All the Best People Page 3
“You’ll have to speak with the school nurse about doctors’ excuses. I only handle class schedules and attendance.” Plus a million other things, for both the middle school and high school. Not that Snelling would notice or care. Janine stood and brushed her skirt straight, calling the meeting to a close. She moved to the door, certain Snelling was staring at her behind, a thought doused equally with pride and disgust. Pausing with her hand on the jamb, she cast another glance at his feet. She couldn’t help herself. “Enjoy your last days of freedom.”
“Freedom? A rational mind is always free.”
Oh, for the love of God. He really was an idiot. But she gave him a sweet smile. She wasn’t a bitch.
She collected her purse from her desk drawer, checked to see that the desk she’d straightened before the meeting was still tidy and made her way toward the exit. The door to the principal’s office was ajar and she scurried past so he wouldn’t call her in for One Last Thing. “One last thing, Janine. It won’t take a moment.” But it always took several. They didn’t pay her enough for her scheduled hours, much less for overtime. Principal Ike Kawolski was a disorganized man. His entire working day was a hodgepodge of One Last Things and she did her best to steer clear of them. Of course, as the secretary, it wasn’t simple.
She kept her head down as she passed his door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Penney, the school office employee with no title, inside Kawolski’s office watering a plant. Mrs. Penney had worked for the Adams schools since the depression, a vestigial employee whom no person or administration had had the heart, or the gumption, to dismiss. Janine didn’t mind. The woman was her own memorial but did no one any harm. Janine only wondered whose salary was larger.
Her cherry-red convertible Ford LTD was waiting in the parking lot. It had belonged to her husband, Mitch, and she’d worried initially that it was a bit short on femininity. But red was her color (what else with raven hair?), and she’d loved Mitch, at least part of the time, in her own way. She was certainly sorry he was dead, as nothing had been easy for her in the intervening three years. And it had been so sudden. He might have succumbed to something more drawn out than a massive heart attack and given her a chance to position herself better. She might have had time to move some money around so it didn’t all go flying out the window the instant his soul left his body. She might, at the very least, have had time to prepare and not be blindsided by the laundry list of requirements for the widow of an almost–state senator. (She might have had her hair done.) Instead, he’d yanked open a trapdoor and she’d fallen straight into the basement—Adams High.
Her anger with him for making her a widow was as fresh as it was irrational. That word: “widow.” It made her sound both old and used and, worse, an object of pity. Well, she’d see about that. She might be thirty-four, but she knew for a fact she looked a damn sight younger.
She got behind the wheel and started the car. The LTD was a lot like her, now that she thought about it. It had attractive lines and a no-nonsense engine that growled when you put your foot to the floor.
Ten minutes later, she liked the car a good deal less. Just shy of the turnoff onto River Road, smoke started pouring out from under the hood. She pulled onto the shoulder, shut off the engine and smacked her palm on the steering wheel. With the list of things she had planned the next few days, she could do without a predicament. School started next Tuesday and would mark her reunion with Greg Bayliss and the continuation of her quest to make a husband out of him. If she was going to be irresistible on Tuesday, she had work to do.
She climbed out and started walking toward town. The Fosters were just a little ways, and if they weren’t home, the gym teacher, Ruth Singletary, lived next door.
Luckily, Prissy Foster was at the back collecting tomatoes. Not wanting to stain her shoes on the grass, Janine shouted from the stone path, explaining she’d broken down and needed to call Walt. Prissy pouted, no doubt thinking Janine had come around for a visit. Fat chance. But Prissy regained her manners and told her she was welcome. Janine went inside and found the phone on the wall between the kitchen and the den. She dialed the garage. It rang and rang, but eventually Walt came on and said he’d be there presently.
Presently, Janine thought. That was a Walter word if there ever was one.
