All You Never Wanted (18 page)

“Here they are. Three Sisters,” Dad would say in a Russian accent. A tired joke about the Chekhov play. But he was just saying
it. His eyes already would be flicking to his watch. As if he hoped date night was done before it had even started.

He didn’t notice us, but we didn’t need him to. We’d all complimented one another in the bathroom beforehand. Alex’s eyes. My smile. Mom’s little beauty-mark mole that neither of us had inherited. Everybody had looked in the mirror and told everybody else how good we looked. How wonderful and lovely we all were.

I blinked. My eyes were red, overfull with remembering.

I’d have to apply makeup later.

Downstairs, Joshua was dealing with the sound system, setting it to his own iPod. We’d listened to the same music on the way to the Stratford Mini-Putt. Maybe I could joke that it was almost like he was playing “our” songs, ha-ha-ha.

Except where was Alex? Her single voice mail of checking in on me had been on the secret end of vague. For the girl who’d barely left Camelot’s driveway these past few months, today was a record absence.

The worry clung to me, but at least I didn’t need her for the work I had left to do. I pulled on my cutoffs and a T-shirt and motored through stray housekeeping details. A humungous papier-mâché whale tottering on the porch roof felt like enough of a liability. I’d attempt to control what I could.

Starting with. Move that supposedly priceless crystal vase into the kitchen. Check. Key-code-lock the door to the Ivory Room so nobody would decide to use it as the make-out room. Check. Unhook the Ming Dynasty sword hanging over the marble hall console and. Um. Stash it in the coat closet. Oof, heavy. But a good call. Plus I’d avoided the disaster of some wasted mofo
swinging it around, looking to swordfight all takers on a twenty-dollar dare.

Check check check.

As for the pale gold carpet runners? Not a heck of a lot I could do. Cross my fingers and pray. And while I was on my knees, I should also ask God to pleeeeze not let anyone sneak down into the wine cellar and get intimate with Arthur’s Cabernets and Merlots.

Pausing at the living room window, I stared across the long lawn to where one of our unknown, unfriendly neighbors was puttering in her garden. Through a break in their hedgerow, I could see her bent double over her prized whatever bushes. She was upholstered in a lime-green and yellow flowery tunic over a contrast checkerboard pattern of orange and puke green. Eeesh. Imagine actually taking
that
out of your clothes closet and saying yes. “Oh, yes. Exactly! The outfit that looks like two giant sewn-together beach towels. Flowers all over my massive bosom and checkers up and down my thighs.”

Mrs. Checkers lived in one of the older Round Hill Manor homes, tastefully structured to fit the landscape. On the topic of puke green, I bet she’d wanted to throw up a bit when she saw Camelot go up. Camelot was definitely one of those houses that snooty Greenwich people saw and mouthed “There goes the neighborhood” over their gin and tonics.

It was almost like she’d overheard my thoughts.

Suddenly Mrs. Checkers looked up across the lawn to where I was watching her. In the next heartbeat of time, her body seemed to seize up on her. Her eyes rolling back to monster whites, her hands smashing flat over her ship’s-prow chest. It was as if the
whole thing was happening in slow motion. I watched unblinking as she rolled over and slumped boneless to the ground.

Mute. Still. A mound of disco fabrics. Almost poetic. Like the final moment of some experimental dance recital, when you’re not sure if it’s really the end or if something has gone wrong.

Except.

Something had gone wrong.

In a flash, I was out of the house. Sprinting over the grass. Mrs. Checkers’s property was adjacent to Camelot, but there was a huge lawn separating us. By the time I’d dropped right next to her, I was winded.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong? What can I do?”

Mrs. Checkers’s face was darkly red. A Halloween devil mask topped off with her silver, sculpted pouf of a hairdo. She was fighting for breath. As she tried to speak, her fingers fluttered like pudgy butterflies.

“My heart,” she whispered.

Heart, heart. Okay, okay. Arthur also had a bad heart. What to do what to do. I saw that my own hands were shaking as my fingers touched her wrist, her throat—Keep passages open?—No! that was if someone was choking—
heart, heart—ding-ding-ding
. “Aspirin. My stepdad—Hang on, there’s a bottle at our house, I’ll be quick, just … wait. Wait a minute, okay—please, hang on, Mrs.… hang on!”

