What We Remember. Michael Thomas Ford

might be unraveling. It wasn’t like they were the perfect American family, but they were pretty happy. She always felt sorry for her friends whose parents had split up, and even though she didn’t always get along with her mother and father, it was reassuring to know that they loved her and loved each other.

      It was just a fight, she told herself. Her mother was just overreacting to something. In a few days she would forget all about it and things would be back to normal. That’s how it always was.

      She realized suddenly that she very badly had to pee. She tried to ignore it, but eventually she resigned herself to the fact that, without going, she would never get to sleep. She threw back the covers, got out of bed, and opened her door. The hall was dark. No light came from downstairs, and the narrow space beneath her parents’ bedroom door was dark. She breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had caused the fight, it now appeared to have passed.

      She padded down the hallway, the rug soft beneath her feet. At the bathroom she stepped inside and shut the door before turning on the light. Cursing the male members of her family, she lowered the toilet seat, pushed her panties down, and sat. Immediately she felt better as the pressure on her bladder lessened. And I can brush my teeth, she thought. Her mouth tasted like beer and Paul. She blushed at this last thought, but it also made her happy.

      She was tearing some sheets from the roll of tissue when she heard the muffled sound of someone crying. The bathroom was between her room and her parents’ room, and she knew from experience that people in either room could hear what was going on in the bathroom and that in the bathroom you could hear noises coming from either of the bedrooms. She’d once heard James playing with himself and had teased him mercilessly until he’d threatened to tape-record her using the toilet and play it for all of his friends.

      She knew that what she was hearing was her mother crying. It was loud enough that Celeste thought her mother must really be sobbing. Hearing it made her sad and self-conscious. Was she supposed to go in and comfort her mother? Should she just go back to her room and pretend she hadn’t heard anything? If she flushed the toilet or ran the water, her mother would likely hear it and know that someone was listening to her.

      She decided not to flush. James and Billy were always forgetting, and if anyone noticed they would blame one or the other of the boys. But she still wanted to brush her teeth. They felt funny, and she knew her breath would be horrible in the morning. After pulling her panties up, she opened the medicine cabinet and looked inside. She took out a bottle of mouthwash, opened it, and took a swig. As she swished the liquid around in her mouth, she recapped the bottle and put it away. After a minute she leaned down and spit the mouthwash into the sink, getting as much right into the drain as possible. The rest she wiped up with some more tissue, which she crumpled up and threw into the wastebasket beneath the sink.

      Behind the wall her mother was still crying. The more Celeste listened, the more she wanted to knock on the bedroom door and see if her mother wanted to talk. But she just couldn’t. It was her mother who talked to her when things went wrong, not the other way around. Her mother was the adult. What could Celeste possibly say to her that would help?

      She put the toilet seat back up to make it look more like one of the boys had been in there. Then she turned off the light and opened the door. Again she walked quickly to her bedroom, away from the sound of her mother crying. The air was chilly now, and she got into bed and pulled the covers up. She was tired, and although what she’d seen and heard that night still troubled her, her thoughts turned to her own romantic happiness. After a restless twenty minutes she had forgotten all about her parents’ marital difficulties and fell off to sleep to dream about being with Paul in a sun-dappled glade. His strong hands caressed her breasts, and as he kissed her he whispered in her ear. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

      CHAPTER 11

      1991

      “Mom, I need to talk to you about something.”

      Ada looked at her daughter. Celeste had arrived only minutes before. James was still asleep, and she had no idea where Billy was, but she was making breakfast anyway. It gave her something to do. She’d been up since four and was tired of the novel she’d been reading, so she’d finally gotten up and come downstairs.

      “What about?” she asked Celeste.

      “Dad,” Celeste replied.

      “I don’t see that there’s anything to talk about,” Ada told her. “Not until Nate comes up with something.” She had, since the day before, accepted the truth about her husband. They had found his body. This was upsetting, but there was nothing she could do about it. What was done, was done. Now she just had to let things play out as they would.

      “I don’t mean about finding him,” Celeste explained. “I want to ask you about something that happened a little before he disappeared.”

      Ada turned up the heat under the griddle. “Well, ask then,” she said.

      Celeste looked uncomfortable. Ada, keeping her eye on the pancakes on the griddle, waited for her to continue. Finally Celeste said, “One night I came home late. I heard you and Dad talking in the kitchen. Arguing, actually.”

      Ada turned one of the pancakes over. “What were we arguing about?” she asked, examining the bottom of the pancake to see if it was truly done. “Probably money. Seems like we were always arguing about money.”

      “No, it wasn’t money,” Celeste said. “It was about a woman.”

      Ada turned around. “A woman?” she said, and laughed. “Why on earth would we be arguing about a woman?”

      “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,” said Celeste. “It sounded to me like you were accusing him of having an affair.”

      Ada returned her attention to the stove, where the first pancakes were almost ready to come off. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” she said. “Your father never had an affair.”

      “I didn’t think so,” said Celeste. She sounded relieved. “But I distinctly remember you saying something like ‘I see the way you look at her.’ Also, I heard you crying in your room later that night.”

      Ada slid the spatula under a pancake and transferred it to the waiting plate. “Well, you were a regular little Nancy Drew, weren’t you?” she remarked.

      “Mom, I’m serious,” Celeste countered. “I know I’m not making it up. I was right outside the kitchen. I heard what you said.”

      Ada added two more pancakes to the plate, then took it to the table. Setting it in front of her daughter she said, “And what were you doing coming in so late? Let me guess—out with Paul Lunardi? I never did like that boy.”

      “Well, yes,” Celeste admitted. “I was. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I want to know who you and Dad were arguing about.”

      “We weren’t arguing about a woman, I can tell you that,” Ada said. “Your father was as faithful as a hunting dog. I don’t know what you heard, but you heard wrong. Which is what you get for snooping around in the first place.”

      She went to the cupboard and returned with a container of brown sugar, which she set on the table. Then she opened the refrigerator and took out a bright yellow plastic lemon. “As I recall, you and your brothers prefer this to maple syrup,” she said as she handed the lemon to Celeste.

      Celeste smiled at her. “That’s right,” she said as she spooned brown sugar onto her pancakes. Then she removed the cap on the lemon and squeezed juice onto the sugar, which melted and formed a sticky glaze. “I forget why we started eating them this way.”

      “I don’t remember either,” Ada said. “Probably some foolish idea of your father’s. All I know is that once you started I couldn’t get you to go back to plain old syrup.”

      Celeste took a bite of pancake and made a face. “Too much lemon juice,” she said, reaching for the brown sugar.

      Ada resumed