Life Before (19 page)

I want her to be here. To tell me I will get through this—through Burlington, through the Gary hunt, through life after her. I need something.

I need my mom.

T
WENTY-EIGHT

The morning feels like a whole new life, complete with washcloth and soap. Curt’s decorative soaps smell like vanilla. Or maraschino cherries, I’m not sure which. Either way, the sweet scent reminds me of Jill’s mom’s kitchen, which exacerbates my ravenous hunger.

Curt is at the stove. He must live at the stove. “Morning, Graham! How did you sleep?”

“Great, thanks.” I slide onto a bench at the kitchen table. A month ago, I might have said I’d slept like the dead, but I’m never using that expression again.

Curt tosses an omelet like a pro. I guess he is one. “Breakfast, Ma!” He makes cooking breakfast look like the greatest thing ever.

There’s a low shuffle in the hall before she appears. Curt’s mother’s pale yellow shirtdress clings to her shoulders and falls over her body without otherwise touching her skin. My mom would have said this woman was swimming in her clothes.

“You needn’t shout, love,” she says, without so much as a glance in my direction.

“I know, Ma. Next time I’ll come to you and speak civilly.”

“Where have I heard that before?” She eases herself onto a seat across from me, holding tight to the kitchen table.

Curt slides an omelet in front of her. “Ma, this is Graham.”

“Like the cracker?” She doesn’t look at me.

“I guess so.” It’s difficult to ignore her bulbous knuckles and the distinct chill of her smooth skin when she grabs my hand. This is exactly how zombies feel, I just know it.

Her eyes are kind. “I’m Sophie Danley.”

Curt says, “Graham will be sleeping on my couch for a few days, maybe a couple weeks.”

“Well, Graham-like-the-cracker, I hope you will leave the sitting room tidy. My programs are on every afternoon, and I prefer an uncluttered space.”

“Yes ma’am.” Sophie seems like the ma’am type.

Sophie softens, suggesting I’m not alone in my discomfort here. “Please don’t call me ma’am. We will use our given names.”

No, we won’t.

Sophie dissects her omelet with difficulty, torturing my empty stomach.

Between bites, Curt says, “Cereal’s in the cabinet. I mean, feel free to make an omelet if you want, but cereal’s in the cabinet if that’s more your speed.”

Curt’s selection is more like Mom’s—healthy tasteless crap—than Jill’s yummy cereals. I thought Curt was cooler than that. Still, Special K is better than stale convenience-store bread.

Curt talks with his mouth full. “So, Ma, Graham is a Tulane student, in New Orleans. Every time I think of NOLA, I think of that day you, dad, and I tooled around the French Quarter hunting for the perfect muffuletta.”

That must be like hunting heffalumps.

“Curt and Curt can really eat,” Sophie says. Curt gets his smile from her.

“Central Grocery’s the answer, Graham,” Curt says. “Or it was during that trip. Haven’t tried any other ones since, because why bother?”

“Sorry,” I say. “What’s a heffalotta?”

“Muffuletta. Kind of the city’s signature sandwich. You, Mr. Reuben-with-extra-dressing, would love it.”

Sophie cocks her head. “How can you not have had a muffuletta?”

“I’m just a freshman in August. I’ve never even been there yet.”

“Well you are in for a treat.” Sophie loads up a very calculated forkful of omelet. “So, New Orleans for college. What are you doing in Burlington?”

Let the games begin.

“I just felt like I needed a break. I’ve been in school or working for what seems like forever, you know? And my family’s a little crazy,” to say the least. To say the absolute least.

Sophie smiles. “Everyone says that about their families. My boys would tell you that our house was utter mayhem. I never had enough time to encourage them or focus on them individually or tell them how proud I was of the men they were becoming.”

Curt interrupts. “No, Ma. You were always clear. I knew you were proud of me.”

“And I am, Curtis.” She turns to me. “Graham, even if your family is crazy, you are an important part of it. Does your mother tell you that? She must tell you she’s proud of you for something, right?”

Not anymore, she doesn’t. But maybe she mentioned it a few times, before she was mercilessly killed at my father’s hands. While I cowered outside.

