Best Behavior Page 3

  Yeah, no playbook for that year, either. Joel knows it’s harder for Meredith to deal with her ex than it is for him. Keep things civil. Swallow your pride. Remember, it’s all about Dawn and Cody, he tells himself. Once, Joel went so far as to suggest he adopt Dawn and Cody to make it official, but apparently this isn’t possible so long as their dad is around. Joel doesn’t mind being a stepdad—it’s a lot like being the cool uncle. One who gets to impart his wisdom without provoking an instant knee-jerk reaction, which is how Dawn, at least, usually responded to her mom in high school.

  Over the years, Joel has stepped into the role of the funny guy, the one who lightens the mood around the dinner table. So different from all those years when he used to come home to his bachelor pad and crack open a Pabst Blue Ribbon on the couch, the apartment so quiet he could hear his own breathing till he switched on the TV. He knows he’s lucky, becoming a part of his family and escaping permanent bachelorhood, a fact he’d grudgingly resigned himself to before meeting Meredith.

  For all their sakes, though, he hopes like hell this weekend will unwind smoothly. Herding together families and stepfamilies and grandparents and friends’ parents, all probably several sheets to the wind by Sunday, however, sounds like a recipe for a human Molotov cocktail. Give it a little shake, and the contents could easily turn combustible.

  * * *

  “Did you get some?” Dawn’s dark hair hangs in a curtain across her shoulder. Her mom has been on her case to cut it, or at least get it trimmed before graduation, but Dawn likes it long. She thinks it lends her an air of mystery, a shade to hide behind, and besides, Matt makes a purring noise whenever he runs his hands through it. With long hair, she can pretend she’s voluptuous when there’s nothing else remotely voluptuous about her. Her body is all skin and bones, a remnant from her days as a ballerina, when her childhood and teenage years were marked by four-hour-a-day practices. Dawn still has nightmares about her instructor shouting, “Posture! Posture,” her hand pressing against Dawn’s backbone, her fingers pinching hard at Dawn’s midsection, where there was only skin to pinch. Grueling and mostly miserable is how Dawn remembers those days. But her instructors insisted she possessed a natural talent coupled with a ballerina’s body, such that it might put her in the running for the conservatory one day.

  She endured the endless practices, the pulled muscles and broken toenails (and toes), the millions of leaps and pliés and spins, the pressures of performances, until her freshman year in high school. Until, that is, it all became too much. She remembers the overwhelming sense of relief she felt when, at fifteen, she confided to her mom that she wanted to quit. How she’d feared Meredith would explode—all that money spent! All those hours wasted! But the news landed easily, as lightly as a butterfly, as if her mom had been expecting it all along. Maybe the sport had worn her mother down, too. The constant complaining, the complicated carpooling schedules taped to the refrigerator door. The exorbitant expense of hideous costumes and the endless pairs of pointe shoes. Maybe her mother was as sick of ballet as she was. In any case, when Meredith met her gaze in the rearview mirror, all she said was “Why?”

  Dawn remembers scrambling to put her misery into words, blinking back tears.

  “Too much pressure?” her mom gently suggested.

  “Too much everything,” Dawn replied. Mostly (though she didn’t say it) she didn’t think she could stomach the sound of her friends making themselves sick in the bathroom anymore, the constant click, click of the scale weights when a dancer stepped on, the brutal competition of it all. The audition for prima ballerina in Swan Lake was what truly broke her, though—the ugly backstabbing and behind-the-scenes gossip among dancers whom she’d assumed were her friends. At first, Dawn was devastated when she didn’t get the lead, but then, the more she thought about it, the more outrageous it seemed. Because, really, they were fighting over a swan. A stupid, obnoxious bird in a tutu. Dawn’s mother didn’t pressure her to stick with dance or give her some lame lecture about the importance of not giving up when things got tough. Instead, she’d said, “Okay. When would you like your final lesson to be?” To which Dawn replied, “How about tonight?” And that was the last time she’d slipped her feet into pointe shoes for lessons, even though occasionally she’ll still twirl around her bedroom.

