You Will Know Me (19 page)

“I don't know what—”

“Stop it. I know. His mother told me, Devon. Ryan's mother told me.”

“She's lying,” Devon said. “I don't even know her. She's lying.”

Oh, to see her daughter look at her, her face so composed, and lie so easily.

“I saw your leotard, Devon.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Mom. I don't.”

“Stop lying, Devon. Stop.” Her hand reaching out, grabbing Devon's chin so tightly, clenching her fingers around her jaw.
“Stop.”

Like a pin pulled out, Devon's face seemed to collapse, her whole body sinking into itself.

“Devon. Devon.”

She covered her face with one hand, turning away.

It all felt unfair. There'd been no ramp-up to it. Her little girl, so unflappable, so self-possessed, never talked about boys, never seemed to look at a boy, and now, like a mask torn away in an instant.

“I loved him, Mom. I loved him so much.”

The words just like Hailey had said, her fist covered in ice,
I got so mad I punched my own wall
.
I love him so much.
But Katie recognized the feeling too. The unbearable push of feelings at that age. How she'd looked at Eric and would have done anything at all to have him forever, her own body feeling like it was spinning from her, unstoppable.

You make me crazy, baby. You make me crazy.
“I loved him,” Devon repeated, her body so still, her voice so small, “and he's dead and what if it's my fault?”

“It's not your fault, Devon,” Katie said. It seemed like she'd said it a hundred times in recent days.

Devon's hand fell from her face, a pale smudge in the dark of the garage. There was a long pause, like before a vault sometimes, that strange dead-eyed look, her breath slowed to silence.
Breathing throws off your alignment
, Teddy always told her.
Don't breathe.

“Devon,” she said, “what is it? You know you can tell me.”

But Devon couldn't seem to speak, her hand on her chest, a nervous gesture Katie recognized as her own. It was as if something had been undone. All that talking, the saying of things out loud, made them real. When you say it aloud, it becomes real in fresh and horrible ways.

“Devon—”

“He knows, Mom,” she blurted, eyes panicked.

“Who knows?”

“Dad.”

Katie took a breath, the heat of Devon, and the closeness of the car, the smell of exhaust and chemicals. “Tell me.”

“It was a few weeks ago,” Devon said. Her hand on Katie's arm, she was ready now. “We were driving home from practice. He made me get out of the car. He sat down with me and he was so upset, Mom. He said that he knew, and it didn't matter how. He said I was throwing my life away.”

Katie watched her daughter, watched her mouth moving, words coming out, but it was like Devon herself couldn't believe each sentence until she'd uttered it. Her own words terrifying her.

“And he said I needed to know the biggest mistake you can make in life is giving in to sex.”

“He said that to you?” Katie pressed her fingers to her temples as if trying to hold her head in place.

“I told him it was just for now,” Devon kept going. “That it wouldn't change anything. And he said, ‘All the things you do at your age seem like they're just for now. But they're all forever. You live with those mistakes forever.'”

She looked at Katie, her voice relentless, her eyes growing wider and wider.

“And then he said, ‘Devon, there's a hundred ways sex can ruin you.'”

A bursting in Katie's eyes, making her dizzy, her mouth thick with alcohol and exhaust.

There's a hundred ways sex can ruin you.

Had he really said that? And all she could think was
What did that mean, to him?

“Devon. Devon, what else?” Because she knew there was more. And she had to get it, all of it.

And then Devon was talking again. Devon wasn't done at all.

“The day of the funeral, Mom,” she said. “Dad showed up at practice even though I had a ride. And when we were in the car, he…he said this awful thing. I can't get it out of my head.”

Katie took another breath. She was thinking of him, his hands on her thighs not an hour ago, and wondering what was wrong with her.

“What did he say, baby? Tell me.”

Her head bobbing slightly, Devon turned, and Katie watched as her eyes fixed on the door from the garage into the house. She couldn't tell what Devon was looking at, Drew's two-liter bottle, Eric's Gore-Tex jacket slung there on a hook, dark and swelling.

“He said Ryan got what was coming to him,” Devon whispered, so close to Katie the words vibrated on her skin. “That's what he said. And he said, ‘What made that kid think he had any right?'”

They locked eyes with each other.

 “Devon,” Katie said. “Look at me.”

But Devon couldn't, and Katie found herself getting lost in her head too. It was as though the garage were this haunted place, the empty spot where Eric's car usually sat like a stain beside them, like a black pit with no bottom.

“Devon,” she said, forcing the words out, “do you think your father might have done something?”

With unbearable slowness Devon turned.

“Mom…I don't know what he did,” she said, her face assembling into something grave and hopeless. “Do you?”

One hand on her stomach, Katie felt something pierce her, everything spilling out. She couldn't answer.

