The One That I Want (29 page)

“What rest of it?” I ask. “Isn’t this it?”
What the hell else could there be?

She shrugs. “There’s always a little more.”

“Stop being so damn cryptic,” I snap, my raw edges breaking through.

“Fine,” she huffs. “I’ll help.” She turns to gaze at her mother, all wires and tubes and machines now. “Don’t you ever wonder why we stopped being friends?”

“You asked me this before,” I say. “At the diner. It’s because you went all weird, and I became a cheerleader.” I try not to think back on that time, even though for the better part of my adulthood, it was the only time I wanted to think of. But now, no, not now. Not when I’ve discovered how easily it can all shatter, like the glass frame against my fireplace.

“That’s not why,” she scoffs, and then reconsiders. “Though there’s that too. I never did like cheerleaders.” She smiles. “Look, this is for you to figure out. I was pissed at you back then for not getting it, but I’m not pissed now. Because I know that you didn’t know. That you didn’t want to see it back then because it was so much easier. I get that. I wish in some ways that I hadn’t seen it either.”

“Honestly, Ashley,” I interrupt. “I’m so tired. Can you just enlighten me?”

She starts to say something, but then a voice calls my name from down the hallway. I spin around and see my father, then turn back toward Ashley, and something clicks into focus. But before I can even fathom what is sliding into place, my father shouts for me again.

“Tilly, come on,” he cries. “Darcy’s awake. She’s asking for you.”

Darcy and I start sobbing simultaneously when I enter her room. Her hands are bandaged, wrapped tight to ward off the damage, and her limbs are ensconced in blankets. I wonder if she’ll ever warm up, ever be the same, but those questions won’t be answered for some time now.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her, sitting at her bedside, between my sputtered gasps, between my tears. I don’t know if she can ever forgive me for this. Less important, or perhaps more important, I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for this.

“I’m sorry too,” she says, and it’s clear that she doesn’t hold me responsible, though of course, how could she know that I could have seen this coming, that if I’d thought harder, been less selfish, maybe I could have stopped it?

We sit there in comforting quiet, kept company by the beating monitors, the drip of the IV, two sisters, taking care of each other, maybe what we should have been doing from the start. Darcy’s eyes droop, and I study her face. She’s no longer a child now. The layer of baby fat has long since dripped off her, the smooth luster of adolescent skin somewhat dulled. But she is still breathtaking; her cheekbones are sharp protrusions, her hair with its sheeny gloss despite purple dye and a diet of pizza and Coke.

Her lashes flutter, and she looks up at me.

“What?” she says, self-conscious but happy to be admired all the same. The perfect contradiction, as always. That, at least, hasn’t changed.

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “I’m just thinking about everything. Everything we’ve been through, you know?”

“I do.”

My dad raps on the window and gives a little wave, a flimsy peace offering that I hope she’ll latch onto. I watch her watch him, gauging her reaction.

“Can you forgive him?” I ask. “He wants that so badly.”

“Why are you so easy on him?” she says, with no rancor, only depletion. “Why do you always give him another chance?”

“I guess I believe in second chances.” I shrug.

“He’s had more than that,” she says succinctly.

“Can I ask you one more thing?” I’m not sure what I’m asking,
even though I think I sort of know. She nods, looking sleepy. “What did you mean the other day in the kitchen—his secrets? You meant the hidden bottles, that stuff, right?”

She sighs, a long, exhausted, purging sigh.

“Tilly,” she says. “I’m tired. And I love you. So let it go for now.”

“I can’t,” I answer quietly, thinking of my father in the hallway, of his hands against the glass of Valerie’s room, of some strange unspoken tie that binds him to Ashley and her mother, of Ashley’s request that I understand it all too.

“It’s years old,” she murmurs, fading fast. “Years behind us now. Before Mom died.” Her lips quiver, and she’s asleep.

I look up to find my dad frozen in the doorway, his face a veil of worry, of guilt, of disquiet. I hadn’t even noticed him slip closer.

He dislodges the phlegm from his throat. “What was that about?”

“You tell me,” I say, then reconsider. “You know what? Don’t. I don’t want to hear an excuse. I want to hear what Darcy knows about before Mom died. What she knows about you and Valerie Simmons.”

His mouth drops open, as does mine. I hadn’t even realized I’d made a connection, but somehow, even without attempting to master the jigsaw puzzle of my life, my instinct had taken the reins.

