The Hazards of Good Breeding (6 page)

The stitch in Caroline's side has blossomed into a full-fledged cramp and her lungs hurt now, too.
Keep running or you will die
, she tells herself.
Keep running or you will be stuck here forever
. The threats are effective. She is a superstitious person. There is a pain in her chest that might be her heart, although, of course, statistically it probably isn't. She is unlikely to drop dead of a heart attack or heat exhaustion. But there are always those freakish cases: the long-distance runner who jogs every day and then, rounding his favorite corner one bright, beautiful morning, collapses—dead; the woman who walks out of her split-level ranch house in the safest town in Iowa, into the arms of a gun-toting madman and off all the charts of sociological probability. Caroline is at the top of the pyramid of data on heart disease and life span, rare viruses and violent deaths; she lives in that slim, coveted triangle of money and health and education where the odds are always in your favor. She is young and white and female. She uses birth control and takes vitamins and has health insurance. She eats vegetables and wears sunscreen and does not work with heavy objects or chemical products. She lives in a Western country with calcium in the orange juice and fluoride in the water. And even so, she feels unsafe! What if she were at the long, squat bottom of this same pyramid? What if she woke up every morning knowing she was twice as likely to have a heart attack or get AIDS or die in her sleep or be the victim of a violent crime? She would probably be bedridden by the sheer horror of anticipation. But then, if she
was
on the bottom, would she even know the pyramid existed? Isn't it the people on top who are aware of statistical probabilities and sociological predictions? The thought is absurd though—if she were on the bottom, surely she wouldn't need a pyramid to tell her so. The whole train of thought actually succeeds in making her feel three times as certain she is having a heat stroke.

“Hey,” comes a voice from behind her, startling enough to make her leap off the pavement. She hasn't even heard the battered blue Buick Skylark approach.

She sees first the long black hair, and then the man leaning across the seat to the passenger side. Stephan—the moviemaker she talked to at the play yesterday. “Oh,” she says, from the ditch she has skipped off the road into. “You gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry. I thought you heard me behind you.” He extends his hand through the open window.

Caroline has to scrabble up out of the ditch to accept it. Her own hand looks sweaty and bloated from running. “Hi,” she says stupidly. He is wearing a snug light gray T-shirt—she can see the long wiry muscles in his upper arms extend and retract as he pulls his hand away. Something about this makes her think of beef jerky. Makes her think of sex, actually. According to Rock, the guy is screwing Denise. Caroline can feel her face getting hotter, standing there, mud soaking through one sneaker. The fact that she has determined the nature of his familiarity does not add to her composure; he was the filmmaker she and her best friend Abby referred to as “Roman Pol-cute-ski” after seeing his movie in their senior film class.

“I don't want to interrupt your run. I gave your wallet to your little brother—you left it on the bench where we were talking yesterday.”

“I did? I didn't even notice—that's so nice of you to have brought it out here.”

“No problem. I had to come out here anyway.” He has a very intense gaze and almost yellowy green eyes.

“Oh, for your—for the movie?”

“Yeah. . . .” He sighs and shifts his weight against the flesh-colored vinyl car seat, which makes a wheezing, crackling sound. “Trying to rustle up some interviews. You know Mamie Starks?”

“She—yeah—she was a friend of my mother's.” Caroline regrets this as soon as it is out of her mouth. She does not want to have to try to explain the
was
, and more importantly she doesn't want to be implicated by her acquaintance with Mamie Starks, a woman whose burning ambition is to make sure the Boston Cotillion stops its slippery slide toward becoming
open to just anyone
.

“Oh, yeah?” he nods his head in a thoughtful way—but as if he is thinking about something else, actually.

“Not really good friends,” Caroline adds.

Stephan stops nodding and looks right at her. “So now that you've graduated, you have something lined up for the summer?”

“Something? No. I mean, I did—I was going to move to San Francisco, but I didn't.”

“And you like film—that class you were telling me about yesterday, you learned something about production and all that?”

