The Grown Ups Page 11

  The spray of something hard against the window above Sam’s bed woke him. He thought it was raining until he remembered how cold it had been, how cold it was even right now in the house because his dad turned the thermostat down to fifty-eight while they slept. He had just tucked his comforter back around his shoulders and legs when the sound came again.

  Sam sat up and lifted the shade. The window was smeared with ice and water and seeing anything was impossible. He kneeled to squint out of the upper part of the glass that remained streak free and saw someone in a long, dark coat hurrying back down the driveway toward the Epsteins’ old house.

  Sam yanked on a pair of jeans and a sweater. Downstairs he shoved his feet into his dad’s shoveling boots, which he kept on a plastic tray by the back door. When he got outside Suzie was standing with her back to Sam at the edge of her old driveway. She wore a knit cap topped with a giant puffball. Her head was tilted back as she took in her house.

  He touched her on the shoulder and she turned around. “Sam.”

  “Suzie.” He noticed she was wearing the plaid scarf Michael had been wearing earlier.

  She smiled. “I know I’m going to sound like every person who goes back to look at her childhood home, but I’m going to say it. Looks smaller.”

  Sam nodded. It looked exactly the same to him.

  “So,” she said, and shrugged. “Your brother wants to leave at three. I wasn’t sleeping. I thought I’d come early.”

  Sam glanced back at the house, but it was dark. No light from the bathroom or Michael’s room.

  Quietly Suzie said, “We have some time.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say. Would asking how much time sound like he was expecting something?

  “You grew up handsome, Sam.” Suzie gave him a tentative smile that broke into a grin. “Not that I ever doubted that.”

  There were puffs of frost in the air between them. Sam felt the heat rise to his cheeks despite the cold and Suzie giggled.

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed, Sammy.”

  “That’s what you think,” Sam said weakly.

  “That’s what I see. You and Bella? I’m glad about that, glad that it’s you she has to lean on. I’m glad she is with someone who has a good and generous heart.”

  “Bella’s a cool girl,” Sam said, and stared at the ground. He didn’t want to talk about Bella with Suzie. “So, a psychiatrist, huh?”

  She looked embarrassed and brought a hand up to her mouth. “Am I that transparent? Do I sound like one of those jerks who takes a class and diagnoses everyone they meet?” She put her hand on his arm. “I’m not, really. If anything it has taught me to say what I mean.”

  Sam nodded, concentrating on the feel of her hand through his sweater. He wished he could tell her that after all this time, after all these years, she still had the same effect on him.

  Suzie looked back at her house again, her hand still on his arm. “I spent most of my life right here in this spot, and I feel like I can’t remember anything about that time at all. It’s like my life has only started now, and nothing before has any significance.” She dropped her hand and Sam stepped back. Suzie didn’t look at him, and right then he knew she hadn’t meant a single word she’d just said.

  Sam took Bella back to Vassar because the last thing he wanted to do was return to school, although he admitted that to no one. When he went to her house to pick her up Mr. Spade patted him on the shoulder and called him a “good man” for seeing Bella safely back.

  On a snowy day, they boarded a nearly empty train. Sam nudged Bella toward a window covered in crystals and stowed his backpack and Bella’s small leather satchel above. The satchel contained some of Bella’s mother’s things, and as far as Sam could tell from the bulk and the heft of it, there was no clothing at all inside.

  Bella put her hand against the window and pressed hard, leaving an imprint. “It’s like being inside a snow globe,” she said before putting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes. She was still wearing the fur, and either he was getting used to the smell or the coat was actually airing out.

  Back at Vassar Bella returned to classes right away. She was a serious student, serious about her English degree and her dead poets and her writing. She mentioned several times, first in a tone of awe and then of envy, that she was amazed Suzie had skipped a grade, that she was a soon-to-graduate senior on the cusp of her real life. That if Bella had known that was an option she would have taken it. Sam realized then they all had someone they measured themselves against, and even the brightest weren’t immune.

