t been there at all. It would have been easier that way. Just like old times.”
He squeezed the empty water bottle so hard that it crinkled. “If you didn’t want to have dinner with them, you should have said something.”
“And what, look like an asshole? How did you not realize I didn’t want to have dinner with them? It must have been written all over my face. I thought it was just going to be you and me! I was waiting for you to step in!”
He raised his palms in surrender. “How was I supposed to know that? I’m not a mind reader!” He rolled his neck around, cracking a joint. “So, what, you’re pissed off at me for not knowing what you wanted and you bring up the hazing thing in revenge?”
“Is that why you brought up Bronwyn?” she shot back. “Maybe the revenge goes both ways.”
He let air seep from his nose. The bottle slipped from between his hands to the floor of the car. “I was just curious if Nadine talked to her. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Not like you deliberately tried to hurt me.”
“I did no such thing.”
He turned away from her, pressing his head against the window. “Sometimes I think you want to hurt me.”
She gaped at him. “How could you say that?”
But he didn’t retract it. She bit down on her lip. Was that what she was doing? But she couldn’t; that would mean she was a heartless, sinister person. A saboteur.
She faced front again, put on her turn signal, and got off at the rest stop. Her tires squealed as she pulled into the parking lot.
“What are you doing?” Charles asked.
She didn’t answer. The mini-mart attached to the gas station gleamed fluorescently; a clerk lingered behind the counter, surrounded by shelves of cigarettes. Joanna pulled into a space and shoved the gearshift into park.
“You do hurt me, Charles,” she said. “You leave me out of things. And it feels deliberate. And then you ask about Bronwyn in this voice, this completely wistful, longing voice, like she’s the one who’s important. Like it’s always been her. What am I supposed to do? How does that make me look, just sitting there?”
“I didn’t use a voice,” he said. “And Bronwyn …” He trailed off.
She stiffened, on alert. “Bronwyn … what?”
Charles shook his head. “Forget it.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.”
Joanna’s mouth trembled. It was clearly not nothing. She glared out at the green highway sign in the distance. A Honda drove into the parking lot. Another Honda was parked next to them. This whole place was full of Hondas, completely unoriginal. This conversation was unoriginal, too; it was probably a conversation every couple had at one point or another, probably even verbatim. A conversation not special in the least.
Joanna gazed at Charles imploringly. Charles winced. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“You …” He waved his hands in front of his face. “It’s like you’re so disappointed.”
“Disappointed in what?”
“How am I supposed to know? I never know what you want.”
There was a thin line of spittle between his top and bottom lips. The turn signal was still on, making an irksome, repetitive tick-tuhtick-tuh-tick-tuh. She was disappointed. Of course she was. She’d felt it about their wedding in Roderick’s garden, which had been organized long before Joanna came into the picture. She felt it touring old, creaky, dusty Roderick, not nearly as grandiose as in her dreams. She felt it when Sylvie and Charles left Joanna out of family matters, when Charles’s Swithin friends ignored her, even when Charles didn’t cry at his father’s funeral, not one tear, and not even when they went back to their apartment in Philly, instead suggesting that they check out the Jennifer Convertibles store—they were having a sale on sectionals.
She felt it when she assessed what she’d wanted to happen and what had happened instead. Nothing felt right. And then she realized exactly who she sounded like. She realized who she was turning into.
She heaved her door open in one smooth movement and stepped out of the car. It had started to rain again. The night sky was thick with dark clouds, indicating it would probably turn into a deluge.
Charles was out of the car. “Where are you going?”
“Drive yourself home. I’m getting a cab.”
“Joanna … come on.”
She walked across the parking lot and flung open the door to the mini-mart. It was bright and freezing inside. Pop music blared so loudly, the floor vibrated with every bass note. A man wearing a work shirt with his name, Stewart, stitched on the breast was checking out the hot dogs. Two teenage boys, both acne-riddled, were staring at the refrigerators, probably waiting to shoplift a few cans of beer. The whole place smelled like a confused mix of coffee and burnt peanuts and bleach.
“Joanna.” Charles followed her down the candy aisle. “This is inappropriate.”
“Go away,” she said, shaking him off. The lone counterperson looked over. The register to her right said out of service. Next to her was a big box of horoscope scrolls.
She zigzagged through the aisles, passing the mini-bags of chips, the refrigerator cases of soda. Pepsi. Nestea. Fresca. She kept her arms glued to her sides, her shoulders in.
“Will you come back to the car?” Charles protested. “We can talk about it there, okay? We don’t need to be in here.”
She walked down the row of car maintenance products, motor oil and wiper fluid and air fresheners. Charles let out a frustrated grunt, then turned to the do-it-yourself coffee bar, poured himself a cup of coffee, and brought it to the register. “Hello,” he said pleasantly to the counter-woman. After he paid, Charles lingered by the door, sipping his coffee, watching her.
