The Ghosts of Now (14 page)

Mom sits up straight after a couple of tries. “Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Grein—my daughter Angie.”

“Hi,” I say.

Mrs. Dunlap squints through a film of cigarette smoke that’s the same gray-brown as her hair. She takes her cigarette from her mouth, smiles, and murmurs something, but Mrs. Grein bats her fake eyelashes at Dad and says, “My goodness, Greg, if you’re home from work already, then I’d better get home and make dinner for Jake!”

“It’s a little early,” he says. “I stopped by the hospital to pick up Angie and see Jeremy.”

Immediately both women’s faces twist into serious expressions. “We came by to try to cheer up Barbara. That was a terrible thing. Simply terrible,” Mrs. Grein says.

“We’d better go,” Mrs. Dunlap says. She stubs out the pink-smeared butt of her cigarette into an already filled ashtray and heaves herself out of her chair and onto her feet.

Mrs. Grein fumbles inside her handbag for her car
keys, dropping them a couple of times as she digs down for a glasses case. Finally she tucks her sunglasses on her nose and her handbag strap over her shoulder. She gets to her feet and holds out a hand to Mom.

It’s anyone’s guess which one of them needs steadying the most. They sort of hold each other up, reminding me of a rag doll dance some kids did in a talent show when I was in seventh grade.

“Maybe I’d better drive you home,” Dad says, and Mrs. Grein gets coy again.

“Now, Greg, don’t look so serious. We just had a couple of little drinkie-poos.” I’m about to gag when she adds, “Nothing that would interfere with my driving. Evelyn isn’t worried about my driving, are you, Evelyn?”

“Not any more than usual,” Evelyn says, and the three women laugh hysterically.

By this time we’ve all reached the front door. “Thanks again for coming,” Mom tells them. They hug her again as they leave.

“That’s not going to help,” Dad says. He frowns down at Mom, who curls her lip in a little pout.

“Don’t be so stuffy, Greg,” she says. “I had to be so-sociable.” She has trouble getting the last word out, so she frowns, too, and adds, “Besides, it
does
help.”

“You’re drinking too much lately,” he says.

Mom stands up so stiffly that she loses her balance and puts out a hand to steady herself against the wall. “Oh? You mean you’ve been counting? Hmmm?”

Dad doesn’t answer. He just turns and walks out to the kitchen.

“I better make dinner,” I tell her. My voice comes out as cold as Dad’s had been, and Mom blinks at me. I didn’t mean to sound that way, but I can’t help it. For a few moments I wish I hadn’t come home at all.

“Angie,” Mom says, and she clutches my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “You and Greg—you just don’t understand.”

I don’t know how to answer her. Maybe I don’t understand. Maybe I don’t want to. But I think about Jeremy. I don’t know any more about Mom than I do about him. “I thought you’d be at the hospital with Jeremy,” I blurt out. “You weren’t with him when I got there after school.”

Mom’s shoulders sag, and her voice is high, like a little girl’s. “I sat with Jeremy most of the morning, and he slept. He just slept, Angie.”

Her fingers tighten on my arms, and the pressure hurts. Instinctively I step backward, pulling away. “I’d better do something about dinner, Mom.”

“Angie, I did what you said. I told him that I love him.”

I’m still walking backward. “That’s good, Mom.” Her face is crumpling, and she starts to cry.

“He didn’t move. He didn’t answer me. I don’t think he heard me at all.”

“Oh, Mom! Don’t do that, Mom!”

“Angie!” Dad calls. “Where the hell is the bread knife?”

I turn and run toward the kitchen.

Dad is standing in the center of the kitchen, his hands at his sides, looking as uncomfortable as a
pedestrian caught by a light change in the middle of rush hour traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. If I ever get married, my husband is going to have to know how to cook.

“We could have sandwiches, I suppose,” Dad says. “Do you know what we’ve got on hand for sandwiches?”

“I’ll fix something,” I tell him. I put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you talk to Mom? I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

“Not now,” he says, and he drags a chair from the table, screeking it across the floor.

“She was crying.”

His mouth tightens, and he leans against the table, his hands against his chin in that gesture I know so well. “Leave it alone, Angie.”

