Look Closely (9 page)

She put her hand on my head, stroking my bangs back, making me remember the way she had done that same thing once when I was a smal child. I’d been sick, I remembered, and Del a had carried my lunch on a white tray to my room. I hadn’t been able to eat, so she sat on the side of my bed and stroked my hair until I fel asleep.

Odd,Ithought,thatitshouldhavebeenDel atakingcareofmethatdayandnotmymother,butIhad thedistinctrecol ectionofmymotherbeingabsent, of Del a coming to get me from school, Del a takingmytemperatureandhelpingmeintocoolsheets.

“You’ve always been so good to our family,” I said.

“Wel , of course. I love you al . I’ve always done what I’ve been asked.”

“You’ve been wonderful.” I paused. “I do have another question for you. As far as you know, did the police find anything after her death?”

“No,” Del a said, sitting in a chair next to me. “They talked to everyone once or twice, and they decided that whatever happened was an accident, and that’s what I came to believe, too.”

She nodded as if to reassure herself. “No one would’ve wanted to hurt your mama. Everyone loved her.”

“Everyone?” I said, thinking of the letter implying murder, and Ty’s recol ection of his father’s wordsthathewasgoingto“findoutwhokil edher.”

“Wel , sweetie, if you’re thinking about your father, he always loved your mom. Even when they separated and he was living in Chicago, he stil loved her.”

I sat without moving. The word
separated
battered my memory. Had I known this and buried it along with so many other things? Nothing came to me. Not even a shred of recognition.

“Separated?” I said, my voice coming out a little high.

Del a looked at me, her face slightly alarmed. “Yes. Your parents had broken up. You don’t remember that, either?”

7

“Hey, you’re back,” Ty said, looking up from the front desk, where he was sorting through a stack of papers. “How’d it go?”

“Okay.” I shifted my purse to the other shoulder. Although the letters from my brother and sister added no real weight, I thought I could feel them inside my purse, waiting.

Ty pushed aside his paperwork and leaned on the counter. “Want to tel me about it?”

I did. I wanted to blurt, “My parents were separated!” But more than anything I wanted to read the letters and see if I could find Dan and Caroline. “Not just yet. Thanks, though.”

A sconce shone behind Ty’s head, making his hair look redder, making him seem younger somehow. “How about going out later?” he said. “I could show you some of the Woodland Dunes hot spots.” He rol ed his eyes as he said the phrase “hot spots.”

“Yeah, maybe. I’ve got to read over some things first, and I think I’l do it on my balcony. Is there any way to get a glass of white wine sent up to my room?”

“I’l take care of it.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Ty and I stood stil a moment, smiling at each other, but then I touched my purse and felt the imagined heft of the letters. “Bye for now,” I said and headed for the stairs.

Fifteenminuteslater,Iwassettledonthechaise lounge on the balcony. On the table at my side was a wedge of Gruyère cheese, a smal loaf of bread and a bottle of pinot grigio in a tan plastic bucket that read “Long Beach Inn” on the side. Elaine, the housekeeper, had brought it up, saying it was compliments of the house. A smal note had been tucked under the napkin that read,
“Hope you find what you’re looking for. Let me know if I can help. Ty.”

The note touched me more than I’d have thought possible, and I kept picking it up, reading it again, running my finger over the blue ink. It was somethingaboutthekindness,theofferofassistancewithoutgettinganythinginreturn.Ihadnooneinmylife

whomadeofferslikethatexceptmydadandMaddy.

Otherassociatesatworkmightaskiftheycouldhelp

me,maybetakeacourtcal oradepositionfromme.

But

their

offers

were

more

about

moving

up

in

the

firm,gettingingoodwiththeyoungwomanwhohad

started

the

new

department

and

whose

dad

was

on

theexecutivecommittee,forcingmetobuildashield

aroundmyselfthatprotectedmefromal egedfriends looking for something other than friendship.

Ty’s gestures, on the other hand, felt genuine. His open smile and watchful eyes made me want to keep in touch with him even after I’d left Woodland Dunes. He wasn’t bad-looking either, the olive T-shirt barely hid a solid chest and strong arms. Then again, he lived in the Midwest, a thousand miles away from Manhattan.

