The Beautiful Between (4 page)

No one ever thought I was lying about my father—by now, half the kids in our class have divorced parents, and why would anyone invent such a mundane story? And I never leave the room or make uncomfortable faces when kids talk about their dads. Never sigh with jealousy when people complain their dads are too strict, too hard on them, too embarrassing. I laugh when people talk about the annoying things their fathers do. Everyone knows my parents had a messy divorce when I was too young to know the details, and everyone accepts that, because plenty of kids are in the same situation. But now Jeremy has broken my lie and my skin is itching, as though curiosity could be turned back on like a light.

5

It’s Tuesday, and Kate’s absent. Actually, she’s been missing a lot of days since the school year began; I’d just never really noticed before. Now I kind of miss her. I want to spend time with the girl who thinks I’m cool, because maybe then I’ll start to believe it myself.

After the physics quiz, I try to catch Jeremy’s eye—I actually think I did well, and I want to thank him for his help—but it’s the last class of the day, and he rushes out like he has somewhere he has to be. Probably track practice or something. Of course, Jeremy is the star of every team he joins.

At lunch on Wednesday, Jeremy sits next to me and we begin our Alexis-staring contest. I joke that we’re actually losing weight too; we’re so fascinated by watching her that we forget to eat.

“We’ve gotta get ourselves a new table,” Jeremy whispers to me.

I grin, though certainly I know that if Jeremy leaves this table for another, he isn’t going to take me with him. He could fit in at any table. I’m not so sure about me.

“No, seriously,” he continues. “We’ll start our own table. Healthy eaters only.” He turns his chair around so it’s facing away from the table, and I do the same. He looks around at the cafeteria. I never counted how many tables are in here, but I can tell that Jeremy has.

“’course, it’ll be tough; most of the tables are taken.”

“Yup. We’ll have to get here early, claim one right away.”

He winks, like we’re on a mission now. “Good call.”

The lunchroom is packed. There’s a crowd around the table with pastries and bread on it—this means they’ve brought out a fresh batch of bagels that are still warm. I even see a teacher or two pushing to get to the bagel basket.

Brent Fisher is walking toward us. He’s a senior, but he knows Jeremy pretty well.

“Hey, Cole, can I talk to you a second?” He crouches by Jeremy’s chair.

“What’s up, Fisher?”

How do boys know how to use last names like that? Makes them sound so cool.

“Well, it’s about Marcy McDonald.”

Marcy is a junior at another school, but everyone knows who she is. She’s beautiful, and Jeremy dated her for most of sophomore year, but at the start of this year he was single. I don’t think anyone knows why they broke up: the gossip mill is never as strong in the summertime; people go away—on vacation, to country houses, to fancy college-preparatory summer schools.

“I know you guys were pretty tight last year,” Brent begins, and Jeremy shrugs. “But she and I were hanging out last weekend, and I … Well, dude, I’d really like to ask her out. But I know things ended badly between you guys—”

Hmm, I think. Really?

“—and I don’t want to, you know …”

“Dude, don’t worry about it. Marcy’d be lucky to have you.”

“So we’re cool?”

“Completely.” Throughout this whole exchange, Brent hasn’t so much as looked my way. I wonder if it’s one of those unwritten laws on how to converse with royalty.

“Thanks, dude.” Brent looks genuinely relieved as he turns to walk away, which makes me think that things have already moved forward with him and Marcy and he’d been scared it would get back to Jeremy before he got the okay. Huh, I think, Fornication Under Consent of the King. Just like in feudal times.

Jeremy turns back to me. “Marcy, man. Good luck with that chick.”

“That must have been a bad breakup,” I try, curious to know what happened, hoping he’ll elaborate.

“Whatever. I’m sure she has nice qualities. I used to think so, anyway.”

Maybe she cheated on him. But that’s unfathomable. Why would anyone cheat on Jeremy Cole? I decide to change the subject. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you—how’s Kate doing? She’s absent again today. She must not have been faking, huh? I mean, is she really sick? The flu’s been going around something awful.”

“Going around something awful?” Jeremy smiles wickedly. “You know, Sternin, sometimes you talk like a grandmother.” I blush. “Catch you later, Granny,” Jeremy says, and he gets up and heads to a different table—where he’s met enthusiastically, of course. I knew he didn’t mean it about starting a table of our own.

Now that the physics quiz is over and Jeremy’s vocab has improved, I wonder if maybe our—I don’t know what to call it: friendship? flirtation? exchange of skills?—is over. I pretty much assume it is. It never was anything; Jeremy is just that guy who can hang out with anyone, so he just chose me for a few days there. That’s all.