  Sam stayed because he was hiding and then he stayed because he couldn’t leave. He made Bella breakfast before she left for class each morning. One morning, as he was pouring them each a mug of coffee, he glanced over at Bella, sitting at the table, framed in the curtainless window that looked out over the parking lot. Her hair, like his, was still wet from the shower. Sam’s muscles felt warm, pulled, like ribbons of saltwater taffy. Bella was bent over a book, wearing a white long-sleeve T-shirt, loose at the neck, without a bra. She held a piece of cinnamon toast halfway to her mouth. As Sam slid her coffee across the table at her she looked up at him and smiled wide.

  Sam sat down opposite her and returned her smile. He genuinely cared for Bella; if he focused on that, on living with her and making her breakfast, he could ignore the fact that the rest of his life seemed to be imploding.

  The phone rang and Bella leaned over, squinting at the caller ID screen. She frowned. “It’s your dad, again.”

  Sam shook his head and brought his coffee to his lips.

  Bella frowned again and pressed ignore. “Sam, you never called him back?”

  Sam put down the cup.

  “Sam, you can’t ignore him forever.”

  “It’s only been two weeks.”

  Bella sighed. “Forever, two weeks, what’s the difference?”

  Sam sighed. “You’re right. He doesn’t deserve this.” He ducked his chin to his chest. “I think I need to go.”

  For a moment Bella looked scared, but she quickly straightened her shoulders, her small breasts brushing against the cloth of her shirt. There was a damp circle above her right breast where a tangle of wet hair had fallen. “Then you need to go.”

  Sam reached across the table and grabbed her fingers in his hand. “Hey. You have class. And I have to go see my dad.”

  Bella took a deep breath and exhaled. “Pretending was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Were you pretending?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Only if you were.”

  Sam laughed. “Oh, is that how it is?”

  Bella giggled. “Oh, that’s how it is.”

  They stared at each other. The air smelled of cinnamon, coffee, heat from the radiators, and Bella’s shampoo. Sam inhaled. Trying to remember it all.

  Sam had intended to go home, and then he didn’t. It took a train and two bus transfers to get there, eleven hours in all. The snow was deep and the walk unpleasant in sneakers. There was an absence of streetlights, although the moon was low on the snow.

  When he got to the house every window was an inked rectangle, and he hesitated, but figured, as he put his fist against the old wood, that he had come too far to go anywhere else that night.

  When the door finally swung open Sam saw him first and immediately thought he was wrong to have come. Then from the back of the long, narrow hall she came rushing toward the door. Her hair was loose and long; it fell around her shoulders like a blanket. She flung her arms out to her sides as if she were going to hug him and then changed her mind.

  Sam opened his mouth to explain why he was in Vermont on a late snowy night in the dead of winter. But the only word that came out of his mouth as he fell against her shoulder was “Mom.”

  SIX

  We Only Move Backward

  Bella—2003

  Years ago on a December night in their junior year of high school they had been in Peter Chang’s basement before the winter
dance, and Sam had turned to Bella, his eyes as navy as his sweater, and said, “So?”

  It began as simply as that, friends who had known each other since they were in diapers. Sam made her happy. Just the sight of him as his cheeks flushed a deep shade of red was all it took. She wanted to kiss him and she knew that he probably wanted to kiss her too. Later, when they had all stumbled from Peter’s basement, wandering through the streets of their neighborhood to the high school, Sam had bumped up against her shoulder and she had found his hand down by his side and grabbed hold of his fingers. He wound them through hers and hadn’t let go, and right then in that moment she had been so sure of everything she had ever wanted.

