I decide I need to take control of the conversation.
“So when all those kids would come over here to sled—were they Whitney’s friends?” I ask. “Was that still going on when she was in high school?”
“Oh, sure, Whitney’s friends, then my girls’ friends later on. . . . Yeah, the high school kids loved sledding out here,” she says. She rocks a little harder and starts a long, convoluted tale about three high school boys having a dramatic crash at the bottom of the hill, and one of them breaking his leg so terribly that everyone on the hill could hear it, and some of the girls started screaming because the blood looked so extreme, dripping in the snow . . .
I am taking notes furiously until I think to ask, “And where was Whitney when that happened?”
Mrs. Congreves looks startled.
“Oh, she wasn’t here then,” she says. “Those were friends of my Rachel. That was long after Whitney graduated and . . . well, you know.”
I decide not to follow up on the “you know.” Not yet, anyway. I want to keep Mrs. Congreves talking about happy times.
“What’s your favorite memory of Whitney?” I ask.
“Oh, probably all those times she’d come over and watch Rachel and Tiffany for me,” Mrs. Congreves says. “She was the best babysitter! She’d get down on the floor and really play with them. She had all these games she made up for them, make-believe worlds where animals could talk and zebras had pink and purple stripes. . . . Dan and I would get home and the girls would say, ‘No, no, Mommy and Daddy! Go away! We want to keep playing with Whitney!’ ”
This is good stuff. I am writing as fast as I can.
“Tell me more about those games and the make-believe worlds,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t remember it all,” Mrs. Congreves says. “There was something about a cat—or was it a pig?—that could speak Spanish . . . or French. Yeah, it was French, because I can remember Tiffy running around saying, ‘Par-lay voo fran-say?’ It was the cutest thing. Or, wait a minute, did she pick that up at preschool?”
I clench my teeth.
“Do you think maybe I could talk to your girls about what they remember?” I ask.
“Oh, sure,” Mrs. Congreves says. “I’ll give you their phone numbers. Rachel’s is five-one-three . . . oh, let me go check for the exact number—I never dial it anymore, I just type in ‘Rachel . . .’ ”
She gets up and goes into the next room.
I take a sip of my iced tea, which is way too sweet, and tilt my head so I can see the Courts’ old house a little better. Now that I’m sure that really was where Whitney lived, I’ll slow down driving past on the way home. Maybe I’ll even knock at the door, ask if I can see Whitney’s old room. Or would that seem too stalker-ish?
Mrs. Congreves comes back and hands me a paper with numbers written down for each of her daughters.
“I remember something else,” she says. “Looking out the kitchen window reminded me. When Whitney would play with Rachel and Tif, she’d always say they lived in the Land of the Two Seas. Get it? Because ‘Court’ and ‘Congreves’ both started with C’s? They’d pretend that there was an ocean on either side of our house.”
I like that one a lot. I write down “Land of the Two Seas—C’s” and grin at Mrs. Congreves as she settles back into her wicker rocker. I can already see that description playing a big role in my essay.
“That’s so great,” I say. “Like, poetic even. I love it that she was so good with your girls when she was so much older, in high school and all.”
Mrs. Congreves frowns.
“Actually, I’m thinking that was more when Whitney was in middle school,” she said. “Seventh, eighth grade, you know? Once Whitney was in high school, she was busy with so many school activities, it got so it was hardly worth my time to call over there and see if she was available. I had to start calling other babysitters instead—Sandra Stivers, for example, or Lana Graham, or—”
“But Whitney still babysat for you some during high school, right?” I interrupt a little desperately.
Mrs. Congreves’s frown deepens.
“Oh, I’m sure, some,” she says doubtfully. “At least once or twice.”
