The Stories We Tell (22 page)

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The design for number eight in the Ten Good Ideas line—
Find Adventure
—waits on the project table. The thick cotton stock is dense with a sketched forest. In the far right corner, there's a figure, a woman in a white dress set against a dark blue night sky, peeking around a tree. On the left side of the card, there's a man—also peeking around a tree. They're facing each another, and yet it's unclear if either sees the other. The night is so dark. The trees are so dense.

Max comes to my side as I look at the drawing, turning it at different angles. “Like it?” he asks.

“No.” I place the sheet down and turn to face him. “I love it.”

He waves his hand toward Francie, who's on the phone across the room. “She did most of it.”

“But your idea.”

“How was Willa's appointment?” he asks.

“Okay. Nothing really new except that what she's experiencing is normal, whatever ‘normal' means these days.”

A jittery silence quivers between us. We haven't talked about the Kiss. I've done my best not to think about the Kiss. But it's there—sitting between us, smirking. It seems to beg for an answer. I can't give one. I don't have to, either, because the overhead bell rings, signaling another appointment.

“The accountant,” I say to Max. “Right?”

“Probably.”

Francie opens the door and allows the woman into our space. She stands taking our studio in the way she did the first time she visited, looking for something or someone she can't seem to find.

“I'm back here,” I say.

She sways toward me, her long black pants—wide at the bottom, like a skirt—billowing out in a dance. Her white tank top is a fashionable version of a man's undershirt, pulling tight across her breasts. A white bra strap peeks above her collarbone, and a fragile gold necklace hangs on her neck with a peace sign pendant. A woman trying to look like a girl, I think.

“Hello,” she says to me, her voice crisp and quick, like she wants to get it over with.

“I have your packet here,” I say. “Let's sit down and go through it. I think you'll like what we did with this third concept, incorporating your changes.”

She pulls out the metal chair and it scrapes loudly, a screech across the concrete floor. Sitting, she folds her hands in her lap. “Show me.”

I open the file and spread the graphic-design sheets across the table. “This is the branding logo we like best, but on this second page are alternates. And this”—I point at a wave pattern with her initials inside—“is a watermark to put on all your stationery or cards.” I continue on, explaining the designs and how they can be combined.

“I told you I didn't like the wave at all,” she says.

Mary Jo, with her peace sign pendant, has never once mentioned she doesn't like the wave, but arguing with a customer is about as effective as arguing with a cat, so I smile. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not paying you to be sorry. I'm paying you to help me find a brand that echoes my superior accounting services.”

“Moving on to this concept, then.” I slide the next sheet toward her. “The palmetto leaf and sea oats, and—”

She interrupts me. “Stop. Really the best you can do is a wave and some plants? I could hire a grad student from SCAD who could do better than this.”

“There's more than the images; it's the package. We mix them up to find exactly what you feel.…”

“I feel like I need to take back my project.” She stands and looks down at me. “Find someone who knows what the hell she's doing.”

By the time she's reached the end of her obnoxious speech, Max is at the table, standing next to me. Willa has entered the studio and sits in the back corner, strumming her guitar.

“Is there a problem?” Max asks.

The woman looks at Max and her face softens. There she is, the kind of woman who knows how to act differently in front of a man. I've been jealous of these kinds of women. I know how to be one way, and switching personalities for gender has never been in my bag of tricks. It's definitely in hers, I think.

“No real problem. I just don't think that Eve here understands my needs. So I think it's best if I move on.”

Here is how something goes for me: A narrative forms in my head, a running dialogue, as if I'm writing a screenplay for the scene, what I
want
to say and what I
do
say hardly matching. My internal dialogue says this: Yes, why don't you move on, and after you do, please stop at a restaurant and eat something to put meat on your bones. It's obvious why I don't say these things out loud, right?

“If you think it's best” is what I do say.

“I do.” She begins to gather the papers and place them neatly into the file folder.

Max drops his hand on top of the file. “You can't take that with you.”

“It's mine. I paid for it.”

“No, you didn't. If you want to finish the process and pay your final installment, then you can take it. Otherwise, no go.”

Willa's music and voice gain speed in the back of the studio. Francie joins her with the lyrics, a melody of love: something lost, something needed.

Mary Jo opens her mouth and another voice comes out, a new and high, screeching voice. “Give me my folder. Give it to me.” She opens her mouth again as if she means for more to come out, something else, but nothing at all erupts. Willa and Francie stop singing. I hold my breath, and Max places his hand on my lower back. In the aftermath of the song and the screeching demand, a silence falls over our studio. Far off, that owl again hoots.

A scuffling sound follows, and Willa stands with us, her guitar still in hand, an extension of her arm and voice. “You,” she says to Mary Jo.

Mary Jo looks down, digs into her purse until she finds her sunglasses, and shoves them on her face so quickly, it seems she might break the bridge of her nose. “Me,” she says in a sarcastic echo of identification.

Willa's face drains of color, and her fingers flutter in the air as if she is still playing the guitar. She stares at Mary Jo, moving closer. “In the booth while I practiced that song.”

“What?”

Mary Jo walks backward toward the door, clutching her necklace as a talisman.

Willa hands her guitar to Max and takes two steps toward Mary Jo, who is by now more than halfway across the barn. Willa catches up and places one hand on Mary Jo's shoulder. “You were there. You were with Cooper. In the booth.”

Mary Jo spins around, her mouth twisted. “You're crazy. You know that, right? I don't know why they let a crazy person work here, but maybe that's why the designs suck.” She pulls away from Willa and looks toward Max, then at me. “I don't know how y'all were voted the best letterpress in Savannah. Probably because of your husband's rich Morrison family. Because it's not for your work.”

“That's enough,” Max says.

