The False Friend (20 page)

“Oh Celie.” The pity in Josie’s voice stopped Celia mid-stride. “It just isn’t true. I mean, I used to think that if only I had said something, maybe I could have saved her, that if only I had tried a little harder, she wouldn’t have gone, but that’s … that’s magical thinking.”

Celia returned to the bed.

“I can understand how you feel,” Josie continued. “But the truth is that Djuna was as good as gone the second that car pulled over. Nothing we could have said or done would have stopped her.”

“But there was no car,” Celia said. “You know that … you saw for yourself, in the woods. You saw her fall, and you chose to walk away.”

“In the woods?” Josie made a sound that was not quite a laugh. “I’m sorry, Celie, but I was scared just being
next
to those woods. If you went in, then you were out by the time I came around the curve. I told Becky to stay with Leanne so I could check to see what you guys had decided to do … Do you know that at that point, I think Leanne was actually holding her own hands together and telling Becky how to retie the knots because the ones that Djuna tied had come undone?” Josie sighed. “I could never figure Leanne out. She was always so … willing. No matter what grade you and Djuna gave her, she always accepted it. I remember this one day: she showed
up with French braids and a shirt that had puffy sleeves. And, sure, it looked a little weird on her but she had really tried, you know? I remember thinking she deserved at least a B-plus, maybe even an A-minus, but you guys gave her the same grades you always did and she just took it, the same as she took everything else. Like wearing that sign, or when you made her sit on the floor. Even that last day—with her hair, and then walking down the road—she barely tried to stop you. I think if it had been me I would have put up at least some kind of a fight.”

When Josie stopped to take a breath, Celia remained perfectly still.

“Anyway, by the time I came around the curve, the car was already there. For a while I used to think that if I’d started running or if I’d yelled, things would have turned out different. It bothered me for a long time. But then I decided that I had to stop blaming myself, to stop blaming Djuna, to stop blaming my parents—and just try to accept what happened.”

Perhaps if Celia made no sound, the silence would return them to where she thought they had been.

“Celie?” Josie asked. “You still there?”

“The piece I saw,” Celia said. “At that Web site. Djuna had fallen and I was looking back at her as I ran away.”

She closed her eyes, the way one does when making a wish.

“Well, that wasn’t what I had in mind,” Josie said, “but you’re welcome to look at it that way if you want.”

Celia lay down.

“The whole reason I make things with blank spaces,” Josie continued, “is so that others can fill them in.”

The absence of a car had allowed Celia to picture a forest. In a space empty save for three small figures, she had planted trees.

“Do you know that for a long time I was actually jealous?” Josie’s voice was unceasing. “I mean, just because Becky and Leanne were farther down the road, they got to keep their lives. Their parents didn’t send them to boarding school. For years afterward they didn’t have nightmares. But I’ve accepted who it made me become. And to think that you’re okay with what I’ve done …”

Celia got up from the bed and pressed her forehead to the window.

“Celie,” Josie asked, “are you all right?”

Celia considered the question.

“No,” she said. “I thought—”

She stopped. What she thought would make no difference.

W
hen he reached the car, Huck reflexively went for the right rear door. The front passenger seat had always belonged to Noreen. This disregard for the best use of leg room had pricked Huck’s egalitarian sensibilities before he came to accept that until he and Celia exchanged formal vows, they would be relegated to the back like children in need of chaperones. Sliding into the front, Huck felt as if he had been promoted.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Warren said. “There’s a switch on the right-hand side that you can use to slide everything around. It’s all electric, complete with heated seats. Sometimes, when I open everything up to let the breeze in, I turn
mine on. Go ahead and try it. It’s like being in a fancy hotel and wrapping yourself in a prewarmed towel.”

Huck pressed the switch. In minutes, the seat reached a temperature that reminded him of sitting in his own pee.

Before doing anything else, Warren reached for his driving gloves, which hung from the rearview mirror when not in use, dangling like a pair of sleeping bats. Donning them, Warren reminded Huck of a surgeon entering the operating theater: a man about to undertake a great responsibility; a man in love with his hands. With professional pride, he slid open the sunshade.