Devon was saying, “Mom, I can't go inside and see him. I can't.”

And here Katie was, still drunk on his whiskey, still feeling his hands on her, back to the mattress—what was wrong with her?—a red daub spreading across her collarbone where his hand had pressed, other things she wouldn't let herself think about at all.

Who was that man? Did she even know?
You were mysterious to him and he was mysterious to you.
She put a hand on either side of Devon's face.

“He's gone,” she promised. “And you're with me. And everything's going to be okay.”

Devon looked at her, jaw shaking between Katie's fingers.

“Mom,” she said, eyes filled with bright tears, “you always give me everything.”

Three a.m., four, sleep never came, not really, her heart pounding, cymbals crashing inside.

The photo on the bedside table, she and Eric in matching BelStars tracksuits, searing red, Eric smiling at the camera, Katie smiling up at him.

Before she knew it, she was dragging her wedding album out from the closet, behind the boxes of baby clothes, Devon's old leotards. The pictures, fading already, those disposable cameras people used to use, all the blurred, frantic shots that captured the feeling of life better than anything else.

The small catering hall, a raucous and joyous crowd of forty, kegs of summer ale, the DJ with rainbow sunglasses, everyone dancing, their faces glazed with sweat—three old girlfriends came, one by one introducing themselves to Katie.
He's the greatest guy
, they all said.
The one that got away
. A gentleman, a sweetheart, a knight in shining armor.
And you did it, you got him, how did you?

And she never knew, not really. Because yes, she was three months along by then, but that wasn't the reason. She'd already gone for her consultation at the Options Women's Center, listened to them describe how they would insert a tube, “a suction device that will gently empty your uterus.” But then Eric showed up the night before her appointment, saying he'd been driving around for hours and had come to important decisions about the things that mattered to him and it turned out that the life inside of her, which they'd created, was the Thing Itself, and he'd torn the pull tab from the Schlitz can and promised her everything, always and forever.
This
must be how life really happens
, he'd said,
you don't know what you're supposed to do, what your purpose is, and suddenly life tells you.

The wedding night, she wasn't supposed to drink at all, but she'd had three glasses of champagne, and Eric three times that, plus tequila and Mexican cigars, and they both smelled of sweat and crushed flowers and ending up having sex in the backseat of Eric's car in the hotel parking structure, neither able to remember what they'd done with the key card and not wanting to wait one more second, his arm under her dress up to his shoulder and everything frenzied and luscious.

And the truth was, arm hooked in his, tight, she did think:

I've got him now.

Now he is mine.

Just before five, in the purple dawn, she crept down the hall and checked on Devon sleeping, her head a dark mass on the pillow.

Finally, she fell asleep herself.

Now it was nearly seven, the clock radio droning with weather, traffic, weather, traffic, her face muffled in pillows. Drifting in and out. The tug of forgetting.

The phone ringing. The landline again.

“Did you hear?”

“Hear what?” Katie said, her voice sleep-frogged. “Who is this?”

“It's Helen Beck. The police called late last night to tell me about the paint chips. I can't stop thinking about it.”

“What? Wait. Helen.” Sitting up now, her stomach churning with last night's liquor.

“They found some paint chips in Ryan's clothes. Car paint. And guess what? They're not purple.”

“Oh,” Katie said, biting down on her finger, trying to wake herself.

“They found just a few. Very tiny.”

“What color, Helen?”

“So I guess that witness was wrong.”

“What color, Helen?” Katie said, head throbbing with the knowing.

“Silver, they said. Or metallic gray.”

“Silver,” Katie repeated.

“I know. Doesn't narrow things down much. The detective told me there's more than six thousand silver or gray cars in this county alone.”

“I see them everywhere,” Katie said, her mouth dry.

Silver to match your eyes
, she'd said when Eric first drove it home a half a dozen years ago. And he'd grinned.
My eyes are gray
. But the yellow ring around the center always made them glitter.

“So what does this mean?” Katie asked. “What comes next?”

“The state crime lab might be able to identify the make and model of the car from the samples. Sometimes they can do that.”

“Make and model, that limits it a little, but—”

“I'm optimistic. I have to be. He's my boy,” she said. There was a pause, Katie already on her feet, the cord, wreathed with dust, tangling up her legs.

“Katie, I bet we're both sorry now about the other day.” Helen kept talking. “Mothers, you know. When they're born, we grow a new set of teeth. What's that line, ‘There ought to be a law against a mother like that'?”

“I have to go, Helen.”

“I guess I'm glad to know it wasn't his girlfriend,” she said, taking a breath. “It was just some random monster.”

Stumbling into the bathroom, Katie ducked her head under the sink faucet, gulping hungrily.