  “Yeah,” Matt says now, as he lets himself into the room and collapses on the couch. “Just a pinch, but enough, you know?”

  Dawn breaks from her reverie and nods. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about but pretends that she does. That she hasn’t tried weed until now, this in a state where you can legally smoke it or even devour it in a chocolate lollipop (though technically, marijuana still counts as an infraction on campus) is embarrassing, verging on humiliating. Matt has smoked plenty of joints with his roommates, so he knows who sells and who doesn’t. Not that she’d call her boyfriend a stoner, but at least he can inhale without coughing up a lung, which is precisely what Dawn does after taking a puff on the joint he has rolled. Her vision goes blurry for a few seconds and she swipes at her eyes. Matt grins at her, wickedly.

  “Went down a little rough, huh?”

  She clears her throat and squints in his direction. “I don’t feel anything, do you?” After a minute, she adds, “Ew. That aftertaste is gross.”

  Matt studies her with hooded eyes. “It’ll pass. Chill, babe.” He takes another hit while she stumbles to the bathroom sink to cup cold water into her hands, swallowing greedily. The water cools her tongue, and she brushes her teeth for good measure, her reflection staring back at her in the mirror. Nope, still nothing. She feels completely normal. When she returns to the couch, Matt lays stretched out on his back, his hands resting on his chest like a mummy. Dawn curls up next to him, her body a lanky S. “I don’t know how you smoke that stuff. It tastes awful. And I don’t feel anything, anyway.”

  “Give it time, babe.” Matt strokes her hair with his fingers. In the corner of the room, a soap opera plays on the small, beat-up television that Dawn rescued from a Dumpster during her freshman year, some senior’s discard. Soon it will be heading back to the dump, when Dawn clears out all her stuff after graduation. She watches the daytime drama without really watching. Even if her first toke has been a bust, she doesn’t care. So long as she and Matt get to hang out together before their families arrive, before they have to be disgustingly polite and upbeat, she’ll be happy.

  Everyone assumes that Dawn is excited to finally be graduating. And, yes, there had been some question about whether she actually would graduate, having to face the Admin Board last year for charges of cheating on a final. But all that got resolved (even though she’s not sure her parents ever entirely believed her explanation). She and her friend Beth were accused of having suspiciously similar essay answers on an anthropology test—but that was because they’d studied together! In advance of the final, their professor had handed out a list of possible questions, and Beth and Dawn had discussed potential answers. No surprise their essays were similar. It wasn’t as if they’d copied from each other’s exam books.

  In the end, all that really mattered was that the Admin Board gave them a slap on the wrist and ended the common practice of professors handing out questions before an exam. Even though Dawn knows she should be pleased with the end result, there’s a lingering piece of her that still resents having to defend herself to her parents that awful day. Surely, they would have come to golden child Cody’s rescue immediately, convinced of their son’s innocence. But with Dawn, for some reason, those convictions were murkier, quicker to evaporate through the tiniest crack until the Admin Board itself had exonerated her.

  So, yes, even though she is gratified to be graduating, today all she feels like doing is throwing up. Because on Sunday she heads back to New Haven for the summer to work as a lifeguard at the YMCA. Unless Matt plans to fly out from Chicago for a surprise visit, she won’t see him until September, when she starts her job i
n the Windy City.

  At least we’ll be together in the fall, she tells herself. They planned it that way. In the mornings, they’ll take the Metra into Chicago, then transfer to the ferry that will deliver them across town, Matt to his job at a real estate firm and Dawn to her advertising company. Dawn can hardly wait to play grown-up, to pretend that she and Matt are off to work like any normal couple. But that’s a long three months away.

  She pulls her cell off the table and glances at the screen. No text back from Cody yet—what’s taking him so long? They need to talk. It’s one thirty. Still, plenty of time before she has to shower and get ready, before she has to chase Matt out and spray down the room. Not that her mom would even recognize the scent of marijuana, but it can’t hurt to be safe. (Her stepdad, if he notices, would probably be too cool to mention it.) Dawn rolls over on top of Matt and snuggles in closer.