“I always wanted a convertible,” Warren said. “But I never lived where it would be any kind of practical. When it’s nice out, I’ll slide open the moonroof and roll down all the windows, but only if I’m alone. Nor’s kind of sensitive these days about her hair.” When he pressed a switch, the moonroof raised itself at one end, half a drawbridge rising. Warren turned toward Huck, his eyebrows arched at a comparable angle.

“Cool,” Huck said and Warren grinned, a boy with a Matchbox car.

“Now listen to this!” he said. Jazz ripped through the front seat. “Whoops!” he apologized, and readjusted the dial. “That’s my solo driving volume. I’m actually happy when I hit a little traffic on my way to work. There are speakers in six different places!” As he pointed out each speaker’s location, Huck realized they had never been without Celia’s company. Warren released the parking brake, then paused and looked toward the house as if he had left something behind.

In the day’s fading light, they passed cars in the final throes of the homeward commute. Huck saw pedestrians walking dogs inferior—as all others were—to the two he had left in Chicago. He suddenly longed for Bella spread out beside him on the couch, Sylvie at his feet as if his shoes were in need of protection. He wondered if these passing drivers and dog walkers would mistake him and Warren for father and son. Whenever they went out as a foursome, Huck was taken for Celia’s husband. It was an assumption none of them ever corrected or used to segue into the obvious conversation, the one the four of them had never had.

Warren braked for a red light. “It’s a quiet car,” he said. “Handles well. Better than the rest of us, to tell the truth.”

It took Huck a moment to realize what Warren meant.

“There’s so little we can do for her anymore,” he continued. “It’s a funny complaint, I know. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, if you do your job right. She’s a grown woman, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes …” He shook his head. “Nor and I, we’re both glad that she has you, especially now. Listen to this. Jazz Messengers. Birdland, 1954. Listen to the way Horace Silver keeps the rhythm.”

When they reached the restaurant, Warren disappeared inside, returning minutes later with a large bag, accompanied by a young Japanese woman who smiled and nodded as he gestured emphatically in Huck’s direction. Huck smiled and nodded in return before realizing that Warren was talking about the car. A moment later, the scent of new upholstery was overpowered by the tang of miso soup.

Huck was handed a bag the approximate weight of a toy poodle. He considered the possibility that he had only been invited along to prevent spillage.

“That was one of the owner’s daughters,” Warren explained. “Whenever you eat there, you see all the children and grandchildren around, helping out or playing in a corner. A real family business. Suki said they were looking to buy a new car. You know, sometimes I think I should have been an automobile salesman.”

Huck held the bag on the floor between his feet. He talked about his classes, then fielded Warren’s historical trivia questions. Eventually, Warren would revert to jazz or cars, but Huck had made his peace with this, had come to realize that as much as Warren liked people, they made him nervous, his congeniality constructed over a deep well of shyness. Huck suspected that Celia’s preference for small-scale socializing was a more conventional strain of her father’s anxiety, that nature rather than nurture was responsible for two people at ease in the company of data. Huck had witnessed Celia with a spreadsheet. There was relaxation in her concentration. She was like a beaver intent on building a dam, all native capacities put to best use. She had looked like that when she wrote poems but Huck had only seen that once, back when they were still in school and he had been falling in love.

It hadn’t been any one thing. Love can’t be mapped so easily, but Huck would have been dishonest not to count that stolen glimpse as a key moment, Celia sitting at her desk hunched over a sheet of paper, dancing with herself. She had written metered poems, a font of sestinas and villanelles in an
age of blank verse. Then she had stopped, abandoning her poetry at graduation the way others renounced green hair or bisexuality. It had taken a while for Huck to decide that she had stopped completely, that she wasn’t simply writing when alone. Even longer in coming had been the admission that there was nothing arty or visibly unusual about Celia, who wore business coordinates to work and flossed every night, even when that meant abandoning the narcotic afterglow of a good fuck. Huck wondered, if they were to meet now—but he wasn’t sure how that would happen. His friends were teachers and musicians, hers were economists, social workers, and lawyers. On a Venn diagram, his circle and hers would not overlap. Were Huck today to come across Celia’s Internet profile (he was infinitely grateful his bachelorhood had predated
that
quagmire), his eyes might stop only briefly to admire her face before moving on to more obvious quarry.

