Untethered (11 page)

W
eek after week, as January turned into February, Allie kept seeing Kate and the boys. Week after week, Char kept her mouth shut.

Mostly.

Now and then, she commented lightly to Allie that it would be nice if the kids came to the door instead of honking from the driveway. If the boys would make eye contact with her, rather than with their phones, when she went outside to speak to them. If they would address her as “Mrs. Hawthorn” instead of “Hey” when they did deign to acknowledge her. If Allie didn't smell like an ashtray when they dropped her off at home.

Each time, Allie would say, equally lightly, “Okay, Mrs. Rockwell.”

It was a nod to their playful ganging up on Bradley over his Norman Rockwellian idea that they should all gather together each morning for “the most important meal of the day.” It was Allie's nonconfrontational way of saying Char was being old-fashioned. For a while, “Okay, Mrs. Rockwell” turned a situation that had potential for argument into one that strengthened a bond.

Sort of.

What began as a funny “bit” between them eroded over the weeks, and by the middle of February, Char sensed a creeping in of impatience, both hers and Allie's, over the situation. Their once-light banter about Allie's new friends took on a bit of acid.

“Again?” Char heard herself ask at dinner one night in late February, after Allie said she was planning to spend time with Kate, Wes, and Justin that evening.

Allie, who had been midway to taking a bite, dropped her fork, letting it clatter on her plate. “What does that mean? I've seen Sydney almost every day for the past five years and you've never said ‘Again?' like that.”

Char considered her response. What reason could she give for not wanting Allie to spend so much time with these kids? If there was ever a time when she could have confessed to forming an opinion about the boys as a result of her eavesdropping, it wasn't now, when there was already some tension between her and Allie. Mentioning the boys' lack of manners, or the fact that they drove her around in an ashtray on wheels, would sound like something a grandmother would say. “I have a bad feeling about them” would never fly, either.

So instead, she used the only concrete argument she could think of: Allie's grades had slipped since she started hanging out with Kate and the boys. Winter conditioning had begun for soccer, and although Allie had been evasive about what she was doing in the ninety minutes between the end of class and the start of practice, it was clear from her report card she was not heading straight for the library with Sydney like she used to do. That alone would have been enough reason for Bradley to start saying no to Allie's spending more time with her new companions.

Hiding behind her late husband's high expectations for his daughter, Char murmured something about “GPA” and “college admissions.” But her heart wasn't in it, and she and Allie both knew it. Bradley had cared about his daughter getting every last point she could, but it had never been Char's thing.

“Seriously?” Allie said. “I drop from the top of the honor roll to the middle after
my dad dies
, and you want to blame it on the very people who've been keeping me together all this time?”

Char was confused. She had no idea that Kate, Wes, and Justin had been providing moral support. “
They've
been keeping you together?” she asked. “How?”

Allie pushed her chair back and stood. “Nice.”

“Allie, wait,” Char called as the girl stomped to the stairs. “I didn't mean it that way. I was surprised, that's all. Come back and finish dinner, and let's try that conversation again.”

“Not hungry,” Allie said.

Char waited for the girl to turn and thunder up the stairs, but Allie stopped and turned. “It just so happens,” she said, “that of all my friends, these three are the only ones who treat me like I'm a normal person, not a poor, pathetic girl who just lost her dad. No one else, including Sydney, can have a regular conversation with me, not even for two minutes, without patting my arm or giving me a hug and asking how I am.

“We'll be talking about math or English homework or whatever and their faces will totally cloud over, like, wait, it's been ninety seconds, time to check in, see how Allie's
really
doing. I feel like I'm this chore of theirs. ‘Time to check on Allie. Better say something encouraging to Allie.'

“Sometimes I'll see them coming down the hall toward me and they'll be talking and laughing and smiling, and then they spot me
and immediately they start looking like they feel guilty having fun around me. And I don't want that. It makes me feel so much worse, not better.

“Kate and Justin and Wes don't treat me like that, like I'm some special case. And it's not because they don't care that Dad died. They do care. They told me they were really sorry about it. Once. And then they got back to normal. Talking about whatever, laughing, making fun of me. If I want to talk about it, they'll listen. But if I don't mention it, they don't either. It's so . . . easy with them.”

