All The Things We Didn’t Say

Dear Claire. You know how you’re always looking for kitsch? Well, you’d hit the jackpot here.

‘Why don’t I take your bags upstairs?’ my father offered.

We all walked through the kitchen and up the creaky stairs to the bedrooms. The upstairs, way colder than the downstairs, opened into a long, narrow hall with doors on either side. The bathroom door, the first to the left, gaped open. Stacks of books and crossword puzzles balanced on the top of the toilet.

My father tapped the first bedroom door open with his foot. The door was very heavy, with a long crack traversing through its center. ‘This used to be my room.’

It smelled musty inside. There was a From Russia With Love poster on the wall and a video game console-at least I thought that was what it was-on the ground. The television was a tiny bubble. An orange milk crate in the corner held action figures, and a second milk crate behind it was filled with old LPs. Blonde On Blonde was up front, a frizzyhaired Bob Dylan pursing his lips at the camera. A plaid spread covered the twin bed.

‘Huh,’ Steven said, looking around.

‘Where did this TV come from?’ My father tapped it, puzzled. ‘And these video games?’

Steven knelt down to examine the console. ‘Atari.’

‘I certainly wasn’t back here when video games came out,’ my father said. ‘And I don’t remember them here the one time we brought you guys.’

Steven inserted a cartridge into the video game and turned on the television. The words DONKEY KONG flashed on the screen. ‘This is, like, vintage. It’s never been played with.’

‘No one plays those video games,’ Samantha scoffed, peering in from the hall. ‘They’re, like, a zillion years old. I have Sega.’

‘I never liked this game,’ Steven said, but fired it up anyway. The gorilla pitched barrels down a plank, and Steven’s character, a Mario Brother, jumped them.

‘Sad!’ Stella sang when the barrel tripped up Mario. Then she looked at my father. ‘You know who I saw the other day? Georgette Mulvaney. That Kay girl’s mother.’

My father’s chin jutted up. I watched his eyes carefully.

‘I’m amazed they still live here.’ Stella gazed out the window. The wind was pushing the tire swing back and forth. ‘I thought they moved. I invited her to the funeral.’

My father stiffened. ‘What did she say? Is she going to come?’

His face was so splotchy. That name was so familiar, all the years he’d talked about the accident. But I’d always suspected-maybe wished-that he made the accident up, that it had never happened.

‘I doubt it,’ Stella answered. ‘She said she had something to do, I don’t know. She thanked me for inviting her, though. And she gives her condolences.’

‘Oh.’ My father let out a breath. He began running his fingers over the scar on his palm.

‘Does the guy still live here?’ I asked, searching for the boyfriend’s name. ‘Mark? The one who was in the accident, too?’

‘He lives in Colorado,’ my father said quickly. ‘Moved out there years ago.’ His face had tightened so drastically that I didn’t dare ask anything else.

My father shuffled his feet on the shabby burgundy carpet. Mario bleeped as he jumped the barrels on the screen. My father looked around and scratched his head. ‘I don’t get it. Did someone else use this room? I have no clue where this TV and the video games could have come from.’

‘Oh, Ruth bought them for you,’ Stella said. ‘She bought you all kinds of stuff. I guess she always thought you’d bring Summer and Steven here more often. She bought tons of crap from that space movie, too. It’s all in boxes in the closet. What was the name of one of the characters in that movie? The Nookie?’

‘The Wookie?’ Steven fished, after a pause. ‘You mean Star Wars? Chewbacca?’

Stella frowned, annoyed. ‘No. That’s not right.’

When Mario died, Steven turned off the game, bored. He wandered into a bedroom down the hall, and my father and Stella returned downstairs. But I stayed in the old room, looking at the posters on the wall. There was one of a Playboy girl, her bathing suit straps sliding down her arms. I couldn’t imagine my father looking at girls in that way, let alone taking the time to buy the poster and hang it up, neatly pushing tacks into each corner.

Slowly, I opened the drawers of his desk. In the very bottom drawer, I found a photo of a guy with shaggy, longish hair and sideburns. He wore a football jersey and held up a paper cup to toast. Next to him was a small, pale, freckled girl with a guarded, uncertain smile. Her long blonde hair was parted in the center. They stood in front of the eye-shaped Dairy Queen sign. I turned the picture over. Mark Jeffords and Kay Mulvaney, (secret!) engagement, 1970. The handwriting was neat and orderly, definitely not my father’s crabbed, crazy scrawl.

I looked at their faces for a long time, especially at her, dead now. Then I tucked the photo back under a bunch of papers and shut the drawer tight. ‘This place is really creepy,’ I whispered aloud, then went to find Steven to see if he thought so too.

Steven was in the next bedroom, which was done up in green and gold checkered wallpaper. I found him on the floor next to the bureau, his knees bent, his hands behind his head. His cheeks inflated then deflated, and he breathed out in puffs.

