Best Behavior Read online

  Meredith takes a selfie in her floral dress and considers posting it online with the heading, “Can’t believe graduation day is almost here!” with hashtags of #lovemykids #feelingfabulous #soproud, but then stops. Lily will surely see it (Meredith knows Lily follows her because Lily “likes” her posts on occasion). And when Lily sees the post, she will instantly chalk it up to Meredith’s feeble attempt to outshine her in a field where Lily clearly excels (Meredith has exactly fifty-seven followers).

  Instead, she toggles over to the app that the college has conveniently provided for graduation weekend and that Dawn forwarded to her this afternoon. It lists all the pertinent events with times and locations, and Meredith suspects it will soon fall into her can’t-live-without category for the weekend, much like Tylenol and booze.

  “Wow, you look amazing.” Joel has stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. Small beads of water cling to his shoulders.

  “Don’t sound so surprised.” Meredith performs a coquettish twirl, her dress spinning out around her. How immature, she thinks now, and slides lip gloss and a powder compact into her purse. Trying to compete with Lily on social media! She reminds herself of the advice she gives the kids: social media isn’t real life. It reveals only what people want you to see. Meredith is Dawn and Cody’s mom, not Lily, who has been a stepmom for all of six paltry months. If anyone gets credit for shepherding her children to graduation day, it’s Meredith. Well, Meredith and Joel. Save for writing an occasional check, Roger did precious little for the children after he left, and even less, if it’s possible, before that. No, Meredith will not engage in a self-imposed war of jealousy with some sexy tart who’s almost the same age as her kids, for goodness sake! She has plenty of other things to think about, to be excited about.

  And so, apparently, does Joel, whose towel has just dropped from his waist.

  THREE

  Down in the lobby Carol is already waiting for them, dressed in a cardinal red dress and her signature strand of pearls. Around her lingers the unmistakable cloud of Lancôme Poême perfume. Neither her mother’s nap nor the humidity has dampened Carol’s gray bob one bit, and her thick, straight hair bounces with authority as she turns to greet them.

  “There you are! I’ve already asked them to pull up the car,” she says. “You look darling, darling,” she tells Meredith. “You, too, Muffins.”

  “Muffins” is her mother’s improbable nickname for Joel, who, when he first met Carol over brunch, managed to devour three blueberry muffins. Ever since then, Joel has been Muffins to her mom. Meredith thinks it’s sweet, a term of endearment. Though after Roger, she supposes her mother would have considered any other man to be a cupcake, a scone, a dreamy biscuit. The name seems to have grown on Joel over the years, too, because he signs Carol’s birthday cards, “Love, Muffins.”

  “Thanks, Mom. You look fantastic yourself.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she says as the valet pulls up in their dusty Subaru. The three of them climb in, and Meredith shoots the kids a quick text to let them know they’re on their way. According to her app, they should be at the school in twenty-three minutes. Meet you out front of the dorm, she texts. OK! Dawn texts back within seconds.

  Joel navigates the complicated maze of tunnels leading out of the city, across the Zakim Bridge and past the TD Garden, the blue-green ribbon of the Charles River unspooling below. They almost take the wrong exit, but Joel corrects their route, making a last-minute swerve into the right lane and prompting a string of irate horn blares. Old factories, three-decker houses, and billboards promoting everything from new waterfront condominiums to car insurance sprout up like weeds along the highway. Before long, they exit off the freeway and wind their way through back streets toward the school, where the landscape eventually begins to breathe more easily.

  Just a few weeks ago, Meredith drove up to say hello to the kids, and every time she sets foot in the old neighborhood, a sense of déjà vu descends, as if she might still be a student here, dressed in her Levi’s, a baggy sweater, and clogs. That was nearly thirty years ago, but things haven’t changed all that markedly. The neon sign for Redbone’s barbecue still beckons down a side street, as does the sign for the Somerville Theater. Sadly, Johnny D’s, where she spent countless nights drinking cheap beer and kissing boys she probably shouldn’t have, has shut down.

