Dirty (28 page)

“Why,” Dan asked after another round of relatives had faded for the moment, “do they call you Ella?”

My third glass of wine had left me with flushed cheeks and a pleasant tipsiness I didn’t want to become full-blown intoxication. “It’s my name.”

Another cousin interrupted us. By the time she was done reminding me I owed her a phone call, my bladder had begun to twinge. The small powder room off the kitchen had seen a steady stream of action, and I’d just seen Uncle Larry heading into it. I couldn’t wait for Uncle Larry. That left the bathroom upstairs.

“I’ll come with you,” Dan said when I told him where I was going. “I need to go, too.”

We wove through the throng, most of them well on their way to being soused on my father’s gin. I put my foot to the bottom of the stairs, looking up. I hadn’t been up there since leaving home, but my hand found the light switch with unerring ease, proving once again the body remembers what the mind tries to refuse.

Sixteen stairs. I’d counted them too many times to forget that. What once had been white shag now was bare, polished wood with a stapled runner of beige and gold flowers running up the center. It’s nearly impossible to get blood out of white shag carpet.

“You all right?” Dan said from behind me.

“Fine.” I took a step with him close behind.

Faces followed us up the stairs. My mother had hung pictures in matching wooden frames, each in its place the same precise distance from the next. One was askew, possibly knocked by a stray elbow as people passed each other on the narrow stairs, and I reached a finger to straighten it.

“Is that you?”

The gap-toothed smile and ponytails were mine, indeed. “Yes.”

“You were a cutie.”

I looked at him with a raise of my eyebrow. “Sure. If you like kids who look like monkeys.”

Dan laughed. “You didn’t look like a monkey, Elle.”

I’d have been more than happy to keep moving, but Dan studied all the photos. Elementary school pictures. Photos of my mother and father in bad 1970s haircuts and polyester fashions, grinning with an infant in front of them. Sports teams with the individual photo set off to one side. She had so many pictures hung it seemed impossible that any could be missing, but I knew they were. She’d taken them down, every hint or reminder she’d had two sons, not just the perfect one. It was as though Chad had never existed, and I was an afterthought, my smile captured behind glass as though to prove a point and not because of maternal pride.

Dan was smart. It didn’t take him more than a moment or two to scan the wall of photos and see there were few of me and many of another. His brow furrowed in concentration as he looked at frames filled with the same smile. The one that did not belong to me.

At the top of the stairs was the final set of photos. A triptych, a threefold frame. The first held a picture of Andrew, grin broad, skin tanned, eyes twinkling. The second slot was a photo of me, a girl with long dark hair and puffy cheeks, skin flawed with pimples. No smile. The third slot was empty.

“Elle.” Dan looked from the frame to one a bit farther down in which I held up a fish for the camera, my head tipped back with laughter. There had been only three years difference in time between the pictures but a lifetime had happened. “Is this you, too?”

“Yes,” I answered and kept moving to the hallway above.

He caught up to me, followed me down the hall. His hand caught and turned me gently. “What happened?”

“I stopped smiling” came my answer. “And nobody asked me why.”

We stood like that for one of those eternal moments that last seconds but seem like hours. A shadow passed across his gaze. I put my hand on the doorknob directly behind me, pushed open the door, stepped inside.

“Want to see my old room?” The words came out sounding like a challenge rather than an invitation.

“Sure.”

He followed me inside. Emotions cascaded over his expression as he looked around the space that had been left untouched for ten years. I saw interest, then awareness and discomfort, but it was the flash of pity that turned my heart hard.

“Roses,” Dan said.

“Yes. Roses.”

I’d slept in a room full of roses. Roses on the curtains, the wallpaper, the bedspread, the pillows. Big red roses like something from a fairy tale, only not even the thorns had been enough to keep the monsters from this room.

“There used to be a rug, too,” I said carelessly, pointing at the bare wood. “But it got stained. I guess she threw it away.”

“Elle…”

“You can call me Ella.” My voice was like stones tossed against a windowpane. One thrown too hard could break the glass. “They all do. Or Elspeth. It’s my real name.”

