“Did your mom get in trouble?”
Darla’s lips trembled into the briefest of half smiles. “She was always in some kind of trouble.”
But Abby stayed almost completely out of sight until after we moved away; I don’t even think she came over to say good-bye the day we moved out. She and Gretchen didn’t reconnect until a few years later. I don’t know exactly why it happened that way, but my best guess is that Abby figured my parents hated her for being Steven and Gretchen’s go-between, which they did.
I wonder if Abby realizes how hard it was for Gretchen to lose her best friend and her sister at the same time, or if there was a reason for the rift that I don’t know anything about. Either way, nothing seems to have changed about their relationship. They are inseparable once again, spending most of their time at Abby’s house. Ed Tickle needs almost constant care since his stroke last winter. Gretchen told us she doesn’t think he’ll live much longer. She’s been here with Abby, on and off, since February. Darla and Ed split up years ago; without Gretchen’s help, Abby would be looking after her father alone.
I’m surprised to realize how jealous I am of their friendship. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Maybe it’s because the Remy I’ve remembered for so long does not exist anymore; instead he’s been replaced by an aloof stranger, way more interested in his friends and girlfriend than he is in me. I’ve never had a friendship like Gretchen and Abby’s.
I barely see Gretchen. When she is around, she always seems to be either coming or going in a hurry. Our only consistent interaction happens most mornings as she’s getting ready for work. She takes the longest showers of anyone I’ve ever met, hogging the bathroom and leaving me with no hot water, wet towels thrown on the floor for someone else to worry about. She is always running late. As I brush my teeth one morning, she strolls in without knocking and sits down on the toilet. She doesn’t acknowledge me as she props her foot against the edge of the garbage can and begins to clip her toenails while simultaneously peeing.
“Do you mind?” I spit into the sink. “I’d appreciate some privacy.”
“You’re seriously foaming at the mouth, Sam.” Clip. Clip. “Guess what I just saw outside. Remy was sneaking that chick out his basement door. She clearly spent the night. I watched him walk her outside, and I felt like I should be paying them for the show they were putting on. No joke. They were like a couple of octopuses.” She pauses. “Is it ‘octopuses’ or ‘octopi’? Anyway, you know what I mean.” Clip, clip, clip.
I rinse my mouth and slide the garbage can out of her reach with my foot. “Get out.”
She blinks innocently at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Get out.”
“Sam, calm down.” She grasps my arm. “You’re way prettier than her. She’s built like a ten-year-old boy. You could steal him in a second if you wanted to.”
“Why do you need to use my bathroom every morning, Gretchen? Why don’t you just stay with Abby all the time instead of making everything harder for us here?”
She’s silent for a moment, drawing her hand away from me and crossing her arms. “This is my family, too. I have as much right to be here as you do.” Her wedding band sparkles on her finger. It seems strange that she’s still wearing it when she hasn’t so much as mentioned her husband since she arrived.
“You’re still wearing your ring.”
She glances down at it, wiggling her finger. “Yeah. So what?”
“I thought you were getting a divorce.”
“It’s not that simple, Sam.”
“You seemed happy together.”
“Well, things aren’t always what they seem.”
“So you’re giving up.”
“We’re working on things.”
“Isn’t it hard to work on things when you’re up here and your husband is all the way down in Texas?”
She flings a hairbrush into the sink. “You’re such a brat. You think you know everything, don’t you? I am here. To help. My friend. Her father is dying. I didn’t want her to go through it alone. I know—I’m such a bitch, right?”
“Don’t you ever worry that she’s taking advantage of you, Gretchen?” I ask, echoing the suspicion our mother has been muttering to herself for weeks. “She could hire a nurse, couldn’t she? It’s not like she couldn’t pay for it. Mom says Ed has veteran’s benefits.”
Gretchen’s irritation softens into sadness. She looks at me with an unsettling expression of aching, sincere regret. She feels sorry for me, I realize, because I don’t know what such an intimate friendship feels like.
“Abby isn’t taking advantage of me. Trust me, Sam—you think you know all about her, but you don’t have a clue. Nobody knows her like I do. She’s going to surprise everybody someday.” She pauses. “You just wait.”
Chapter Ten
Summer 1996
I’m still working on the Mitchells’ basement at the beginning of July. Susan is at some kind of teachers’ conference today, so I’m supposed to let myself into her house and get started on my own. So far, my days in the basement have been unrelentingly dull reminders that I have no friends or social life here, but after my fight with Gretchen this morning, I was looking forward to being alone. So of course, when I walk into the kitchen, Remy is standing over the counter with his back to me, nodding along with whatever’s playing on his headphones as he butters a piece of toast, oblivious to my presence. He starts to sing and dance along with a Bob Marley song, the one about three little birds.
I’ve been watching him for less than a minute and have barely moved an inch since walking through the door, but somehow Remy can tell he’s not alone. He spins around and we make eye contact. His face freezes in mortification. His arm bumps the counter, sending his toast flying from his plate onto the floor. All he’s wearing is a pair of Smurfs boxer shorts. He tries to cover himself with his arms for a second before realizing that it doesn’t help much, so he switches tactics by running out of the kitchen and down the hallway. He forgets to grab his Discman from the kitchen counter, and it falls to the floor and breaks into three pieces when his headphones snap away, but that doesn’t slow his exit. We haven’t exchanged a single word yet.
