The Whole Golden World (4 page)

Yet she said, “Look, it's none of my business, but are you okay?”

In the pause, he'd been staring down at the surface of his desk, drumming his fingers. He startled back to life. “Huh?”

Morgan brushed her hair forward on her scar side. “You just look like you're not . . . feeling well.”

“I'm stressed out, actually. This calculus stuff is hard.” He laughed darkly. “Probably not for you, though.”

Morgan just shrugged. It hadn't been that hard for her so far, but she didn't want to act smarter than him, like she was bragging.

Mr. Hill continued, “I just have to refresh myself on the details, you know? All those years teaching
x
+ 7 = 14 in September have rotted my brain. And I'm worried the kids can tell. Can you tell? Is it obvious?”

She shook her head. “Nah. You seem fine to me.” This was a lie, Morgan realized as soon as she said it. She'd already thought he looked nervous and unsure, his gaiety in the classroom more forced than she remembered from ninth grade. But he wasn't putting up a front with her, for some reason, which Morgan found both weird and thrilling.

He shook his head hard then, like a dog shaking off water. “Anyway, sorry. You don't want to listen to some old man groan about his job.”

Morgan laughed. “Oh, yeah, old. Get out the wheelchair, Gramps. You can't be more than what, thirty?”

“I'll have you know I'm a mere twenty-nine years old. For another few months anyway. You sure know how to cheer up a person. Thanks, Morgan.” He was now smiling so wide she saw his cheek tuck in with a dimple. She'd never seen that before.

Morgan felt a tingly wave of heat pouring down over her.

Her phone chimed. Her brothers, she knew without looking.

“Look, I gotta run, my brothers are expecting me. Sorry about the texting.”

“Sure, Morgan. I understand. Happens to the best of us.”

Morgan had to work hard not to skip out of the room. She turned back just at the doorway and saw him watching her. She turned away and tipped her head, letting her hair fall to hide her smile.

She didn't have time to revel, though, as the phone buzzed again. Connor. “
Where the f are you? Stuck here with your fag friend.
”

Morgan broke another school rule by running through the hallways so she could let her brothers know what a couple of immature jackasses they were for saying such a thing about Ethan, about anybody, but especially about Ethan.

7

R
ain turned away abruptly from Layla's disappointed confusion and almost ran to the door of NYC. The new girl—lithe and young and earnest about her chakras—was under the impression everyone wanted her company every moment, and she had been trying to rope Rain into an awkward lunch in the cramped back room. Rain begged off, saying she wanted some air, and Layla had made to follow her even then. She was like a lonely puppy and in her dewy youth reminded Rain of how long ago she herself was so slender, cheerful, and fertile.

Rain shoved open the door and stole a glance into the window of the adjacent jewelry shop as she took a right turn, marching off as if with purpose, going nowhere special. Her hair was looking thin and flat, and indeed so was the rest of her, though her stomach bumped out unattractively, due to last night's garlicky pizza.

Rain bypassed her blue VW Bug parked at the end of the lot and turned away from the row of businesses toward the tree-lined neighborhood nearby.

She strode along until she found herself at the center of Arbor Valley: Richmond Park. The fanciest houses in town bordered this green, shady expanse. The founding fathers of the town had tried to echo Central Park in New York City. Known simply as “the park,” it featured a fountain in the center that in fact very much resembled the Central Park fountain.

Rain settled on one of the green benches ringing the fountain space, facing inward. She and TJ—just like countless other Arbor Valley couples—had their wedding pictures taken here. In her very favorite, TJ was dipping her, and she was laughing, one arm around his neck, the other grabbing the top of her head because she feared her veil would slide off onto the pebbled ground. It was a spontaneous moment for TJ, an unguarded moment for her, and the photographer captured the exact apex of their joy.

Rain's attention was, as ever, drawn like a compass arrow to any babies or small children. Thus her gaze landed on a toddler with curlicue hair in two pigtails at the top of her head, like puppy ears. The girl was toddling in circles and giggling at her own delightful walking.

After watching for a few moments, Rain looked up to find her watchful mother to send her a smile of
isn't she adorable?

Odd. She did not see any such watchful parent nearby. Rain began to study the adults on the benches, looking for a mother, father, nanny, big sister. No one seemed to be paying any mind.

