Love All: A Novel (8 page)

I turned the bottle and read the label:

Mary Matthieson

Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 5mg/500mg

Generic for Vicodin

Take 1 tablet by mouth every 4–6 hours as needed for pain

Quant: 20

Refills: 0

Carl’s mom had been depressed since Carl’s dad died, but last spring things had gotten much worse. Carl had moved in with his uncle in Richfield Springs for two weeks, right in the middle of the school year, and he probably wouldn’t have told us why except that Richfield Springs was fifteen miles from Cooperstown. Sam didn’t have his license yet, and we wouldn’t stop hounding Carl about how we were going to hang out after school when he was living two towns away.

“Why can’t you just stay at Sam’s dad’s house?” I’d asked.

“I can’t,” said Carl, for about the fifth time.

“He won’t care,” said Sam. “We can take over the basement.”

“Where’s your mom even going?” I asked. She worked at a bank on Main Street, and I’d never known her to take a single day off, much less two weeks.

Carl didn’t answer.

“Did she actually
say
you can’t stay at Sam’s dad’s?”

“I’m supposed to stay with family,” said Carl. He looked deeply uncomfortable, refusing even to make eye contact, fidgeting helplessly in his seat.

“Why?” asked Sam, and finally Carl leaned forward, hands palming the table, and told us that his mom had OD’d on Vicodin, okay, then he pushed away from the table and disappeared, leaving us with his bowl of tomato soup and Otis Spunkmeyer cookie, untouched.

I shook the bottle. Full. The name at the bottom of the label was M
ICHAEL
T
REMONT,
DDS—a dentist in Utica whom lots of people in Cooperstown went to. Maybe Carl’s mom had broken a tooth while Carl was in Myrtle Beach. Maybe she’d lost a cap or undergone a root canal, but I wondered if Dr. Tremont knew about last spring.

Two cabinets over I found the ketchup. Back in the den, I handed Carl the squeeze bottle and he squirted it directly onto his fries.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” I told him.

“Do what?”

“Squirt ketchup onto your fries.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Because if you were ill mannered enough to smother your French fries in ketchup, Anne Obermeyer liked to say, you should at least have the decency to use a fork—but I didn’t repeat this to Carl. I wondered what it would’ve been like if Carl’s dad were still alive. He’d died when we were in the first grade, long before Carl and I had become friends. On the nightstand in Carl’s bedroom was a framed photograph of the two of them at one of his T-ball games, taken ages ago. In the picture, Carl’s dad was leaning over him at home plate, his hands covering Carl’s on the handle of the bat. I’d once asked Carl if he remembered that day and he’d said almost, he almost did.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.

I settled next to him on the couch and tucked my legs under the blanket. “Carl,” I said, “what happened between Sam and Megan?”

He held a French fry in midair, then set it back on his plate. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not really anything, I don’t think.”

“Sam said they kissed.” Carl shrugged and I turned to face him. “Did you see it?”

“There was this boardwalk by the beach—I saw them down there. She was pretty Perkins, to be honest.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Carl. “She was okay. Do you want me to quiz you?”

“No.”

“Come on,” he said, poking my ribs. “The quiz is Wednesday. Quadratic formula.” Carl pushed his math book onto my lap, then pointed to the equation and said, “Memorize it.”

But I couldn’t concentrate. His first night in Myrtle Beach Sam had written to me, and I wondered now if he’d been trying to tell me something, not about speeding tickets or random girls named Megan but about possibility.

“Carl,” I said quickly. “Did they sleep together?”

“Jesus,” said Carl, his cheeks flushing. “I told you, I don’t know.” He stood up, knocking the blanket off us. “Why does it matter?”

When I didn’t respond, he disappeared into the kitchen and I heard his silverware clattering in the sink and his plate shuttling across the counter, but I didn’t go after him. He was angry, or annoyed, but I was thinking about how Sam had touched my leg on the porch swing after practice and how he was home now. If not Megan, someone else; if not Myrtle Beach, Cooperstown. My chest tightened while my pulse raced ahead, counting out the hours till homeroom, history, then seventh-period study hall. I’d offer Sam my arm and he would ink my skin with a thousand blue lines.

