You Will Know Me

  “Drew—”

  “‘“First, I prick the design. Then comes the dye.”’” Drew flipped a page, found another highlight. “‘“The mark will stay with you for life,” cried the pirate.’”

  “Drew, honey, listen to me. I’ve got to go see Coach T. for a little while.”

  “Mom, the tattoo ruins your life,” he said, looking up. “Once he puts it on you, you have bad luck forever.”

  She could ask Mr. Watts to watch him, but she didn’t want to. (What had he meant, anyway? That she’d been standing at the screen door before the accident. That she—)

  “You have a tattoo, Mom.”

  “I do,” she said. “Not a pretty one.” Fight Like a Grrrl on her left thigh. She’d done it stick-and-poke style, with a sewing needle and an ashes-vodka slurry when she was Devon’s age.

  Placing her hand on the top of his head softly, she said, “Pal, you think you’d be okay here for a few minutes by yourself?”

  “I saw it when we went swimming that time.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said, “so the curse must be over.” A funny hitch in her voice.

  “And a pirate didn’t give it to you.”

  “No,” she said. “I gave it to myself.”

  Drew’s always-sticky phone in her hand, checking the battery charge, she explained again how to reach her, as if he hadn’t called her hundreds of times.

  “It’s only nine blocks,” she said. “And Mr. Watts is next door if you need anything. Or if you just get lonely. But I’ll only be gone a half hour. I’m just at Coach T.’s.”

  “Okay,” he said, the book still between his fingers, his other hand scratching his temple, the rash peeling now, like an overripe plum.

  “I’ll be back before you know it,” she said, opening the front door, car keys clutched in her hand. “It’s just nine blocks.”

  “I think this is going to be my favorite book,” he said.

  “That’s good. It’s nice to have a favorite book.”

  “Ryan had a favorite book,” he said. “He kept it in his back pocket all the time.”

  “Did he?” She looked outside, at the quiet street. No sign of Mr. Watts or anyone at all.

  “You know he did,” he said.

  She turned and, for the first time ever, he looked at her like he knew she was lying. Which she was, though she wasn’t sure why. But in that look, his eyes dark and sad, she knew something had ended, that great parental loss, the moment they realize you’re not perfect, and maybe even a little worse.

  “In his back pocket,” he added, watching her, squinting. “You know it.”

  She sat in her car for a minute, staring up at the sprawling house, bright yellow with white trim, like a slab of coconut cake, layers piled high.

  The new cedar deck stretched twice the length of the entire first floor of the Knox house.

  No sign of the detectives’ unmarked black Dodge.

  Katie smelled her shampoo first. Like Love’s Baby Soft.

  Then, walking across the softly carpeted living room, she saw her.

  Knees together, hands folded, Hailey posed. Swimmer’s shoulders hidden in a blush-pink oxford shirt, her face was paler than her usual golden-girl glow, but she was meticulously groomed. Katie pictured Tina leaning over her niece, brushes and wands and implements, incanting some kind of brisk Southern sorority-girl magic. Jerking Hailey’s curls into a long ponytail that looked as shiny as a girl’s favorite doll, soft and staticky and overtended so Katie could see every brush mark.

  But something was wrong. One sandy spiral hung down, a forelock that didn’t belong. A big hank of her hair got torn out. Artfully positioned to cover a bare patch, pink puckered. Her scalp opened up where she hit the floor.

  “Okay,” Katie said. “Why am I here?”

  All three of them, sentried together on the sofa, heavily upholstered in bold plaid, her uncle and aunt didn’t look at Hailey, and she didn’t look at them.

  They all looked only at Katie, their eyes clear and inscrutable.

  “Eric wouldn’t come?” Teddy asked.

  “I told you he’s at work. You’re going to have to deal with me.”

  Teddy nodded, then Tina too, watching Katie closely, with twinkling eyes.

  “Katie, we are thanking the heavens that Hailey’s name has been cleared.”

  “Has it, Tina?” Katie said, straightening herself. Readying herself. “Because my daughter’s battered body suggests otherwise.”