I stared out at the softly lapping waves, aware that I stil hadn’t absorbed the news that my parents had split up before my mother’s death. I must have known that at some point, although Del a said that they had lived apart only a few weeks before my mom died. But why hadn’t my father ever mentioned this? And why had he seemed like the grieving widower if they’d broken up?

To distract myself, I got up and checked my voice mail in case there was an SOS cal from McKnight Corporation or someone from my office. Nothing.

The letters,
I decided.
Focus on the letters for now.
I went back onto the balcony. I put Caroline’s letters in chronological order, using the postmarks on the outside of the envelopes, then I opened and stacked them, so that the earliest rested on top. The first five letters were written on lined paper, the round holes and frayed edges on the left side making it clear they’d been ripped from a notebook. Tiny cursive handwriting, afraid to take up too much space, covered the pages. The words
Brighton Academy
were stamped on the top right corner of each sheet of paper.

One afternoon, a few days before our mom died, I had sat on the front porch swing with Caroline, and I asked her what it would be like to go to high school. At the time, she was supposed to attend the local high school in town. Caroline rubbed a hand on my back and said, “You’l be great when you go to high school. You’re pretty and happy, just the way they like

’em. For me, it’l be hel .”

“But you’re pretty,” I’d said. Caroline wore no makeup over her peach-toned skin and always had on loose clothes that could have been worn by a boy, but she couldn’t hide the dark eyelashes or her new breasts or the long, thin legs that seemed to have sprouted from her body over the last year.

“But I’m not happy.” Caroline pul ed her hand away from my back, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Why?”

Caroline shrugged. “I never have been. I don’t know how.”

A month later, with our mother dead, and Dan gone to col ege, Caroline was sent to Brighton Academy, a boarding school outside Detroit. The letter I held in my hand had been written in September 1982, Caroline’s first year there.

Dear Del a, I hate it here,

the first letter started.

The other girls are assholes. I know I’m not supposed to swear, but there’s no one around to stop me anymore. The classes are fine, I guess. Algebra is my favorite, because if you learn the rules and stick by them, everything works out the way it’s supposed to. I don’t know why people think math is so hard. I hope things are good with you in Woodland Dunes. I miss you a lot.

Caroline wrote Del a once or twice a year from Brighton Academy, and the majority of the letters were in a similar vein.
I hate this place,
she said.
I hate the other girls.
It seemed she hated everything—the teachers, the food, her roommate— everythingexceptafewclasses.Andshewaslonely.

In the spring of what I figured should have been her senior year, Caroline wrote:

Wel , I’m staying here for one more go-around. I flunked three classes accidental y. It was better than the alternative.

What, I wondered, was the alternative? Graduating and moving on to col ege or out into the world? Why wouldn’t she have wanted that if she hated the place so much?

The next letter came in the spring of the fol owing year, Caroline’s fifth at Brighton.

They passed me, and now I’m slated to walk the plank so I can leave. I don’t think I actual y did better in class. In fact, I think they passed me to get rid of me, or maybe my father paid them. Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s supposed to be here tomorrow. Nice of him, don’t you think?

I put the letter facedown on my lap. Caroline’s sarcasm made me anxious and confused. I took a sip of my wine, but it tasted too warm and citrusy now. The sun was starting to slide into a thicker, yel ow color, threatening to turn rust-red and hot-pink, but I couldn’t appreciate it. Why, why, why, I kept thinking, why hadn’t I been al owed to see Caroline? Why hadn’t my father and I
both
gone to her graduation? Was Caroline’s resentment based solely on her being sent away to boarding school? Or was it the result of something more?

I lifted the knife off the tray to cut a piece of cheese, more for something to do than out of any real hunger, but as I sliced through the brick of Gruyère, my hand slipped and the knife made a sharp scrape on the bottom of the silver tray, nearly missing the index finger of my other hand. I put the finger to my mouth, as though I had cut myself, feeling jumpy, nervous.

I managed to cut a slice of cheese, and then lifted the stack of mail from Caroline again. The next letter on the pile was written on lavender stationery and was dated seven months after Caroline’s high-school graduation.

