Everything We Ever Wanted (6 page)

She turned away from the box toward the kitchen, focusing her gaze on a Crate & Barrel box by the fridge. Inside was the Cuisinart mixer she and Charles had been given as a wedding gift. She lifted it out of the Styrofoam packing material and put it on the counter. Maybe she’d make cookies to lighten her mood.
A sound in the backyard made her turn. The women from the neighboring houses were standing outside in their yards. Two little kids sat in an enormous sandbox that straddled the neighboring lawns, feeding sand into a wheeled and levered contraption and sifting it out in a neat, pyramid-shaped pile.
Joanna sprang into action, running her hands through her hair and racing upstairs to put on a bra, a clean T-shirt, and a pair of jeans. She walked down the stairs, turned right instead of left for the kitchen, stopped, reversed directions, and padded around the island and the table and the pile of broken-down boxes near the laundry room. Sun dappled across the back deck, and the one birdhouse they’d installed twisted on its chain. When the women heard Joanna’s sliding glass door open, they turned their heads for just a moment and gazed at her disinterestedly, as though she was just another Canada goose slowly meandering across their lawn. Undeterred, Joanna walked over.
“Hi,” she said. Her heart beat quickly, although she wasn’t quite sure why. She was usually good at making plenty of new friends. “I’m Joanna Bates-McAllister. My husband and I just moved in. I’ve been meaning to say hello for a few days, but I’ve been so busy.”
The brunette woman nodded. “I thought I saw a van.” She was the type of woman who wore matching velour sweat suits and shimmering athletic sneakers, ready to exercise at a moment’s notice. She lived on the left side of Joanna, and Joanna had watched yesterday as she’d hung a silk flag decorated with an Easter basket outside her front door in honor of the upcoming holiday.
“I’m Teresa Cox,” the woman added as an afterthought. “And this is Mariel Batten.”
Joanna turned to Mariel, who had blunt-cut blonde hair, a slender, down-sloped nose, and very white teeth. There was a lipstick imprint on her white coffee cup. She appraised Joanna without much enthusiasm. “Is your husband related to Timothy McAllister?” she asked blandly. “From Chadds Ford?”
“Oh.” Joanna tugged self-consciously on her earlobe. “No, my husband’s last name is Bates-McAllister. His father was from Boston. He didn’t have family from around here. His mother did, though. Sylvie Bates?”
Mariel shrugged noncommittally. There was no recognition of Sylvie’s name. No swift change of expression, no grabbing Joanna’s arms and saying it was so nice to meet her. No begging that she and her husband had to come over for dinner some time. No huge grin and confession that when they’d heard Joanna and Charles were coming to this neighborhood they’d gotten so excited, for it’s truly an honor to have them.
Joanna rubbed her hands up her bare arms, struck dumb. “Anyway,” she fumbled. “Cute kids.”
Teresa Cox smiled. “The girl is Forrest. She’s mine. Hollis is Mariel’s. Do you have any children?”
Joanna shook her head. And then there was that dead air again. But my mother-in-law is on the board of directors at the Swithin School, Joanna wanted to say. The best school in the county. Didn’t that matter?
“Anyway,” Joanna said, not able to stand the pointed, exclusionary silence any longer. “It was nice to meet both of you. I have things to do inside. So …”
“Nice to meet you, too,” the women said in unison, as they tilted their bodies away. Joanna took faster steps than normal back to her house, suddenly painfully aware of how cold it was outside. Goose bumps rose on her arms and her whole body shook with shivers. There was a peal of laughter behind her, followed by a gasp. She whipped around to see one of the children turning a crank of a sandbox toy.
She shut the screen door quietly and placed her palms flat on the cluttered kitchen table. The house was judgmentally quiet. She longed for the noise of the city—traffic screeches and subway rumblings and buzzing chaos to drown out what had just happened. She snatched her cell phone from the island and pressed the speed dial for Charles’s office. When he answered, she let out a whimper.
“What is it?” he gasped.
“I just tried to meet the neighbors,” she blurted out in a scratchy whisper. “The ones I told you about? With the shared sandbox? The ones that just stand there and talk all day?”
There was a three or four second pause. “Okay …”
“They were so … cold. I felt like I was the new girl at school not wearing the right clothes.”
There were voices in the background, someone else’s phone extension ringing. “I’m sure they’re very nice, Joanna.”
“Oh.” She sat down on the couch, not anticipating this answer.
“I don’t remember you being this way about people in the city.”
“I wasn’t. It didn’t matter.”
“Why does it matter now?”
She stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she whispered. There was something about these people peering out from their identical houses that made her want to conform and belong. Sadly, it reminded her of her mother sitting on that Adirondack chair at the country club, in the right place but so, so wrong. Joanna had always assumed it would be so much easier for her.
“Is that all?” Charles asked.
She swallowed, now almost in tears. “Are you okay?” she blurted out.
“Me? Yeah. Why?”
“You’ve been … quiet.”
“No I haven’t.”
She squeezed the red throw pillow on the couch. Give me something, she thought. Anything. “Are you and your mother worried about Scott? Is there anything I can do?”
He paused for a long time. Let me in, she willed, staring at her reflection in the blank television screen. You have to know I heard you two talking.
