Full Ride (14 page)

“What, did the whole family leave Deskins after Whitney died?” Rosa asks. “Can you blame them?”

I shrug. Ms. Darien starts class before I can say anything else. But a few minutes later Rosa slips a piece of paper onto my desk with her familiar scrawl:

Whitney Court lived on Seldom Seen Road.

I give her a wide-eyed look, and she writes some more:

Tanya Dodson talked about going to parties out there.

I pull the paper toward me and start writing back:

Thank you!!!!! But—I thought you weren't going to help anyone else?!?

Rosa writes back:

Us poor kids have to stick together.

Two hours later, I have an interview set up with Joann Congreves, a woman who, according to online property records, bought her house on Seldom Seen Road in 1982. She would have been the Courts' neighbor the whole time they lived there, the whole time Whitney was growing up. And the best thing?

She's promised to tell me everything.

“Whitney was always such a sweet girl,” Mrs. Congreves says. “Such a sweet, sweet girl.”

We're sitting on her screened-in porch, overlooking what she's already told me used to be the hill where all of Old Deskins' kids (including Whitney!) would go sledding whenever there was snow. Sometimes it didn't even take that—sometimes they just rode saucers and sleds downhill on frozen mud.

“Deskins wasn't so stuck-up back then,” Mrs. Congreves says. She gestures toward the window and makes a face. “It wasn't like
that.
”

“That” is an invading army of McMansions, row after row of oversize houses that have taken over the entire view. They dwarf whatever slope would have made the area a good sledding hill. Or maybe the developers flattened the hill when they built the whole neighborhood practically in Mrs. Congreves's backyard. Really, none of the houses are any larger or showier than the one Mom and I left behind in Georgia, but three years of living in a tiny apartment has changed my perspective. Why would so many people need such enormous houses? I can see why Mrs.
Congreves preferred looking out on a field full of laughing, playing children as they sledded in the wintertime, flew kites in the spring, set up bike-race courses in the summertime, or held pumpkin-rolling contests in the fall.

“If it hadn't been for all those kids coming around, Seldom Seen Road really would have been seldom seen back then,” Mrs. Congreves says, even though she's already told me that on the phone and when she greeted me at the door. I have a feeling it's a line she uses a lot.

“Fifteen years ago it was just your house and the Courts out here, right?” I say. If I crane my neck a little, I can just barely see the corner of the sprawling ranch house where Whitney Court grew up. It's about as big as some of the McMansions, but it looks homier, more comfortable. Less pretentious. Mrs. Congreves has already told me how Whitney used to stand out on the back patio practicing cheers and tennis serves, and I can almost picture it. But I don't need to peer out the window watching for her family now: I've also learned that Whitney's parents sold the place and moved to Cincinnati ten years ago.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Congreves says. “This whole area had a different feel to it back then. . . . It's hard to imagine being so isolated now, isn't it?”

She casts one last resentful glance out the window and stirs another spoonful of sugar into her glass of the iced tea she insisted on pouring for both of us. Mrs. Congreves seems to have a lot of nervous energy. She's rocking her wicker chair pretty ferociously for someone who announced that she had her seventieth birthday last week.

She's also told me her husband was an engineer, but he died of a heart attack four years ago; her daughters were six and eight years younger than Whitney, and they both went to Ohio State and now live in Dayton and Indianapolis; Mrs. Congreves herself
has been getting over a bout of bronchitis and pneumonia, even though, yes, it is a bit strange to have those ailments this time of the year . . .

When she promised to tell me everything, I thought she meant everything about Whitney, not everything about everything.

I decide I need to take control of the conversation.

“So when all those kids would come over here to sled—were they Whitney's friends?” I ask. “Was that still going on when she was in high school?”

“Oh, sure, Whitney's friends, then my girls' friends later on. . . . Yeah, the high school kids loved sledding out here,” she says. She rocks a little harder and starts a long, convoluted tale about three high school boys having a dramatic crash at the bottom of the hill, and one of them breaking his leg so terribly that everyone on the hill could hear it, and some of the girls started screaming because the blood looked so extreme, dripping in the snow . . .