  Teddy’s head bobbed in dramatic assent. “I know that none of this takes away what Hailey did, laying her hand in anger on our Devon,” he said, pointing at his niece as though she were set in a pillory, face winsome and pleading. “But Katie, can I ask you, do you know, truly, how you might behave if you lost the person who mattered most to you?”

  “And you were the one blamed?” Tina burst in. “That you not only lose your true love in a horrific accident, but on top of it you face this smear campaign—suspicion, rumors, dirty digs—”

  Teddy raised his arm in front of Tina like spotting the girls on the bars, and her mouth closed briskly.

  “Grief can drive you mad, Katie,” he said, taking a different tack. “That wasn’t our Hailey in the locker room with Devon. That was grief.”

  “Well,” Katie said, looking over at Hailey, unable to stop herself, “it sure looked like Hailey when I pulled her off my four-foot-ten, ninety-two-pound little girl.”

  Turning her head slowly, Hailey met Katie’s gaze. Composed, enigmatic. Katie had never seen her like this—a young woman whose face had always been like soft taffy, stretched into smiles, laughter, C’mon, gymmies, let’s show ’em what we got. But maybe that had been a composition too, a mask. You never really knew anybody.

  “Katie,” Teddy said, clearing his throat, leaning forward. “I understand there’ve been some issues between Devon and Hailey.”

  He turned, for the first time, to Hailey.

  “But Hailey was wrong about some things.”

  Katie looked over at Hailey, her stillness.

  “And”—Teddy was still talking, his dulcet tones and bent brow, that mesmer-coach thing he could do—“I need you to know she has not shared with the police any of the wrong things she once believed. About your daughter.”

  “Ron wouldn’t let her, thank God!” Tina jumped in. “He said it would only have made things worse for her. It would have made her look…a certain way. That’s what Ron—”

  Teddy’s arm came up once more.

  “And she will not be telling them now, or ever,” he said. “None of us will.”

  Teddy and Tina looked earnestly, meaningfully at Katie. Their matching pearly hair, their tanned skin and finely laundered sportswear.

  Beside them, Hailey. All three of them, their honeyed tans blurring together, the crispness of their shirts. All three becoming as one. A united front. Confederates. That’s what families were, weren’t they? The strong ones, the ones that last. Not supporters or enablers so much as collaborators, accomplices, coconspirators.

  Hailey looked at her uncle, face benumbed, and nodded. A stuttering nod, like a record skipping.

  “Yes, Mrs. Knox,” Hailey said, nodding and nodding. “I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. I behaved wrongly and I believed false things.”

  There was a mysterious interlude, the passing around of footed glasses, the pouring of Tina’s ambered sun tea, the entrance of Nadia and Nastia, Tina’s snapping terriers, nipping and licking at Katie’s feet.

  Katie felt confused, light-headed in a way she couldn’t recall since she was a child when the dentist put that glorious sucking mask over her face, what he used to call “happy hour.”

  Now, the talk was of the warming weather, the ragweed, the problems with their new deck, wood already splitting in the vertical posts, and did they need to sue the contractor. It was always something with these contractors, the workers they hired.

  Somewhere, in all of it, Hailey disappeared into the kit
chen, for napkins, for sugar, and never returned.

  “Where did she go?” Katie asked, head jerking backward.

  The temporary looseness in Teddy’s bisque-colored jowls tightened and he leaned toward her again, setting his glass on the table.

  “Katie, don’t you worry about Hailey. She had her come-to-Jesus moment locked in that unholy facility. That is over. And I get why Eric wouldn’t come with you today. But maybe you can talk to him. About his plans for Devon, and BelStars.”

  Tina sprang forward, past Teddy’s block this time.

  “John Ehlers is a fraud!” she shouted. “He’s tried to poach from us before. He’s tried many times. The stories I could tell you about him. About how he’s boarding one of his gymnasts. A sixteen-year-old. He says it’s all proper, but she’s posting pictures of herself on his water bed—”

  Teddy’s hand landed firmly on Tina’s linen-shod knee and her mouth shut again.

  He looked at Katie, those misty eyes he used to such strong effect during his pre-meet speeches.

