White Elephant Read online

“I have to . . .” What did she have to? “See how the champion is doing!”

  “Rain check?” Kaye said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “How about my house Monday morning?”

  Suzanne was unprepared. Monday, Monday. “I have to take Adam to the doctor.” It was true. He had been feeling under the weather for weeks.

  “Tuesday?”

  “I’m going to yoga.” Yoga! What made her say “yoga”? What was the point of yoga? You couldn’t win at yoga.

  “How about after class?”

  Suzanne, out of ideas, nodded. Half an hour. She could spend half an hour with Little Mary Sunshine. Maybe it would be good for her, actually, to spend time with a smiling person, even if the smile seemed slightly desperate.

  She walked out into the October sun, taking in the smell of her coffee. She waited for the ahhhh, the sensual, lift-me-off-my-feet feeling the smell always gave her, but her stomach tightened. She breathed out through her nose, emptying it of previous notions, and sniffed again. Again, it smelled off. Damn it. She didn’t need the stupid pregnancy test. She offered her latte to Allison, sitting on the café steps, reviewing her pictures on her camera.

  Allison smiled. “How did you know?”

  7

  OCTOBER 28—NIGHT

  Ted and Allison sat on beach chairs on the grass in front of Lucy’s listening to old Mr. Fitzwilliams play the fiddle while Mrs. Fitzwilliams sang “If I Had a Hammer.” The moon was bright enough to light the green, casting flickering moon shadows of the older residents and children dancing on the grass. The Halloween festival was drawing to a close, the bowls and platters from the potluck down to their last bites; the fire truck, upon which the children had climbed, back at the firehouse.

  When Ted was a child, there had been a parade starting at the elementary school for the mothers on Halloween, during which the children showed off their costumes, most of them homemade. In those days kids dressed as gypsies and ghosts, hobos, witches, and ballerinas with cardigans over their sparkling tutus. At twilight they knocked on doors holding a bag for candy in one hand and a small orange cardboard box in the other: “Trick or treat for UNICEF,” they would cry, and receive candy along with coins they gave to their classroom teachers the next day. What ever happened to those little boxes? They were such a simple way to remind children to think of others.

  These days Halloween went on all day and into the night, dinner on the green followed by music and two cauldrons of cider, one spiked, provided by Lucy. This was a change, but not a bad one; even Ted could see that.

  The Fitzwilliams started playing “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night” and Allison clapped along. Ted was not a clapper. He didn’t have a good sense of rhythm, and the idea of being off beat embarrassed him. It was the same reason he wouldn’t dance. Allison couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t dance with her. She didn’t understand the deep feeling of humiliation he felt that he moved so gracelessly, so out of time. She was disappointed in him these days. She’d wanted to have sex the other night, so he pretended to be interested—but it was clear pretty quickly that he wasn’t all that interested after all. She’d asked him if he’d be open to trying something new. “Sure . . . ,” he said, not at all sure.

  “How about porn?” she’d said, as casually as if she were suggesting they order a pizza.

  “Porn?”

  “Can’t hurt,” she said with a laugh.

  He was glad to see that she appeared to be new to it. She typed a few words into her laptop, and then a few others, until they came up with a website that seemed to specialize in this sort of thing. It was shocking, really, what you could find with a few quick taps of your finger. The offerings were like items in a candy machine—so many choices, each more decadent than the last. Who wanted to watch someone do that? Or that!

  “How about this one,” Allison said, but then she looked at Ted’s face, and her own face closed down. She shut the computer, turning the room dark. He could hear her set it on her night table.

  “Well, good night,” he’d said, and they’d gone to sleep on the far reaches of the mattress.

  His mother used to say that he and Terrance marched to the beat of a different drummer. Another boy might have felt embarrassed to be compared to his disabled brother, but Ted agreed with her. He was never a teenager the way he was supposed to be, had never rebelled against what he already realized was the good life. As a boy he assumed that the four of them—he and Terrance and their parents—would spend their lives together in their house. Well, the five of them, he thought, smiling as he thought of his and Terrance’s imaginary brother, Thomas.

