Look At Me_ A Novel Part 8

Still, after finishing her hair, she slid open the jewelry drawer and looked at the tray of velvet cups, Charlotte lurking nearby while she checked her favorites: the Elsa Peretti bracelet, the jade lozenge Harris had brought from Singapore, the tiny yellow diamond cuffs. The amethyst pin, a gift from Moose years ago. She wore it for luck when Ricky was tested each month. "The important stuff is all there," she said. "Why?"

Charlotte gave a disinterested shrug and left the room, as if Ellen were the one dwelling on the topic.

Harris stood at his dresser, a.s.sembling the oblong gold studs and cufflinks engraved with his initials that he wore to dressy events. Charlotte watched his meticulous toilette from her parents' bed, thrilling at each gust of irritation her father provoked in her. His shirt was flawlessly pressed, sections of fine, translucent netting in the arms. Had he ever worn a soft flannel shirt, even once? Did he even eat banana bread?

"No plans!" Harris exclaimed, as if this were out of the ordinary. "No friends coming over, nothing?"

"I have plans with Ricky. When he's done skateboarding."

Her father looked disappointed, as if this were a feeble excuse for nothing.

"Plus I've got tons of reading for Uncle Moose," Charlotte threw in, purely to annoy him.

Her father frowned, and installed his cufflinks in silence.

Driving to the club through the azure dusk, Harris thought of his daughter alone before the TV set and felt a twist of anxiety. "She doesn't seem to be making many friends at East," he said.

"No," Ellen said. "She doesn't."

"I worry she's gotten lost in the shuffle," he said, turning to his wife. "This whole Ricky saga."

Ellen sighed. "I can only worry about one kid at a time."

"How was today?"

"Fine," she said. "Afterwards he ran out the door with that skateboard."

Harris whistled. "Busy life."

Since the beginning of school, Ricky had a.s.sumed a new ident.i.ty as a skateboarder, an ident.i.ty whose component parts were baggy pants worn so low that Harris expected to see his son's bare a.s.s any minute, and a partially shaved head, a thin sheet of hair dangling over baldness. "Kid's hair finally grows back," he said, "and he shaves it."

Ellen shook her head. She hated the hospital; even now the smell of illness, of hospital food, made her almost gag. From the moment she and Ricky walked through those gla.s.s doors, her brain objected to every sight they pa.s.sed: The veal-complexioned people in their paper outfits-no. People crumpled in wheelchairs or walking feebly, dragging IVs alongside them on wheels. No! No! They stared at Ricky ravenously, these failing creatures, as if he were a gatekeeper jingling the keys to their release. Ellen's son had never looked more beautiful than shuffling beside her over the hospital linoleum; she imagined these sad, broken figures grasping for his narrow eyes and lingering summer tan- "Let go, Mom!" Ricky barked, shaking free of her grasp and pounding ahead down the hall in his oversized skateboarding shoes. Ellen understood, from her sessions with Dr. Alwyn, that her feelings about the hospital were freighted with memories of her mother, who had taken to bed for whole years, swaddled in her mysterious illness, ringing a little bell-deceptively tiny, for it had made a sound like breaking gla.s.s that filled the house-asking for cranberry juice. And Ellen would bring it, climbing the stairs with the small silver tray to her mother's room, which was always dark. No matter how bright or pretty a day might be-soccer games, damp summer gra.s.s, diving lessons at the country club-Ellen always felt inside her the weight of that dark room; only Moose had the power to dispel it. Yet she couldn't bring herself to sell the house! Now, with Dr. Alwyn's help, she had come to see that her reluctance was not so very strange-that the urge to return to the scene of unhappiness with the hope of undoing it was natural, if not necessarily good. "Bigger windows!" she'd exhorted the architect. But your furniture will fade. Screw the furniture, Ellen had parried, taking a certain delight in shocking the man. She wanted light, light. Fresh air to wash away the smell of her mother's illness-her mother, now hale and robust at seventy-two, living in Palm Beach with a Cuban immigration lawyer. Who took lessons in the tango, the mambo, the hustle, and had wallpapered a bathroom by herself. Who, it now appeared, had never really been ill in the first place.

"Penny for your thoughts," Harris said. He'd been hoping she would ask about his golf-he'd played under par and won a client, Matthew Krane, a consultant to the Radisson Hotel chain. But nowadays she rarely asked.

"I hope Ricky comes home on time," Ellen said. "So Charlotte doesn't worry."

"Charlotte never worries," Harris said.

