April & Oliver (18 page)

“Expecting rain?” April asks.

Nana turns to look at her. “Oh you,” she says, recognizing April. “Don’t you know anything? They always make you wear this
for surgery.”

“Surgery?” April says. “What’s the trouble?”

“My heart,” Nana says, turning back to her pictures.

April steps closer, caressing Nana’s back with the tips of her fingers. “Broken?” she says.

Nana nods. “Triple bypass. Detours everywhere.”

April looks down at the table covered with pictures of Buddy. She swallows. “What are you up to here?”

“Buddy asked me to find his high school graduation picture, but I don’t think your parents gave one to me. Isn’t that odd?”

April feels a shiver skip across her skin. “Oh, did Buddy stop by?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nana says. “He’s in the White Mountains. He called this morning.”

April sits down, drawing her hands down her face. “How did he sound?”

“Concerned. He needs to find this picture. Oh, he said to tell you he was sorry about your car.”

April holds a breath. “My car?”

“The accident with your car.” Nana turns to face her. “Well don’t act so surprised. Why else would you be driving his?”

April glances out the window at the white car in the street. She lets out a breath. “Take that thing off your head,” she says.
“I’ll make some lunch.”

April lifts the shower cap from Nana’s head, noticing the earrings beneath. They are long, turquoise, Indian looking. Nana
stares, touching April’s lip where it is swollen. Then she touches her own lip and cheek. “Nicky was here last night,” she
says.

“Nana, Nick left fifty years ago. Then you married Spencer, remember?”

“Nicky used to hit your father,” she says. “And I was too scared to protect him. Imagine that.”

“It’s okay, Nana. He’s long gone.”

“No,” she says. “He lives in the basement. He’ll outlive us all.”

April shivers. “Come on. Lunch.”

“You know,” Nana says as they move toward the kitchen. “You look a lot like I did when I was your age.”

April smiles. “I’m lucky, then.”

“It won’t last. Then what?”

“You tell me.”

“Find yourself a good man, April. Someone like my Spencer.”

“No, Nana. That’s not the answer for me.”

“The one you live with is a bum.”

“I told you, he’s gone. We went our separate ways. Besides,” April says, filling the kettle, “if I could change anything,
I wouldn’t want a guy. I’d want to live alone somewhere in a small town where no one knows me. All by myself. Doesn’t that
sound nice?”

“Hmpf,” Nana says. “Sounds preposterous. Who would take care of you when you’re old?”

April smiles wryly. Planning ahead has never been her strong suit. “Look, I bought some marigolds for your garden.”

“I don’t like marigolds. Everyone has them.”

“They’re the giant kind.” When April sees that’s not working, she adds, “Oliver picked them out.”

“Oliver.” Nana’s face lights up. “Let me see them.”

“They aren’t blooming yet. There’s not much to see.”

“I’ll call to thank him.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“He has a good heart.”

“Yes,” April says, “he does.”

After lunch, April brings the flat of marigolds out to the small garden where the phantom carp once lived. She unwittingly
chose flowers as gold as the fish, to make the story come true.

Her father spun so many tales; April listened with relish and adoration. Later she realized that he told those stories to
girls at the bar, too. They would sit there in their snug clothing and styled hair, listening. April could almost hear their
squeamish giggles. She thought of the picture taped to the back of the aquarium, the way the naked lady smiled to suggest
she enjoyed being there even though the neglected tank was grimy with scum and the scavengers sucked at its sides.

The pond April imagined in her grandmother’s yard was clear as the tropics, the fish healthy and silken, their fins rippling
like kites on a summer sky.

Along with the marigolds, April has a bag each of peat moss and manure, a watering can of fertilizer, a hand shovel, a hoe,
and a dandelion fork. She is wearing an oversize T-shirt and baggy pants, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. The sun
is warm on her back. She likes turning the soil, pulling weeds. She learned to garden from Oliver when they were in high school
and he worked at the nursery.

April pauses to look at the sky, her capped tooth throbbing. The maple above her, too big for the yard, is covered with half-size
leaves a tender shade of yellow-green. The branches swish and frolic. As a child, she loved to climb trees on blustery days
to be closer to the wind, loved how it felt inside her clothes, in her hair, the wild energy of it. Who needed food and sleep?

