Love All: A Novel (17 page)
Authors: Callie Wright
I repositioned the gearshift, jammed the gas pedal, then jerked my foot off the clutch. We lurched forward, the smell of rubber burning the air.
“Profit!” said Carl.
I shifted into second and sped up, ignoring the stop sign and whipping left onto Beaver.
“Third gear,” Sam called.
But I wasn’t shifting. The car groaned and roared in my ears as I navigated between the stone pillars at the entrance to Bassett Hall, then gunned it around the office buildings to the courts. I drove onto the grass at the top of the hill, narrowly missing a pine tree.
“Clutch,” said Carl.
I clutched and he yanked up on the emergency brake and we came to a stop with pine needles brushing the windshield, a branch gently sweeping the roof.
Sam reached between the seats and turned off the ignition. “Very nice,” he said. “Now get me out of this bitch.”
Carl set off across the dark lawn, disappearing onto the path, then emerging by the metal switch box next to the gate. Seconds later, the giant purple bulbs of the court lights began to hum and glow.
I sprang my seat forward to free Sam, who reached for my hand, and I helped haul him out. Breached, his legs came first, long and tan, with the hem of his shorts rising.
We walked in darkness down the hill to the courts. I could just make out Carl on the opposite side of the net, draped in a gauzy glow of light. He bounced a ball on his racket, knocking it higher and higher, the
thunk
of his strings a drumbeat, the buzzing lights his chorus, and the night was alive; I felt it in the fine hair on the back of my neck.
“You brought Carl,” I observed.
Sam said, “He called right after you did. I had to invite him.” I felt Sam’s hand on my waist and I glanced up. “He likes you, you know—Carl. He told me in Myrtle Beach.”
But the name was so far from the one I wanted to hear that I couldn’t register it. I shook my head as Carl called out, “Watch this,” then I felt Sam’s hand pulling me along the shrouded path to the courts. We arrived in time to see Carl drop-serving a moon shot into the air, high up above the lights, which were starting to shine now. It arced easily, weightlessly, before plunging back to earth, bouncing once, dead, then dribbling into the corner, where it came to rest in a crusty patch of snow.
“Sam,” I whispered, but he was already busy cracking a new can of balls. He held the can to his nose and inhaled deeply from the fizz of compressed air, then peeled back the metal lid. He tossed one ball to Carl and handed another to me, nodding toward Carl’s side of the court.
It made no sense for me to play with Sam. Of the three of us, Sam was by far the best player, capable of feeding alternate shots to Carl and me and keeping the ball in play no matter how poor our returns. But I didn’t want to go with Carl.
“Come on,” said Carl. “Let’s see your tennis spirit.”
My stomach knotted around the sound of his voice, balling his words into a fist that I coiled back and held. I couldn’t quite see the shape of the blow, but its potential energy swelled in my chest, sending tingles down my arms and flushing my neck and face. The night air couldn’t cool me. My vision tunneled on Carl, my roadblock, the wedge keeping me from Sam.
Sam started the rally from the service line and Carl returned his first feed into the net. “Big surprise,” he said, fetching it while Sam fed me a slice, which I dinked back.
“How was detention?” Carl asked.
“Swelfare,” I heard myself say.
“You didn’t miss anything at practice,” said Carl. “Except an extra set of wind sprints for sucking at overheads.”
He hadn’t been given an exhibition match—he would’ve said something by now, and I began to see where I’d throw my jab. It wouldn’t take much. Carl would never see it coming.
Sam started the rally again, but we were arrhythmic—Sam, Carl, net. Sam, me, wide. Carl, Sam, Carl, Sam—and soon the dissonance spread to our conversation. Questions went unanswered, words like feeds knocked straight down into the net. My racket felt heavy in my hand. We backed up to the baseline, trying to redeem the rally, but the game only got bigger, messier, with more ways to mishit and farther to travel to correct our mistakes. Carl hit a ball into Court 2 and trekked after it; the tape at the top of the net caught my slice and I left it where it fell. Sam fed me another, our final ball, and I watched it go by without moving.
“Nice look,” said Carl, reappearing at my side. “Next time you should swing.”
I stared at him. He had a ball. I held out my hand for it.
“What’s wrong?” asked Carl.
“Just hit,” said Sam, ignoring me.
Carl bounced the ball twice at his feet, then caught it in his hand and started to rock back for a serve. His racket went up as his left arm lofted and I pictured him gilded, frozen at the baseline, his hand a pink-petaled flower at the toss.