This gives me permission to still use the stories about the Land of the Two Seas and the pig/cat who spoke Spanish or French, but those tales seem less valuable now. Mr. and Mrs. Court might be involved in judging the scholarship contest, as well as sponsoring it. What if they specifically remember that Whitney stopped babysitting for Rachel and Tiffany Congreves after eighth grade? What if that prejudices them against my entire essay? If somebody’s kid dies right after high school, wouldn’t the parents remember the high school years that much more, because they don’t have newer memories of their kid?
“Tell me what else you remember about Whitney in high school,” I say, perhaps emphasizing the “high school” part too hard.
“Oh, that girl was always on the go,” Mrs. Congreves says. “She’d leave for school at seven in the morning, and then we wouldn’t see her car coming back down the road until ten or eleven at night, she had so many afterschool activities. My husband and I would joke, ‘Was that trail of dust Whitney going by?’ ”
Meaning, you really didn’t see her at all when she was in high school, I think with a sinking heart.
I lead Mrs. Congreves through more questions: “Did you ever go to the football or basketball games and watch Whitney cheer?” “Did you see her in the musical, playing Maria in The Sound of Music?” “Did you see her school plays?” “Do you remember her being prom queen?” “Did you ever just see her hanging out with her friends?” But everything is vague and distant; there’s nothing more along the lines of the Land of the Two Seas. It’s clear that Mrs. Congreves and her family were on the sidelines of Whitney’s life by her high school years. Mrs. Congreves seems to want to help, I’ll give her that, but it’s like I’m asking her to dig up the old, dried-out bones of someone she didn’t even know that well to begin with.
Ugh, why did I have to come up with a corpse analogy? I scold myself.
For every lively, interesting memory I try to push Mrs. Congreves to give me about Whitney, she keeps veering off into tales she knows better about other people. I feel like I’ve now heard everything about Rachel and Tiffany Congreves’s high school years, as well Joann and Dan Congreves’s high school years more than fifty years ago. And the high school experiences of various friends and relatives of Mrs. Congreves who might have graduated from Deskins High School anytime over the past century.
“But, about Whitney,” I say, interrupting a long, rambling story about why Tiffany Congreves lost out on becoming prom queen her senior year.
Mrs. Congreves squints at me, as if she doesn’t understand why I’d stop her in the middle of such a fascinating tale.
“About Whitney,” I repeat. “Tell me . . .” I am desperate. I can’t make a whole essay out of the Land of the Two Seas. I have to get something else that’s at least that vivid. “Tell me about her funeral,” I blurt out. “Surely you went. What did people say about Whitney then? Why was everyone so sad when Whitney died? Why did they say she mattered so much?”
I wince at my own words. They’re too blunt. Too heartless. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Congreves told me I was being rude.
She doesn’t do that. Instead, she tilts her head. Her squint deepens, and she blinks several times.
“You thought Whitney was dead?” she asks. “Dead? Whitney Court didn’t die. She . . .”
And then Mrs. Congreves, who’s been talking practically nonstop for more than an hour, clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head like she’s refusing to say another word.
Now—
totally confused
“She what?” I demand. I half rise out of my wicker chair. “What you do mean, Whitney Court isn’t dead?”
Mrs. Congreves just looks at me.
“If Whitney Court isn’t dead, then why is there a memorial scholarship named for her?” I ask,
baffled.
Mrs. Congreves is still pressing her lips together like she’s trying to keep herself from talking. But she opens her mouth enough to say faintly, “I don’t think it’s called a memorial scholarship, exactly.”
Is she right? I remember that it was listed only as “The Whitney Court Scholarship” on both the information sheet that Ms. Stela put directly in my hand and the one I got from Ms. Darien, along with everyone else in AP lit class. There was no “memorial” in the official name. But I thought that was just another of Ms. Stela’s careless mistakes.
Didn’t the description of the scholarship say it was “in memory of” Whitney? I wonder.
Or was the wording more like, “in honor of Whitney Court”?
I can’t remember. I start shaking my head, just like Mrs. Congreves.