When he finally comes back—fully dressed—I hand him the Discman. “The hinge on the lid is broken. Sorry.” Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits rests safely on the index finger of my other hand.
“Damn it, Samantha, I won that playing skee-ball last week at Cedar Point. I had to spend, like, seventy bucks on tokens.”
“You could have bought one for less than that.”
“That’s not the point.” He stares at his now-ruined toast, which landed butter side down on the linoleum.
“I thought you knew I’d be coming over. I’ve been here every morning for a week.”
“I’m not monitoring your every move. I don’t even know what time it is.” He’s trying to brush the dirt from the floor off his toast. I think I see a pubic hair among the debris.
“Please don’t eat that.” I reach for it.
“Five second rule.” He pulls his hand back.
“Remy, it’s been sitting there for at least three minutes. Throw it away. There are ways to get more toast.”
He sits at the kitchen table and tries to fix the Discman, without success, while I make him a new slice.
“Did you find anything interesting downstairs yet? My grandma kept everything she ever saw or touched, pretty much. My dad says it’s because she lived through the Great Depression. We used to take her to the buffet at the Howard Johnson’s on Sunday mornings. You know, the one down by the old Family Dollar? She’d stash bacon in her bra to eat later that day. One time we caught her stealing the little salt and pepper shakers. It was humiliating.”
“When did she die?”
“Back in March. She just didn’t wake up one morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs, chewing nonchalantly. “Don’t be. She was so old that it wasn’t even sad, not really. I m
ean, she was out of her mind, so it was more of a relief than anything. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s true. I’m the one who found her. Did you know that?”
“How would I know that?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like a big deal to me at the time. I told lots of people.” He pauses. “Her eyes were open. I wish they would have been closed.”
“I thought you said she died in her sleep.”
“She must have opened them, maybe right before it happened. Her light was out. It would have been dark in her room.” Another pause. “It would have been better if they’d been closed. You remember her, don’t you?”
I nod. “A little bit.”
“But she was normal back then. She was crazy toward the end.”
“Yeah, your mom told me about that.”
“You don’t know how bad it got. She was paranoid. She used to set up all these weird little booby traps to see if someone was going through her things. Like, she’d put little pieces of tape on the edges of doors or drawers or whatever, so she’d know if someone other than her had opened them. She did it all over the house, and sometimes she’d forget about them for days. Her memory went in and out like that. One minute we’d be watching Wheel of Fortune together and everything would seem fine, and the next she’d be begging me to drive her to a violin lesson.”
“Your grandma played the violin?”
“Uh, no. That’s what I’m trying to explain. She had dementia on top of being paranoid—or maybe she was paranoid because of the dementia, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor or anything—so even when she could think clearly, she was still insane. Like with all those pieces of tape; she’d forget about them, and we’d all go about our business living here, and when she finally remembered what she’d done, all the tape would be broken or out of place. It was awful.”
He takes a bite of toast, staring at me while he chews. It’s so quiet in his kitchen that I can hear his jaw muscles moving as he works the food around in his mouth. He swallows, takes a swig of milk directly from the open half-gallon jug beside his plate, and repeats the chew-and-stare process all over again. He can tell I’m uncomfortable, but he seems to be enjoying the power of his silent gaze too much to let it go. When I can’t stand it for another second, I blurt out the first thought in my mind: “You have a big hickey on your neck.”
More silence. His expression only changes a smidgen. If he’s embarrassed, it doesn’t show. “I know that.”
“Kind of trashy, don’t you think?”
“Who cares?”
“People care.”
Remy squints at me as if he’s trying to make up his mind about something. When he starts talking again, everything about him seems suddenly detached, as though he’s flipped a “disengage” switch in his brain. “Okay, Sam. I’ll try to conduct myself in a way that’s less embarrassing for you from now on.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Not now.”
“I know I don’t. I didn’t mean—I wasn’t—I should go downstairs.” I try to rush past him, but he grabs my arm with buttery fingers.
“You don’t look anything like I thought you would.” He says it like an accusation.
“Neither do you.”
Outside, someone gives a car horn three long honks.
“That’s Luke.” Remy lets go of my arm, and I feel an invisible wall moving back into place between us before he’s even left the kitchen. “I have to get dressed. I’ll see you later, Samantha.” He doesn’t even turn around to say good-bye.
“I bet his girlfriend hates your guts.” Abby rarely comes into our house unless my parents aren’t here, which means it’s not hard to avoid her most of the time. Tonight I’m not so lucky. My dad is out, probably drinking beer with Mike at the American Legion. My mom is at an all-day gymnastics camp with Hannah. I don’t have anywhere else to go, so I’m stuck with my sister and her trusty sidekick, who are snuggled together on the opposite end of the living room couch, a blanket spread across their laps. Abby’s head rests on Gretchen’s shoulder. We’re eating pizza and watching Dirty Dancing. I’d pass on movie night with them under any other circumstances, but I’m starving, and what kind of girl turns her back on Dirty Dancing? (No kind of girl. Everybody loves Dirty Dancing. Everybody.)