  Since her mother’s funeral, Bella had been stuck on that memory, and she didn’t know why. Maybe it was only the ache of nostalgia. That night, coming in late after the dance, straddling the threshold of her mother’s room to tell her she was home, she apologized for missing her curfew. Her lips had been swollen from kissing. She wanted to lie in bed alone and go over every minute she had spent in Sam’s arms. But then she had noticed the way her mother was looking at her and instead she had crawled into bed with her and whispered about Sam. The mustard light in the room was diffused by the angle of the bathroom door, and she caught a glimpse of her mother’s face in the shadows. She was smiling but there was also something sad in her expression. Bella had pled exhaustion then and gone to bed, not wanting to give her mother a chance to say what she had been thinking. She was sure her mother had never felt anything close to the way Bella had felt that night. She hadn’t seen the way Sam had stroked her cheek with his fingers, and looked into her eyes before the first time he kissed her.

  But here she was, weeks after her mother’s death, without him. And now when she thought about everything she had once believed, she just felt raw and foolish.

  She knew her father was worried that she would end up alone, curled up like a snail on the bathroom floor, a weeping, wilting mess. Her brothers had wives and children, full lives that extended into every single minute of their days, and he wanted that for his only daughter. So he called her every morning, usually from the train. And Bella began to look forward to the sound of his voice. There was something comforting about the two of them sharing the quiet part of their morning together.

  She also had Suzie. Bella and Suzie had fallen back into their friendship as if the gap in years meant nothing. That night after her mother’s funeral, after her sisters-in-law had wrapped the leftovers, cleared the counters of cloudy wineglasses, after the kids had fallen asleep in midmovement, with food-smeared faces, shoes missing, half dressed in their funeral clothes, after her father had taken a drink into his study and asked to be alone, after the last drunken mourners had left and her oldest brother had locked the front door, Suzie and Bella had lain in her bed. Bella couldn’t remember the last thing she had said to her mother. She had never returned the call she promised she would, begging off on the pretense of studying when instead she’d gone out. These things were playing on a loop in her brain. So Bella had asked Suzie to talk. She didn’t care about what, she just wanted to hear the sound of her voice, she just wanted anything but the quiet, and Suzie had obliged.

  Suzie was interviewing at medical schools in the city and had convinced Bella to take the train in from Poughkeepsie and meet her for the weekend. Bella, saddled with one last year at Vassar, was envious that Suzie had something concrete to move on to. After everything that had happened, Bella couldn’t help but think that her English degree was somehow trivial.

  They were staying on the Upper East Side in an apartment owned by the parents of someone Suzie knew from Boston. When Bella rang the bell Suzie greeted her at the door in a suit and heels, holding a bottle of wine, looking the part of an adult. She drew Bella inside quickly with a bright smile and squeezed her forearm. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Bella set her bag on a bench in the hall and followed Suzie into a long, narrow kitchen off to the left. Suzie rummaged around in the drawers until she found the corkscrew. She held it up, triumphant, and grimaced as she wound the metal into the cork. Next to Suzie Bella felt even more like a college student in her tan corduroys, stretched-out sweater, and bulky scarf, and her mother’s fur coat.

  While Suzie secured glasses and poured their wine, Bella shrugged out of the coat. “Bathroom?” she asked.

  Suzie looked up. “Down the hall to the right.”

  In the bathroom, Bella closed the door and sat down on the toilet. Across from her was a stack of New Yorkers that looked unread. She picked up the top magazine and flipped to the table of contents. The slick pages were virginal, and Bella wondered if The New Yorker was the only magazine that seemed always to be subscribed to but never read. She replaced the magazine, flushed, washed her hands, and frowned into the mirror. Her hair, which had been wavy her entire life, had mysteriously gone straight since her mother’s death. She smoothed it down, wishing she had a hair tie, and pinched her cheeks, and then felt ridiculous that she was acting as if she had to look attractive for Suzie.

  When she opened the door Suzie yelled, “In the living room.”

  Bella walked down the hall to an open room with large panes of glass, a grand piano resting on a faded oriental carpet, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and an enormous L-shaped couch covered in brown velvet. In front of the couch was an old trunk that held precariously uneven towers of books. Behind the trunk sat Suzie, a wineglass balanced on her knee and another in her hand, which she held out to Bella.

