Читать книгу The Rest of the Story - Sarah Dessen - Страница 10

“Well, shit.”

I opened my eyes at the sound of voices, the first I’d heard since crawling into my bed after my dad left and falling asleep. It had still been morning then: now the clock on the bureau, analog with tiny numbers, said 3:30. Whoops.

“Why is there no bread in this house?” a woman was saying in the kitchen, the question accompanied by the banging of cabinets. “I just brought a loaf over here two days ago.”

“I’m not hungry,” a voice that sounded like a child said. “I told you that.”

“You’ll eat something if I make it.” Footsteps, then a door—the screen one downstairs, I was pretty sure—slamming. “Mama! What happened to all my bread?”

“Your what?” That was Mimi.

“My bread! I’m trying to make Gordon a sandwich.”

“Honey, I don’t know. If there’s bread, it’s in the regular place.”

“But that’s not my bread, that I bought with my money, for my family to eat,” her daughter replied.

“I’m not hungry!” came again from downstairs.

“I’ll remind you that we are all your family,” Mimi hollered, “and if you want to get picky about it, then you can stop drinking all my Pop Soda and not replacing it.”

Silence. But the heavy kind. Meanwhile, I thought of my mom, who was the only person I’d ever known who had heard of Pop Soda, much less drank it. It was like a generic Diet Coke, heavy on the syrup. It had been years since I’d had one, but I could still remember how it made my teeth hurt.

“Mama, all I am asking is where is the bread,” the woman said, sounding tired. “If you have some other issue with me, let’s get into it, by all means, the day hasn’t yet been long enough.”

Mimi responded, although at this point they were apparently close enough not to be yelling, so I couldn’t hear it. But I was up now, so I grabbed my toothbrush and navigated the way to the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall. Once rid of nap breath, I finger combed my hair, took a deep breath, and went downstairs.

At first the kitchen looked completely empty. Only when I’d started to the cabinets for some water—again noting all those dirty dishes, how could you just leave them like that?—did I notice a little girl standing just inside the opening to the hallway. Until she reached up, adjusting the glasses on her face, she’d been so still I’d assumed she was part of the wall.

“Oh,” I said, startled. “Hi.”

She studied me, her face serious. While her appearance—dark hair in a ponytail, denim shorts and thick plastic clogs, a purple T-shirt that said #AWESOME—was young, the expression on her face reflected the world-weariness usually seen in a much older woman. “Hello,” she replied.

I glanced down the hallway, to the screen door. “Are you looking for Mimi?”

“No,” she said. “Are you?”

“No,” I replied. “I was actually trying to find a glass for some water.”

Another beat as she studied me. Then she turned, crossing into the kitchen and standing on tiptoe to open an upper cabinet. She pulled out a plastic tumbler with a gas station logo on it, holding it out in my direction. “If you want ice, it’s in the bucket in the freezer.”

“I’m good,” I said, taking the glass. “Thank you, um …”

“Gordon,” she said.

“Gordon,” I repeated. “I’m Emma.”

She nodded, as if this was acceptable. Then she watched as I went to the sink, filled my glass, and took a sip. “My real first name is Anna,” she said after a moment. “But nobody with two names ever uses the first one.”

“I do,” I said.

This seemed to intrigue her. “Really?”

I nodded. “I’m Emma Saylor, technically.”

“And you get to be just Emma?”

“Well, yeah.”

She looked wistful for a second. “Lucky.”

The door banged again, and I heard footsteps approaching. A moment later, a woman in jeans and a polyester uniform top that said CONROY MARKET entered the kitchen. She had long blond hair pulled back in a headband and wore tall wedge sandals of the sort Nana would call ankle breakers.

“Well, it looks like you’re having a quesadilla, Gordon, despite the fact I just bought—”

She stopped talking when she saw me, her blue eyes, lashes thick with mascara, widening. I put my glass down on the counter, thinking I’d overstepped by helping myself.

“Oh, my God,” she said softly, putting a hand to her chest. “You look just like … Waverly?”

