New Year Troubles
As it turned out, although there was much excitement around the world about this particular New Year’s Eve, because many people thought it signified the start of a new century, although many others held out for the year 2000 being the final year of the old century and reserved their excitement for the next New Year, there was little festivity in the Green-Bell household.
It was a long and tedious drive. Amy alternately slept and complained, no conversation seemed to last very long before breaking down into unpleasant disagreement, Teddy was critical of the way Meg stayed in the left lane even when there were impatient drivers trying to pass her, and finally, after a lunch stop in New Hampshire, they listened to the radio without speaking for the rest of the way to New Haven.
Teddy closed his eyes for the last three hours in order to give the impression that he was sleeping, but he was thinking. He felt undependable, capable of changing directions as easily as a weathercock, and he hated himself for it. What did he really imagine would come of that malicious telephone message? It had seemed reasonable, even amusing, at the time but the closer they sped toward New Haven, the large and darker the falsehood loomed. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Sitting in the front seat beside the stony-faced Meg, he had tried to catch her eye several times since Long Harbor, but she would only stare at the road ahead, and he felt injured by her unwillingness to acknowledge him just as he felt a gnawing certainty that he had harmed this dear girl immeasurably and she had every right to treat him as the worm that he was.
He sat up and looked over his shoulder when Meg slowed for the entrance to the Mass Pike, and saw Amy and Joanna tilted against each other in the back seat, sleeping like puppies. Amy looked especially fragile. As he watched, Amy swiped at a strand of Joanna’s hair that was brushing her face without opening her eyes. Joanna rearranged Amy’s head on her shoulder and opened her eyes for a moment. She saw Teddy and smiled before closing her eyes again and drawing Amy more snugly against her. He felt a surge of helpless love for both of the sleeping girls. He sighed heavily and Meg patted him unexpectedly on the leg. He looked at her and she granted him eye contact for a moment before readjusting her gaze.
“We’re too much, aren’t we?” she said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re too much for you. We’re overwhelming with all of our neurotic this and that. It’s okay. You can be sick of us. You’re entitled.”
“I’m sorry, Meg,” Teddy said soulfully.
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I’m sorry I can’t make everything perfect for you,” he said desperately. “You deserve to be happy. I’m sorry you aren’t happy. I’m sorry I’m not your—”
“Don’t!” Meg said fiercely. “Just don’t.” She turned the radio on and jabbed at the buttons to find a station. She settled on some staticky Coltrane. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now,” she said over the music. “I just can’t.”
Meg declined to pull the car up in front of their building so they could unload their things, because she didn’t want to take the time, with all the one-way streets, to circle around several blocks in order to park the car in the garage on Crown Street. Nobody wanted to argue with her, so they drove directly to the garage and carried their bags up High Street, picking their way through the refrozen ruts of unshoveled sidewalk slush.
“I hate frozen footsteps,” Amy complained.
“What?” Teddy asked irritably over his shoulder.
“Other people’s footsteps in the slush that have refrozen. You can’t really walk in them, even though you’re tempted,” Amy explained. “They look nice and easy but they’re like a booby trap to trip you unless you have really little feet that will fit inside the footprints, but if your feet are that little you probably can’t take big enough steps to match—”
“Just go faster and stop bumping me with your bag,” Joanna interrupted crossly.
From the moment they climbed the cold stairs to their apartment late in the afternoon—where they discovered that the heat and the electricity had been out for an indeterminate number of days, resulting in a hideous stench emanating from the refrigerator—Meg had been agitated and snappish. Before she even took off her coat, she grabbed the telephone and took it into her room, closing the door on the cord. She burst out of her room moments later, still in her coat, with a wild look in her eye, before exiting the apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard it bounced open again and Teddy had to go shut it properly.
Teddy heroically filled and carted out two trash bags full of the freezer contents, much of which consisted of bagged quarts of homemade soups and stews, foil packages of leftovers, and large quantities of Meg’s beloved bargain chicken parts from the Stop & Shop. Amy and Joanna spent an hour cleaning out the refrigerator
and swabbing it with disinfectant to try to overcome the eyewatering odor.
“Id shells like subthig died id here,” Amy said mournfully.
“I don’t think I’ll ever eat chicken again,” Teddy said, slumping against the doorway. “Man, you can still smell it on the stairs. But at least the building’s warming up now. I could hear the radiators banging all through the hallways.”
“Where did you leave it?” Joanna asked. “Not in our trash cans, I hope—someone will report a murder before the garbage is collected next week.”
“I’m ahead of you,” Teddy replied. “I dumped the bags in the bin in the British Art Center parking lot. And if I hadn’t been so desperate to get rid of them, I would have stopped to rescue some damaged posters the gift shop had just thrown away, but I just had to toss those putrid bags in there right on top of them. I think I saw a Stubbs.”
“So where did Meg go, do you think?” Joanna asked.
“Yeah, what was that about? The mystery phone call last night, right?” Amy chimed in.
“She made a call when we came in, but it didn’t sound like she talked to anybody,” Teddy said. “So I don’t know. Maybe she went to Mark Frank’s.”