  Bella took the glass and positioned herself on the couch so that she could face Suzie, who had taken off her suit jacket and kicked off her heels. Suzie raised her glass and Bella did the same. The wine was tangy and she let it pool on her tongue before she swallowed. Growing up, she and Suzie had shared many days and nights on the couch watching television and consuming bags of junk food until they wanted to puke. If no adult was around to shoo them outside, and frequently none was, they could sit silently for hours, the only noise the rustling of the bags. Bella wished they could sit like that again. If only for a moment.

  “So,” Suzie said, “you found it okay?”

  Bella nodded, taking another sip of wine. She looked over at Suzie, her expression expectant. Then Bella remembered the reason Suzie was in the city. “Did everything go okay with the interviews?”

  Suzie nodded, as if she had been expecting Bella’s question. “Good. Nerve-racking, but good.”

  Bella knew that Mount Sinai was Suzie’s first choice, but she had also interviewed at Columbia and Hunter. Bella also knew, because Suzie had told her, that Michael was hoping to secure his residency at Mount Sinai. Other than that Suzie had been quiet regarding their relationship. Bella wondered if it was out of deference to her struggles with Sam.

  Bella took another sip of wine. “You will have multiple offers, Suzie, I’m sure.”

  Suzie shrugged. “I’m not fishing for reassurance here, Bells, but you just never know.”

  Bella nodded. “You’d think I would get that by now.” She twisted her mouth into what she hoped looked like a smile.

  “You look thin,” Suzie said, changing the subject.

  “I’m not,” Bella said, even though when she put on her pants that morning she was surprised to feel them slip down to her hipbones. She looked at Suzie and admitted, “Maybe a few pounds lighter.”

  Suzie leaned forward and twisted the stem of the wineglass between her palms. “How do you feel?”

  Bella gave a sharp little laugh. She ran a hand across the smooth velvet couch cushions. “Like I’ve been locked out of my house without any hope of getting the keys.”

  Suzie sighed. “You haven’t heard from Sam?”

  “No,” Bella said. “And I don’t think that’s going to happen.” She shook her head. “We’re not like that.”

  “Then why the hell did he go back to school with you?” Suzie sounded a little angry as she reached for the wine bottle.

  Bella had always thought t
hat maybe something had happened between Sam and Suzie in high school, before Suzie moved. But so far they had skirted around the whole thing. She supposed anything that happened before was really a nonissue at this point. Bella held out her glass for another pour before Suzie refilled her own. “I don’t think Michael has heard from him either. Their dad is worried.” Suzie paused. “Especially since he seems to have ditched school.”

  Bella knew how Sam felt about school. Her mother’s death and Bella’s neediness had temporarily given him the excuse to prolong the inevitable. “He’ll show up eventually.” She really believed he was fine, even if she didn’t think he would turn back up in her life.

  Suzie looked like she was about to say something but instead clamped her mouth shut, her lips squished into an uneven line.

  “What?” Bella asked.

  “He’s so unlike Michael.”

  “I guess. I don’t really know Michael, but Sam said they were pretty different. He always described Michael as goal oriented,” Bella said.

  “That’s true.” Suzie smiled. “Michael knows what he wants. He has a plan. I like that about him, you know?” She paused. “Does this seem totally bizarre to you, that I would end up with Sam’s brother?”

  “Only in a who-ever-would-have-guessed kind of way.” Bella was curious where Suzie was going.

  “We were fifteen a long time ago.” Suzie laughed awkwardly. “And it really was nothing.”

  It took Bella a minute to realize that Suzie was acknowledging that there had been something between her and Sam. ”Does it bother Michael that you were once with Sam?” she said carefully.

  “No,” Suzie said softly. “I wasn’t with Sam. I mean there was hardly a relationship. We made out in my basement for a few weeks.” She shrugged. “I mean if I hadn’t moved, you know, maybe things would have ended differently.”

  “Sure,” Bella said, wondering why Suzie had never told her.

  “But that was high school,” Suzie said, “history. No one stays with their high school crush.”