Her voice broke on the word, and I saw now she was pale, like she literally had seen a ghost. “No,” I said quickly. “I’m Emma. Her daughter.”

“Emma?” she repeated.

“Saylor,” Gordon offered. “That’s her other name.”

The woman moved her hand to her mouth, still staring at me. “I’m sorry,” she managed finally. “I just … I just didn’t expect you here.”

“It was kind of last-minute,” I told her. “My dad was leaving the country and I didn’t have any other place—”

Before I could finish, she had crossed the short distance between us and was pulling me into probably the tightest hug I had ever experienced. It felt like she was squeezing the breath right out of me.

“Oh, my God,” she said again. Over her shoulder, Gordon observed our embrace, chewing a thumbnail. “You’re her spitting image—I saw you there and it was like she was back for a second.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Now, finally, she pulled away, and I saw tears in her eyes. They were so blue, like Mimi’s. Like my mom’s. And mine. “Do you even remember me?”

I paused, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “I—”

“Celeste,” she told me, putting her hand back on her chest. “I’m your aunt. Do you remember? And Gordon there, she’s your cousin.”

“Oh,” I said, glancing at Gordon again, then back to her. “Right. Hi.”

Celeste blinked, a tear running down her face. “Oh, God, you must think I’m a total psycho, look at me.”

“You’re fine,” I said as she reached over to a roll of paper towels and ripped one off, dabbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry you weren’t warned.”

“Well, that’s Mama for you,” she said. She blew her nose with a honk. “We’ve only talked on the phone three times today already. Are you hungry? I was just about to make Gordon something.”

“Oh,” I told her, “you don’t have to do that. I can just—”

“Sit,” Celeste said, gesturing to the table. She handed me my water. “Now, let me find those tortillas …”

I went to a chair, doing as I was told as she opened the fridge and began taking things out. A moment later, Gordon joined me, bringing a thick paperback book along with her.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Oh, Lord,” Celeste groaned. “Don’t get her started about those damn gorillas.”

“They are chimpanzees,” Gordon said. From the annoyance in her voice, it was clear this was a common exchange.

“Can I see?” I asked, nodding at the book. She pushed it toward me and I flipped it over. The Allies, Gathering Two: Justice Begins, it said in thick raised print on the cover. The illustration was of, yes, a chimpanzee, but with very human features, staring into a red-and-yellow-streaked setting sun. “Oh, the Allies series. I remember these. There are, like, a million of them.”

“Twenty in the first gathering, fourteen so far in the second,” Gordon replied. “And that’s not counting all the extra editions and compilations, plus the manga and graphic novels.”

“It’s like she’s speaking another language,” Celeste added from the stove, where she was now heating up a frying pan. “I gave up trying to follow years ago.”

Gordon, unfazed, flipped the book back over and opened it to a bent-down page, then started to read. After a moment, she reached up, twirling a piece of hair around one finger.

“She’s gone,” Celeste told me, tossing a tortilla into the frying pan. “Gets lost when she reads. Thank God for it. I give her a hard time, but I was never good in school. She is.”

“What grade is she in?”

“Starting fifth in the fall. She’s in accelerated reading and math,” she replied, sounding proud. “Clearly not my child, but I will take some of the credit.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought she was—”

Celeste looked over her shoulder at me. “What? Oh, no. Her mama’s your cousin Amber, from my daddy’s side. She lives in Florida right now.”

Amber, I thought. The name was familiar, but only faintly so. “Was my mom close with her?”

“Thick as thieves,” she replied, pushing the tortilla with a spatula. “But we all were, back then. Growing up here, family was everything. It had to be. We only ever had each other.”

It occurred to me that at some point I would need to draw up a family tree to really understand my place in all this. But as long as I had Celeste here, it was worth getting started.

“So you have … how many kids?” I asked her.