I pull out the rest of the leftover pot roast, slice it, and put it in a pan with some bottled barbecue sauce to simmer. I open a can of string beans and chop some lettuce, tomatoes, and green pepper in a bowl for salad. All this time Dad doesn’t say a word. He sits at the table, staring at nothing. I wonder if he’s thinking about Mom or Jeremy. I know he doesn’t want to talk, but I need to. And this seems like the right time, so I sit across the table from him, where he has to look at me.

He still doesn’t say anything, so I blurt out, “Dad, I don’t think you’ve noticed that Mom’s awfully lonely.”

He blinks a couple of times, staring at me. “I’m sorry, Angie. I’m trying to work out a problem. I didn’t hear what you said.”

“A problem about Mom?”

Again he looks at me as though he’s on a different plane entirely. Then he shakes his head. “This is a personnel problem, something at the office I’ve got to handle before tomorrow.”

“Dad, I was trying to tell you about Mom. She’s lonely.”

“Lonely? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. She has you children. She has me.”

I think of how I felt when I had to say good-bye to Meredith. Was it like that for Mom each time she moved away from friends? “Maybe that’s not enough for Mom,” I say, and I know it’s the wrong thing when the lines under Dad’s eyes sag and he looks as though I’ve struck him. “That’s not what I meant,” I tell him. “I was thinking about friends, and—”

But Dad shoves back his chair and stands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he repeats.

I watch him stride from the room, his back as stiff as a toy soldier’s, and I smell the sticky-sour sauce that is scorching into bitter blackness on the bottom of the pan.

I turn off the stove and stir dressing into the salad. “Dad,” I yell. “Dinner’s ready.”

No one answers, so I walk back through the house. There’s a murmur of voices coming from the open doorway to their bedroom. Mom blows her nose, and her voice is heavy with drips and hiccups.

“Dinner’s ready,” I repeat.

“We heard you, Angie. Thank you,” Dad says.

I don’t want this, and I don’t want dinner. I get my handbag, fishing out the car keys, and head for the door.
There is something else I’ve got to do. Once in a political science class our teacher said, “In any argument look for the weakest link. That’s where you’ll be able to break through.”

In this situation I know where the weakest link is. Debbie. It’s time to talk to her, face to face.

But Debbie’s face is not what I get.

I hear heavy footsteps coming to her front door, thudding across the polished wooden floor in the entry hall. The door swings open, and I look eye-to-eye at a short, slightly pudgy, balding man who has eyes like smooth, round stones. If this is Debbie’s father, she’s lucky she looks like her mother.

“Mr. Hughes?”

“Yes.” There’s no uplift of question in his voice, as though he doesn’t care who I am.

“May I please speak to Debbie?”

“Debbie’s not here.”

“When will she be back?”

“Not for a week or so. She went to visit her aunt in Lubbock.”

Over his shoulder I see Mrs. Hughes, craning her neck as she tries to peer out the door. I hear a muffled “Oh!” when she recognizes me.

“I’m Angie Dupree,” I tell him. “May I please come in? I had wanted to talk to Debbie, but maybe it would help if I talk to you and Mrs. Hughes.”

His eyebrows move together like two caterpillars in collision. Mrs. Hughes squeezes close behind him, whispering in his left ear. Only one word comes through, and that is “no.”

“You’re trying to cause a lot of trouble, young lady,” he says. “Do you realize how much damage you’ve done?”

“I don’t want to cause any damage,” I tell him. “But I must find out what happened to my brother.” The door is moving toward its frame, an inch at a time; so I quickly add, “Maybe everything will work out if I can just get the answers I need. I’ve found out some things that probably involve Debbie, but if you won’t talk to me, I’ll go back to the police.”

“Hold on a minute,” he says. The door swings almost closed, and I hear vague mumbles and mutters behind it as Mr. and Mrs. Hughes discuss what I’ve said.

It slowly opens wide, and the two of them stand there, glaring at me. “Come on in,” Mr. Hughes says.

If it weren’t for Jeremy I’d run, but I’ve got to find out.

I step inside and follow them across the entry hall, past the wide staircase, and into a paneled den complete with built-in gun rack and a coffee table with an orderly row of
House Beautiful
and
Ladies’ Home Journal
.

I follow the direction of the hand Mr. Hughes has flung out and sink into one end of a love seat. They perch opposite me on a matching love seat.

“Well?” Mr. Hughes asks, so I try to tell them what happened, including most of what Boyd told me.

