Chapter Ten
Hilly and her husband, Donald, owned a farm. It had been a point of pride with his sister for years, as though possessing a plot of land once toiled over by Quakers somehow made her a better person, even though the only thing they grew on their ten acres of pristine Pennsylvania countryside were weeds.
Matt parked his car in the huge area in front of the farmhouse, which carefully straddled the line between historic and decrepit. Built in the eighteenth century, the house could very well travel back in time and fit in. Few updates other than plumbing and electricity had been added over the years, and the rooms boasted the low-ceilinged, cramped feeling common in all the old homes in this part of the state.
Not that he could judge, what with his current cheese-shop accommodations. And Hilly’s two sons, Trenton and Dylan, seemed to like the house. They said it was a lot like living in a fort full of hidden nooks and crannies, including a staircase cupboard so small no grownup could come crawling in after them.
Matt enjoyed a few minutes of quiet contemplation before entering the house. Tonight was their monthly family dinner, presided over by Hilly, whose rambunctious family seemed to take up all the space around them. It reminded Matt a little of his own childhood, when he and Lincoln did their best to break every bone in their bodies and every valuable in the house.
The rumble of gravel kicking up came along not too much later. Even from a distance, Matt could tell his brother’s car was flashy and too fast, showering the top layer of unpaved road over the porch and the empty potted plants and the piles of tires that sat, haphazard and toppled, all over the front yard.
Chances were the car, with the rounded yellow molding denoting speed and low self-esteem, wasn’t even Lincoln’s. His salary as low-level cop, though more than what Matt enjoyed as a low-level teacher, wasn’t nearly enough to support him in the manner to which he was accustomed. Every time Matt saw his brother, he was driving something new, and he held the cars of spurious origin just long enough to sell them at a profit.
Lincoln always had some sort of trading deal going on Craigslist and, from the looks of the dark brown bob in the seat next to him, he’d also managed to get a date to accompany him to the family dinner. He had a way of getting results. It just defied Matt’s capabilities of reason to figure out how.
“Matt!” Lincoln called amiably, sliding over the hood of his car to pull open the passenger side door. Matt recognized the woman who emerged—it was Lincoln’s supposed one-night stand, the friend and business partner of Whitney’s with the flawless eyebrows.
“Hey, Lincoln. Kendra, right?” He extended a hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Is it weird that I’m here? It’s weird that I’m here.” She looked around, taking in the disrepair and fields of rippling weeds with a near-grimace. Like Whitney, she oozed city polish, dressed in a skirt and wobbly-looking shoes, her hair shiny in ways that didn’t seem natural.
Hilly was going to eat the poor girl alive—if there was one thing she hated more than women who wore dresses, it was women who wore dresses and actually looked good in them. She’d been married in a beige pantsuit, Hillary Clinton style.
“No, not at all,” Matt said warmly, even though it was kind of weird. He hadn’t even known Lincoln was seeing Kendra like this, let alone enough to foist their family on her. “I didn’t know we were bringing dates. Should I call Whitney to see if she wants to come?”
Kendra laughed. “Oh, you’re cute when you’re funny. Whitney doesn’t do families.”
He should have assumed as much. Parents implied longevity, and after their chat at brunch the other day, he knew better than to give her even a whiff of that.
Lincoln draped a casual arm around Kendra’s shoulder and pointed out various areas of non-interest to her as he led her into the house. An empty silo leaning so far it almost touched the ground. A chicken coop containing one scrawny bird that pecked at anyone who dared come within a few feet.
Kendra nodded politely in all the right places, and the look Lincoln cast at Matt over his shoulder was one of triumph—calculated to put him in place. Matt doubted his brother even cared that much about Kendra in romantic terms. He just couldn’t stand coming in second.
He allowed them to enter the house first, mostly out of respect so that Kendra didn’t have an audience when she met the insanity that was the Fuller family. In his experience, his sister didn’t make anyone look good, what with the constant bombardment of inappropriate questions voiced at top decibel levels.
“Uncle Matt!” A blur of mud tackled him from the side, and Matt lifted the grungy, red-haired seven-year-old into the air with a roar. As he came crashing back down to the ground, the boy added, “Do you want to see my tadpoles? Trent and me caught them at the pond yesterday. Three of them are dead—those are my three, Trent says—but they still float. If I poke them it’s almost like they’re swimming.”
Matt looked at his nephew’s wide grin, missing two of the most important front teeth, and nodded solemnly. “I love tadpoles. Especially dead ones.”
“Cool!” Dylan, younger than his brother by three years, reminded Matt an awful lot of himself at that age. “I wanted to show Uncle Lincoln but he said he sees enough dead things during the day.”