“Three,” she said, flipping the finished quesadilla onto a nearby plate and starting another one. “There’s Trinity, who you may have seen earlier, she’s pregnant right now …”

I thought of the girl with the cleaning cart, eyeballing me as I passed. We were first cousins? So much for family being all you had. She’d acted like she hated me. “She works at the motel, right?”

“Yes,” Celeste allowed with a sigh, “but only in the broadest definition of the word. Mostly she’s on her phone complaining about how her feet hurt while Mama does both their jobs because she’s a damn softie.”

“Right,” I said.

“Then there’s my son, Jack, he’s three years older than you,” she continued, shaking the frying pan over the burner, “and finally Bailey, who is your age.”

“She’s seventeen?”

“Both your birthdays are in April. Your mama and I were pregnant at the same time, our due dates just weeks apart. We spent a lot of time on the phone complaining to each other, now that I think about it. I probably shouldn’t be so hard on Trinity.”

She finished up the second quesadilla, then brought both plates over to the table.

“Thank you,” I said as she put one in front of me.

“You’re very welcome,” she replied. “Silverware and napkins are—”

Before she finished saying this, I was reaching like it was a reflex to the rattan basket across from me, pulling it closer to retrieve a fork, knife, and napkin. Huh.

“Well, never mind,” she said with another smile. “Gordon. Put the book away and eat.”

“I can eat and read,” Gordon replied, picking up her quesadilla and taking a bite, her eyes still on the page.

Celeste rolled her eyes and went to the fridge, retrieving a can of Pop Soda. Then she sat down, opening the can before kicking off her shoes, first one, then the other. “What a day. It’s only early season and I’m already exhausted.”

“You work at a market?” I asked.

She looked surprised I knew this, then glanced down at her uniform top. “I forgot I had this thing on! Usually take it off the second I get in the car. Yes, Conroy Market. Only grocery store in North Lake. I’m an assistant manager.”

I took a big bite of the quesadilla: I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I’d begun eating. “This is really good,” I told Celeste.

“You want another one?” She started to get to her feet. “It’ll only take a second.”

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

While I ate, I could tell she was trying not to stare at me, my presence still so surprising. Finally she got to her feet, taking my now-empty plate and Gordon’s. “I can do those,” I said as she started to run water into the sink, crammed with all those dishes.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re a guest.”

“I want to,” I said, wanting to add that it had been driving me crazy all day. “You cooked, I clean. That’s the rule in our house. Please?”

Celeste looked at me for a second. “Okay,” she said finally. “But know this: you start washing dishes in this house, you’ll never stop.”

In response, I stood up and walked over to the sink, pulling the faucet aside and turning it all the way hot before beginning to sort everything into categories. I knew I probably looked like the weirdo cousin, but as I added soap to the water, finding a scrub brush in the nearby dish rack, I felt more in control than I had since that call in the dark from Bridget twelve hours earlier. I was in a strange place, feeling strange even to myself, but this task was one I knew well, and I took comfort in it. So much so that when I finished, I turned to see both Celeste and Gordon had gone, leaving the Allies book and the lake as my only company.

I always did a lot of good thinking while washing dishes, and Mimi’s sink had been slam full. By the time I was done, I’d decided to look at my time here at North Lake as a kind of organizing. So back up in my room, once I unpacked my suitcase and put my clothes away, I pulled out the one notebook I’d brought with me. MIMI + JOE, I wrote at the top of a blank page, with CELESTE and WAVERLY each under a vertical line beneath. From those, I drew more lines, adding in my dad beside my mom’s name, and mine underneath it. Then I did the same with Trinity, Jack, and Bailey under Celeste’s, realizing as I did so I had no idea who her husband was. I’d be here three weeks, though. I had a feeling I could fill in the gaps.

Just then there was a whirring sound from outside, distant, and I turned to see a motorboat puttering from the shore to the floating platform I’d seen earlier. Then I saw another from the corner of my eye, followed by one more, all of them converging to the same spot from varying directions. The first pulled up alongside, and a dark-haired girl in a yellow bikini top and shorts jumped out, her phone to one ear. As the others docked as well, more people joined her. Within moments, between the boats and those who had arrived on them, you couldn’t see the raft at all.

