Chapter One
1 June 1991
julia roberts is getting married. It’s true: Her dress will be an
eight-thousand-dollar custom-made two-piece gown from the Tyler
Trafficante West Hollywood salon, and at the reception following the
ceremony, she’ll be able to pull off the train and the long part of
the skirt to dance. The bridesmaids’ dresses will be sea-foam green,
and their shoes (Manolo Blahnik, $425 a pair) will be dyed to match.
The bridesmaids themselves will be Julia’s agents (she has two), her
makeup artist, and a friend who’s also an actress, though no one has
ever heard of her. The cake will be four-tiered, with violets and
sea-foam ribbons of icing.
“What I want to know is where’s our invitation?” Elizabeth says.
“Did it get lost in the mail?” Elizabeth-Hannah’s aunt-is standing
by the bed folding laundry while Hannah sits on the floor, reading
aloud from the magazine. “And who’s her fiancé again?”
“Kiefer Sutherland,” Hannah says. “They met on the set of
Flatliners.”
“Is he cute?”
“He’s okay.” Actually, he is cute-he has blond stubble and, even
better, one blue eye and one green eye-but Hannah is reluctant to
reveal her taste; maybe it’s bad.
“Let’s see him,” Elizabeth says, and Hannah holds up the magazine.
“Ehh,” Elizabeth says. “He’s adequate.” This makes Hannah think of
Darrach. Hannah arrived in Pittsburgh a week ago, while Darrach-he
is Elizabeth’s husband, Hannah’s uncle-was on the road. The evening
Darrach got home, after Hannah set the table for dinner and prepared
the salad, Darrach said, “You must stay with us forever, Hannah.”
Also that night, Darrach yelled from the second-floor bathroom,
“Elizabeth, this place is a bloody disaster. Hannah will think we’re
barn animals.” He proceeded to get on his knees and start scrubbing.
Yes, the tub was grimy, but Hannah couldn’t believe it. She has
never seen her own father wipe a counter, change a sheet, or take
out trash. And here was Darrach on the floor after he’d just
returned from seventeen hours of driving. But the thing about
Darrach is-he’s ugly. He’s really ugly. His teeth are brownish and
angled in all directions, and he has wild eyebrows, long and wiry
and as wayward as his teeth, and he has a tiny ponytail. He’s tall
and lanky and his accent is nice-he’s from Ireland-but still. If
Elizabeth considers Kiefer Sutherland only adequate, what does she
think of her own husband?
“You know what let’s do?” Elizabeth says. She is holding up two
socks, both white but clearly different lengths. She shrugs,
seemingly to herself, then rolls the socks into a ball and tosses
them toward the folded pile. “Let’s have a party for Julia. Wedding
cake, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We’ll toast to
her happiness. Sparkling cider for all.”
Hannah watches Elizabeth.
“What?” Elizabeth says. “You don’t like the idea? I know Julia
herself won’t show up.”
“Oh,” Hannah says. “Okay.”
When Elizabeth laughs, she opens her mouth so wide that the fillings
in her molars are visible. “Hannah,” she says, “I’m not nuts. I
realize a celebrity won’t come to my house just because I invited
her.”
“I didn’t think that,” Hannah says. “I knew what you meant.” But
this is not entirely true; Hannah cannot completely read her aunt.
Elizabeth has always been a presence in Hannah’s life- Hannah has a
memory of herself at age six, riding in the backseat of Elizabeth’s
car as Elizabeth sang “You’re So Vain” quite loudly and
enthusiastically along with the radio-but for the most part,
Elizabeth has been a distant presence. Though Hannah’s father and
Elizabeth are each other’s only siblings, their two families have
not gotten together in years. Staying now in Elizabeth’s house,
Hannah realizes how little she knows of her aunt. The primary
information she has always associated with Elizabeth was acquired so
long ago she cannot even remember learning it: that once, soon after
Elizabeth became a nurse, a patient left her a great deal of money
and Elizabeth squandered it. She spent it on an enormous party,
though there was no occasion, not even her birthday. And she’s been
struggling to make ends meet ever since. (Hannah has been surprised
to find, however, that her aunt orders takeout, usually Chinese, on
the nights Darrach is gone, which is at least half the time. They
don’t exactly act like they’re struggling to make ends meet.) It
didn’t help, financially speaking, that Elizabeth married a truck
driver: the Irish hippie, as Hannah’s father calls him. When she was
nine, Hannah asked her mother what hippie meant, and her mother
said, “It’s someone fond of the counterculture.” When Hannah asked
her sister-Allison is three years older-she said, “It means Darrach
doesn’t take showers,” which Hannah has observed to be untrue.
“Would we have our party before or after the wedding?” Hannah asks.
“She gets married on June fourteenth.” Then, imagining it must
appear on the invitations like this, all spelled out in swirly
writing, she adds, “Nineteen hundred and ninety-one.”
“Why not on the fourteenth? Darrach can be my date, if he’s here,
and Rory can be yours.”