“Okay, I am totally confused,” I admit. “If Whitney Court didn’t die, then why’s there a scholarship in her name, whether it’s in her memory or her honor or whatever? Why didn’t anything about her current life show up on the Internet when I looked her up? What happened to her?”
Mrs. Congreves has her lips pressed together so tightly now that it seems like it’d take a crowbar to get her to open her mouth again.
“I thought you knew,” she finally mumbles. “I thought you were just being . . . tactful.”
“Tactful? About what?” I wail. “Why are you acting so mysterious? What did happen to Whitney Court?”
Mrs. Congreves goes back to shaking her head, more emphatically than ever.
“It’s not really . . . my place . . . to tell you that,” she says.
“Then whose place is it?” I’m almost begging now.
Mrs. Congreves keeps shaking her head. All the warmth has gone out of her eyes.
“You would have to talk to the Courts about that,” she says. “It’s really for the family to decide who they tell and who they don’t.”
She glances at her watch.
“Oh, dear, how did it get so late?” she asks, in a totally different voice than she’s been using with me all along. It’s like she’s not even trying to keep it from sounding fake. “I’m sorry, young lady, but I think we’re going to have to end this. I do have other obligations.”
This from the woman who assured me over the phone when I said I had a lot of questions, “Oh, that’s no problem! I’ve got nothing on my schedule this afternoon.”
“Please,” I say to her. “Please explain.”
“I really can’t,” Mrs. Congreves says, and it’s so odd: For someone who clearly loves to talk, it sounds like she’s relieved not to have to tell me anything else. It’s like a magician’s trick: She may still be sitting right in front of me, but she’s vanished from the conversation.
“Can I show you to the door?” she asks.
She stands up so abruptly, her wicker chair slams against the wall.
I am on autopilot now. I have a moment of flashing back to how I behaved during Daddy’s trial: Stand when someone tells you to stand; walk when someone tells you to walk. Your head may be spinning, but somehow your body can do what it’s supposed to.
Without quite realizing it, I propel myself out of my chair and stumble across the floor. Mrs. Congreves grabs my arm to help me—or, maybe, to make sure I keep moving.
My mind is stuck on repeat: But . . . But . . . But . . .
We reach the front door, and I resist the temptation to brace my feet against the doorframe and refuse to go. What good would that do?
“Good luck with your essay,” Mrs. Congreves says.
And then she gives me a little shove. I stumble out onto the front porch.
She immediately shuts the door behind me.
An even more confused now
I stand numbly on Mrs. Congreves’s porch.
What was that all about? I wonder.
I half expect the door to spring back open, Mrs. Congreves to come bursting back out: Oh, all right. I’ll tell you the rest of Whitney’s story.
That doesn’t happen. The door stays firmly shut.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the blinds of Mrs. Congreves’s front window twitch slightly: She’s checking to see if I’ve left yet.
She might call the cops, I think. The cops could look up my records; they might even tap into some database that shows the connection to Daddy . . . then they’d treat me like a felon’s daughter . . . my secret would spread . . .
I’m extrapolating way too much—thinking too much like Mom—but at least I understand the problem of being related to Daddy. I can’t understand anything about Whitney. I stumble on out to Mom’s car, which I’ve borrowed for this expedition. I put the key in the ignition, turn it, drive slowly down Mrs. Congreves’s driveway. Barely thinking, I veer into the next driveway over, the one leading to Whitney Court’s old house.
I pull to the edge of the driveway and stop the car. A wind chime dangling by the patio sends out an eerie tinkle. Was that wind chime there fifteen years ago, when Whitney lived here?
Why would it have been? I think. No Court has lived here in a decade. They probably couldn’t stand to stay after Whitney . . . what? If she didn’t die, was she maybe kidnapped? Is that what happened? Is that what destroyed her?
I tell myself that’s a ridiculous theory. If she’d been kidnapped, everybody would know. There would have been all sorts of references online, and people would still talk about it. The Courts would have spent their money trying to find her, not giving out scholarships.
