Sara Shepard - Everything We Ever Wanted

It was possible, she supposed, that he’d heard the boys were performing silly hazing rituals but hadn’t witnessed it firsthand, and then had let it slip his mind, figuring the boys would just work it out themselves. Really, who wasn’t guilty of letting things happen without doing the appropriate things to stop them? Once, when Joanna lived in Philadelphia after college, she’d watched out her apartment window as a young guy robbed an old woman. The man knocked the woman to the ground and ran away with her purse – it was black patent leather, with an old-fashioned chain strap – and Joanna just stood stock-still against the kitchen counter, her hand to her mouth. And lately – more and more – Joanna felt as though she was watching her own life pass by without intervening. It was like, she sometimes thought, her true self was becoming smaller and dimmer, and again all she did was stand there, her hand at her mouth, simply staring.

Joanna and Charles had been in bed when Sylvie called with the news. Joanna picked up the phone, saw Sylvie’s name on the Caller ID, and quickly passed it to Charles without saying hello, feeling too shy and intrusive to talk to Sylvie herself. Charles took the phone, waited, and then pushed back the covers, slid on his slippers, and padded out of the room. ‘Now wait, Mom,’ he said as he walked down the hall. ‘Just a second. He said what ? And that has to do with us… how ?’

Charles came back to the bedroom a little later, his face ashen. The phone was in his limp right hand; his left hand worked the top of his head. Joanna knew right away something was wrong. She also felt a twinge of annoyance that he’d gotten up from the bed to have the conversation away from her. Why didn’t he feel comfortable with her listening? They’d been married for six months; would these boundaries between them ever go away?

‘There’s some sort of trouble with my brother at school,’ was all Charles had said. He’d climbed back into bed beside her and turned the television to a tennis match, cranking the volume high. She’d pressed him for information, but he hadn’t told her much else, staring glazed-eyed at the screen. Most of the details were still tangled in Joanna’s mind. She didn’t understand whether there was any evidence that hazing had happened, or whether the school could point fingers at Scott and, by association, Sylvie, or what would happen if they did. Nor did she know if Charles believed, deep down, that Scott was capable of such a thing. He hadn’t said one way or the other.

It was the next day, as they were on their way to Charles’s childhood home, when Joanna dared to bring it up again. ‘So, is your mom worried about her place on the board?’ she asked.

Charles gave her a sidelong glance. ‘Why would she be worried?’

Joanna sighed. He was going to make her spell this out, then. ‘Because of the boy’s suicide. Because of – you know – what people are saying. I thought you said the school was super-judgmental. If one family member’s bad, they’re all bad.’

‘Why would you think that?’ Charles said.

‘Sorry.’ And then she added, ‘I didn’t go to that school, Charles. Remember? I don’t know what to think about it.’

‘You should know better than to think that. ’

Charles had recently had his hair cut, the ends hung bluntly just above his ears, reminding her of the crisp bristles of a broom. He still went to the same barber who’d cut his hair when he was a boy; he was fiercely loyal in that way, patronizing the same business establishments for years, diligently keeping in touch with old prep school friends, and even remaining faithful to inanimate, unresponsive things like old jogging routes and brands of breakfast cereals.

‘And anyway, I don’t think it’s going to go that far. It’s just a stupid rumor,’ Charles said as they swept past the large vacant lot that sold Christmas trees in December. ‘You know how kids talk.’

They turned up the winding street that would eventually lead to the house. Sylvie had invited them over for dessert that evening. Charles had announced the invitation only an hour ago upon coming home from work. It was a sharp contrast to the protocol by which Sylvie usually summoned them for visits, emailing them days ahead of time, negotiating both their schedules to see when was best for all. Sylvie wasn’t the type to demand they come only when it suited her – that was Joanna’s mother’s territory. If Joanna had to make a guess – and she always had to guess, because none of the Bates-McAllisters would ever tell her directly – she’d say that today’s invitation was a response to whatever this was with the wrestlers.

Joanna sat back in the passenger seat, letting the iPod she’d been fiddling with fall to her lap. ‘So what happened, anyway? How’d the boy kill himself?’

‘I don’t know,’ Charles answered.

‘Your mom didn’t tell you?’

‘I don’t think she knows, either.’

‘Was there a suicide note?’

‘No. They don’t even know if it’s a suicide. They’re doing an autopsy to find out.’

Joanna paused, considering this. ‘My mother said Scott should talk to a lawyer.’

‘You talked to your mother about this?’ His face registered a dart of annoyance.

‘It just slipped out on the phone today,’ she admitted.

‘You had to run and tell her, didn’t you?’

‘It just slipped out,’ she repeated. She adjusted her seat belt. ‘So, do you have any idea who’s supplying these hazing rumors?’

‘No.’ He took one hand off the steering wheel and ran it over his head.

‘Who could it be?’

‘Joanna, I don’t know.’

‘Why aren’t you curious?’

‘Why are you ?’ But he said it quietly, almost tepidly.

The trees formed a canopy over the road. Small green buds dotted some of them, but others were bare. ‘I just worry, that’s all,’ Joanna said. ‘Your poor mom. After your dad and all…she doesn’t need this.’

Charles pulled the lever for the wiper fluid. The windshield wipers made a honking sound and slid the soap across the glass. ‘Probably not.’

‘And I think you should help Scott. You’re his brother. Don’t you think you should?’

‘Well, he hasn’t asked for help.’

‘People don’t always ask,’ she reminded him.

‘He hasn’t done anything wrong.’

Joanna touched the smooth, slick buttons on her jacket. She was tempted to ask Charles if he really believed that.

‘Don’t worry about it, okay?’ Charles said, putting on his turn signal. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

They were at the turnoff to his parents’ house. It was so ensconced by the trees it was easy to miss. Charles pulled up the long, snaky drive. A pine near one of the turns had fallen against a few other trees, reminding Joanna of a happy, drunken girl propped up by her friends at the end of a long night. They pulled into the circular drive behind Sylvie’s car, the newish Mercedes she often parked outside, and Scott’s car, the slightly older Mercedes that Sylvie had given to him. Scott’s Mercedes had dings on the side, worn tires, and a speckled half-moon of rust across the front bumper. The back bumper was plastered with stickers, many of them irate and instructive. One bumper sticker near the window said Free Mumia; it featured a picture of a black man with a beard and dreadlocks who’d been wrongfully imprisoned. According to an article Joanna read on Wikipedia, this Mumia guy had been accused of committing a crime because of preconceived notions about his past, his looks, his blackness.

The house loomed ahead of them, a turreted estate over a hundred years old that Charles’s great-grandfather had passed on to Sylvie. It was made all of stone, with a low stone wall around it, a little balcony on the upper floor surrounded by a wrought-iron terrace, and a six-car detached garage across the drive. The house had numerous out-croppings and gables and cupolas and a brass weathervane in the shape of a rooster at the very highest point. There were three patios, a sun room, and a lap pool out back, and the whole thing was surrounded by thick, shapely pines and an elegant garden. Whenever Joanna beheld the estate, she got reverent chills. She always felt like she needed to be on her best behavior here. It was like what her mother used to say to her when they went to Mass at the drafty, icon-filled, stained-glass Catholic Church in Lionville, Pennsylvania, where she’d grown up: Don’t make any noise. Don’t touch anything. God’s looking at you.