“I’m gonna sell that. It’s kid shit, really.” Everett felt hot as he said it, angry. He was surprised to discover the emotion.
“Oh, don’t do that. You love zipping around here.”
“I could get two thousand for it, twenty-five hundred maybe, enough for a trip. We should go somewhere, just us, like a family trip.”
“There’s no point. Every place is the same.”
“What about Italy?”
Marly lit a cigarette and he put the window down. She glanced over and he knew she wanted it back up. His mother was always cold, even when it was fifty-five degrees.
“Italy. That’s where you take your new wife, not your mother.”
But he wanted to take his mother, he told her. He smiled. He tried his best. She was wearing an oversize hoodie that he’d bought for her from the college he’d attended for a year, its acronym puffed up over her chest. It was the one that everyone went to, the one that hadn’t really required high SATs. She glanced at the window again, and Everett pressed the button and back up it went. He signaled and moved toward the expressway on-ramp. “I have been sort of seeing someone,” he told her on an impulse. She didn’t need to ever know the real story. He could always tell her it didn’t work out later, that it was some college girl who had to move home, to North Carolina, or DC, or somewhere. He could see the lie like a thing of beauty.
“That is the fastest way to heartbreak,” Marly said, lips drawing on her cigarette.
They drove along awhile and then she said, “Do I know her? Is it serious? Will I get to meet her?” as if she’d only just realized what he was telling her.
Everett shook his head and said, “Probably not.”
He knew Marly wanted him to be happy, get a girlfriend, get a job, get married, give her grandkids. These were the things she recited at him, as if reading from the script for the role of the caring mom she’d once been. At the same time, she’d only come to see the condo once. She was surprised to see it was a tower; she said she’d thought a town house was more likely, and he wondered how closely she’d looked at any of the pictures he’d shown her in the months they waited for it to get built. If Everett did any of that big life stuff, he wasn’t sure she would really care. She’d given up a long time ago, and bringing her back was no easy task. Maybe that was why Everett didn’t want to go clubbing or meet girls through his friends, even though they expected him to. They said he was the good-looking one, the one who would bring the ladies scrambling toward them. There was no point. Everett knew he could do all the things a person was supposed to do, but at the end of the day, just like his mom, he was a little dead inside.
With Carter, it was easy. He would get lost in a feeling that didn’t have a name—it was like a big wave carrying him forward.
“Everett! You’re drifting,” Marly said. “And you’re driving too fast.”
He pulled the vehicle back from the outer line. He didn’t know why he’d said that thing earlier, to Carter about her neck. Or why he’d phoned her right after she’d left. It was an impulse. Stupid. “Italy,” he said to his mother. “I was thinking of Italy.”
“She has a name, this girl?”
“Of course, it’s . . .” Everett squinted out the windshield. He took a moment to think as he reached for his sunglasses. “Jane.”
“Jane. That’s nice. Don’t hear that name very much anymore. Is she older?”
“A couple years, yeah.”
“That might be good for you, Everett.” Marly nodded.
* * *
—
There was a TV on the back wall of the pizzeria near the beach. A commercial was playing for a crime show. “They’ve been calling,” Marly said with a nod, and Everett followed her gaze. Crime After Crime, the spot read in large letters. Tuesdays at 9.
“Who?”
“You know these TV shows. I don’t want to be interviewed again—not after what they did on 20/20 before the sentencing.”
His mother insisted Stone Phillips had made her cry on purpose. But of course his mom had cried. She would have cried no matter who was interviewing her or what they asked. Everett never understood why she was so embarrassed by the segment. He’d found it on YouTube a while back, a small clip anyway.
Stone Phillips: The evidence is not that strong. The DA is now afraid to go to trial. A jury would never convict her. Do you think Kennedy did it?
Marly Kimberson: All I need to do is look that freak in her eyes and know the truth. She killed her. I knew something was wrong when I came home and they were hanging upside down off the bunk bed, arms crossed and hair straight down. I asked what in the hell? And that Kennedy said to me: practicing being vampires. Well, practice makes perfect, don’t they say?
His mother ran her hand over her red hair—lately she’d been wearing it super short so she didn’t have to deal with it. She squinted out the big front window of the restaurant. It was after two p.m. and the sun was streaming in.
He was about to ask if she wanted him to stand up and fix the blinds when she said, “I always thought we got a raw deal—shoulda been both of them.”
The server came then and the pizza tray landed between them. Everett waited until the server left, then, as his mom lifted her slice up, he said, “What are you talking about?”
She chewed and didn’t answer right away. He took a few bites, then picked some of the mushrooms off. They ordered them because Haley liked them.
“I’m not saying they’re telepathic, but c’mon, secrets with twins?” She shook her head. “There ain’t no secrets.”
He felt himself flinch. What was it Carter had said that morning? It’s not that simple? Did that mean she included herself in what happened? He thought about the dreams she’d hinted at.
Marly was chewing and staring out the window. “I always thought Haley could’ve been a lawyer, or something like that. Wouldn’t have been easy, the tuition. But she was so smart. Do you know what she got on her PSATs?” For once his mother didn’t rattle off the numbers but bragged instead. “And she had an internship with Doug Macaulay. You know, a law firm ain’t Arby’s.”
“Wasn’t she a little young for that?”
“It was a school internship.” Marly shook her head. “I knew we never should have taken her to that Clint Black concert. Too secular. That’s when it all started with Haley—the makeup, the dancing.”
They were finishing up when the TV played the Crime After Crime spot again. This time Everett caught the whole thing. A young woman lay, unmoving, in a pool of blood. At that moment he turned away but could still hear. The narration carried through the half-empty restaurant: “Time doesn’t heal wounds. Justice does.”