Downstairs, the screen door slammed—this sound was becoming familiar—and I heard someone come into the kitchen, then start up the stairs.

“… told you, I was at work and couldn’t answer,” a guy, maybe my age by the sound of it, was saying. “Taylor. Don’t start. Seriously.”

The bathroom door closed, and I heard water running, along with more of this conversation, now muffled. As the screen door slammed again, I thought how much this place would have driven Nana crazy: she treated her house like it was fragile, with doors and drawers eased shut, gently. You slammed, you scrammed. That was a direct quote from my dad.

“Jacky?” Mimi yelled from the kitchen. “You here?”

“One sec,” the guy yelled back from the bathroom.

“Jacky? Hello?”

“ONE SEC,” he replied, louder. This time, she didn’t say anything, but a moment later I heard the fridge opening. I looked back at my family tree, full of gaps, and went downstairs.

“There you are,” Mimi said when she saw me. Still in her tie-dye, she’d ditched her sandals and put on fuzzy slippers in their place. A can of Pop Soda was in her hand. “I wondered where you got off to.”

“I fell asleep after Dad left,” I told her. “And then saw Celeste and Gordon.”

“Oh, good,” she said, turning back to the fridge. “You want a soda?”

“No, thanks,” I said. As the kid of a dentist, they’d been so forbidden in my early life that when I finally could have them, I’d lost interest.

“Oxford’s holding down the office until dinner, so I was just getting ready to watch my shows,” she said, grabbing a bag of potato chips from the top of the fridge. “Want to join me?”

Upstairs, Jacky—Jack?—was talking again. “Sure.”

She started down the hallway, to the living room we’d passed on the way in. The walls were lined with long couches—one leather, one dark blue corduroy—and there was a huge TV set, surrounded by shelves of family pictures. Off the back side of the room was the screened-in porch I’d seen earlier from outside, separated by a door with a glass pane that had been covered with a tacked-up towel. The result was a dimness that would have made the room feel cold even if the A/C hadn’t been going full blast, which of course, it was.

“Does it feel hot in here to you?” Mimi asked as I thought this. I was about to say no, and try not to do it vehemently, but then she was over at the A/C unit, adjusting it from 67 to 65. “That’s better. I hate a warm house. Have a seat.”

She was already doing just that, lowering herself onto the leather couch and putting her soda into the built-in cup holder on its arm. Even though the couch was huge, I didn’t want to crowd her, so I moved to the blue one.

“Now, let’s see,” Mimi said, pulling up a list of recorded programs. “What are we in the mood for?”

As I looked at the screen, scanning the titles, it was clear there was only one answer to this question: home improvement. Everything listed—Fix and Flip, Contractor: You!, From Demo to Dream House—shared this same subject. I said, “I take it you like renovation shows.”

“They’re my therapy,” she replied, scrolling through the titles before picking an episode of something called 3 Flip Sisters. “Have a hard day with everything breaking down all around you, then come and watch somebody else fix something up nice. I can’t get enough.”

She sighed contentedly, taking a sip of her soda as the show began. “One family,” intoned the announcer as the screen showed a trio of blond women, all with long hair, wearing matching plaid shirts, “three opinions, one firm deadline. This is 3 Flip Sisters.”

Just then my phone beeped in my pocket, the first noise it had made since my dad texted from the airport an hour earlier to say he and Tracy were boarding their plane. This time, it was Ryan. She’d been incommunicado since arriving at Windmill a couple of days after the wedding.

Testing testing. Anyone out there?

I smiled, quickly typing a response. Your phone works? I thought you were in the middle of nowhere.

I am, she replied after a moment. But if I climb this hill and stand on one foot, I have a signal. For now anyway. What are you and Bridget doing?

I filled her in, as succinctly as I could, while the TV showed a montage of the sisters and Bill and Shelley looking at various properties. By the time I hit send, they’d settled on a ranch house with hideous green linoleum floor in the kitchen that Angie, the sister Realtor, said was priced to sell.