  “You okay?” Allison said.

  Ted nodded. “Yep.”

  Thomas would approve of the petition, he thought—but he wouldn’t settle for the number of signatures Ted had garnered today. Thomas would get everyone in town to sign it. Starting tomorrow Ted would go door-to-door and ask his neighbors directly to support the preservation of their town. He would embody Thomas.

  Terrance approached with a cup of cider. He gave it to Ted, then sat on the grass beside him. “It’s not spiky,” he said.

  Ted sipped. No. He wouldn’t have minded a spiked one, but oh well. “Thanks, pal.”

  Terrance still had his baseball outfit on. Ted had dispensed with his uncomfortable tree costume at Jillian’s behest, but Allison was wearing her cowgirl outfit by design—she got up now, joining Grant at the microphone.

  “And now, little lady, if you’ll kindly step up to the parapet, I’ll give you a lesson in marksmanship,” Grant said. He pretended to shoot a bird out of the sky and catch it.

  “You couldn’t give me a lesson in long-distance spittin’!” Allison said, hands on hips, and she began singing: “Anything you can do . . .”

  Jillian, sitting nearby, was clearly wishing she was anywhere else, but the truth was, they weren’t bad. Their choreography still needed a little work, but Allison could carry a tune, and Grant had stage presence. When they finished, a trio of boys with guitars from the high school Spanish club performed “Guantanamera,” which inspired a whole new crop of dancers to join in. Allison held out a hand to Terrance. “Want to dance?”

  Terrance, too, was a lousy dancer, but he didn’t care. He did a few disco moves, then some Irish dance steps, with a little Mexican hat dance thrown in. Meanwhile Allison danced fluidly, smiling and laughing. The Cox boy danced with Kaye. Grant danced alone, while Suzanne and Adam sat on a blanket, both looking like they’d rather be home, sleeping.

  Terrance tipped his head and body from side to side, making Ted think of the Peanuts characters dancing on A Charlie Brown Christmas. When the song ended, Allison kissed the top of his hand, and he kissed hers. Then he gave her a big bear hug, which made her laugh.

  Ted offered some cider to Terrance, who was still tipping his head to the side. He was hot from dancing, his face moist looking. “The trees look funny,” he said.

  “Funny how?”

  “Like they want to take a nap.”

  Ted looked where Terrance was looking, at the little copse of woods near the playground—he was right. Something did look off. Ted headed over to investigate, and Terrance followed. It was quieter there, and darker, the moonlight straining to make its way through the leaves.

  Most of the trees looked fine, but others, no. The moon shadows were sideways, and indeed the trees themselves were sideways, their trunks bent or snapped clean. Not the big ones; the big ones looked all right. It was the small trees, saplings—just a handful of them. Two of them just leaned over toward the earth, but two others were uprooted, their trunks on the ground like fallen soldiers.

  “Odd,” Ted said.

  Terrance tugged the less broken trees upright, but they sagged again. He looked at Ted. “Don’t cry, Teddy. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  Terrance frowned. “Okay,” he said in the tone of someone who has been told the world is flat when he knows it is round.

&n
bsp; “Cox,” Ted said, shaking his head.

  “What’s that?” Terrance said.

  “Our neighbor. He did this.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes.” Ted sighed.

  Terrance sighed too. “Cox,” he said.

  8

  NOVEMBER 7

  Lindy’s kitchen smelled good—like butter and cheese and all the things you were supposed to eat “in moderation.” Lindy’s mom was making a grilled cheese sandwich.

  “Hi, girls.” Lindy’s mom smiled over her shoulder as though Jillian walked through their door every day. In fact it was the first time Jillian had ever stepped inside the Coxes’ house. Lindy had been saying hi to her in the halls for the past couple of days, ever since the Halloween festival. Then, today, she’d come up to Jillian when Jillian was opening her locker at the end of the school day and said, “D’yawannacomeoverandworkonthesocialstudiesthing?”