Sophie’s family’s craziness can’t compete with mine. I don’t have a civil answer for her. “My mother has told me she is proud of me, yes.”

Her smile is wan. “So you wanted to get away from everything. Where is everything? Where are you from, originally?”

“Georgia.” It’s a practiced lie now. With a hasty fist pump, I add, “Go Falcons!”

Still a rotten liar.

Sophie opens her mouth to a small
o
shape. “How did you wind up here from Georgia? That’s quite a journey for someone who just needed a break!” She looks toward Curt, incredulous.

Curt touches his mother’s hand. “Okay, Ma, enough with the interrogation. It’s Wednesday. How are you feeling?”

“Great. Do whatever you need to do. I’m fine here.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright. Love you, Ma.” Curt shuffles the dishes into the dishwasher and turns to me. “Lots to do today. You ready, Graham?”

Guess we don’t get a day off. “Just a sec.” I rip the sheets off the couch and pile all my stuff in one corner of the living room.

In the car, Curt explains that Kat, the woman who takes care of his mother, has Wednesdays off. “So I take care of Ma on Wednesdays. When I asked how she was feeling, the best answer would have been that she was feeling great and wanted to come with us on errands. Worst answer: she needed me to stay with her today. I’ll take the middle ground, frankly. Everything’s faster without her.”

He hands me a list and reverses out of the driveway. We’ll be playing house today: picking up stuff from the cleaners, doing the grocery shopping, fetching a resoled pair of shoes, and retrieving Sophie’s holds from the library, where they know me as a homeless guy.

The library! “Hey Curt? Do you think I can check out a few books on your card?”

“You are so weird, man. Gave you a job and a place to sleep, and the most excited I have ever seen you is over library books.”

“They’re like family to me.” I look out the window at new parts of Burlington.

“Can’t say no to that,” he says, and life gets a tiny bit better.

_______

Curt leaves me to his computer all afternoon. Jill has posted a photo of herself with a crown labeled
FIVE
! Thank goodness. I get through every single post on Jill’s and Gretchen’s pages, through all the social media, and catch up with all the trivial news.

An hour at the kitchen table with
All Fifty
feels like the best parts of home. The book is so good.

Books are like family, I meant that. But nothing compares to my friends, and I can hardly wait to talk to Jill in half an hour. Her page was full of cryptic stuff about drinking today. It must have been one hell of a birthday party.

Across the breakfast table, Sophie thumbs through a magazine. I think she just goes back and forth between here and my bed. Er, couch.

If I don’t hurry, I’ll be late to the phone again.

I yell in no particular direction, “Back in an hour, Curt.”

“Graham!” Sophie eyes me sternly from the breakfast nook.

“Yes, Sophie?”

“We are not out in the wild. If you have something to say to Curtis, find him and say it civilly. There is no need to shout indoors, particularly in a house of this size.”

I bite my lip a little. “Yes, Sophie.”

Curtis
is watching soccer in the living room. “Heard ya. Careful out there.”

“Thanks.”

A brisk walk lands me at my phone on time.

Jill picks up on the first ring. “Hi?”

“Hey, Jill.”

“I just realized you’ve been gone two whole weeks.”

No kidding. “Two weeks tomorrow. Does this mean there’s no news again?”

A gargantuan pause. “Not exactly.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I think something’s going on. Dad is walking around like the cat that swallowed the canary, and I can’t figure out why. He’s, I dunno, giddy or something.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah. And he won’t tell me anything. Maybe there’s a sting operation or something?”

Jill always thinks there’s a sting operation. In her seventeen years, there has never been a single sting operation. Whatever. I’m dying to hear about the cryptic drinking instructions she posted online an hour ago. “What was all the beer-before-liquor stuff about?”

“Oh my god, Xander. You will never believe this. Grant Blakely is in a coma.” Jill has all the details: alcohol and a swimming pool, ambulances, and arrests for underage drinking. That
never
happens in Laurel. Our police usually turn a blind eye to parties in people’s houses. Because there is literally nothing else to do in our cow town.

And now Grant Blakely is in a coma.

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” Jill says. “It was touch-and-go for a while, but everyone is very hopeful.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“And this was at your birthday party?”