I am very nearly floored when the phone at home rings later and it’s him. First of all, the call comes late, after eleven, and I don’t really have any friends who would call that late on a school night. That’s the kind of thing only your very best friend would do without worrying about getting you into trouble with your parents. I’m not particularly social once I get home at night; I’m Rapunzel, locked up in my tower to study, with no late-night callers.

I’m groggy as I say, “Hello?”

“Sternin, hey, what’s up?”

“Not me.” I recognize Jeremy’s voice. It’s thrilling to hear his voice on my phone, even if he’s upset my bedtime routine.

“Huh?”

“I was half asleep, Jeremy.”

“Oh, dude, it’s not even midnight. Jeez, Connelly, let your hair down once in a while.”

Not quite the fairy-tale request, but he is a modern-day prince after all.

“Wanna hang out?” Jeremy continues.

“Now?”

“Sure.”

“It’s eleven-thirty on a Wednesday night. I’m in my pajamas.”

“So? I’ll grab a taxi. Just stand outside with me while I have a cigarette.”

Why is he compelled to take a cab all the way up here—his family lives a good thirty blocks away—to stand outside my building with me (in my pajamas) to smoke a cigarette? That’ll take him less time than the trip up here. But I’m curious.

“Okay, sure.”

“Great. Come down in fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Okay, see you soon.”

My muscles feel so tight that I practically bounce from my bed and into the bathroom. My skin looks awful, greasy from the lotions I douse it with before I fall asleep—all kinds of clear-pore stuff that promises to prevent breakouts. My hair is dirty and flat. I should put on some makeup. I should change my clothes.

I open the front door quietly, leave it unlocked for myself, press for the elevator. I think about the kind of guy who goes out, jets uptown just for a cigarette with some girl. It’s not because he’s scared of getting caught smoking in his neighborhood; just as many people know him around here—maybe even more, since I live closer to school. For the Coles, a cab ride uptown just for the hell of it isn’t a waste of money. They’re old New York money. I heard that there’s a centuries-old mansion from his mother’s side of the family somewhere in New England. But maybe that’s just a rumor; that’s the Jewish side of the family, and I also heard that they’d immigrated here in the 1900s and made their fortune in New York real estate. The Coles know everyone and everything. I’m certain Jeremy knows how my father died. And of all the things that Jeremy has and all the things he gets to do, that’s the thing I envy most.

He’s in my lobby when the elevator door opens, which surprises me—cool people aren’t usually so prompt.

He doesn’t look like he usually does. He’s wearing flannel pajama pants and they don’t fit at all, unlike the rest of his perfect wardrobe. He looks scared.

“Sternin!” he calls out as I exit the elevator, though I can tell his heart’s not in it. He doesn’t sound happy. He turns and I follow him out the door, and he lights a cigarette expertly. I’ve never had a cigarette, but I don’t want to admit that to him.

“Want one?” he offers.

“Sure.”

He hands a cigarette to me and I put it in my mouth. He holds his lighter to the tip and I wait for the cigarette to light up. Nothing happens and I stick the tip farther into the flame.

“You gotta suck in, Sternin.”

My cheeks get hot and I suck hard, but manage not to cough as I inhale. The cigarette lights and I’m relieved. Jeremy doesn’t notice, or at least doesn’t care, that when I inhale I blow the smoke right back out instead of breathing it all the way into my lungs.

He doesn’t say anything. I’m scared that if I ask him what he’s doing here, he won’t come back.

He lights a second cigarette with the smoldering tip of the first before tossing the butt on the ground, something I’ve never seen anyone do before.

“It’s nice out, huh, Sternin?”

I nod, even though I’m freezing. My cigarette’s gone, so I bury my hands in my pockets. Maybe if I just wait, maybe if I’m just quiet, he’ll explain why he’s here.

“Sometimes I can’t believe we’re juniors. I still feel like I’m younger, you know?” I nod, but Jeremy’s not even looking at me. “I mean, I’m sixteen. That makes Kate twelve. Twelve! I remember when she was born.”

I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t have any siblings. I can’t think of anyone I’ve known since she was born.

Jeremy drops his cigarette and expertly crushes it under his heel.

“Hey, Sternin, thanks for coming out tonight,” he says with finality, and I think, That’s it? Wait, please wait, and tell me why you asked me to come have a cigarette with you. I should say something.

“Jeremy?”

“Yeah, Connie?”

I’m kind of startled when he calls me Connie. Normally I hate being called that, and now I’m surprised to discover that I like the way it sounds when Jeremy says it. So I just say, “Have a good night.”

