Love All Read online

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t had a second all day.” She glanced through the pantry. “Sloppy Joes?”

  “Here,” I said, returning the seasoning mix to the pantry. “Let me.”

  Mom drank white wine while I made a green salad with Nonz’s mustard vinaigrette and spinach quesadillas. The quesadillas were frying when Teddy and my father walked in.

  “Hey, old girl,” said Dad, kissing my head. He wore khakis that were frayed at the hem along with his old running sneakers—clearly not a workday. An unidentifiable orange splotch had stained the pocket of his button-down shirt: Play-Doh or Gak. It had probably been there for ages.

  “What’s the occasion?” asked Dad, pointing to the quesadillas.

  “Poppy’s here.”

  We all peered into the dark den, where Poppy was snoring.

  “How’s he doing?” Dad whispered to my mother.

  Mom shrugged.

  “He watched Jenny Jones with us today,” I said.

  “Nice, Julia,” said Teddy, but what was his problem? At least I’d been here.

  “He liked it, okay?”

  “That show’s total trash.”

  “Kind of like Kim Twining?”

  “Hey!” said Dad. “No fighting.”

  Which was our cue:

  Teddy said, “Crisscross, applesauce.”

  I said, “One, two, three, eyes on me.”

  Dad said, “Okay, okay.” He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose, the portrait of a school principal. It just so happened his was a preschool. “Now it’s time to play the quiet game.”

  At the dinner table, we fell into our places—Dad at the head, Teddy against the wall across from me, and Mom to my right. Our table was the sanded and polished nine-foot barn door from Poppy’s childhood farm, which he’d saved and gifted to my parents when they moved back to Cooperstown. We tended to cluster at one end of the table but Poppy plunked himself down at the other head of the table—the foot, I guess—far from the action and the food.

  “Poppy,” I said, waving him over.

  “I can’t squeeze back there,” he said. “This’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, but Poppy.” We had a way of doing things—we had an end of the table where we sat—and everyone who came to dinner, which was mostly Carl and sometimes Sam, sat in the seat across from Mom.

  “Why don’t you switch with me?” said Mom. “I’ll go next to Teddy.”

  “I’m fine, Anne.”

  Mom put up her palms as though she’d run into an invisible wall. If it weren’t for my father, we would’ve spread like roaches to eat alone in our favorite holes. Mom preferred the kitchen island, stooped over a legal brief. Teddy and I liked to split the purple couch, careful not to touch. Who knew what Poppy liked—he seemed miserable at our dinner table and given the chance probably would have scurried off to the TV in his room.

  “So,” Dad began, “any second thoughts about the tennis team?”

  “No,” I lied.

  Teddy launched into a detailed description of his knuckleball, offering his sock for a demonstration, but Mom said no.

  Suddenly Poppy cleared his throat and said, “I had no lunch today.”

  “You did, Poppy. PB&J, remember?” But he wasn’t talking to me.

  Mom apologized for not leaving him a sandwich and said she’d go to the grocery store tomorrow, but Poppy only shrugged.

  “I don’t want to put you out,” he said.

  “You’re not putting me out, Dad. I’ll get some of those soups Mom buys and whatever else you like.”

  “I don’t know how to fix all that,” said Poppy.

  Mom took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and I wondered if she was wishing Nonz were here as much as I was. The last time Nonz and Poppy had come over for dinner, he hadn’t had any problem sitting near us and when he’d needed something from the kitchen he’d walked right in and found it.

  “Dad,” said Mom gently. “Hugh and I both work.”

  Poppy pushed his plate away.

  “Now you’re not eating,” Mom observed. “You just said you were hungry.”

  “Never mind,” said Poppy. “I’ll be fine without.”

  “Jesus, Dad—”

  “Anne,” my father warned, and Mom shifted her gaze to him.

  “What, Hugh?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s try to be calm.”

  God, did he never learn?

  “‘Let’s?’” Mom repeated. “This isn’t preschool, Hugh. My father is an adult and if he can dish it out he can very well take it.”