“He’s away until next week,” Amy said with certainty. “He left this morning.” Meg and Teddy both looked at her.
“And you know this how?” Joanna asked.
“Well, since you ask, and since you seem to be willing to include me for once in the ongoing conversation about Meg instead of sneaking around in laundry rooms behind my back, I’ll tell you. I read a letter he wrote to her the day before we left. It was in her bag. I read it one time when she was in the shower a couple of days ago.”
“Amy Green!” Joanna exclaimed.
“Amy Green what?” Amy retorted. “Is reading a letter any worse than making up a phone call?”
“How do you know about that?” Teddy demanded.
“Duh, I’m not as dumb as I look, okay? She was talking about it before dinner with Avery, when I was setting the table and Avery was making the salad and cutting up all that fruit to go with dessert while Meg got dinner ready. I heard them.”
Amy was spreading Nutella on a cracker with her usual demonic precision for such tasks, and she stopped to square off the edges with professional symmetry.
“Don’t stop!” Joanna demanded. “And that’s really disgusting, by the way. Nutella on a Stoned Wheat Thin?”
“You have no palate for one of the great pleasures in life,” Amy retorted with dignity.
“It’s the combination,” Joanna said.
“As opposed to the perfect combination of Nutella and a spoon?” Teddy offered.
“She told you about that?” Joanna said. “For God’s sake, I was in eighth grade.”
“But it was the whole jar,” Amy pointed out. “And the Larkins, those people whose kids you were baby-sitting and then they came home early, they must have looked under the sofa and found the empty jar sometime—”
“Continue!” shouted Joanna and Teddy together.
“Okay, so now you really want me in this conversation after all! See? So maybe the young innocent child does have a little something to contribute,” Amy said sarcastically. “So, any old hoo, she told Avery how upset she was because she wasn’t supposed to call him—she wouldn’t say his name—and then she did, but it was really awkward and he couldn’t speak for very long, which was probably the call Avery overheard, and apparently now she was worried that he was upset about it and called back to yell at her or something. She was scared that she had done something really wrong, somehow, and she was afraid about what he had made his mind up about. She said something bad had happened that was her fault and he was all upset. And she told Avery he was supposed to go away this morning with his family to stay with some people in
New York for five days, so she wasn’t expecting to hear from him until next week, because they had a plan. So the call you told her had come while she was out had her all upset. She didn’t say you made up the phone call, but that was my guess and I can see I was right!” Amy concluded her soliloquy with slightly breathless triumph.
“Well, aren’t you the little font of info. So she told Avery she’s involved with someone who has a family?” Joanna asked with curiosity. “Even though she wouldn’t say his name she sort of admitted she was involved with a married man? What did Avery say about that?”
“Meg was worries that Avery would judge her, but Avery just laughed and said”—here Amy drew herself up and managed an uncanny duplication of Avery’s fierce yet kind visage—“‘My dear, the older one grows, the more one likes indecency!’”
“Woolf,” Teddy said. “One of Avery’s favorite remarks, actually.”
“So, Amy, what else was in the letter?” Joanna asked.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be immoral for me to tell you?”
“Oh, it’s definitely immoral. But do tell us, Ames.”
“Do you want me to go look for it in her bag? You two can be lookouts.”
“Absolutely not! Just tell us what it said, if you don’t mind,” Joanna said impatiently.
“Well, he said he would miss her but that given the recent unfortunate drama—those were his words, ‘the recent unfortunate drama’—their time apart was all for the best, and that his family would be in New Haven for most of the break, that they were going to a professor somebody’s house in Bethany for Christmas dinner, and then that they were leaving for New York today, in the morning, so he would see Meg in the new year and they would sort things out—his words. And that no matter what happened to their relationship he valued her—what was it? her fine splendid mind, I think, something like her spicy intelligence.”
“So where could Meg have run off to, if he’s out of town?” Joanna mused.
“I saw her take keys off the hook as she left,” Amy offered. She dipped the tip of her knife into the Nutella and licked it pensively.
“Don’t do that,” Joanna said automatically.
“So? We all take our keys when we go out,” Teddy said.
“Not just her house keys. Some other keys.” Amy nibbled another defiant glob of Nutella from the knife tip.
“What other keys?” Joanna wondered.
“Mark Frank’s office in Linsley-Chit,” Teddy said. “She’s got all of those keys. But what would there be for her to do in there if he’s away? Ransack his lecture notes for clues to his true feelings? I wonder what the recent drama was.”
“She wouldn’t be able to get into the building. It’s New Year’s Eve, remember?” Joanna pointed out logically. “Every Yale thing is locked up and dark.”
“Not everything,” Amy pointed out. “She could get into the Franks’ apartment in JE.”
“You’re right,” Teddy said, “but to do what?”
“Read through his stuff, rummage in their drawers, read other people’s letters, boil a rabbit, who knows, I’m tired of this,” Amy said crossly. “Are we going to eat dinner or what?”
Some rather grim omelets were consumed that evening, made with basic ingredients procured at the unpleasant twenty-four-hour grocery situated incongruously beside the fastidious J. Press shop on York Street. This was the one place on campus where cigarettes and junk food could be obtained by bleary Yale students all night long. After they ate, when there was still no sign of Meg, Teddy had rung the Franks’ number, but it just went straight to voice mail—Mark’s voice—saying they were out of town until the fourth of January.
