Crystal Grader by Tag Cavello (read my book txt) 📕

“Jarett was—“

“Don’t,” Crystal cut in, raising her hand. “Don’t say anything bad about him, please. I’m in no mood to hear it.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything bad,” Hannah promised. “I was going to say that Jarett was…unhappy. That was what struck me about him when we first met. I looked into his eyes and thought: This man is unhappy.”

“Me too,” Crystal said.

She spoke the truth. Jarett’s doleful eyes had, in fact, been part of his appeal, and thinking of him now made her chest begin to hurt, they way it always did when terrible things that couldn’t be changed appeared along the plateau of her life: hungry children in the streets of Manila, terminal illness, burned out dreams. She thought of Jarett, and then, instantly, of Chubby. Sweet, smiling Chubby. And before she could stop them, tears began to well up in Crystal’s eyes.

“But why?” Hannah asked. “Did he ever tell you things about his past or share any secrets?”

“Both,” Crystal nodded, “he did both. Do you have a Kleenex?”

In a flood of apologies her younger sister jumped from the table. Crystal waved them off, telling her not to worry, that she hadn’t cried over Jarett in a long time so it was fine. Hannah fetched a box of tissue and placed it on the table. Thanking her, Crystal began to wipe her eyes, but was interrupted by Luke, who seemed insistent upon helping. His pudgy hands snatched at the tissue until it became clear that his arms were too short to manage the task. Undaunted, he leaned closer to wipe at the tears with his fingers instead.

“It’s okay honey,” Crystal laughed. “Mommy’s fine.”

Hannah was smiling at the scene as well. But like Luke, she would not be deterred long. Within seconds she asked again what it was about Jarett that made him brood so. Instead of answering the question, Crystal responded with another: What made Hannah think he was sad all the time? She’d barely known him, after all.

“I suppose you have a point,” the younger woman admitted. “But we lived with him while Mom was in the hospital, remember? And I’m telling you, Crystal, that guy was out there. Somewhere near Pluto if you ask me.”

“It only seemed that way. I got…very close to him.”

“That must’ve taken some work.”

“You know I never back down.”

“So tell me,” Hannah said for the third time, “why was he hurting so much?” And did you help with that pain? her eyes seemed add. Or did you make it even worse?

“He lost someone special in high school,” Crystal said. “A girl. They were young. Very much in love.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died. Shot herself at an arcade. With a revolver.”

Hannah said nothing for several moments. A bird twittered outside the window; a car went by in the street. Then she asked Crystal if she wanted more coffee. Crystal accepted, and while she was stirring in the cream Hannah wondered aloud whether Jarett had seen Crystal as a kind of replacement or second chance.

“Maybe,” Crystal told her.

In fact Hannah’s theory had occurred to her more than once over the years, and while it wasn’t pleasant to entertain, it made perfect sense. A girl he loved who’d been young and beautiful had gone. Years later, another young and beautiful girl had come along—young, beautiful, and aggressive for his affections. Was it really so farfetched to assume he’d made a connection between the two? To think that one could possibly heal the pain caused by the other?

Rather than pursue the subject any further, Crystal decided to change it. She asked after Hannah’s husband. Were they happy? Did they enjoy work and parenthood?

“I don’t work,” Hannah said.

“Like hell you don’t. Being a housewife is a pain in the ass.”

“Please don’t swear in front of the kids.”

Crystal smiled. “You sound just like Mom.”

“What can I say? She’s perfect.”

***

The next hour found Crystal back on route 61. She traveled under skies considerably darker than what they’d been before lunch, and a breeze had gotten up in the fields, so that the wheat on one side of the car swept towards her in waves. Hoping to make it back to Monroeville before the rains came, Crystal pressed harder on the gas. She passed fresh-painted two story homes with electric candles glowing in the windows. She passed the church where once, in what seemed like another age, she and Hannah had attended a farmers winter meeting with Jarett. Her foot came back a little. That icy-cold winter night had been fun—good, crazy fun. Something had gone wrong, she remembered, something about there being too much coffee and too little food…

Hannah’s coffee had been strong. As for Hannah herself, she’d seemed distant. Tired. Nothing at all like the little sister from Eagle View Drive. And in her case, the aggressive style of communication that Crystal used (with humor, dry wit, and seat-of-the-pants flight in equal measure) had failed to turn anything about.

“That’s weird,” Lucretia said later that evening at dinner. “When Hannah and I go shopping I can barely shut her up.”

“Maybe that’s what we need to do,” Crystal said.

“What, go shopping?”

“Yeah. All three of us. With the kids, of course.” A new thought struck her then. “Hey Mom, did Hannah ever talk about me while I was in Manila?”

Lucretia’s fork of macaroni pasta stopped halfway to her lips. “Not too much, I guess. She might have asked after you a couple times during the first year, but after that it tapered off. I figured you two were talking so much online she was already up to speed.”

Crystal nodded. She and Hannah had never talked very much online. Twice a year, maybe, for an hour.