“Claw gave me an exhibition match,” I said, and watched as Carl’s arms dropped to his sides. The ball landed behind him with a soft bounce.
“Are you serious?” he asked. I shrugged. “When did you even see him?”
“After practice. He came to my house.”
“To give you an exhibition match?”
“Right,” I said.
“And you just took it,” said Carl.
“He offered,” I said.
“Did you even ask about me?”
I felt my anger ebb even as Carl’s started to flow, the tide of our feelings shifting, and I could see that in a different world we might still have avoided a fight altogether. But our battleground was a bathtub; we’d grown up together and outgrown our vessel, and there was nowhere else for our waves to go.
Carl stepped toward me, saliva on his lips, blood storming his cheeks and ears. He was three inches shorter than I was but he seemed to rise to meet me. “That should’ve been my match,” he said, his breath a visible vapor in the air. “You’re not even on the team.”
“Claw offered,” I said.
“Why?” Carl demanded. “You ditched. I had to file over here by myself and line up for all these fucking drills while you were home watching TV.”
“I wasn’t watching TV,” I said.
“Really?” asked Carl. “Then what were you doing? Watching Sam? Because that’s far worse. That’s pathetic.”
We both looked at Sam, who seemed a mile away on the other side of the net.
“Fuck you,” said Carl. Then to Sam: “Let’s go.”
Sam shrugged, sweeping the air with his racket, and the arcs and curves seemed to mean something, but I couldn’t read them. Finally Sam crossed the court to the gate and slipped into the darkness, and I heard the doors open and close on the BASS. The engine roared to life and Sam and Carl motored off, brake lights shining, then dimming as the car disappeared down the hill.
At home, I hooked my racket next to my mother’s coat in the entryway, then I pried off my tennis shoes and dropped them next to Teddy’s cleats. Quietly, I padded up the front stairs and past my parents’ room to Teddy’s bedroom, where the light glowed under his door.
“Teddy,” I said. “Can I come in?”
I peeked around the doorjamb. Teddy was sitting on the floor, flipping through one of his baseball-card binders, a collection he’d spent ages amassing.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I stood with my hand on the door in case he told me to get out.
“Seeing how much my cards are worth.”
I started to sit but Teddy told me to shut the door, so I went back and shut it, then knelt on the rug with my hands folded in my lap.
Teddy looked at me. “I’m thinking of selling them.”
“Could you get a lot?”
He shrugged. “That’s what I’m seeing.”
Teddy had open the
Beckett Price Guide
next to his left knee, which was newly skinned, pink at the edges and deep red in the middle. He’d showered since I’d seen him on the porch and now wore a pair of mesh shorts and an old Cooperstown Redskins T-shirt, ripped beneath one armpit. Deep in thought, he’d pushed his hand into his hair, and I noticed a line of tiny pimples on his forehead.
I thought of all the girls who would’ve killed to be sitting across from Teddy in his room and I looked around, trying to see what they’d see, but it was just my brother’s room: Michael Jordan posters on the walls; a bed with a bare comforter; a bureau covered with trophies that were strung with ribbons and medals.
“How much is my Oddibe McDowell worth?” I asked.
Teddy smiled. “Look it up.” I reached over his leg for the book and lugged it back to my lap. “1985 Donruss Highlights,” he reminded me. “Mint.”
I checked the table of contents and moved off to the Donruss section. Teddy kept my rookie Oddibe for me in the back of one of these binders. “Fifteen cents?” I read. “I thought it was my best card.”
“He hasn’t done a whole lot in the last ten years.”
“Would you really get rid of all these?”
“Maybe. No point in just keeping them.”
“I guess,” I said. I’d sort of thought that was the whole point. “Why do you need the money?”
Teddy studied me and I sat up straighter, trying to appear worthy.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m buying a Jeep.”
“Did Mom and Dad say you could?”
“It’s my money,” said Teddy.
“Right,” I quickly agreed, although I wasn’t sure if that mattered.
Teddy said, “I’d let you drive it, except I saw you outside tonight.”
I watched him for a moment, then said, “Can I ask you something? If you’d had a friend who liked Kim before you did, would you still have gone out with her?”
“I have like eight friends who like Kim,” said Teddy.
There was no point in asking Teddy for his advice about Sam and Carl. He’d tell me to do whatever I wanted: take the exhibition match, play, win—maybe Sam would want me more in the end. Or maybe he wouldn’t.
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad about the Jeep.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and pulled the door shut behind me.