Dear Del a, Merry Christmas. Sorry I haven’t written sooner. They asked me not to contact anyone for a while, so that I could stay “in touch” with myself instead. I keep tel ing them how ironic that request is. I’m already too in touch with myself. Oh wel . It’s not al bad here. Hope you are happy in Woodland Dunes. You can write me at the address on the envelope, and if you feel like sending some of

your oatmeal cookies, I would be thril ed.

Miss you, Caroline.

I found the envelope the card had been in and looked at the return address. Caroline’s name was listed there and below that, “Crestwood Home” and an address in “Hol y Knol s, Connecticut.” Crestwood Home? I swal owed hard on a piece of cheese.

I went inside and turned on my laptop. I could hearapealoflaughterfromdownstairsandthelow rumble of voices. Probably the happy hour Ty had told me about. Every Friday and Saturday from May to October, he opened the smal bar on the deck and treated guests to a few cocktails. Normal y, it was the kind of gathering I would have joined with optimism, hoping to meet a few nice people, hoping for that rush of belonging, even if it was just for a few hours. Right now, though, I wasn’t feeling very social.

Once my computer was powered up, I got on the Internet, clicked on “Web Search,” then typed in “Crestwood Home.” The search brought up a number of results that I had to scrol through, including a few Crestwood Inns and B and Bs. Final y, I found a Web site for Crestwood Home in Hol y Knol s, Connecticut. Under a banner with the Crestwood name hung a photo of a beautiful estate on a green lawn. Below that, in scrol ing script it said,
At the Crestwood Home and Psychiatric Institute, we are devoted to the
restoration of well-balanced mental health. Our residents live in the peaceful harmony of Connecticut horse country until that restoration is achieved.

Oh, God. I sat back, away from the laptop, staring back and forth between the photo of the lovely brick mansion that looked more like a country inn and the words
Psychiatric Institute.
I pushed the laptop away and leaned on the desk, cupping my face in my hands. Why had Caroline been there? Because she had seen something too awful, because she had known something too painful?

Or maybe, I thought, because she had done something too horrible.

8

Ipried open one eye and groaned. Even that minor movement caused a lurch of pain in my head so severe it blinded me for a second. There was light. Way too much light.

I blinked repeatedly until the other eye opened and focused. A smal , black alarm clock was on a nightstand, I could see that much, but it didn’t tel me anything except that I was in a hotel, not an uncommon event. I opened my eyes wider and moved my head toward the clock. Now I could see that it was on a white wicker nightstand instead of the usual lacquered wood veneer of most hotel tables. I continued to stare at the clock until the numbers made sense. Final y, I grasped that it was 11:00 a.m., an ungodly late hour for me. I forced my eyes past the nightstand to the source of the light—sun streaming through white-trimmed French doors. That’s when I remembered that I was in Woodland Dunes. And as I pushed myself up on my arms and took in my clothes scattered in a trail toward the bed, I realized that I was very hungover.

Last night, Ty had cal ed and told me that I should get out of the room. “You need something toeat,andc’mon,youcan’tworkal night,”hesaid.

I laughed. I wanted to say, “Tel that to the people at my firm,” but he was right. I was famished, and the text of Caroline’s letters had begun to swim and merge in front of my eyes. I wanted an excuse to escape.

“Great,” Ty said when I accepted. “We’l get you something to eat, and we’l have a few beers.”

But

a

few

beers

had

turned

into

six.

Or

seven.

Okay,

possibly

eight.

I

lost

count.

What

I

did

rememberwasTyshakinghisheadatsomepoint,saying,“Youdon’tneedanotherone,”andmegrabbing the beer out of his hand, saying, “I sure as hel do.”

I rarely get drunk, and if I do, it’s with Maddy, someone I can let down my guard with, no one else. But it turned out that I felt I could relax with Ty. It was something about the kind eyes that watched my face as I talked, the way he held the barstool out for me, the way he tried to get me to slow down on the alcohol. And he had danced with me to “Brown Eyed Girl” when I’d played it on the jukebox, even though there was no dance floor, even though some guys he knew jeered at us.

I found some ibuprofen in my bag and took two. Then another one for good measure. I lay down again, waiting for the drug to take the edge off. I buried my head under the pil ow, but stil the light from the beach forced its way into the room.