  They travel along the main street, appropriately nicknamed the Avenue of the Churches, and while several steepled buildings remain, the street appears to have evolved into something slightly grander over the years, as if a big sister has come to dress it up and offer pointers on etiquette. The ramshackle Victorian houses, once off-campus housing, have been bought up by young professionals, evident from the tidy herb gardens that now front expansive porches painted in tasteful shades of purple and green. BMWs line the freshly paved driveways.

  As they draw near campus, it’s obvious that it’s Bolton’s graduation weekend with the rolled-up carpets, abandoned mini-fridges, and crushed packing boxes littering the curb. Meredith swallows hard when she considers the moving job, times two, still ahead of them this weekend. She hopes the kids have at least started packing—she has only reminded them a million times, even going so far as to drop off boxes for this very purpose the other weekend. Beyond the car window, a handful of families strolls toward the main quad, dressed for the various dinners hosted in the dorms tonight. Most parents appear to have shucked formality for comfort on an evening that is growing increasingly warm. A few senior girls in blush-colored dresses wobble in their high heels. Flamingos in shoes, Meredith thinks. Every one of them wears her hair down—long and straightened. How they can stand to leave it down in the heat is beyond her. She would melt into a puddle.

  The parking lot is already full when they pull in, cars wedged in at odd angles in what can only be described as creative parking.

  “Over there,” Carol calls from the back seat, her bony finger pointing up ahead and to the right.

  “Good eye, Mom.” After a few tries, Joel manages to squeeze the car in between two behemoth SUVs, and Meredith hops out to open the back door for Carol, careful not to nick the Lexus next to them.

  When Joel comes around the other side, his sport coat looking a little snug, Meredith can’t resist reaching over to unbutton it. If he had a pipe, he might well be mistaken for a professor on campus. Typically, her husband dresses up only for weddings and funerals (khakis and a blue oxford shirt are his work uniform at school), and she appreciates the fact that he has purchased a new blazer for this weekend. If he’d asked her to go along shopping, however, she might have gently encouraged him to buy one size up.

  “It’s too hot,” she says now, as if undoing one button will make all the difference between his sweltering and being comfortable tonight. “Shall we head over? I’m sure Dawn and Cody are waiting for us.”

  The truth is, Meredith isn’t at all certain that the twins are waiting for them. While Dawn has answered her texts, Cody has responded with only radio silence. She hopes it’s because he’s busy packing. Maybe he packed his phone by mistake, and it’s buzzing in the bottom of a box somewhere? But even she recognizes this thinking for the fallacy that it is. Cody is never without his phone, which might as well be his third hand.

  When the kids were younger, she knew their schedules by heart, not just their after-school activities but during school, as well. Snack time was at ten thirty, gym on Mondays, music on alternate Tuesdays, and chorus on Thursdays. Roger was incredulous that she could name everyone in the twins’ classes and also describe their little personalities, as rich and varied as a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream list. But Meredith had thought, How could I not know? She’d volunteered enough times to recognize which kids needed coaxing to come out of their shells and which ones would be the first to dart their hands into the air to answer a question. Even though she has had to cede control of the twins’ (and their frien
ds’!) schedules long ago, she still misses the comfort that comes from having a firm grasp on their whereabouts.

  Of course, she trusts her son, and up until this year, if she had to place a bet on which child was most likely to graduate with honors, it would have been Cody, hands down. But recently, Dawn has pulled herself together, scoring good grades and surrounding herself with a nice group of friends from her cross-country team. Most surprising of all, she got a job offer before Cody. Halfway across the country in Chicago, but an offer nonetheless, at a crack advertising firm. Cody, on the other hand, has sounded oddly distant over the phone these past few weeks. Meredith wonders if maybe he’s having second thoughts about moving thousands of miles away to North Dakota. Perhaps, she speculates, the dreamy appeal of life-after-college is starting to feel a bit more real.

