The Moment Before (16 page)

The Monday after Prom is always a waste. Hungover students. The fallout of whatever breakups or hookups went down. Good luck to Pale Blue Dot or any of them who think actual educating will happen.

First thing, before trig even, Martha finds me and she’s holding a yellow rose. A perfect yellow rose. “I am so sorry to hear about your dad, Brady,” she says, offering the flower to me. Plus a card.

My throat is dry but I manage a gracious
Thank you
. I say, “He’s expected to make a full recovery,” in my robot voice.

But then, behind her happy, happy Princess face, there’s a little wrinkle. Something not quite right.

“He is,” I insist. “Going to be fine.”

“It’s not that,” she says, continuing to thrust the rose my way until I take it from her. “It’s just, well, Nick told me that you’re involved with Connor.”

“Involved? Well, not involved, really,” I stammer, sort of Judas-like.

“And that he’s been filling your head with a bunch of lies.”

Nick. Of course he’d be doing his best to save his hide now that he knows what I know.

“Martha, I realize that you’re hot on Nick and all, but, he’s got a dark side. He’s guilty of more than you think.”

“Guilty of what? You mean loving a girl who cheated on him? Repeatedly?”

I can’t believe it. Nick’s spreading who-knows-what sort of crap about Connor. I reach my rose-wielding hand toward Martha, but she steps back, like I’m about to strike her.

“I don’t know what Nick told you, Martha, but it’s not true. And, as far as the Connor thing. I’m not involved with him. Not anymore, anyway.”

As soon as they’re out of my mouth, those words
not anymore
, a huge cavern tears open inside of me.

Martha, though, she bounces up like a happy Jack-in-the-box. “So, you came to your senses, then? About Connor? I’m so happy to hear that.”

Why am I even friends with this girl? The way she glows with satisfaction when the world matches up to her sense of order and the way things should be. I want to tell her that it’s only temporary. Once Dad recovers, once Mom re-busies herself with her own life, I can see who I want to see. Why should Martha be the only one on the planet who gets to do whatever the hell she wants? I glare at her. “Happy? Well, good for you, Martha. I’m glad you’re happy. Because I am not.”

She pushes a hunk of her shiny mahogany hair back over her shoulder and grins. “Cheer up, Brady. It’s time you got back into things around here. I’d love it, assuming your dad’s out of the woods and everything, if you could come over later and help me with my Rose Festival Court speech. You’re so good with words, you know?”

Good with words. Maybe I should show her the power of words. Let her hear Nick in all his glory.

“I’ll come over, Martha, but there’s a few things you need to know about that boyfriend of yours.”

“Now, Brady, can’t we just all be friends?” Martha’s Rose Festival smile is lightning rod against any negative Nick information.

I feel trapped. And then, before I can say anything more, she pours her Martha honey all over everything. “I’ve put the word out. I hope you don’t mind, but there will be dinners delivered. There’s a sign-up schedule on Facebook. A page, actually. It’s called Johnscare. You can like it. Join it. You can write in dietary preferences.”

“That’s way too thoughtful, Martha,” I tell her. “Really, we can manage.”

“It’s the least I can do. Your family means so much to me.”

It hits me that the reason I resent Martha so much is that I think that sometimes she just spouts off with things. That she doesn’t really mean them. Sabine says,
Not everyone’s as true-hearted as you, Midge
.

I try to meet her kindness with some of my own. “Martha. You totally will get this Rose Festival Queen thing. Your name stamped into the brick. The whole deal.” And she will. Because the Marthas of the world do get everything they go after.

She leans in after I say that, and she plants a tiny kiss on my cheek. A small grace.

Throughout the rest of the day, teachers are extra careful around me. The word
sorry
rains down on me like confetti. And the flowers. Since when do you give people flowers when their parents are ill? I realize that everyone’s just taking Martha’s lead. Even Walter Pine. Even Cathi Serge. Wilted rhodies, an azalea cluster. It’s Brady Appreciation Day at Greenmeadow.