I take the car out of park and let it inch forward slightly. Two of my tires are on the grass, digging into the Courts’ former lawn. There are no other cars in the driveway, but I think I see a flicker of movement through one of the back windows of the house. It could have been a dog or a cat or a shadow or just my imagination, but I still hit the brake.
It feels like many eyes might be watching me: from Mrs. Congreves’s house, from the Courts’ old house, from the dozens and dozens of McMansions stretching toward the horizon. I am behaving suspiciously, and for what? Even if someone is home at the Courts’ old house, there’s no reason anyone there would know Whitney.
I put the car in reverse and back up to the road. It’s a public road; there’s nothing suspicious about me driving here. I make myself accelerate to a normal speed and drive home. But I’m still dazed.
I can tell the apartment is empty as soon as I step inside. Mom has left a note on the table:
Bec,
They called me in early b/c 3 day-shift nurses got sick. Kelly’s picking me up and will bring me home tomorrow. So you’ve got the car all night. (Be careful!)
Love,
Mom
P.S. If I keep getting overtime—or a second job?—maybe it won’t matter if you can’t apply for financial aid. We’ll pay for everything on our own.
I crumple the note in my hand. Has Mom gone totally nuts? Does she have any clue what college actually costs? She can talk all she wants about being poor but honest and paying our own way, but financial aid is going to be the only route for me, unless I really do get a full-ride scholarship.
And that brings me back to Whitney Court.
Maybe Mrs. Congreves is just senile and confused? I tell myself. And she just doesn’t remember that Whitney died?
Mrs. Congreves didn’t seem senile—it’s hardly a sign of dementia that she couldn’t remember whether an imaginary animal from fifteen or twenty years ago was a pig or a cat. But I decide to try calling the Congreves daughters.
“Hello, you’ve reached Tiffany Congreves at Imagitechnics. Please leave a message.”
“Hi, Tiffany here, or, actually, not here . . . You know what to do if you want me to call back.”
“You’ve reached the offices of Dillman Incorporated. If you are calling after hours . . .”
“Rachel’s not available right now, so . . .”
I’ve run through all their numbers, work and home and cell. I don’t leave any messages. I want to know what happened to Whitney Court right now,
not whenever Mrs. Congreves’s daughters feel like calling back some stranger who thinks their mother might be senile.
I glance at the clock. It’s five forty-five p.m., a time when normal adults like the Congreves girls—er, women—would be driving home from work or maybe starting to fix dinner or hanging out with their boyfriend/significant others. (Mrs. Congreves said they each have one.) They probably won’t answer their phones for an unidentified number anytime soon.
I think of looking up the Courts’ new number in Cincinnati and calling them—Mrs. Congreves did say they were the ones to talk to about whatever happened to Whitney.
Yeah, right, I think. That would make a great impression: “So if your kid’s not dead, what happened to her?” I bet that would make them blackball me from the scholarship, right there.
I want to talk to somebody about this. I think of Rosa’s “Us poor kids have to stick together,” but I don’t want to admit to anyone I’m competing against that I’m so woefully confused.
Jala, I think. She’s not competing for this scholarship.
I dial her number. I get her voice mail too, her musical voice saying she’s sorry she can’t answer in person.
I clear my throat and start rambling: “Hi, uh, I was hoping you could talk . . . I just had the weirdest conversation about that scholarship and I thought maybe you could help me figure something out . . . Anyhow, call me when you can. And, uh, hope everything’s going okay at OSU . . .”
A beep cuts me off before I’m done talking.
I sit there, staring down at the phone. Who else do I want to call?
Daddy, I think.
I drop the phone. I ball up my hands into fists and pound them against my forehead: No, no, no!
I do not want to talk to Daddy. Even if I did, it’s not like I could call the prison in California and they’d casually bring him to the phone, at my whim.
But Daddy would know how to find out about Whitney, I tell myself. He knew how to find out anything about anybody online. You could just pretend you were talking to him. You could just do what you know he would tell you to do.