Wish You Were Here (33 page)

“It's not fair. You guys are cheating.” He was pouting, his eyes reddened, the lower lids brimming.

“Right, we're all cheating,” Ella said, though in reality they were all peeking at each others' hands. It was part of the game.

“Don't be a baby,” Sam teased him.

“Shut up!”

“Justin,” their mother warned from the couch.

“He's making fun of me—”

“Play nicely or don't play at all.”

“You've got to stay awake over there,” Aunt Arlene said, shuffling. “The trick is not to worry about your own cards. Worry about everyone else's.”

He knows how to play, Sarah wanted to say, but Aunt Arlene might think she was giving her lip. She was touchy and Sarah thought she didn't like her very much, the same way Grandma liked Ella better. Part of it was how she looked—she knew that feeling from everyone at school: the other girls, the boys, even the teachers. It was like she was some kind of freak, except she was supposed to be lucky. Her mother was proud of how pretty she was, always telling her to be thankful for her looks, that someday she'd be grateful for them, and Sarah couldn't explain to her how hard it was knowing everyone thought you must be stupid or stuck-up or slutty and were dying to see you mess up.

Aunt Arlene dealt out their hands on the orange velvet ottoman. It was Ella's turn to go first.

“Wait,” Justin said, struggling to get his hand together. His hands were too small for the cards, that was one problem.

Sarah had a pair of aces and junk, so she watched Ella and then Aunt Arlene and then Sam pick up and discard, her tongue ready, caged behind her teeth. She hesitated before she picked up, faked, making sure Sam wasn't going to ambush her in the middle of her turn.

She drew the third ace, checked everyone as she slipped it into her hand (not rearranging), then discarded. Ella looked at her, holding her eyes to see what she was hiding, and Sarah gave her a bluff smirk, as if she might or might not have something.

Justin picked up and put down the same jack of clubs, so she concentrated on Ella's face, her eyes reading the new card from the top of the pile, then blinking as she added it to her fan, folded the hand closed and looked them over again.

“Nothing,” Sam guessed.

“Let's see what she throws away,” Aunt Arlene coached, and glanced at Sarah.

Someone must be close, she thought.

Ella threw the jack of hearts.

“It's not jacks,” Sarah said.

Aunt Arlene had to reach from the couch.

Ella's face hadn't changed. Justin scratched at his collarbone, his arm blocking Sarah's view of his hand. He was going for queens. He had three, and she had the other one. She decided to let him win. It wasn't really cheating.

“King of diamonds,” Aunt Arlene said, laying it down, and Sam snatched it up.

They all waited for him to punch his tongue out (Sarah eyeing Aunt Arlene, waiting for the delayed move), but he set down the jack of spades.

“Three in a row,” Justin noted.

A second check of Sam and Aunt Arlene and then Ella, and Sarah picked up the fourth ace.

Her luck surprised her. She couldn't help but laugh.

“Uh-oh!” Ella cried, and then everyone was watching her face and the five cards in her hand. There was no rule that you had to stick out
your tongue before the next person's turn. Part of the strategy was choosing the right time, like an assassin. She fitted the ace into the middle of her hand and dumped the queen.

Ella was staring at her like a gunslinger, sure. Sarah matched her, waiting. Beside her, Justin was so excited he dropped part of his hand. To throw them off, Sarah checked Sam and Aunt Arlene.

Aunt Arlene had her tongue out, just barely, sneaking between her stained teeth.

Ella had hers out, and Sam, grinning like an idiot.

Justin was still gathering up his cards.

She saw that they saw. Losing on purpose would be worse. Short of kicking him there was nothing she could do, so she stuck out her tongue.

“Ha ha,” Sam said, doing his Nelson, which Sarah hated.

“No,” Justin said, looking around wildly, short of breath, “I won. You're cheating. You're a bunch of cheaters. I don't want to play anymore.”

He threw his cards across the ottoman, Aunt Arlene waving at them. He rolled over in a ball, and this time he was crying.

“Go!” their mother said, getting up, and Rufus cowered, his head between his paws. “Justin, go!”

He couldn't stand fast enough, and their mother yanked him by the arm and swung him toward the stairs. “You stay there until you're ready to come down and apologize. That is not appropriate behavior.”