She waved to Prissy Foster as she rounded the house and, magnanimous now that help was on the way, shouted that her garden was lovely. It truly was. The ordinary vinyl-clad house was surrounded by enormous beds of daisies, lilies and gladiolas, with flagstone paths winding in between. The lawn would have evoked envy in any greenskeeper, and the birches and maples were in precisely the right places. Somehow Prissy had not been compelled to add plastic windmills, gnomes, signs with insipid quotations or, God forbid, a gazing ball, grasping clearly that Vermont was neither a miniature golf course nor Victorian England. Pretty, very pretty. Such a lot of work, though. And in the dirt.
By the time Janine got back to her car, her brother-in-law Walt’s tow truck was approaching from the other direction. The truck made a U-turn and pulled in front. The dashboard was buried under a thick layer of papers and trash. Janine clucked at the sight. How did her sister put up with it? Both cab doors opened and Walt and his son Warren stepped out.
She was struck, as she was every time she saw Walt, how precisely he resembled his twin, her dead husband, Mitch, and yet looked nothing like him. It evoked the most peculiar feeling in her, as if her eyesight or her judgment were off, or both. It was like being drunk.
“Afternoon, Janine.” Walt put his fingertips on the fender as if the LTD were a horse in need of reassurance.
“Thanks for coming.”
He took off his baseball cap, ruffled his hair and replaced the cap. The differences between the twins unaccounted for by genetics were plain. Walt held himself back a little. Mitch never had. Walt’s jawline was leaner, his stomach flatter, while Mitch’s love of food and drink had earned him a paunch. And Mitch had sharpened the edges of his vowels while Walt’s rolled out like polished stones and betrayed him as a Vermonter with each syllable. But sometimes the brothers’ resemblance hit her full-on, as it did now. She stared at Walt and he stared right back, his eyes blue as a swimming pool.
Her fingers moved to her neck and fiddled with the top button of her shirt. Walt’s eyes unnerved her; the ghost of her dead husband had climbed inside his twin. But there was more there, in Walt’s look. Disapproval? Amusement? She was on her back foot with Walt, always had been, although it made no sense. He was a simple man, with no ambition or power. Still waters run deep, people said, but she’d never seen any evidence of it. And yet here was Walt, looking at her as if she was the one who’d guessed wrong at every turn.
“Hey, Aunt Janine.”
She’d forgotten her nephew was there. “Hello, Warren.”
The boy popped the hood. “Smoke, you said?”
“A lot.”
Walt bent over the engine. “Oil’s dripping onto your exhaust.”
Janine said, “Is that bad?”
He straightened. “Well, it isn’t good.” He smiled. Mitch’s smile. “Creates a pile of smoke, for starters.”
Warren laughed and shook his head.
Janine said, “I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Walt said in his soft, even voice. “I was only pulling your leg. It’s an easy fix but I can’t get to it until tomorrow.” He signaled to Warren to drop the hood. “Warren’ll drive it in. You can ride with me. One of us’ll deliver you home after the shop closes. In the meantime, you can visit with Carole.”
She checked her watch. An hour and a half until closing. She didn’t want to spend all that time at Walt and Carole’s, but what could she say? “I appreciate it, Walt.” She fished the keys from her purse and dangled them over Warren’s outstretched palm. She could tell he was fighting to appear nonchalant, but he’d always gotten twisted up a
round her. Since he’d turned the corner from boy to man, his looks her way had become braver. She winked at him, watched him redden and let go of the keys.
The twins were born when Janine was seventeen and living with Carole as she always had. Walt had called from the hospital to say she had two nephews, but one was “not a hundred percent.” Lester had been born second, waiting in the dark with the cord around his neck. Warren’s foot was looped in the cord, as if they’d been wrestling in there before Carole’s contractions began, ending the contest. With each hard-won inch toward birth, Warren pulled the noose tighter around his brother’s neck. Warren emerged red and screaming, his brother blue and silent. By the time they came home, both were screaming nonstop. When Warren was old enough to understand the story of their birth, he felt responsible, no matter what anyone said, and tried to make it up to Lester by protecting him. It was touching, Janine supposed, but the whole mess only underscored her conviction that having children was a crapshoot best avoided. Other people managed fine but she wasn’t other people. When she’d first married Mitch, she’d fancied the idea of children, having not thought it through. Luckily, Mitch had been shooting blanks.
