Page 49 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“Mama made me look at Reynolds, and Andover and the Putney School, but I told her not to hold her breath.” Piper was twelve, and next year she would start at boarding school. That was the reason why Piper and her parents were here now—they were considering Knollwood.
“Ah, my little fish,” I said, leaning into her shoulder.
“Fish?” Piper said, scrunching up her face like she smelled something bad.
“Yeah, you know, fish. Like freshman. The little fish in the big pond.”
“I’ll never be a fish,” Piper said. “I’m a Calloway.”
The Knollwood Lions scored again, with Leo carrying the ball triumphantly into the end zone, and we were all on our feet, cheering.
After the game was over, Eugenia suggested that she and I wait for Leo to shower and change, and everyone else would head to Falls Church to grab a table at Fiona’s. Fiona’s was the only nice restaurant in town, and so there was always a mad rush to get a table on weekends when families were in town, like homecoming or graduation. As they were leaving, Uncle Teddy pinched my arm playfully and said under his breath, “Don’t let the old broad drive.”
When everyone was gone and it was just Eugenia and myself, I buried my hands deep in the pockets of my jacket and braced myself for the inevitable. Eugenia was always very direct and she didn’t shy away from prying into the particularities of our lives. For the past several years, she had taken a keen interest in my and Leo’s dating activities. Freshman year, I had made the mistake of teasing Leo about Drew in front of Eugenia, and Eugenia had somehow proceeded to gather Drew’s entire family history, and when she discovered that Drew’s aunt played tennis at the same club, she invited her and her husband to play doubles. A few weeks later at a family dinner, Leo was forced to admit to Eugenia that his relationship with Drew was short-lived, and Eugenia had told Leo, in front of the whole family at dinner, that Calloways did not engage in dalliances and it was not becoming for a man to appear loose. I had nearly choked on my tomato bisque and Leo went red in the ears and stared down at the table. We’d vowed from that point on to keep our lips sealed when it came to who we were dating (or more, I promised not to let slip who Leo was involved with, since I didn’t date).
So it took me by surprise when instead of asking about my romantic endeavors, Eugenia folded her box of crackers neatly back into her wine bag and said, “Your father told me you were at the house on Langely Lake last weekend.”
“How did he—?”
“The groundskeeper phoned him,” she said. “It’s been a while since anyone’s been at the house. You and your friend gave that poor gardener quite the scare.”
“Sorry about that,” I said.
She didn’t ask me what I had been doing at the lake house, or what I had been doing in Hillsborough, even though there was only one reason I would ever go to Hillsborough: my mother.
“Your mother’s family—they’ve always wanted to control the narrative,” Eugenia said. “They don’t want to believe Grace is the type of person she turned out to be. It is a great tragedy to lose a child, and an even greater tragedy to lose your good opinion of your child—and so the Fairchilds told themselves a story they could live with. I don’t blame them for that. But I do blame them for trying to drag you and everyone else down that twisted, delusional path with them.” Eugenia sighed. “Charlotte, there is something you have to understand,” she said. “Your whole life, people will try to tell you who you are and what to believe about yourself. Don’t let them.”
I looked out at the now empty football field. The sky overhead was shot through with pink and orange. It was the kind of sky that came at the end of summer; the kind of sky that marked the end of days where there was more daylight than darkness; the kind that announced the cool chill of autumn.
“The truth is, your mother was unhappy,” Eugenia said. “She was always unhappy. A quiet, reserved, skittish thing. Prone to moods and outbursts. She struck your uncle Teddy once, you know. Nearly broke his nose,” she said, shaking her head.
“She hit Uncle Teddy?” I asked. I had never heard that story. I couldn’t recall my mother and Uncle Teddy ever being hostile toward one another. In fact, I barely remembered them interacting with one another at all. “Why?”
“There’s hardly a provocation that could justify physically assaulting someone in public,” Eugenia said, waving away my question. “I sometimes wonder if your mother had some sort of chemical imbalance that made her act the way she did.”
This new sliver of information dropped like a pebble into the pool of my mind, creating a ripple through the memories I had of my mother. Was what Eugenia said true? For a moment, it seemed to obscure everything I thought I knew about my mother, casting every image in a slightly different light.
I remembered one morning at the lake house, going to my parents’ bedroom door and finding that it was locked. It was a weekday and my father was away in the city. I stood there for a long time, twisting the knob and calling for my mother, but she never opened the door. After a while, Claire showed up. I remembered her telling me that my mother wasn’t feeling well, but that she was there to take me and Seraphina out for breakfast.
Were there other things that happened that I hadn’t really understood at the time?
“For years your mother was very withdrawn with the family,” Eugenia said. “And those last couple of months before she left, she even became distant with Alistair. It nearly killed him, what she did.”
At that moment, Leo came out of the field house with one of his teammates. He raised his hand and waved at us in the distance. Eugenia stood and adjusted the wine bag on her shoulder.
“I’ve kept my mouth shut about your mother for years out of respect for your father. But I thought you deserved to know the truth,” Eugenia said before turning away from me.
Yael leaned over the porcelain sink next to me toward the mirror and concentrated hard as she drew the liquid black liner across her lower lid. Then she leaned back to admire her handiwork: a perfect, thick black line.
“Do mine next,” Drew said. “You always do the best smoky eye. Somehow mine always end up making me look like the walking dead.”
“That’s because you put way too much on,” Yael said. “Less is more.”
I stared blankly at my wan complexion in the mirror and my damp, freshly washed hair. Usually I enjoyed getting ready for the homecoming dance and spending time with the girls, but today I was having trouble feeling anything but this suffocating weight on my chest. Ever since Eugenia had told me those things about my mother, I couldn’t really think about anything else. My mother may have had some sort of manic-depressive mood disorder. My mother’s family was spinning the narrative about her disappearance because they couldn’t accept the person she’d turned out to be. Surely some of what Eugenia said was true—but which parts, and how much?
“Earth to Charlie,” Stevie called out.
“Hmm?” I asked.