Charles sighed. “Joanna, I’m actually in the middle of something. Can I call you later?”
The receiver was limp in her hands. She tugged on her sweater sleeve so suddenly and with such force that she heard a seam rip. “Don’t bother,” she snapped.
And then he hung up. Joanna sat upright on the couch, her back pressed into the cushions, her calves at right angles to her thighs, waiting for him to call back, but he didn’t. She felt silly for wasting his time. To Charles, she was the one at fault, she was the one who’d broken some kind of social contract and was now being whiny and impatient. Where was the sympathy for her? Again she thought of Bronwyn and tried to imagine what Charles was referring to two nights ago, but it was like trying to bake a cake without any of the ingredients.
She stared blankly at the mantel across the room. The only thing they’d put up there so far was a framed photo from their wedding, Joanna in her long and simple strapless gown and Charles holding her waist just as the photographer ordered. They stood in Roderick’s garden, where the wedding had taken place, grinning at one another. Joanna squinted at the photo until their faces blurred.
On the day of their wedding, Catherine had arrived at Roderick in a long red dress that dragged on the floor, almost like a wedding train. Her posture was very poised and upright, Joanna could tell she was trying very, very hard to act as though she’d visited Roderick many times, but whenever Catherine thought no one was looking, she stole long glances at the stained glass on the second floor, or at the labyrinth and wading fountain over at the other side of the grounds, or at the opulent yellow diamond Sylvie had recently begun wearing. It was early fall, the air growing crisp, and some of the guests wore furs. Catherine gaped at those, too.
“A garden wedding,” Catherine had sighed romantically. She spied a man with a camera over her shoulder and gripped Joanna’s arm. “Who do you think he is?” she whispered. Her breath already smelled like gin; she’d been making good use of the open bar, probably due to nerves. “Maybe from the Inquirer? Or the Main Line Times? This is just the kind of thing that would make it into that.”
“He’s just the wedding photographer,” Joanna said, shrugging.
“Nonsense,” Catherine said, craning her neck at other guests. “I’m sure he’s from the Main Line Times. I think I recognize him. And oh! I just met Charles’s brother, Scott. So unusually handsome. And such a flirt!”
Joanna craned her neck to see where Scott was. Charles had chosen not to include him in his small wedding party—”It’s not like he’d do it, anyway,” he’d said defensively—and so Scott had been a ghost at the ceremony. Joanna had definitely taken notice of the thin, beautiful, dark-skinned girl he’d brought as his date—Queenie, or Quincy, something with a Q. As she walked through the crowd earlier, taking a look at the cocktail hour appetizers, everyone quickly parted. It was as if the other guests were slightly afraid of her.
Catherine inspected Joanna carefully. She reached out and brushed a few strands of hair from Joanna’s eyes. “Why do you look so pissed off? You should see yourself. It’s like you’ve swallowed a wasp. Your pictures in the Main Line Times are going to be terrible.”
“Mom, the Main Line Times isn’t here, okay?” Joanna snapped. And then her mother’s face fell, and Joanna clenched inside. Okay, so she was pissed off. A sour, irksome feeling had infected her in the last hour, crawling under her skin, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on the cause. Catherine, most definitely, was a contributing factor, but that wasn’t all of it. Was she irritated about the band not showing up on time? Was it because the bustier beneath her dress was digging into her ribs? Certainly, but she was also just the tiniest bit rueful about a particular entry in an old journal she’d kept when living alone in Philly, which she’d come upon a few days before while cleaning out her things. The entry described Joanna’s ideal wedding—barefoot on a beach on a midsummer night with only a handful of guests, culminating in a clambake on a patio and a lot of dance songs like “Come On, Eileen.” It was a silly idea, one she never would’ve shared with Charles, but that was the thing, she was never able to share any ideas with Charles. The details for the wedding at Roderick had more than likely been in place before they’d gotten engaged, probably before Charles was even born.
“You’d better start smiling,” Catherine whispered through clenched teeth, nudging Joanna’s elbow. “Don’t screw this up. You probably don’t even realize what you have here.”
Joanna took stock of Catherine’s words and finally understood. Her mother’s reservations weren’t about Joanna not knowing how to hang pants on a hanger, or how to properly set a table, Catherine thought Joanna didn’t deserve this marriage—Catherine did. She was the one who had wanted, who had worked, but Joanna had swooped in and taken.
Joanna walked away from her mother, not dignifying her with a response. As she headed back toward Charles, who was sitting with his groomsman, having danced his one and only dance of the wedding and therefore fulfilled his duties, a sharp pain pierced her side. She suddenly felt dizzy and thirsty and on display. When the photographer grinned at her from behind his camera, she was afraid he was secretly laughing. What if Catherine was right? What if she didn’t deserve Charles? Was that what was eating away at her?
It wasn’t possible. She was just feeling wedding jitters, and underneath that, a fizz of excitement. Excitement that her life was about to change into all she’d anticipated it would be. In fact, no, more than that, excitement that it was going to be better than she’d ever imagined.

