“I used to be,” I said, with some regret. “Although now I think maybe that was just wishful thinking.”
“I always suspected that those prim and proper girls were repressing actual personalities,” Rachel assured me. “You’re just confirming that.”
“By being a terrible person? A liar and a cheater?” I shrugged. “But of course you already knew that.”
“I don’t see any point in beating yourself up over things you can’t change,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. I pulled up in front of her house. “Actions might speak louder than words, but only what you learn matters.” She crooked a brow at me. “So sayeth the rum and Coke.”
Hope returned from Costa Rica deeply tanned and unprepared to discuss the trip with our parents.
“I promise,” she told Mom over dinner, “I’ll show you the pictures.”
“You said that about your trip to Canada and have I seen a single photograph?”
Mom’s tone was a classic: the oh, how you wound me tone.
“That was like five years ago, and I told you, the film was ruined,” Hope gritted out.
She caught my eye across the table and shrugged, then mimicked smoking. Presumably not tobacco.
“I’d love to go to Costa Rica,” Dad chimed in. As ever, deaf to tones and mimed communication. “Not to collect any fish, per se, but some of the saltwater varieties are supposed to be quite amazing. I’d love to see some of those babies up close!”
“It’s great to be home,” Hope murmured and closed her eyes briefly, as if to summon her strength.
Later, we sat in the cheesiest of the town bars. It was filled with piano music and desperate-looking blind date types, and we thereby avoided Hope’s minions, who would never allow themselves to be seen in the place.
“What happened to you down there?” I asked, when I’d depressed us both with my tales of temping and other humiliations. “You seem different. Is it Costa Rican fever?”
“I feel different.” Hope frowned into her drink. “You know, I’ve had a great summer, more or less. We hung out, which was cool, and even hanging around here was fun. It was all good.”
“I’m glad someone had fun.”
Hope eyed me. “I bet you that one day you’re going to reflect on this summer and think that it was actually the best thing that ever happened to you,” she said. “You already know it. If you didn’t, you would have stayed down south and worked things out with your frat boy.”
“We were talking about you.”
“Right.” She shrugged, and cupped her hands loosely around her beer. “So we decided to hike up this mountain, which looked like no big deal, even though it was near an active volcano.”
“How was that no big deal? How could that possibly be no big deal?”
“Because an active volcano down there is like a pine tree here, I don’t know,” Hope said, waving a dismissive hand. “There was this whole monkey incident when we were starting out which I can’t talk about because I’m still freaked out, but then everything was great. Nice hike, pretty on top, except it was about to rain. And we figured, no big deal, it would obviously take a long time for the water to penetrate through the leaves and get to us, and we probably had plenty of time to hike back down before it mattered that it was raining.” She smiled. “Sounds reasonable, right?”
“I don’t know anything about Costa Rican rain forests.” I was apologetic. Hope let out a bark of laughter.
“Yeah, well, neither do I. And neither does Katie, I assure you. It took all of fifty seconds for us to be involved in some kind of flash flood roaring down the side of the mountain, which looked like it was only going to get worse, and possibly carry us away with it, which would mean broken bones and a slow, painful death from exposure. If we were lucky. If we weren’t lucky—wild animals.”
“What did you do?” I asked, fascinated. I would probably sit down and cry, all things considered. Hope was far more intrepid.
“We ran,” Hope said, with a certain grimness. “Down the side of a mountain. For about two hours. I was pretty sure we were going to die up there.”
“Thank God you didn’t,” I said, unable to even think of it.
“And that’s the point,” Hope said firmly. “I thought I was going to die on this mountain in the middle of nowhere, and nobody had any idea I was even there. No one would even think to miss me for a week or so, since no one knew anything about our itinerary. Some guy in the office at the foot of it had our passport numbers, but how long before they would even think to look?”
“This is what you thought about?” I asked. “You couldn’t concentrate on anything more positive at such a time?”
“That’s when it clicked,” Hope said, ignoring me. “If I die in some foreign jungle, I want it to make the nightly news—that night—in several countries. I don’t want to just vanish. This was all very, very clear in the jungle, and it forced me to come to a decision.” She smiled grandly. “I’m going to Hollywood.”
I stared at her for a minute and let that statement hang between us.
“But not now,” she amended, in slightly less ringing tones. “After New Year’s, when pilot season starts.”
“Wow,” I said. “But, Hope. I mean, you’re gorgeous, you know it, and you have this thing about you which is probably that X factor thing they’re always talking about, but can you actually . . .” I paused, delicately. “Act?”
Hope smiled. “As a matter of fact,” she said. “I can. I did a lot of theater at school.” She laughed at my expression. “I don’t just mean in a social sense. I was pretty good. I just didn’t tell you guys about it, because I didn’t want Mom giving me that speech about dreams versus reality again.”
I shuddered. “I got that speech when I announced that I wanted to wander around Europe looking at art and maybe someday become an art historian. Brutal.”
