The Stories We Tell (12 page)

“Huh?” I grab champagne from a passing tray and take a sip. “We fell into?”

“The oil rigs in the gulf.”

For once, I am annoyed with his short explanations and minimal word count. “Oil rigs?”

I try to laugh. “Okay, Fritz, you're going to have to be a little more specific. Less obtuse this time.”

“Okay. The investment we all made in that company doing prospective oil drilling off the coast. It was a joint venture thing. I'm pissed we put so much into it. Sure, if it had panned out, we'd be having a different discussion. But since it didn't, I'm trying to figure out how to pay my son's fall college tuition.”

“Oh, yes, that.” I glance at Cooper, who has now reached our side. “That investment, right, Cooper?”

I feel his muscles tense, although I'm not touching him. “Hey there, Fritz. How are you?” Cooper shakes Fritz's hand and leads him across the room without once glancing back at me.

It's happening again: One casual comment and I feel the ground shifting under me. I glance around at the crowd and wonder again how I could not know these things that are part of my life, inside my life.

My heart is sluggish, like it doesn't want to pump enough blood to get me through this night. It would be lovely to climb upstairs and get in the bathtub, and then into bed. I wonder how long it will be before someone needs something.

“Eve.” Cooper calls my name and that answers my question: one second.

I turn around and smile at him. He looks so handsome; even his bandage against his face seems to be part of his tuxedo, white and tight. “Yes?” I ask.

“Where are the gluten-free foods?”

“The what?”

“I told you—our largest donor is on a gluten-free diet and I needed at least two types of gluten-free appetizers.”

I shake my head.

“I did. I told you.”

“I didn't remember.” I cringe. Did he really tell me this and I let it fall out of my head completely?

“Shit.” He turns and stalks into the kitchen.

My stomach plummets. It's like a roller coaster I don't know I'm riding and the drop comes without warning. Had I forgotten? Had he told me? I exhale and turn, bumping into Mark Langdon, one of Cooper's childhood friends. “Hey, Eve,” he says, and hugs me. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks, Mark. And you?”

“Good. But I know these have been rough days. Just want you to know I'm thinking about you and praying for all of you.”

“Praying?”

“For healing.” He pats my shoulder, then reaches over to grab a glass of wine off a passing tray. The server pauses and asks if I'd like one. I shake my head and thank Mark for his prayers before walking away.

I hear Willa's voice from somewhere behind me, high from what I hope is laughter. I can't distinguish the words, and I rush toward the arched entryway to the kitchen. She's talking with the caterer, a friend she's known from her rounds singing at restaurants. Willa looks beautiful, wearing a thin blue sundress that hangs off her shoulders, loose and lovely. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail, yet strands have come loose. Dangling silver earrings hang low and catch the light. She sees me. “Hey, sis.”

I hug her. “I am so glad you're here,” I say. “So glad you decided to come.”

“Gwen begged me,” she says, and looks around the room. “You know where she is?”

“Probably still upstairs.”

Willa is moving toward the back of the house to look for Gwen when we both hear Cooper's voice. “Yes, it was Willa. You know her, right? Eve's sister.”

We stop, listen.

“Well, I'll pray for peace and healing.” Mark Langdon, again with the prayers.

Cooper answers in that low, polite voice he uses in business. “Thank you.”

“But my God, what
really
happened?”

“Crazy pants sister-in-law grabbed the wheel and took us into a tree. That's exactly what happened.”

Willa looks at me, and her face is white parchment with red lips. The blood inside me rushes away from my head. I'm dizzy. I grab Willa's hand.

A bell clangs from the front room—Mayor Stanton attempting to gather the crowd for Cooper's speech. Willa releases my hand and moves toward Cooper and Mark. “Not now,” I say. “Please.”

Willa snatches a champagne glass from the counter. I want to stop her, want to stop the world from spinning for a moment, just long enough to know what to do, what to say, how to say it. But I don't have that time, and Willa slugs back the champagne, then grabs another. “Don't,” I say.