“Some.” Caroline feels herself blushing again.

“Well, how about working for me in sort of a production assistant/liaison position? I mean, you know this place, you like film, I need a little help with the material. I can't pay you, but it would be good experience and I know some people in the field I could connect you with.”

“Oh,” Caroline has finally stopped feeling her heart beating in her face. “That's nice of you. . . .”

“Think about it,” Stephan says, giving the car door his arm has been resting on a final-sounding pat. “We'll talk later—you'll be there tomorrow, right? At this wedding?”

“What wed— Skip Krasdale's?”

Stephan pulls a scrap of paper from his back pocket. “Is that the same as Matthew Krasdale's?” he says.

Caroline nods, although Skip has certainly never been called Matthew in his life.

“That's the one, then.”

“How do you know him? Or is this also for your movie?”

“You got it.” Stephan grins. It is a slightly practiced-looking, sheepish grin, but handsome anyway. “My camera makes friends.”

“Oh,” Caroline says. “Well, Skip is definitely a character.”

Stephan's eyes stay on her expectantly. “Is that a yes, you'll be there?”

“Ye-es,” Caroline says, despite the fact that she is certainly not expected—that in fact she turned down the invitation ages ago, kept her ex-boyfriend Dan up laughing the night she got it with imitations of Skip's stilted speaking manner. “I'll be there,” she adds, as if sounding authoritative will somehow change this.

“All right, then. I'll find you.”

As the car pulls away, Caroline catches sight of her reflection in the rear window. Her head looks about five times too large for her body. She didn't even put on deodorant this morning. And how is she supposed to just show up at Skip's wedding? She no longer feels like running.

It is a thought, certainly, to have a role helping this guy with his movie. How often has she told people that what she wants to do when she graduates is go into documentary film? Of course, it would mean she would have to stay in Concord for a while, which was not what she had in mind. But then, it's not like she has any offers anywhere else. And with this on her résumé and some money saved up—she could waitress somewhere maybe, since her father surely won't lend her a penny—she could go somewhere really great, Italy or Australia or Costa Rica or something, and work on some
National Geographic
documentary. The idea sends a dart of excitement through her for what feels like the first time in weeks. Plus, of course, she would be spending an awful lot of time with a handsome young documentary filmmaker. And what would Dan think about that?

Caroline walks over to the roadside and stretches her stiff legs against the split-rail fence that runs along it. A faint breeze lifts her hair and cools the sweat on her scalp. In front of her, there is the fluorescent green of the Ponkatawset Golf Course—the carefully manicured rise and fall of hills and dells and neat white sand pits, a pond covered with blossoming Chinese lily pads.

As she looks out at this, a pair of early morning riders appear at the crest of the hill, their helmeted heads round and hard as insects'. They are staring at her, she thinks for a moment, and lifts a hand uncertainly to wave. But then, they are looking the other way, she realizes, down at the flag on the ninth hole below them. Slowly—imperiously even—one of them nods his head and together they move in on it like explorers at the cusp of a new, and still colonizable, world.

O
NCE, WHEN
E
LIOT WAS SIX,
he planted a tulip garden with his mother. Three rows of yellow, two of white, one red, then yellow again. He remembers the order still, and the feel of the soil, cool and soft, with white crystalline fertilizer stones that seemed somehow good enough to eat—crisp, nourishing cereal for the plants.
All right, good night, little guy
, his mother had said, pushing earth back over a naked bulb he had placed in one of the holes
. He needs his beauty sleep—in the spring he'll pop his head back out and we'll watch him grow
.

But in the spring his mother was “sick” and had forgotten all about the tulips. They pushed out sturdy and strong as she had predicted, but then froze in an unexpected May snowstorm, became brittle and weak before they blossomed. This is a memory Eliot cannot quite find a place for—the assured singsong of his mother's prediction, and the feel of her hands, cool and capable, guiding his clumsy fingers through the dirt. It seems to feature a different person than the woman sitting across the table at lunch yesterday, whose hands fidget like a liar's, whose eyes are paler and more nervous, the opposite of reassuring.