“It’s n-not what you’re thinking,” he stammers.

“How do you even know what I’m thinking?” I stand now, firmer on my feet, firmer with myself.
Trust me, trust yourself
. Yes, this time, now, I will.

“I just … I just …” My dad’s words refuse to excuse him this time.

“When was this? How long was this for?” My unchecked rage has returned, the rage that slapped Tyler, that accused my father
of failing us, that chucked that photo clear into the fireplace. Those feel like warm-up acts.

I already know when it happened, of course: it was in the sixth grade, and Ashley must have uncovered it, left me a trail of breadcrumbs to stumble upon it myself, to stand by her and share the burden of the gruesomeness of her discovery that our parents were unfaithful not just to their spouses but to their families, and instead, I kicked the breadcrumbs aside, shuffling past them in my bare feet as I ran through the grass, happy and greedy and oblivious all at once. It’s no wonder she hated me. I’d hate me too.

“Not long,” he offers timidly, exposing his earlier excuse, betraying his guilt. “It was a mistake.” His hands are open, begging me not to judge him.

“And Darcy knew?
Darcy knew?”
I am shouting in a furious whisper, trying not to wake her but wanting wholeheartedly to throttle him, strike him down right here in the ICU.

His shoulders start to shake, then his torso, and soon, his whole body is a mess of spasmodic, wracking fits of anguished tears coursing free. I don’t care. I don’t give one shit. I watch him tremble, and I vow that
this is it
. I will not excuse him for another moment of my life, I will not protect him, I will not offer counsel, I will not care if he returns home tonight and swallows two gallons of vodka and chokes on his own vomit.

He tries to reply but is drowned by his guttural moans. It’s just as well, because right then, right when it cannot get any worse, Ashley appears behind him, her eyes swollen and pink, and says, “She’s gone.”

Another daughter left to face the world alone.

V
alerie Simmons is buried in the same cemetery as my mother, on a quiet day in the first week of November, the sky a cast of gray steel, the air cold enough to bite. The snow still hugs the ground, squishing below us as we plod solemnly to her plot. Ashley is holding up better than I anticipated, or perhaps just better than I did when I buried my own mom, but she is stronger than I am, this I understand now, so maybe it’s no surprise.

She knows that I know her secret from so many years ago; she saw this washed across my face, and of course, across my father’s face, when she told us the melancholy news of her mother’s passing, but we haven’t spoken of it. With all that has happened, it seems almost beside the point.

Tyler and I, along with Susanna and Luanne, attend the funeral. I spot my father on the periphery of the small huddle of mourners but don’t move toward him to start rebuilding our bridge. There are only so many times I can lay myself down, I tell Tyler in the SUV afterward, and he nods, his eyes on the road, and I wonder if he’s agreeing with me or mentally checking sports scores.

This isn’t just the day that we have all gathered to bury Ashley’s mom. As if fate is mocking me with gallows humor, it’s also my wedding anniversary. Tyler reminded me two days ago, pulling out an old album, laughing over our Halloween-themed rehearsal dinner. He went as Joe DiMaggio; I went as Marilyn Monroe. How odd, I thought, as we flipped through the pages, the plastic crinkling, the photos yellowed around the edges, that we already were concealing ourselves before we even married.

“We should go out to dinner,” he said, though his voice turned upward and it was more of a question. “Um, to celebrate.”

“Okay,” I said, wiping down the kitchen counters. “Okay, yes, let’s.” It all felt so long ago, that rehearsal dinner, the toast my father made with nonalcoholic wine, how much I missed my mother as Luanne and Susanna pressed my dress and adorned the bun at the nape of my neck with baby rosebuds. Only that part—the pangs for my mom, I thought, squeezing out the sponge, the brown water sliding down the kitchen sink drain—didn’t feel like so long ago at all.

We shower quickly after the funeral and then take our time to dress, each avoiding eyeing the other’s state of half nakedness. Tyler finishes first and waits for me on the downstairs couch, reminding me of how he used to wait for me back in high school. I’d walk down the stairs, and his whole being would illuminate. Of course mine did too, though now, with everything, it’s easy to forget that.

Tonight, I come down, and he rises, and I try to convince myself that it’s possible to regain that glow, like turning on a flash of a camera, and
bam
, that shadow of darkness is gone.

He kisses my hand. “You look beautiful.”