My chest knotted. Steven noticed me. His face reddened.

‘Why are you doing sit-ups?’ I burst out.

‘I’m in training.’ He lowered down.

‘In training for what?’

‘The Marines.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Like from your GI Joe days?’

Steven’s forehead crinkled and his mouth became very small. After one more sit-up, he stood and swished by me for the bathroom, not answering my question.

6 (#ulink_4029d573-890f-5207-89bc-0d8241d0f049)

My father and Stella sat around the kitchen table and drank cans of beer. Steven closed his bedroom door so I couldn’t barge in again. Samantha was smoking on the front porch-Stella just let her smoke-and was making a face that indicated she didn’t want me to come near her.

The sky was a dirt-brown color, as if it was about to storm. There were no shadows on the road, and the wind blew the leaves on the trees upside-down. I ran my hands over the rusty tin mailbox of my father’s old neighbors. The name stenciled on the box said Elkerson. I’d seen that name all over Cobalt on our drive in-Elkerson’s Grocery, Elkerson’s Auto Tag & Notary, Elkerson’s EZ Car Wash. In an ad circular on the kitchen counter was an ad for an Elkerson Used Auto dealership, specializing in Dodges and Fords.

The Elkerson house was as slumped and beaten-down as my grandmother’s. In the front yard was a large, plastic deer.

A smaller deer was next to it, tipped over. There was a rolledup, waterlogged bunch of newsprint on the gravel driveway. It wasn’t a real newspaper, though, just a fat booklet of coupons. On the front page was an ad for Unimart, the convenience store we’d passed on the way in; there was a two-for-one deal on packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes. I considered going down there and buying Claire Ryan a pack; she and her new friends smoked Lucky Strikes by the carton.

After our argument in Prospect Park the December my mom left, Claire and I didn’t speak for a while. In the months following, Claire lost some of the weight, settling into an apple shape: bigger boobs, fleshy stomach, flat ass and skinny legs. She befriended a band of outcasts and started dressing in fishnet stockings, short skirts, clunky boots and ripped t-shirts whose obscure band names stretched precariously across her chest. After some time passed, Claire began waving to me in the halls again. By the following school year, she was inviting me out with her and the rest of the freaks. All her new friends hung out at the Galaxy Diner, a greasy spoon on Seventh Avenue, and every time I trailed into the diner behind them I felt unoriginal and out of place. It wasn’t that I wanted to hang out with them, I just didn’t have anything better to do. Long gone were the days of thinking who I was friends with made any difference. It had been ages since I believed my mother was waiting around every corner, monitoring my every move.

Claire caught up on all the classes she’d failed when she was in France, taking courses over the summer, and graduated with her original grade a few weeks ago. She’d gotten into painting and was going to a summer art program in San Francisco to build up her portfolio. ‘I don’t like that it’s for the whole summer,’ she told me the last time I hung out with her. We were sitting in a booth at the diner, waiting for her other friends to show up. ‘So don’t go,’ I answered impassively, gently pushing the tines of a fork into my palm. ‘Will you write me?’ she asked. I laughed and told her that she should write to the corpses she was friends with instead. ‘They’re not the types who write letters.’ Claire lowered her eyes and tugged at her oversized t-shirt. It bore the name of one of the strange, toneless bands she now loved, Fugazi, and had the words you are not what you own printed in small, subliminal letters on the back.

Dear Claire, I don’t want to write you. I already told you I don’t want to talk to you. You should just leave me alone.

A slightly larger house loomed at the end of the road, a blue light flickering in the front window. As I got closer, I realized it was light from a television. I wasn’t sure why, but it comforted me. The main television in my now-dead grandmother’s house didn’t work, and I hadn’t braved the 1970s model in my father’s old room.

I stepped closer, gazing at the flickering screen. It was the OJ Simpson thing, yet another recap of the slow-speed car chase that had occurred a few days before. My father and I had sat slack-jawed on the couch, watching the whole thing unfold. I hadn’t been clear on why they were chasing OJ, and I still wasn’t, not exactly. I felt sorry for him, though, because I’d found him funny in the Naked Gun movies.

I had been staring at the screen for a good half-minute before I realized there was a boy on a brown, saggy couch. His posture was so bad that his butt was nearly off the cushions, and his feet stretched almost to the TV stand. He looked about my age, with messy dark hair and an oversized nose, in a baggy t-shirt and shorts.

Surprised, I took a step back, flattening an empty Coke can. The sound made the boy look up. His forehead creased.

I took another step back. He walked to the door and peered outside, scowling. The humid air felt toxic. He gaped at me, seemingly furious. ‘How many times are you guys going to do this?’ His voice was sharp, impatient.

‘I’m sorry?’