Relatively Honest (7 page)

“Good God.” I shook my head. “I need to teach these lads a better approach.”

She smiled a little, and we walked on in silence. “So what made you choose that costume?” she asked.

“Sinter told me about the arrow trick. We devised ‘victim of love’ around it because it was easy to put together.”

She nodded. More silence for a minute or so. “How’s Liz?” she asked then.

“Don’t know. I only stayed that one night because she begged me to. Nothing really happened. I realize that makes me a horrible person, all the same.” I laid a nasty tone across the last sentence.

“It doesn’t. I didn’t mean that either.” She picked leaves off her ivy and dropped them as we went. “And…how’s Miriam?”

“Not sure. Haven’t got an email in a while.”

She nodded. She looked ill, exhausted, and unhappy. Feeling bad for my part in it, I asked, “Are you all right? Really?”

“No.” She ripped away another leaf. “I’m stupid.”

“Now, come on…”

“And mean.”

“You’re not mean.”

“And I have no tolerance for alcohol at all.”

“That was particularly strong alcohol.”

We had reached the dorm. She watched me unlock the outside door. “Will you forgive me?” she asked.

We stepped inside. “Yes, I forgive you.”

“You
are
a good friend, you know.” On the landing to the second floor, she took my hand, and squeezed it.

“Cheers.” I squeezed back, then let go. Tonight was not the night to sweep her into my arms. She hardly needed another molester, even if he was a “good friend.”

So we said goodnight, and I went up to third floor. I tugged the pencil-arrow out of my chest, threw away the red-stained shirt, and wiped Sinter’s lip-marks off my face. She now owed me gratitude and humility, and viewed me as trustworthy, which was a huge improvement. But I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t get my mind off the way she had looked, pale and frightened, trapped under that dodgy drunken Elvis’s arm. I had an absurd desire to go down to her and make sure she was all right, and stay with her until dawn. I also had a fierce wish to bludgeon the two frat boys to death with a shovel. She was unhappy, and I wanted to do something about it. I rarely got this way about anyone.

Worst of all, she was probably unhappy because she missed her boyfriend, and I, the cocky womanizer, was a poor substitute. And I couldn’t do a bloody thing about that.

I planned
to give Julie at least one full day to recover before I approached her again. But the one day turned into quite a lot longer, for on the second of November I awoke with a sore throat. I attended class anyway, but by lunchtime I was miserable. By supper I was delirious. All night I sweated, flopped around, whimpered, and would have annoyed Sinter tremendously if he hadn’t been sleeping downstairs with Clare. I stayed in bed the next day, conscious only of how much my throat and nasal cavity ached. I was quite convinced I had never been healthy in my life, and that nothing had existed for me except pain.

I remember Sinter bringing me orange juice and toast from the dining hall, and convincing me to take some kind of syrupy medicine. After the medicine I slept in a swirly dream-state for ages. Julie and Elvis and the flasher played a hundred nightmare scenes together, sometimes with a cameo by Patrick.

When I came out of it, it was the middle of the next day. I was surrounded by crumpled-up tissues. I could feel my hair sticking up in all directions. Sinter was doing his homework, sipping tea. He glanced at me with bloodshot eyes and rasped, “I think I may have caught it.”

Repeat cycle above, with Sinter in role of invalid, and my nowhere-near-recovered self in role of caretaker. He told me that Clare and Julie had also come down with the plague and preferred not to be bothered. I dragged my feet to the dining hall and back to get food for Sinter, and went out once in the pouring rain, coughing up phlegm, to buy more medicine.

It was the vicious type of illness that not only knocks you on your arse but rides you for at least a week. Sinter, being a smoker, took even longer to recover. I ended up missing three days of classes, which never used to be such a drama, but in university it set you back far indeed. My life after that consisted of accosting professors in their office hours to go over what I had missed. (They tended to back off and shield their noses and mouths when they heard me cough.) On the heels of my catching-up, midterms and essay deadlines arrived and smacked me over the head. I hadn’t cried in about four years, but I came close to weeping in frustration over my unfathomable trigonometry.

I saw Julie sometimes from a window or in the dining hall or in a chance meeting in the stairwell, but even the sight of her filled me with frustration. She seemed just another thing I couldn’t succeed at, and didn’t have time to deal with properly.

But we were getting a reprieve: the four-day Thanksgiving weekend was coming up.

“Going home for it?” Sinter asked me around the third week of November. We were sitting in the dining hall with Clare and Julie, eating lunch. It was rare that we all ate at the same time, but today had worked out that way. Each of us still coughed or blew our nose every five minutes, but at least we were looking like ourselves again.

“Don’t know,” I answered. “Do people usually?”

“Of course,” Julie chided. “The dorms will be totally empty. You can’t stay here; it would be pathetic. I’ll give you a ride home and back.”