She did another lap of the convenience store, gazing at every item. So she was disappointed. So Charles had his idealized Bronwyn. Joanna had her ideal, too. Someone who hadn’t disappointed her. Someone she’d probably never know well enough to disappoint her.
She dared to imagine the look on Charles’s face if she told him what sometimes went through her mind. The feeling that had coursed through her body the first time she’d seen his brother standing in the kitchen at Roderick, the very first day Charles brought her there. She’d walked into the kitchen before Charles and his mother, and there was Scott, standing at the fridge. She hadn’t anticipated the sultry, desirous heat to ripple through her when he turned those eyes on her, those mysterious, dangerous, heavy-lidded eyes, looking her up and down, looking inside her. When she reached out her hand for him to shake, her movements were heavy and dreamlike. She was rendered breathless.
She could tell Charles that whenever they had dinner at his parents’ house, she hoped Scott would join them. For Scott would sit there, thrillingly sullen and noncompliant. Sometimes she felt him watching her, his gaze predatory and primal. She had dreams about him, too. In her fantasies, Scott was rough and passionate. It was after those dreams that she woke up face-down on her stomach, her hand between her legs.
She looked at her husband, leaning against the rack of newspapers, drinking his cup of coffee. It was amazing how separate they were. Here she was with this huge, ghastly secret she could say, silent and closed inside of her. He had no idea.
An obese man gathered up a few bottles of soda from the counter and trundled out the door. The little TV behind the counter broke for commercials, and a local news teaser came on. “Unknown death at a local Philadelphia school leads to questions,” the newscaster announced.
Joanna froze. Charles pivoted, his eyes on the TV.
The newscast’s signature music blared. “We have the exclusive,” a second newscaster bragged. “Up next.”
The fluorescent lights pulsed. The hot dog machine creaked atonally. Joanna walked to Charles and put a hand on his arm. “It’s not the boy from Swithin,” she said.
Charles didn’t move.
“They said a Philadelphia school. Swithin is too far out.” A small noise escaped from Charles’s throat.
“And, I mean, Swithin wouldn’t release this kind of story to the press, right? They’d keep it quiet.”
Charles gazed at her, fear in his eyes.
“They would,” Joanna said.
They had no choice but to stay in the mini-mart to watch the rest of the news. The story came on almost at the end. It was about a boy from an inner-city Philadelphia school, just as Joanna had predicted, gunned down in his neighborhood for what police suspected had to do with drugs. They watched as snapshots of the boy paraded past. There he was opening a Christmas present, then standing with a whole gaggle of other Latino kids, then kissing the cheek of a woman of indeterminate age.
Joanna turned to Charles and put her hand on his waist. They didn’t say anything for a long time.
“They want me to interview someone for work next week,” Charles croaked. “Like, follow them around all day. They want me to write a story for one of the magazines. A magazine that’s advertising this community that lives like the Amish, but at least it’s a shot at writing something.”
Joanna put a finger to her mouth, not following why he was bringing this up right now.
“It’s weird,” he went on. “I’m not going to have anything in common with them. They had normal lives before this, like you and me. They live off the land, to build their houses, to get rid of TVs and cars. It’s not like we’re going to get along.”
She searched his face. “But you don’t have to be friends with them, do you? You just have to interview them.”
“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right. The thing is, it’s on Tuesday. The day of your mom’s … thing.”
“Oh.” Joanna raked her hand through her hair. “It’s all right if you don’t come. It’s not a big deal. It’s a good thing, like you said. You’ll get a writing credit.”
Charles picked at the plastic lid to his coffee. “I should just quit instead.”
“Quit?”
“I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to break my commitment to you.”
She breathed out. “I go to my mom’s all the time. It’s not a big deal.”
Charles’s jaw wobbled.
Joanna cocked her head. “You’re serious? You want to quit.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why?”
“It’s insincere, writing for things I don’t believe in. I feel like I lie for a living.”
She leaned against the window. “Everyone lies for a living. And anyway, it’s a group of people who want to live in log cabins. It’s a little weird, but it doesn’t seem amoral.”
“Maybe it’s not just that. I don’t feel right about any of it anymore.”
“And so then what? Would you look for another job?”
“I don’t know.”
The air around them felt fraught. She wondered if there was something more he was trying to tell her in all this. She glanced at the television again. The news had moved on to a weather report. Rain for the next few days. Today’s sun was a short-lived tease.
She turned back to Charles. “Don’t quit your job, okay? Try to have a clear head about this. Do the interview next week and then we’ll figure out your job situation together.”
He paused a few moments, and then nodded his head. She rested her head on his shoulder, relieved. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said, staring off toward the freezers.
And then they walked out to the car, unlocked it, and Joanna drove home. It ended the argument for the night, deflating the balloon of tension. Because really, after that, there wasn’t much more either of them could say.