“Uncle Lincoln is probably grouchy because he hasn’t had anything to eat yet today. Low blood sugar does that to him.”
Dylan nodded as though that made perfect sense. “He told Trent he’ll take him out to shoot cans later. How come I can’t shoot cans, Uncle Matt? Amn’t I big enough?”
“Aren’t you big enough,” he gently corrected him, “and no.” He didn’t have the heart to tell the poor kid that it wasn’t his age, but rather his clumsiness, that prevented him from participating in Lincoln’s plan to show off in front of his lady friend. “Besides—if you were out shooting, then we couldn’t go see how many more tadpoles we can catch. You know what’s a really good trick? Putting them in your mom’s glass of water when she isn’t looking. Did I ever tell you about the one time Uncle Lincoln and I tricked her into eating a peanut-butter-and-firefly sandwich...?”
* * *
“I’m just saying that maybe you wouldn’t feel quite so depressed all the time if you upped your intake of Vitamin D, that’s all. One or two tans a week would do wonders for your mood, Matt—not to mention your pallor.”
“Yet the answer is still a resounding no.” Matt looked around for a means of escape. Hilly had outdone herself in terms of cuisine for the evening, piling their plates with a shepherd’s pie made of what looked and tasted like bloodshot roadkill, so food offered no recourse. Lincoln was all too happy to leave him right where he was in the hot seat, and even Kendra was no help. She’d claimed vegetarianism as a means for avoiding the food and merely sat, drinking boxed wine and stifling laughter, while Matt flailed for some kind of foothold. “I appreciate the concern, but I am not becoming a walking advertisement for your business. Lincoln has more than got it covered.”
Beside him, Kendra let out an inelegant chortle.
“Did you see the new car Lincoln drove up in?” Donald asked, attempting to engage his wife in a discussion of something—anything—else. “He promised I could take it for a spin later.”
“So.” Kendra turned to face him, a smile playing on her lips as Lincoln vehemently denied his brother-in-law’s claim. “You’re clearly the sane one in this family.”
Matt had to laugh. He was beginning to get an idea of why she and Whitney were such good friends. His personal struggles seemed to be an endless source of amusement for them both.
“I’m the white sheep, I’m afraid. I don’t tan, I don’t steal cars and I don’t teach children how to arm themselves against empty sodas. We’re big believers in owning one’s faults, and they feel I’m sorely lacking in vices.”
“Is that why your sister looked at me like I had two heads when I said I don’t eat meat?” Kendra asked.
Matt nodded. Hilly had heard the word “vegetarian” and gone into a state of denial. Kendra had the biggest portion of them all slopped onto her plate, as if Hilly somehow hoped to woo her to the other side with her military-style cooking. “She grows on you after about fifteen years or so. Aren’t you so glad you came?”
She shrugged and played with her fork. “Your brother’s nice. Persistent too—but I’d be lying if I said I came for him. I wanted to talk to you, actually.”
“Me?”
Hilly scooted her chair closer and cocked an ear their direction, though her attention never wavered from refilling Trent’s glass of milk. At least she was making an effort to be subtle.
“Yep.” Kendra spoke loud enough for Hilly to overhear. “I want to know about your intentions.”
He sputtered on his cheap, acidic wine. “You want to what?”
Kendra didn’t blink. “Whitney’s told you about our plans, right? The spa?”
“Yeah, it’s come up a few times,” he said wryly. He and Whitney might be nothing more than sex buddies, but it would take some kind of jerk not to be aware of what was going on in her life. “I think it’s great what you guys are doing. I can’t imagine the kind of work that goes in to opening up a medical facility of that caliber.”
“She’s an amazing surgeon.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He didn’t. A person of Whitney’s monumental confidence rarely had the chops to back it up but, so far, nothing about her failed to deliver.
“Then I probably don’t need to tell you what it takes to reach her level of skill.” She didn’t wait for Matt to agree with her. “Four years of undergraduate studies. Three of medical school. Internships, residency, the whole package. Women booked her for boob jobs six months in advance. She did mine, you know.”
Matt couldn’t help his gaze from traveling to Kendra’s chest. Now that she mentioned it, she was rather well-endowed, given her small stature. “They’re...lovely?”
She laughed out loud, clearly amused at his uneasiness in checking out her rack. “You know how this works. The night we met, you saw for yourself how Whitney and I protect each other—and I’m not just talking about at the bars. You’re a nice guy, and I know you don’t mean any harm, but you have to understand that as much as she might seem like this outgoing, good-time party girl, there are layers to Whitney you haven’t even begun to touch.”
He knew that. Of course he knew that—the fact that she refused to let him all the way in was something he was rapidly growing accustomed to. But even though Whitney loudly proclaimed her intention to take two steps back every time Matt got too close, her actions spoke differently.
