We Were Never Here(36)
Nana and Bill’s house was enormous, bigger than I’d remembered, with brownish brick and a peaked roof, windows gazing down at me like watchful eyes. Two massive maple trees framed the driveway and a row of bushes fringed the front door, and all of them had that about-to-burst spring look: crimson kernels clustered on the maples’ boughs and lime-green puffs poking out from the bushes. Normally I loved spring, that period of rebirth, but against the tawny lawn and imposing house, the flora looked defenseless, preemie.
“Do you want me to help you carry your stuff in?”
“My grandparents are going to insist you come in and say hi. They’re probably waiting by the door. Consider yourself warned.”
“We’re gonna go be social?” I raised my eyebrows. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
“I’m hanging in there. C’mon.”
We headed for the front door. Kristen had spent her teen years here, at a high-performing public high school that went to state for bougie sports: golf, tennis, soccer. Kristen had been on the poms squad, a postgrad discovery that delighted me to no end. (It was a dance team that used pom-poms, she informed me, and nothing like cheerleading.) In college we’d rolled our eyes at the girls who rushed sororities, eager to fit in. Picturing teenage Kristen high-kicking to Justin Timberlake was strange at best.
Kristen rang the doorbell, and for the umpteenth time that day, I steeled myself. Nana and Bill always put me on edge. Sure, they were friendly in that folksy, generic way. But I couldn’t quite square my impressions of the nice, slightly snobby senior citizens I’d met with the remarks Kristen had made about them. How Bill had told her, smiling, that she’d never last in advertising. How he’d read her honors thesis (“Female Political Representation and Labor Force Participation in Thailand”) and handed it back to her with nothing but a few passages underlined in the Limitations section, as if demonstrating his agreement with everything her dissertation didn’t do. It was hard to imagine these publicly pleasant people acting so dismissive in private.
The door swung open and there they stood: Bill tall and round, Nana small and birdlike. They gave Kristen and me curt hugs.
“We picked out a bottle of Merlot,” Nana announced, and I thanked her. Apparently we were doing some day drinking. “I’ll grab us glasses.”
Bill gestured me into a living room (family room? They looked identical and sat directly across from each other), and I sat. There was that awkward group exhale as we all smiled and looked at one another and wondered whose turn it was to speak. Aren’t you going to ask Kristen how her flights were? Aren’t you excited to see your granddaughter for the first time in over a year?
Bill broke the silence: “How was brunch?” I got the feeling he didn’t really care.
“It was great!” I nodded eagerly. “We went to Evie’s, near the casino? Solid French toast.” I cleared my throat. “And how are you doing? It’s been at least two years since I’ve seen you, right?”
“That long?” Bill made a puffing sound.
“We heard you had a nice time in Chile,” Nana broke in, expertly clutching our topped-off glasses in a four-leaf clover pattern. “You girls are so brave, traveling around in a foreign country like that.” She leaned over to hand me one and I avoided her eyes, my heart suddenly racing. Would I ever be able to speak casually about our trip?
“Careful—Emily has butterfingers today!” Kristen called out. She winked, actually winked, and I felt myself blush.
Bill ignored her as he disentangled a drink from the others. “Yeah, we heard all about the little mountain towns you found in Chile. And all the—what’s it called?”
“What?” Kristen asked, plucking a glass of her own. She looked unperturbed.
“The liquor you gals were drinking—pico?”
“Pisco!” I nodded. “Delicious stuff.” I tried to catch Kristen’s eye, but she was sipping her wine calmly.
“I get so nervous about you girls doing all that traveling on your own,” Nana said. “I didn’t even have a passport until I was in my forties—and I certainly wasn’t going anywhere without Bill here.”
“Yeah, we both caught the travel bug,” I replied. Could they see it on my face, the panic, the blood I could swear was visible as it drummed against my temples? “But, um—what about you? What’s new?”
“You didn’t travel until your forties because you had Dad when you were twenty-one,” Kristen said to Nana, ignoring me. “If Emily and I had eight-year-olds, I doubt we’d be cavorting around the Elqui Valley either.”
“That’s true, I was busy being a mother.” Nana pursed her lips, as if she’d tasted something sour.
“Well, thank God we’re busy visiting pisco distilleries instead of changing diapers.” Kristen raised her glass high and I cringed again—why couldn’t she set aside her resentment long enough to move the subject away from Chile, where we’d left a body in the ground?
“Nana and Bill, have you been traveling—enjoying your retirement?” I glanced from one to the other.
“Oh, they haven’t gotten rid of me yet.” Bill shrugged a shoulder. “How would they run Czarnecki Chemists without the Czarnecki?”