“I’ll tell them after Christmas,” Hope said, leaning back in her seat. “That will give them exactly no time to react, and then they can just harass me by telephone.” She crooked a brow. “Which is always better, because I won’t have to be involved. The beauty of voice mail.”
Chapter 15
That Saturday, I decided to take myself shopping.
I managed to slip out of the house without having to explain to my mother how my underemployed self could afford to shop, or having to discuss with my father the exciting reproductive developments of live-bearing guppies.
I snuck down the stairs and took off in my car like I was escaping from Attica.
I was only about fifty feet down the street, however, when I recognized the figure running in the street, and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled up next to him.
“Morning,” I said out the window.
Scott rocked to a stop and looked at me, wiping at his face with one arm. I didn’t think it was at all fair that, sweaty and exerting himself, Scott just looked even sexier than usual. I had once viewed my own appearance after running, had found the red face only slightly more upsetting than the frizzy hair, and knew there was absolutely nothing sexy about it.
“How can you already be scowling at me?” Scott demanded. “I haven’t even said anything!”
“Why are you running in this neighborhood? Why don’t you go running near where you actually live?”
“I like the route I have over here better, and why do you care?” A beat and then, more calmly: “Where are you going?”
“Christmas shopping.” I arched my eyebrows at him.
Scott’s hands came to rest on his hips and he squinted down at me.
“You know it’s months away, right? Or has this been a really long run?”
“It’s only going to get more crowded and horrible as time passes,” I warned him.
“Why do women shop all year round for one day in December? It’s impossible to catch up. My mother has extra gifts going back fifteen years. How can I compete with that?”
He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble along his lean jaw was a revela
tion. I jerked my eyes slightly more north. Scott’s smile was knowing.
“Want to come?” I asked, without meaning to or even knowing I was going to say anything.
I must have looked as surprised as I felt.
“Where did that come from?” he mocked me. “You want to reconsider?”
“A simple yes or no is all you need to say,” I said primly.
“I’ll come,” Scott said, after a long, assessing look I could feel in my toes.
But first he demanded that I take him back to his house to change, which meant I got to spend an uncomfortable twenty minutes staring around his living room and remembering the last time I’d been there.
He jogged down the stairs, in old jeans and a T-shirt, and we stared at each other for a moment. I wondered what he could see in my eyes, because his own narrowed slightly. He said nothing, and angled his head toward the door.
Scott lounged in the passenger seat and propped his arm across the headrest behind my head. He looked particularly at ease, and I was aware of every single breath he took.
“So how’s the big wedding coming along?” he asked. “Are Jeannie and Christian getting ready to pledge their love?” His voice was just shy of full-on mockery, so I ignored it.
“It’s all fine,” I said. “I mean, given what you think ‘fine’ means when you’re talking about the most anal person alive—that would be my mother—and the scariest woman alive—that would be Jeannie’s mom.”
“You’re not kidding. I remember that woman. I think she ate kids for fun.”
“She still does,” I said. “And then there’s the bride, who pretends to be laid-back but is secretly high-maintenance.”
“Jeannie Gillespie in a nutshell,” Scott said, and laughed. “My mother predicted she would marry your brother, you know. Years ago, when we were still kids.”
“Really?” How had I been so oblivious to that eventuality?
“Sometimes she can just read people,” Scott said with evident pride.
“It’s good that you and your mother are so close,” I said. Meanwhile, mine seemed to be from a different planet. But maybe all daughters felt that way. “She must really depend on you.”
“You know my dad died when I was ten,” Scott said.
I nodded, not sure what else to do. Were you supposed to offer your condolences some eighteen years after the fact? The moment to do so passed, and he continued.
“So five or six years later, I was this angry teenage boy with no life and my mother started seeing other men. And I seriously flipped out. There was this one guy in particular . . .” He shook his head. “She ended up getting rid of him to keep me happy. Meanwhile, I grew up and realized that she was just as entitled to a chance at happiness as anyone else, and who was I to ruin that for her?” He shifted in his seat and his smirk was directed at himself for once. “So, yeah. She depends on me. It’s the least I can do.”
“You can’t blame yourself for her not finding someone else,” I said before I thought better of it.
I could feel his eyes on the side of my face, and concentrated on the road in front of me with more ferocity than was strictly necessary.
“I can’t?” he asked, surprised. And maybe something else.
“Your mother’s happiness is her own responsibility,” I told him, a little fiercely. “If she wanted to date that guy, she would have dated that guy. Maybe she’s happier on her own.” I remembered suddenly that I was talking about his mother and coughed slightly. “I mean, what do I know, I’m just—”
“It’s okay,” he said. I snuck a look and saw a smile playing around his mouth. “I’m not that fragile.”
But I wondered.
“So explain to me why Southern Comfort let you go,” Scott said, out of nowhere. We were strolling along one of the corridors in the mall, listening to the Muzak. “That seems like a boneheaded move.”