“It’s pretty,” he said, moving closer as though he meant to hug me, but I stepped away. “I’ll call you whatever you want.”

He looked around the room at my collection of dolls and model horses, set high on their shelves and yet free of dust. My desk. My closet, where he might find my ballet slippers and cast-off crown if he opened the door.

He didn’t open the door. “What happened to him? The boy in the pictures?”

I think he already knew, but wanted to hear my answer. Maybe he hoped it would be different. Maybe he hoped I’d lie. And maybe I should have, except that I was so weary of lying. Tired of hiding behind a wall of thorns.

“I told you what happened to him already,” I said, voice flat and sounding very far away. “He slit his wrists and bled to death while I watched from the doorway. He’s dead.”

I
didn’t wait for his reaction. By that time, my bladder threatened to explode and I thought I might also puke, so I pushed past him and locked myself in the bathroom where I peed for what seemed forever and held myself from vomiting by reciting the multiplication tables over and over. Once that bathroom had been white, but apparently blood is also impossible to get out of towels and curtains. My mother had changed her color scheme to dark blue with yellow accents. Wallpaper decorated with sailing ships had replaced the stenciled pansies that had once danced along the white-painted walls. I touched the merry little boats, counting them. If I peeled it away, would I find the blood still beneath? Or had she tried to bleach it first?

“Elle?” The doorknob rattled. “Let me in. Please?”

I took a deep breath. “Dan, please go away.”

Silence. I washed my hands, taking time to scrub each individual finger and rinse them, over and over. I went to the door. “Dan?” I knew he was still there, but I asked, anyway. He didn’t jiggle the knob. I imagined him standing on the opposite side of the door, and I flattened a palm against the wood like maybe I could touch him through it. I pressed my forehead to it, my eyes closed.

“I’m still here.”

I had to swallow, hard, before I could force myself to speak without my voice crumbling. “I need you to go away.”

“Oh, Elle.” He didn’t ask me why.

I didn’t want to tell him. What could I say? That shame was easier to bear alone? That seeing his face and knowing he knew what had happened was too much, right now, with my father’s death still so raw?

“You don’t want me to leave you.” The steadiness of his voice was a comfort that could break me, if I took it.

“That won’t work this time. I do want you to go. I need you to go, Dan.”

A soft shuffle on the other side of the door made me think of him, standing as I did, pressed up against the wood. He sighed so heavily I had no trouble hearing it. I heard the clink of keys.

“I don’t want to go, Elle. Won’t you just let me in? We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to—”

“No!” My shout echoed in the bathroom, and I winced at the way it bludgeoned my ears. “No, I mean it. I want you to go away! I have to be alone right now!”

“You don’t have to be alone,” he said quietly.

“But I want to be,” I told him.

To that, he seemed to have no answer. I waited, but at last the sound of footsteps led away from the door, the jingle of keys getting fainter and at last, fading away. By the time I came out, most everyone had gone home, leaving behind them the remains of casseroles and cakes I knew I’d be expected to put in containers and freeze.

Mrs. Cooper had stayed behind. I found her in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and tying an apron around her waist. She turned when I came in, and her smile was meant to warm me but missed a big icy section in the middle of my chest.

“I put your mother to bed, poor dear, with one of her headache pills. She’s resting. I’ll just get these dishes started.”

“You don’t have to do that, Mrs. Cooper.”

“Oh, but, my dear, it’s no trouble, really. What are neighbors for if not to help each other out in a time of need?” She smiled and reached for the bottle of dish soap.

I bent to find the neat stacks of butter tubs my mother used as storage containers, but found instead a cupboard full of matching containers and lids. My muffled noise of surprise drew Mrs. Cooper’s attention.

“Oh, God love her, your mother,” she said with a chuckle. “She had one of those parties, you know? And she went a bit hog wild, I’d say. She’ll never use more than a few of those at a time, what with it just being her now, but well, I guess they’ll come in handy, won’t they?”

She indicated the table groaning with the offerings of potato salad and meat loaf, pierogies in butter sauce and carrot cake. “People were so generous. Look at all that food!”

“You should take some,” I told her. “Maybe Mr. Cooper would like some.”