It was about then that the toddler looked up in a searching kind of way, and her pudgy little face bunched up with confusion.

Rain left the bench and approached the girl slowly, bending over as she came so by the time she reached her, she was crouched down to her level. “Are you okay, sweetie? Where's your mommy?”

The toddler regarded her with round, wary eyes and sniffed hard. She was angling her body slightly away, as if prepared to run screaming. “Where did your mommy go?” Rain prompted again, though she knew it might be a babysitter, grandma, or dad she was with.

Rain looked around again. No one seemed to be noticing them. There were college-age kids with earbuds in, a few people reading on the benches, mothers absorbed with their own children. A jogger plodded by, his feet whapping heavily into the dirt. She looked around for an authority figure; a police officer, or even a park employee would do.

No one. Rain rose to her feet but folded over so her face was still close to the girl's. “Sweetie, let's try to find your mommy. I'll take you.” She held out her hand and offered the girl a soft smile.

The girl seemed to relax at this gesture, and she slipped her dimpled hand into Rain's.

Rain started to walk toward a distant play structure, thinking that a likely place the girl had wandered from. The toddler scuffed her feet along slowly. She shifted her grasp of Rain's hand so that her tiny fingers were wrapped around Rain's pinky.

Their progress was painfully slow. Rain paused and crouched down again. “Let me pick you up, sweetie, so we can go faster. Can I do that?”

The girl didn't reply, but nor did she seem upset by the idea. Rain put her hands under the child's armpits. She didn't react or seem alarmed. So Rain stood up and propped the little girl on her hip. She smelled of strawberries and tomato soup.

A familiar pang registered in Rain's chest at being this close to a child not her own. She looked down at the girl, those precious bouncy pigtails, and planted an impulsive kiss on the top of her head, the downy curls tickling her lips.

A shriek shattered the air.

“Let go of her!”

A woman was running toward them, almost waddling with a preschooler on her hip, the older child bouncing along crazily.

Rain set the girl down carefully, and the toddler ambled toward her mother, arms up and fingers flexing.

The mother fell to her knees and dropped the older boy at once, opening her arms for the girl. When her daughter was safely in her arms, she turned on Rain.

“What were you doing with her? Where were you taking her!”

Rain held her hands up, palms out. “I was trying to find you!”

“You were walking her toward the parking lot.” The woman was half sobbing and had reached her other arm around her son, who looked to be maybe four years old, as if Rain might try to run away with him, too.

Rain replied, half pleading, “No! The playground! I thought she'd come from the playground! She was by the fountain!”

“Did you follow her there? Were you watching for a child to wander off? I should call the police.” She took out her cell phone and began to dial, but her hands were trembling and she dropped it.

The girl—who had been placid throughout her walkabout and her brief journey with Rain—began to cling to her mother and wail. The boy popped a thumb in his mouth.

“No, ma'am, please, I didn't mean any harm . . .”

Rain heard the rhythmic pounding of running feet and soon after, panting breath in her ear. Next to her was the jogger who had passed them earlier. “Ma'am?” he said, addressing the mother. “I have to say I watched this young lady with your daughter, and it's clear she was only trying to help.”

He jogged in place, keeping his heart rate up.

The woman plopped down on her rear end and started to sob into her daughter's neck. “I thought she was gone . . . Joey fell, and I . . . I didn't know she could unbuckle the stroller . . .”

The jogger nodded at Rain, one curt dip of the chin, and carried on with his run. She muttered “Thank you,” though he couldn't have heard.

Rain approached the woman as one might a wounded animal. “Ma'am? Is there anything you need me to help you with? Carry that diaper bag or anything?”

The mother dried her face on her daughter's hair, her hands still locked around her children. “No,” she croaked out. “Sorry. I . . . Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.”

As Rain walked back down the path to the fountain, she heard the woman still muttering “sorry.”

 

Rain walked back through the door of NYC and cringed when she saw the clock on the store's rear wall. She was a full fifteen minutes late for her next class. That meant a bunch of angry women who'd paid good money and were probably squeezing in some
ohm
before picking up school-age children or grocery shopping.