Gra.s.sOkay, the land. Well, it was totally different from now. (First of all, where IS the land now?) It was mostly prairie, and prairie in those days did not mean dried-out gra.s.s up to your knees with some flowers mixed in. Prairie meant a mixture of many gra.s.ses-Indian Gra.s.s, bluestem, side oats grama-that were extremely tall, taller than a person's head! With long tangled roots that reached way down deep into the earth. Prairie soil was incredibly rich and good for planting, but all the gra.s.s and roots were very hard to break through and turn over, which you had to do before you could plant anything. It could take a whole year to make prairie ready for farming. "Breaking the prairie" was the name for that process, and there were professional Prairie Breakers who were experts at it. But eventually the whole prairie got broken up and planted into crops, and the real original prairie hasn't been around for many, many generations. What we call "prairie" now is just gra.s.s.

Eight o'clock, no Ricky. Charlotte went to the window and looked at the sky, but it offered her nothing tonight: a starless darkness. In the kitchen, she slipped a mini pizza into the microwave. She went online to see if any of her three best friends were logged on, but they weren't-out somewhere, probably together, these girls she had known since third grade, sharing sprees of candlemaking, ant farms, weaving, papier-mache; Halloween costumes in which each was a different colored M&M. The summer after freshman year, the other three had gotten boyfriends, and a gap had fallen open between them and Charlotte. Even as her friends schemed on her behalf, begging to know which boys she desired and promising, through espionage and subterfuge, through brainwashing, hypnosis and possibly witchcraft, to make at least one reciprocate; even as they urged makeup upon her, a padded bra with the future option of implants, colored contact lenses (violet being their top choice), an alternative haircut and some more intriguing mode of dress-The thing is, Chari, you aren't really making an effort-even as a machine of rehabilitation churned around Charlotte, she'd been seized by a deep new resistance in herself, an aloofness from her friends' earnest confabs on her behalf. It was true, she wasn't making an effort. It seemed phony-dangerous, too, as if she might lose something in the process. A last hope.

She sent an e-mail to all three: "What's up? Hey, I miss u guys :-)"

At eight-forty-five she started watching Murder on the Nile Murder on the Nile-part of an ongoing project she and Ricky had undertaken to watch every Agatha Christie movie ever made. It was half over by the time she heard her brother downstairs and paused the tape. He gasped when she walked in the kitchen. "You're stoned," she said, looking at his boggled eyes.

He didn't answer. He was prying open a box of Pop-Tarts.

"It's nine-forty," she said.

"Ding ding ding."

"Where were you?"

"Skating. I nailed a dire trick." He dropped a Pop-Tart into the toaster. "A Switchdance one-eighty."

Charlotte had no idea what this meant. "Who with?"

"Seniors." He could not suppress a grin.

"You're kidding. From Baxter?"

"No. From Saturn."

The Pop-Tart jumped, and Ricky caught it between two fingers, blew on it a while and took a bite. The flavor shot through his head, a crazy infusion of berries. Charlotte just stood there. At the Pit, where he'd been skating, he'd heard someone say his sister's name but thought at first he'd imagined it; he was stoned, which made everything loop around and curlicue until he was skating through time-kings, knights on horseback waving lances, then ollying back around to the steps, where he heard it again-"Charlotte Hauser"-and was so startled he lost his balance and the board blurted away. He listened. Two seniors. It seemed to Ricky they were using Charlotte's name as kind of a threat, like, If you f.u.c.k with me-Charlotte Hauser. Hearing his sister spoken of in this way so appalled him that he forgot it instantly, let it drop into the night and disappear. Paul Lofgren, a senior, had decided this year that he and Ricky were bros, a mysterious grace that had befallen him for reasons Ricky didn't a.n.a.lyze. And so he hung with these older kids now, Smashing Pumpkins on the boom box, the very air sweet and rare. Charlotte was folded into the night. When he nailed the Switchdance 180, everyone clapped.

"Who's the kid?" Someone to Paul Lofgren. And Paul, laughing: "Girl bait," which occasioned a bigger laugh (everyone laughed when Paul laughed), and although Ricky wasn't clear on how he could be girl bait when he hardly knew any girls, he liked it immeasurably better than being the kid who was sick.

Nibbling his Pop-Tart under Charlotte's solemn gaze, he felt a jerk of impatience. She was weak, a joke-his sister-without even knowing it! Why don't you do something? Why don't you do something? he wanted to shout, then wondered why he hadn't done something himself-or said something. Said anything. Opened his f.u.c.king mouth even once. He believed Charlotte had the power to determine the outcome of certain things. Did she sense his treachery (she could read his mind, he was sure), or was she sad for some other reason? he wanted to shout, then wondered why he hadn't done something himself-or said something. Said anything. Opened his f.u.c.king mouth even once. He believed Charlotte had the power to determine the outcome of certain things. Did she sense his treachery (she could read his mind, he was sure), or was she sad for some other reason?