And Connor keeps calling and texting. I’ve yet to give him an update. I don’t know what to say to him. He’s wondering if I’ll be over at Mrs. Cupworth’s later. He really wants to see me. He thinks about me all the time.

My stomach is a knot the size of Blue Dot’s overhead projector.

Finally, I text him back,
Have to go to hospital after school. Dad better.

I tap out an
xo
and then delete it. Add it back, delete it. Press send. I wish I could just be sitting in Connor’s truck, next to him, the two of us leaving this world where everything is broken.

The image of Nona, the way she works a rosary, finds its way into my head. The same way that Martha pops a pill when she’s upset, Nona says a Hail Mary. It occurs to me that when people feel powerless to change the way things are, they try and find some sort of magic. Something they can grab quickly, and believe in. I don’t have that. Maybe that’s my problem.

It turns out that I’m not going to the hospital after all because Dad’s going to some sort of recovery outpatient thing. It’s unclear whether this has to do with his heart or his drinking problem, and Mom is keeping it unclear. It’s exactly the sort of thing I wish I could talk to Connor about. Family secrets, all the craziness at home. But I’m forbidden to see Connor, so where I am going, for reasons I can’t quite explain to myself, is Martha’s house. To help her with her Rose Festival Court speech.

Martha’s house is almost as grand as Mrs. Cupworth’s, but much less formal. There’s that pair of mastiffs that lope about. Some exotic birds that screech. Despite the full time staff, the house has a very lived-in feel. Older, worn furniture, scuffed up by pets. They’re wealthy, but total Democrats, the Hornbuckles. Evidence of their foundation associations is everywhere. Handmade Guatemalan rugs made by marginalized mountain women dot their floors. Plaques are hung askew here and there: MAC Club Tennis Task Force donor, Leukemia Society Sponsor, Healthy Rivers and Streams Coordinator. It’s like the Do-Gooder Museum at Martha’s.

Clearly, Martha is the Do-Gooder in training.

Right away, no sooner am I in the house, when she starts rehearsing. “My topic is on introducing free range poultry to foodservice in the Oregon schools.”

“Nice,” I say, following Martha into the library, where there’s a podium and microphone set up.

Martha goes through her speech a half-dozen times, and I’m not being a good listener. I’m distracted, wondering if Connor’s up the street, or at Mrs. Cupworth’s, or in Forest Park. I’ve plastered an attentive smile on, my eyes don’t leave the podium, but, truly, I haven’t heard a word. So when Martha says, “Brady? Brady? Should I go into the hand-eviscerating part or is that TMI?” I snap to attention.

“Hand-eviscerating?”

I’m spared from critical input though, because just then, in walks Nick. It must be one of his few lacrosse-free days, because he’s wearing civilian clothes. An Abercrombie tee-shirt and jeans. Some Day-Glo kicks and his usual indoor-outdoor sunglasses. “Brady,” he says after kissing Martha on the top of her head the way fathers often do. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at your dad’s bedside?” “Nick. Really.” Martha starts apologizing for her rude boyfriend.

I hold up my hand. “Not a problem. I have known for a while that tact and manners are not Nick’s strong suit.”

“Speaking of manners,” Nick says, peeking over his shades for effect. Leveling his gaze. “We saw you and that creepy pal of yours spying on us at Prom. No wonder your Dad had a heart attack. His living daughter hanging out with the guy who killed his dead one.”

Martha punches Nick’s arm, and under her breath half-whispers, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

But I can.

“You know, Martha, I really need to go,” I say, grabbing my things and heading for the various rooms that will lead me, eventually, out the front door. “I’m sure Nick can help you with the hand-eviscerating stuff.”

Before Martha can intervene, or sweet talk or use her world-class diplomatic skills to stop me, I’ve slammed the custom twelve-panel wood door behind me, and just doing that, that little act of movement and closure, makes me feel better. But a second later, I’m back to feeling furious again. That bastard parked my sister’s Volvo right in the middle of the drive. Not even over to the side, courteously out of the way of other potential comings and goings. No, Nick is all about possession. About winning.

