UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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School passes by me like a dream.
I go. Talk and smile. I do all my work, follow the rules.
I don’t talk about the divorce because it’s nobody’s business and because I won’t keep it together if I have to say it out loud.
Mandy asks about my “date,” of course, and I shake my head. “It’s not going anywhere,” I tell her.
“But why? You guys would be so cute!”
“We weren’t feeling it,” I lie. “We’ll be better as friends.”
“You were so into him, though.”
“Things don’t always work out.”
“It’s just so disappointing,” she says.
I want to say, Tell me about it. But she doesn’t press.
Peter is friendly, but just. He makes eye contact in rehearsal, long and brooding Hamlet stares, but outside of rehearsal, our eyes barely meet and then flicker away.
These first couple weeks of October, we’re working only the first two acts, and it’s easy when I remove myself from myself. Nadia tells me I’m doing a good job making Ophelia regal, untouchable.
“There’s something about you that’s always a little bit sharp,” she tells me. I imagine my whole self scaled over with razor blades.
“I like that for Ophelia,” Nadia says. “She’s playing her role, but there’s a part of her we’ll never see.”
Until she cracks open. But I try not to think about that.
Home feels like a rehearsal as well.
Rehearsal for being a family of three? That’s the show Mom’s directing. She makes us eat dinner together, smiles and asks questions. Jordan and I find Mom’s performance unconvincing.
I haven’t spoken to Dad since our brief conversation the day I got cast. Mom’s stopped trying to make me take the phone.
She did invite him to my birthday, which is in the middle of October, and Dad said he’d come. If I’m honest, I really hope he’ll follow through, but I don’t want to call and say so.
Exactly one week before, Dad calls and asks to speak to me. I’d started to worry I’d pushed him away for too long, that I’d damaged things beyond repair. So I accept.
“Hi, sweet,” he says. “Got any big birthday plans?”
“No, I’m not feeling celebratory this year.”
“Oh, no? Your mom told me about your coup with the play. I have to say I’m not surprised.”
Really?
“I was,” I say, “surprised, I mean. New students don’t usually get big parts.”
“Well, they didn’t know who they were dealing with.”
He’s buttering you up for bad news, I tell myself. But maybe not. Dad used to be proud of me when I’d perform in school plays, back when that meant standing on risers to sing about patriotism or Christmas.
“Dad,” I say, “are you still coming for my birthday?”
“Well, that’s why I called,” he says. My shoulders tense. “The department wants to send me to a conference on the West Coast.”
Oh, the “West Coast,” like he’s afraid I’ll track him down if he reveals which state.
“Fancy,” I say, careful to keep my voice free of expression. It takes so few words from him to turn me inside out—my nerves, my heart, raw and exposed.
“I know it’s a bummer,” Dad says, and then chuckles. “Or maybe it’s not. I feel like I might be persona non grata in Birmingham right now.”
“No, I want to see you.”
My voice sounds tight, and I bite my lips together to prevent stray sounds from escaping.
He goes on, “Plus, it’s so soon after our big decision.”
The divorce. Why can’t people say what they mean?
“It might be more stabilizing,” he says, “if we don’t shake things up with a visit right now, let everyone get used to the idea.”
I almost say, The idea of you not visiting ever? but I restrain myself.
Dad’s a wordsmith with “stabilizing.” He makes it sound like his absence is all to benefit my mental health.
“I’m thinking I’ll come for your play,” he says. “Your mom’s told me how hard you’re working.”
“I am,” I say. I want to get off the phone so he won’t hear the strain in my voice, but I also don’t want to hang up. I have this feeling like once I hang up, I might never speak to him again.
“Thanks for understanding, Caddie,” Dad says.
I want to smash the phone, but instead I hold on tighter.
“No, I get it.”
“I’ll give you a call on your birthday, all right?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
He’s saying all the things that have to be said, back-to-back, fast, so he can get off the phone.
“Love you too,” I say. In spite of him being an ass, it’s still true.
“How was it?” Mom asks, and then, “Oh, honey,” because I guess I look stunned.
“He’s not coming for my birthday,” I say.
“Oh, honey, I know.”
She takes the phone from my hand, rubs my shoulder. I’m wearing a scarf, so my neck’s safe, but I want to lean into her, let her cradle my face, and I can’t.
She sits across from me. “You know, you and your dad are a lot alike sometimes,” she says. “You don’t love to talk about your feelings or problems,” she says.
“No, I know.”
“Your dad . . . that was one of the problems he and I had. Sometimes, I think he’d rather pretend a problem’s not there than sit down face-to-face and hash it out.”
“He’s afraid of us,” I say.
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”
“No, he is. He’s afraid of having to deal with everybody’s feelings. If he stays in Virginia, he can bury himself in work and pretend the rest of the world is all good.”
Mom’s silent but pained.
I take that to mean she agrees.
On my actual birthday, there’s a card with a check. “I didn’t know what you would like,” Dad writes. “Happy sweet sixteen!”
I don’t feel like celebrating, but Mom insists we should “move forward” and “embrace the positive.”
On her insistence, we invite everybody over for my “birthday feast!”
Mandy and Drew arrive first, and Drew’s a big hit with Mom. He shakes her hand gallantly and says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“Oh, I’m not a ‘ma’am,’” she says. “I’m a Molly.”
When she makes a comment about wanting to pack up some of Dad’s stuff to ship, Drew says, “You’re single? That’s crazy.”
“Drew!” Mandy squeals.
“I’m not trying to be crass,” he says as if offended. Drew plays the southern gentleman well. “I just find it unbelievable that someone as charming as Caddie’s mother would have trouble in the love department.”
“Well, aren’t you the sweetest?” Mom says, and offers him another ginger ale.