He kisses me goodbye on the cheek, like I’m a friend of the family. He smells like smoke, and I’m kind of relieved when he disappears into a cab. This was a strange seven minutes. I felt like he was waiting for me to do something. Maybe he was waiting for me to kiss him. I’ve never had a guy wait for me to do that, and maybe that’s how they wait. Or maybe he was waiting for me to ask him something; maybe he knows I don’t know how my father died. Maybe he wants to tell me. But how would he know that I don’t? And even though asking him might soothe my skin—I’ve even tried using extra moisturizer since this itching started—it would be beyond embarrassing. For the Coles and everyone else to know that I don’t know, that I never found out, that I’ve been lying.

6

There are things that even the Coles don’t know. Maybe they know that my dad’s parents live across the country, and even that I see them for one week every August. But they don’t know that when I visit them, I feel like I’ve been transported back to the 1950s. My grandparents still have a black-and-white TV with an antenna, and my grandmother cooks spaghetti and meatballs, and they call dinner “supper.” There’s white bread and margarine in the middle of the table, and Oreos and milk for dessert. And no one knows that when I was little, I would pass the time by pretending I was someplace else, usually someplace exotic; that I was a princess trapped in a mystical tower, waiting for a prince to break through the enchantment to set me free.

Every corner of my dad’s parents’ house reminds me of a different fantasy I had there when I was small, a different story I made up to keep myself busy. Sometimes I get caught up in the stories all over again. There are childhood pictures of my father on the living room wall, right next to my baby pictures, but they don’t seem connected to my fuzzy idea of a father. I have no memory of my grandparents with him, no memory of them before my father died. They could just be a nice old couple I spend time with.

You know, if my mother could’ve gotten away with it, I bet I wouldn’t even know that he died—like, if a girl could grow up fatherless without some kind of explanation, she wouldn’t have even told me. But it’s not the kind of thing you can say absolutely nothing about; only nearly nothing.

My whole body has gone curious, not just my skin. I tap my fingers on my desk while I wonder if my father’s death was sudden, when I should be studying for a history exam. I chew my lip till it cracks in study hall while I wonder if he was ill and had time to put his affairs in order, or if it was sudden and my mom was left scrambling. Curiouser and curiouser: now that the switch has been flipped, it’s all I can think about. I think about it until my head hurts. Sixteen seems far too old to be this clueless. Now, I’m almost ashamed that I haven’t looked for answers before; now, I can’t imagine going much longer without answers, can’t possibly go on living with this curiosity that makes me scratch till my skin is raw and my whole body tense.

Jeremy comes over on Thursday night too. By Friday night I expect his call; I’m wide awake, and I’ve waited to wash my face and things so that my face isn’t covered in lotion. It’s always the same: he smokes his cigarettes, I fake-smoke one or two, and I wait for him to explain what he’s doing with me, to explain why he needs to leave his house every night. But we barely speak. I’m beginning to suspect that Kate is really sick, since she still isn’t back in school, but I don’t ask him about it. Now that I think it might be something serious, it would be nosy to ask; before, it seemed like just making conversation.

On Saturday, Gram—my mother’s mother—takes me out to lunch. Gram always says that I don’t eat enough, though she also always says to be careful to hold my stomach in when I stand up because it’s sticking out. When she says things like that, I remind myself that she’s had a hard life: her family died in the Holocaust after she had escaped to America, and her marriage to my grandfather was arranged because his family had a good business. They had a successful, if not happy, life together, I suppose. My grandfather made a good enough living to take care of my grandma, and there was even enough left for my mom and me after he was gone. My grandfather had a heart attack and passed away before I was born.

It’s strange that I know how my mother’s father died, I have some idea how Gram’s whole family died, but I don’t know how my own father died.

I sit across from Gram at the restaurant, both of us in flowered chairs with plush seats and hard, straight backs that Gram says are good for your posture. I wonder if Gram is proud of my mother, if the life my mother has is anything close to the life Gram wanted for her.

Maybe my father’s not really dead. Maybe it’s true that he and my mother had some terrible, awful divorce and she got full custody, and then she said he was dead so that I would never go look for him. Maybe he is a really terrible person. Maybe he did something really bad. There’s a girl at school whose father convinced a judge that his ex-wife was insane and had her institutionalized so he could have full custody of his daughter. The truth came out, though, and the mother was released, and the girl never sees her dad anymore. It’s comforting to think that the truth always comes out eventually. It soothes my curious muscles. But then they tense again, because I don’t know how that truth came out; there was probably a lot of work involved: court cases, investigations, questions asked and answers found. I wish the truth would just come out on its own.