“I'm not crazy,” Willa protests in a monotone voice. “Your voice. It's stuck in my head.” Willa takes in a long breath. “You were screaming at Cooper about not leaving you there alone. That terrible voice.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Mary Jo trips backward, trying to leave, to escape.

“If I'd been Cooper, I'd have left you alone in that booth, too.” Willa says this with a hiss behind her voice, a threat.

Mary Jo reaches up, and it all moves slowly, but not slowly enough for me to stop her hand from slapping Willa across the face, lightly, almost a pretense of a slap. The sound—skin on skin—breaks our silence and we run toward Willa and Mary Jo, tripping over chairs and piles of paper, over boxes and bags. I reach Willa first, but she's recovered, holding her hand over her face and glaring directly at Mary Jo.

Max stands between them. “Leave,” he says, his low voice vibrating underneath my ribs like thunder.

Mary Jo turns and slides open the barn doors, but she doesn't close them. We don't move. Willa holds her hand over her cheek. I place my hands over my stomach, where I feel an opening begin to form, a cavernous, bottomless opening. Max rests his hand on my shoulder and Francie slumps to a chair. The geo-tagging, I think, the uniting of place and memory.

“Sorry,” Willa says, tears rising in her eyes. She bends over as if she is going throw up. “I did it again. I mucked it up again, didn't I?” Sobs tear through Willa the same way they have a few times since her return home. But this holds passion: something true. She looks up while bent over. “Eve.”

“Yes,” I say, exhaling the breath I've been holding.

“Cooper was with her that night. She was there.”

“Okay.”

“She didn't want him to leave her alone. There wasn't anyone else there.”

“Why was she
here
?” Max asks.

“I don't know.” Willa stands up straight, wipes at her eyes. “To see who we are? What we do?”

A flood opens inside me. I slide open the barn doors and run up the gravel path toward the house. A hurricane wind blows behind my eardrums as I fling myself into the kitchen. “Cooper,” I holler, the screech of my own voice harsh.

Gwen appears in the curved entryway. “What's wrong with you?”

I grind my teeth together, a vain attempt at self-control. “I'm looking for your dad.”

“He's upstairs.”

I walk slowly, even as my body wants to run up the stairwell. I push away the larger understanding as I notice the smaller things: The frames in the hallway need dusting; the corner of the rug runner is folded over; Gwen's bedroom light is on. These are things I can fix and these are things I notice, ticking them off in my brain to keep from hearing Mary Jo's voice, hear the slithering slap of her hand against Willa's cheek.

Steam flows from the master bath and into the bedroom, where it fogs up the windows. There is my husband, in the steam, a towel wrapped around his waist. This is an ordinary moment, one repeated for years and years, a familiar scene of our married life, and here I am, seeing everything in a new way: What is familiar becomes distorted and peculiar. His wet hair hasn't yet been brushed and he is placing folded shirts in an open suitcase.

“Going somewhere?” I ask.

“Hey, darling.” He walks toward me and kisses me.

I am rigid with anger. “Where are you going?”

“I told you. I have to go to Nashville to meet with the music publisher who wants in on the magazine deal.”

He did tell me. I'd forgotten. “Is Mary Jo going with you?”

I watch him carefully, the details sharp and holding clues. First his brow drops down and then his eyes open wide. He yawns: a one-two count. He touches his chin, where only moments before he shaved, there must have been stubble. “Who?”

I am silent as I allow her name to settle into the room.

“Eve, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The woman with the long dark hair. Skinny. High-pitched voice.”

“Oh, her. The accountant for the Glencoe documents.”

“The woman you were with the night you wrecked the car.”

Cooper drops a folded shirt into the suitcase and then walks toward me, tightening the towel around his waist. “Let's start over here. I didn't wreck the car. Your sister did. And I wasn't with Mary Jo. That's insane.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Is that what Willa says?”

My voice doesn't shake, which surprises me, because everything else about me quivers. “Yes, that's what Willa says.”

Cooper's face softens and he shakes his head. “Poor thing.” He sits on the bed, next to his suitcase.

“What do you mean?”

He holds out his hand for me to take, but I don't move. “You can't do this, love. This has to stop. You can't let your sister come between us. When have I ever, in all our married life, given you reason to distrust me?” He looks directly at me, the way I used to make Gwen do when she was young and I wanted her to understand what I was saying. “When?” he asks again.

“Never.” I drop my gaze, unable to hold it any longer. “Until now.”

“Why would I start now?” He exhales. “Remember when Willa showed up drunk at our rehearsal dinner? Remember when we visited her in Colorado and she forgot we were coming and she'd gone camping? Remember when Willa slept with my best man? Remember when—”

“I get it. She's screwed up a few times.”

“I know things have been bumpy and we're both buried in work. Gwen isn't behaving, but to think…” He shakes his head. “I know this is hard for you, but I think you're forgetting what it is for me.” He touches his scar, a reminder of his pain. “And to have you not believe in me, it's almost…” He closes his eyes and then opens them again, and now they're full of tears. “If you're doubting me, I don't know you as well as I thought.”

“What does that mean?”

“How could you think I'd be able to do something like that?”

“Something like what?” My voice rises on the last word. “I didn't say what I thought you were or weren't doing. I am asking if this woman is someone you know. If you were with her that night.”

He holds his fingers to his lips. “You're yelling.”

I lower my voice. “Do you know her?”

“Yes. I just told you that I think you're talking about the accountant on the Glencoe project.”

“Then why in the hell is she fishing around in my studio? None of this makes sense.”

He stands up and walks toward the closet. “I told her about your branding and incredible business. She must have decided to use you. I brag about you all the time.”

The steam has dissipated and the bathroom is clear; my husband takes socks from his drawer and I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to find something to say.

“Eve, I have a plane to catch. I can't sit here and debate with you about what is real and what isn't.”