horrible idea had begun to form in Sylvie’s mind. It was a torturous idea, an enticing idea. Yesterday her fellow board members had mentioned where the boy had lived. They’d dangled it out there, a worm on a fishing line. She knew where that apartment complex was—everyone knew where it was, even though they pretended places like that didn’t exist. She could remain anonymous and just go and see.
No, she told herself, as though she was a bad dog. No. She tried to

garden, to do a crossword puzzle. She read the first few pages of her grandfather’s copy of The House of Mirth, one of his favorite guiltypleasure books. He wrote notes in the margins, chicken-scratched nonsense she could barely decipher. She went into James’s office and stared at the filing cabinet. It was so infuriatingly unchanged. She looked again at the blank spot on the bookcase where the jewelry box had been. She turned her diamond ring around and around her finger.

To stave off the idea, she called Hector, the lawyer who had handled James’s will. She described the situation at the school to him in dainty, unworried tones. Just if you have a couple minutes to chat. In case you have an opinion. Hector passed her to another lawyer, one who “handled cases like this.” Sylvie wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he quickly added, “I just handle tax law and estate planning, Mrs. Bates-McAllister.”

The second lawyer’s name was Ace. He sounded about nineteen years old. Uncomfortably, Sylvie explained what she knew all over again—that Scott had coached this boy, that there was a rumor floating around that the coaches might’ve been negligent or even encouraged the hazing. “Though I can’t imagine how,” she added. “Certainly the coaches wouldn’t be stupid enough to whisper terrible things into boys’ ears just to see if they’d do them. Boys look up to their coaches, sometimes even more than their parents.”

But then she looked down at her hands. She’d picked the skin on the side of her thumb clean off. Scott hadn’t used his power as a coach to turn these boys into monsters. Scott hadn’t put the hazing ideas into their malleable heads. She refused to believe it.

Ace the lawyer let out a long sigh and waited almost ten whole seconds before speaking again. “Well, if his parents choose to fault the school for negligence, your son might be called to answer questions since he works for the school. It seems like a hard thing to prove, unless, of course, one of the other boys confirms the rumor. If they discover evidence, they may be able to build a case against your son?that his influence led to this happening, that sort of thing.”

