Love All: A Novel (18 page)

3 Beneficiary

4 Alternate Beneficiaries

Anne looked up, her eyes blurry after staring at the computer screen for so long. She could hear the sound of her father’s television from the guest room upstairs and wondered if they were the only two people still awake.

Did you know Hugh wanted to put you in the Thanksgiving Home?

She paused, the cursor blinking patiently.

Instead, you’re watching TV in our guest room, and if we had a different sort of relationship I could talk to you about Hugh, but you are the last person on earth who should be allowed to weigh in with marital advice. I will eschew your counsel herein.

Did you know for years now, Mom and I had been planning for her to live with us after you died? I was going to learn to cook her favorite foods, beef stroganoff and chicken tetrazzini; take her for drives in the country to visit Natty Bumppo’s Cave and the Forest of a Dozen Dads; wash and comb her hair as she washed and combed mine when I was a little girl. Instead, your pajamas are wadded in front of my washing machine, urine-stained and mephitic, but they remind me so much of Mom I can’t bring myself to touch them. I want to keep everything I can of her. Even you, it turns out.

Anne started to chew a hangnail, then heard her mother’s voice telling her not to bite her nails.

Remember last year when I took Mom to see
Swan Lake
at the Palace for her birthday? We never made it to Albany. Instead, Mom asked me to drive her out to the farm where you grew up, though now it’s nothing but a field. I threw a fit, of course. Why were we standing on the side of the road when we could’ve been seated behind the pit orchestra, watching Prince Siegfried fall in love with the maiden swan? But Mom had this whole speech planned, how what she really wanted for her birthday was for me to forgive you, how everything had changed between the two of you, how you were happy together now. Imagine: a cloudless sky in June, tiny purple and orange wildflowers blossoming at the edge of the grassland, and in the far back field near the foothills, a sea of gold, a cluster of a million dandelions. Mom’s hair was thinning on top and I could see straight through to her scalp. I tried to remember when her hair had turned white, but when I closed my eyes it was still brown and I was still a child and nothing had changed at all.

Anne tipped the wine bottle over her glass, and a thin purple stream trickled out, then dried up. She ran her index finger over her front teeth, rubbing at the tannins.

Did you know no one in town even really remembers
The Sex Cure
? Hugh dragged me to a cocktail party in December and the host had a copy on her bookshelf, and of all people it was me who got it down. I asked the host if she’d read it and she said, no, she hadn’t grown up here, but her aunt had been a nurse at Bassett Hospital when the author checked in after having a nervous breakdown. Figures. Soon other guests had crowded around to discuss the book and among them they recalled little things: the babysitter who sued for libel, the cast lists scribbled on inside covers, and where their parents had hidden it—in attics, nightstands, and bureau drawers. I said, “My mother let me read
The Sex Cure
at the breakfast table,” and everyone laughed, thinking I was kidding.

Anne pictured Hugh reading through this document, all her deepest feelings made bare. She had never written anything like it in her life, but she’d consumed an entire bottle of wine, and now even her inhibitions were inhibited.

Hugh, I can’t go through this again.

But Anne had barely breathed a word to her husband about her parents’ rocky marriage, and she didn’t think she should have to trot out her poisonous past to sell Hugh on marital fidelity. They’d made a vow to each other, and, unlike her mother, Anne wouldn’t turn herself inside out to coax her husband back.

Or maybe she would. Maybe she would print this and leave it under his pillow, or seal it in an envelope and slip it into his briefcase before he left for work. Hugh used to solicit her feelings all the time, though not so much anymore. If he knew her, if he really knew … but it was three thirty in the morning, and Anne was drunk, and common sense dictated that she save the document, power down, then reread it with fresh eyes tomorrow. It was an auspicious beginning just to have gotten her thoughts on the page, in the privacy of her own office, on a computer that was password-protected with the date of her wedding, MaY21ONE975.

6

Wednesday morning Teddy arrived in homeroom as his classmates were wrapping up the Pledge of Allegiance and falling back into their chairs. He nodded conspiratorially to his sister, then let the door close behind him, sealing himself in. For the third day in a row, the chemistry lab was sticky, tropical, worse than an overheated school bus. Teddy’s sweat glands sent salt trails down his sideburns and ignited his Right Guard’s sporty scent. All around him, his classmates fanned themselves with notebooks or wilted over their desks. Only chubby Ben Fulton, his neck rings slicked with sweat, was showing any fight. He’d twisted around in his chair and was begging Mr. H. to crack a window.

Not a chance, said Mr. H., whose hay fever was acting up. Before spring break they’d all witnessed the fits of sneezing, the folding and refolding of a wet hanky, the honking nose blows, but it was nothing compared to the hell they were in now. Mr. H. had consulted with his allergist over the break, and it turned out that spring’s breeze off the freshly mowed soccer field was the culprit. It’s wreaking havoc on my sinuses, he’d announced, then administered the ban on open windows.