“Thanks, honey.” Mrs. Cooper started scrubbing while I started packing. I smoothed a spoon over the top of a mound of tuna salad to finish filling the container.

“Where’s your young man gone?”

“I think he had to leave.” Dan had gone, like I’d asked him to. He gave me what I wanted, the way he always did.

“He seemed nice.” She gave me a birdlike glance. “Your mother seemed to like him.”

I looked up, startled. “She did?”

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Cooper smiled. “Your mother is so very proud of you, you’re all she ever talks about. How well you’re doing with your job, how you’re always getting promotions. How you fixed up that house of yours all on your own, without her help. Yes, she seemed quite impressed by your young man. He has a good job, she said, and is very polite.”

That didn’t sound like my mother, but I didn’t argue with Mrs. Cooper. I kept my attention focused on filling containers with food and stacking them to be taken to the freezer in the basement.

“It was so good to see you. It’s been so long. I’m sorry it had to be such a sad occasion. We miss you around here, Fred and I.”

The stack in front of me doubled and tripled, and I blinked away tears. “That’s nice to hear, Mrs. Cooper.”

“Ella,” she said gently, but I didn’t turn, “you know we were all sorry about what happened.”

“My father dug his own grave,” I said. “Not to be rude, but you know it as well as I do.”

“Not about your dad,” said the woman who’d given me my first copy of
The Little Prince.
“About Andrew.”

Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing.

I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on a concrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them I was glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.

I sobbed, and Mrs. Cooper rubbed my back and let me do it.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator of
The Little Prince
says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mrs. Cooper told me, stroking my hair the way she’d done when I was a little girl and had run into her kitchen for a cookie and tripped and scraped my knee instead. “None of it was your fault. Stop blaming yourself, honey.”

“What good is it to stop blaming myself,” I sobbed, “when she still does?”

And for that Mrs. Cooper had no answer.

Dan left ten messages before I called him back. I know the number of times I lifted the phone to return his calls, but I’m too embarrassed to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was fine for Mrs. Cooper to tell me not to blame myself, but I couldn’t do that any more than I could face Dan. I didn’t want him to see something different in his eyes when he looked at me.

“I can’t see you anymore,” I said finally when I’d managed to finish dialing and stay on the line long enough for him to answer. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I can’t do this. Us. I can’t do it, Dan.”

I heard the sound of his breathing, this time separated by a far greater distance than a wooden bathroom door.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to say okay.”

His voice hardened a bit. “I won’t say it’s okay, because it’s not. If you want to break up with me, Elle, then do it. But I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

“I’m not asking you to make it easy for me!” I bit out the words, pacing as I talked.

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“So then do it!” I cried.

“No,” he said after what seemed like forever. “I can’t, Elle. I wish I could. But I can’t.”

I sat down on the floor because the chair was too far to walk. “I’m sorry, Dan.”

“Yeah,” he said, like he didn’t believe me. “Me, too.”

I wanted to hang up, but couldn’t make myself do it. “Goodbye, Dan.”

“You don’t have to be alone” was his answer. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. When you change your mind, call me.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“You want to change your mind, Elle,” Dan said.

I couldn’t deny the truth of it, so I hung up instead. I let him go. I let him slide away. I convinced myself it was better that way…to say goodbye to something before it had a chance to start. I didn’t have time, in my grief, for more.

The days passed, as they do. I went back to work, because I could and because it helped me not to think so much about my father, Dan, my mother, my brothers, both of them. One dead and one so far away. I still hadn’t heard from Chad, and I stopped calling.

It didn’t seem as if it ought to have been a good time in my life, but the introspection and time alone, undistracted, proved to be the best thing I could have done. I stopped trying to forget what had happened in our house, and instead started trying to let it go. I wasn’t very good at it. I’d cloaked myself in my secrets for a long time. They’d become habit, too, one I was at last ready to shed.

Summer ended and fall began. Apples came into season, and I went to hunt some at the Broad Street Market. As I bent over a display of local-grown fruit, a voice once familiar made me turn.

“Elle?”

My smile tried to fade, but I forced it to remain in place. “Matthew.”