I run my hand along the boxy hood, the familiar chrome door handle. It’s so unfair. He should not have this car. And then, in concert with a shrieking crow in a nearby tree, it’s Sabine.
You know where the key is, little sister
.

The hide-a-key. I’d forgotten until this moment that Sabine was always getting locked out of her car, and she had run out of AAA allowances for Slim Jim assistance. Dad put a magnetic box under her car, near the driver’s side wheel. Like the sneaky spy I’ve just been accused of being, I drop to my knees, reach under, and, sure enough.

I think about how easy it would be to just take the car. Drive down the gated Hornbuckle driveway, and leave nothing but tires tracks. Imagining Nick’s face upon discovering the missing car is almost good enough. But then I think of Dad, and the last thing I want to do is create more stress. How would I explain stealing the car?

So I pocket the key and keep walking. A small piece of Sabine’s property, that’s all I have left. But, somehow, for today anyway, it’s enough.

Once I’m off the Hornbuckle compound, past the tree house where Martha and I smoked our first joint a few years ago, my body wants to head right. Up the hill. To the house where, a year ago, they had an auction to raise money for a cheerleading team that no longer exists. Where a few months ago, a girl sought help to pull a car—once belonging to her sister and now commandeered by a maniac—out of a ditch. Where a month ago a girl tried to kiss a boy who didn’t kiss her back. A boy who is baffled by the sudden cold shoulder given him by the girl, who just a few days ago, spent an afternoon studying and reproducing the lines and angles that made her bones turn to jelly.

I turn the Volvo key over and over in my hand. I owe him an explanation. At least that.

I knock lightly, hoping, praying, even, that Connor will not open the door. Maybe his mother, the interior designer, will be home. She’ll look confused that I’m here, but she’ll be gracious, and invite me in for tea and ask how my family is doing, and she’ll go white with shock when she hears my father just had a heart attack.
But he’s expected to make a full recovery
, I’ll sing-song.

I’m still lost in the imaginary conversation with Connor’s mother when he rips the door open wide. In one second I can tell, he’s completely baked.

“You sure you should be here?” he says, the smell of weed wafting out his lips.

All that comes out of my mouth are swear words. “Shit, Connor, what the fuck?” Though I’m here to explain why I can’t see him for a while, I’m derailed by the fact that he’s high. I feel, somehow, invested in his poor choices. Dr. Stern would call that the slippery slope of co-dependence.

Before I can even utter a word, he cuts in with, “Sounds like your mom put a bug in Lilith Cupworth’s ear. Guess she must have shaken the old lady up because she started talking about restraining orders and whatnot.”

An elevator feeling slips into my body. Guilt. Fear. A mixture of emotions.
Mom
. Jesus. “Connor, that really sucks. I’ll set her straight about you. But, you’re going to get kicked out of your house if you’re not careful. Is that what you want? For your mom to send you off to live with your dad in some trailer park?”

Connor shrugs. “My life is shit here. People think what they think, and that’s not going to change. It was super lame of me to get close to you, anyway. Given what we were up against. It’ll be better, me living a mountain range away from all this crap.”

When he says “all this crap,” I feel like he just slapped me in the face, giving me a shiner worse than Dad’s. Only this bruise won’t disappear in a few days. I want to blink back time. Go back to the day before Dad’s accident. Or, as long as we’re in a time machine, go back to the day before Sabine’s accident. Everything is unraveling, and this boy who is the center of it all, he’s just one big, snagged thread. “Connor, believe me, I wish there was another way. I wish we could just figure this out, but right now, I need to help put my family back together.”

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes red and itchy looking, “well, like your sister always said, ‘People love winners. As for losers, they might as well burn in hell.’”

I notice that there’s no earring dangling from his lobe as he shuts the door, giving me one last look at a long slice of him—a boy who once held my sister’s future in his hand.