Char stepped toward Allie, a hand reaching out. “I didn't realize they'd been so helpful to you.”

Allie turned back to the stairs. “Well, now you do.”

Then came the thunder on the steps, followed by a loud thud as Allie slammed her door.

•   •   •

T
he following evening, Allie didn't spread her homework out over the kitchen counter after dinner the way she had always done. Instead, she hoisted her backpack to her shoulder and headed for the stairs and her room. Char called to her from the family room couch, where she was sitting with a cup of tea and a book. “Aren't you going to keep me company?” she asked.

“Better not,” Allie said. “Too much distraction. My grades are slipping, after all.”

The night after that, Allie didn't wait until after dinner to retreat to her room, but ran straight upstairs the moment her friend Maggie dropped her off after soccer conditioning.

“Hey,” Char called. “You want to make a salad while I finish setting the table?”

“Huge test tomorrow,” Allie said. “Better not.”

Later, she stayed at the table only long enough to gobble up her dinner and give one-word answers to Char's questions before excusing herself to get back to her studying. The night after that, it was “tons of math homework” that kept her in her room, except for the ten minutes she took to eat.

Every night thereafter, a rotating list of assignments, tests, and papers kept Allie from spending more than the briefest of moments downstairs. She still tutored Morgan on Mondays, and Char still picked her up after. But Allie said less and less on the drive home each week, and after a while, Char thought it best to stop asking. For most of each evening, and entire days on the weekends, Allie stayed behind her closed bedroom door, possibly studying, possibly talking to friends or texting, but most definitely not spending one more minute than she had to with Char.

S
oon, it was the end of March, and there was only one week left before Allie's spring break. She would spend it, as usual, in California with her mother. Char hoped that the sun and heat would bake a little sense into the girl, and that when she came home, she would promptly dump Kate and the boys and resume spending all of her free time with Sydney. The tension in the house would dissipate, and Char and Allie could get back to the serious business of figuring out, together, how to navigate life in Mount Pleasant, and the rest of the world, without Bradley.

On the last Monday afternoon of the month, Char drove to pick up Allie from tutoring. When she walked into the community center, she saw Sarah and Stevie Crew sitting in the waiting area outside the tutoring room. Stevie jumped up to greet Char at the front door.

“Hey there, mister!” Char said, raising her hand for their customary high five.

Stevie slapped Char hard and allowed her a moment to make
her dramatic inspection for broken metacarpals before clasping his little palm around her fingers and pulling her to his mother.

“Stevie, for goodness' sake,” Sarah said, “let the woman walk on her own.”

The boy released Char's hand and ran three steps before sliding to his knees on the dirty floor. Morgan's backpack was sitting near Sarah's chair, and Stevie fished through it, tossing his sister's lunchbox, mittens, and books as he went. Finally, he produced a stack of folded pieces of construction paper, which he held out to Char.

For weeks, Morgan had been making cards for Char and Allie. Some were “simpithy” cards, some “frendshipe” cards, some were simply filled with drawings. From time to time, Stevie added one or two to the weekly delivery, clearly under Morgan's direction—his signature, a backwards
S
, was printed carefully onto a line his sister had drawn for him in pencil, beside a proper
S
drawn in the same pencil.

“I think Morgan will want to give the ones she made,” Sarah said, as she placed the mittens, lunchbox, and books back into her daughter's backpack. She held her son by the shoulder as she brushed off the knees of his pants. “Come here,” she said, crooking a finger to beckon him closer. Still clutching the cards in his hand, he extended his arm back, moving them out of his mother's reach.

“Oh, you can keep those,” she said. “It's your knees I was after. And now I want to see that chin. What were you eating?” He jutted it toward her and she licked a finger and rubbed it under his lower lip to remove a dark smudge. “There!” she said, patting his chest. “Perfect!” He jumped backward, away from her, waving the cards in his hand.

“I hope they're not dragging it out for you,” Sarah said as Char took a seat beside her.

In addition to the weekly cards, Morgan and her mother had produced two more deliveries of lasagna, each time with hearts carefully cut into the noodles.

“Morgan was talking about it again last night at dinner,” Sarah said. “How sad she was for Allie. And you. And she insisted.” She gestured toward Stevie, who was still hopping around the waiting area with the cards. “So then, of course, he had to get into it, too. Always wants to do whatever she's doing.”