Silver, gray, metallic,
her head clunking and clanking from one image to the next, like coins jangling against each other.

Silver, gray, metallic,
like coins. Melted coins.

Drew's fever-streaked palm open before as they stood in the garage, and the three silver specks stippled in the center.

She stood in the garage, barefoot and wearing only Eric's old BelStars Booster T-shirt, eyes on the greasy blot where his car was usually parked.

Kneeling, one hand holding back the bowing handle of the rusting lawn mower, its wheels turning, she used the light from her phone to look.

Down on her knees, now, fingers spreading, she searched. Even in the crease between the concrete and the garage wall.

There was nothing glinting.

The greasy blot, though—she crawled over to it. At night, it had looked like a pit. Now she could smell something. Motor oil, and something else.

“I saved them.”

“Show me,” she said.

He pointed to his window, to a piece of Scotch tape, a few inches long, sealed diagonally across the pane.

It was only when she walked right up to the sill that she could see them: three hard sparkles, one as large as a dime, the sun perforating the center.

Her arm stretched, she tore off the tape and crumpled it into her palm.

“It's not safe,” she said. “There's lead in it.”

He looked her.

“Like in the school basement?” he asked after a few seconds. “They used a big vacuum cleaner. They wore these white space suits and big masks.”

“Are you sure you didn't dream that?” Katie said, rolling the tape tighter and tighter in her palm.

“You always think I dreamed things that were real. They came when we were at that meet after Halloween, the one far away. We didn't get back in time to empty out my cubby. The Parthenon got ruined.”

“Oh, Drew, yes,” Katie said. “That was rotten.” Drew's prizewinning sugar-cube Parthenon—the same kind she'd made when she was in fourth grade more than a quarter century ago. Like his sister, he did everything with precision, until his hands were hard with glue.

The entire drive home after the meet, she and Eric kept promising they'd make it back in time.
We'll rescue the Parthenon, kiddo!
Eric said, pounding the gas.

But by the time they got home, the remediation workers had thrown it away, dumped it in a bin out behind the school.

“I'm sorry, honey,” she said now. “We all felt really bad about it.”

Drew didn't say anything, just looked back up at the window, the sticky streak where the tape had been.

“Drew,” she said, looking at his digital clock, “where's Devon?”

“School,” he said. “Mrs. Chu came and got her. She said you needed to sleep and to let you.”

“Drew,” she said, rolling the tape in her hand until it was fine as wire, “go watch TV. Watch anything you want. Mom has to work.”

It was as if her body were moving on its own, pure muscle memory.

Later, she would wonder why she didn't even hesitate.

Standing over the sink, she tore every bit of the tape off her fingers, where it stuck, glue-thick, to her nails. The sound of her own breaths like an animal.

The garbage disposal hummed and grinded and then she wondered if it would be enough. Would the tape, like potato peels, celery string, grip and line the pipes, stay there forever?

Devon, you ok?

Yes,
she texted back.

Have u heard from yr dad?

Dont want to talk abt dad

I'm coming to get you

Mom, no. I want to be here.

Everything will be ok, D

Ok mom

It was all adrenaline, blood. Breathe in, breathe out.

Back downstairs, turning on her laptop, nearly shaking it to life.

Eric had taken the car to the shop—which day had that been? Was it a tune-up? A cranking sound, the alternator again? There were always car problems, both their Fords gasping past a hundred thousand miles, countless out-of-state meets, the daily sojourns to and from gym, school, booster meetings.

She couldn't recall seeing his car the day they learned about Ryan. Katie had driven them all to practice in her old warhorse, Eric decamping to a nearby diner with his laptop.

All she could remember was his was in the shop the day of Ryan's funeral, and when she came home after, she'd found Eric in the garage, his car returned.

And the garage—hadn't it smelled of something? Solvent, or aerosol.

Or was it paint?

She tried to log on to their credit-card sites, but she didn't know the passwords. Eric paid those bills.

She didn't know anything.

Click-clicking, palm wet and sticky, she tried to open his e-mail.

Incorrect password.

It had been Elite-D, for years. The only password they ever used, but now it didn't work.

One by one, she yanked open all the warping plywood drawers of the desk, paper wafting. Booster minutes, work orders, credit-card bills, mortgage statements, past-dues. One drawer glided free, landing on the floor, releasing something.

It fell to the carpet, tented there.

A creased Father's Day card from years before, an illustration of a card deck on the cover:

Bottom drawer, a fat stack of receipts—gym dues, meet fees, furnace maintenance, last week's dinner at the Wooden Nickel.

She sat down at the swivel chair, breathing. Then she bent down to pick up the greeting card, her foot hitting something: the shredder bin under the desk.