In my room, I peeled off my clothes and yanked on a T-shirt, then turned off the light and climbed into bed, feeling for my journal under the covers with my toes.
It was true that I’d taken an exhibition match that rightfully should’ve been Carl’s, but Carl had taken something from me, too. By laying claim to me, he’d drawn a line in the sand that Sam couldn’t cross. Now both of my friends were aligned against me, and I needed Carl out of the way if I had any hope of getting Sam.
Thinking about
The Sex Cure
, I opened my journal and flipped to a clean page. All the narrow lines—between truth and fiction, want and need, friendship and love—seemed suddenly traversable: Elaine Dorian had done it. By the stroke of her pen, she had roiled and rippled the town with one story, a story everyone believed, so much so that she may have made it true. Roman à clef. A novel with a key. I uncapped my pen and wrote:
CARL’S MOM TRIED TO KILL HERSELF.
Like Misty Powers in
The Sex Cure
, divorced, lonely, raising three kids on her own—in the middle of the night, she’d dialed the drugstore’s emergency number to renew her prescription for something called Nembutal, planning to take a few too many because her boyfriend wouldn’t marry her.
CARL’S MOM TRIED TO KILL HERSELF.
At Cooperstown High School there was only one Carl, and even though his mom was nothing like Misty Powers, it was still true, so I tore out the page and folded it into eight equal pieces until I had a white cube like a Chiclet, which I slid deep into the back right pocket of my favorite jeans, where the fabric was worn thin.
L
AST
W
ILL AND
T
ESTAMENT
OF
A
NNE
C
OLE
O
BERMEYER
59 S
USQUEHANNA
A
VENUE
C
OOPERSTOWN
, NY 13326
W
EDNESDAY
, A
PRIL
6, 1994
1:57
A.M
.
1 Declaration
1.1 | | I hereby declare that this is my last will and testament and I hereby revoke, cancel, and annul the will and codicil previously made by me jointly with my spouse, Hugh Obermeyer. I declare that I am of sound mind to make this will, though admittedly a bit tipsy [see: one (1) bottle of 1988 Pétrus, a present from Dale for the Trevor-Moreland settlement, totally insufficient as a bonus but more than adequate as a nightcap]. |
1.2 | | This last will and testament expresses my wishes without undue influence (under the influence!) or duress, though I’d take a little duress, frankly, an out and out screaming match with my husband. In lieu of information, my imagination is running wild. I’m up at two in the morning reallocating my assets, for Christ’s sake. You have to talk to me, Hugh. You have to tell me what’s going on. |
1.3 | | Let’s start with tonight: Were you really at work late; if so, why didn’t you pick up the phone when I called; and what about this meeting with Barry Klawson; was it really |
2 Family Details
2.1 | | My mother, Joan Elizabeth Cole, died last week while my father was asleep in his plaid pajamas next to her. Dr. Brash insisted she went quickly, which was more than Dad could offer, being hard of hearing and under the influence of no fewer than twelve medications. In fact, Dad didn’t notice she was dead until he woke around 6:30 |
2.2 | | My father, Robert Murray Cole, wears prescription-strength rose-colored glasses that actually sharpen his myopia so that he’ll never be at risk for seeing anything he doesn’t want to see. Like Mom’s mortification at the beauty parlor in 1958 when she overheard the new stylist telling Regina Fratelli about the Cooperstown man she’d been going with in Oneonta? It was me who found Mom crying in her bedroom with her rollers in, and I helped her the only way I knew how. |
2.3 | | From the time I was a little girl, I knew my marriage would be different. There would be no children as foot soldiers, for example, and my husband and I would be faithful to each other. All I’d ever wanted was someone to grow old with, a partner in this life, a husband who desired only me, but from the beginning there has been a third person in our marriage, and her name is Cooperstown. |
2.4 | | I was pregnant with Teddy when Mom called to announce that Dad was about to retire. “You don’t know what a grandchild would mean to him,” she said, and it was late but I knew by the volume of her voice that she was alone. “He’d want to be with that baby day and night,” she said, “right here at home.” I was well versed in my mother’s way of asking for things. First it sounds as if she’s confiding in you, then you realize her need is so great you will ford oceans to save her, and it will sink you again and again. |
2.5 | | No doubt Hugh was confused—why had I moved us here if I didn’t want to be here?—but I was confused, too: Why did it seem my husband loved Cooperstown more than he loved me? As soon as we arrived, the familiar feelings from my childhood—the stomach-lurching discomfort of being stared at in the A&P, the ear-burning embarrassment of being gossiped about at Withey’s—came racing back. Hugh thought I was being paranoid, but he hadn’t lived through the sixties here. |