“Do I?” I ask, matting the wrinkles in a navy dress I haven’t worn since last year’s graduation ceremony. It’s out of season, but I didn’t have anything else clean.

We eat, as we have every anniversary for the past nine years, at Bella Donna’s, CJ’s father’s restaurant, which is as close to Italy as I’ve ever been. The tablecloths are made of real silk, the music softly lilting from the stereo an opera that Darcy would likely recognize. The air swims with the scent of fresh, doughy pasta. Hank Johnson greets me warmly at the door, sliding my down coat off my shoulders, squeezing both of my cheeks with his hands.

“Thank you for doing everything that you have for her,” he says.

“She did it herself.” I smile. “Though you know this means she has a shot at Wesleyan.”

“I know,” he answers, showing us to our table, pulling out my chair. “Of course, I don’t want to see her go, but I also don’t want to see her not go.” His shoulders rise, then fall. “Welcome to life.”

“It’s nice being here with you,” Tyler says after Hank is gone. “I’m glad that we’re doing this, glad that we’re celebrating.”

“Me too.” I nod and scan the menu, ignoring the obvious: that I’d forgotten about our anniversary until he reminded me, and that if he hadn’t, the day would have passed much like any other, except that I began it by burying an old friend’s mother.

“I didn’t realize how close you and Ashley had become,” he says, after he orders his usual chicken cacciatore, and I, breaking from tradition, opt for the salmon.

“We used to be best friends, remember?” I say.

“Sort of,” he says, his eyes squinting. “I sort of remember.” He falls silent, and I do too. We’ve grown unaccustomed to this, the meandering small talk that adds up to something substantial in a marriage. We’ve forged a partnership this past week built on crisis—
How is Darcy’s recovery? How is Ashley holding up?
—and now, with no red lights glaring, no alarm bells blaring, as we both shift in our seats, sipping a wine that I wouldn’t have ordered for myself but Tyler went ahead and did it anyway, we’re left with,
well, not so much.
It doesn’t feel like so much
, I think, pressing the cabernet down my throat, feeling its burn as it goes.

“How’s your fish?” Tyler asks after it arrives.

“Not as good as I thought it would be,” I say. “I just wanted to try something new, though. But I don’t think I’d order it again.”

“Well,” he answers, cutting his chicken and popping it in his mouth. “You tried.”

Well
, I think,
I did
.

T
he snow piles on again the next week, obese golf-ball flakes; winter is announcing its early and unrelenting arrival. Tyler is working a shift at the store, some extra holiday shopping money, and though the doors to Westlake High have been shuttered due to dodgy roads, he drops me at school on Tuesday morning. College applications are due on Friday, so I have no choice but to face the mountainous pile of paperwork on my desk. The hallways are quiet, the lights dim. I say hello to Billy, the security guard, who has heard about Darcy and asks after her. She’s doing a little better, I answer, forcing a smile. This is both true and not. She has been moved into the rehab wing, and her fingers are regaining sensation, no small victory, but today, she will lose two of her toes.

“They can’t be saved,” the doctor told us yesterday, though they’d thought for a time last week, maybe. Dante was also in the room. He’d bought her a CD player from Walmart, so she could listen to the demo he’d been laying down of their new songs. He squeezed her shoulder and told her that ten toes were overrated, and we all grinned because what choice did we have anyway? But she will always walk with a limp, always feel self-conscious in
sandals, and I will always glance down at her maimed feet and feel the flush of shame that I didn’t do better by her, didn’t put aside my selfishness to save her in time. I try to see it from the other side, though, too, that it’s a literal walking reminder of clarity, of how muddied things once got and how far I’ve come to actually see more clearly.

CJ’s Wesleyan application is resting on the top of my files, and I sit wearily—
How many nights has it been since I slept?
I wonder, flipping through the essays and the pages that she hopes will carry her so far from here. Now that Tyler is back in my bed, he’s been keeping me awake, snoring and twitching and grinding his teeth. I never realized that maybe I’d sleep better on my own. Probably because, if I really thought about it, I’d never actually slept alone in my adult life. There was always someone snuggled next to me, as if a warm body is any reason to feel secure. That day at the school carnival, I’d smiled smugly at Ashley and stated my theory: that I had a husband and a wonderful, steady pattern and
we were trying for a baby
, so what else could I possibly need? It turns out, both everything and nothing at all.