Just like that, the miseries of the past fortnight lifted off my mind and floated away. “Sorted, then,” I said. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She clicked my juice glass with hers.

It was a running joke among the other three: they knew by now that “Cheers” meant “Thanks” in my parlance, but they liked to pretend I was making a toast every time I said it.

Thus, battered by midterm exams, and burdened with a backlog of homework, I hopped into Julie’s car on the fourth Wednesday of November, and felt cheerful as could be, because I got the front seat this time and Patrick was thousands of miles away.

“He’s staying in Boston,” she said, in answer to my question. “Having Thanksgiving dinner with one of his college friends. Says he’s really busy, and can’t take a few days to fly to Oregon and back.”

“That’s a shame.” I was happy enough that I even made it sound sympathetic.

We talked amiably all the way to Sunriver. She didn’t mention the frat party, so neither did I. And she didn’t bring up Patrick again, so I didn’t either. Instead we compared sob stories about the plague we had suffered, speculated on what classes we might take next term, and commented on the snow that had already swathed the Cascade Mountains around Sunriver. Whitecrest’s ski lifts were now carrying actual skiers.

I did learn, to my regret, that Julie’s family was to be flooded with visiting relatives all weekend, plus she had just as much homework as I did, which meant she couldn’t come away from Bend and loaf about at my house or anything. (
Or tumble together into snow banks, cuddle up under a blanket in front of the fire, eat cranberry sauce off one another’s bare skin
…yes, my health was indeed returning.)

As she dropped me off and said, “Happy Thanksgiving, see you Sunday!” I felt the loss of her company like a pain where my chest cold had recently lived. But that was silly, since I often went days without seeing her. At least now I would get to sleep in a room by myself, catch up on homework, and see my parents again.

Oh, yes. My parents.

Apprehension swamped me as soon as they opened the door and welcomed me in. They were happy enough – in fact, overjoyed to have me back for the holiday. But they looked older and wearier, the shadows deeper about their eyes, their hair grayer. Surely I was imagining that?

“How have you two been getting on?” I asked as we settled down in the dining room for tea.

“Busy,” grunted Dad.

“Work has us absolutely exhausted,” said Mum.

“Ski season’s started early,” Dad added. “Bloody great snowstorm last weekend.”

Ah. Well, that probably explained the strain.

Or not.

The next day, after sleeping luxuriously late, I lounged on the living room sofa and made notes in my history text. Mum came in and stood at the window a while, her arms folded, watching a bird hop about in the snow. Dad came in too, and put his hand on her back. They looked at each other, both wearing their most anxious faces. Dad pulled Mum close to him, and she bowed her head and let it lean on his shoulder. In a few seconds she moved abruptly away and murmured she had to get some stuff for dinner, and went out. Dad sat down in the nearest armchair and stared out the window for a quarter of an hour, twisting his wedding ring around his finger.

I tried to study during all this, but couldn’t help glancing up every so often, totally baffled.

Dad noticed one of my glances. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and said, “How are classes?” though he had already asked me last night.

“Not bad. Everything all right here?”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

I shrugged and returned to my reading. Probably empty-nest syndrome. I was their only child. They had me back in the house again, but now it felt strange to them, because I was a “university man.”

They kept acting that way all weekend, and tried to cover it up with fake cheeriness for me, as if I hadn’t known them my whole life and couldn’t see through it. I was worried. Empty-nest syndrome seemed an inadequate explanation. I went through a pile of their post and bills on Saturday while they were at Whitecrest, hoping to find some clue as to what was wrong – ideally an unmistakable clue like a bill from a divorce lawyer or a cancer specialist or the private investigator (with the text “For services rendered in finding your ex-boyfriend” printed neatly on it). But I turned up nothing.

I opened Mum’s mobile, and scrolled through the numbers she had programmed in – again, as if one of them would say “My lover.” I did find one, a Bend number, labeled simply “B. Manning.” The investigator? I looked him up on the Internet, found a listing, and verified it. Same number. Next I checked her call log: she had dialed that number four days ago.

For a long time I held the mobile and stared at the number, and dared myself to dial it and ask Bill Manning just what the hell he was up to with my mother. But of course he wouldn’t have told me, and Mum would have been furious when she found out.

At supper that night I asked Mum and Dad, “Listen, perhaps I’m insane, but things seem a bit peculiar with you two. Is anything going on? Any kind of…trouble?” My heart pounded.

They looked startled, and exchanged a glance. Mum said, “Goodness, Daniel! You’re sweet to worry, but there’s nothing wrong. We’re still adjusting, that’s all.”

“To what?”

“Living in America,” said Dad. “And the new resort, and you being off at university.” He pointed his fork at me, and winked.

“It does make me feel I’m getting old.” Mum sighed.