  Jillian had to take the sentence apart—slowing down the words, peeling off the southern accent—to understand her. Lindy wanted her to come over? She felt flattered for a few seconds, until she remembered that they were the only people in third-period social studies signed up to make a model of a Greek temple for the Ancient Greece unit. “I can’t today,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I . . . have Recycling Club,” she said, but that wasn’t the only reason. The main reason was that her dad would kill her if she went to the Coxes’.

  Someone was cutting down little trees around town. Her father was convinced it was Lindy’s dad.

  “Recycling Club? That’s a thing?” Lindy laughed. “That’s so lame. Recycling Club,” she said again, inspiring a new round of laughter in herself.

  It was lame. Jillian couldn’t deny it. All they did was talk about the different kinds of plastics that could be recycled and make posters urging kids to use the recycling bins in the cafeteria.

  “Skip it. You can skip it once, right? Next time you could pick up a bunch more cups or something.”

  In the end, Jillian had agreed. The environment wasn’t going to get that much worse if she skipped one day of Recycling Club. Her parents didn’t have to know.

  Lindy kicked her shoes into the mud room by the kitchen. One bounced off the back wall and landed on the dryer. The other just missed the window. Jillian set hers side by side on the mat by the door. The dog came over to sniff the insides.

  “Off!” Lindy said, her face up close to his. “Watch out or he’ll hump you.”

  Jillian stood still, ready to push the dog down, but he just sniffed her ankle. He tipped his head sideways when she scratched his chin.

  “Soooooo?” Lindy’s mom slid the grilled cheese sandwich onto a Barbie-pink plate.

  “He said, ‘Hi,’” Lindy said.

  “That’s good!”

  “I said hi first. My mom is pimping me,” Lindy said. “She’s trying to get Mark to like me. Jillian likes him, too, Mom.”

  “I do not!” Jillian said. She leaned back on her stool at the Coxes’ counter, in case her mom happened to be looking out the window.

  “Boys!” Lindy’s mom said.

  “Yeah boys. Boy oh boy oh boys,” Lindy said.

  “Do you want some grilled cheese, Jillian?”

  “I’m okay.” She did. Badly.

  “Share with her, Lin.”

  Lindy tore off a bite-size corner of her sandwich.

  Her mother watched them chew. “So! What are you girls up to today?”

  “We’re supposed to make a model of a Greek temple,” Lindy said.

  “We should go on a cruise in Greece sometime. Would you like that, Lin?”

  “I guess.”

  “I got us some new jeans.” Her mom darted for the row of shopping bags by the door. She held up a pair of jeans in each hand. One pair was marginally bigger. They came with a glittery pink belt.

  “Mom. No,” Lindy said, covering her eyes with her hand.

  “And . . .” She pulled out two white T-shirts with sequined flowers on them.

  “No. Just . . . no.” Lindy grabbed a bag of cookies and set off up the stairs.

  Jillian put the plate in the sink. “Thank you, Mrs. Cox.”

  “Oh, please! Call me Kaye.”

  “Okay Kaye,” Jillian said, then felt embarrassed. Did she understand she meant okay Kaye and not okk, which was just dumb? She could call Lindy’s mom by her first name. It suited her. But Lindy’s dad was definitely Mr. Cox.

  Jillian ran her fingers over the sequined petals on one of the shirts. “They’re pretty,” she said, wanting to make up for Lindy’s rudeness.

  “You think?”

  “I like them. The jeans too.”

  Kaye smiled. “Why, thank you. Sometimes I just don’t know with Lin, you know? It’s hard to tell.”

  Jillian nodded, not sure what she was agreeing with, but just the fact of her nodding, agreeing with Kaye that she had a point, whatever it was, seemed to draw some of the worry out of Kaye’s face.

  “Did you get enough to eat?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “’Cause if you’re hungry . . .”

  “I ate a big lunch.”

  “Did you? Do you buy or bring?”

  “Bring. The food at school isn’t good for you, my mom says.”

  “Your mom is smart.”

  “She’s writing a book,” Jillian said. “Well, taking pictures and all.”

  “That’s neat.”

  “It’s about Willard Park. About the houses and stuff.”

  “Nick could help her. My husband? He’s, well, you know, a house builder?” She said it as though she wasn’t sure.