A stab of pain in her tooth interrupts her thoughts. Somewhere along the way, she screwed up. The girl she was at nine did
not survive adolescence. Last month she turned twenty-eight, still living the same gimmick, an impostor in her own life. But
there is no going back. All she has is the April she’s made of herself. Besides, despite a smattering of courses at a community
college, she doesn’t know how to do anything but tend bar. And garden.

“April?”

She turns. Because he is standing in front of the sun, she cannot see his face, but she knows the voice. “Hey, Oliver.”

He sits down beside her.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Semester’s over. I start my internship next week. What about you?”

“Off today.” She wedges a plant from its container, placing it in the hole. She is grateful he doesn’t stare at her lip. Maybe
he doesn’t notice. “Nana call you?”

He nods. “To thank me for your marigolds.”

April glances at the house to see if Nana is watching. She is, of course. April waves with the shovel. “She wouldn’t have
liked them if I didn’t tell her they were from you.” She dusts dirt off her knees, embarrassed by how she must look, but Oliver
smiles gently.

“Did you hear the latest?” April continues, nodding toward the house. “Nick Simone’s living in the basement.”

“Oh, no. Why doesn’t she have delusions about Spencer? At least they’d be more pleasant.”

April starts on a new hole. “Your party get rained out?”

“We moved inside. Need some help?”

“If you want.” She hands him a flat.

“April, I’m sorry for—”

“Me, too. Let’s forget it.”

“I didn’t want you to leave.”

“Just pass the watering can.”

“I was an idiot.”

“Fine.” She smiles. “You were an idiot.”

He smiles, too, filling his hands with peat, packing it loosely around the roots of a marigold. He handles the plant gingerly,
the way she has seen him touch Bernadette’s hair, the nape of her neck, fingers like butterflies. When he glances up, April
looks away. “What happened to your mother’s portrait?” she asks. “The one your father gave you?”

“Oh, that. I finally gave it to Al.”

She looks at him questioningly.

“I don’t know.” He smiles. “Maybe I didn’t want it staring at me all the time.”

April sits back on her ankles. “I’m surprised you still hold on to the piano.”

“Have you ever tried to move one?”

“I’m sure if you sold it, someone would be glad to come and get it.”

“Are you offering?”

“I’d take it if I could. There’s so much crap in my apartment, there’s barely room for me.”

“T.J.’s stuff, you mean.”

She tries to separate two immature plants, but the roots are fragile and intertwined, so she puts them into the ground as
one.

“What about your lip?” he asks finally.

She thinks of the usual excuses, missed steps and falling bookshelves. She trims a broken bud off a damaged plant, saying
nothing.

“Help me out here,” he says. “I’m trying to square the girl who reads Stephen Hawking with the one I saw at the party. Will
the real April please stand up?”

“It was Brian Greene,” she says. “I couldn’t get through Hawking.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You don’t get it,” she says. “I read not to think.”

“You think,” he says. “You think a lot.”

“Yes, but I’d rather think about wormholes in time than a fat lip I can’t do anything about.”

He touches his own lip, studying her. She feels suddenly nervous. “Can I ask you something?” he says. “If it’s too personal,
you don’t have to answer.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s about Quincy.”

Her insides go cold, like fog freezing on asphalt.

“I just wonder if you ever look back on that, I mean—”

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”

“Don’t get upset. I just wonder if it wouldn’t be useful to—”

“It’s not.”

“I mean, I’m just curious about how you see it now.”

“I don’t. I don’t see it.”

“April, that’s not reasonable.”

“So you’re telling me you go home at night and talk to Bernadette about the things you did in high school?”

“Well, if statutory rape was on the list, I might.”

“God, you’re always exaggerating. Why are we talking about this?”

“Because we never have.”

She closes her eyes tightly.

“Look, you don’t have to talk to
me
about this. Just tell me I’m not the only one who knows. Tell me you’ve confided in a girlfriend, a customer at the bar,
anyone.”

She looks down at the grass.

