Page 32 of The Ghostwriter

May 16, 1975

“Girls, I’m off to run some errands,” my mother says as she enters the kitchen. She eyes the open bag of potato chips on the table between me and Margot and sighs. “Maybe you could have some carrot sticks instead?” she suggests. “You’ll be glad you did when you’re my age.”

She doesn’t stick around long enough to hear me mutter, “You mean when I’m old and pickled with alcohol?”

But Margot laughs and takes another chip from the bag. “So who do you think did it?” she asks.

We’d been talking about the graffiti that appeared this morning in the school gym.

But I’m sidetracked again when I hear my mother say, “Hello, Lydia.”

Margot’s eyes lock with mine.

“Is Vince home yet?” Lydia asks.

“He’s supposed to be, but you know Vince. Feel free to come in and wait. There are some Diet Rite sodas in the fridge, and the girls are in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Taylor.”

“Did you just come from track practice?” we hear my mother ask. Lydia says something I can’t make out and then my mother says, “Well, lucky thing you have some time to tidy up. Feel free to borrow my lipstick if you like. It’s in the top drawer of the bathroom.”

I roll my eyes and Margot stifles a giggle. The front door closes, and Lydia wanders in.

“Hi,” Margot says, offering her a bright smile. I kick her under the table.

Lydia glances at us. “Hey,” she says.

When she turns to open the fridge, I gesture for Margot to follow my lead. “All I know is that the graffiti was already there in first period because Lana Simpson has PE first period and she said Mr. Stewart canceled their volleyball game and made them run laps instead. He wouldn’t even let them inside the gym.”

“So someone must have broken in either early this morning or late last night, because when I was there for basketball practice yesterday evening, everything was normal,” Margot says.

“What are you talking about?” Lydia asks.

I turn to her and say, “Someone broke into the gym at school and wrote Fuck You on the wall right by the PE offices.”

Lydia pulls the tab from her can and tosses it in the trash, taking a sip of my mother’s favorite no-calorie soda. I watch her, trying to see if this news surprises her.

“Were you training with Mr. Stewart this afternoon?” Margot asks her, her tone overly friendly. Almost suggestive.

Lydia looks at her, wary. “Yeah,” she says.

“Did he mention the graffiti to you?”

“Why would he?” Lydia says to her. “He gives me laps to run and I run them. We don’t really talk.”

“Uh-huh,” Margot says, taking another chip. She holds the bag out to Lydia. “Want some?”

Lydia shakes her head and takes another sip of soda.

“So who do you think did it?” Margot asks me, her question performative. We both know Vince did it, and we’re pretty sure we know why.

“Who knows?” I say. “Could have been anyone, really. Vince once told me that some of the kids in his class used to pry open the side door—you know, the one by the bike racks—and get drunk in there.”

Margot wrinkles her nose. “Gross. That place smells like an old shoe.” Then she glances toward the hallway, where Jimi Hendrix is blasting from Danny’s room. “Do you think Danny ever did that?”

“Nah, he prefers the oak grove. Always has.”

Lydia coughs, tears forming in her eyes, and I look at her. “Are you okay?”

“Bubbles,” she says.

Just then, the door of Danny’s room opens, and he comes out, wearing a pair of shorts and no shirt. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar blasts from his stereo and Margot and I stop talking.

Danny walks past us, grabs the bag of chips off the table, and shovels a handful into his mouth, winking at Margot, who blushes. She’s so obvious.

He barely glances at Lydia, still standing by the doorway, silent. He opens the fridge, pulls out one of our father’s beers, pulls the tab and drops it on the counter, where our mother is sure to find it, and strolls back toward his room again, the music fading as he closes the door.

“Why go through the effort of breaking into the gym when they could have just written it on the outside?” Margot says, picking up the thread of our conversation.

“Placing it inside, next to the PE office, feels personal,” I agree, watching Lydia. For the first time in a while I really look at her, noticing how hollowed out she seems. She’s lost a ton of weight, and she didn’t have much to lose to begin with. My mother is always complaining about dark circles under her eyes, but Lydia actually has them. She certainly looks like someone who’s had an abortion.

“Poor Mr. Stewart,” Margot says. “To have to clean that up.”

“Don’t be dumb,” I say, turning to her. “It’s Frank who will have to do that.”