Seriously? asked Ben Fulton. Seriously.

Because Mr. H. had also returned from spring break with a personal fan for his desk, the kind that clipped to the table and rubbernecked in any direction you chose. Mr. H. had chosen his own face, and through the fan’s rotating blades he now replied that his three-year-old grandson didn’t whine half as much as Ben.

I think I have to go to the nurse, said Ben.

Mr. H. wrote out a hall pass, and Teddy took this opportunity to slip past Mr. H.’s desk and into his seat across the aisle from Kim.

Teddy, said Mr. H. without looking up. To what do we owe the honor?

Teddy said nothing, only slung his backpack onto his desk and smiled politely.

You’re late, Mr. H. clarified. He licked the tip of his pen and marked Teddy down in his attendance book. I guess today isn’t a game day?

Nope, said Teddy. Not today.

Right, said Mr. H. Of course not.

Every couple of months Teddy liked to take a breather from school, and the key to cutting was to act normal. Don’t change up the routine; don’t attract attention. By being late, he had fulfilled every expectation Mr. H. had for him, and in five minutes,
boom
, he would disappear without a trace. If Teddy had been right on time, Mr. H. might’ve taken special notice, might’ve looked him up and down and noted Teddy’s dress shoes, might have thought, Today’s not a game day, so why does he have on his dress shoes? Not only that, but Teddy’s hair was wet—he had showered before school, parted and combed the locks—which he hardly ever did because he had gym first period. No point in showering prematurely. But he didn’t intend to be in first period.

What’s with the shoes? asked Kim, leaning in close. She sat directly to Teddy’s left and with the wall of lockers to their right it was sort of like having a private hotel suite. Teddy reached across the aisle and squeezed Kim’s leg above her knee. She was wearing the jeans with the small hole near the pocket, and Teddy went to trace the hole but Kim pushed his hand away.

You didn’t call last night, she said.

Teddy shrugged. My mom was talking to her friend in California.

Not true, said Kim. I called and hung up.

Teddy remembered one of those. His father had answered, said, Hello? Hello?, then offered the dead receiver to Teddy. This has to stop, he’d said, but Teddy kind of liked it: contact without the trouble of actual communication. It was exactly the level of commitment he was up for. Teddy reached for Kim’s leg again.

You’re an asshole, she said, but she let him trace her skin through the golf-ball-size hole, and Teddy felt his dick stir. He wondered if he should invite Kim to go to Albany with them. Dave would refuse to drive.

What are you doing fourth period? asked Kim.

Sometimes they snuck out—Teddy from typing, Kim from study hall—and found an empty classroom where they could commit acts of PDA. Teddy was too afraid to have actual sex in school, but they’d done pretty much everything else.

Now Teddy’s knee jumped under his desk as he
tap-tap-tapped
his heel, toying with the idea of telling Kim that by fourth period he’d be in possession of enough money to buy a Wrangler. Teddy was terrible with secrets. If he had good news, he liked to share it. If he had bad news, he liked to get rid of it. He felt the secret tickling the back of his throat.

Want to meet up? asked Kim. She slid down in her seat so that the hand that had been touching her thigh was now touching her zipper.

Teddy quickly pulled his backpack onto his lap to hide his erection, then leaned across the aisle and let his lips brush Kim’s ear. I can’t, he whispered. I’m cutting.

Fuck you, said Kim. Take me with you. He told her he couldn’t and she said, You can. You just don’t want to.

We can meet after school, said Teddy. He’d gone down on her. Not as often as she’d gone down on him, but still. At your house. Before practice.

Kim pouted. That’s only like ten minutes, she said.

Yeah, so? How long did they need? Now Teddy took her hand and tried to guide it under his own desk, but Kim yelled, Get off me! and suddenly their suite was not so private after all.

Mr. H.
ding-ding-dinged
his silver bell, while Kim’s coterie (which the girls had taken to calling themselves and Teddy never said aloud, in case it related to a woman’s period) trained their evil eyes on Teddy. Teddy could almost hear his father telling him to grow up, but what his dad didn’t get was that Teddy and Kim were like the paragon of maturity, as far as their friends were concerned. In the classrooms, in the halls, in the cafeteria and the gym and the courtyard by the flagpole, Teddy and Kim talked, fought, made up, made out, exchanged gifts on birthdays, on Valentine’s Day, waited for each other after homeroom, after lunch, before practice, after games, on the nature trail, on the walking path, in the backseat of their friends’ parked cars. They didn’t have the luxury of a house, the privacy of a bedroom, the freedom of a fenced-in backyard, but they did have high school, and as the most popular couple, they were the stars of their own soap opera, the student body their devoted viewership. Kim really likes you but doesn’t think you’re going to stay together next year; everyone is saying that you’re only going out with Kim because you couldn’t get Ava; Steve wants Kim back; and on and on and on. Most of his guy friends were as bad as the girls, except for Dave, who was kind of above it or below it, depending on how you looked at it.