was a sharp contrast to the protocol by which Sylvie usually summoned them for visits, emailing them days ahead of time, negotiating both their schedules to see when was best for all. Sylvie wasn’t the type to demand they come only when it suited her – that was Joanna’s mother’s territory. If Joanna had to make a guess – and she always had to guess, because none of the Bates-McAllisters would ever tell her directly – she’d say that today’s invitation was a response to whatever this was with the wrestlers.
Joanna sat back in the passenger seat, letting the iPod she’d been fiddling with fall to her lap. ‘So what happened, anyway? How’d the boy kill himself?’
‘I don’t know,’ Charles answered.
‘Your mom didn’t tell you?’
‘I don’t think she knows, either.’
‘Was there a suicide note?’
‘No. They don’t even know if it’s a suicide. They’re doing an autopsy to find out.’
Joanna paused, considering this. ‘My mother said Scott should talk to a lawyer.’
‘You talked to your mother about this?’ His face registered a dart of annoyance.
‘It just slipped out on the phone today,’ she admitted.
‘You had to run and tell her, didn’t you?’
‘It just slipped out,’ she repeated. She adjusted her seat belt. ‘So, do you have any idea who’s supplying these hazing rumors?’
‘No.’ He took one hand off the steering wheel and ran it over his head.
‘Who could it be?’
‘Joanna, I don’t know.’
‘Why aren’t you curious?’
‘Why are you?’ But he said it quietly, almost tepidly.
The trees formed a canopy over the road. Small green buds dotted some of them, but others were bare. ‘I just worry, that’s all,’ Joanna said. ‘Your poor mom. After your dad and all…she doesn’t need this.’
Charles pulled the lever for the wiper fluid. The windshield wipers made a honking sound and slid the soap across the glass. ‘Probably not.’
‘And I think you should help Scott. You’re his brother. Don’t you think you should?’
‘Well, he hasn’t asked for help.’
‘People don’t always ask,’ she reminded him.
‘He hasn’t done anything wrong.’
Joanna touched the smooth, slick buttons on her jacket. She was tempted to ask Charles if he really believed that.
‘Don’t worry about it, okay?’ Charles said, putting on his turn signal. ‘It’s not a big deal.’
They were at the turnoff to his parents’ house. It was so ensconced by the trees it was easy to miss. Charles pulled up the long, snaky drive. A pine near one of the turns had fallen against a few other trees, reminding Joanna of a happy, drunken girl propped up by her friends at the end of a long night. They pulled into the circular drive behind Sylvie’s car, the newish Mercedes she often parked outside, and Scott’s car, the slightly older Mercedes that Sylvie had given to him. Scott’s Mercedes had dings on the side, worn tires, and a speckled half-moon of rust across the front bumper. The back bumper was plastered with stickers, many of them irate and instructive. One bumper sticker near the window said Free Mumia; it featured a picture of a black man with a beard and dreadlocks who’d been wrongfully imprisoned. According to an article Joanna read on Wikipedia, this Mumia guy had been accused of committing a crime because of preconceived notions about his past, his looks, his blackness.
The house loomed ahead of them, a turreted estate over a hundred years old that Charles’s great-grandfather had passed on to Sylvie. It was made all of stone, with a low stone wall around it, a little balcony on the upper floor surrounded by a wrought-iron terrace, and a six-car detached garage across the drive. The house had numerous out-croppings and gables and cupolas and a brass weathervane in the shape of a rooster at the very highest point. There were three patios, a sun room, and a lap pool out back, and the whole thing was surrounded by thick, shapely pines and an elegant garden. Whenever Joanna beheld the estate, she got reverent chills. She always felt like she needed to be on her best behavior here. It was like what her mother used to say to her when they went to Mass at the drafty, icon-filled, stained-glass Catholic Church in Lionville, Pennsylvania, where she’d grown up: Don’t make any noise. Don’t touch anything. God’s looking at you.
Sylvie was already standing on the large brick side porch, her hands clasped at her waist, a brave smile on her face. As always, she was impeccably dressed in an ironed lavender skirt and a perfectly tucked-in eyelet blouse. She even wore heels, little lavender things to match the skirt, and pearls looped twice around her throat. She dressed this way to go to the grocery store, to go for a walk. The ring Charles’s father had given her a few months before he died glimmered under the porch light.
‘I made banana bread, Charlie,’ she said after everyone hugged. ‘Your favorite.’
They entered the house through the kitchen. Dim golden light dappled through the stained-glass window and across the white-painted wooden cabinets, the ancient, rounded Sub-Zero refrigerator, and stout, space-age MasterChef stove. The smell of banana bread drifted comfortingly through the air. Sylvie had put an old classical record on the turntable, presumably plucked from the collection that belonged to her grandfather.
‘Sit, sit,’ Sylvie urged, gesturing toward the kitchen table. A bunch of vacation property brochures were spread out on the surface. As Joanna and Charles sat down, a very different sort of song thumped through the walls to their left. Joanna cocked her head, listening to the drubbing beat, the muddy bass, the muffled shouting. She tried to meet Charles’s eye. Scott’s suite shared a wall with the kitchen.
‘So listen – we’re so behind!’ Sylvie said, fluttering from the oven to the cupboards to the sink and then repeating the cycle all over again, though bringing nothing to the table. ‘We haven’t picked out a vacation house for this summer! But I think I found a good one. It’s on the water in Cape May. July seventh to the twenty-first.’
She plucked a magazine from the pile on the table and leafed to a marked page. ‘Here. It has seven bedrooms. It seems like a lot, but you know those houses – they’re all huge. Really, I wonder if we should just buy a place instead of rent. Then we could decorate it the way we want.’
Charles shifted in his seat. Joanna wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking: planning a vacation in the middle of a scandal seemed inappropriate. Only, was that what this was? A scandal?
‘And it’s brand new,’ Sylvie went on, pointing at the tiny pictures of the house’s interior: a country kitchen with white bead board on the walls, a master bedroom with lavender striped curtains, a shed that was filled with beach balls, bicycles, plastic kayaks, and kites. ‘It won’t have that smell; you know that old beach smell? Even the nicest houses get it sometimes.’ She flipped through the catalogue to another page. ‘Though this one’s nice, too. It’s closer to town. It’s hard to decide.’ She looked up at Charles, her face softening as if a thought had just struck her. ‘Honey, don’t think you have to come for the whole