  Dad wiped his mouth and made a show of putting his napkin in his lap, carefully smoothing it so that he didn’t have to actually look at my mother when he said, “No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I just thought it’s his first day—”

  Mom threw up her hands, frustrated. “Why is this my fault?”

  I glanced at Teddy, who was picking a cuticle on his thumb.

  “Anne,” said Dad.

  “I’m exhausted!”

  Her blue eyes, normally clear, were bloodshot, small pouches bagging under the lower lids. Suddenly Mom covered her face with her napkin, sour cream brushing into her hair; I’d never seen her cry and quickly looked away.

  Dad jumped up from his chair while I scooted mine back. “Come on,” he said, helping Mom up. She was only a few inches shorter than he was but just then she looked like a child.

  When they were gone, Teddy tossed his napkin on the table and in five long strides he was at the back stairs, climbing them two at a time.

  Minutes passed. Poppy and I didn’t speak. Outside, it was nearly dark.

  Poppy picked up his quesadilla and bit. His teeth chomped through the thin tortillas, wood knocking wood. My parents still hadn’t come back to the table and neither had Teddy, who flung himself out the front door soon after leaving me with Poppy.

  “Why don’t you and Mom get along?” I asked.

  Knock knock knock.

  “Poppy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why don’t—”

  “We get along fine.”

  I cleared the table—though technically it was Teddy’s turn—using my knife to scrape my mother and brother’s food onto my father’s plate, then stacking them all on mine. I reached for Poppy’s plate but he said he wasn’t finished.

  I carried the dishes to the kitchen, where it was so dark I had to feel for the counter. I started to turn on the lights, then changed my mind. Teddy had the right idea. I left the dirty plates in the sink and headed for the front door.

  Outside a cloud had swaddled the moon and the streetlamps barely lit the sidewalk. I walked down Susquehanna to Chestnut and over to Leatherstocking Street, where I entered Carl’s house through the backyard.

  “Hey,” said Carl. “I thought you weren’t coming over.”

  I eyed his plate. His mom went to a widows’ support group three nights a week and tonight she’d left him a feast to go with his TV.

  “What is all that?” I asked.

  “Steak, fries, Dr Pepper. We’re celebrating my return from Myrtle Beach. There’s more of everything in the kitchen. Bring the ketchup,” he called after me.

  I served myself two steak strips and a handful of fries, but I wasn’t hungry.

  “Where’s the ketchup?” I called, pawing through the refrigerator.

  “Cabinet,” said Carl.

  “Right.” In my house, ketchup was in the refrigerator but maybe it was like peanut butter and could go either way. I shut the fridge and opened the first cabinet next to the stove: spices, a pepper grinder, and a large orange pill bottle.

  I turned the bottle and read the label:

  Mary Matthieson

  Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen 5mg/500mg

  Generic for Vicodin

  Take 1 tablet by mouth every 4–6 hours as needed for pain

  Quant: 20

  Refills: 0


  Carl’s mom had been depressed since Carl’s dad died, but last spring things had gotten much worse. Carl had moved in with his uncle in Richfield Springs for two weeks, right in the middle of the school year, and he probably wouldn’t have told us why except that Richfield Springs was fifteen miles from Cooperstown. Sam didn’t have his license yet, and we wouldn’t stop hounding Carl about how we were going to hang out after school when he was living two towns away.

  “Why can’t you just stay at Sam’s dad’s house?” I’d asked.

  “I can’t,” said Carl, for about the fifth time.

  “He won’t care,” said Sam. “We can take over the basement.”

  “Where’s your mom even going?” I asked. She worked at a bank on Main Street, and I’d never known her to take a single day off, much less two weeks.

  Carl didn’t answer.

  “Did she actually say you can’t stay at Sam’s dad’s?”

  “I’m supposed to stay with family,” said Carl. He looked deeply uncomfortable, refusing even to make eye contact, fidgeting helplessly in his seat.

  “Why?” asked Sam, and finally Carl leaned forward, hands palming the table, and told us that his mom had OD’d on Vicodin, okay, then he pushed away from the table and disappeared, leaving us with his bowl of tomato soup and Otis Spunkmeyer cookie, untouched.