Later that night, after Luke had gone to sleep, she soaked in a hot bath, trying hard to think of nothing at all. Trouble was, there were a lot of memories to beat back, and all she had right now for weaponry consisted of steam, water, and soap. These were not poor substitutes by any means (most of the time they worked just fine), but tonight, for whatever reason, they were not enough.

How did Shit-Shit the janitor die? a morbid voice asked from the back of her mind. Easy, another answered, Crystal killed him.

And what about Lucy? How did she die?

Easy, the other voice repeated, Crystal killed her. And Jarett too, of course. Jarett also died because of Crystal. My goodness, you know what? Crystal’s a mass-murderer. A serial killer. It’s no wonder she creeps Hannah the fuck right out.

“That’s enough,” Crystal said aloud to the tiles.

Hannah doesn’t like you, Crystal. Why should she? You were a total loon back in the day. All you cared about was yourself. A-number one. The snowflake. The it girl.

“I said shut up!”

But the voice wouldn’t shut up—not completely. It was like an echo that refused to die, even after she tucked herself under the bedcovers with a book and a reading light. Her stomach felt tight, tense. If it kept on, she knew, she would break into a light sweat, and her heart would begin to race. In other words, if it kept on, it would eventually become a panic attack.

She had to prepare herself for that. Give herself a pep speech. Not to prevent the attack from happening (this was almost impossible), but to make it more bearable. Okay girl, she thought, you’re going to fall asleep for maybe an hour, and when you wake up…wham-o! Ten thousand volts of fear. Just remember that it’s all harmless. It doesn’t mean anything.

She began to read. In five minutes her skin felt hot. In ten she was gnawing at the collar of her nightdress. Very soon now, a full-blown, stage four panic attack would arrive. Arrive? More like kick down the door and rape her.

And all the while, the echo continued. Crystal heard it over her racing heart. She heard it over the rustling leaves outside the window. She heard it over the gentle, steady music of Luke’s breathing. Murderess…you’re a murderess. Hannah’s afraid of you.

The book slapped closed. It wasn’t doing any good tonight anyway. Crystal sat up in bed, took a few deep breaths. It made no sense to let fear do this to her over and over again. It had no right to pick her up and swing her around by the tail. For Luke’s sake, she had to put a stop to it.

But how?

Miko seemed to think he knew. Back in Manila, he would keep telling her to relax, to just relax. Such advice was ridiculous—tantamount to telling a passenger on a jet with no pilot to fly the plane, to just fly the plane. One night during a particularly intense attack she’d become angry and demanded instructions. Miko’s blank, stupid stare had been answer enough. He didn’t know how to relax either. He just did it.

Crystal picked up the book, put it down, picked it up again. Her heart continued to race. And now, right on cue, came the tingling in the arms. It was all so very stupid. There was nothing to be afraid of in this room except fear itself.

“Easy, girl,” she said softly. “Easy.”

Next to her in the bed, totally at peace, Luke slept on. It relaxed Crystal a little to know that at least one person in the house tonight wasn’t engaged in a tug of war with insanity. She smiled…and at last, her heart began to slow down, the echo fade.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

Putting thoughts of janitors and writers and childhood friends out of her mind, Crystal picked up her book. Before long, the words were swimming on the page. Five minutes later Crystal closed her eyes, and without even realizing it, she fell asleep.

24

Your friend Lucy is dead…she killed herself today.

Monroeville’s newspaper, The Village Voice, did not quote the rather untactful method Lucretia had used to inform her daughter of this tragedy, but there was indeed an article, along with a front page headline decrying that Monroeville had now suffered two suicides in less than a year’s time. A week later, a second article appeared, this one more opinionated. The reporter expressed concern over a possible epidemic. Could it be, she wondered over three meandering paragraphs, that the inhabitants of our fair town have fallen under a spell of despair, wrought by bad economics, bad weather, and just plain boredom? She went on to urge readers that if they or anyone they knew had ever been inclined to do themselves harm, to seek help immediately. We need not suffer alone, this reporter insisted at the end of her piece. The first step towards ending our pain lies with communication. Speak, and people will hear. Hear, help…and finally, heal.

Crystal Genesio read the article when it appeared in April of 2006, but she didn’t take its advice. There were good reasons not to. In the first place, she wasn’t feeling suicidal, though for the rest of that year she cried into her pillow nearly every night before falling asleep. It the second place, it just seemed wiser to keep her mouth shut, considering her involvement with both the events in question. This latter point rang especially true with the janitor (whose name she had never learned and still did not care to know). The April edition of The Voice had perhaps chosen not to remind its readers of the humiliation he’d suffered last year out of simple courtesy, but everyone knew about it all the same. And after the suicide of Lucy Sommer, it became the talk of every lunch counter in the Firelands all over again. People seemed intent on finding a connection between the two tragedies—an idea Crystal would have found ridiculous had she not known that there actually was. Had the janitor and the girl been in a relationship of some kind? There was talk at Vanson’s of an inappropriate love affair gone sour. They’d been sneaking around