She laughs. “My party was completely legal. No alcohol at all. The soccer team had a huge party after my party, and that’s when it happened. He banged his head and fell into the pool and the drunks had a hard time fishing him out. Half the varsity team might be banned next year. I mean, it’s a rumor, but maybe.”

“And Grant Blakely is in a coma.”

“An induced coma. They might bring him out of it tomorrow.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

I don’t know what else to say. Grant Blakely is a really great guy. He’s playing soccer at Ohio State next year. I mean, it’s not football, but it’s Big Ten athletics, and they recruited him. If he doesn’t pull out of this … I don’t even want to think about it.

Jill says, “You okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Um, what have you been doing in New York?”

“I got some library books today.”

“Really? I give you a life hanging in the balance and you give me library books?”

“I’m sort of speechless. The news about Grant sort of knocked the wind out of me.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. Tucker told me not to tell you.”

“Tell Tucker to fuck off. I want to know what’s going on. Next time you see Grant, tell him I’m pulling for him.”

“I will. I promise. Xander, how are
you
?”

“I got a job. And somewhere to sleep.”

She lowers her voice. “Xander Fife, you promised me you weren’t sleeping on the streets.”

“Jill, I promise you I have not—not one single time—slept on the streets.”

“My dad would kill you for that, you know. I mean, not literally. He would, you know, be pissed as hell if you were sleeping on the streets. He pretty much thinks I know something about where you are, but I don’t think he knows we keep talking.”

My stomach flips over. “Why do you think he knows something?”

“The questions he asks. He tries to do that interrogation thing with me, you know? He doesn’t ask a yes/no question. He asks something else that would trip me up. Like ‘What did Xander say about you going out with Tucker?’ or ‘Don’t you think Xander would appreciate a slice in the mail?’ over my birthday cake. He told me to figure out whether he should buy you a ticket for Mastodon next month. Like I’m going to tell him anything.”

The answer is no. No Mastodon, even if they were passing out free beer and delivering Gary to the police on a silver platter. Okay, maybe for that.

Thank god Jill is keeping mum. “Do you think he’s ever tailed you to Pizza Works?”

“Nope. And we’ve been scheduling when I know he’s busy. Have you been dialing star-67?”

“Yeah, but …”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should cool it with the calls for a while?”

“Xander, in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s probably okay if my dad finds out where you are. He’s not the one you have to worry about.”

Who the hell knows what to worry about anymore?

“Also, I thought we agreed that Gary couldn’t follow a cold trail, right?”

I never actually agreed to that. “He couldn’t, but this is kind of a hot line, isn’t it, Jill? It’s not a cold trail if he suddenly figures out I’ve been calling Pizza Works from my very distinct area code.”

“New York City isn’t exactly small. And if you’re using star-67, how exactly is he going to figure out New York in the first place?”

“I don’t know! I just don’t like it!”

“You don’t like it, or you
do
like being all mysterious and going on adventures by yourself?”

That is low.

“Because, Xander, you could come home if you really wanted to. My dad will keep you safe. He said we could do things with an escort. I think he thinks the worst of this has passed. I think he thinks Gary has fled to Mexico or something. Why don’t you just come home? Come on, come home.”

Tempting. Home to Jill and Gretchen and Laurel. Home to Sunday dinners and pick-up soccer and Dairy Queen.

Home, where Gary would know exactly where to find me. “I can’t.”

“You can’t? Or you won’t. Why can’t you?”

I don’t know. Which is better: a cautious life at home overshadowed by constant fear, or freedom far away from friends? Then again, am I really free here? My hat is off and I’m not hiding anymore, but holing up inside every day isn’t exactly freedom.

“I just can’t, Jill. I’ll come home when they find him, okay?”

Jill’s pissed. “And what if they never find him?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Listen to yourself. You’re saying never. You’re saying if they don’t find him, you’re never coming home. Really?”

I don’t know. Really? “I don’t know, Jill. Let me think about what I want to do, okay? I just need … I just need to think. Give me a few days. Talk Saturday? Five o’clock?”

“I leave for swim camp this Friday morning. No phones or electronics there, anyway. I’ll be back next Friday. So, Friday?”