  I shook the bottle. Full. The name at the bottom of the label was MICHAEL TREMONT, DDS—a dentist in Utica whom lots of people in Cooperstown went to. Maybe Carl’s mom had broken a tooth while Carl was in Myrtle Beach. Maybe she’d lost a cap or undergone a root canal, but I wondered if Dr. Tremont knew about last spring.

  Two cabinets over I found the ketchup. Back in the den, I handed Carl the squeeze bottle and he squirted it directly onto his fries.

  “You’re not supposed to do that,” I told him.

  “Do what?”

  “Squirt ketchup onto your fries.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Because if you were ill mannered enough to smother your French fries in ketchup, Anne Obermeyer liked to say, you should at least have the decency to use a fork—but I didn’t repeat this to Carl. I wondered what it would’ve been like if Carl’s dad were still alive. He’d died when we were in the first grade, long before Carl and I had become friends. On the nightstand in Carl’s bedroom was a framed photograph of the two of them at one of his T-ball games, taken ages ago. In the picture, Carl’s dad was leaning over him at home plate, his hands covering Carl’s on the handle of the bat. I’d once asked Carl if he remembered that day and he’d said almost, he almost did.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he asked.

  I settled next to him on the couch and tucked my legs under the blanket. “Carl,” I said, “what happened between Sam and Megan?”

  He held a French fry in midair, then set it back on his plate. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not really anything, I don’t think.”

  “Sam said they kissed.” Carl shrugged and I turned to face him. “Did you see it?”

  “There was this boardwalk by the beach—I saw them down there. She was pretty Perkins, to be honest.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Carl. “She was okay. Do you want me to quiz you?”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” he said, poking my ribs. “The quiz is Wednesday. Quadratic formula.” Carl pushed his math book onto my lap, then pointed to the equation and said, “Memorize it.”

  But I couldn’t concentrate. His first night in Myrtle Beach Sam had written to me, and I wondered now if he’d been trying to tell me something, not about speeding tickets or random girls named Megan but about possibility.

  “Carl,” I said quickly. “Did they sleep together?”

  “Jesus,” said Carl, his cheeks flushing. “I told you, I don’t know.” He stood up, knocking the blanket off us. “Why does it matter?”

  When I didn’t respond, he disappeared into the kitchen and I heard his silverware clattering in the sink and his plate shuttling across the counter, but I didn’t go after him. He was angry, or annoyed, but I was thinking about how Sam had touched my leg on the porch swing after practice and how he was home now. If not Megan, someone else; if not Myrtle Beach, Cooperstown. My chest tightened while my pulse raced ahead, counting out the hours till homeroom, history, then seventh-period study hall. I’d offer Sam my arm and he would ink my skin with a thousand blue lines.

  3

  Hugh couldn’t remember the last time he’d left school in the middle of the day, but after his run-in with Caroline he acted on an impulse that told him he needed fresh air, a brisk walk, and a lobotomy. Back in his office, he grabbed his ski hat and gathered the mail from his desk and didn’t stop when Mrs. Baxter rose from her desk and called his name.

  At the Doubleday Cafe, Hugh waved to one of the owners, then to Randolph DeVey, a local lawyer whom Anne couldn’t abide, sitting alone in front of the mute jukebox. A trio of Yankees fans in matching caps drank coffee at the bar; it was too early for tourist season but still a few found their way. Hugh recognized the older couple in the window seat from church, and they nodded to him, and Hugh returned the gesture, then continued to watch them for a moment. The woman held her coffee cup with both hands, making knots of her knuckles, while her lanky husband stared resolutely out the window. Neither spoke. Something about the way the woman worried her cup reminded Hugh of his mother. Ten years ago his father had lost a short battle with lung cancer, and three months after that, his mother had followed his father into an early grave. Yoked together for more than half a century by a common sorrow, theirs had been a marriage of loss, not love, and it made Hugh sad to even think of them now.

  He took a seat at a table for two near the back of the restaurant.