3

Hugh couldn’t remember the last time he’d left school in the middle of the day, but after his run-in with Caroline he acted on an impulse that told him he needed fresh air, a brisk walk, and a lobotomy. Back in his office, he grabbed his ski hat and gathered the mail from his desk and didn’t stop when Mrs. Baxter rose from her desk and called his name.

At the Doubleday Cafe, Hugh waved to one of the owners, then to Randolph DeVey, a local lawyer whom Anne couldn’t abide, sitting alone in front of the mute jukebox. A trio of Yankees fans in matching caps drank coffee at the bar; it was too early for tourist season but still a few found their way. Hugh recognized the older couple in the window seat from church, and they nodded to him, and Hugh returned the gesture, then continued to watch them for a moment. The woman held her coffee cup with both hands, making knots of her knuckles, while her lanky husband stared resolutely out the window. Neither spoke. Something about the way the woman worried her cup reminded Hugh of his mother. Ten years ago his father had lost a short battle with lung cancer, and three months after that, his mother had followed his father into an early grave. Yoked together for more than half a century by a common sorrow, theirs had been a marriage of loss, not love, and it made Hugh sad to even think of them now.

He took a seat at a table for two near the back of the restaurant.

“You want to see a menu?” asked Missy, leaning across Hugh’s table to lay down a set of stainless-steel silverware.

“I guess not,” said Hugh. The specials were chalked on the wall. Hugh consulted the board, scanning for his breakfast. “What’s the omelet?” he asked, squinting.

“Cheddar and bacon.”

Hugh shrugged. “The omelet, please, and coffee.”

“You got it.” Missy turned and walked to the kitchen, her generous backside swinging in her black pants.

“Nice day,” said Randolph from across the room. He had the
Daily Star
open in front of him alongside a mug and four empty creamers.

“Beautiful,” Hugh agreed. He shuffled through the stack of unopened mail he’d brought along, then placed it on the table and proceeded to ignore it.

Hugh’s problems were reproducing at rabbit rate, and in his estimation they all led back to his wife. If Anne worked in Cooperstown, Hugh might have called her right then and the two of them could’ve met away from the house and everything the house seemed to bring with it: Anne’s father, a broken faucet in their bathroom, an infestation of flies in their basement. All of these things needed tending to, and Hugh supposed that’s what life was mainly about but, frankly, he needed a time-out from his life. When, for example, had he started noticing waitresses’ backsides?

“Brewing a fresh pot,” Missy called from the bar. “Gorgeous day,” she said.

Already spring, soon to be summer, and school would be out for the season. Hugh would be free to can beans and pickle cucumbers, play high-handicap golf on the nine-hole course at the north end of the lake, grow tomatoes in his backyard. Maybe this summer he really would get started on expanding Seedlings. He’d take seriously his meeting at Klawson’s Hardware this evening. He’d write down figures instead of just pretending to do math in his head. Building a larger school would mean more work—taking out a loan, hiring and training teachers—impinging on Hugh’s relatively relaxed schedule, but with Teddy off to college in the fall and Julia soon after, what else would he have to occupy him but Seedlings?

Hugh watched Missy pour his coffee. She had been a waitress at the Doubleday since it’d opened, and Hugh had never seen her anywhere outside the restaurant—he wasn’t sure she even lived in Cooperstown—but she was such a fixture here that he felt like he knew her.

“Do you live in town?” Hugh asked when she brought his coffee to the table.

Missy produced a teaspoon from her apron. “Milford,” she said. “I drive in early and get back late. Might as well live here, I guess.” She laughed and Hugh smiled. He wanted to keep her talking but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to ask. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, he noticed, and he wondered if that had always been the case.

“Omelet’ll be right up,” she said, and Hugh nodded and thanked her and watched her walk away.

“Read the paper yet today?” Randolph held up the Oneonta
Star
.

Hugh smiled. “Not yet. Anything interesting?”

“A few of my clients are in the police blotter, but that’s to be expected. How’s your wife holding up in the big city?”

“I don’t even pretend to know what she does over there,” said Hugh.

Randolph stood and collected his briefcase and newspaper and walked over to Hugh’s table. “I heard Anne’s mother passed away,” he said. “Terrible business.”

“It is,” Hugh agreed.

“Give her my best.”

Hugh nodded and Randolph turned, crossed the restaurant, and stepped gingerly onto Main Street, shielding his eyes from the sun.

