Sara Shepard - All The Things We Didn’t Say

What had happened to my family a few days before this was something else entirely-something far bigger than anything I’d even dared to consider. But Mr Rice’s words made me think that maybe I didn’t have to worry about it after all.

The substitute’s shoulders slumped as he walked into the hall with the principal. As soon as the door shut, one of the fist-coughing boys snorted, ‘What a loser .’ Someone threw a balled-up piece of notebook paper at the alien spaceship. One by one, like dominoes falling over, everyone began to talk, to forget. I was the only one who didn’t laugh.

The following day, when my father told me that Claire Ryan and her mother were coming over to visit in a few minutes, I was struck dumb. Just because I was friends with someone a couple years ago didn’t mean we liked each other now. I thought my father understood this.

‘Claire?’ I shrieked. ‘Are you sure? Why?’

‘Her mother wants to talk to me, that’s why,’ my father explained. ‘And she’s bringing Claire because she thought it would be nice for you two to see each other again.’

The doorbell rang. I looked at my father. He was wearing plaid slippers and had the same Pfizer t-shirt he’d been wearing for days. Our house had magazines piled by the fireplace, empty soda bottles on the coffee table, and a crooked, undecorated Christmas tree in the corner, needles all over the floor. It was amazing how messy things could get in just two weeks.

When my father opened the door, Mrs Ryan looked right-perhaps a bit thinner, a little ragged, her blonde hair not as smoothly blow-dried as it used to be-but Claire was different entirely. Her eyes were the same, those blue-green eyes everyone used to be so jealous of. As was her thick blonde hair, the hair she used to toss over her shoulder so effortlessly, and her pretty, bow-shaped mouth, the mouth every boy wanted to kiss. But her cheeks were puffy. The rest of her body was, too.

I couldn’t stop staring. Look at the way her t-shirt clung to her arms! Look at the pink flesh around her neck! I actually gasped, although I tried to pass it off as a hiccup, hitting my chest for effect like I was working something down my esophagus. Everyone knew Claire was back from Paris and her parents were divorcing, but no one knew this.

Mrs Ryan looked at me. ‘Hi, Summer. It’s so nice to see you again.’

She pushed Claire forward. ‘Say hi, Claire.’

‘Hi,’ Claire mumbled.

‘How was France?’ my father cried. ‘You two look great.

Very European.’

He didn’t even notice how different Claire looked. My mother wouldn’t miss something like this.

My father asked me to take Claire to the roof to show her the view of the city, as if Claire hadn’t seen it thousands of times before. Although her view wasn’t from this side of the river anymore-what everyone also knew was that Mr Ryan was retaining his apartment on Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights, near us, and Mrs Ryan and Claire were renting a place in a mysterious Manhattan neighborhood called Alphabet City.

‘Go on,’ my father said, making a shooing motion with his hands.

When we reached the roof, Claire looked at the buildings across the East River. Back when we hung out a lot, we had names for each of the buildings we could see from my apartment-the tall pointy one was Lester, the squat one on the harbor was Fred, and the twin towers were Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, the only two characters on the show worth caring about. I glanced at Scooby-Doo-One World Trade-and counted twenty-two flights from the top and three windows over. My mother’s office. I’d never been inside it, but I was certain there was an official-looking name plaque on her desk, Meredith Heller-Davis. The room was still dark. I squinted hard, willing the light to come on.

Claire ran her finger along the edge of the charcoal grill. There was rust on it, but we used to cook out on the roof a lot. All four of us, my mother, father, my brother Steven and me, we would come up here and point at the boats and buildings and eat hamburgers. My father used to bring up a boom box and put on a bunch of old jazz tapes, even though my mother preferred music that, as she put it, ‘actually made sense.’ When it was time to eat, my dad turned his back and whipped up a condiment that he said was his Aunt Stella’s Famous Special Sauce. Once, I remarked that it tasted like nothing but mayo and ketchup mixed, and my mother snorted. ‘Stella probably got the idea from Burger King,’ she said with a laugh. My father chewed his burger. ‘Stella’s a good woman,’ he said stiffly, not that it was in question.

Later, my mother and I would watch the boats on the East River through binoculars, making up stories about some of the yachters. The man in the sailboat named Miss Isabelle still lived on his parents’ estate. The man in the yacht with a naked woman figurehead had made his fortune by patenting the long plastic wand used to separate one person’s groceries from another on the belt-how else could a man with such a tacky comb-over own a boat that big? When it was Steven’s turn with the binoculars, he always aimed them at the buildings across the water, watching the people still in their offices, working. ‘What do you think they’re doing in there?’ he asked out loud on more than one occasion. ‘I bet they’re doing math,’ my mother or I always suggested, struggling to remain straight-faced. Steven’s love of math was an ongoing joke between my mother and me; we were convinced that he slept with his graphing calculator under his pillow.

Claire’s belt was fastened on the very last notch. ‘So my new neighborhood is weird,’ she informed me, as if we’d been talking every day. As if I knew everything about her-which I kind of did. ‘Last night, I saw a man dressed as a woman.’

‘How did you know?’

‘I looked at his arms.’

I’d never been to her new neighborhood before, this mythical Alphabet City. When kids at our school traveled into Manhattan, they went to SoHo to shop, or to the Upper East or West Sides to visit grandparents. No one ventured into the East Village, and definitely not to the avenues with the letters.

The Staten Island ferry chugged away from the west side of the island, spewing a contrast of black oil and crisp white waves behind it. ‘So.’ Claire tapped the top of the grille. ‘What’s new with you?’

‘Not much.’ I kept my eyes on the ferry. ‘Same old, same old.’

Claire curled her hand around a rusted spatula. ‘I heard about your mom.’

A hot fist knotted in my throat. What did everyone know about my family?

Before I could reply, a noise interrupted us. Claire’s mother clomped up to the roof. My father followed. ‘Time to go,’ Mrs Ryan announced.

Claire crossed her arms over her chest. ‘We just got here.’

Mrs Ryan gave her a tight smile. ‘We have a lot of things to do today.’

‘ You have a lot of things to do. I don’t.’

‘Well, you have to come with me.’ Mrs Ryan’s expression didn’t falter.

‘I can ride the train by myself.’

‘Seriously. Time to go.’

Claire put her head down. ‘Fuck off.’

My father’s eyes widened. Mine did, too. I’d never heard Claire swear.

Mrs Ryan swallowed, then stood up straighter. ‘Fine.’ She turned around stiffly and started back down the stairs. My dad and I stood there, waiting to see if Claire would move. She didn’t. My father looked blank. He wasn’t good at dealing with things like this.

Claire sighed. ‘Unbelievable,’ she eventually said, and stood up. The doorway down from the roof to our apartment suddenly looked too narrow for her to fit through.

My father and I walked them to the door. We watched them out the window as they marched toward the subway, not talking, not touching. The wind blew, shaking the plastic bags caught in the trees.