I was so startled by the question that I was nearly mowed down by a pack of teenagers. Scott pulled me out of their path and smiled down at me.
“This was such a strange summer,” I said after a long moment. “I’m almost convinced that my personal life is your business.”
“I could pretend that I don’t want to know,” Scott said agreeably. “But I thought I’d just go for it and see what happened. It’s a lawyer thing.”
I smiled despite myself, and looked up at him. “It’s not what you think,” I warned him. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“That’s good, right?” He shrugged. “For you, anyway.”
“The thing is,” I said, looking at the ground and not answering him, “I think I just got caught up in being the kind of person who would be in that particular relationship. I think—” I broke off. “It’s really hard to talk to you about this,” I told him, looking him straight in the eye. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Maybe I don’t want anything from you,” he replied in an even tone. “Do we have to go there?”
“Look!” I said too brightly as we approached a store with both men’s and women’s clothes. “Let’s go in.”
“Nice dodge,” he said, but he was smiling.
Scott tried on a ridiculous oversized shirt in an obnoxious shade of orange that he claimed to love, and I experimented with straw hats.
“You can’t buy that shirt,” I told him.
I flung the hat back in the bin.
“I have to have this shirt. It wants me to have it.”
“It wants to hurt you.”
“You’re crazy!” He held it up against his chest and waved it at me. “See? How can you resist?”
“It’s evil. Scott, it’s orange.”
“You have no soul,” he told me with a sigh, but he didn’t buy the shirt.
We had lunch in one of the restaurants attached to the mall.
“So what’s it like spending so much time with your family?” He smiled at me. “Do you feel like you’re reliving your youth?”
“Just paying for it,” I assured him.
“Your little sister seems pretty cool,” Scott said.
“She is,” I agreed. “It’s been great to get to know her. It’s my parents who’ve become total strangers. Maybe they always were, I don’t know.”
“Parents are tough,” Scott said, watching me.
I told him about my father and his fish, and about my mother’s curious decision not to cut short her European vacation. Of course, the moment I’d finished speaking, I was filled with a searing sense of shame for exposing her like that.
“Your mom’s always been pretty intense,” Scott said. “I think the hardest part about watching parents get older is that they become more and more like caricatures of themselves. All the dramatic parts, and none of the stuff that made the drama okay.”
“She’s actually an amazing woman,” I hastened to tell him. “She raised three kids and took over all these volunteer organizations when what she really wanted to do was go to graduate school. She’s the most well-informed person I know. She reads the paper cover to cover every single day, and reads about five books a week. She could have been just as powerful and successful as my father if she’d wanted to, maybe even more so. She’s amazing,” I said again, my defense winding down.
Scott was looking at me in a way that made me want to curl into a ball, preferably where he could hold me.
“I don’t think I understand her or her life,” I confessed. “And the longer I live at home, the surlier I get. I keep expecting to mutate into a troll, so everyone can see what kind of person I am. Any day now.”
There was a beat. I wondered where that had come from.
Scott studied me for a moment. “You’re not going to mutate into a troll,” he assured me. “Anyway, there would be warning signs, probably. Like falling into a vat of radioactive sludge. Let me know if that happens.”
“You should be more concerned than anyone,” I said. “You had a front-row seat to my bad behavior. And when the troll takes me over? You’re going do
wn.”
His eyes warmed. “You’re not turning into a troll.”
“I appreciate that, but you know, you’re the person I cheated with, so you’re hardly in a position to judge.” Because there was no need to pretend we had any kind of pretty history here.
“Meredith.” He shook his head at me. “You want to feel bad, and maybe you should. I’ve been cheated on and it sucks.”
“Thank you.” For some reason, when he joined in and beat up on me too, it hurt more.
“But you weren’t happy,” he continued. “And now you’re out of the relationship. It’s not like you’re off living a lie somewhere, pretending everything’s okay while you’re beating yourself up inside. That’s insane, and you know what happens?”
“More cheating and lying?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Or you take it out on the person you’re with. None of these are good scenarios. It maybe took you a while, but you ended up doing the right thing.”
I stared at his hands. They were almost elegant, and he drummed his fingers against the tabletop to a rhythm only he could hear. I liked that.
“I don’t know why you like me,” I said. “I’m not particularly nice to you either. I’m beginning to think the only person who really thought I was nice was me.”
“I liked you because you always seemed so happy.” He smiled at me. “There I was having this shitty adolescence, my family was in pieces, and there you were, always so happy. I figured if I could get close to that, to you, it would rub off on me.”
I put my glass back down carefully. I said his name, softly, and then I didn’t know what else to say.
“I figured out later that probably you were no happier than anyone else,” he said. His eyes were warm on mine. I felt caught there. “I wanted to find that comforting but really I just resented it. How come you could fake it so well? Why couldn’t I?”
“The real me must be such a crushing disappointment,” I said, only half kidding. “All messy and just as unhappy as everyone else.”
He smiled again, a real smile that I could feel myself answering even before he spoke.