Crystal Grader - Tag Cavello (reading women .TXT) 📗

door and slammed it shut. Lucretia stopped. And suddenly it struck Crystal: Her mom knew everything. Somehow, someway, she had found out about her and Jarett. Maybe she really had seen something through the window last week. Maybe it had been a simple matter of decrypting the way she and Jarett looked at each other. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Lucretia knew.

Stick with the plan, Crystal told herself, keep lying.

“There is absolutely nothing,” she began, back pressed against the door, “going on between me and Jarett. Nothing like what you’re thinking anyway.”

Lucretia didn’t even twitch. “Get out of the way, Crystal. Don’t make me move you.”

“If you call the police I’m going to tell them the truth. Jarett is my writing instructor.”

“I said move.”

Crystal stepped aside. “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “You can’t prove a thing.”

Without a word Lucretia yanked the door open. Hannah stood on the other side, her expression that of a girl passing by a car accident on the freeway.

“What do you want?” Lucretia said.

Hannah replied vacantly that there was a telephone call for her downstairs. Lucretia left. Crystal sat down on her bed and began to agonize over what to tell Jarett. He’d been afraid of their relationship from the very start—had tried over and over to push her away. But no. She’d been relentless, steadfast. And look now, everybody, Jarett had been right all along.

“What happened?” Hannah wanted to know.

“Mom’s gone crazy,” Crystal replied, hoping that would be enough. “Who’s on the phone?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t recognize the voice.”

Hannah went to her room. From this point there was nothing for Crystal to do but lie back and look at the ceiling, which she did for a number of minutes. Lucretia’s voice drifted up the stairs. Crystal thought she sounded strange, as if she were trying to talk and lift something heavy at the same time. When it finally stopped, she called from the bottom of the stairs for Crystal to come down.

So she intended to contact the police right away—drive to the station with Jarett’s victim in the passenger seat to offer testimony. Fine. Crystal would play the game just as she’d already promised. No matter how many questions got asked tonight, nobody was getting a thing.

She came down the steps like a cat. Cool, calm, collected. This until she looked up at her mother, and saw there were tears in her eyes.

“You need to come into the living room,” Lucretia said.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

They went to the living room, where Crystal was asked to sit on the couch. Fear gripped her all over again. Never in her life had she seen her mother cry. She asked once more what was wrong. Lucretia sat down next to her, put an arm around her shoulders.

“Mom?”

“I don’t know how to tell you,” she said. Her chest hitched in between the words.

“Is it still about Jarett?”

Lucretia shook her head. “No, no.”

“Just tell me then. Please,” she added, eager to get this over with, whatever it was.

“Crystal,” her mom began, “honey…your friend Lucy is dead. She killed herself today.”

PART FIVE: Shark Attack

23

 

The drive down 61 South was pleasant. Open farmland on either side of the road tumbled gently towards distant lines of trees that were just beginning to turn under the mid-September sun. Crystal drove with the window down, letting a myriad of scents assail her: hay, grass, leaves. Asphalt and cow shit. Her hair whipped to and fro. On her face was a smile that floated like a ghost in a storm.

How wonderful it was to be away from Manila! To drive on a wide open road with her foot down on the gas pedal, never worrying about jeepneys or buses blocking the lane, or about motor scooters with four passengers splitting mere inches across her bumper. She took a deep breath through her nose to let it all in…

And was reminded of Jarett.

“So tell me, Luke,” she said, peering at the baby’s car seat through the rear-view mirror, “do you like Ohio so far?”

It was hard to tell from the expression on his face. With one brow up and the other down, his eyes were on the window like a baby transfixed. Following his gaze led Crystal over an enormous field of wheat that tapered off along what appeared to be a railroad track.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s called elbow room. By the way, we’re getting close to your aunt’s house. Ready to see her?”

Hannah lived about twenty minutes outside of Monroeville, in a town lost to the ages. Driving into North Fairfield was, quite literally, like driving into a dead dream. Once, in the year 1818, it had aspired to become county seat. But Huron had chosen Norwalk instead, leaving North Fairfield to sink or swim on its own out in the sticks between hell and nowhere. Indeed, the very fact of its isolation (it was a town surrounded by crops for miles around) kept it from being a serious contender with the officials of the day. No one wanted to work in a place so cut off from the rest of the Firelands that to reach it by horse and buggy was to risk death by any number of variables. No one wanted to live in a place overrun with coyotes and rattlesnakes. Thus, the town had festered, even while its many grand houses continued to stand stately along its oak and chestnut lanes.

Crystal drove another three miles, then turned left onto a road that eventually became Main Street. But it was only that in name. What should have been downtown North Fairfield (what would have been downtown North Fairfield had its fortunes been different) consisted of a tired-looking market with peeling paint, two small churches, and a post office. Stopping at an intersection, Crystal looked left, then right. Despite the fact that it was one o’clock in the afternoon, there was not a soul to be seen.

She drove on. Hannah’s house, large and old like all the others, stood at the end of East Main. Also like all the others, its porch was empty, its windows vacant.