  That her stepdad will be around this weekend to run interference comes as a relief. Joel reminds Dawn of a giant, easygoing seal basking in the sun, one who reacts only if provoked. Most important, he can steady her mom, who has the ability to whip even the smallest nonevent into a tornado. With Joel, what you see is what you get, no frills. Dawn’s real dad, on the other hand, embodies the polar opposite, always buying her gifts and trying to woo Cody and her so that they’ll stick around Boston after college. Cody says it’s Roger’s way of making up for his guilt over abandoning them as kids (Cody’s minor is psychology). To which Dawn replies, Yeah, right. Let their dad grease the grooves of his guilt however he wants. As far as she’s concerned, he went AWOL for most of their childhood, ripping up the memo that forbids parents from being selfish and capricious. That’s territory typically reserved for kids, and Dawn and her brother have been robbed of it.

  She blinks her eyes hard as her head begins to spin, the light cutting in through the window blind slats and casting miniature rectangles along the wall. A battered Imagine Dragons poster hangs in the patch of light. Come Sunday, it will get chucked along with the rest of her artwork, if you can call a few more band posters art. Her dad has promised to drop by on Sunday to help move her stuff, even though it’s not necessary. Matt can help, and her mom and Joel (and her nana) will be here, too. But apparently, her father considers it some kind of weird dad duty, moving his kids out of their college dorm rooms.

  “Wanna take another hit?” Matt asks.

  She shakes her head, then burrows it between his neck and shoulder and inhales his scent, which smells like fresh cut grass and vanilla. Dawn sincerely hopes her dad doesn’t make an ass of himself this weekend. Of course, there are no guarantees, not with Lily in the picture. As if it weren’t awful enough that Dawn’s new stepmom is young enough to be her sister—there’s not even a decade between them! Dawn does her best to ignore Lily whenever the family gets together, and, thank goodness, Lily finally seems to be taking the hint.

  A few weeks ago, she’d tried befriending Dawn, inviting her out for lunch at Trident Booksellers on Newbury Street, followed by pedicures. Dawn endured it like the one root canal she’d had in her life, which is to say with as few words as possible and a silent prayer that her misery would end quickly. When Lily paid with Roger’s credit card and signed her name, Mrs. Roger Landau, in round, loopy letters, Dawn half expected her to turn the U into a smiley face. She’d sat on her hands, willing herself to shut up. But really, if someone was going to waste her dad’s money, then Dawn preferred it to be herself.

  “Did I mention it would be really stupid to get caught with this stuff the day before graduation?” She slips a leg between Matt’s. Even as a blanket of tiredness settles over her, she feels jittery. Why did she think getting stoned before her family arrived was a good idea? Oh, right. Matt dared her, told her she wasn’t allowed to graduate without having smoked a bud at least once in her life. No big deal, she said. Bring it on. But she didn’t expect the experiment to fail, with her lying on the couch sober and Matt fading off into never-never land.

  “Shh,” Matt whispers into her ear. “You worry too much. No one’s around. Besides, Jerry doesn’t want to catch us. Can you imagine how bad he’d feel if he had to shut us out of graduation?” Jerry, a graduate student in the veterinarian program, is their dorm proctor. Over the years, he has overlooked numerous student transgressions, sometimes even being the source of them.

  “I guess you have a point.” Matt rolls over to realign his body on top of hers and sets down the joint on an abandoned soda can. Gently, he lifts the edge of her shirt, circling her belly button with small kisses that feel like butterfly wings stroking her skin. Dawn pulls off his T-shirt, then hers, prompting a moan from Matt when he sees that she isn’t wearing a bra. His tongue slowly traces an imaginary line from her belly button up to her breasts while he unzips her jeans.

  “When’s Claire coming back?” he asks, tugging at her jeans.

  “Not till dinnertime. She’s working at the café.” Dawn wiggles out of her pants and tosses them on the floor. Claire is Dawn’s roommate, and though they didn’t become instant best friends like some roommates she knows, they’d been compatible roommates for four years. At least Claire doesn’t do crazy things like light her hair on fire, a trick one girl tried sophomore year on a dare.