When Missy set Hugh’s plate in front of him, Hugh said, “You want to join me?”

He had not expected her to say yes, but she shrugged and pulled out the chair across from him.

“I’m on break,” she called back to the kitchen. Then, to Hugh, “Mind if I smoke?” Missy produced a pack of Pall Malls from her apron and struck a match from a flimsy white book. Waving the cardboard match to extinguish the flame, Missy inhaled and exhaled, and Hugh, not wanting to offend her, resigned himself to the smell of smoke on his clothes.

Missy said, “You run that school up on Mill Street, don’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Hugh.

Missy smiled good-naturedly, tiny lines circling her mouth and creasing her forehead. She was not unpretty.

“They say it’s a good school.” She gestured with her cigarette. “Seedlings?”

“Seedlings,” Hugh confirmed.

“I don’t have any children. Nieces and nephews, but they’re in school over in Milford.”

Hugh nodded. “We have a few kids from Milford. About one or two in each class.”

“How much does it cost to send them up there?”

It was Anne who’d first warned Hugh about this kind of question. In her estimation, Missy wasn’t weighing the cost of tuition against the quality of education; she was preparing to judge. And given that there were few other private schools in the area, any amount of tuition was bound to seem absurdly high. So Hugh generally tried to answer without really answering: “It’s hardly any more than day care” or “We run the school for as little as we possibly can.” But for some reason he revealed to Missy that tuition was “about five thousand a year.”

Missy whistled loudly and fell back in her chair as though she’d been pushed. “Five thousand for one child?”

Hugh shrugged, hands clenched under the table.

“Wow,” said Missy. “Rich people, huh? Must be the doctors’ kids.”

Hugh understood that Seedlings was not for everyone—it was nothing to be sorry for, he told himself—but still he felt deflated as Missy extinguished her cigarette and pushed away from the table. She scrawled a few lines on her order pad, then tore off his bill—$6.35—and slid it across the table, telling him to take his time.

“You don’t have to go,” said Hugh stupidly.

Missy smiled, then disappeared into the kitchen.

Hugh eyed his half-eaten omelet and decided he was no longer hungry. By now the coffee was room temperature and he took two gulps, then pushed it away. Riffling through his wallet, Hugh selected a ten and shoved the bill under the edge of his plate. Too much, but he didn’t want to wait for change.

Back at Seedlings, reeking of cigarettes, Hugh passed Mrs. Baxter’s desk outside his office and she neatly rose from her seat and fell into step behind him, as though they had choreographed it. He heard her clicking along in time, felt her just shy of his heels. He turned at the doorway and she nearly bumped him.

“Mrs. Baxter,” said Hugh evenly.

“I didn’t know you were going out,” said Mrs. Baxter. She sniffed the air. “Have you been smoking?”

“No,” said Hugh.

Mrs. Baxter’s eyebrows went up, her forehead wrinkling.

“Can I help you with something?” asked Hugh.

“Graham Pennington’s mother has been calling.” Mrs. Baxter crossed her arms over her chest, clearly pleased to have purged herself of the news.

“Been calling?” Hugh’s legs felt boggy.

“Once while you were out just now. Once last week and once yesterday. I tried to tell you this morning.”

Hugh regarded Mrs. Baxter and held his voice steady.

“What does she want?” asked Hugh. “Did she say?”

“She didn’t, but I’ve written down her number for you.” She pointed to the stack of carbon-copy messages on his desk. “I imagine it’s about her son.”

Hugh barely managed a shaky “Anything else?”

“Nothing else,” said Mrs. Baxter, clicking away on her blocky high heels, as focused as ever. He heard her pull out her roller chair and plug in again, and then there was the
tap tap
of her computer keys,
tap tap tap
, ninety words a minute. Priscilla had timed her.

Hugh closed his door and crossed the room to his desk. He stared at the phone, waiting for it to ring. Ears perked, he heard Melanie on the playground, calling, “Michael S. and Michael D., right now please.” Then Priscilla counting, counting, recounting, finally shouting, “Brian Meyer! All the Dolphins are over here and you’re still climbing up the slide, which we don’t do. Up the stairs, down the slide. Please put on your listening ears.” Hugh had on his listening ears. The phone would ring. He could already hear it, a shrill
brrrrrrr
, a deafening
ding-a-ling-a-ling.