  “You want to see a menu?” asked Missy, leaning across Hugh’s table to lay down a set of stainless-steel silverware.

  “I guess not,” said Hugh. The specials were chalked on the wall. Hugh consulted the board, scanning for his breakfast. “What’s the omelet?” he asked, squinting.

  “Cheddar and bacon.”

  Hugh shrugged. “The omelet, please, and coffee.”

  “You got it.” Missy turned and walked to the kitchen, her generous backside swinging in her black pants.

  “Nice day,” said Randolph from across the room. He had the Daily Star open in front of him alongside a mug and four empty creamers.

  “Beautiful,” Hugh agreed. He shuffled through the stack of unopened mail he’d brought along, then placed it on the table and proceeded to ignore it.

  Hugh’s problems were reproducing at rabbit rate, and in his estimation they all led back to his wife. If Anne worked in Cooperstown, Hugh might have called her right then and the two of them could’ve met away from the house and everything the house seemed to bring with it: Anne’s father, a broken faucet in their bathroom, an infestation of flies in their basement. All of these things needed tending to, and Hugh supposed that’s what life was mainly about but, frankly, he needed a time-out from his life. When, for example, had he started noticing waitresses’ backsides?

  “Brewing a fresh pot,” Missy called from the bar. “Gorgeous day,” she said.

  Already spring, soon to be summer, and school would be out for the season. Hugh would be free to can beans and pickle cucumbers, play high-handicap golf on the nine-hole course at the north end of the lake, grow tomatoes in his backyard. Maybe this summer he really would get started on expanding Seedlings. He’d take seriously his meeting at Klawson’s Hardware this evening. He’d write down figures instead of just pretending to do math in his head. Building a larger school would mean more work—taking out a loan, hiring and training teachers—impinging on Hugh’s relatively relaxed schedule, but with Teddy off to college in the fall and Julia soon after, what else would he have to occupy him but Seedlings?

  Hugh watched Missy pour his coffee. She had been a waitress at the Doubleday since it’d opened, and Hugh had never seen her anywhere out
side the restaurant—he wasn’t sure she even lived in Cooperstown—but she was such a fixture here that he felt like he knew her.

  “Do you live in town?” Hugh asked when she brought his coffee to the table.

  Missy produced a teaspoon from her apron. “Milford,” she said. “I drive in early and get back late. Might as well live here, I guess.” She laughed and Hugh smiled. He wanted to keep her talking but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate to ask. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, he noticed, and he wondered if that had always been the case.

  “Omelet’ll be right up,” she said, and Hugh nodded and thanked her and watched her walk away.

  “Read the paper yet today?” Randolph held up the Oneonta Star.

  Hugh smiled. “Not yet. Anything interesting?”

  “A few of my clients are in the police blotter, but that’s to be expected. How’s your wife holding up in the big city?”

  “I don’t even pretend to know what she does over there,” said Hugh.

  Randolph stood and collected his briefcase and newspaper and walked over to Hugh’s table. “I heard Anne’s mother passed away,” he said. “Terrible business.”

  “It is,” Hugh agreed.

  “Give her my best.”

  Hugh nodded and Randolph turned, crossed the restaurant, and stepped gingerly onto Main Street, shielding his eyes from the sun.

  When Missy set Hugh’s plate in front of him, Hugh said, “You want to join me?”

  He had not expected her to say yes, but she shrugged and pulled out the chair across from him.

  “I’m on break,” she called back to the kitchen. Then, to Hugh, “Mind if I smoke?” Missy produced a pack of Pall Malls from her apron and struck a match from a flimsy white book. Waving the cardboard match to extinguish the flame, Missy inhaled and exhaled, and Hugh, not wanting to offend her, resigned himself to the smell of smoke on his clothes.

  Missy said, “You run that school up on Mill Street, don’t you?”

  “That’s right,” said Hugh.

  Missy smiled good-naturedly, tiny lines circling her mouth and creasing her forehead. She was not unpretty.

  “They say it’s a good school.” She gestured with her cigarette. “Seedlings?”