“There’s no evidence,” Sylvie said quickly. “Someone’s making this all up.”
Ace cleared his throat. “The boy that died … he was on scholarship, right?”
“Yes.”
“And Hector mentioned you’re the chairman of the school’s board of directors.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I’ve been on the board for years.” “And Scott still lives at home. I understand both your grandfathers left quite the estates when they died. I’m so sorry about your husband, too, by the way.”
She sniffed out a thank you. Then, “Where are you going with this?”
“Well, when some people lose a loved one, they look for someone—or something—to blame,” Ace said. “Worse than that, they lose sight of what’s important. I’ve seen it more times than I want to admit. They just see dollar signs, especially if they think you’ll do anything to preserve your reputation.”
“I’m not asking these questions out of concern for money or for my reputation,” Sylvie spat. “I’ve called you because I don’t want my son to be implicated for something he had nothing to do with.”
“Come now, Mrs. Bates-McAllister,” Ace said softly. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to protect what’s yours.”
She bristled. What could some fresh-out-of-law-school upstart know about protecting what was hers? What could he possibly understand about reputation? He certainly spoke like he was some kind of an authority, and what kind of name was Ace, anyway? It was a cruel affront that Hector had passed her to someone like this.
“Have you spoken to Scott directly about this?” Ace asked.
“No,” she said automatically.
“Maybe you should.”
Sylvie wanted to laugh. Talk to Scott? When was the last time she’d done that? She felt their relationship was cursed before they even met. Even before the paperwork was finalized for Scott’s adoption, Sylvie’s mother, Clara, had shaken her bony finger from her cancer deathbed and asked Sylvie why on earth she wanted another boy. You’ll never be a good mother to two boys, she scolded. You’re too delicate. You take everything too personally. And she’d propped herself up on the mattress and added, And he’s mixed race? She made a pinched, worried face. Are you trying to be political or something?
Politics were the furthest motivation from Sylvie’s mind when they got the news that a young mother from the Southwest who could no longer take care of an eighteen-month-old toddler had chosen Sylvie and James as new parents. Adopting an American child was far more difficult than Sylvie had imagined, and she and James had jumped through all kinds of hoops to even get this far; it seemed ungrateful to turn the child down. Still, when the adoption agency broke the news about Scott’s background, she felt a push and pull inside of her. It didn’t matter; it did matter. There would be a whole separate culture to consider, a world she knew little about. There would be talks they’d have to have, a painful explanation about the woman who’d given him up, a woman they knew nothing about. But maybe that wouldn’t matter. Couldn’t they just raise him as theirs? Couldn’t their culture be his culture?
You’re doing a wonderful thing, you know, the adoption coordinator mentioned during one of their private conversations, when James wasn’t around. Sylvie found the statement churlish and crass. Did the coordinator sense her uneasiness? Was it because she’d asked her if adoptive parents sent out some sort of I-just-brought-home-my-child announcements to friends, similar to a baby picture with weight and length and tiny footprints and handprints? Could the coordinator pinpoint the ambivalence that welled so deeply inside of her, the fear that she may never be able to bond with this child as she’d instantly bonded with her biological son?
James, of course, didn’t care one way or another. A baby is a baby, he’d said. He longed for another boy and didn’t care where he was from.
After a while, Sylvie warmed to the idea of having a second boy in the house. She imagined looking out her window and seeing her two sons hauling red sleds up the hill in the winter. It could be the image on her Christmas cards.
Sylvie meticulously planned how she would break the news to Charles, nearly four, that he was going to have a brand-new brother. It was going to involve an ice-cream cake, a trip to the zoo, and maybe a walk around the Swithin grounds. The day before the news, Charles arrived home from a play date, eager to show his parents an origami crane that his friend’s mother had taught him to make. When he proudly placed it in James’s hands, a perfect folded bird out of shiny pink paper, James frowned. “What are you, a fruit?”
Charles looked confused. “Like … a banana?”
James held the crane by its beak, scoffing at its pinkness. “This is gay, Charles.”
James had that obstinate, self-righteous look on his face again—it wasn’t an opinion, it was law. Charles’s face took on a worried, guilty, self-conscious expression that Sylvie would never get used to seeing. His gaze swiveled from James to Sylvie. “What does gay mean?” he asked worriedly, his eyes already filling with tears.
“It means happy,” Sylvie said quickly.
Charles looked relieved and James snorted. “Thank God we’re going to have another boy around here, Syl. Maybe he’ll teach this one not to act like such a pussy.”
Sylvie held her breath. Her son seemed to stop breathing. It was hard to know whether Charles understood the individual words, but he understood their thrust. He whirled around and ran out of the room.
Sylvie glared at James, who was busy pouring himself another drink. “What?” He raised his hands defensively. “What did I do?”
“I had plans for how I was going to tell him about the baby,” Sylvie said.
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Because I told you!”
She ran out of the house and found Charles in the garden, sitting on a rock, sticking a twig into the dirt. She crouched down next to him and told him his father was just teasing him. But there was a surprise—Charles really was going to have a new brother. They were adopting a new little boy for him to play with, two years younger than him. They were picking him up and bringing him home next week. Charles would get to teach this little boy everything he knew.
“Now, he may look a little different than you,” she added. But it doesn’t mean he’s different inside. He’ll be your brother. A boy just like you.”
Charles nodded, not really understanding what she meant. After fiddling with his toes for a while, he raised his head. “What does ‘adopting’ mean?” he asked.
“Well, it means he’s coming from another family. But once we adopt him, he’ll belong to our family.”
Charles wrinkled his nose, confused. “Why?”
“Why what?” Sylvie cursed James for forcing this on her a day early. She felt unprepared for questions.
“Why can’t he stay with his own family?” Charles clarified.
Sylvie sat back. “Well, sometimes mommies can’t take care of their babies in the way they should be taken care of.”
Charles’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“Well, sometimes the mommy is … sick. Or too young. Or maybe poor.”
“Or bad?” He sounded thrilled.
“Well … yes. Maybe.”
Why had she said it? She should have said No, mothers are never bad, mothers are always good! But she was still so raw from what had just happened in the house. She couldn’t bear the thought that Charles might believe what James had just implied. What James often implied. That’s not the way you throw a baseball. Do it like this. Like this. It’s not like it’s hard. What are you thinking about, just sitting there? You’re daydreaming? Men don’t daydream, Charlie. That’s girly. And, Why do you need a night-light? Being afraid of the dark is for babies. She saw Charles’s face crumble every time James corrected him. She didn’t want Charles to ever think he was inferior, that he was anything less than perfect.
A look of intrigue sparkled through Charles’s eyes, and the idea took hold. The first few times she caught Charles stating matter-offactly that Scott’s real parents were poor poop-heads who’d given him up, she tried to correct him, but Charles would always look at Sylvie quizzically, she was the one who had told him this. And then James would cluck his tongue as if he understood that she had perpetuated it. Sometimes she felt like Scott knew she’d planted the idea, too. Even as a little boy, she’d noticed how he stared at her sometimes, his dark, round little eyes derisive, his pink mouth a flat line. Judging, seething. Sylvie thought Charles would eventually forget what she’d told him and accept Scott as his brother, but as the boys grew older, their relationship deteriorated. That Christmas card of them pulling sleds up the hill never came to fruition.
Sylvie told Ace the lawyer thank you and good-bye. She couldn’t ask Scott outright, nor could she ask the lawyer if what she wanted to do—the idea that had begun to grow—was wise. She already knew his answer. But there was so much she’d lost this year, so much she’d given up. The lawyer had said it himself: When some people lose a loved one, they look for someone—or something—to blame. They lose sight of everything important. Imagining her life without the school seemed inconceivable. It was a second heart beating inside her; she wasn’t sure who she was without it.
Resigned, she opened the closet and pulled out James’s tan trench coat. The last time he’d worn it was on a trip they’d taken to France, when the boys were little. It was too big on her, the sleeves hung well past her hands, but she’d taken to wearing it often, pushing her hands into the deep—and empty, she’d checked—pockets, feeling the smooth, large buttons, knotting the belt tighter and tighter. But when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she didn’t see a glimmer of James, as she’d hoped. All she saw was a middle-aged woman in a man’s coat that didn’t remotely fit.

