Remind Me Again What Happened by Joanna Luloff

Author:Joanna Luloff [Luloff, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9781616208370
Goodreads: 40558047
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Charlie

After we returned from the hospital, Claire went up to take a nap and I joined Rachel in the living room, music from the stereo barely humming in the background. Rachel was sitting cross-legged on the floor, balancing a mug on her inner thigh. Her toenails were painted pink, which surprised me. She still drank coffee late into the day and bragged that she never had problems falling asleep. She didn’t look as though she’d have any trouble tonight either. She looked rattled, and I wondered if she was still a bit shaken from her shopping trip with Claire a few days earlier. It took me a moment or two before I saw one of Claire’s boxes half-unpacked beneath the coffee table. It took me another moment still to realize that Rachel had been crying.

“Rach? What have you been up to all day here by yourself? Are you all right?” I tried to meet her gaze. There were times when she was impossibly difficult to talk to, and I feared that I might be up against one of them now.

Rachel fixed her eyes on the box. She seemed angry—with me or with Claire or just generally, it was impossible to say. “Rach?” I asked again. “What’s wrong?”

“Have you been through her things?” Rachel finally looked up. “Have you let her go through all of them?”

Her tone stung me a little. “I’m not a prison warden, Rach.” I tried to laugh; I tried to get her to laugh with me, but she was making me unsure of myself and she refused to look up from the box.

“Sure you’re not. No one is accusing you of any such thing, Charlie.” She was trying to smile as she kicked the box away. “I’m going to help Claire sort through some more of these tomorrow if she’s feeling up to it.”

“Of course,” I answered. “I’m sure she’ll be up for it.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows; her look was almost teasing, but I was still sensing some hostility in her gaze. “It’s all right with you, then? There’s a lot of her work things here. Her stuff from New York, her correspondence.” Rachel paused.

“I know what’s here, Rachel. I moved it myself.” I was becoming irritated. After our visit to the hospital, my patience was already worn thin. There were things Rachel wasn’t saying, and she seemed to be savoring the process of leaving me in the dark.

“If she asks me about things, I’ll have to tell her the truth.”

I squatted down beside Rachel and picked up a photograph she had taken out of one of the boxes. It showed the three of us perched on a wall on Charles Street. Rachel was licking an ice cream cone and Claire was wearing a Red Sox jersey. I remembered the day the shot was taken. We had just been to Fenway Park. It was August, just before school was about to start up again. I had a mustard stain on my shirt and Claire was staring directly into the camera, her gaze not entirely friendly.

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