"I rented Murder on the Nile," Murder on the Nile," she said. she said.

"Subtle," he said. "Let's."

"Here, I'll make your pizza." She'd saved half her own to eat with him. Her thin brown hair fell around her face as she took a pizza from the freezer and carried it to the microwave. And in that moment, Ricky, like the pizza, seemed to travel some distance in his sister's hands, to arrive fully and decisively home, in this kitchen.

"I smoked pot," he said.

He spoke with a mix of conspiracy and challenge, longing for Charlotte's approval yet daring her to withhold it. She rarely did; Charlotte liked being Ricky's confessor, privy to all his evil deeds.

"Ding ding," she said.

She carried his pizza upstairs, trying to master the anxiety it gave her to picture her brother consorting with boys who despised her. It seemed possible they might turn Ricky against her, and this conjured an isolation more brutal than any Charlotte had imagined.

"I watched a little, but we can start over," she said as they collapsed onto the couch in the TV room.

"That's okay," Ricky said, penitent. He relied on his sister to be cheerful; her somberness tonight unnerved him. "I can watch tomorrow."

But Charlotte rewound the tape, as he'd known she would. They flopped together, chewing pizza, and as the movie began, Ricky felt comfort fold itself around him like a pair of wings. The skating, Paul Lofgren, it all just blew away. It was maybe even good, he considered, that the other kids didn't like Charlotte-it meant that whenever he came home, she was likely to be here.

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"You're waiting for something to happen?" Moose asked. "Is that what you said?"

"Does it sound weird?"

He smiled. "There are those who would tell you I'm not the best judge of that."

Charlotte laughed. The air was full of leaves. Ten fat jack-o'-lantern bags squatted on the bright lawn around Versailles. "Do you think something will happen?" she asked, hesitant.

"Yes," Moose said. He was thoughtful now. Charlotte followed his gaze, but saw just the lawn, the jack-o'-lantern bags. What was he always looking at, this handsome, uneasy man her mother loved so much?

"Yes, I do," he said.

And then it did. Something happened. Something strange-stranger than finding the wounded lady thief inside their house. It happened several days after her last visit to Moose, when Charlotte borrowed her mother's Lexus and drove to Baxter to pick up her friends. She waited for them outside the school, a woodsy a.s.semblage of A-frames built in the sixties. She waved to Mr. Childs, her old biology teacher.

"How goes it, Chas?" he asked. Mr. Childs was famous for conferring monikers upon his favorites; a nickname meant a B+ at least. "How's East?"

"Good so far," she said. "You dissecting yet?" Charlotte had loved dissection, especially larger animals like the baby shark and fetal pig.

"Worms, and you should hear the bellyaching. You're in chemistry now?"

"Chem II. But the labs aren't as nice."

A teacher Charlotte didn't know was crossing the lot in the canted sunlight. He looked familiar: dark eyes, an angular, expressive face that seemed just slightly to glower. "See you tomorrow," this stranger told Mr. Childs. His eyes skimmed Charlotte, braking on her just long enough for Charlotte to recognize him: the man she had met by the river last August.

"Have a good one, Mike," Mr. Childs said. And to Charlotte, who was staring after the stranger, "That's Michael West, teaches math. Tracy Lapoint's husband got a last-minute transfer to Omaha, and Mike turned up out of the blue. All the right credentials."

"Where did he come from?"

"California, but I guess he's lived in Europe a good while. I've got to run get my kids out of day care. Nice to see you, Chas."

He crossed the parking lot to his car. Meanwhile, the man Charlotte had met by the river was backing out of a s.p.a.ce. She bolted toward him without thought, shoes hammering the pavement. The man stopped his car and rolled down his window, squinting at her in the angled light.

"I met you last summer," Charlotte said, breathless. "Remember?"

"I do not."

"By the river. You said you were new in town. Remember?" But already she saw differences: this man had neatly trimmed hair, a smooth, tanned face, while the other had been scruffier. And injured, too-his arm? Charlotte stared at the man in front of her, red Lacoste shirt, tanned fingers tapping at the wheel. Both arms looked fine.

"I believe you are mistaken," he said, with a slight accent. Had the man by the river had one?

"No," she insisted. She wanted it to be true-to have this coincidence. "It was you."

He laughed, his teeth a white slash against his face. "We have hit an impa.s.se," he said. "And I'm hurrying to go." He waited, looking up at her, and only then did Charlotte realize that her hands were on his car, he couldn't move. She lifted them.