“Shit,” she muttered, head down and racing past the front desk, where Beverly was sitting, before her boss had a chance to ask her where the hell she'd been.

Rain threw open the door to the studio but recoiled in shock. Instead of a roomful of angry women she found her class in full swing, everyone's butt high in the air. Layla popped her head up from her downward-facing dog and mouthed,
I got this
. Then she jerked with her head toward the door.

As Rain backed out, she saw more than a few familiar students looking back at her from between their knees, foreheads wrinkled in confusion.

Rain walked to her locker, to grab her water bottle, trying to figure out why she didn't feel grateful that Layla had filled in and spared her students the annoyance of a late class. Rain checked her phone, fumbling it just as the hysterical mother in the park had done. For the first time since she walked back in through the NYC front door, Rain noticed her own hands were shaking.

8

M
organ was so drowsy on the grass in the park, feeling the sun paint her all over with the warmth of the tailing ribbons of summer, she almost didn't open her eyes when her phone chimed with a message. It chimed again and she sighed. Mom would have the police combing the town for her remains if she didn't reply in a nanosecond.

Morgan saw it was David and turned the phone over with another snort of disgust. “Whatever.” She hoped to sound casual.

Ethan was stretched out on the grass next to her, their open AP English notebooks between them, pages fluttering in a slight breeze. He cocked his eyebrow.

Morgan intoned, “High school senior commits homicide over continued texting from hypocrite ex-boyfriend. Film at eleven.”

“Homicide ruled justifiable by a jury of indignant teen girls. Film at eleven.”

Morgan laughed and propped up on her elbows. In the late-afternoon light flickering through the trees, Ethan looked older than she remembered. No, not older. More mature. She recalled his face earlier in the week when he thought he lost her in the crowd, and the feel of his large hand over hers, pulling her along.

“What?” he asked. “Do I have a zit?”

“Nothing,” she replied, quickly. “No, you don't. Just spaced out a sec, that's all.”

“So what's up with Dashing Dave? Is he trying to get back together?”

“No, at least, I don't think he is. It's like he wants to pay me just enough attention so I'll fall for him again, but not so much he has to be my boyfriend. It's screwed up.”

“Yeah. That empty-headed jock didn't appreciate you anyway.”

Morgan felt her face grow hot despite the shade from the trees. “Hey, he wasn't that bad.” After all, she'd spent the best part of her junior year in his arms and gave him her virginity.

“It's solidarity. I thought we were hating ex-boyfriends.”

“Just don't hate him so much that you cut me down for liking him in the first place.”

Ethan sat all the way up, then, and turned to her with dark, serious eyes. “I'd never cut you down. Ever.”

Morgan blinked under his steady gaze. She caught herself stroking her scar, so she sat up and leaned forward, allowing her hair to draw over it like a curtain. “I'm so mad at my jerk brother for what he said about you the other day. I'm sorry I told you, though. I shouldn't have even mentioned it.”

Ethan shrugged and looked away toward the park's fountain. A couple was being photographed. Morgan guessed by the way the photographer kept directing her to display her left hand on his shoulder it was an engagement shot. “Whatever. No big deal.”

Morgan sat up straighter. “No, actually, it is a big deal. But of course the boys acted like it was nothing and so did Mom. She was all, ‘go to your room' and ‘that's not nice,' like he'd said ‘booger' and he's five years old.”

“It's over, and it's not a big deal. Honest. I've been called worse.”

“What's worse than that?”

“You don't want to know.”

Morgan flopped back in the grass again. “I can't wait to get out of high school and away from these provincial, small-minded idiots.”

“You think there are no idiots in college?”

“There have to be fewer idiots in college. That's kind of the point, isn't it? Maybe I'll even get into Boston U.”

“While the rest of us provincial idiots toil away back here in Michigan?”

“Who says you have to stay in Michigan?”

“I don't get the grades you do.”

“Your grades are good. And anyway, you don't have to go to Boston or the Ivy League to go someplace different.”

Ethan pulled his knees up, propped his folded arms on them, and rested his chin there. His gaze seemed far away as he replied, “There's no place different. Not really.”

“Hey, let's watch a movie on Saturday. Something hilarious and stupid. This is all getting too serious for me.”