Hannah feels a stab of disappointment. Of course her date will be
her eight-year-old retarded cousin. (That’s the final piece in the
puzzle of Elizabeth’s financial downfall, according to Hannah’s
father: that Rory was born with Down’s. The day of Rory’s birth, her
father said to her mother, as he stood in the kitchen after work
flipping through mail, “They’ll be supporting that child all the way
to their graves.”) But what did Hannah think Elizabeth was going to
say? Your date will be the sixteen-year-old son of one of my
coworkers. He is very handsome, and he’ll like you immediately.
Sure, Hannah expected that. She always thinks a boy for her to love
will fall from the sky.
“I wish I could find my wedding dress for you to wear at our party,”
Elizabeth says. “I wouldn’t be able to fit my big toe in it at this
point, but you’d look real cute. Lord only knows what I did with it,
though.”
How can Elizabeth not know where her wedding dress is? That’s not
like losing a scarf. Back in Philadelphia, Hannah’s mother’s wedding
dress is stored in the attic in a long padded box, like a coffin.
“I gotta put the other load in the dryer,” Elizabeth says. “Coming?”
Hannah stands, still holding the magazine. “Kiefer bought her a
tattoo,” she says. “It’s a red heart with the Chinese symbol that
means ‘strength of heart.'”
“In other words,” Elizabeth says, “he said to her, ‘As a sign of my
love, you get to be poked repeatedly by a needle with ink in it.’ Do
we really trust this guy?” They are on the first floor, cutting
through the kitchen to the basement steps. “And do I dare ask where
the tattoo is located?”
“It’s on her left shoulder. Darrach doesn’t have any tattoos, does
he? Even though that’s, like, a stereotype of truck drivers?” Is
this a rude question?
“None he’s told me about,” Elizabeth says. She appears unoffended.
“Then again, most truck drivers probably aren’t tofu eaters or yoga
fanatics.”
Yesterday Darrach showed Hannah his rig, which he keeps in the
driveway; the trailers he uses are owned by the companies he drives
for. Darrach’s current route is from here in Pittsburgh, where he
picks up axles, to Crowley, Louisiana, where he delivers the axles
and picks up sugar, to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he delivers the
sugar and picks up women’s slips to bring back to Pittsburgh. The
other night Darrach let Rory demonstrate how to turn the front seat
around to get in the sleeper cab. Then Darrach pointed out the bunk
where he meditates. During this tour, Rory was giddy. “It’s my
dad’s,” he told Hannah several times, gesturing widely. Apparently,
the rig is one of Rory’s obsessions; the other is his bus driver’s
new puppy. Rory has not actually seen the puppy, but discussion is
under way about Elizabeth taking Rory this weekend to visit the bus
driver’s farm. Watching her cousin in the rig, Hannah wondered if
his adoration of his parents would remain pure. Perhaps his Down’s
will freeze their love.
After Elizabeth has moved the wet clothes into the dryer, they climb
the basement steps. In the living room, Elizabeth flings herself
onto the couch, sets her feet on the table, and sighs noisily. “So
what’s our plan?” she says. “Darrach and Rory shouldn’t be back from
errands for at least an hour. I’m taking suggestions.”
“We could go for a walk,” Hannah says. “I don’t know.” She glances
out the living room window, which overlooks the front yard. The
truth is that Hannah finds the neighborhood creepy. Where her family
lives, outside Philadelphia, the houses are separated by wide lawns,
the driveways are long and curved, and the front doors are flanked
by Doric columns. Here, there are no front porches, only stoops
flecked with mica, and when you sit outside-the last few nights,
Hannah and Elizabeth have gone out there while Rory tried to catch
fireflies-you can hear the televisions in other houses. The grass is
dry, beagles bark into the night, and in the afternoon, pale
ten-year-old boys in tank tops pedal their bikes in circles, the way
they do on TV in the background when some well-coiffed reporter is
standing in front of the crime scene where a seventy-six-year-old
woman has been murdered.
“A walk’s not a bad idea,” Elizabeth says, “except it’s so damn
hot.”
Then the living room, the whole house actually, is quiet except for
the laundry rolling around downstairs in the dryer. Hannah can hear
the ping of metal buttons against the sides of the machine.
“Let’s get ice cream,” Elizabeth says. “But don’t bring the
magazine.” She grins at Hannah. “I don’t know how much more
celebrity happiness I can take.”
hannah was shipped to Pittsburgh. She was sent away, put on a
Greyhound, though Allison got to stay in Philadelphia with their
mother because of exams. Hannah thinks she should still be in
Philadelphia for the same reason-because of exams. But Hannah is in
eighth grade, whereas Allison is a high school junior, which
apparently means that her exams matter more. Also, Hannah is viewed
by their parents as not just younger but less even-keeled, and
therefore potentially inconvenient. So Hannah’s school year isn’t
even finished, but she is here with Elizabeth and Darrach
indefinitely.