“They’ll end up putting an arch in there someplace, mark my words,” Mimi said as the TV cut to a commercial. “Paula loves an arch.”

My phone beeped. Holy crap. Is Bridget’s grandpa okay?

Haven’t heard from her since she left, I wrote back. So not sure.

Are you okay? What’s it like there? I’ve never even heard you mention having another grandmother.

Even though Mimi was on the other couch, a fair distance away, I tilted the screen to be sure she couldn’t see it. The desire not to hurt her was that strong, even as I knew that I, too, could have claimed injured feelings, considering. Where had she been all this time? It was one thing if my mom had kept her at arm’s length—notoriously private, she got even more so when she was using—but five years had passed since her death. Had my dad run interference, thinking Mimi and all the rest of the Calvanders would be too much for me to handle?

Plus, my mom had never talked much about her family. It was Nana—my grandfather died young in his forties—who was consistently there for holidays and birthdays. Other than the funeral, which was a blur, the only trip I’d ever taken to my mother’s home was so long ago I didn’t even remember it. Yes, I had the Lake Stories, but they were never about people as much as a place.

“Arch!” Mimi said, pointing at the TV. “What did I tell you?”

Sure enough, on the screen, Paula was gesturing at a small, cramped living room as a computer graphic showed what it would look like with that shape as an entryway. “You told me,” I said.

She cackled, and I looked back down at my screen at Ryan’s question. What was it like here?

Unclear, I told her. Stay tuned.

I heard thumping, then footsteps crossing the kitchen. A moment later, a tall, thin guy with red hair, a baseball hat, shorts, and a faded NORTH LAKE T-shirt passed by in the hallway, his phone to his ear.

“Jacky,” Mimi called out, and he stopped, turning to peer in at her. “Didn’t you hear me calling you before?”

“I was taking a shower,” he said, sliding his phone into a back pocket.

“Well, say hello to your cousin Saylor.” She nodded at me. “She’s staying awhile.”

It was a testament to the dimness of the room, and the dark blue couch I was on, that Jacky hadn’t even seen me until she said this. He looked surprised as he lifted a hand. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said. “It’s Emma, actually.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mimi told me, her eyes on the TV, where I saw someone was now carrying a sledgehammer. “I keep forgetting you changed it.”

But I didn’t, I wanted to say. I’d always introduced myself as Emma, even as a kid: my mom was the only one who called me Saylor. Could you literally be a different person to different people? I was pretty sure I was going to find out.

“I’m going out to the raft,” Jacky told Mimi. “Back for dinner.”

“We’re having burgers,” she replied. “I made the patties already.”

“All right,” he said, then started toward the door again, drawing his phone from his pocket.

“Jacky.”

He stopped, exhaling visibly. “Yes?”

Mimi shifted in her seat. “Why don’t you take her with you?”

“What?” he said.

“Saylor,” she replied, nodding at me. “I mean, Emma. She’s just got here, doesn’t know anyone. You can introduce her around.”

“Oh,” I said quickly, mortified, “he doesn’t have to—”

“They’re all out at the raft this time of day,” she explained, cutting me off. “Figuring out what kind of trouble to get into later.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I had no sense of the rules here, but I did know enough to not want to be someone’s burden. “I’m fine.”

The TV went back to 3 Flip Sisters. “Demo,” Mimi said, nodding at the screen. “You can tell, because everyone’s in goggles.”

“Right,” I said.

Jacky hesitated a moment more in the non-arch hallway opening, then started out the door. “Be back to grill,” he called over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Mimi said, taking a sip of her drink.

The door slammed, and I turned my attention back to the Flip Sisters. A moment later, though, he was back.

“Hey,” he said to me. “You really want to watch that?”

I looked back at Mimi. It wasn’t clear she’d heard him, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, even if this had all been her idea.

But Jacky didn’t seem worried. Instead, he just pushed the door back open, holding it for me. “Emma,” he said. “Come on.”