“Here we are,” she said to Luke. “Are you as nervous as I am?”

She got him out of the car seat, and the first thing that came from his mouth when he looked up at the house, with its tall gables and decorated eaves, was: “Ahhhh!”

“Oh come on. Your condo in Manila is big.”

“’ig!”

“Yeah, ‘ig. Let’s go ring the bell.”

Seconds later they were waiting on the porch. Luke heard the chimes from inside the house and wanted to press the button again. Crystal leaned forward to get him closer.

“That’s it,” she said, guiding his hand, “press. Press.”

Luke laughed out loud as the chime went off again.

“There you go! Good boy!”

Running footsteps now from behind the door. Children’s voices. An older voice telling them to hush. Crystal braced herself. It had been five years since she’d laid eyes on her sister. Five years and three kids. What changes would she find in Hannah that had not been apparent over the internet? Would they be the same as Lucretia’s? Would Hannah open the door dressed in funny clothes and holding a pineapple pizza?

The door opened. A woman with sandy blonde hair, slightly taller than she, stood at the threshold. For almost ten seconds not a word passed between them. The women merely stared, with Crystal trying on a smile that, to her surprise, was not returned. Hannah raised her arms to deliver a brief hug instead before ushering everyone—Crystal and the children—into the house with backward steps across a living room flaked and tired as the market. A chipped coffee table stood in front of a stained beige couch. Badly painted lamp-stands idled in dusty corners.

“Come into the kitchen,” Hannah said, smiling a little at last. “It’s really good to have you home again. Joey! Eva! This is your aunt Crystal and cousin Luke.”

Light introductions were made all around while Hannah prepared coffee. Crystal remembered that Joey was four and Eva two. Sitting at the kitchen table with Luke in her lap, she made pleasant chatter with them, but being so young they stayed close to their mother, causing her to stumble on occasion over a clean yet scruffy linoleum floor.

“Will you two relax?” Hannah said, when this happened for the third time. An apologetic look surfaced on her face for Crystal. “They’re always shy with company.”

Crystal gave the kids a grin. “Well maybe some pasalubong would help.”

“What’s pasalubong?” Hannah asked.

By then Crystal was pulling a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies out of her bag. She set it on the table and tore it open. Yet neither Eva nor Joey budged from the safety of Hannah’s legs.

“Oh come on you two,” Crystal began, “Luke loves these—“

“No!” Hannah had turned around, coffee decanter in hand, to see her sister pulling the cookie tray out of its bag. “Put that back, please. I’m trying to control their sugar intake.”

Shrugging, Crystal put the cookies away. “All right. But this is an occasion, Hannah.” Her brow twitched. “Isn’t it?”

“Sugar makes them hyper.”

“Everything makes kids hyper. Except maybe when their dad forces them to watch golf on TV,” Crystal added, thinking of how Luke would doze off next to Miko during the PGA tournaments on Fox Sports.

Hannah put a pair of mugs down a little too hard on the table, poured a little too aggressively from the decanter. “It also gives them tooth decay.”

“Only if they don’t brush properly.”

“No cookies, Crystal. Sorry.”

Crystal sipped her coffee; it was bitter, and she had to force herself not to wince.

“It’s all right,” she said, “I didn’t come here to pass out sweets. I just wanted to see my little sister again.”

“Of course,” Hannah nodded. “I don’t mean to be brusque. But my children…you know, they’re going to be sizing me up when they’re older. Checking for mistakes.”

This observation went down bitter as the coffee. Against her better wishes, Crystal looked at Luke, who appeared on the verge of torture because he’d not been given a cookie. How long before he would start to judge, to catalogue cherry-picked memories from stressful days?

“I want to be a perfect mother,” Hannah then said.

“That’s impossible,” Crystal replied, as much to herself as to the other.

“Our mom did it.”

“No. Mom was damned good but she wasn’t perfect.”

“What did she do wrong?”

Crystal took another sip of coffee before answering. The verbal terrain since her arrival had been slippery at best—now it was downright treacherous. Joey and Eva, meanwhile, continued to keep their distance. They’d retreated to the kitchen doorway, one with a toy and the other with a bottle. To judge by the blank wonder on their faces, Crystal didn’t think they would ever make friends with Luke.

“Bad romantic advice,” she came out with, hoping to make light of the affair. “Always bad romantic advice. And don’t forget the night she spanked the shit out of me with that book.”

Hannah winced. “Okay. Point taken.”

“Thanks.”

“I was afraid of her. Locked myself in my room. She was like a different person.”

“All three of us were different people on that night.”

“As for the romantic advice,” Hannah shrugged, “bad romance is almost always the fault of the man.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mom.”

Crystal laughed.

“You don’t agree then?”

“Of course not.”

“You should, considering what you’ve been through.”

“The mistakes I’ve made in life all belong to me,” Crystal said. “Not that the men have been perfect. But I owe a lot for what I’ve done, Hannah. Especially to Jarett.”

Her eyes dropped after the words were out. She hadn’t meant to bring up Jarett. Now, undoubtedly, Hannah would pounce. Become angry and start to hack Crystal’s memories of