She waves her free hand toward the living room. “I think they might need you in there more than I need you in here.”

Her dress flares out as she turns away from me and heads toward the back door, her hand reaching for the knob. The music stops and every sound in the house is amplified: the clanging of the dishes as the caterers move around the kitchen; the murmur of voices quieting for the speech; the slip-slap of the screen door as Willa leaves. It's Gwen who breaks my frozen stare when she comes into the kitchen.

“Mom. Hello? Dad is looking for you.” If sarcasm can really drip off words, it just did so now.

Gwen wears a sequined orange dress she wore to homecoming the previous year, but she's cut the bottom off, taking it from a long gown to a short cocktail dress—too short. Her hair, so long now, is up on top of her head, a squatting bun falling loosely to the left. “You look beautiful,” I say. “Let's go hear Dad.” I walk slowly toward her and feel as if my head is too large, too heavy and lopsided on my neck.

“Where's Aunt Willa?” she asks.

“I think she went back to the cottage.”

Gwen's mouth screws into a circle, as if she's just put an invisible pacifier in her mouth. “Oh.”

I enter the room where Cooper is standing in front of the fireplace. His speech is one I've heard before, many times before. He looks the part: the man who started his own company from scratch; the man from a legendary Savannah family; the father and husband. Injured but strong.

“Baseball.” He smiles and pauses for the flavor of the word, the sport, the sacred religion of it all. “I believe it is a game that changes a young boy's soul. It teaches character, patience, and losing with grace. The game offers focus and goals in a world that doesn't give them either.”

The crowd claps, a polite echoing of palm on palm.

He continues, but I don't hear another word. I learned how to do this in childhood—appear to pay rapt attention without really listening. Sermons at our church could go on for over an hour as the preacher repeated the essential message that we were unworthy, so unworthy. And yet, luckily, we were also chosen and saved. It was in the pews that I learned that the mind can be an escape more powerful than any getaway car.

Long ago, I taught myself how to be present and absent at the same time. Sometimes I'd leave a two-hour church service and never remember having been there at all, my special and inventive kind of blackout. But I've never done this with Cooper, and I'm startled when his speech is over. Cooper shakes hands with the mayor and I peek over Gwen's shoulder. Her text to Dylan reads
Finally over
.

“Don't leave,” I whisper to her.

“Creepy, Mom. Don't read my text.”

The crowd moves toward Cooper, shaking his hand, taking out their phones for photos.

The absence of music is a gaping hole: I need something to fill the quiet. I walk to the foyer to greet the quartet. “Can we start back up?” I ask the violinist in the tuxedo.

“Sure thing,” he says.

I stand there as they begin, first the violinist and then the woman in the black dress with the cello. She stares past me and into the crowded room; I follow her gaze. There they are: Cooper and Willa, standing in the dining room. He is backed against the antique buffet table. The candle's flame quivers as Willa's mouth opens and she leans toward him.

Cooper glances left and right, as if making sure no one hears or sees them. Willa steps closer and jabs her finger into his chest.

My feet come loose and I rush to them both. I grab Willa's arm and pull her away. I know it looks like I want to save Cooper but it's Willa I want to protect. She allows me to guide her out of the room, and the crowd blurs. We enter the kitchen. Willa sinks to a bar stool and her face reddens; tears fall and her face contorts. “Oh my God, I thought I was whispering,” she says.

“You were. I just saw what was coming.”

Cooper enters the kitchen and stands before us with his hands spread out. “Do not come in here and ruin this party.” He looks directly at Willa, as if I'm not there at all.

“Stop,” I say, but I might as well be talking to a tornado already in motion.

“Crazy pants? That is really how you want to explain that night?” Willa stands, defiant.

“Not here,” he says. “Not now.”

“You didn't quite seem to think that ‘not here, not now' was a good idea when you just told your praying friend that I was crazy. That I was drunk. That I grabbed the wheel.” Her voice is strong and loud. The catering crew is watching and I know that Cooper is worried that the spectacle will move beyond the kitchen and into the living room where the guests are gathered. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I am too.