I jumped up and doubled back across the lawn. My own heart was rocketing and my lungs were a bellows as I tore through the house. Up the stairs to the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet, where I shook two aspirin into my palm. Or should I give her a
bunch more? What’s the recipe? Even my brain was trembling, I couldn’t think right—who cares! just go!—and I grabbed the bottle. Flying back down on windmill legs, across the soft sea of grass to reach her.

“You’ve got to swallow this aspirin!” I ordered. “It’s on account of platelets or clotting—or something! But it works!”

Mrs. Checkers, thankfully, seemed to know what I meant. She nodded and took the aspirin from me. As she struggled up on her elbows, I leapt for her watering can, which stood abandoned by the trellis. An inch of water was sloshing around the bottom. “Here! Drink from here.”

She took the can. Tipped it and drank. Some dribbled out, but most got down. “You’re an angel,” she croaked.

Oh, that was a good touch.

Standing motionless at the living room window, I saw the two of us out there as clearly as if it had really happened.

Me, kneeling. Mrs. Checkers’s white head on my lap. Her eyes blinking gratefully up at me.

The late honey sun glancing rainbows off those diamond rings.

“You’re an angel,” I said softly, imagining how she might say it. If I’d truly done it. If she’d actually dropped and rolled. If I’d really saved her life.

I could tell the story to everyone at the party. “I totally thought she wasn’t gonna make it. But then I remembered about aspirin. I never ran so fast in my life.”

Would Joshua believe me? Or would he wonder why I didn’t yell for help first? Or call 911 while I was running across the lawn?

Multiple problems with this tale. Besides, crowd support is
given more easily to the victim than the hero. People are secretly jealous of heroes and are always looking for ways to shoot them down.

I watched Mrs. Checkers, in perfect health, finish sweeping her tools into her gardening basket before she heaved to her feet and steered full-sail through her front door. I wondered who she really was. Her real name. Funny thing about this neighborhood. You weren’t supposed to make friends with your neighbors. Leave Everybody Alone. It was like an unspoken agreement.

Joshua was in the kitchen. Eating again! A peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. Who knew that Camelot was stocked with such plain-folks food as peanut butter and jelly?

He gave me that same look. The one from the porch. Like no time at all had passed. Like he wanted to pick up exactly right where we’d left off.

If I’d have been an animal, I would have squeaked.

My skin burned for him. My animal self wanted him unashamedly.

“Hey, Joshua. Can we do my playlist tonight?” I asked. “I made this widget of it and I got a lot of excellent feedback. And I want to remember the night through my music. You know what I mean?”

“Thea, are you
wheedling
me?”

“Wheedling.” That was an Alex-ism. She’d heard it in a movie a while back and she’d thought the word was funny, so she’d adopted it as her own thing. Why was Joshua using it? Why would he want to remind me about Alex?

Was that a red flag?

I stepped back. “Not on purpose.”

He stepped closer. Closer. His breath was peanut butter. No red flag here. The opposite. All systems go. On tiptoes, I was only a tiny bit shorter than Joshua. “What’s that cornball thing your stepdad always says?” he asked.

“ ‘Cheese and rice’?” That was Arthur’s signature “curse word.”

“I meant the thing about your mom. When he talks about getting stuff for his ‘girly girl.’ ”

I wrinkled my nose. We were too dangerously close to each other, but neither one of us was inching back. “You know what he says. You’ve heard it like a million times.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“What if I don’t want to say it?”

“Come on. Say it.” It was a power play. And Joshua was the one with the power. Over me, anyway.

I gave him a sullen look. To show I didn’t want to do this. Then quickly launched into my imitation of Arthur’s jolly alto, his ever so slightly patronizing tone that he used when he flirted with Mom. “Whatever my girly girl wants, my girly girl gets.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Joshua sneered. “That’s it.”

“Arthur’s a fool.” I felt like I had to say it. That Joshua wanted me to say it. It was like we needed to tamp out Arthur’s power here. Otherwise we were squatters, paupers in the palace. I understood Joshua’s outsider status in a way that Alex, forever beloved, never would.

Alex didn’t need Joshua. She wasn’t as alone as me.

We were staring at each other. The pause before the kiss. I was rubber, stretched to a place almost beyond suspension. Beyond what I could take anymore. I was going to snap. And this time it happened. And this time I was ready.

