The False Friend (21 page)

“This sounds like a conversation you should have with her,” he said.

Warren nodded while looking ahead, as if agreeing with the angle of the windshield.

“Of course you’re right,” he said, “but you know how it is. In an ideal world I’m sure that she and I could talk about all of this … but the truth of the matter is that she’s still my little girl. Perhaps it’ll be different for you if you have a daughter, but for me … When it comes to Cee Cee, there are certain
things. The search party, for instance. The day after Djuna disappeared, all the neighbors started organizing. My daughter’s own best friend, and I didn’t want to go. I know that sounds awful, but I couldn’t imagine being the one to find something and having to go back home and tell her … having to watch her face—”

Warren’s face went slack.

“But the point is,” he continued, “I
did
search. We all did. We searched all along that road and beyond and we didn’t find a single thing. Not a shoe. Not a hair ribbon. So you can understand that when Cee Cee says she left Djuna back there, I find it just a little hard to believe.”

At some point Warren must have changed course without Huck realizing it, because they were pulling up to the house. The steep grade of the driveway was custom-made for sleds and tricycles, a slant that signaled a dozing child to either awaken or feign deeper sleep in order to be carried inside.

“Well, here we are,” Warren said. “Why don’t you grab the takeout. I bet you a nickel Nor put out these square plates she got on sale a couple months ago, supposed to be specially made for eating Asian food.” He chuckled. “As if the shape of the plate would make a difference.”

Warren climbed out and strode the length of the front walk. As he reached the house, he froze for a moment before removing his driving gloves, then looked back at the car before thrusting them into his pants, his pockets bulging as he went inside.

N
oreen had put out the square plates, had even brewed green tea for the sake of authenticity, the steaming cups sipped in ceremoniously minute quantities to mitigate the repercussions of dinnertime caffeine. Devoid of appetite, Celia reflexively shuttled a piece of eel and cucumber roll beneath the table. Homesickness was not the proper term for the dog-shaped void that met her outstretched fingers. She did not know what to call it, this desire to return not just to another place but to another time.

“How did your phone call go, sweetie?” Noreen asked. “Did you … Was it Mrs. Pearson?”

Celia shook her head. Since her silent arrival to the table,
Huck’s stare had slowly escalated to the one he beamed across restaurants to hail preoccupied servers. Were Celia in Chicago, she’d be talking, or at least working up to it, but her parents’ house annulled the habits she and Huck had built over ten years.

“You look so upset,” Noreen coaxed, “and I’ve been worried all this time that if you
did
end up talking to Djuna’s mother, she might, well … I don’t know quite how to say this without sounding awful, but … I didn’t
like
them, Celia. I never did.”

For the first time since dinner had begun, Huck’s attention shifted. Celia felt her jaw unclench.

“Who?” she asked.

Noreen took a breath. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to finally say this. Ask your father. When you were little it took all my self-control to hold myself back. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I never liked Djuna or her mother.”

Celia looked to Warren, uncertain what she’d heard.

Her father nodded. “Back then,” he said, “at night, after you’d gone to bed, your mother and I would stay up talking about it.”

“They weren’t nice people,” Noreen explained. “It wasn’t Djuna’s fault, of course. She was only following the examples she’d been given. I blame Grace—”

“And the husband,” Warren said.

“Who knows?” said Noreen. “Dennis was so rarely there. All those academic conferences. I heard that he exhausted the math department’s budget, that he had to pay for trips out of his own pocket. And who could blame him, with someone like Grace waiting for him at home?”

“How can you say that? Mrs. Pearson was totally great!” Celia said, surprised at the ferocity and paucity of her defense. As far as she could remember, the last
totally great
thing in her life had been a Genesis album.

“She adored you,” Noreen agreed. “And I could see how much you adored her right back. It was impossible to compete. Here was a woman who had traveled, who had this beautifully furnished home, who had opinions about art and food—”

“About everything, really—” Warren interjected.

“—and if you didn’t agree with her … or worse, didn’t have an opinion of your own … about Victorian architecture, for example, or modernist poetry—”

“She was a poet?” Huck asked.

“An English professor,” Celia said. “She loved my poems.”

“Djuna’s mother loved everything Celie did,” Noreen said. “She took her under her wing. But as for everyone else …”

Warren shook his head. “Notwithstanding how she treated Cee Cee, she was a snob, plain and simple. Noreen and I are not unintelligent people and she made us feel like rubes. She enjoyed it.”

Celia appealed to Huck. “She wasn’t like that! I learned so much just by listening to her. She was the first adult not to talk
down
to me. She never treated me like a child.”

“But you
were
a child,” Noreen reminded her. “You were eleven years old. We didn’t know what to do. We knew we couldn’t try to keep you from seeing Djuna. So we decided to let things run their course.”

“Wait it out,” Warren said.

“Celie and Djuna were so … mercurial,” Noreen explained. “We thought if we were patient, the friendship would burn itself out. Or at least fade into something a little less …”

“Extreme,” Warren suggested.

Noreen nodded. “But in the meantime, we saw Celie becoming more like her … less tolerant, less considerate, more willing to make a joke at someone else’s expense.”

“We didn’t turn a blind eye,” Warren said. “When she was at home, we expected her to behave.”

“But it was awful, watching her change like that, knowing that we had to let her make her own decisions about who she wanted to spend time with, who she wanted to be.”

“All
we
could do,” Warren told Huck, “was hope that we were right about the person we felt she was at heart.”

Celia tried to content herself with the backs of her parents’ heads. She was certain that without Huck to address, her parents would not have been able to speak at all.