They were almost at the house when Warren turned to Huck as if they’d been speaking all along. “Tell me,” he said. “She talks to you. Does she really think she did this thing?”

Huck pictured Celia in the guest bedroom watching for their return.

“She does,” he said.

Warren shook his head. “I just don’t understand it,” he said. “This idea of hers … well, it’s ridiculous. Forgive me, but there’s really no other way to put it.”

Huck could tell Warren didn’t want to be looked at, but it was hard to keep facing front. Huck wondered if the confessional had bred in Warren a taste for sidelong confidence. When they reencountered a tree they had passed several minutes
before, he realized that Warren had been circling the same few blocks, drumming his fingers on the wheel while working up the courage to begin.

“Cee Cee’s a good person,” Warren said. “She’s sensitive, she’s kind … practically all her life she’s tried to help other people. I mean, sure, she can be stubborn sometimes, especially when she gets a certain idea in her head. But I hope that all this new business hasn’t … that she hasn’t … that you—”

“Warren, I’m in love with your daughter.”

Warren let out a slow breath. “I suppose I already knew that. We love her too, of course. Which is why we were hoping you could help us to talk some sense into her. Encourage her to see reason. We can understand she might have a hard time taking it from us, but if it came from you …”

It was so unlike Warren to ask for anything that Huck didn’t recognize at first that an appeal had been made. It
was
a quiet car. The rush of air into and over the narrow breach made by the moonroof was louder than the engine. He turned toward Warren, whose eyes darted away from the road just long enough for Huck to see the fear there.

“I’m not really comfortable with the idea of choosing sides,” Huck said as mildly as he could. “I worry about saying something I’d regret later on.”

Both Celia and her father draped their hands over the steering wheel at ten and two, as if resting them there rather than preventing a moving vehicle from crashing and bursting into flames.

“Did Cee Cee tell you that she talked to her mother?”

Huck nodded. “I remember her telling me that Noreen recalled things differently.”

“Not differently,” Warren amended. “Accurately. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that things happened the way Cee Cee says they did. Nor and I weren’t with her at the time. A band of wild hyenas could have carried Djuna off. But Nor and I
were
around later, and I’m telling you that none of what happened afterward jibes with Cee Cee’s version.”

They stopped for a red light at an empty intersection.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Huck said, no longer certain he wanted Warren to be talking at all.

“Didn’t she tell you?” Warren asked.

The light turned green. Warren drove around a squirrel. Huck couldn’t tell if it was terrified or bored.

“Celia doesn’t remember what happened afterward,” he said. “She’s tried, but she can’t.”

“Exactly,” Warren confirmed. “If she did, she would have to see the illogic. Let’s look at it from the beginning: Cee Cee says that she and Djuna were in the woods, that Djuna fell … into a hole or something, and that Cee Cee left her there. She was mad at Djuna; she made up the story about the car to get even, and once she realized what she had done, it felt too big to take back. Now, children sometimes do terrible things. I won’t deny that, and I won’t try to say that Cee Cee was an exception. But when children misbehave, especially when they misbehave as badly as Cee Cee is saying, what do they do after? They hide, that’s what. If Cee Cee had done what she says she did, she would have never gone to Djuna’s to tell Grace what
had happened. I mean, it’s one child in a million who might have the … I don’t even know what you’d call it … the
gumption
to pull off a stunt like that. To lie like that, believably … and to Grace Pearson’s face, no less. Not to mention to the police and to Nor and myself. That sort of thing takes practice. And Cee Cee was an honest kid. For crying out loud, look at her now! How much more straight an arrow can you get?”

Huck had discovered early in life that he was a good liar. True, it had started small, but he hadn’t needed to practice. He had left his new jacket at the playground. When his mother asked where it was, he told her it had been taken from the class coat closet. Maybe he had an honest face, or maybe it was because he didn’t look away, but his lies were never questioned. He had kept at it—his lies growing in scale, ambition, and frequency until he wasn’t always sure what would happen when he opened his mouth—until he got so disgusted with himself that he gave it up cold turkey. It did not seem incredible to Huck that a person could succeed on a spectacularly grand scale her first time out, or that the experience might come to make honesty all the more appealing.