True Places(9)

“It’s disappointing to get a poor grade, but the important thing is to try not to let it happen again.”

Brynn’s thumbs stopped. “Wait. That is so deep. Let me write that down.”

“I know you want to blame me.”

“Yup. Wasn’t it only a couple days ago that you were late to my meet because Dad forgot his tennis bag and you had to run it up to the club for him?”

“That’s different. Your father has a demanding job and I help him however I can.”

“Right. And I’m just a lazy kid taking advanced classes and swimming varsity.” She shifted her feet onto the dashboard, setting Suzanne’s teeth on edge, and went back to her phone.

As Suzanne drove home, she considered where she had gone wrong with Brynn, not just today, but across a longer window of time. When had Brynn become so adversarial? When had Suzanne begun to fail to find a way to bridge the gap between them? She could not pinpoint the shift. She could remember when a lollipop or a balloon was all it would take; it was that easy. The space between then and now was impossible for her to examine objectively. It pained her as much to recall the tender moments as the hostile ones, and the transition from mostly positive interactions to mostly awful ones had been insidious, like a spreading mold.

Suzanne pulled into the drive. Brynn got out and slammed the door shut without a word. Suzanne remained in her seat, in the quiet, searching her memory for how she had so monstrously failed Brynn and coming up with nothing more than a laundry list of shortcomings and oversights she doubted could account for the scope of Brynn’s rage.

As Suzanne gathered her phone and her bag and left the car, her thoughts turned to her own adolescence. She was certain she had never been as openly hostile to Tinsley as Brynn was to her. She had not been an angelic teenager, but she was more circumspect in expressing her feelings toward Tinsley, to the extent that she expressed them at all.

Along the path to the front porch, snowdrops and crocuses bloomed at the base of a trio of Hana Jinam camellias that soon would be covered in huge white flowers edged with hot pink. When she and Whit had bought the house twelve years ago, Suzanne had replaced the tired foundation plantings with varieties guaranteed to celebrate spring. Now she bent to pull a few weeds from between the snowdrops and was reminded of her fourth-grade science poster, “Uses for Useless Weeds,” and the reason she did not depend on her mother—or her father—to tend to her feelings.

Suzanne’s excitement about her project—as she gathered plants from the backyard and roadsides, read library books about botany, and drew the poster itself, her lettering painstakingly even—had been quelled only by her mother’s announcement that her father would attend in her stead. Tinsley played bunko the third Thursday of every month and wouldn’t dream of missing it.

Suzanne remembered being anxious about this role switch but still eager to share her new knowledge with her father. He was a banker, and Suzanne was determined to show him that weeds were as interesting as money and had many surprising uses. For instance, plantain, which grew in their yard, had medicine in its leaves that could heal cuts and stop bites from itching. Suzanne had tried it on her mosquito bites and reported her findings on the poster.

At the fair, her assigned spot was right across from the door of the gymnasium. Each time someone came in and it wasn’t her father, she felt a pinch of worry. The evening dragged on, and kids started taking down their exhibits. Suzanne’s father never appeared. Her teacher, Ms. Highcraft, offered Suzanne a ride home; in her disappointment, she’d forgotten she was stranded.

As Ms. Highcraft pulled up the long drive, Suzanne was surprised to see two cars parked in front of the house, including her father’s black BMW. As Ms. Highcraft’s headlights swung across it, a woman jumped out of the passenger side, scurried to the other car, and drove away, casting a red glow on her father as he got out of the car.

Her father thanked Ms. Highcraft, walked inside, and went straight to his study. Suzanne ate the dinner Marcia had left her, retreated to her room, and eventually fell asleep. Sometime later she woke to raised voices coming from her parents’ bedroom down the hall. She went to her door, forcing herself awake.

Her mother’s voice was high, like someone was grinding their heel into her foot. “Sarah saw you, Anson. She saw you leaving the Grille with that woman.”

“Okay, so it was dinner.”

“If I wake up Suzanne now, will she tell me you were at the science fair?”

“I lost track of time.”

A loud crash made Suzanne jump.

Her father whisper-shouted, “For God’s sake, Tinsley, get a hold of yourself.”

Suzanne’s stomach felt sour, and she could taste her dinner. The shouting went on, softer, louder. Her mother cried. Her father was silent. Then they began again. The stream washed over her, individual words catching at the edges of her consciousness now and again: shame, whore, frigid, money. Suzanne struggled to make sense of what the argument had to do with the woman who had driven away and with her father missing the science fair. Her mother was accusing him of doing something bad, that was obvious. He had caused “a disgrace,” which Suzanne knew, even at ten years old, was the worst thing someone could do.

Suzanne returned to bed. Her gaze fell on her science poster leaning against the closet door. She read the definition she’d carefully written in Magic Marker: WEED: A PLANT THAT GROWS WHERE IT ISN’T WANTED.