Chapter 3 “You Took Advantage of My Disadvantage.” #3
I was holding too much inside, but still, ever an uptight Tallmadge kid, I released the air from the balloon carefully.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I…I really liked Kenny,” I said, which was absolutely true.
I didn’t know him well, but we’d shared a history class together, and that spring and summer at the club we’d had a good time making fun of the caddy master, club pro Harry Fallows, and the retirees who were always yelling at the caddies or condescending to me.
He’d share with me the appalling things both the men and women would say to each other as they walked the fairways, oblivious to the caddies—some of it overtly racist, some of it vaguely fascist—and the amount some of the men would drink.
One afternoon when he was waiting for a loop and I was waiting for room on the practice green, we concocted all sorts of alternate meanings for “NOCD,” the four-letter abbreviation he’d heard a couple of women use the day before.
We began with its actual meaning, “Not our class, dear,” and—as if it were a game like Wordle—eventually got to a long list of sophomoric replacements, some about golf, but most merely juvenile slang for body parts.
(We weren’t stoned, but still found the rhythm of “Nuts, orbs, cha-chas, and dicks” hysterical.
Please remember: we were in high school.)
“I’m sure you did like him. But, funny, isn’t it, we’re only meeting now?
” she said, and there was a trace of venom there that she hadn’t tried to mask.
The subtext? Mira, you all looked down on him.
You know you did. Kid from Miami, dad driving a car with ads on the sides.
No roots in the village. Sure, you liked him, but you weren’t his friend.
The implication was not inaccurate. And, to someone who hadn’t seen Kenny and me laughing together that summer, it was especially pronounced in my relationship to the boy.
I played golf. He caddied. Could there have been a more obvious chasm in a place like that suburb?
Her sister took her arm and tried to soothe her, suggesting, “Let’s invite the girl inside and sit down.
” For my benefit, she added, “My brother-in-law and the girls should be back any minute. They’ve just gone to the supermarket.
People are going to be bringing us lots of meals, but we’ll still need the basics.
And Nick thought it would be good to get the girls out of the house and away from the phone and just… just the claustrophobia of it all.”
Mrs. Foster pried her sister’s fingers from her biceps. “We don’t believe our children are immortal,” the woman said, more pensive now, and I realized she was trying to apologize for having been brusque. “But, as parents, we also aren’t supposed to outlive them.”
“I know,” I agreed.
“No, you really don’t, Mira. And, I hope, years from now, you never do. You’re still a child. And contrary to that idiot priest at the church who believes in fairy tales like virgin births and resurrections, I know my son is gone. Just gone.”
“I think—”
She shook her head. “No, I’m speaking.” Her sister looked at me conspiratorially, her face urging me to be understanding and patient.
“My husband thinks I’m mad at you,” Mrs. Foster continued.
“My sister here thinks I’m mad at you. Father Whitlock sure thinks I’m mad at you.
But I’m not. Oh, I’m mad. Warpath pissed off.
But I’m mad at the fact that my boy is dead.
I’m mad at the fact he was killed at a country club we don’t even belong to. And you know what?”
I waited.
“I’m mad that a girl like you is going to be messed up by this forever. You will, you know. You’re cursed, too.”
“Sharon,” her sister said, but the woman was on a roll and ignored her.
“Oh, child, you don’t need to apologize to me. The club does. The company that made the net does. But they haven’t. They won’t.”
“I did know him,” I told her sheepishly, still haunted by what she’d said earlier. “And I liked him. We were in AP European history together.”
“Well, then, you know the horrors of human history.”
Had I been older or not already so broken myself, I might have responded that the class also taught us the aspirational beauty of the Renaissance.
But maybe not. Most of the class had indeed been about the obdurate law of human depravity and violence.
It was all wars and more wars. And Renaissance incest.
“I guess. But, still. I just wanted you to know, Mrs. Foster, that I’m really sorry.”
She had thawed a bit. “For God’s sake, you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Which was when she gave me a great boozy hug, her skin scented by eighty proof whiskey, and suddenly we were both sobbing in each other’s arms, and she was murmuring something about how much better I was than my parents because here I was on their front stoop, here I was at their house.
Then the woman’s sister was herding us both inside and walking me to the living room couch and sitting us down side by side on the cushions.
Yes, I knew my family would be frustrated and worried that I was sitting beside Kenny’s mom, consoling her and being consoled by her, but I didn’t care, and it would be misleading of me to suggest with some ominous foreshadowing that my apology would come back to bite my family and me in the ass in a lawsuit. It did not.
But what would come back to haunt me was this.
Sharon Foster and I would still be talking in the living room when Kenny Foster’s father and sisters returned from the supermarket.
Nick Foster’s eyebrows would rise in a pyramid and then boomerang into a V as he recognized me as the young woman he had once seen, in a white boho blouse that looked like it belonged on Stevie Nicks, on the arm of Theo Catton.
Theo and I were in the lobby of that aforementioned hotel near Grand Central, checking in.
Nick Foster was there because he needed B-roll footage of the iconic train station for a commercial for a Westchester real estate agency.
“Are you Theo Catton’s daughter?” he asked.
I shook my head no. His sister-in-law explained who I was, and he began a sentence with the words “But didn’t I see you at the hotel with…”
And then he stopped. And soon, against all odds, almost miraculously, that summer would manage to get even worse.