I walk through the next few weeks like a painting of myself. Something formed by someone else. I’m viewing this painting as an outsider, too. Watching myself going through the motions. Brushing, flossing, taking out the trash. In trig, I get my first A. My paper on Flannery O’Connor is a solid B, but Mrs. McConnell tells me I can do better.
Where’s the passion?
she writes on my paper all red inked and loopy.

Passion? I’m done with that. I’ve joined the rosary prayer people. The pill-poppers. Like a Nike ad, I’m “just do it-ing” my way through life. Every time I think about Connor, how much I miss him, I flip a switch in my heart. Better to just move forward. Don’t feel. Don’t feel. Don’t feel.

Dad is released. He’s on a strict no cholesterol, low salt, 1500-calorie diet. He has to go to meetings and talk about one day at a time. Mom has turned into his personal cheerleader. She follows his diet to the letter. She buys a kitchen scale and, no kidding, she’s weighing lettuce leaves. She dumps all the whiskey down the drain. She’s counting out raisins for his oatmeal. Dad can’t return to work for another month, so afternoons, it’s me and Dad on the couch, watching
Wheel of Fortune
and
World Series of Poker
. The occasional Mariner’s game.

He’s always asking me if I’m happy. “You seem down, Little Bird,” he’ll say.

“I’m not,” I argue. “I’m fine.”

“I am really ashamed, Brady. So ashamed.” I know he’s thinking about when he slapped me, but when he tells he wants to make amends for everything, who I think about is Connor. The person who should be forgiven more than anyone. I want to tell Dad everything I know. About Connor, about Sabine. About Nick. But Dad’s so broken. So fragile.

I pat his hand. On TV, a Versace-wearing poker player who reminds me of Nick slowly chews gum. I hope he loses all his money.

Dad says, “Are you sure? Are you sure you’re fine?”

I nod.
Fine
. Stupid word. A word that’s empty of feeling. The perfect word for now.

Don’t feel, Brady. Just don’t.

And in the real world. The world that continues on, the ballot measure passes. Arts and electives are safe for another year. Bowerman and McConnell get to teach their classes again. Pink slips are tucked back into the district file cabinet. Everybody cheer.

A couple times a week, I head up to Mrs. Cupworth’s and work on some sketches, and even a few paintings. At first, after she fired Connor, I wanted to boycott the whole artist-in-residence thing. Let her know she’d drawn a line in the sand. Mom and I had it out about that.

“I’m sorry but I had to tell her,” Mom said. “I let her come to her own decision, but I had to give her the facts.”

“What facts, Mom? You don’t know the facts.”

In my new life as a robot, I decided to go back to Mrs. Cupworth’s studio. Pretend to still be an artist. Fake it ‘til I make it. I set up a still life with a St. Agatha statue and a bowl of plastic apples that I got from Michael’s. I printed out a version of da Vinci’s The Last Supper from Wikipedia, and blew it up at a copy store. It’s scary pixelated, and I set it behind the bowl of apples and the St. Agatha, so it really just looks like colorful embroidery. At least that’s what shows up on my canvas when I dab my brush into color after color. Art, reduced to upholstery. That’s sort of how I feel.

The sketch I did of Connor, the day Dad had his heart attack, I can’t bring myself to throw it out, or refine it. I simply tuck it into the sketchpad where I imagine it’ll smear itself unrecognizable. I think about him every day. And then I make myself unthink about him. But I can’t help it. Every tree on this property, the shrubs, the roses—which are now being tended by Mrs. Cupworth’s entourage of gardeners—remind me of Connor. His lips and the dimple at the side of his mouth. Is there no end to grieving? Every time you love someone, it seems, you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Sabine isn’t the only one who took a chance and lost.

“Don’t feel. Don’t feel.” I yell at myself out loud one day, just as Lilith Cupworth sashays through the door.

“Don’t feel what?” she says, eagerly peering over the canvas.

“Stop messing up the painting, I guess,” I tell her.

“Doesn’t look very messy to me,” she says, appraising it with a bit of a sigh in her voice.