  Joel grips her hand as they walk up the stone-paved path that meanders past the campus’s administrative buildings, their walls blanketed in ivy that’s the color of a ripe avocado. Up ahead, off to the left, sits the cluster of dorms where tonight’s banquets will take place. As if to prove she can, Meredith’s mom leads the charge up the hill, and neither Meredith nor Joel says anything to stop her. Meredith can feel a familiar tug in her calves. No wonder she was in such great shape in college! She must have walked ten miles a day across the rolling hills of this campus.

  When they reach Pratt Hall, a group of guys is tossing a football around out front. No sign of Dawn or Cody anywhere. Meredith feels her spirits dip a tad—did she really expect the kids to be waiting out front for them? She reminds herself to keep her expectations in check. Just because she has pictured this weekend so many times in her head doesn’t mean it will play out exactly that way.

  “I’ll text Dawn,” she says and flops down on a paint-chipped bench in front of the dorm that looks as if it has seen better days. “Tell her we’re here.”

  “Great.” Joel claps his hands together as he steps away. “Hey, buddy, over here!” he calls out to one of the boys with the football. And before she can stop him, her husband has shrugged off his sport coat and is cavorting about in a game of tag football. He’s lost his mind, she thinks, because within minutes he’ll be sheeted in sweat. But she also realizes there’s no stopping boys from being boys. Of which her husband is decidedly still one.

  Carol, seemingly reaching the same conclusion, drops onto the bench beside her. “Not much longer now,” she says and tenderly pats Meredith’s knee. Meredith isn’t sure if she’s referring to seeing the kids, or graduation day, or something else entirely, but she agrees, “No, not much longer.”

  Just then her phone pings with a text from Dawn, and her stomach flutters. “They’re headed down,” she says, and her mom shoots her a smile, as if she understands all too well what lies ahead for her daughter in the next few days. Meredith smiles back and waits for her beautiful children to push through the door.

  FOUR

  Earlier, Thursday afternoon

  Dawn is freaking out. Or, was freaking out. When Cody didn’t show up to look at the photo earlier this afternoon, she bit her thumbnail down so far that it began sprouting bright red droplets of blood. Which is why her thumb now sports a Buzz Lightyear Band-Aid (the only kind she could find in their medicine cabinet). Even the weed did little to soothe her nerves. Finally, when she couldn’t take Cody’s silence anymore, she typed, YOU BETTER MEET ME RIGHT NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT YOUR BUTT KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL. That got his attention. The photo is of Cody, himself, handing over a paper to a junior who’s notorious for dealing drugs on campus. The photo reveals a date from last week. “Does your brother know it’s not smart to sell papers for drugs? In fact, some would say it’s illegal. Hope no one finds out before graduation.”

  Who would have it out for her brother? Or is it Dawn they intend to humiliate? Why didn’t they send it directly to Cody? When Cody finally texted back around four thirty, I’m in my room. Why don’t you come over here? Dawn had marched over in exasperation.

  Now when she lets herself in, her brother lies sprawled out on the couch, his fingers wound around a controller aimed at a TV screen blaring with gunshots. Dawn despises Call of Duty, a game that she thinks explains a lot about male behavior in the current culture. She even wrote a paper about it for her sociology class. Her eyes skirt across the detritus of Cody’s room, which currently resembles a garbage pit—pizza boxes everywhere, empty beer cans, packing boxes that have yet to be packed. That her parents think her brother is a model child strikes her as slightly hilarious. A snapshot of his dorm room would lead anyone to conclude that it’s the bedroom of a slacker teenager at best, maybe even a serial killer, but definitely not a guy about to graduate Phi Beta Kappa. Sometimes she wonders if Cody really is so smart or if maybe he’s paying someone to write his papers, slip him an early exam. She’s heard of worse offenses to keep the high-octane athletes in school, special “tutors” to boost failing grades. Rumor has it the tutors do all the work.