“That’s all it was!” Mrs. Hughes squeals like the tires on an old car coming to a fast halt. “It was a party! Just a harmless little party!”

Her fingers fumble with the neckline of her dress, and she calms down a bit, adding, “Oh, we know the
kids are too young to drink, but after all, everyone does it, and all the kids in Baby’s—Debbie’s—crowd are good kids.”

“That wasn’t a harmless party. My brother was hit by a car.”

“It wasn’t Debbie’s car, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Mr. Hughes says.

I shrug. “You had Debbie’s car fixed in a big hurry. Then you sent the mechanic out of town on a vacation.”

Their eyes meet as though little magnets pulled them together. He quickly looks back at me. “Where did you get that information?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s true, isn’t it?”

He gives a long sigh. “Listen to me, Angie. That night some of Debbie’s friends dropped her off at home. She woke us up and told us about the party. She said it had got out of hand, and there were a few kids who drank too much.”

“Not Baby, though,” Mrs. Hughes interrupts.

“And she told us there had been some party crashers, and one of them stole her car.”

“She was terribly upset. What her father isn’t saying is that she was really ill from crying and carrying on. Our Debbie isn’t the kind of girl who could tolerate a party like that.”

Mr. Hughes puts a hand on his wife’s knee, and she clutches it with both hands. “I called the police and reported the car stolen. Y’all talked to the police, so you know that.”

And apparently they reported my visit to him. “What time did you call? Before or after the accident?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only that it could have been Debbie driving the car, and the story about its having been stolen might not be true.”

Mrs. Hughes’s nostrils quiver and her lower lip juts out. “Are you trying to make us believe that Debbie didn’t tell us the truth?”

“I’m trying to find out the truth.”

Mr. Hughes leans toward me, his hands clenched, his elbows resting on his knees. “Debbie’s always been a good girl,” he says. “She’s pretty and popular and has lots of friends.”

I have to ask. “What does she think about? What does she talk about? What is Debbie really like?”

“What a silly question,” Mrs. Hughes says.

Mr. Hughes frowns again. “She’s like all young girls her age,” he says.

It’s just what I thought. They don’t really know their daughter. She’s living in the same house with them, and they talk to her every day, and her mother calls her “Baby,” and they just don’t know. Not any more than in my family.

But now it’s my turn, and I try to get a bead on Mr. Hughes’s stone eyes. “If you were really sure that Debbie was telling you the truth, you wouldn’t have been so quick to take care of her car.”

“I don’t like your suspicions, young lady,” he says. “And I don’t like what you’re doing—trying to hurt some fine kids who’ve grown up together in Fairlie, who’ll come back here to live and raise their children and help Fairlie continue to prosper.”

Mrs. Hughes quivers as she interrupts part of his leftover Chamber of Commerce speech. “You outsiders—y’all have no right to come in here and disrupt our lives! And you particularly—you have no right to upset Debbie the way you’ve been doing!”

We’re at a stand-off. And the only thing I’ve learned is that Debbie has lied to her parents. Because I’m beginning to believe that on that horrible Friday night there was no party.

Dad and Mom are sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. I feel like a fool for tiptoeing through the back way so quietly.

“I know,” I say. “I should have left a note. But you were talking, and I was upset, and—” I shrug. “Okay. I should have left a note to tell you where I’d be.”

“You can’t just walk out of the house like that,” Mom says. “Especially when it’s dark.”

“We were worried,” Dad says.

But they’re still cradling their coffee cups, and their voices are smooth with exhaustion, the aftermath of an argument that’s been settled. I’m glad they worked things out. I wonder if Dad tried to find out what Mom is feeling.

“Where were you?” Dad asks.

I sit down with them at the table, and brush away the cup Mom moves toward me. “I’ve been talking with Debbie’s parents.”

They wait for what I’ll say next, so I tell them about what Debbie told her parents and what Boyd told me.

When I finish, Dad just sits there, staring like some
kind of zombie. Mom rests her forehead against her hands. “Dear God!” she whispers.

“And it’s all a bunch of lies,” I say.

She lifts her head and looks at me. “I read Jeremy’s poetry too. There is a lot of despair in it.”

“I don’t believe that Jeremy wanted to kill himself. And he hadn’t been drinking. I asked the doctor, and they didn’t find alcohol in his blood.”