The Moment Before (7 page)

Connor meets me at the edge of Forest Park, on a trail known for the disposal of dead prostitutes. Amid newly fronded ferns and tri-petaled, pale purple trillium, he greets me with a slouched posture, again shrouded in a hoodie, but this time without my sister’s earring dangling from his lobe. “Hey,” he says.

“So,” I say. “I heard you quit school.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m thinking of transferring to BALC, finish up there.”

Beaverton Alternative Learning Center or
balk
, as it’s sometimes called, is the school where the druggies go before flunking out completely. I must be wincing because Connor follows it up with, “No, seriously, they have a great wrestling team.”

“You’re going to go back to wrestling, then?”

Connor slouches further into himself and says, “I think my cheer career is like, you know, over.”

My fingers are playing with the phones in my pocket. I want to get on with it. I’ll barely get home by 7:00 as it is. “So, thanks for, uh, meeting me. You think you can help?”

“Jailbreak Sabine’s phone? Yeah, I can do that. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

The boulder of Ivan’s unhelpfulness appears in Connor’s face. Not him, too.

“I mean, why?” he asks. “Why do you want to get into her business?”

“Personal reasons,” I say.

“Look, I know you two were tight, but there’s stuff about her you don’t know and, well, I don’t think she would want you messing around there.”

“Like what?”

“Brady, you should let this go.”

An unleashed dog comes romping up and sniffs our crotches, its frantic owner behind it, calling “Cookie. Cookie. Get over here.”

“Let
what
go? What are you getting at?”

Connor holds the runaway dog’s collar while the owner fumbles up the trail. Whatever Connor’s referring to will have to wait until we’re done with this interruption. I’m impatient. I should be getting home. My fingers shuffle the two phones in my pocket.

Once the owner and his pet are out of earshot Connor says, “How well do you know Nick?”

“He practically lived at our house the last couple of years. Pretty good, I guess. Where are you going with this?”

“Sabine had some secrets,” Connor says. “I made a promise to her. She told me stuff in confidence.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” I’m furious now. Why would Sabine confide in Connor and not me? “Look,” I tell him. “I just want to hear her voice. I miss it. Can you do that? Just clear her voicemail so I can hear her again?” I pull Sabine’s phone out and hand it over, like it’s a foreign document and Connor’s the translator.

Connor takes the phone, puts it in his pocket and we walk along the darkening path up and up, when we should be walking down, back toward our respective homes. It’s getting chillier and my windbreaker isn’t enough. An early evening breeze shoots through to my bones. A couple of birds, big black ones, flap the air as they cut across the path in front of us. Into the silence between us Connor says, “That so-called boyfriend of hers, he’s an asshole.”

“You keep saying that. I mean, I know you guys had your differences, but he really loved my sister.”

Connor lets out the sort of laugh that’s not really a laugh. A sneer mixed with disbelief. “Love. Right. Who he loves is himself. The guy’s up for 6A lacrosse player of the year. He’s got full ride offers all over the country. Kid just turned eighteen, can barely vote, and he acts like he’s Bill Fucking Gates.”

“Bill Gates?”

“OK, maybe David Beckham. Thinks he walks on water. If I told you what I know about him? Jesus.”

Something occurs to me. “So, was he dating Martha before Sabine died?”

Connor shakes his head. “Nah. He was obsessed with your sister. And not in a good way.”

We get to a fork, and we follow the sign for Wildwood, going deeper into the woods. It’s past the time when the runners are out. The dog-walkers are all home. It’s getting colder and darker. I don’t feel scared though. Next to Connor, weirdly, I feel safer than I’ve felt in weeks. “Spill it.”

“Nick? Let’s just say, the
Beenick
thing? You know, all that Brangelina stuff? Bullshit.”

We hike through muddy ruts, our sneakered feet in step. Where it’s really mucky there are planks. The path wanders up and down. The creek below us flows in its spring enthusiasm. A few bold crickets chirp. Or maybe they’re frogs. Night sounds are overtaking day sounds and we’re continuing on.

A question pops out of me, so fast that it doesn’t even register until it’s out of my mouth, “Did
you
love her?”