  “Katie, gymnasts—all gymnasts but especially the exceptional ones—thrive on routine, on fair winds and following seas. And I can’t apologize enough for our role in disrupting those waters for Devon. But we want things to go back.” His eyes glowing wetly, Katie feeling her chest swelling out of habit. “We want to return to those bright days when all our hearts and minds were directed toward Elite Qualifiers. We want what you want: for Devon to realize her deepest promise, at last.”

  On his feet now, lifting Katie to her feet too, holding her hands in his, between his.

  “With your say-so, we start over, now. We refocus all our efforts. Forget all this confusion, leave it in the darkness. Remove any obstacles from our champion’s way. Return to our path, the one we mapped out together, all those years ago, all of us together, right here in this house, at that table in there.”

  Katie looked through the arched entry into the dining room. She could see it. Eric and herself leaning forward nervously, watching Teddy with his Sharpie, his flow chart. Deciding Devon’s future.

  She felt something turn inside her. A phantom kick to the ribs.

  At that moment, a sharp thwack vibrated from the ceiling. And something else, almost like an animal scratching a carpet on the floor above them.

  “You say the word, and the minute you leave,” Teddy said, as if he hadn’t noticed. Could he really not notice? “Bang goes the starter pistol. We are back.”

  Tina was on her feet now too, her hand on Katie’s shoulder, the hard pebble of her engagement ring pressed there, talking loudly into Katie’s ear, loudly over the thudding of a door over and over again upstairs.

  “Practice at two forty-five sharp, as ever,” Tina said. “Devon back where she belongs.”

  Upstairs, a brief lull came, before the ceiling itself seemed to shake from a fathoms-deep, from-the-bellows sobbing.

  “And I promise you this,” Teddy intoned, moving closer to her, all their bodies nearly touching, as if in prayer. “I will devote every fiber of my being, every cell in this aging body, every drop of my heart’s blood to making Devon a Senior Elite in one month’s time. She will have it. I leave it in your hands.”

  What could she say? What else could she possibly say?

  This is how it is, Katie thought, sitting in the parked car, not ready to turn the key. Our shared effort, the things we all do to keep following that Sharpied arrow.

  It made her think of something from months back. She’d come upon Eric and Teddy in the living room, watching footage from Devon’s failed bid for Junior Elite two years ago. Their faces lit by the screen, Eric’s hand on the remote, pausing on every frame of the vault. Hurtling down the runway, round-off, feet slapping board, rocketing backward, hands hitting table, body rising, left arm down, right elbow lifted, and then twisting, arms close to chest, spinning madly like a lathe.

  Then landing, legs fused, on the mat.

  Again and again, the frame palsied on that landing, that slightest of ankle rolls, the half step at most. A decade of work, an inch, two, of blue foam.

  “That’s always been her Achilles’ heel,” Teddy had said. “That foot. It makes her work the other one too hard. It’s like she can’t bear how wrong that foot is.”

  “The foot’s not wrong,” Eric had replied, eyes on the screen. “The foot’s everything.”

  Still sitting in her car, from the corner of her eye, she saw a blond blur speeding past the Belfours’ side deck, the one she’d stood on after Ryan’s funeral.

  Pound, pound, pound across the deck, the sharp twang of the small dive board.

  A swelling plunge, a splash from the chemical depths of the Belfour pool.

  Exiting the car, Katie walked quickly up the lawn and through the arbor.

  Just then, Hailey emerged from the water and climbed, shirt and jeans drenched, up the ladder.

  “Hey!” Katie said. “I need to ask you something.”

  Sweeping her hair back with her hands, the pectoral fins of a slender dolphin, she looked over at Katie, chin trembling. Katie could see the stippled spot on the scalp where the hair was gone, the purple under her eye where Devon’s teeth had been.

  “They’ll see you,” Hailey hissed, eyes darting toward the house. “They see everything.”

  Her pink shirt stuck to her brown skin, Hailey sat, dripping, in Katie’s passenger seat.