2.6 | | At some point between the time I graduated from high school and the time Hugh and I moved back, Mom forgave Dad, and I think there’s a lesson here: |
2.7 | | But we are up against a very big “anything.” |
2.8 | | There is literally no way Hugh could know about Dale. There’s nothing to know. Dale tried to kiss me and I turned away. This was four months ago, just before the Trevor-Moreland settlement, when Dale and I both knew it was in the bag. We’d been celebrating, a bottle of Dom for each of us. Dale called me his “work wife,” and I said I don’t need another husband, like, ha! one is already too many, ha-ha! What I’d meant was, sometimes it’s hard being married. What Dale heard was Hugh-Schmu, and then his lips were on mine, and I was sorry it had come to that, sorry to see Dale in that position. I like Dale, but when he pulled back, flustered, blushing a deep shade of Bordeaux, and I looked away to spare him further embarrassment, and he said, “Are you fucking kidding me, Anne?” I no longer felt sorry for him. I felt like I’d picked up a script for |
2.9 | | After the settlement, I did not immediately renew my caseload. I’d been billing 100 |
2.10 | | I spun through my Rolodex, skimmed the country-club directory, even paged the phone book—then I remembered I have no real friends. As a child, I had my parents’ undivided attention, making playmates inessential, and by the time I was in junior high and could’ve really used a confidante, I was too apprehensive to reach out. Every one of my eighth-grade classmates read |
2.11 | | So Hugh’s birthday surprise was me. Mortifyingly, I bought a |
2.12 | | And that was where I saw it, our “anything”: the vast span between us, Hugh’s terrifying remoteness at his birthday dinner with his wife. What should’ve been romantic—white tablecloths, full wineglasses, duck confit on the way—was instead extremely awkward. I felt as if we were on a first date that wasn’t going well. This Hugh was nothing like the Hugh I’d met at a law school party twenty years ago. He barely seemed to notice me, laughing instead with our waitress about a water spill that coated one sleeve of his shirt, then spending the entire appetizer course studying a partially visible man on the other side of the dining room to determine if he was indeed Burt Schlessinger from Hugh’s fast-break basketball league. With my wineglass empty and Hugh neglecting to refill it, I realized suddenly that in tiny increments, over hours and days and weeks and years, while we were busy shuttling Teddy and Julia to their millions of activities and tending to our own overstuffed work schedules, that old Hugh had gotten away from me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the man he’d left behind. |
2.13 | | By nine o’clock we were home, in bed, drunk, and I forgot everything I’d read in |
2.14 | | It was over in ten minutes. I never even had time to put in my diaphragm. I’m forty-five years old and if you ask me the best thing Hugh and I ever did together was make children. But a third wasn’t meant to be. |
2.15 | | I have the following children: |
2.15.1 | | Theodore George Obermeyer. Teddy is eighteen (18), of legal age to buy cigarettes and to act as his younger sister’s guardian but constitutionally incapable of both. Teddy is fiercely protective of his health: He stretches after running, ices after throwing, rests after starting, decompresses after winning. He wants everyone around him to share his passion for baseball and he is a dedicated teacher, placing fingertips on phantom seams to elucidate curveballs and miming batting stances at mock home plates to demonstrate swinging through the ball. Just last week, Teddy put his hands on my hips and turned me left to right, rotating me through a make-believe pitch, powering my bat—a baguette—with my legs, and I felt the thrill of knowing what it is to be at the center of Teddy’s world. Many girls will feel it, but few will have the staying power of Mom. Which is one thing Teddy is most definitely not ready to be—if Hugh and I were to die, I’d have to find a suitable guardian for Julia. Last week, this guardian was my mother. Today, I have no idea. |
2.15.2 | | Julia Anne Obermeyer. Julia is fifteen (15) going on seventy going on eight. She is braver, smarter, stranger, and sillier than her brother, which is both delightful and annoying, provoking, and comforting. People either get her or they don’t. She has a discerning eye for friends, and when she finds them, she keeps them. Right now she has a crush on her friend Sam (which he’d have to be blind not to see), but that darling little Carl is forever in the way. It’s sweet to watch, but I do worry someone will be hurt. Three is not a good number. It certainly didn’t work for my parents and it won’t work for Julia and her friends. I wish I could talk to her about it, but it’s hard for me to open up in that way. I never so much as had a date in high school, much less a boyfriend. Really, what do I know about anything? Less and less every day. |