“Your sister? Shit. Everyone did. She’s, she
was
, the hottest girl at Greenmeadow.”

His answer feels like a line from
Cosmo
, and it disappoints me. The dismissiveness of it. I slap his arm, lightly, like you do with a good friend who’s just pissed you off. Then, “I was looking at her timeline picture. Her doing that Scorpion stunt, and you holding onto her foot that way? That looked real to me, the way you held her.”

“That Scorpion stunt. Yeah. There was no holding your sister. Put it that way.”

He stops on the trail, fishes around his jeans pocket, and pulls out a doob, then a match. Lights it, cups his hand and sucks in the skunky weed and the tip of it lights up his face. Around the joint in his mouth he says, “Don’t imagine you want a hit?”

I shake my head. “I need to get back.”

We turn around and retrace our steps, the marijuana cigarette lighting our way. When we’re close to the main road, I change my mind about the messages. “Look, I want to know. I need to know. If there is stuff on her phone, don’t erase it.”

“You’re aiding and abetting a criminal, Brady,” he says. “I think it’s illegal to break into someone’s privacy.”

“You
did
love her, didn’t you?”

Connor sucks in another hit. Doesn’t answer. Even though it’s totally dark now, I have the sense that all around us are living things. Crickets, crows, ivy.

We part ways and agree to meet the following day. It’s nearly 8:00 by the time I board the bus. When I finally see our porch light illuminating the driveway, and pad up toward the front door, I stop in my tracks beside Sabine’s Volvo. The barely shining map light is on, and there’s Dad, reclined in the driver’s seat, his eyes closed. In his fist is a bottle of something, and next to him, on the passenger’s seat, is the Ziploc baggie we’d brought to the coast, filled with the charred bits and fragments of his oldest daughter.

Bowerman keeps me after class. This is starting to be a “thing,” this, let’s check in with the grieving girl and make sure she’s not self-harming. Seriously, I see them scanning my forearms, these teachers. I know they’re worried, but all of their scrutinizing makes me feel itchy.

She doesn’t scan me though, Bowerman. After the other students leave and she closes the door, she talks fast. “Mrs. Cupworth would like you,
us
, to visit with her this afternoon. Are you up for it?”

I think about my plan to meet Connor, but that’s not until later. “Cupworth? Why?”

“She smelled a rat that night, and she wants more information. You game?”

I’m intrigued, I admit, but I’ve let the whole Art Fair debacle go. I really don’t feel like revisiting the humiliation of last week. “I don’t know, Ms. Bowerman. I mean, what’s done is done.”

Bowerman grips my arms and looks me square, “Brady, that’s just it, it’s not done. Mrs. Cupworth loved your sketch. In fact, she bought it that night. She was disappointed with the decision to give the scholarship to Martha. When she heard about the extenuating circumstances surrounding your grades, she even said, ‘The child just lost a sibling, have a heart.’”

“Well, there’s always next year, right?”

Bowerman lets go of my arms, and her voice takes on a pleading tone. “Just come with me. She wants to meet you. She thinks, as do I, that you’re incredibly talented.”

Painting, sketching, it’s all fallen so far to the back burner. All I want to do is listen to Sabine’s voice. Listen to the messages on her phone. Find out what was really going on with her the day she died. But I nod anyway. Take the slip of paper Bowerman hands me. The address is another West Hills mansion. This one high up on Vista, above the jumper bridge, where Portland’s most devastated commit suicide year after year. “I have to be somewhere right after that, though. I hope she won’t think me rude if I just stay for a few minutes.”

“I’m sure that will be fine. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

At lunch, Martha flags me down. It’s out now, her relationship with Nick, and they’re inseparable. Helping each other through grief. They’ve managed to position themselves as virtuous.
Elegiac
, is what Mrs. McConnell might call it. They are soldiering forth, the way Sabine would have wanted. Her periodic best friend and her boyfriend aligned to honor her memory throughout time. Seeing them in the hall, holding hands, is like being pushed down on a bed of rusty nails.

“Brady, wait up.” she sings. Her boyfriend chorusing the notion.

“I need to get a bagel,” I say, and continue on down the hall to the student store—a retail establishment set up in an abandoned classroom, manned by Marketing for the Real World students. It’s a gut class, one you take for a guaranteed “A.”