I step back a bit, squinch my eyes the way I’d seen Connor do a million times. “Do you like it?”

She sighs again. “I do. I like it.” And then she stares square into my face. “It’s perfectly fine. But, to be honest, it doesn’t quite have your energy behind it. It lacks a certain … oh, I don’t know. Authority?”

“Passion, you mean?” I fill in the party line.

“Right.”

I bite my lip.

“Brady, Dear. I know you miss that boy. I know a broken heart when I see one.”

I want to tell her she’s wrong. She can’t see the shards of my broken heart. I’ve swept them up. And, I want to spill all the other things she can’t possibly see, about Mom and Sabine and Dad and the web of lies, but, truly, I don’t see the point.

“The two of you were quite adorable together, no denying that. But. I’ve seen what drugs can do. Seen it in my own children. Cocaine. Marijuana. You can’t trust a drug addict, you know.”

Cocaine? Where did that idea come from?

“Mrs. Cupworth, it wasn’t about drugs. That’s not why my mother intervened.”

“No? Well, she was clearly very worried for your safety. She told me that the young man was high when he caused the accident that killed your dear sister.”

I take in a deep breath, and hear a ringing sound in my ears. It’s like the way Nona always described the trumpets of Heaven, only, for me the ringing is more like a Greek chorus chanting
He was high when he killed her!
over and over and over. Duplicity, I think. Double standard. And then, I just say it. Plain and simple. “Connor Christopher was not high when Sabine plunged to her death. That’s what nobody will believe. My sister performed a move that was well outside of her abilities. She wanted to win, and she pushed the envelope into crazy. She was the one who made the mistake, not Connor. She had secrets. She was—”

I can’t finish my sentence. Mrs. Cupworth is clutching the strand of pearls that hangs just below her throat. “What, child, she was what?”

“She was a liar,” I shout. “She was the one who shouldn’t have been trusted. She and her so-called boyfriend were playing an ugly, dark game with each other. Connor just got caught in the middle.”

I go on to explain The Eraser Game that Sabine used to play. “It was like that, only instead of scarring up a forearm, it was other people’s lives.”

Mrs. Cupworth shakes her head. “These are certainly odd times, Brady.”

“Well,” I tell her, “I guess you should know what you’re in for if you want to open your house up to teenagers from Greenmeadow.”

All the way back down the hill to my house, I think about what I said. Regret and shame and anger all mixed up together like Nona’s sauce. I’m wondering if that’s why Catholics trot off to confession every Saturday afternoon like clockwork. It would be so nice to walk into Holy Redeemer’s darkened space, wait in the line of sinners, and pop into the booth to spill my troubles. My guilt over betraying Sabine. Like Beaverton Grief & Family but instead of a middle aged shrink with dandruff and yapping mutts next door, you get some Angel of God who stays on his side of the panel, and gives you a little homework assignment that you can punch out in a few minutes.

For no apparent reason, Natalie jumps into my thoughts. There was that day, late in the summer of Johnsaffair, Sabine painted rubber cement all over Natalie’s golf club handles. Dad was furious. His Scottish temper making his face redder than a sinking sun, he demanded that we apologize to Natalie, and pay for cleaning and re-gripping the clubs. I didn’t even know what had happened, but I silently took the blame and punishment right alongside my sister.

Afterwards, depleted of a year’s worth of babysitting money, Sabine was jubilant. She knew this stunt was the last straw. And sure enough, by the next weekend, Johnsaffair was history.

Her apology was not sincere—it was just for show. She’d do it again in a minute, she told me, as Natalie’s Pathfinder barreled down Pelican Lane for the last time.