She sat down again on the couch, still dangerous, her anger filling the room, and the rest of them were quiet.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Aunt Arlene said, collecting the cards, so they did. Ella went back to reading. Sam had one of Justin's
Star Wars
comics. Sarah headed for the stairs.

“I don't want you going up there and disturbing him,” her mother told her, meaning she couldn't go and tell him it was all right, that it was just a stupid game and Sam was being a jerk and that her mother shouldn't have yelled at him or grabbed him so hard.

“I just want to get my book,” she said.

“Try a different tone.”

“I need to get my book.”

“That's better.” Her mother stood up and came over to her. “I'll get it for you. Which one is it?”

“It's Ella's. It's the one with the dragon on the cover.”

Her mother went up, leaving her standing there. When she came back down with the book, she asked Sarah to step into the other room with her—Grandma's room.

“You know,” she said, “I appreciate that you're sticking up for your brother. I think that's important. And I know how much you do for him at home, how well you took care of him when I was sick.”

You weren't sick, Sarah thought.

“But sweetheart,” her mother said, “as much as you want to, you can't fight all of Justin's battles for him. He's going to have to learn how to do things for himself.”

Sarah didn't argue with her, didn't say a word.

“Okay,” her mother said, “I just wanted to let you know that.”

Their talk was over, everything was settled. Sarah was supposed to follow her into the living room. Instead, she stayed there, baffled and angry at what an asshole her mother was being.

It wasn't true, though her mother would never believe it. And it wasn't worth running the risk, here, now, of her mother hitting her or, worse, crying as she held on to her, saying she was sorry, that it was all her fault, meaning—really—that it was her father's. When her mother was drunk or when she was just too depressed to get out of bed, Sarah had learned that the
only
way she and Justin were going to get through this was to fight their battles together. But she couldn't tell her that.

It was a reflex, a motion she'd known her entire life—the postcard waiting in her other hand—but as soon as Emily licked the stamp she realized she didn't have to.

“Uck,” she said, wiping her fingers across her lips, though there was no taste, really, she just felt foolish.

Sometimes she didn't know where her mind went. She wrote things down on the calendar, then discovered them a day late. Henry was forever chiding her about leaving the oven on or forgetting to let Rufus back in. Even Arlene had started, reminding her to check her purse for her keys whenever they went somewhere together. That exasperating Maxwell practicality. She was sorry, but she didn't have that kind of a mind. She needed her lists.

Self-adhesive stamps. She could remember when a postcard cost two cents and there was no such thing as a zip code. Or computers or cellular telephones, she thought. The world she knew was gone—or still there but obsolete, passed by like Kersey, stranded in the long barrens between exits on the interstate that would always be new to her, though it must be almost fifty years old.

Time had been her friend until her late thirties, then it turned against her.

She would not let a silly stamp send her into a blue mood, not on vacation. The rain was still upon them, but she'd taken care of the lists, the garbagemen had finally come, and now she'd finished the postcard she'd promised Louise. If the mailman took it today it should arrive by Friday, Saturday at the latest—if she got it to the box in time.

In the living room, Rufus was watching Sarah and Justin playing chess on the floor, Ella and Kenneth soldiering away at the border of the puzzle. Arlene and Margaret didn't look up from their books. She supposed Lisa was hiding upstairs. The weather said it would rain again tomorrow, and Emily had no idea what they were going to do then.

Sam was in the kitchen, twisting open one of the plastic bottles of Kool-Aid that filled up their recycle bin, a swampy green the color of antifreeze, pure sugar. It was ten-thirty, and as far as she could tell, his mother hadn't fixed him breakfast yet.

“Did you ask an adult if you could have that?” Emily said.

“No.”

“You need to eat breakfast first. Go ask your father to fix you something.”

He obeyed wordlessly, clearly unconcerned, and she sighed. She couldn't imagine her acting like that with her grandmother Hedrick. She wouldn't have been able to sit down for a week.

“Rain, rain, go away,” she said at the back door, and pushed the
wet umbrella through before stepping out. She was careful on the stairs, watching her feet, all the while gripping the postcard in a fist, afraid it would fall, water smearing the ink.

A gust of wind shoved her square in the back like a hand, and she feared for the umbrella, tugged it down about her shoulders.