Willa moves closer to Cooper as if to whisper, but her voice comes louder. “We both know you're lying. I was
not
drunk. So you can make up whatever else you want about that night, but not that, Averitt Cooper Morrison the Fourth. Not that. You can take your awards and charm your guests and lie about any damn thing you please. But I was not drunk.”

“Calm down, Willa. You'll be okay,” he says, as if soothing a child, a tantrum-throwing child.

“Okay?” she asks too loudly, too sharply.

“Shhhh,” I say, shackled to my spot and desperate to stop them.

“I have to get out of here.” Willa glances around the kitchen, confused, as if the room has no doors.

Cooper spins on his heels, leaving the kitchen with a parting comment. “I'm joining our guests.”

Gwen bursts into the kitchen, hopping on one foot as she attempts to remove her high heels to run toward us. She has her arms around Willa before I can react. “Are you okay?” she asks.

Willa's face is smashed into Gwen's shoulder, like a child who has fallen asleep on her mother. “I think I'm going to throw up,” Willa says.

I rush to grab a bowl from under the sink, bending over and tripping on Gwen's discarded shoe. I fall into the side of the cabinet and then onto the floor. The back of my head bashes against the corner of the cabinet. My dress, splayed out in its wide-skirted glory, hides my tangled legs.

“Oh my God,” a male voice says. “Are you okay?”

I look up to a server with the name tag that says
MARTIN.
“Yes,” I say, and let him help me up. I stand and cover my face with both hands. I'm embarrassed. My ears are ringing.

“Mom,” Gwen says.

I uncover my face to look at my daughter and my sister, both of whom are staring at me with wide eyes.

“I'm okay,” I say.

“You are anything but okay, Mom.”

“Somebody go get Mr. Morrison,” a woman says in a high, manic voice.

“No,” I say. “No. Let him be. We're fine.”

Willa places her arm around Gwen's shoulder. “I think I need to get out of here,” she says. “Now.”

“I'm coming with you,” I say.

Gwen holds up her hand in a motion I know too well, the same one Cooper uses when he wants her to stop arguing with him.

“I am,” I say.

“No,” Willa replies. “Don't do that, Eve. Don't.”

They leave, Gwen and Willa, going out the back door. I stand in the middle of my perfect kitchen, my hand on the back of my head to cover the throbbing center, the caterering staff staring at me. I open the back door and walk into the evening light, the sky darkening. There was a time when I'd believed that if I stared long enough into the clouds, I would be able to fly. I look up now through the scribbled circles of oak branches, tilting my head to find an expanse of sky. I hear someone calling my name, and I turn slowly, my heels digging into the soft earth. It's Cooper and he's in the doorway, framed and backlit.

“Eve, the guests are leaving. Maybe come say good-bye?”

“Sure,” I say.

He holds my hand as we make our way through the dispersing crowd. We pass Mark and he touches my shoulder. “You okay, Eve?”

His wife, Linda, stands next to him. Her black hair is short, a pixie cut I know is meant to look like Audrey Hepburn's, because Mark is obsessed with her. Linda takes my hand. “I'm so sorry about everything going on.”

“Me, too,” I say, and try to release my hand, but she holds tight.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asks.

“No, but thanks so much for coming tonight.” I hear my voice, it, and it's not mine.

“Well, you do look beautiful,” she says. “I thought the same thing when I saw you wear that dress to the school fund-raiser.”

I wrench my hand from hers and back away slowly. Cooper is gone by now, at the front door, shaking hands and saying good night to our guests. I join him.

 

ten

Who knows when anything becomes a routine, but every afternoon there's a crunch of gravel and the ring of the bell as the mailman drops our mail and packages. Bills, catalogs, and supplies stream in daily through the front door. It's Francie's job to grab and sort the mail. Bills are put in Max's box. Supplies in their designated storage. Everything else is dropped on the project table. But this … this is a first. I know even before I pick up the envelope and see our logo that this is one of our own cards. Someone sent me a card from my own line.
Cool beans,
as a younger Gwen would have said.