And so did his heart.
“What exactly are you saying?” he asked.
Kendra took her time responding, and in the momentary lull, Matt realized the sounds of conversation and the scrape of dinner being hidden in the napkins had stilled. Everyone was listening.
“In the esthetician trade, the first thing they teach us is about our limits—did you know that?”
Matt shook his head wordlessly.
“It’s day one. No matter how much we might want to or how far technology has come, it’s impossible to completely erase a scar. A plastic surgeon like Whitney can cut into it, I can apply all the topical creams in the world, and we can even improve every other aspect of that person’s physical appearance in an attempt to divert attention. But remnants of the scar tissue will always be there.”
Matt wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond—especially since they had quite a captive audience. He doubted Lincoln or Donald had any idea what Kendra was really talking about, but Hilly had grown abnormally still.
“I’ve always wondered about that,” Hilly boomed. “I have got the biggest, ugliest scar down to my you-know-what—they had to slice Dylan out of me when he was born. Ten pounds, that kid carried on him, and I swear half of it was in his head.” She cast a fond look at her youngest son, whose face bore the resignation of having heard this story countless times over the dinner table. “Still is. In your professional opinion, what do you think would work best for me? Like you said—cut it, cream it or maybe get one of those vajazzle thingies so Don won’t notice anymore when he’s making the weekly trip downstairs?”
Across the table, Lincoln let out a strangled sound and clapped his hands over his ears. Donald grew so red he matched the tablecloth, and Trent asked in the same overloud voice of his maternal parent, “What’s a vajazzle? Matt, do you know what a vajazzle is?”
But the damage—or the repair, depending on your perspective—had already been done. Kendra quietly resumed not eating her dinner and Matt no longer felt compelled to answer her. And as Hilly looked around her with a wide-eyed look, asking, “What? What’d I say?” Matt used the moment to mouth his thanks.
Hilly was a good sister. She might be able to beat him in arm wrestling and try to poison him every month with these family dinners, but if she were an affectionate sort of woman, he’d slap her with a big, hearty kiss right about now.
* * *
“You can’t fix her, you know.”
Matt eyed Hilly warily. He’d forgotten that his generous feelings toward his sister rarely lasted more than an hour at a time. The second he thought they were finally about to agree on something, she pulled rank and started ordering everyone around.
“I never said I was going to,” he protested.
Hilly plopped her coffee cup down, spilling the almost opaque, too-milky liquid all over the coffee table, which was little more than several shellacked pieces of firewood glued together to form a horizontal surface. In their pre-tanning-salon entrepreneurial days, Hilly and Donald once decided to make and sell driftwood furniture out of their barn, take advantage of the rural antiquing crowd. Unfortunately, a shortage of driftwood in landlocked Pennsylvania meant they’d turned to their winter firewood pile for parts. Hilly thought no one would notice the difference. They noticed.
A tabby cat with the size and stripes to rival a tiger jumped onto the table and started lapping the milk. It was only a matter of time before her other seven cats—another barn project—came to share the bounty, so Hilly abandoned her after-dinner beverage altogether.
“You always think you can fix them,” she said, settling back into her overstuffed chair, upholstered in the swirled brown and orange velour of the seventies. “That’s your thing. You’re drawn to broken women.”
“I am not,” he said irritably, focusing on his mug.
“Case One, Jenny Hefflemeyer.” Hilly refused to back down. She never backed down from anything. Put her against a drunk biker or an irate camel—he knew who would come out on top. Armed with Jenny Hefflemeyer, and the odds were stacked even more in her favor.
“Don’t be mean. You said you wanted to talk about Trenton’s grades.”
“Trenton’s reading skills aren’t the ones fornicating in public,” she said, her tone magnanimous. Matt retreated once again into the welcoming bosom of his coffee. This town’s gossip would be the death of him. “You remember Jenny, don’t you?”
Of course he remembered her. She was the first girl he ever kissed—a sweet, shy neighbor who’d been having a hard time fighting off a fifth-grade bully. “Sure. What about her?”
“Don’t you remember how you took it upon yourself to make her popular? That poor girl just wanted to be left alone with her books and her weird doll collection.”
He sat up straighter. “What are you talking about? She was bullied. I see it all the time in schools today. It’s not a joke.”
“Oh, the other kids teased her, I know. Don’t forget—I’m the one who drove you to and from school every day.”
He wouldn’t forget. Not only because he knew how much he owed his older sister, but because she mentioned it at least five times a month. Subtlety had never been her strong suit.
“But she never noticed any of it. Seriously—you could have placed that girl on top of a polar bear and she would have blinked and given it a little pat. I don’t know why you ever took it into your head to make her class president, but she hated every minute of it. You know her family transferred her to the charter school because of you.”