  Dawn thinks back to when they were in high school together, often in the same classes, and Cody would pull in the highest test score. It used to irk her—his scores were usually only a few points higher than hers, but Cody would inevitably throw the curve for the rest of the class. The possibility that he actually is brilliant, just lazy, seems more likely. Maybe he’s an idiot savant, she thinks, as she steps over a pilled brown blanket lying on the floor. Cody finally glances up and says, “Hey.” His seersucker jacket dangles from a hanger on a doorjamb. Apparently, his roommates, Brad and Toby, have already cleared out for the banquet.

  “What are you doing?” Dawn plops down in a worn recliner, a remarkably ugly brown-and-gold striped chair that’s about a hundred years old. She remembers Cody dragging it from his bedroom at home freshman year and how ecstatic her mom was to finally be rid of it. “Aren’t you a little bit curious about what I have to show you?” she asks, desperate for some kind of reaction from her brother.

  She’s growing more frustrated by the minute, especially now that she understands she left Matt behind for this. Dawn is not about to rescue the golden child today. She deserves this graduation weekend and the accolades just as much as, maybe even more so, than her brother after the year of hard work she’s put in. Too many all-nighters fleck her distant memory. Her mom always assumes that Dawn is the difficult child, stubborn and unyielding, but what she doesn’t know is that Dawn has pulled her brother out of plenty of jams, too. Like that time he almost got caught at an off-campus bender that the cops busted up. Dawn whisked Cody right out of there.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” he asks, his eyes still locked on the television.

  She unlocks her phone, pushes up out of the chair, and waves the photo in front of him, a gesture that at least gets him to press Pause on the stupid game. Dawn can only glimpse her brother’s profile when he sees the photo and caption, but she’s pretty sure she detects a flicker of surprise ride across his face.

  “So?” he says after a few seconds and unfreezes the game, the sound of gunshots piercing the air again. “It’s from last week. We were at the gym. What’s the big deal?” Dawn takes the phone back, stares at the photo.

  “That’s it?” She’s glaring at him, not that he would notice. “I’ve been worried sick all day about this, and that’s all you have to say? No big deal?” An oscillating fan stands in the corner, and every so often it sends Cody’s floppy hair flying so that it stands up like a tuft of chicken feathers.

  “Look, chill out. Eddie asked me to look over his final paper for psych. I guess he was on the verge of flunking the class, so he wanted my help. I told him I’d do it, no strings attached. So, that’s what I did. I edited his paper for him.” Cody glances up from his game for a moment. “You know, it wasn’t even half-bad.”

  Dawn vacillates between desperately wanting to believe her brother and calling him out on the crock of BS he very well could be feeding her. His explanation, detailed enough to be credible, war
rants some consideration. She’s known Cody all her life, and it’s not like him to be involved in drugs. Surely, she would have seen signs of it before this? Just a hair away from accepting his explanation, she remembers the backpack. “If that’s the case,” she presses, “what’s in the backpack that he’s handing you?” Cody pauses the game again, grabs the phone out of her hand, and takes another look. But instead of offering up an excuse, he shrugs. “How am I supposed to know?”

  She is so taken aback by this nonexplanation that she’s momentarily speechless. While it’s true that Eddie holds the backpack, anyone looking at the photo would argue he’s about to hand the bag to Cody. Without a doubt, it’s an exchange of some type. But is it drugs? Just because that’s the reputation that precedes Eddie on campus doesn’t necessarily mean her brother is getting drugs in return for an “edited” paper. Of course, Dawn doesn’t buy the edited paper story one bit. She’s pretty sure that paper was written by Cody. For Eddie. Like 95 percent.

  “You don’t know? Really, Cody?” she demands. “You expect me to believe that? Aren’t you even a little bit worried about the caption under the photo that accuses you of trading a paper for drugs?”

  He flips off Call of Duty, tosses the controller on the table, and jumps up from the couch. He grabs the phone from her and studies the picture one last time before shoving it back into her hand. “Regardless of what you might think, that picture proves squat about squat.” He pulls out a cigarette from a random pack of Lucky Strikes lying on the table, lights up. “Besides, who the hell would take it? It’s twisted.”