Walt whistled as he drove, then pulled into the garage lot. Lester was polishing the bumper of a Buick and dropped his cloth when he saw Janine climb down from the cab of the tow truck. “Auntie Janine!” He rushed at her and threw his arms around her waist, as he had since he was a toddler. He had to crouch to do it now, tall as he was, and ended up mashing the top of his head into her breast. She would have deflected the move, but he was too fast. She grasped his shoulders firmly and held him at arms’ length.
“That’s better, Lester. I can see you now.”
“And I can see you, Auntie Janine.”
He wasn’t a bad-looking boy. He had a strong jaw, a straight nose and a charming smile, and his hair was dark blond and wavy like his mother’s. But his features, in fact his whole person, didn’t hang quite right, as if he weren’t screwed together properly. He was easy to like, and harmless, which was lucky. After he finished school next year (graduation was out of the question), he’d work at the garage for his father. And when Walt died, Janine guessed Lester would work for whoever took over—Warren, maybe—or find something else. He’d probably lead a happier life than anyone else in the family. Janine wasn’t certain how she felt about that.
“You ready for school next week, Lester? You’ll meet Miss Honeycutt. I hear she’s got all sorts of fun things planned.”
The school district had hired April Honeycutt to begin work this year after the state passed a law requiring special teachers for special kids. Janine hadn’t met her but had read her job description. The woman wasn’t much more than an educated babysitter, but at least Lester wouldn’t be spending all day hanging on to Warren and being shushed by the regular teacher.
Lester’s eyes were huge. “Did you see Miss Honeycutt? Is she nice or a meanie?”
“I haven’t met her yet, but I’m sure she’s very nice.” She had to be, didn’t she? Nice, patient and unaffected by drooling and shouting. Janine could see her now, a darling smile pasted on a dull face, forced into looking after the slow kids because she didn’t have the brains, ambition or looks to do anything better.
In his excitement over his upcoming introduction to Miss Honeycutt, Lester dove at Janine’s middle again, forcing her to step back to absorb his momentum, and her ankle crumpled. She caught herself in time but annoyance rose in her. “Hey! Take it easy!” She pushed him away and regarded the damp stains on her blouse.
“Lester!” Walt stuck his head around the opened hood of the car in the garage bay. “You finish up with that Buick. Mr. Stafford will be here before you can say boo.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. LaPorte.” He insisted on calling his father “Mr. LaPorte” during work. Something he picked up from television. “Boo.” Lester peered down the road. “Boo.”
Janine felt a pang of guilt for barking at him, but then noticed a smear of black on her skirt. Her guilt evaporated. Really, the boy was like an untrained Saint Bernard.
She arranged her handbag and headed inside. “See you at school, Lester.”
“See you at school, Auntie Janine!” He shouted, not a speck of resentment marring his grin.
Janine strode through the office, calling for her sister as she went, regretting more with each step having had this visit forced upon her. The dreariness of the surroundings aggravated her feelings. The gray metal desk could have been ripped from a submarine, and the chair behind it had perhaps once been cordovan but had worn to a sickly pink in the middle. The carpeting was no color at all. Chaotic stacks of file folders and mail teetered on the desk, floor and filing cabinets, along with mismatched coffee cups, Coke bottles and cardboard boxes. She pushed open the door to the kitchen, which was cleaner but no cheerier. Faded gold and green brocade curtains hung lopsided on the windows overlooking the yard. She’d rather do without curtains than have those. Not Carole. If she were married to Aristotle Onassis, she’d still wear Edith Bunker housedresses and put up with those curtains. She didn’t seem to notice, or to care, and neither did Walt. But it depressed the hell out of Janine.