“And then,” Noreen told Huck, “all our worries were taken away. And as ashamed as I am to say it, I was relieved.”

When Noreen turned toward Celia, her face reflected a fear that Celia had thought was hers alone.

“I didn’t think I would ever tell you that,” Noreen said. “I was sure you’d hate me for it. It’s a mother’s job to show her best self to her children. But you’re grown now, and it’s something I still think about.”

For a moment, they were the only two people in the room.

“Your mother is being too hard on herself,” Warren said. “She was heartbroken for Djuna, and for Djuna’s mother, for all that poor woman went through.”

“No parent deserves that,” Noreen confirmed. “It was shameful, really, the way the community turned its back on Grace.” She shook her head. “The way I turned
my
back.”

“It’s okay, Nor. Water under the bridge,” Warren said, but his wife was contemplating their daughter.

“She called once,” Noreen said. “It was maybe a week after Djuna was gone. I came home to her message on the machine. It was the first time I’d ever heard Grace sounding anything less than completely self-assured.”

“Who was she calling for?” Celia whispered.

“She said she was calling for me,” Noreen said, “but it was you she asked about. She wanted to know how you were doing, if you were eating and sleeping all right. I never called back.”

As the sky outside the window darkened, the sodium streetlights flickered on. Once, there’d been a propane gas lamp at the foot of every driveway, a glowing yellow trail leading home.

“How long did they stay?” Celia asked.

“Who?” Noreen asked.

“Djuna’s parents,” Celia said. “How long after did they stay in the house?”

Noreen shook her head. “Six months? Nine months, maybe? If it’s something you need to know, I can—”

“I was just wondering,” Celia said. “When I drove past, the colors were gone.”

“The house has been that way for a long time,” Noreen said. “After Grace left—”

“She’s listed,” Celia said. “I found her straight off, but I wanted to reach the others first. I wanted to be able to tell Mrs. Pearson that I’d told everyone the truth. Except that when I talked to Becky and Josie, when I told them what had really happened, they both said that they remembered seeing a car.”

“You mean that they—” Noreen began.

“They don’t believe me either,” Celia said. She tried to ignore the sight of three faces going slack with relief.

Warren leaned forward, and for once Celia found herself looking forward to one of his nervous non sequiturs about cars or music, started counting the seconds until she might excuse herself from the table without seeming rude.

“It’s strange what people do or don’t remember,” he said instead. “Once, I asked Jem if he recalled that last day in his room.” He paused. “You and I have never talked about this, Cee Cee. I always meant to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time.”

When he looked to his wife, Noreen nodded, and something inside Celia’s father unfurled.

“Your brother told me he remembered watching himself on the floor,” Warren said. “An out-of-body experience, I guess you’d call it, which was something he’d never had before. He said he kind of liked it, but he could tell that something was wrong because he couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t like being numb. It was like he didn’t have anything to do with the person he was looking at. He remembered wondering if he was dying, if maybe he was already dead. Then he heard a
voice calling his name, and that was when the griffin came into his room. Jem said it was as big as a man, with gold wings and a golden tail. At first he was scared because he thought maybe it meant he really was dead. But then he felt himself being lifted, and he wasn’t on the floor anymore. And then …” Warren gazed at his lap. His shoulders shuddered and he took a few deep breaths. “And then,” he continued, “he told me that he loved me, but in his mind it would always be a griffin that had saved him. I told him I didn’t care what he saw walk into his room that day. All that I wanted was for him to be all right.”

Noreen reached across the table, and Warren met her there, his arm longer than hers, their hands joining just short of center.

“Cee Cee,” he said, “I can’t bring myself to believe that you left Djuna in those woods, but even if it were true, I’d love you all the same.”

“You’ll always be our little girl,” Noreen whispered.

Within minutes, the remains of the take-out dinner would be eaten. Noreen would shoo Huck from the dirty dishes, but allow Celia to spell her at the sink. Warren would spin his newest vinyl acquisition and defend the superior playback qualities of the Stereohedron stylus. Celia would have to remind herself that the conversation had happened at all.

   Once Warren and Noreen had retreated upstairs, Celia and Huck settled in front of the television. When Huck left the
den, Celia assumed he’d gone to the bathroom until his absence stretched long.

“Front or back?” she asked when he reappeared.

“Back, of course. A seven-foot privacy fence is a beautiful thing.”

She wanted to tell him not to sit back down, worried about the smell seeding itself into the couch.

“I thought you didn’t do that here,” she said.

“Extenuating circumstances.” His arm, still cold from the outside air, chilled the skin at the back of her neck.

Celia feigned interest in the TV. “Just hold off tomorrow, okay? At least while Jeremy’s around.”

Huck rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Ceel, I’ve never been anything but completely conscientious.” He chuckled. “Though your brother totally knows.”

“How?” she asked. “You haven’t done it in front—”

“Oh, come on,” Huck groaned. “We talked about it once, that’s all. He said that smoking was one of the things he missed the least. Said it always made him feel stupid and slightly paranoid.” He smiled. “Man, how about your dad tonight? Just when I think he’s all old jazz and manual transmissions, he goes and says something like that.”

“Yeah,” Celia said. Her voice rose to her ear like windborne ash. “Jem loved griffins. He went through this whole mythological phase starting from when he was, like, ten and going until he was at least thirteen.” She sighed. “I wish you hadn’t smoked.”

“Ceel,” he said. “Is that really what you want to be talking about?”

“It’s why you can’t get up on time anymore,” she said. “It’s why you’ve been going straight to sleep when the movie ends instead of …” She stared at the television. “You’ve been unhappy for a long time.”