“She's incredibly thoughtful,” Char said. “Most kids that age would have moved on to something else. It's amazing she's still thinking about it.”

“Oh”—Sarah laughed—“Morgan doesn't let go of anything.”

The doors to the tutoring room burst open then and Morgan flew out, Allie walking behind. Sarah stood and opened her arms, but Morgan called, “CC!” and ran past her mother, falling against Char's lap and throwing her arms around her waist.

“Hey, Morgan,” Char said. She glanced over the girl's head to Sarah, to give an apologetic look for inadvertently stealing the hug, but Sarah had stepped toward the windows at the front of the building, her back to Char and the children. One of Sarah's arms was bent, and it looked like she was holding a hand to her forehead or her eyes.

“We made you something,” Morgan said, and Char took her eyes off the mother and focused on the daughter. “It's a surprise.”

Morgan turned to reach for her backpack and saw her brother holding the cards in midair, caught. Char braced for an argument, but Morgan laughed, patted him on the head, and said, “Well, it was
supposed to be a surprise.” Stevie offered the cards to his sister but she pointed to Char. “Go ahead. You can give them to her.”

“You're such a nice sister, Morgan,” Allie said, as Sarah rejoined the group.

Morgan shrugged. “He helped make them.”

Stevie beamed, while Sarah made a tsking noise and said to her daughter, in an artificially light tone that failed to conceal her displeasure, “Yes, he helped make them. At nine o'clock at night, when he should have been sleeping. Not following his big sister down to the basement for a secret arts-and-crafts session. I swear, that boy would follow you anywhere—”

She caught herself and replaced her frown with a smile. “Of course, it was for a good cause.”

“They're wonderful,” Char said, leafing through the cards from Stevie, a four-year-old's renderings of people holding hands and smiling. “Be happy,” Morgan had printed for him underneath. The picture took up only the top half of the page. The bottom half was filled with the wobbly backward
S
.

Next, Char turned to Morgan's cards, each carefully decorated on the outside, with a poem on the inside. One of the poems was about loss, the other about memories. She had printed them neatly onto white paper and then glued that to the inside of the construction paper cards, using pencil drawings to form a frame around each poem.

“Poems this time!” Char said. “Did you make them up yourself?”

Morgan nodded. “It took me half the night!”

“Wow, Morgan,” Allie said. “Those are gorgeous.”

“They truly are,” Char said to Morgan. “They certainly look like they took half the night. What a thoughtful thing to do. Thank
you.” She stood and reached for her purse. Handing the car keys to Allie, she said, “You're driving home, right?”

“Sure,” Allie said, not taking the keys, “but I'm going to run to the bathroom before we leave.”

“Me, too,” Morgan said.

“I!” Stevie said, and Morgan held a hand out to her brother.

“Don't be long,” Sarah called after them. “I need to get dinner started.”

“These really are impressive poems,” Char said when the kids had gone. She held one of the cards open toward Sarah.

Sarah buttoned her coat, brushing invisible lint from her lapels. She didn't look at the card, and Char withdrew her hand.

“I'm sorry if I seem less than thrilled about them,” Sarah said. “I do love her thoughtfulness. I'm aware, though, that if only we could get her to work on her homework for a fraction of the time she worked on those cards, she wouldn't need to come to tutoring. But Morgan is determined to do everything the hard way.”

She picked up her daughter's coat from a chair and frowned at a small mark on the collar. “That girl.” She licked a finger and rubbed the smudge, the same way she had done on Stevie's chin. When the mark didn't fade, she opened her purse and took out a package of wet wipes. Using one on the coat, she managed to coax the dirt into fading. With a satisfied nod, she draped the coat over the back of the chair. She arranged Morgan's hat and mittens on the seat, then zipped up the girl's backpack and set it beside, on the floor.

She did the same for Stevie's, shaking her head as she picked two tiny leaves out of the cuff of one of his mittens before making a tidy pile of the books he had brought with him. Char saw a momentary smile flicker on Sarah's lips as the woman stood back and admired the neat collections of her children's belongings.