“Too serious for Morgan Monetti?”

At this he finally turned back to her, a playful smile breaking out on his lean face.

“You don't know everything there is to know about me.” And Morgan risked a flirtatious smile, the same one she'd used all those months ago on David when she met him at the movies with a group of friends.

“Well. I'm intrigued then, Miss Boston.”

“Don't call me that,” Morgan retorted. “You'll jinx me. I haven't even done my application yet.”

“I don't believe in jinxes. A smart girl like you can't be derailed so easily.”

Morgan ran her fingers along her scar, reading its familiar bumps like Braille, and said nothing.

 

Morgan's car wound through the slow-moving streets of Arbor Valley, and she was careful to note her speed. The cops loved nothing more than to bust a teen driver and fanatically enforced the 25 mph speed limit as a way of “preserving the peaceful residential character of our town.” That's what she'd read in the paper, anyway, back when she was flirting with journalism as a career choice.

“Why not music?” she was asked all the time, because of her cello. She'd always say, “I don't want music to be my work. That would suck the life out of it.” Besides, she was no Yo-Yo Ma. What would she do, teach all day? Dozens of Connors and Jareds using their bows like light sabers?

Driving away from the park took her away from the two-story brick homes with the high decorative arches and masses of sparkling windows to the southern edge of town, nearer to the commercial strip by the highway. The houses shrank as she drove along, faded aluminum siding replacing brick. The landscaping gradually faded from sharply manicured to inconsistently maintained, and now and again she spied a lawn grown long and uneven with soft wisps of seeds on top. “Gone to seed,” she muttered.

She parked her car in the driveway on her mother's side, leaving her father's side of the garage accessible because he was not likely home and wouldn't be for hours yet.

Morgan opened the door to the smell of tomato sauce on the stove and knew it had been another busy day for her mother, who would throw pasta in a pot as many as four days a week. If she never had spaghetti another day in her life after she graduated, it would be too soon.

Morgan toyed with the idea of going gluten-free just to see what Dinah would do.

Dinah thumped down from upstairs then, her wavy brown hair in a messy ponytail, and her jeans riding a bit too low on her hips, revealing a sliver of red underwear. Morgan rolled her eyes and fought the urge to walk over and yank her mother's pants up, or yank down her shirt, at least.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Dinah called over her shoulder. “Could you set the table, please?”

“Can I at least put down my bag first? And why, yes, I had a nice day, thanks for asking.”

Dinah started chopping up lettuce after giving the spaghetti a stir. “Oh, come on, I was going to ask you. But it's close to dinnertime and I need help getting the table set.”

Morgan took the plates out of the cupboard and didn't bother asking why her brothers weren't helping. They were “doing homework,” which seemed to take them three times as long as it would anyone else. Morgan suspected they were probably playing their video games on low volume or playing with their laptops half the time, at least. Because whatever their parents or the school said about their ability to do schoolwork, Morgan noticed that with proper incentive—say, they wanted to go to the varsity basketball game—they miraculously found a way to get it done.

“So,” her mother said, as Morgan tried not to thunk the plates down with too much force. “You had a good day, then? You were studying with Britney, right?”

“Ethan, Mom. I told you.”

“Right. Sorry. How's Ethan?”

“Fine.”

“Did you have a nice time?”

“Fine. Mom, your underwear is showing.”

Dinah flushed and yanked on her pants, while Morgan felt a pang of regret for pointing out the underwear. What difference did it really make? “Ethan is coming over this Saturday to watch a movie. If that's okay.”

Dinah paused in her dinner fixing to beam a smile at Morgan. “Well, of course! I've always liked him.”

“Don't get too excited,” Morgan said drily. “We're just friends.”

“Well, your father and I—”

“Started out as friends, I know, I know. Just don't get . . . you know.”

“How do I get?”

Morgan put a hand on her hip and paused in setting out the glasses. “Don't start picking out wedding china or anything, okay?”

Dinah raised her hands in mock surrender. “I will not be in the least supportive. In fact, I promise to hate him. Better?” She laughed so Morgan would laugh, too, and she did oblige her mother with a chuckle. She meant well, after all.