She dragged the bin toward her and overturned it, knocking the cross-cut shredder onto the carpet. Over and over, she plunged her hands through the confettied shards, nicking her knuckles once, twice, until she found it: a pink paper corner, the staple trapped between the shredder blades:
Briggins' Collision
.

It wasn't a place she knew, not the Firestone they usually went to.

Briggins' Collision.

Reardon.

Reardon, which was forty-seven miles away.

It took her a long time to free the pink paper from the keen blades of the shredder, but she did.

Quarter panel $400 +,
another shard read.
Cash.

She placed it in the center of the desk, bent her shoulders forward. As if her body had lost its bones, that's how it felt. One too many shocks to her shocked system, she could no longer tense, no longer charge forward, no longer do anything. Her body was sinking back into itself like a slime-thick snail. Hiding.

Seventeen years of knowing him—the particular softness of the inside of his wrists, the way he whistled whenever he walked into a bank, the precise choreography of his fingers when he wanted her to turn over in bed. And now to feel she didn't know anything at all.

Devon, do you think your father might have done something?

I don't know what he did. Do you?

None of this, she said to herself, again and again, was Eric. This was not Eric.

Except there was this: He would always do anything for her, wouldn't he? For Devon.

Trampolines, second mortgages, booster president, Gwen, the new equipment, the pit, the righteous e-mails he wrote to unfair judges but never sent, shouting down a heckler in the stands and again in the parking lot.

And yet sometimes he still seemed surprised by the power and weight of feelings she could stir in him, the anger when she was criticized, the awe when she performed.

I didn't hear him,
Lacey had said,
but Devon kept saying, Dad, Dad, don't cry, don't.

And:
What made that kid think he had any right?

So many things you never think you'll do until you do them.

She stared into the shredder bin, the pink accordion snares of the receipt in her hands. If someone taped them together, they could still figure it all out, couldn't they? And surely Briggins' Collision had another copy, the original. And signs on the car, telltale clues, faint ridges that spoke of new paint. Patches, like the surface of an orange peel, like the time they'd had their bumper repaired.

Everything was there, if someone wanted to look.

She picked up the bin and thrust it under her arm, carried it down to the furnace, cast the tatters inside, and watched them burn.

She thought about the piece of Scotch tape, the paint chips on it. She should have burned it too. There might be microscopic pieces left in the drain. You could never hide everything.

Lying on the bed, the lights off, the ceiling fan burring softly, she tried to make the pieces fit together.

(
Could you recall the details of a random night in your family life?
she wondered, as if there were a
you
to hear it.)

Time passed, hollowed out, and she tried to do something akin to meditation, self-hypnosis, a trance like at slumber parties as a kid. That night, the night Ryan died, everyone was tired and frantic. Everyone was always tired and frantic. Lacey's birthday invitation had threatened
Pedicures, pottery painting, and petits fours!
and Katie remembered hunting for wrapping paper, worrying over the gift—a desk lamp that looked like a gummy bear, a pair of glitter bracelets—because Gwen's daughter didn't want for anything, as long as Gwen wanted it too.

Devon, exhausted from the Flip into Spring Invitational, her face with that kind of numb glaze, could barely tie her tennis shoes.

I'm gonna walk
, she said.
I don't need a ride. It's not that far.

Okay, but call us when you're ready to leave. It'll be dark.

And Eric, most of his sleep lost that week getting Devon to practice by six a.m., was hunched over his laptop, headphones on, dark pouches under his eyes, old coffee on one side of him and a warming liter of diet soda on the other.

Katie had taken Drew to the mall for rock salt, right? And run into Kirsten Siefert in the parking lot, on her way to Lacey's.

In the backseat, barely visible behind the raffia and cellophane, her daughter Jordan held a colossal spa birthday basket suited for a Beverly Hills grand dame.

I hope the party goes long. Greg's taking me to Randello's for dinner
, Kirsten had whispered in Katie's ear, her hair stiff with spray, an energy on her.
But you've seen the way he eats. We'll be home by nine. Eight if he starts ordering Jack and Coke.

At home, she'd lost an hour or two helping Drew with his science project, the shrimp eggs and the salt, salvaging a two-liter from a neighbor's recycling bin, slicing the top off to serve as a hatchery, filling it with salt water. Standing on a kitchen chair, Drew sprinkled the shrimp eggs—glossy little beads the size of pinheads—inside.

Did Devon call?
Eric had asked, vague tang of beer on his breath.

Right. He'd had a beer at dinner, and another while he watched, standing at the kitchen counter, the Junior Olympics National Invitational on one of the ESPNs. He'd drunk it guiltily, greedily, looking tired, all the adrenaline from the meet, from Devon's win, from everything.