He was still tall. Still handsome. Gray streaked his hair at the temples now, and when he smiled I clearly saw lines around his eyes and on his forehead.

“Hi,” he said, like we’d seen each other only yesterday. Incredibly, he moved forward, like he meant to…what? Hug me?

I drew away. His eyes flashed; his ready smile grew a bit strained. He put his hands in his pockets.

“Hello,” I said carefully.

“Elle,” he sighed. “It’s good to see you.”

I lifted my chin a bit. “Thanks.”

“You look…fantastic.”

I hadn’t seen him in more than eight years. “You know what they say. Best revenge is looking good, right?”

He frowned. He’d never really understood my sense of humor. I’d forgotten how he pouted. “Elle.”

I shook my head and put the apples back on the stand. I had no appetite for them now. “I’m sorry, Matthew. It’s been a long time. You look good yourself.”

We stared at each other for a long time while the tide of patrons surged and ebbed around us.

“Have coffee with me,” he suggested, and how could I really say no?

So I let him buy me coffee, which warmed my fingers, and I sat across from him at one of the tiny tables at the Green Bean, a small coffee shop just down the street. We chatted about work and mutual friends, all of whom he still saw and none of whom I did. He told me about his wife, their kids, his job, his life, which I couldn’t help envying, even if the car-pool and soccer-mom lifestyle seemed more than a bit stifling.

“And you? How are you?” He reached for my hand. I turned it so I could hold his, and I looked into the eyes I’d once loved so much I thought I’d die if they didn’t look at me every day. “Are you happy?”

“Are you asking because it will make you feel better to know I am?”

“Yes. But also because I’d like to know you are.”

I smiled. He stared. I shrugged, a little.

“You won’t even tell me you’re happy,” he said, resigned, and pulled his hand away. “Listen, I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry for the things I said and did. I was young. Anyone would have done the same thing. You lied. You weren’t honest with me. What was I supposed to think?”

I smiled again.

“Elle, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“You don’t have to be,” I replied. “It was a long time ago, and hardly matters now.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he said in a low voice. “I wish—”

“You wish what?” The words came out harsh, not curious.

“Do you want to go somewhere?”

I gaped but couldn’t find the words at first. “Like a motel, somewhere?”

He looked miserable, guilty, but also flushed with the excitement I recognized from old. The thumb of his left hand turned his wedding band at its place on his finger. “Yes.”

Not so many months ago, I might have said yes, but now I stood. “No.”

He stood, too. “Sorry.”

I clenched my fists. “You accused me of cheating on you. You said being unfaithful was the worst—an unfaithful person was worse than anything. What would you tell your wife about this?”

He looked uncomfortable, and I understood it hadn’t only been the letters he’d found, but the knowledge of who’d sent them that had made their end. Furious, I left. On the street he caught me by the elbow, turned me, left a mark that would likely bruise.

“I’m trying to tell you I was wrong!”

“You said you loved me, but guess what, Matthew, I’ve heard better lines from worse men, and if you had loved me you wouldn’t have left me like you did.”

A grimace twisted the mouth that had once kissed me all over. “You should have told me the truth.”

I laughed, low and full of bitterness. “I did tell you the truth, and you turned me away.”

I could still recall the look on his face. Disgust. The way he’d backed off, the way he’d never kissed me again.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “I didn’t make it happen. I didn’t let him do those things, Matthew, he just did them. I didn’t ask him to write those letters to me. He just did.”

He said nothing.

I yanked my arm from his grip. “I did not let my brother do what he did,” I said, glad to see him wince. “He just did it. And I counted on you to love me anyway. And you didn’t. So tell me something, Matthew, who really fucked me, in the end?”

Then I turned and walked away, sick to my stomach, and when he called after me, I didn’t turn.

“Great job on the location, Bob.” I looked around the mall courtyard, which teemed with families attending the festival.

Bob smiled at me. “Yeah. We’ll get a lot of traffic here.”

Triple Smith and Brown didn’t need to do something like this. The company had enough business without having to actively solicit it. I liked that the senior Smiths allowed us to take part, though. It was good to be part of a company that didn’t only care about its employees, but also the community in which we lived and worked.