She found her sister out back hanging clothes on the line. Janine called to her from the step, but Carole didn’t hear, so she slipped off her shoes and walked gingerly across the lawn, watching out for bees and cat shit.
“Carole. Hey, it’s me.”
Janine was practically on top of her but Carole had her back turned and didn’t respond.
“Yoo-hoo! Earth to Carole!”
Carole jumped and spun around, a shirt crushed in her hand. “Good lord! Don’t sneak up on people like that!”
“I didn’t. You’re losing your hearing.”
“I doubt it.” She clipped the shirt to the line at the shoulders and bent to retrieve another one from the basket. “You at the school today?”
“I sure was. My car broke down on the way home. Walt can’t get to it until tomorrow.”
“That’s too bad. Cars can be a nuisance.”
Janine puffed out a short laugh. “I should hope so. It’s your bread and butter.” She crossed her arms, impatient. “Can we sit, or go inside? You know about me and grass.”
Carole glanced at her sister’s feet and resumed pegging socks. “I need to finish.”
“It won’t dry tonight anyhow.”
“All the same.”
Carole’s hair seemed more gray than usual and Janine wondered about suggesting she color it. Blondes, even dark blondes, could get away with some gray, but after a while it looked old on them like it did on everyone else. At forty-four, her sister still had her figure, although her clothes did it no justice. For years, Janine had given her stylish outfits for her birthdays and Christmases (nothing fancy, just from Sears and Penney’s), but Carole only thanked her and stuffed them in a drawer. When asked, Carole pointed out she didn’t socialize, unless you counted handing invoices across the desk in the garage and an occasional trip to church. Janine would pull herself together even for that, but not her sister. She’d been careless about her looks and reticent in her relationships for as long as Janine could remember, and the shell she’d retreated into only seemed to get thicker. Janine might have enjoyed her sister more if they went out to lunch together or shopping, but Carole was too tied down to the garage, Walt, her kids and their crazy mother, and was not one to indulge besides. Janine had been tempted many times to give up—who could blame her?—but Carole had practically raised her. And although her sister wasn’t free with affection or tender words, Carole’s love was something Janine had always had, like her name.
“Alison eager for school to start?”
“I expect so.”
“Sixth grade next week. Doesn’t seem possible.”
“Well, I’ve been through it with the boys.”
“But little Alison.”
“Don’t you? I thought you worried about everything.”
She paused on the landing but didn’t turn around. “Are you coming to see Mama on Sunday?”
“I don’t think so. With school starting next week, I’m awfully busy.”
Carole faced her sister. “I’m happy to drive.”
“The driving’s the least of it.”
“Well, I just thought—”
“Maybe in October, for her birthday. I’ll think about going then.”
Carole gave her a tired, resigned look. Janine hated that look. She didn’t see why her decision not to visit their mother had to disappoint her sister freshly and thoroughly every time. Carole could visit their mother and Janine could do something worthwhile. What was wrong with that?
Carole stepped inside and Janine followed her, blinded by the relative darkness. Carole left the basket on the stairs and crossed in front of Janine on her way to the kitchen. “I’ve got iced tea.”
“Sounds good.”
How odd. Her sister normally made a bigger deal about going to Underhill. She and Carole were their mother’s only visitors, but Janine rarely went. The place made her ill, especially the smell of cheap disinfectant sprayed over a miasma of sour hopelessness. There was nothing for Janine there. The woman trapped behind the barred windows and brick walls, trapped in the tangled circuitry of her brain, was her mother—she had no reason to doubt it—but the space between them was empty.
It was different for Carole. She and their mother had ten years together. Carole didn’t talk about it and Janine didn’t want to know what she had missed, but Carole had to have memories of Solange, and Solange of her, never spoken of but existing nevertheless in their separate minds, like copies of a photo placed in separate albums and locked in drawers in different cities.