“That doesn’t make any sense. Remy and I aren’t even friends.”
“Who said it had to make sense?” Gretchen doesn’t take her eyes off the television screen.
“That is why you fail, Samantha.” Abby is still as petite as always, especially compared to Gretchen, but she’s nowhere near as pretty as she was a decade ago. Her whole person, from her face and body to the way she moves and breathes, has the look and vibe of a woman who knows that whatever potential she might have possessed in her youth has long since faded away. It wasn’t that noticeable at first, but it became obvious once I’d spent some time with her. Her face is a shade too thin, her eyeliner a touch too heavy; her fingernails are uneven, their polish chipped; her dark hair is littered with strands of gray. There’s a weariness emanating from within her that never goes away, not even when she’s cuddled up beside her best friend in the world.
I guess that’s what happens when you sacrifice your whole life to take care of someone else, which is what she’s doing for her father. He might live for another thirty years with Abby caring for his broken body, his working mind trapped inside without any possibility for either of them to escape until his heart stops beating. I want to loathe her, but it feels too cruel, even though she gives me a reason to every time she opens her mouth.
“She doesn’t need a good reason to hate you,” she continues. She’s still talking about Heather, Remy’s girlfriend. “She hates you because you’re a pretty girl who lives next door to her boyfriend.”
“But I’ve barely even spoken to Remy.”
“You will,” Gretchen says. “You were best friends.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Ten years isn’t that long.”
“Maybe Samantha doesn’t like boys,” Abby suggests, flicking her tongue at me from between her fingers. Mid-gesture, her gaze lands on my necklace. I’m wearing a silver locket that I found in Remy’s basement in a shoe box filled to the brim with old jewelry, most of it too tarnished or tangled to bother with.
“Where did you get that?” Her eyes narrow in accusation.
“From Remy’s basement. It was his grandma’s.”
“Oh, yeah? It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“Whose picture did you put inside?”
I put my hand over the locket. “Nobody’s.”
Gretchen laughs. “That sounds about right.”
“Shut up. I do like boys, you know.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I’m busy with other things.”
Abby snorts through her perky little nose. “Well, that’s a lie.”
“God, Samantha, you’re no fun at all!” My sister lights the joint she’s been rolling for the last ten minutes and gets it burning nice and steady before passing it to Abby. Abby offers it to me, even though she knows I don’t want any. Once I’ve refused, she starts blowing smoke rings in my direction and singing under her breath: “Don’t smoke, don’t drink, goody-goody-two-shoes.” She pauses before adding, “I’m talking about you, Sam.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize.”
“Wait a minute, you two—stop bitching at each other. Tell me this, Samantha: have you ever been on a date? Like, a real one?”
“Why are you so interested in my love life all of a sudden?”
Gretchen shrugs. “Because you’re my sister, I guess.”
For a moment, the world around me is all background noise and static, and I can only think of Noah. My parents called him my boyfriend, but that’s not what he was. One night together at a Holiday Inn does not a boyfriend make, but it’s not like it mattered; my parents made sure they put an end to any
relationship we might have had before it ever got started. But if Gretchen knows about Noah, she isn’t letting on.
Beside my sister, Abby digs through her purse until she produces an oversized bag of candy corn, which she begins to eat by the handful. The sight disgusts me. “I wasn’t aware anybody ate that stuff on purpose.”
“I have to agree with Sam on this one,” Gretchen says. “Candy corn is the worst. That shit will rot your teeth faster than anything.” She works part-time as a dental assistant three mornings a week. Even if she and her husband are trying to “work things out,” I don’t think she’s planning on going back to Texas anytime soon. Otherwise, why bother to get a job here?
Abby smiles. Her teeth are already stained orange and black. “I brush twice a day,” she says. Tiny flecks of spit go flying from her lips onto the blanket. Gretchen wipes them away.
“That isn’t enough. You have to floss every time you brush, too, or you might as well not bother at all.”
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do! You know what I hear at my job at least once a week? I mean at least. Take a guess.”
“I don’t know. Tell me, oh wise and lovely dental assistant.” They’re both giggling like maniacs. Neither of them seems at all concerned that the entire first floor of the house reeks of pot. It’s no surprise that Abby’s not worried, but Gretchen should know that our parents would likely frown on the scene if they happened to walk in with Hannah. She hasn’t even bothered to open a window or turn on the ceiling fan. If I had smoked some of the joint, would I be as relaxed as she and Abby seem right now? I can’t imagine how it feels. I’ve never smoked marijuana, although I’ve smelled it plenty of times. I’ve never even been drunk.
“I hear, ‘Is that a popcorn kernel? I don’t even remember the last time I ate popcorn.’ ”
Abby laughs with her whole body. She butts her head against Gretchen’s shoulder and kicks her bare feet with glee. “That happened to me! I swear to God, it happened to me the last time I had my teeth cleaned!”
“Popcorn,” Gretchen repeats. “It’s always stuck between molars or below the gum line. People are always so surprised. ‘How did that get there?!’ ”