  “Are you coming or what?” Lindy yelled from upstairs.

  Jillian had the urge to ask Kaye to come along, to help them make the Greek temple. She was pretty sure she would jump at the chance—but Lindy might not like it. “See you,” Jillian said, grabbing her backpack.

  “Have fun!” Kaye said, her smile jumbo size.

  Jillian made her way across the marble floor, up the curved staircase. She felt like Maria arriving at the von Trapps’ in The Sound of Music. The chandelier was on even though it was the middle of the day.

  Lindy wasn’t in the first room, an all-white room like a hotel room with a bathroom that was about the size of Jillian’s whole bedroom, and a sitting room with a fireplace; nor in the next, which had bunk beds and walls painted like outer space, with rockets and planets.

  Jillian found her flopped onto a big bed in a huge room painted spring green. It was crammed full of stuff—a website’s worth: a bright blue couch piled with flowered pillows, a computer, a television, a couple of soccer balls, a box of stuffed animals, an iPad, a purple bean bag chair, a pink chandelier, model horses, heaps of inside-out pants and shirts, and a high shelf full of smiling American Girl dolls. Jillian counted ten of them. Ten! Molly, and Felicity, and Samantha, and Kit among them. Jillian only had Elizabeth, the Colonial doll.

  “What are you looking at?” Lindy said.

  “Nothing.”

  “My dad’s going to let me drive soon,” Lindy said.

  “But you’re too young . . .”

  “Once we were at the beach and he made a bonfire and the fire department came . . .” She got a funny smile on her face. “That’s what she said,” she said. “Get it?”

  Jillian smiled, not getting it.

  “Our TV is like five feet wide.”

  “That’s really big.”

  “That’s what she said,” Lindy said.

  “Who?” Jillian said.

  Lindy scoffed. Maybe she had ADD. A lot of kids at her school did—so many that it was a regular cafeteria conversation: what kind of meds they took, how much. It made Jillian think of conversations she’d overheard between her grandmother and her bridge-playing friends about arthritis and cholesterol medications.

  “How old are you?” Lindy said.

  “I’ll be thirteen in January,” Jillian said.

  “I’ll be
fourteen in July.”

  “Oh.” Rumor about being held back confirmed.

  “Sit down.” Lindy shoved the bag of cookies she’d taken from the kitchen at her.

  Jillian perched on the edge of the bed, ate one, her hand under her chin.

  “Why are you doing that?” Lindy said.

  “So I won’t make crumbs.”

  Lindy raised her eyebrows, as though crumbs were something Jillian had just invented. Lindy tore a piece of paper out of her notebook and made a dot in the middle of it with a pencil. “Know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “A Greek pimple.”

  “What?”

  “Pimple. Temple. Get it?”

  Jillian laughed even though it wasn’t funny.

  Lindy crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the air. “My dad’ll do it for us. Well, he’ll get someone to.”

  “What?”

  “Make the temple. He’s a builder. Look! Rubber pencil!” Lindy said. She held her pencil between her thumb and forefinger and shook it up and down.

  “Weird!”

  They shook their pencils, Lindy showing her just how to hold it, loosely, between her thumb and forefinger, to make it look rubbery.

  “Look at me! I’m rubber too,” Lindy said, and she started to shake her body back and forth. Her lips and cheeks did look rubbery, as though she weren’t quite human. “Try it!”

  Jillian hesitated, afraid Lindy would stop shaking the moment she started, and laugh at her, but Lindy kept at it. Jillian joined her. They shook, laughing, until Lindy eventually did stop short. Jillian did too.

  “So Mark’s hot, huh,” Lindy said.

  “He’s got a nice smile.”

  “And nice pecs.”

  “Lindy!” “Pecs” sounded dirty.

  “What-y?”

  “It sounds . . .”

  “Pecs not pecker! Did you think I meant pecker? Oh my God! You have a dirty mind.”

  “No . . .” Sofia would know what it meant. Jillian felt a sudden longing for her.

  “Want to explore the new house my dad’s building?”

  “Are we allowed?”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t it dangerous? Like, nails and boards and stuff?”