“I don’t know what version of history you’ve got on playback, but that is not what happened.” He remembered it well—Jenny was one of the main reasons he’d gone into teaching in the first place. She always ate lunch alone, spent recess sitting on a swing, rocking back and forth and singing under her breath. To everyone else, she’d always been the weird kid. To Matt, she’d just seemed lonely.
So he’d befriended her. Sat on the swing next to her at recess, ate lunch next to her in the cafeteria. She’d never been overwhelmingly excited to see him, but she’d just needed a little warming up, that was all. The class president thing had been a fluke—he’d thought it would help her make a few more friends. And it would have, if she hadn’t gotten moved to a new school. All she’d needed was someone to believe in her.
“I was her friend,” he insisted.
“No.” Hilly reached out to pet a black cat that wound in and around her feet. “You tormented that poor child right out of town with your...your...”
“Kindness, Hilly. It’s called kindness.”
“Is it?”
He didn’t care for her ironic tone. “So, what? You’re saying I’m going to cause Whitney to cry in an assembly when she wins class president? Is that it? Because I’m warning you, she strikes me as the type of woman who might have had her tear ducts surgically removed on a whim.”
“I’m saying you suffer from chronic white knight syndrome. You’re always looking for a woman to save. Shy Jenny. Unfaithful Laura. And now this Whitney woman, who, if town rumor has anything to say about it, is a train wreck just waiting to happen.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never tried saving Laura.”
“Are you sure? Isn’t that what you’re still trying to do?”
Always, it came back to this. Always, his family and friends refused to leave him in peace to deal with things on his own terms. He jumped to his feet, scattering the cats.
“It was nice seeing you, sis, and I appreciate the meal, but I think you’ve said enough for one night.” And she had—more than enough. But as his blood warmed up, Matt realized he’d barely scratched the surface of what weighed on his mind. Maybe Hilly had earned the right to speak out against Laura...but he’d be damned if he’d let her say a word against Whitney. “And what is that supposed to mean, Whitney is a train wreck waiting to happen? You don’t even know her.”
“I’ve heard enough.”
“From who? Natalie Horn? A bunch of stubborn shop owners who refuse to adapt to change? I’ll tell you all you need to know about Dr. Whitney Vidra. She speaks her mind and doesn’t let the borough’s single-mindedness dictate her actions. I, for one, think that’s something we should all aspire to.”
“Matt?” Lincoln called. “What are you talking about?”
Naturally. No outburst of Matt’s would be complete without an audience. And opinions from each member thereof.
“Whitney. And me. I’m talking about me. No matter what you think, what any of you think—” this time he turned to include Kendra in his pronouncement, “—I’m more than aware of the repercussions my actions have on the women in my life.” Acutely so. Painfully so. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m leaving.”
Hilly’s mouth firmed, but she knew better than to try and stop him. He didn’t offer more than a tight nod to Kendra and Lincoln, who sat arguing with Donald over a Scrabble board, all three of them misspelling catharsis. On second thought...he reached down and traded an e for an i.
“Tell Trent and Dylan I said goodbye,” he added, and walked out the front door.
The cold night air that washed over him did little to soothe his anger, the austere moonlight only enhancing his feeling of isolation among the people who were supposed to matter to him most.
Yes, he’d done a lot of things wrong with Laura—there was no doubt of that in his mind. He hadn’t tried hard enough to hold on to her, he hadn’t forced her to communicate when they started sharing more silences than they had conversations.
But he’d never tried to save her. If anything, he’d pushed her to find her own happiness, never making demands or forcing her to do anything she didn’t want to. Early on in their marriage, he’d been offered a principalship in New Jersey—something he’d always wanted—but she’d hated the thought of being away from Pleasant Park and her family. He’d gone along with her wishes, happy to thrive at Hamilton Elementary and come home every night to their two-bedroom cottage on the outskirts of the borough.
After all, that was what a marriage was supposed to be, right? A partnership? A place where both people shared a vested interest in the future?
He slid into his car and pulled the handle roughly, narrowly missing slamming his fingers in the door. Gripping the wheel, he willed some of his anger to ebb away and was surprised to find that his knuckles had grown white.
Anger. This was anger.
The strange thing was, he had no idea where he intended the emotion to land. Hilly, Laura, Kendra...even Whitney danced through his mind, fueling a sudden urge to grab Lincoln’s gun and start shooting cans.
As he started the car and pulled across the gravelly drive instead, satisfactorily kicking up rocks that pinged against Lincoln’s car, he realized that the person he was angriest at most was himself.
Because the reality was that he didn’t think he needed to save Whitney.
But, oh, how he wished she’d ask him to try.