“He looks like the sidekick in a Disney movie.” She’s got him right in her sight, in the space in the leaves.

“Which Disney movie?” Xander whispers back.

“Any one of ’em. Any ole goofy Disney sidekick.”

“That dude’s not goofy yo.”

Alex nods. “True. But he’s cartoony.”

Xander snorts his agreement.

Alex is raw with nerves. Unfamiliar neighborhood. No safety net. No Plan B. Nowhere to retreat.

“I can’t do it, Xander.”

“Course you can.” Xander is tugging her.

“No, don’t!” But now he’d fully extracted her from their hiding place behind the knuckled oak tree that stands across the street from where they’ve parked.

“We can do this. I promise.”

She’s not sure. She loves this feeling of Xander’s fingers knit through hers as they leapfrog down the flagstone path. Closer and closer to the pretty stone house with its blossoming lindens and double-bay-window views of the man himself.

Chuck “Hurricane” Gussman.

Who is padding from one front room to another and back again.

From the moment Xander had jumped out of the car and
dived into the hiding spot, Alex had assumed he was pranking her. “Operation Weatherdude” was just a version of “chicken.” And at any moment, he’d stop. She’d get the dimpled laugh and the hand slap and a leap back to the car. While she chased breathlessly after him, relief spiraling through her body.

But if Xander’s playing chicken, he plays it well. He’s heading right for the front door. And with every second that he hasn’t retreated, she hasn’t, either.

It occurs to her that he might even be serious.

All the tiny microbes that make up a scream are percolating just beneath her skin. Why had she gone so far with this? She’d been dumb from the start. Surrendered Chuck Gussman’s address to Xander without a peep of protest. Silently watched him plug it into the GPS.

She’d done it because she hadn’t been ready to end the day.

Not just yet.

And she’d known that this particular errand would hold Xander’s interest.

She’s right, of course. Xander loves the idea of tracking Gussman. Alex loves buying time with Xander. Feeding the meter of his interest. Even as the time meter runs out. But it’s a whole other thing to face Gussman’s front door.

Except that they’re hurtling toward it. Operation Weatherdude is in full swing.

The house itself doesn’t intimidate her. Not up close. The ivy-trailing window boxes. The brass lion’s-head knocker. Anyone could live here.

Maybe Xander’s right. Maybe asking Gussman for what she wants, face to face and in 3-D, is the best way to get it.

“My legs are shaking,” she admits.

“You’ll be fine.” They’re planted outside the front door. Motionless.

Next to her, Xander is holding himself as stiff as a groom on a wedding cake. “Remember to tell him you’re a fan.”

“But I’m not a fan.”

“It’s halfway true if you say it out loud.”

“What about the other half?”

“Who cares?” He reaches for her back. His fingers drum up her spine. She tingles from his touch. “Here goes,” Xander whispers. “For Len.”

“For Len,” she whispers as Xander sticks out a single finger and jabs the bell.

Gussman opens the door as if he’d been standing right behind it all along. Waiting for them. She is semi-braced for it. It shocks her anyway.

There he is. Her local weatherman. It’s kind of cool.

“Can I help you?”

She takes him in. Thin-combed hair and button-down blue shirt and pressed khaki pants. Clothes that formal people like to think is casual wear. If Gussman were a scent, he would be Lime Aftershave in a Toaster Oven. Hot, dry air with a citrus bite.

“Hey,” says Xander. “Is this the, ah, Gussman residence?”

“This is. Are you kids Greenpeace or Planned Parenthood?” Gussman’s smile is a tired blink across his face. Here and gone. Minus the bow tie, he looks like your extra-average suburban white guy.

When they don’t answer, their weatherman asks, “What’s up,
kids? You here for an autograph? Or you just felt like bothering a private citizen on his day off?”

“Mr. Gussman, it’s me. Alexandra Parrott.”

His eyes clamp onto her, a pair of pliers, as he quick-steps it back into the cocoon of his foyer. “From my voice mail,” he says.

“Yes. I called you a few times. I’m …” A fan. A fan of what? His profile on the green screen? She just can’t say it. “Actually,” she starts again, “it’s my stepfather. He knows—”

“Yes, yes. Your stepfather. Let me ask you this. Do you think he’d appreciate your harassment?”

“Oh. I’m sorry it came off like … that. I was getting desperate.”