“Well,” I said, “it’s just…I get the impression you’re not telling me something.”

“Really, dear, stop fretting,” Mum said. “We know you’re a grown-up now. We will treat you as one.”

“Can tell you all about the local hew and cry over the snowmaking machines if you really want,” Dad said. “There’s a grown-up headache for you.”

I let him tell me about it. It sounded like a headache indeed. I was willing to believe the explanation for the night.

Then Sunday morning, while I lay in bed, I heard their voices through the heating duct in the floor. To judge from the clink of mugs and plates, they were finishing breakfast. The furnace had just switched off, eliminating the white noise that had masked their conversation up till then.

“…see the harm in telling him,” Dad said.

“I don’t see the
need
to tell him,” Mum said. “Not now, anyway.”

“If we’re to treat him like a grown-up…”

“There’s no rush, is there? At least let him finish this term and get through his exams.” Her voice dropped, and I couldn’t make out words until the end of the sentence: “…so much to explain.”

Dad was silent a while, and when he did answer, his voice was also too low to make out. Mum’s joined back in, and they got into what seemed a whispered argument.

A chair scraped on the floor; one of them was getting up. “…doesn’t matter!” Mum said.

Silence again. The water turned on in the kitchen sink, then off. Something got put away in a cupboard. Dad’s voice came then, too soft to hear properly, but conciliatory. Mum’s responded the same way. Brisk new question about Whitecrest’s dining facilities, and they were off on a different topic.

I stayed motionless, lying afraid in bed, feeling not at all like a grown-up.

I was
still subdued when Julie picked me up that afternoon. She asked how my weekend had been, and I said I had almost finished my essay, and wished I could have got some skiing in. As we drove out of town she told me about some of her relatives who had visited: flamboyant Italian-Americans from her step-mother’s side. I nodded in response, and watched the scenery go from snow to rain, frozen mountain to soggy valley.

I wouldn’t burden her with it. I would sound neurotic if I did. She would think I was fishing for sympathy – like “turning my dog getting killed into an excuse to feel up some chick.”

“How’s your family?” she asked. “Are your folks getting used to America?”

I rubbed at a chapped spot on my lower lip. Of course, if she asked directly…

“I’m a little worried about them,” I admitted.

“How come?”

“They’re just behaving weird recently. I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m only being stupid.”

“No, come on. Tell me.” She sounded like she did in fact care.

I laced together my fingers, picked a raindrop on the windscreen to look at, and started explaining. I spoke for seventeen minutes straight (I stole glances at the digital clock on the radio), spilling everything, even my own snooping through the post and Mum’s phone.

She frowned at the road ahead while I spoke.

“So,” I said, having wrapped it up with this morning’s overheard developments. “There we are. Any theories?”

“Hm.” She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I would have thought of the disease angle right away too. But I don’t see what a private investigator would have to do with that.”

“Right. Neither do I. But I also can’t prove he has anything to do with whatever’s bothering them.”

“I almost wonder if she hired him to watch
you
. You know, her baby’s first year in college.”

I stared at her, stunned. “Christ, you don’t think…no. No, it wouldn’t add up. My parents are weird, but they’re not that weird. Anyway, they wouldn’t have learned anything to make them so concerned in the past couple of months.”

“You did have a terrible cold.”

“True, but I lived, didn’t I?”

“You’re right. It’s not the best theory.”

“They could be in financial difficulties,” I proposed. “Perhaps Whitecrest is in bad shape. Perhaps they’ll have to move house again, and didn’t want to tell me.”

“Possible. But again, why the investigator?”

“I don’t know. Something about illegal funds?”

“Like, your mom caught one of the owners embezzling, and didn’t want to tell your dad?”

“Yeah, but I can’t think why she’d keep it from him. Unless
he
were the one embezzling. Which he wouldn’t.”

“Then that leaves…God, I hate to say it, but an affair, maybe. Divorce.”

I felt the word like a punch to my stomach. “Could be.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw her glance at me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Then she turned hopeful. “But it might not be true. We could be way off here.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

We drove in silence a minute or two. “Why didn’t you just ask them, after hearing them this morning?” she asked.

I gnawed the chapped bit of skin off my lip. I touched the raw spot, and looked at my fingertip. It was stained by a thin line of blood. “Because I was afraid of what they might say.”

She didn’t scoff at my cowardice, didn’t tell me to be a man and confront them. She only said, “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t push it either. They’ll tell you when they’re ready.”

She then spoke for a while of her adopted Italian grandparents, and how they were quite lovable but turned everything into too much drama. She advised against being like that. We settled into a comfortable chat about our childhoods, and by the time we arrived in Eugene we had succeeded in making one another very envious over the places we had been. She wanted to see Switzerland, Italy, and England’s Lake District. I wanted to see Hawaii, Napa Valley, and the Grand Canyon.