  “Mrs. Knox, I can’t talk to you,” she said, the wetness like a presence, a third thing in the car. “I made promises. I made my promises and I’m taking the pills and I’m moving back home with them. I’m getting my act together.”

  “Maybe you’ve convinced them,” Katie said, “but I’m not convinced. How do I know you’re not going to wake up tomorrow and call those detectives or come after my daughter again?”

  Hailey shook her head, water scattering across Katie’s arm. “I’m not saying a word. I’m never saying anything. What would it get me, Mrs. Knox?”

  Katie said nothing for a second, watching Hailey, her eyes pinned, her hands tucked under her soaked jeans. She looked like a teenage girl gone wrong, caught and cowed.

  “Mrs. Knox, I don’t know what happened to Ryan,” Hailey said, eyes flitting up the slope to her uncle’s house.

  “I didn’t ask—”

  “But I do know about Ryan and your daughter, and I’m not talking about it. Not ever. So can I leave now? Can I?”

  “But why?” Katie knew she shouldn’t ask. She couldn’t stop herself. “Why would you do that?”

  “They took care of me,” Hailey said. “Uncle Teddy and Aunt Tina. When I was Devon’s age, younger, I…You know how babies, when they first come out, you swaddle them? To keep them from scratching themselves, from scaring themselves? That’s what it was like.”

  Katie felt her phone vibrating under her hand but didn’t dare look. Instead, she focused on the browning half-moon under Hailey’s eyes. Had Devon really bitten her?

  “And they’re still here, looking after me, even after everything the last week.” Then a funny look passed over her face, a shadow, something. “I should’ve listened to Aunt Tina. She never trusted Ryan. A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end, she said.”

  She looked over at Katie, a smile lurking, rueful and sharp-toothed.

  “The night it happened, I thought he was going to propose. I thought that’s why he’d picked the nice restaurant. But he’d picked it so I wouldn’t make a scene when he broke up with me.”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  “I spent the rest of the night sobbing my heart out, then I find out he’s dead. And I want to die from how bad it hurts.” She shook her head, the scattering of droplets, her eyes chlorine red. “Then, the day of the funeral, I get this call. From Ahee Jewelers. They saw my name in the death notice and called me up. Ryan had ordered something but hadn’t picked it up. So I got there and you can guess what I’m expecting.”

  Katie took a breath. “A ring.”

  ??
?Sure. And what do I find instead?” She reached into the nearly sealed wet pocket of her jeans. Yanking something out, she then slapped it in her other palm. “I can’t seem to stop carrying it around.”

  It was a necklace, gold plate. It was cheap, a girl’s mall necklace. A pendant dangling at the end, a tiger figurine.

  A tiger like the poster in Devon’s room. A tiger like her lucky stuffed animal, plush and matted.

  A tiger for Devon. Its haunches spreading, its legs poised, as if about to vault.

  Small as a peanut, Ryan had said to Katie that time, about Devon, but strong as a tiger.

  “Eye of the goddamned tiger, just like her stupid routine,” Hailey said, staring at the necklace. “I slammed my fist on Ahee’s glass counter and cracked it. They said I had to leave.”

  “You’re lying,” Katie said, shaking her head. “You knew about them before he died. You’d been sending her texts. You sent her texts the night he died.”

  She looked at Katie, head tilted, still holding the necklace, the tiger spinning in the air between them.

  “No. I found out when I went to the jeweler. The day of the funeral.”

  “That’s not true,” Katie said, thoughts churning. Remembering Ryan’s funeral reception, Hailey thumping on the glass, demanding things.

  “I never sent her any texts, Mrs. Knox. I had no idea about Devon. That’s how dumb I was. I should’ve known. Everything’s always about Devon, for all of us. Right? My uncle, my boyfriend, those booster parasites. It’s all about Devon and that fierce little body of hers, and that deformed foot. Everything depends on it.”

  “You’re a pathetic girl,” Katie blurted. “You’re a pathetic little girl.”

  “Isn’t it something,” Hailey said, her gaze returning to the tiger necklace, her breathing harder now, “the things we do for our family?”

  Reaching out, Katie grabbed for the necklace so forcefully Hailey flinched.