“Mind if we join you?” says Martha.

I do, but I shrug.

Nick sidles up next to me, the Axe smell of him. “How you doin’?”

“Not great.”

“How’s the fam?”

By
fam
, I assume he means my parents. “As bad as can be expected,” I say.

“Yeah, well, I miss her too.”

Martha wedges in between us as we round the corner to the store, possessively taking Nick’s hand. “We haven’t seen you around at all the usual places, Brady. It’s like, you’ve just disappeared. People ask about you, you know.”

I want to change the subject. I haven’t been eating lunch with my usual group—the art kids and the brainiacs. I haven’t returned phone calls and texts, and I don’t “like” stuff on Facebook every other minute, so I suppose that’s cause for concern. It’s just, I really don’t know how to be me again. When your sister is the most popular girl in school, you’ve got a role. Now? I have no idea what my role is. Clearly, I’m not an “outstanding art student” anymore. Partially, thanks to Martha.

“I hear you might go to Penn State next year,” I manage, underlining the notion that soon, Nick will be moving on to the next thing, and Martha will be here, at Greenmeadow, alone.

“Might actually be staying in town. UP just offered.”

Of course. And the fact that Martha’s family is one of the campus’s major donors had nothing to do with that. The smell of rats abounds around here.

“We’re hoping to keep this guy in the home town, you know?” says Martha, all smiles.

“Nice,” I say. “OK, I’m going to get some lunch now. See you later.”

“Brady,” Martha says. “Are you mad at me?”

I stare at the incredulity of her remark. I’m thinking
Fuck
nerian thoughts. Duplicity. Falsehoods. Back-stabbing. “Mad? Oh, Martha, that doesn’t even approach how I feel about you. And him.”

Martha truly looks hurt, but I don’t care. And Nick?
You deserve each other
, I think.

The two lovebirds stand there, holding hands in the hall, their stunned and stupid faces all plastered with concern. Then, I swirl away from them and march through the door to the Marketing for the Real World store to buy a stale pumpernickel bagel.

Lilith Cupworth’s mansion sits above the road at the end of a steep, curving drive. I walk up its smooth surface, noting the bank of lilies of the valley that grace the borders. Rhodies are blooming behind the flowers, and beyond that are trees from the historic register. An enormous Doug fir and a redwood and the hugest Ponderosa in Portland, all stamped with greenish copper plaques. This house once belonged to one of Portland’s founding lumbermen. All the fortunes in this town came from trees. I think about the Garden of Eden. The serpent. The apple tree. That ponderosa, I’d love to slap that on canvas. Maybe paint a heroin addict lying against it. A nice juxtaposition. I don’t know why these things occur to me so frequently. The majestic and the decrepit side-by-side.

The Cupworth House is grander than anything I’ve ever seen. The main building is brick, with a portico on one side. Ivy growing up and over the roof. The opposite side of the house is a sun porch with hundreds of tiny windows in a checkerboard pattern of clear and stained glass. Two thick vines of wisteria snake up from either end, coming together in the middle like the fingers on Michelangelo’s Hands of God.

I see Bowerman’s Camry parked next to some fancy foreign car. The brass knocker on the door is a ring in a lion’s mouth. It’s ice cold when I grab it, and I knock quickly and let it go. I expect a butler to answer, or one of those classically appointed French maids. It’s Mrs. Cupworth herself though, as the heavy door peels open. The outspoken dowager invites me into the foyer, and extends her smooth, manicured hand. “So good to finally meet you,” she says.

“Pleased,” I say, in that faux British tone I’ve seen a zillion times in the movies.

Bowerman has traded her usual Oregon Country Fair look for a blazer and pantsuit. Her dreads are roped back, in something approaching a chignon. She stands next to Lilith Cupworth conspiratorially, like I’ve interrupted a BFF session.

“Come,” says Cupworth, gesturing to that fantastic glass porch which, it turns out is called a
conservatory
. “I’ve made lemonade.”