My grandmother clucks as I eat my soup, though she seems somewhat pacified by the fact that I’m also eating bread.

“Not so much butter, Connelly Jane.”

Gram likes to call me Connelly Jane; Jane (or some Polish, Jewish version of it) was her sister’s name.

“Gram, the butter’s the best part.” She smiles, because she agrees with me, and if her stomach wasn’t so sensitive, she’d eat butter too.

“So, darling, I can’t remember the last time you suggested we have a meal.”

“Don’t be silly, Gram, I see you almost every week.”

“With your mother. Honestly, I think she brings you along to distract me while she goes through my china cabinet.”

“You know all she wants are Grandpa’s candlesticks.”

“Feh. I’ve never kept them from her.”

I don’t understand; is she irritated that my mother wants the candlesticks or irritated that she hasn’t taken them yet? My mother takes only the things that my grandmother suggests she take, the things Gram practically forces into our arms when we leave the apartment. Things I know my mother doesn’t want, things that add clutter to our home, clutter that she hates: a china candy dish; a set of linen napkins, some of which are stained; leftover chicken soup. The candlesticks are never offered, and they’re the only thing my mother wants; she’s told me so. They are tall and silver, elaborate, even maybe a little gaudy. Not my mother’s taste, and not mine, but they were important to her father, so now they’re important to her.

“It must have been hard for her when Grandpa died, and they remind her of him.”

“Why? He stopped using them a long time ago. They just sat in the cabinet. I’m the one who took them out and polished them.”

“Maybe just because they were his. Because he used them when she was growing up. Maybe that’s enough to remind her. I mean”—and I pause—“it’s not like I remember seeing my father open a wine bottle, but the wine rack still reminds me of him.”

I’ve made that up. It’s pathetic that bottles of wine are the best I can do. But my mother never touches them—she doesn’t even drink—so I can guess that the extensive, untouched, dust-covered collection by the kitchen must have belonged to him.

“Not the same thing.”

“Why?” My soup has gotten cold and I only had a few spoonfuls of it. It’s not fair; my mother had the chance to build up memories with her father. She doesn’t need to choose the candlesticks just because they happened to be his, like me and the wine bottles.

Although, no matter what they say about “it’s better to have loved and lost,” maybe it’s harder to lose a father you knew and loved.

Gram takes a slow sip of tea, like she’s deciding what to say to me. “She only wants them because they’re fancy,” she says finally, trying to make it into nothing, no big deal, a joke. I want her to know I understand she’s trying to lighten the mood, so I grin.

But I’m not done searching for answers, or at least clues, so I say, “Still, they mean something to her, for whatever reason. A person should have the things that remind her of her father.” Gram shrugs; it’s clear she doesn’t see that this has anything to do with me, with my father. Maybe I lost my father so young that she doesn’t consider me as even ever having had a father.

“I don’t have anything that reminds me of mine,” I say. Gram looks at me sharply. Under the table, I tap my left foot rapidly against my chair.

“What do you need to remember him?” she adds, then pauses, seeming startled by what she has just said. She adds quietly, “What do we need to remember anyone?”

I can hardly play the pity card with someone whose whole family is gone, even if she is my grandmother and is therefore slightly more inclined to feel sorry for me. She never had anything to remember her family by, and moreover, she doesn’t need anything. I’ve played this all wrong. I’ll never get anything out of her that she doesn’t want to give me. My grandmother May love gossip, but gossips only give out information when it’s fun for them.

I decide to walk home, across Central Park, where the leaves are changing and beginning to fall off the trees. I’m hoping the walk will wear me out a little, calm my body down. It’s surprisingly hot, and I wish I wasn’t dressed in such warm clothes. I’m thinking so hard that I get turned around and end up on Central Park South instead of Fifth Avenue. This adds about twenty minutes to the walk, but I don’t care, even though I’ve begun to sweat. It gives me more time to think. I feel like Gram did give something away that I never saw before. Some look in her eye said something, and my feet have begun to hurt when I understand completely. When she said, “What do you need to remember him?” she didn’t mean, “What do you need to remember him by?” What she meant was, “What do you need to remember him
for?”

She doesn’t think he’s worth remembering. Suddenly my theory that his death is a hoax to keep him away from me seems less ridiculous. I mean, I don’t think that’s it—I believe that he’s dead—but there’s something he did that she’s angry about, something she’s ashamed of. Some reason he’s not worth remembering.