“A forty-year-old man and a fourteen-year-old girl,” he says, lowering his voice. “At least tell me you see what’s wrong with
that.”

“You want me to say I made a mistake? Yes, I fucked up. Happy?”

“April, don’t you see? He wanted you to believe it was your fault, and you did.”

“Fine. He had a dick for a brain. Can we stop now?”

“He gave liquor to a child, that alone—”

“He didn’t pour it down my throat.”

“He was your boss.”

“Stop. I’m not talking about this.” She covers her ears.

“And your father. He didn’t help matters, did he. Why did he have you work there to begin with? To save a few bucks on a dishwasher?”

She stands abruptly, knocking over the watering can, drenching her sneaker.

“April, please.” He looks up at her. “I’m only trying to—”

“Look, Oliver. I’ve gotten over these things. Why haven’t you?”

“Pretending they never happened isn’t the same as getting over them.”

“Why now, Oliver? Because I screwed up at your party? I’m sorry I can’t be as perfect as you.” She glares down, breathless.
“Just don’t invite me next time.”

He stands slowly. His eyes fall to her mouth. Maybe it looks worse than she thought. He cups his fingers under the line of
her jaw and runs his thumb lightly over the swollen lip. She steps back as calmly as she can.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I’m just worried, April.”

“It’s my business.”

“If it’s me who has to ID you in the morgue one day, I’m going to take it pretty damn personally.”

“How do you get from a fat lip to the morgue?”

“Faster than you think.”

“You’re such an alarmist.”

“And you have no sense of alarm, do you. Not an ounce. Except once. Something made you go to the police.”

“T.J. is gone. Will you get over it?”

“He’s not gone, April, not as long as you’re living this way. He’s here now. He’s in your head. Him or someone like him.”

“Living what way?”

“You’re an intelligent woman. You can break this.”

The dandelion fork trembles in her grip. “God, you’re infuriating. If I were a killer, you’re the one I’d kill.”

He looks stunned only for an instant. Then he can’t help it. He laughs. Her cheeks blaze because she’s not sure if he’s making
fun of her.

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding his stomach. “But I think that’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

She tries not to smile, but it’s no good. “Bastard,” she says, hating him more now because he’s made her laugh. “You make
me crazy.” She smacks his shoulder and he snatches her arm in the familiar way they did as kids. But it’s different now. The
pressure of his fingers sends a warm rush up her arm. Her heart quickens.

He steps closer until the prongs of the dandelion fork in her free hand touch his chest. “How would you do it?” he asks. “Poison?
Stabbing? How about strangulation? Wouldn’t that be satisfying?”

For the first time in years, she looks him dead in the eye. So blue and clear. Luminous as glacial ice, those radiant cobalt
crevices lit from within. Her voice comes out in a rasp. “I’d hit you with a bolt of lightning.”

His smile fades. She sees now that they are not just one shade of blue, but a thousand, pale and oceanic near the pupil, dark
indigo around the rim, with flecks of sea green and gold. She feels a light shimmering sensation; she is no longer in her
body, yet is intensely aware of the way his fingers have loosened around her wrist. It takes her a moment to realize she has
stopped breathing.

There is a wild knocking at the window. They turn to see Nana holding the curtain open, flailing her arm.

“Oh,” Oliver says, releasing April’s arm. He runs his hand through his hair and tucks his shirt though it has not been disturbed.
April drops the dandelion fork. Her skin tingles from the soles of her feet to the base of her neck.

“Oh, my,” Nana says.

April whirls around to see Nana standing on the top step by the side door. She has her shower cap back on, inside out this
time. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she says, touching the medal on her necklace.

“Nana.” April rushes toward her. “Where’s your walker? You could hurt yourself out here.”

“So you finally brought him by,” she says, “the infamous boyfriend.”

“No, Nana. That’s Oliver.”

“Listen, you.” Nana shakes her finger at him. “You’re not welcome here. I saw what you did.”

“Nana, please.”

Oliver steps closer, holding out his palms. “Look, Nana. It’s me.”

“Get away from me, Nicky,” she says, voice shaking. “Bede doesn’t want your toys. You’re not his father anymore. You’ve done
enough.”

Oliver doesn’t move.