Lilith Cupworth is dressed to the nines, as they say. Skirt, blouse, stockings, a full face. Her hair is what you talk about when you talk about blue haired old ladies. Her posture is ballerina perfect. I feel like a complete slouch in my usual tee-shirt dress, leggings and Keds outfit. She pours fresh-squeezed lemonade into the crystal goblet in front of me and offers an array of treats on a three-tiered platter. I put a linen napkin on my lap, but don’t reach for the pink macaroons that beckon, lest I get crumbs all over the perfect tea party setting.

“Mrs. Bowerman tells me you’ve applied to the San Francisco Art Institute?”

The lemonade is sour, and my mouth puckers around my answer, “The pre-college summer program. Yes. But that was before…”

Mrs. Cupworth leans toward me, “Before your sister passed. And let me say how sorry I am for your loss, dear.”

“Thanks. Thank you. I’m not sure whether I can go. This year.”

“Brady would be a shoe-in,” Bowerman adds. “But, the timing might not be right.”

It’s then that I notice my drawing, set up on an easel at the edge of the conservatory. She’s put it in a sleek black frame, matted in gold. It looks real. Like art. She sees me gazing at it. “I was obviously quite taken with it, Brady. The eye you have. It really made me wonder what you could do with proper tools. Heavier paper? Maybe a Ritmo-type pencil?”

I glance around the room. Martha’s Mt. Hood is nowhere to be seen, and I feel bad that I’m pleased about that.

“Your teacher tells me that you’re quite an advocate. You’ve shared your thoughts on art education in the school paper?”

“I was interviewed once. But nothing I said was as, you know, articulate, as the speech you gave the other night. That was great what you said about being doomed if we cut art from the schools.” I’m aware that I sound like a complete idiot. I take another sip of lemonade just so I’ll stop embarrassing myself.

“Yes, well, I’ll cut to the chase here. Mrs. Bowerman let me in on the, well, circumstances regarding the rescinding of the scholarship, and I have to say, that sort of political ballyhoo is exactly what gets my dander up. I do not like being made a fool of, Brady, so, I thought I would bring you here to, well, prepare you, I suppose.”

“Prepare me?” “I’m going to make a bit of a stink. I’m due for one.”

A nastily happy thought occurs to me then. “Are you going to make Martha forfeit the prize?” I’m mortified, actually, at the lilt in my voice, the enthusiasm, as the words clatter out of me.

Bowerman intervenes. “No, Brady, that would be awkward. But, we are planning on calling up that reporter and setting her straight. We’d like to propose they do a feature on the vanishing funding for arts in the schools.”

Mrs. Cupworth starts talking before Bowerman’s even closed her mouth. It feels like they’re my parents, finishing each other’s sentences. Rehearsed co-conspirators. The dowager is excited, her cheeks are flushed, and one strand of her bluish coif has loosed over a penciled brow, “And, we feel that the school made you ineligible for the scholarship for self-serving reasons, Brady. You deserved to win that prize. And, in fact, I am planning to match the check. I would enjoy helping you explore the edges of your talent and passion for the visual arts, young lady. I’d like to explore a patronage, a place for you to sketch and paint as time allows.”

I really don’t know what to say. The generosity and enthusiasm of these two women is overwhelming. For a whole minute, I forget about Sabine and meeting up with Connor. I forget about the various sadnesses and betrayals, and a genuine joy seeps into the place under my ribs. Despite the cold, sour lemonade, I’m all warm inside.

And then my pocket buzzes with the announcement of an incoming text. I glance down and see that it’s Martha. She wants to talk. She didn’t like the way we left things. Just like that, the happy feeling drains away. It’s past 4:00. I’m supposed to meet Connor in half an hour. I look up and across the table at my host and my advocate, hoping that my face looks less anxious than I feel. I smile. “Mrs. Cupworth, Mrs. Bowerman, thank you. Thank you for your kindness. Both of you. I’d love to talk more about art and your thoughts, but I have some, um, urgent family things to attend to.”

Mrs. Cupworth takes in a breath, and then stands. She takes both my hands in hers, the way older, proper people do, and she says, “Dear, I’d like to continue this conversation when you have more time. Perhaps you could come again?”

The wisteria scratches the glass outside as the afternoon breeze picks up. “I’d love to,” I say, before slipping out of the mansion and down to the roads where the normal people live.