All The Things We Didn’t Say

But then, a few days later, the snow globe incident happened. So I couldn’t feel angry at him about any of it anymore, obviously. I just couldn’t.

When I returned to my grandmother’s, Samantha was still sitting on the porch. The ashtray next to her brimmed with cigarette butts. ‘Where were you?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Just taking a walk.’

‘Were you down at Philip’s house?’

‘Who’s Philip?’

She licked her palm, then stubbed out the cigarette. It sizzled. The butt had blood-colored lipstick marks on it. ‘Just this asshole. He doesn’t talk to people. He thinks he’s too good for everyone. Just hangs out with his family. I hear they’re religious freaks.’ She stretched her long, denim legs out and considered me out of the corner of her eye, as cagey as the Smitty dog. ‘How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘So am I. I had sex this spring. With two guys. How many guys have you slept with?’

I looked away.

Samantha’s laugh was a bitter, horrid snort. ‘You haven’t slept with anyone, right? My first time was with this guy David. He’s twenty-four. Drives an F-150. We used to fuck in it a lot. A big deer stepped out one time when we were doing it. Stared straight at us. It was awesome.’

Her voice did a little dip on awesome. I watched her face, expecting her expression to crumple, but her smile became even brighter.

She shook another cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and blew a plume of smoke toward the outdoor thermometer. Samantha’s parents used to send us a Christmas card every year. They’d include a letter catching us up on the family’s goings-on-a new car purchase, a minor health scare, a vacation to the Grand Canyon. ‘Who on earth are Leonard, Ginny and Samantha?’ my mother would always say, tossing the letters aside, but I liked reading them. Samantha’s family seemed so normal. They went to church, Mrs Chisholm volunteered for a soup kitchen, and Samantha performed in piano recitals. My father told me that when her parents died in the fire, she was in Disney World for a piano competition. Her teacher told her right after she and a few other pianists got off the Maelstrom ride at Epcot.

‘So you moved here in the winter, right?’ I asked her. ‘After your parents…you know?’

Her eyes flashed. ‘You have a problem with that?’

‘I was just asking.’

‘I heard stuff about you, too.’ Her face was pinched. ‘Your mom left you guys. Probably because your dad’s a basket case, huh? Apparently he has this big reputation here of being, like, mentally unstable, even when he was younger.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said quickly.

‘How do you know?’ She put her feet up on the porch’s railing. ‘That’s pretty despicable. A woman leaving her husband. Her children.’ She said it like she was sitting behind the bench on The People’s Court. ‘Did she leave because your Dad’s nuts?’

‘No!’ I cried.

‘Do you think she was having an affair?’

‘No!’

She smiled. ‘Everyone knows that people only leave marriages when they’ve found something better.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘So you’re not angry? She left you before Christmas! Did you even get any presents?’

I shrugged and looked away.

Samantha took drag after drag, her flip-flop hanging off her toe. ‘I tried to have sex with that Philip kid from down the street, but he didn’t want to. He’s not going to have sex with you. His whole family wears special religious underwear.’

‘I don’t even know him,’ I protested. ‘And I don’t want to have sex with anyone.’

She barked a laugh. ‘Sure you don’t. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’

7 (#ulink_2f027337-e492-55c1-b6a1-04325ce682e7)

‘Here you go.’ Stella shuffled into the sitting room with a coffee mug. ‘Some nice hot chocolate.’

‘It’s ninety degrees out,’ I answered.

‘Oh, now. It’s good for you. I made it with whole milk. You need to gain some weight.’

My father and Petey had just left to see my grandmother’s body. Stella decided to stay home with Steven and me, and no one fought her on it. Everyone, I’d noticed, was being extra-nice to Stella. Perhaps it was because she’d discovered my grandmother was dead when she came into her room to rustle her out of bed for breakfast.

Upstairs, Steven made the floor thump with what sounded like jumping jacks. Earlier, he’d gone running, crunching down the gravel road and disappearing onto the highway. To my knowledge, this was the first time he’d ever run in his life. I pictured him out there, gasping, cars narrowly passing him at sixty miles an hour. I saw him in camouflage, running an obstacle course, out of breath while the other recruits easily scaled a twenty-foot wall.

‘So.’ Stella sat down across from me. ‘Tell me about yourself, Summer.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I looked down at my hot chocolate. It was the kind with mini-marshmallows, which I hated.

‘Sure there is! I bet you’ve got tons of things to tell me about you.’

Her glasses were on crookedly, which made her look a little drunk.

‘I’m pretty boring,’ I answered.

‘That’s too bad.’ Stella pulled a pack of cigarettes from her front pocket and lit one. She took a drag and eyed me. ‘Do you want a little?’

I shifted my gaze in the other direction. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Come on. It’ll relax you.’

I lowered one eyebrow. ‘There are all sorts of health warnings on the box.’

‘These? Nah.’

I took the cigarette from Stella to avoid an argument. She looked overjoyed. As I put it to my lips, I glanced at the stairs, both in hope and fear that Steven would come down and see. ‘Thanks,’ I said, handing it back to Stella.

‘You want your own?’

I shook my head no. We sat in silence for a few moments, Stella smoking. A car horn sounded. Stella cleared her throat. ‘Nice day,’ she remarked, even though we were sitting indoors, couldn’t see out the heavily curtained windows, and even though I was pretty sure it was still overcast out. ‘Hope we get a day like this for the funeral. And I hope people bring over a lot of hot dishes.’ She leaned back. ‘Minnie Elkerson makes the best pierogis. And Marcy makes a good ham. And Liza makes cabbage rolls. You ever had a cabbage roll?’

‘Nope.’

‘What? No. Never?’

‘No. They sound disgusting.’