  “Awesome,” Matt says. Dawn’s head feels fuzzy, and her heart boomerangs around in her chest. Maybe the weed is beginning to work after all? She promised Matt they would have the entire afternoon to hang out together, but Cody still hasn’t gotten back to her. She needs to talk to her brother before her mom and Joel get here. There’s a photo he must see, something that’s potentially stomach-turning, but she doesn’t dare text it to him because what if, somehow, it ends up in the wrong hands? What if it’s already in the wrong hands? The sender’s cell number is blocked.

  Dawn knows she should be the one to show the photo to her brother. It’s the kind of thing that could make a guy keep looking over his shoulder, up until the very minute his diploma rests securely in his hand.

  * * *

  Lily stares into the fridge, creating a mental checklist of the plates chilling on the shelves. The caterers have dropped off a few items early to ensure that Saturday’s party goes smoothly. Cheese plates—check. Juices and sparkling water—check. Miniature quiches—check. Wings and ribs marinating—check. She shuts the fridge door and strolls over to the wall of windows, where she can see Donna, the party coordinator, chatting with the grounds crew. At the moment, they are struggling to set up an enormous white tent on the back lawn. A few guys lug stakes and heavy hammers to secure the tent, while a young woman works to untangle a string of white lights about a mile long. Along the yard’s perimeter, the purple hydrangeas have burst into full bloom, as if they’ve been waiting all month to pop at exactly the right moment, an orchestrated event for graduation. Farther out, half a football field away, the lawn gives way to a pebbled beach, where ocean waves kick up white spray. It’s a gorgeous venue for a graduation. Do the kids even realize how lucky they are? Lily wonders. Or maybe when people grow up with such largesse, they forget to appreciate it.

  Secretly, Lily is glad that she fell in love with Roger before getting a peek at this house. Most nights, when they were first dating, they would party in the city and then wander home to her small apartment in Beacon Hill. Roger always said he preferred to stay at Lily’s rather than make the forty-minute trek back home. But after dating a few weeks (and when Lily was pretty certain that Roger was the One), he’d invited her out to his house in Manchester-by-the-Sea for dinner. He’d picked her up dressed in a sharp seersucker blazer, a white shirt and khaki pants, suede loafers without socks, little tan lines snaking around his pale ankles. Lily remembers it as if it were yesterday, when she hopped in the convertible and pretended she was being whisked away in her own fairy tale.

  Which, it turned out, she kind of was.

  When they pulled up to the house, it didn’t seem possible that he lived there all by himself—
that is, he and his hulk of a Saint Bernard, Moses. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d understood that Roger was wealthy—after all, the man drove a BMW convertible and was able to secure sought-after tickets to a Patriots game within minutes. She understood that some of his clients were Boston sports icons. But she hadn’t been expecting a sprawling clapboard house by the sea with floor-to-ceiling windows that peered out on a neatly manicured lawn, a crystalline pool, and the ocean just steps beyond.

  That night, he boiled lobsters in the chef’s kitchen, covering her ears when the beady-eyed creatures screamed and tried to escape the pot, Moses barking wildly. Out on the veranda, a white-draped table awaited with a bouquet of wild roses, their vibrant pink hue reminiscent of the color of the inside of a grapefruit. Moses settled heavily at Roger’s feet, and then they’d proceeded to talk into the night, Roger refilling her glass with prosecco while the sun tumbled casually into the ocean. If she hadn’t fallen for him before that night, she would have always wondered: Did she love him or did she love the lifestyle a future with Roger promised?

  A soft breeze plays with the linen curtains, and Lily sweeps them aside. Being so close to the ocean helps to cool the house, but already the humidity of the day is starting to creep in. Friday and Saturday are forecasted to be the hottest days of the month yet, which is why she persuaded Roger last minute that they should rent a tent. It required calling in a favor (an old boyfriend of Lily’s runs a local wedding company), but it was well worth the price. No one can expect Roger’s parents or Meredith’s mom to cool off in the pool like the kids. Plenty of shade and cold drinks, preferably with copious amounts of alcohol, will be necessary.