Char and Allie had driven Morgan home once, in the late fall. One of the community center workers had come into the waiting room, holding the center's phone out to Char. Sarah was in the emergency room. Stevie had cut his forehead getting into the car and needed stitches. Dave was the only one at the garage and couldn't leave. No problem, Char told her. She would take the girls out for a quick dinner and run Morgan home later.

It took only a few minutes in the Crews' foyer for Char to see that as fastidious as Sarah was about clothes and hair—hers and her children's—she was equally so about her home. It looked like it was part of a model showcase, not the living space for a family with two young children. Not one stray toy lay on the living room floor. The place settings on the dining room table were immaculately arranged. The shoes on the mat in the hallway stood in perfect pairs.

The foyer table wasn't covered in dust or a random collection of junk like the Hawthorns' hall table, but was home only to a neat stack of envelopes and a small ceramic dish that held a set of keys. Even the artwork in Sarah's house didn't dare hang at anything but obedient right angles.

Now Sarah ran a flat palm over her head to smooth hair that wasn't out of place. She turned from her children's backpacks to Char, who was still trying to think of a way to respond to Sarah's complaint about Morgan never wanting to do homework.

“I'm not sure I'm the best person to advise on how to get a child to change her behavior,” Char said, thinking about Allie, and how strained things had been between them. Char checked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone, then put a hand on Sarah's arm. “I know how hurtful it is to put yourself out there for a child and have them not do the same.” Sarah didn't appear to register, and Char said, “The hug. When they got let out.”

Sarah let out a long breath. “She's been doing that for the past few months. She'll hug everyone but me. Tells her dad and her brother that she loves them, but won't say it to me. And she's been talking more than ever about her mom—seeing her again, going to find her, wondering when she'll show up on our doorstep to pick Morgan up. I'm trying not to let on that it bothers me. But it's not easy.”

“No,” Char said. “It's not.” The statement seemed to confuse Sarah. Char tapped an index finger to her chest. “Stepmom, remember?”

“Oh, of course,” Sarah said. “But you and Allie seem so close. Not like the stories you always hear.”

If you only knew
, Char wanted to say. Instead, she said, “We had this honeymoon phase, me and Allie. Right after her father and I got married, I was her hero. I could do nothing wrong. She wanted to be with me constantly, gave me hugs just about every time she walked into a room and saw me. Asked me to tuck her in at night.

“And then, after about six months or so, it all just . . . stopped. She went through a long stretch, maybe a year, where even though I was right there, doing everything for her, she was suddenly obsessed with her mother. Couldn't stop talking about her, calling her on the phone, wondering out loud when she'd get to see her next. While not so much as patting me on the shoulder at night, let alone giving a good-night hug and kiss. It was . . .” she fished for a word that didn't sound too dramatic, “challenging.”

Sarah didn't respond, but she was waiting, Char could tell, to hear more. Char glanced at her reflection in the windows and considered how much detail she should provide, which examples. There were so many to choose from.

Like the time Char volunteered to bake four pies for the seventh-grade basketball team's bake sale. Allie thanked her
profusely, and in the next breath, she pleaded with her dad to drive her to the mall so she could buy something “really good” to send to Lindy for Mother's Day the following week. She had sixty dollars in her wallet, and planned to spend it all on her mother. “Besides,” she told her dad, “there's nothing fun to do at home, anyway. All Char's going to be doing this afternoon is baking.”

Or the afternoon Allie came running into the house whooping about the part she had gotten in a school play after Char had spent the previous two weeks helping her rehearse her lines and her singing. But when Char cheered and asked for details, Allie said she didn't have time to fill her in right then, because she had to call her mom and let her know the good news.

It was a truth sometimes hard for Char to bear that Lindy's absence from Allie's life was only physical. Emotionally, she had remained as much a part of Allie's life as Bradley was. And more, it seemed, than Char was, or ever would be.

That certain degree of politeness in step relationships, Char had learned, comes from emotional distance. A lack of shared biology, an incomplete history—one cut short at the beginning, not the end. Bradley had the ultimate prize that Char could never claim: the unwavering affection, devotion, and unconditional love of a child.

So did Lindy, despite her disappearing act. On this issue, Char knew exactly what Sarah must struggle with each time she saw Morgan opening her Lifebook to gaze at that photo of the young woman in the lawn chair. Each time she heard the girl fantasize about the day her “real” mother would come looking for her.