What made her sick?
Eliot asked his father once, knowing that the word did not really accurately speak to her condition but having no other at his disposal.
Too many questions
, his father answered. Eliot has never understood whether these were questions that she asked, or that were asked of her. But it was enough to make him stop questioning.

There is the sound of the screen door slamming downstairs and Eliot freezes where he is kneeling, clutching the photo of Roberto he was about to replace in his desk drawer when he was struck by the thought of his mother and the flowers, and now he is stuck with it in plain sight in the middle of his room. The footsteps have reached the stairs now: Caroline's—he recognizes the groan and squeak of floorboards under her feet. He glances at his watch—there are ten minutes before he is supposed to meet Forester outside to make arrangements. Caroline is in the hall now and here he is, still holding the picture. In a moment of inspiration, Eliot slips the photo under the wooden baseboard of the papier-mâché replica of Concord he is building just in time for her footsteps to reach his door.

But to Eliot's surprise she passes his room and continues, at a rapid pace, down the hall. This is almost unheard of. He is expecting her to come in, plomp herself down on the bed, and ask him whether he has had breakfast yet, whether he slept all right, what he is thinking about. To fall back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, sit up suddenly, and look at him with those concerned, searching eyes as if he is a leak she is trying to patch.

Instead of relief, Eliot feels an unexpected pang of disappointment. It isn't that he needs Caroline the way she thinks he does. He can cook eggs and toast and cream of wheat, and microwave the dinners his father buys in bulk at Costco. He does his homework. He keeps his room neat. He never sits for hours in front of the TV. But still. There is something he likes about having Caroline back at home. She is too anxious to make him feel taken care of, but there is some kinship in her presence, some comfort in the fact of another person in the house now that Rosita is gone.

He looks at his watch again—he has to be outside to meet Forester in seven minutes now anyway. It is for the best that Caroline didn't come in and settle down. He will attach the little replica of Old North Bridge he has created—it is a little out of proportion with the rest of the landscape, but Eliot doesn't mind so much; this way it will not be overlooked, which seems important to him. He places it carefully over the curve in the Concord River, which he has painted a shiny navy blue, and then secures it with two dollops of rubber cement.

“Hello?”

Eliot has not heard the screen door bang shut this time. “Hello?” the voice comes again, starting up the stairs. It is familiar, but not yet distinct. Eliot remains planted on his knees beside his papier-mâché sculpture, eyes fixed on the doorway as the footsteps approach. Suddenly Rock Coughlin appears in it.

“Hey!” he says. “What are you kneeling like that for? You scared me.”

Eliot stares at him.

“Your sister around?”

“I don't know,” Eliot lies, getting to his feet, but Rock is already out of sight—down the hall to Caroline's room. Eliot hears him knock on the door, turn the knob, open it. The shower is not running and he has not heard Caroline go back downstairs. But there is no sound from her. Rock's footsteps return.

“Know where she is?” Rock asks.

Eliot shakes his head. He is about to insist that she must be here, he has just heard her come in, but something stops him. He is not sure what to make of Rock Coughlin. He is his brothers' age, but is not as big and loud and altogether incomprehensible to him as they are. Around them, Eliot feels like another species; around Rock, he feels merely different.

To his dismay, Rock takes a few steps into the room, begins looking around with interest. It is only at this renewed threat to his privacy that Eliot spies the corner of Roberto's photograph sticking out from under the corner of the papier-mâché project.

“What's this?” Rock asks, making Eliot jump. But he is not pointing at the picture, just at the bridge Eliot has secured, which does, he realizes,
really
look out of proportion.

“A project.”

“But what
is
it?”

“Boston. That”—Eliot gestures at the offending addition—“is Old North Bridge.”

“Oh-ho,” Rock says, as if he understands something more complicated and profound than the identity of what he is looking at. “You like it down there?”