Morgan and Dinah exchanged a quizzical glance when they heard the garage. It was Thursday, the day of staff meetings and paperwork, and they never saw her dad this early.

But it was indeed him, coming in through the garage. Morgan turned her attention back to the table and away from the strain of his blazer as it puckered at the shoulders and failed to reach around her father's middle, if he ever tried to button it, which he never did.

He hung his work bag on his appointed hook with a heavy sigh and turned to the refrigerator. He fished out a beer and with a small, silent wave to his wife and daughter he went off to the den off the living room, where his computer sat and the television was constantly tuned to ESPN.

Morgan looked up from setting the flatware to see her mother's face: grim and hard, staring into the boiling water of the pasta.

“Mom?” Morgan asked. “You okay?”

Dinah rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist, the gesture exposing her pale forearm to the yellow kitchen lights, reminding Morgan of how seldom her mom ever saw real sunlight, between her café and their home.

“Yeah, I guess so. It's hard to be ignored, though.”

Morgan nodded, adding silently:
Don't I know it
.

Dinah went on, “I can't remember the last time he and I went out somewhere or exchanged more than a few words about stuff like the twins' report cards, or your concert. Or whether there are termites eating the deck. This is not the stuff you think about on your wedding day. Termites.”

Dinah had leaned back on the kitchen counter near the stove, crossing her feet at the ankles. She was looking down, her head angled and her face tight as if in concentration.

Morgan laid out napkins, and as she considered her parents' marriage, she realized it had been a good while since they seemed to have any fun together. When she was a little kid—after the boys were out of imminent danger but before they started flailing in school—there were backyard picnics and her parents' laughter as they played badminton and sailed the birdie into the bushes time and again. Her dad's imitation of Al Pacino in
Scarface
(“Say hello to my little friend,” he'd say, wielding something stupid, like a pickle) would make her mom laugh until she folded at the middle. But Morgan could hardly remember her mom smiling at her dad lately, much less her dad trying to make his wife crack up.

Heck, her dad was hardly ever home for him to crack his old jokes. Even though he had the summers “off” (supposedly) he was always taking grad classes, or visiting his elderly relations back in Jersey, or working on projects like building a shed in the backyard or repainting the deck. Before he was a principal, when he'd been a science teacher, he'd taught driver's ed over the summer and regaled his family with hilarious stories of rookie drivers massacring orange traffic cones.

“So why don't you go out somewhere?” Morgan reached into the refrigerator for salad dressing. “I'm going to be staying in this Saturday with Ethan coming over. I'll keep an eye on the monsters and make sure they don't set the place on fire or take off for Vegas or something. Anyway, they'll probably just stay in their room playing their video games or whatever.”

“Oh, I don't know. It probably won't make a difference.”

“But it couldn't hurt. Hey, Mom, take advantage of me being here while I still am. Next year I'll be gone.”

Dinah jerked her head up, seeming shocked, as if she'd forgotten. She regarded Morgan all over with one of her searching looks, like she was a suspect in a lineup.

“When did this happen?” Dinah said in an uncharacteristic voice sounding breathy and tentative.

Morgan turned away, uncomfortable with her stare, and straightened the salad dressings on the table. Britney had noticed it, too, this sudden left turn into soggy emotion that their mothers were prone to lately. Morgan could understand, sort of, but it was also fiercely irritating.

Dinah cleared her throat and Morgan heard the clanking of pans and dishes behind her, the moment snapped off, much to her relief. Then her mother said, “You know, it isn't fair that Kate talks to him more than I do. I married him, for God's sake.”

Kate. Known to Morgan as Ms. Spencer, the assistant principal, who had an office right next door to her dad's.

“Okay,” Dinah continued, after a pause in which she was maybe considering the proximity of Kate Spencer's office to her husband's. “Okay, we will go out. But, hon, you don't have to be in charge of your brothers. You can all be in charge of yourselves. Heck, you're all teenagers, now.”

Morgan turned away to hide her smirk because she knew exactly whose ass would be on the line if the boys tore up the house while her mother was out.

Her mother looked less sad, though, now, with the prospect of her hot date. Not to mention, Morgan thought, with both parents out of the house and her brothers occupied upstairs, she would have time alone with Ethan, at least as alone as she ever got to be.