And then Joanna’s father had stepped in, forming a barricade between mother and daughter. “It’s her fucking birthday, Catherine,” he reiterated. Before Catherine could react, Joanna’s father grabbed her by the arm, announcing that he was taking her and her friends out for birthday pizza. If Catherine needed to go to the ER, she would have to drive herself. Instead of going to the ER, Catherine had stormed up to the bedroom and slammed the door. Which confused Joanna—didn’t her mother need the ER? Wouldn’t she die if she didn’t go? And then she realized how foolish she’d been. The discovery hit her hard, rippling through her whole body. Though she uncovered her mother’s secret that night, she kept it to herself, never admitting to anyone she knew.
After that birthday, Joanna started to also daydream about the Bates-McAllister family. She brought the magazine home from the dentist one visit and stashed it in her nightstand drawer, looking every so often at Sylvie’s smiling face, so poised, so serene. Sylvie wasn’t a striver; she was already there. Could a life like hers solve everything? As time passed, she collected more photos of the Bates-McAllister family, following their lives the way other girls followed the goings-on of popular bands. She kept a photo of Charles at Swithin, a photo of James and Sylvie at a ball for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a photo of Charles and Scott standing outside a new running trail on the east side of the county, and a clipping of Sylvie alone, holding a plaque indicating she was being honored at a Swithin charity event. Joanna dug out a worn map from the junk drawer in the kitchen and found the Swithin grounds, which were a few towns away, and then Roderick, nestled in the woods of Devon. The more trips her mother took to the hospital, the more complex Joanna’s fantasies grew. She envisioned herself and her mother going over to Roderick for a family dinner, though the interior of the house looked very different in Joanna’s imagination than it did in reality. Whenever her father was kind enough to drive Joanna and her mother to the hospital, Joanna would shut her eyes and imagine them in the Bates-McAllisters’ car instead. It would be a very fancy car, of course—a Rolls-Royce. They would listen to the classical radio station, not the angry, evangelical talk radio her father preferred. In reality, after her mom had been discharged and they waited at the curb for Joanna’s dad to pick them up, she would imagine that Sylvie Bates-McAllister would pull up to the curb instead. Maybe Sylvie and Catherine would become friends. Maybe Sylvie Bates-McAllister would die young and include Catherine in her will.
After fantasizing through her high-school years, Joanna earned a scholarship to Temple that allowed her to move out of her family’s house and into the school’s dorms in Philadelphia. After that, there was a string of jobs and boyfriends, and her parents’ inevitable divorce. Out of the suburbs and that house, the cloud over Joanna’s head finally began to clear. Her mother would call with reports of yet more ER visits, and though Joanna would sometimes accompany her, she no longer felt responsible for pulling Catherine out of her misery. She lived her own life. She had all but forgotten about the Bates-McAllisters until the day she saw Charles in a bar in Philadelphia, standing across the big, square room, a beer in his hand.
She’d nearly dropped her glass of wine. It was startling that Charles was real, standing a mere twenty feet away. His posture wasn’t as upright as she’d imagined, and his pants were a little high-waisted. He had razor burn on his jawline, and his leather jacket fit like a poncho. And his voice, which she could hear across the mostly empty room, was wholly different than she had imagined—a bit flat and gravelly, without any accent at all. For some reason, Joanna had always assumed he would sound like John F. Kennedy.
Seeing Charles filled Joanna with bittersweet nostalgia—Oh, there’s that boy whose family I used to be obsessed with! And she could have left it as a sad, funny, odd little moment and gone home, closing that chapter of her life, except that Charles walked over to her. He bent over at the bar right next to her and ordered another beer, even though there were other empty spots at the counter closer to his friends.
So Joanna said something to him. Maybe something about his complicated platinum watch, maybe something about what he was drinking, she couldn’t remember now. Charles said something back, looking her over and smiling. It was surreal, Charles Bates-McAllister smiling at her, like a character from a book coming off the page and asking her to dance. After about a half hour of talking, Joanna dared to take him by the hand, lean over the bar, and kiss him. Charles’s eyes popped in surprise, but then he kissed her back. Charles Bates-McAllister kissed her back. She pulled away and sat back on the stool, grinning, and noticed he was grinning, too. Later that night, when she left with her roommate, Faith, she asked why Joanna had thrown herself at the short guy with the ugly tie and terrible shoes. “He’s an old friend” was the only way Joanna could explain.
Charles called later that week. After they had been dating for three months, Joanna decided to finally break the news to Catherine that she had a new boyfriend—someone whose name she might recognize. It felt like the biggest moment in her life. After she made her announcement, there was a long pause. Catherine stared at her, a nail file in one hand. Finally, she set the file on the table. “Why in God’s name would he be interested in you?” she cried.