“Just miserable,” she said, squishing across the drive.

The road was empty, her toad nowhere to be seen. She was afraid when she opened the lid she would find today's mail, but then when she pulled the tin flange down, hunched close, protecting the dry inside with her umbrella, she saw instead a seething mass of ants.

She fell back as if stabbed, and the postcard fluttered from her grasp. She fished for it with a swipe of her free hand, but it eluded her, landing facedown on the road. She tried to pinch it up quickly before any real damage was done, in the process grinding it against the wet asphalt.

“Goddammit!”

It was ruined. You could still read it, but the front looked awful, as if someone had stepped on it (and she'd picked this one special from the Institute gift shop, a campy shot of the lake from the sixties, the water swimming-pool blue). She couldn't send this to Louise.

She left the lid open, vainly hoping the rain might disperse some of them, and tromped back toward the kitchen, her face rigid, intent.

“Kenneth!” she called before she was even through the door. “Kenneth!”

He'd plotted it like a crime, stealing the opportunity to shoot. He brought along the two gas cans, ostensibly to combine trips, but really to buy himself time, give him an excuse to stop at the Gas-n-Go. He had the Holga loaded, bulky as a revolver in the pocket of his windbreaker. As bad as
the garage was, it was a start. As always, Morgan was right. Take it frame by frame, roll by roll, just keep at it until something happens, because it will. It all came down to patience—like anything, Morgan said—and Ken had patience. If nothing else, the last ten years proved that.

At this point there was nothing else he wanted to do with his life. He'd cast his lot, as his mother dramatically put it, and it was too late to change.

There were times, like now, driving with the radio on low, wipers slapping away the rain, when he could see himself thanking a black-tie audience for an award, a great pompous blowup of one of his photos being lowered to the waxed stage behind him, the image he'd seen first now a worldwide icon like Eddie Adams's street execution in Vietnam. In his tuxedo he held up the gold statuette, the medal, and bent to the stemlike microphone. “I'd like to thank my wife Lise,” he'd begin, “and my teacher Morgan.” His children, his father, his mother. In his daydreams he dedicated the award to his own students, the new generation they could trust with the future of the art. The applause followed him off.

Absurd as it seemed—impossible, since no one wanted his pictures— that fantasy had actually happened to a classmate of his, Davis Larrimore, two years ago. Technically, Larrimore was a mess, but his brother-in-law had an in at
Newsweek
and got him a job with their Seoul bureau. He'd been covering the Hyundai strike when a Molotov cocktail struck a soldier caught between the skirmish lines. A wave of strikers broke forward, and the soldier's comrades deserted him. The frames Larrimore took of the crowd kicking him to death were too disturbing for the cover of
Newsweek,
but by the end of the year the images were everywhere, and they gave Larrimore a Pulitzer. “Right place, right time,” Morgan said when Ken bitched about his luck. And anyway, Morgan said with a shrug, that was a completely different kind of photography. Ken just had to work on his own work.

And he had, at that point zealously, sure that his effort would be rewarded and then confused when it wasn't. He'd always been promising, ever since he was a child—advanced placement, high SATs, dean's list—but now, nearing forty, he couldn't call himself promising. If he'd ever had promise, he'd squandered it. The proof was irrefutable. He'd accomplished nothing, and the suspicion that he'd been a fool all along, an impostor, nagged at him, despite Morgan's assurances.

The day was dark, trees waving, a storm blowing in from the north. The Putt-Putt came, and the graveyard, the high grass around the stones flattened by the weight of the rain, wet flags left over from Memorial Day, their stakes marked with bronze stars. His father did not consider him a failure, he was sure, and yet these last months his thoughts seemed to revolve around the idea, picking at it like a scab. Once Ken had shown him his darkroom—neat as his father's workbench—walking him through the developing process. His father was impressed, as he always was, with the technical steps, the calibrated magic of the chemistry, and complimented Ken on the image (from the side, his father in his favorite chair, reading the business section of the
Post-Gazette
). He was sincere, because the print had become a favorite, hanging in the upstairs hall across from the bathroom. Thanksgivings Ken would come across it and admire his own composition, the way the light supernova-ed in the half-glasses balanced on his father's nose, a happy accident.