Frank, the beloved custodian, who loves to joke with the students, who is always happy to unlock a classroom so they can retrieve a forgotten item after hours.

Lydia pushes off the counter and goes back to the living room where we hear the TV turn on and the click of the dial changing the channel, finally stopping on Let’s Make a Deal.

Margot looks at me, her eyes wide, as if an idea has just occurred to her. “Did you notice how fast she left the room when Mr. Stewart’s name came up? What if her baby was Mr. Stewart’s?”

“No way. He’s a teacher.”

“A young, hot one,” she counters.

“Still,” I say. And yet, the night Lydia and Vince went to see Pink Floyd, I’d followed them. Down the highway, ditching their bikes in the bushes. I remember the confident way Lydia had stepped onto the road when Mr. Stewart’s car had appeared, as if she already knew Mr. Stewart would be happy to drive them to Ventura, no questions asked. The way Vince had pulled her back, his hand rough on her arm. The way they’d had a hurried argument before she shook him off and jogged to the waiting car, forcing Vince to either follow or get left behind.

“I heard he’s only twenty-nine,” Margot says.

“That’s still old,” I say, trying to imagine how that would even work. Like, were they kissing in the equipment shed? Behind the gym after track practice?

“It may seem old now,” Margot says. “But when she’s forty, he’ll only be fifty-four. That’s not a big deal at all. My aunt Joan married a man who was sixty.” She shivers. “Watching them kiss at the wedding was so gross.”

But I’m only listening with half an ear, my mind turning over the fights Vince and Lydia have been having. How he doesn’t like how much time she’s been spending training. Asking why she always gets a ride back to our house from Mr. Stewart. Vince is the only one who doesn’t think it’s cool that Mr. Stewart lives next door. Well, Danny doesn’t, but Danny doesn’t think anything is cool except him and Mark.

“Well, anyway, she looks awful,” Margot whispers.

I get up and peek around the corner of the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room where Lydia sits on the couch, gripping her Diet Rite in both hands, staring at the television. On the screen, Monty Hall asks a man dressed as Little Bo Peep if he wants to keep the $500 behind door number one or trade it for what’s concealed behind door number two.

I return to the table and roll the bag of chips closed. “Remind me never to have sex,” I say.

***

It happens again just a few days later. Someone had kicked in the door of the equipment shed, slashed all the balls with a knife, dragged a trash can inside and set it on fire. This time, I hear about it at the beginning of second period. Two girls, whispering their theories to each other as we wait for our English teacher, Mr. Connelly, to return from his cigarette break and start the class.

“It happened around eleven last night,” one of them says. “A neighbor saw smoke coming up from over the school and called the fire department.”

I’d been doodling a giant sun with rays poking out from the baseball pictured on my Pee-chee folder, and I freeze, unease pulsing through me. I’d filmed Vince sneaking out of the house last night around ten thirty.

I turn to the girls who were talking about the fire and say, “Who do they think did it?”

The other one, a girl named Frances, snaps her gum and says, “They definitely think it’s a kid. I mean, this plus that graffiti the other day. It’s obvious they’ve got a problem with one of the PE teachers.”

There are only three of them—Mr. Stewart, who is by far the most popular. Then there’s Mr. Wallen, an ex-military guy who’d fought in Korea and who makes his students chant cadences when they run laps. And Ms. Kantor, who everyone knows is gay, but no one cares because she teaches PE, so it makes sense.

I pick up my pen again and begin shading in the rays of the sun I’d drawn, my mind worrying about Vince’s rising temper. What he’d done to Ricky Ricardo. And now this. But why go all the way to the high school to target Mr. Stewart when he could just go next door to his house? Take a rock and break a couple windows. Or slash the tires of his car. There are lots of ways Vince could make a statement if he wanted to.

Like killing his cat.

The bell rings, bringing Mr. Connelly with it, the smell of Tareyton cigarettes and Old Spice cologne wafting after him. He claps his hands together and says, “Okay, everyone. Pens out. We’re writing an essay on Othello .”

Groans erupt from around the room, and I pull a few sheets of loose-leaf paper out of my binder, trying hard to push away the image of Vince sneaking across our dark yard last night, or the possibility that Margot was right about the father of Lydia’s baby.