T he apartment complex was in one of the unimproved parts of the county. It loomed behind a shopping mall that housed a dollar store, a Salvation Army, and a facility called Payday Advance. feverview dwellings, an old tan sign said at the entrance. A faded starburst in the corner crowed rentals available! The complex consisted of a cluster of buildings joined by crumbling walkways. Some of the cars in the parking lots had the beginnings of rust and unrepaired dents. One of the apartment windows was covered with a trash bag. The strip mall’s enormous parking lights towered over the trees; it never got truly dark here at night.

As Sylvie pulled into a parking space, she looked around. A curtain fluttered behind a window. A shadow shifted behind a tree. Even though Tayson said everything would remain hushed up, this could have gotten out somehow—and maybe Sylvie wasn’t as anonymous as she thought she was. She’d watched enough news programs to know how ruthless the press could be when they got hold of a story, especially one that featured an injustice between the rich and the poor. When she walked to her car to drive here, she thought the flowerbeds in the garden looked unusually tamped-down, as if someone had been standing in them, peering through the kitchen window. And a lid to one of the garbage cans she kept outside the garage had blown off. Or maybe it had been removed. The garbage bags were still intact, though, the trash not rooted through. And when she turned off her car in the Feverview lot, she wondered if an investigative unit might be crouched in the bushes near the entrance. Maybe a reporter was rehearsing his script right now, ready to go in front of the camera and speculate why she was here and what she was doing. Paying her respects? Striking some kind of deal? Admitting that she knew something?

She cocked her head, trying to coax whispers from the silence. A young black man ambled out one of the complex doors, looking just about the furthest person from caring about Sylvie or a school scandal. The man’s pants hung nearly to his knees, and he had one hand in his pocket, the other hand sort of at his hip, clenched. He walked right past Sylvie’s car with that same kind of aggressive yet apathetic swagger that Scott had. Sylvie shrank into the seat and stared down at her lap, not wanting to make eye contact. The man walked right by.