"Good-bye," the teacher said. He raised one hand to his face in a farewell gesture, and Charlotte felt a deep, p.r.i.c.kling shock. It was the same thing he'd done before, by the river: part salute, part wave. It was the same man. The strangeness and certainty of it fell against her.

"It was you!" she called after him as the car pulled away. "Why are you saying it wasn't?"

She stood in the lot, gazing after the car as kids shambled past her in groups. She felt stunned by the encounter, as if she'd brushed against a tiny corner of something vast and mysterious. But why? she asked herself. So he didn't remember. Or he did, but didn't feel like saying so.

"Chari," her friends called, cascading toward her through the parking lot. "Sorry, babe. My lock was like totally stuck," Roselyn said, enfolding Charlotte in her peppery embrace.

They piled into the Lexus. Charlotte had just gotten her license, and the others hadn't seen her drive. "Look how calm she is," said Sheila, in front. She could make the nicest thing sound mildly sarcastic.

"Chari, your brother is so egregiously cute," came Roselyn's gritty voice from the backseat. She had something known as "screamers" on her vocal chords, a diagnosis that had occasioned no end of hilarity among them, since Roselyn had a tendency to shout. Charlotte smelled her strawberry lip gloss.

"He's thirteen," she pointed out.

"Roz is stalking little boys," Sheila said, fiddling with the radio dial. "It's her new project."

"Yum yum," Roselyn said.

"What're the guys like at East?" Laurel asked. "Like, how evolved?"

"Meaning are they into ballet," Sheila said.

"Ha ha," Laurel said. Freshman year, she had joined the Rockford Dance Company, and now performed in one large ballet each season. Since then she'd taken to extending her legs at odd moments, casually gripping a thigh and easing it toward her head in a disorienting spectacle of limberness. To Sheila, who slouched and was bulimic, the sight of another human so giddy in her flesh was beyond endurance.

There was a pause, and Charlotte realized they were waiting for her to speak. "I guess they're mostly jocks," she said, forcing herself to concentrate. Her mind swerved to the math teacher, then to the man by the river. "Some are cute," she said. "But the girls are, too." She had an anxious sense of covering something up-as if she weren't actually a student at East, as if this were merely a pretext. "You should come visit."

"Let's," Laurel said. "Sisterhood."

"Rah rah," Sheila said acidly.

"You're not invited," Charlotte told her, which made Sheila grin. She liked being put in her place.

"Change it! Change it!" Roz shrieked from the backseat. She meant the song-Sarah McLachlan, whom she hated. "Change it before I scream."

"You are are screaming," Charlotte said. "Right in my ear while I'm driving." screaming," Charlotte said. "Right in my ear while I'm driving."

"No wonder," Sheila muttered.

"That's not why I have screamers," Roz said hotly. "The doctor says there's point zero zero connection."

No one answered. It was a fruitless argument.

"I saw that new math guy," Charlotte said casually. "Mr. West."

"Oh. My. G.o.d," Roselyn said, breathing hot strawberry fumes close to Charlotte's ear. "Is he not the most dire thing you ever saw?"

"I'm in his cla.s.s," Laurel said, and Charlotte winced at the thought of the math teacher watching her point her feet into perfect commas.

"Is he nice?" she asked.

"Freaky," Laurel said. "Half the time when someone makes a joke, he doesn't even get it. He's like, formal?"

"Mucho curioso," Roz said, squeezing Charlotte's shoulder.

"I thought I saw him before," she said, then let it go. But her heart and stomach were alive with secret intelligence. She knew the math teacher in a different way; she'd spoken to him alone, by the river, when he was not a math teacher but someone else. That was how it felt-as if they had met first in a dream and now were meeting again in waking life.

At Cherryvale, the girls bought peanut b.u.t.ter logs and lemonheads at Mr. Bulky's and ate them furtively from small white bags while they clawed through the racks at Juxtapose, whose walls were emblazoned with posters proclaiming, "Back to cool," and "Enter the next level."

At Waldenbooks, they swarmed the magazine counter, sticky fingers snapping glossy pages as they riffled through them greedily, breathing each other's gum and candy and lip gloss as they spied on the slender girls moving about in their parallel universe. Girls squinting in deserts. Girls leaping in s...o...b..nks. Girls fishing in waders past their thighs. Charlotte tried not to see them. There was no place for her in this parallel world; according to its dictates, she was worthless. Her friends didn't look like models either, but in some ineffable way they came closer, Sheila especially. And Laurel had her dancer's body and Roz, with her sultry voice and tangled hair, had been nicknamed "Luscious" since ninth grade. Charlotte observed these facts without resentment; for her, there would have to be another way. She believed this.

At six-thirty, she drove everyone home, Roselyn last because she lived nearest. "I miss you, Chari," she said. "You're real."