Jordan parks himself by Drew and they talk trucks while Mom and Mandy catch up. I’m superfluous, which is fine by me. My brain’s not even here—it’s calculating distances between my skin and theirs, projecting potential threats and how I’ll answer them. If Mom spills her drink on me and tries to help me wipe it off, I’ll grab the dishrag before she can use a paper towel, which might soak through and cause an accidental touch.
Somewhere, I know these are people who love me, here to celebrate my birthday, but the most alert, plugged-in part of me sees them as accidents waiting to happen, last straws.
I’m getting worse.
“We got lost, like, eight times!” Livia says when she and Hank arrive half an hour late. The roads around here wind in strange directions to accommodate the hills, the street lamps are spread far apart, and the signs aren’t always helpful. Sometimes it feels like they’re trying to deter strangers from visiting.
Some part of me is glad they made it—I’d started to wonder if they’d blown me off—but more of me is troubled by new bodies in the room. I wouldn’t mind it if everybody got lost and gave up, but eventually everyone makes it.
Even Peter.
Of all of them, he was the one I felt least sure would come, but he arrives with Oscar. Like Drew, they shake Mom’s hand and call her “ma’am.”
Oscar even brings me a present—something oblong and messily wrapped in Christmas paper. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s all I could find.” Knowing Oscar, the shape makes me nervous, but it’s just an eclair from a nice bakery in Crestline.
“Thanks,” I say.
And he says, “My pleasure. Consider it an apology for my assholery.”
He pops a grin at Peter, who smiles. Maybe they talked about Project A-hole, or maybe Oscar’s sharper than Peter gives him credit for. I wonder if they talked about me, about the failed “date.”
Peter makes eye contact with me, and maybe I’m making things up, but his smile seems rueful. Peter’s “present” to me was only a few weeks ago. It felt like the start of something, but it didn’t last.
It’s started getting chilly at night, but it’s still nice enough to sit on the back porch without coats. We leave the porch lights off and instead light the lanterns and candles. The earthy scent of damp leaves and crisp air, the flames, the whiff of smoke from a neighbor’s chimney, remind me of campfires at Tannehill State Park. Dad would always pick a campsite by the stream, so we could hear the water rushing by as we slept.
A pang seizes me, and I press it down. I have company.
Hank, Livia, and Oscar squeeze onto the cushioned bench facing the woods, and Peter and I sit with our backs to the wood railing, leaving plenty of space between us. Mandy and Drew take Mom and Dad’s rocking chairs, hands clasped so their arms form a “V”. It’s sweet, but it gives me another pang.
As soon as Mom’s out of sight, Drew offers to spike our sodas with a big plastic bottle of Beam from his backpack, but Mandy shoves it back in and says, “Caddie’s mom isn’t crazy like mine. She’d kick us out for that.”
Livia teaches a game with teams where we try to make each other guess the names of celebrities. When we count off, Peter ends up on my team and the whole time we’re playing, I can’t keep from trying to read him, to see if he’s saved any feeling for me or if I’ve put an end to that for good.
Dad calls in the middle of the game. Mom sticks her head out the back door to let me know, and I say, “Tell him I’m busy.”
I feel Peter looking at me, but I resist the impulse to meet his eyes.
As things wind down, Peter seems to glance my way more often, and Mandy keeps looking back and forth between us. When Hank and Livia call it a night, Peter pulls another soda from the cooler.
Mandy tells Drew and Oscar she wants to show them this “really cool” portrait of a cow that hangs over the fireplace in the living room. It’s Mom’s great-granddad’s national prize-winning Black Angus cow, Black-Eyed Susan.
Mandy isn’t the most subtle. She says, “Peter, you stay and keep Caddie company.”
“Do some things I’d do,” Drew says as he goes.
Peter and I sit, not exactly in silence, but close. The summer tree frogs have quieted, but the crickets are still at it, and off in the woods, critters with a stunted sense of self-preservation rustle loudly in the undergrowth.
Finally, Peter says, “How have you been?”
“Okay.”
“You didn’t want to talk to your dad.” I feel his eyes on me, but I don’t meet them.
“Nope.”
After that respectable exchange, we once again slip into silence.
“It sucks,” he says, breaking it again.
“What does? I mean, I know a lot of things do, but what in particular?”
“Well, it sucks that you can’t talk to your dad. I’ve been there, and that’s no fun for anyone. But I meant, more than that, it sucks that things are like this between you and me. I didn’t mean to make things awkward.”
“You didn’t,” I say. I shift to look at him. He’s tucked up his knees and hunched over, picking at a splinter of wood from the railing.
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t tried . . . If I’d left it friendly . . .”
“I can be shy.”
“I know.”
“I don’t mean to be.”
Peter moves so he’s facing me. The flicker of the candles gives his face a honey glow. “You don’t have to apologize,” he says. “You’ve got a lot going on right now.”
“But that isn’t an excuse,” I say. “I think maybe I’m afraid of starting something. I’m always afraid something bad’s about to happen.”
It’s the closest I’ve come to admitting my fears to anyone. “Maybe we need to get to know each other better,” I say, “before we try anything . . . more, you know?”
It sounds like something a normal girl might ask for. It sounds so reasonable, even I believe it for a moment—that given enough time, I might be able to let the fear go.
“Yeah?” Peter says, smiling. “I’d like that.”
His words inspire a heady mix of feeling. There’s fear in there, but warmer feelings too, like hope.
When the other three come back, it’s like the weather’s changed. Before, the crisp in the air felt like a warning. Now, it’s possibility—newly raked leaves to be jumped in, fresh-chopped wood for a bonfire, an empty jack-o’-lantern waiting to be filled. We’re still standing on the edge of something, but for tonight at least, I can hope that if the ground beneath us crumbles, we might be falling into something good.