“Strange,” Teddy had remarked, “I knew he was a Brit, so that’s no surprise, but his voice was plummy, somehow, in a way that just doesn’t go with his face at all.”
“What should his voice sound like? Big sweater-y? We’ve never even had a glimpse,” Joanna pointed out.
“She definitely had it worked out that we would never go over there to baby-sit once they hooked up,” Amy mused. “Or maybe Meg just wanted to keep us away from him because she knew we would see something.”
“See something like what?” Joanna asked. “You mean see the way they gazed into each other’s eyes, or see how irresistibly charming he is so that we, too, would want to fall in love with him?”
“Ick,” said Amy.
Teddy went out for a walk, he said, but when he came back a while later, he admitted he had loitered at the entrance to the JE courtyard in the hopes of checking to see if there were lights in any windows, but the gate was firmly locked and nobody had passed by to let him in.
They were watching New Year’s celebrations around the world on their crummy television set when Meg came home, shortly before midnight.
She was panting, as if she had been running, and she stood in the doorway observing the three of them sprawled in front of the snowy image of the Eiffel Tower fizzing like a giant sparkler.
“Looks festive,” she remarked breathlessly, sitting down to yank off her snow-covered boots.
“Where were you?” Joanna demanded. “We were worried about you. Plus we wanted you to be here at midnight, which is in ten minutes.”
“I went for a walk,” Meg said. “I feel so much better now. I’m just starved. What smells so good? Onions?”
“We had omelets. Do you want me to make you one?” Amy volunteered.
“That’s a hell of a walk, five hours in the freezing cold dark on New Year’s Eve. Where did you walk to?” Teddy asked. “Bridgeport?”
“I wasn’t walking for five hours. I needed to think,” Meg said. “Ames, I would love an omelet, would you mind? So I went to the Franks’ apartment in JE. I knew they would be away, but I thought I could just think quietly for a while. Then I walked all the way up Whitney Avenue to the reservoir in Hamden and back. It’s a beautiful night. The little waterfall at the Eli Whitney Museum is frozen.”
“Didn’t you hear the phone ringing in their apartment?” Amy demanded from the kitchen, where she was slamming cupboard doors and clattering pans. “That was us.”
“No, sweetie, the bell is turned off, it just goes straight to voice mail. Did you—”
“Don’t worry, we didn’t leave a message, if that’s what you were thinking,” Teddy said.
“I know I’ve been so secretive,” Meg began. “I really want to talk to you all. I’ve been thinking. It’s been really hard for me. You probably have no idea—”
“But we know more than you think. Like we know about your rendezvous at the bakery on State Street,” Joanna blurted. “Teddy saw you.”
“You know?” Meg asked, clearly startled. She looked around at the three somber faces. “You know, and you’re not furious at me?”
“Why would we be furious?” Joanna said. “I mean, I think you’re making a stupid mistake, but it’s your life. I guess. But no, I’m not exactly furious. Did you think we would stage an intervention or something?”
“I’m just kind of disappointed,” Amy said primly, emerging from the kitchen with a whisk and a bowl of beaten eggs.
“Teddy?” Meg looked at him with puzzled and guilty eyes. She sat down heavily next to him on the sagging sofa. “You don’t think it’s a horrible betrayal of Amy and Joanna? Why are you all being so nice? Did the Health Plan call and say I have a brain tumor?”
“What does it really have to do with Amy and Joanna?” Teddy said. “It’s totally your own life to fuck up. I mean, I suppose in
some sense it is a betrayal of the famous Green family values or something, but it’s much more of a betrayal of Mark Frank’s family, isn’t it? With the kooky wife and the disturbed kids and everything.” Teddy gazed at her solemnly. Joanna and Amy stood still in fascination at Teddy’s candor, waiting for her response. The smell of burning butter made Amy dive back into the kitchen for a moment to turn the heat down, returning to the discussion without starting the omelet.
“What?” Meg looked utterly stricken. “I have no idea what you’re saying, Teddy. What do you mean? How could my meeting with Lou a few times at Marjolaine be a betrayal of Mark Frank’s children! That just makes no sense at all!”
“Your meetings with Lou?!” Joanna and Amy chorused together.
Reader’s note: This is very one-sided. It’s unfair that you haven’t told the story from Meg’s point of view for so many pages. MG
Author’s note: At this point in the story it seemed a better narrative strategy to limit the points of view for a tighter and less panoramic focus. Some of the tension arises from the very lack of access to Meg’s point of view, after all.
Reader’s note: So no matter what you claim and no matter how cleverly you claim it about how a novel is constructed and how it should owe no debt to reality, this novel is really more about your experience than it is about the experience of the other two sisters. AG
Author’s note: The novel does spend more time in Joanna’s point of view. It is an inevitable emphasis. It’s about artistic choices, not family politics.
Reader’s note: It’s all about you, in other words. MG
Author’s note: In a certain sense, that could be said of every novelist.
Reader’s note: In a very certain sense, we’re saying it of this novelist. AG