A few late lilacs still offer some pleasant scent as I cut through the dog park near home. It’s warm and drizzly out. Typical Rose Festival weather. Summer’s coming on fast, which always makes me sad for some reason. Maybe it’s the way a mother feels when her baby learns to walk, or gets a tooth. That sense of fleeting time. Life moving ahead on its own terms. The brand new bright green leaves have matured, and they’re getting rubbery. Apple blossoms are gone, and hard, golf ball-sized fruit dots the trees. Dreams turning into wakeful realities. A next thing and a next and a next. But never a straight line. Never life just getting better and easier. Everything has a cost. I suppose I’m done protecting my sister. I suppose I’m ready to face the consequences of that.

Why now?
says Sabine.

I’m still a few blocks from home when Martha calls, all breathless and in a tizzy. Tomorrow is coronation day, where she and the other princesses will gather in the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum and, in front of an enthusiastic $30-a-ticket crowd, a Rose Festival Queen will be announced. The lucky Princess who becomes Queen has her lowly court tiara replaced with a queen tiara by one of the ancient Rosarians while the other princesses pretend to be happy for her. Poise under pressure, Martha tells me, is one of the things they’ve been drilling into them. Martha is pretty sure she’s neck-and-neck with Cleveland High School’s Princess. A girl who recently donated some of her bone marrow stem cells to a leukemia patient. “But her GPA is only 2.9,” Martha says, hopefully, over the phone.

“Maybe you should offer someone a kidney or something,” I tell her. “It’s not too late, is it?”

“Will you come?” she wants to know. “I’ll pay for your ticket. It would be so great to see you in the audience.”

I think about it for a minute. Sitting there in the cold venue, where people go to see monster trucks and hockey games. It’s the closest thing Portland has to a beauty contest, this Rose Festival Court gala. “Will Nick be there?” I ask.

“Oh Brady, don’t be like that. I want you both there. Can’t you just get over your issues with one another?”

I don’t want to give her an ultimatum—one of those him or me deals—but it seems that Martha needs all the facts about this boyfriend of hers. She needs to know what he’s capable of. “Can you come over? There’s something you should hear.”

Martha shows up bearing a platter of low-fat, tofu spring rolls. And a six-pack of Evian. “They say spring water is good for the heart,” she tells us.

Dad is happy to see her, and Mom asks her to sit down and catch up. Martha is so good at doing the bread-and-butter thing. She launches into her free-range chicken speech, and my parents smile and nod, attentively. They wish her luck and thank her for all she’s done, and then, finally, I have an opportunity to nab her and pull her into Sabine’s room.

“Wow,” she says, stroking Nona’s rose and pink quilt. “I still can’t really believe it, you know?”

I’m shaking. This is going to be harder than I thought. I grab the little cheerleader doll and start pulling at the cellophane pom-pom strips.
She loves me, she loves me not
.

“So, what is it? What do you have for me?”

I gesture toward the top of Sabine’s tidy dresser next to the photo of Sabine and Martha French-braiding my hair, and point to my sister’s phone. I tell Martha the code, and ask her to listen to the voicemail sequence under LoverBoy.

She takes the little techno-brick in her hand, turns it over a couple of times and says, “Isn’t this a breach of privacy?” She says privacy the way Brits do, with the short-voweled
i
.

“There’s a lot of breach, Martha. One could say these last few months have been nothing
but
breach. Seriously, it’s up to you, but if it were me? I’d want to know.”

Martha sighs, reaches into her pocket for a pill, and swallows it with a big gulp of Evian, then drags her index finger along the bar. She puts the phone to her ear.

I yank at the little green pom-pom strips.

Martha’s face goes through a spectrum of movement. First, it’s all poise under pressure, but as she engages the history of Nick’s messages, drilling down the conversation, poise abandons Martha. And in the end, once the cheerleader doll is holding a bald pom-pom, I’m cradling Martha in my arms. Stroking her glossy princess hair while she sops the front of my tee-shirt with her tears. This same Martha who was once a little girl who got teased for wearing
Finding Nemo
underpants. My dear friend, who frustrates, annoys and fascinates me. The girl who seems like she has all the answers, but really, is just as mixed up as the rest of us. The candidate for Queen of Rosaria whimpers into my chest, “I had no idea.” She blubbers. “Why didn’t she tell me?”