I am taking notes furiously until I think to ask, “And where was Whitney when that happened?”

Mrs. Congreves looks startled.

“Oh, she wasn't here then,” she says. “Those were friends of my Rachel. That was long after Whitney graduated and . . . well, you know.”

I decide not to follow up on the “you know.” Not yet, anyway. I want to keep Mrs. Congreves talking about happy times.

“What's your favorite memory of Whitney?” I ask.

“Oh, probably all those times she'd come over and watch Rachel and Tiffany for me,” Mrs. Congreves says. “She was the best babysitter! She'd get down on the floor and really play with them. She had all these games she made up for them, make-believe worlds where animals could talk and zebras had pink and purple stripes. . . . Dan and I would get home and the girls would say,
‘No, no, Mommy and Daddy! Go away! We want to keep playing with Whitney!' ”

This is good stuff. I am writing as fast as I can.

“Tell me more about those games and the make-believe worlds,” I say.

“Oh, I don't remember it all,” Mrs. Congreves says. “There was something about a cat—or was it a pig?—that could speak Spanish . . . or French. Yeah, it was French, because I can remember Tiffy running around saying, ‘Par-lay voo fran-say?' It was the cutest thing. Or, wait a minute, did she pick that up at preschool?”

I clench my teeth.

“Do you think maybe I could talk to your girls about what they remember?” I ask.

“Oh, sure,” Mrs. Congreves says. “I'll give you their phone numbers. Rachel's is five-one-three . . . oh, let me go check for the exact number—I never dial it anymore, I just type in ‘Rachel . . .' ”

She gets up and goes into the next room.

I take a sip of my iced tea, which is way too sweet, and tilt my head so I can see the Courts' old house a little better. Now that I'm sure that really was where Whitney lived, I'll slow down driving past on the way home. Maybe I'll even knock at the door, ask if I can see Whitney's old room. Or would that seem too stalker-ish?

Mrs. Congreves comes back and hands me a paper with numbers written down for each of her daughters.

“I remember something else,” she says. “Looking out the kitchen window reminded me. When Whitney would play with Rachel and Tif, she'd always say they lived in the Land of the Two Seas. Get it? Because ‘Court' and ‘Congreves' both started with
C
's? They'd pretend that there was an ocean on either side of our house.”

I like that one a lot. I write down “Land of the Two Seas—C's” and grin at Mrs. Congreves as she settles back into her wicker rocker. I can already see that description playing a big role in my essay.

“That's so great,” I say. “Like, poetic even. I love it that she was so good with your girls when she was so much older, in high school and all.”

Mrs. Congreves frowns.

“Actually, I'm thinking that was more when Whitney was in middle school,” she said. “Seventh, eighth grade, you know? Once Whitney was in high school, she was busy with so many school activities, it got so it was hardly worth my time to call over there and see if she was available. I had to start calling other babysitters instead—Sandra Stivers, for example, or Lana Graham, or—”

“But Whitney still babysat for you some during high school, right?” I interrupt a little desperately.

Mrs. Congreves's frown deepens.

“Oh, I'm sure, some,” she says doubtfully. “At least once or twice.”

This gives me permission to still use the stories about the Land of the Two Seas and the pig/cat who spoke Spanish or French, but those tales seem less valuable now. Mr. and Mrs. Court might be involved in judging the scholarship contest, as well as sponsoring it. What if they specifically remember that Whitney stopped babysitting for Rachel and Tiffany Congreves after eighth grade? What if that prejudices them against my entire essay? If somebody's kid dies right after high school, wouldn't the parents remember the high school years that much more, because they don't have newer memories of their kid?

“Tell me what else you remember about Whitney in
high school
,” I say, perhaps emphasizing the “high school” part too hard.

“Oh, that girl was always on the go,” Mrs. Congreves says. “She'd leave for school at seven in the morning, and then we wouldn't see her car coming back down the road until ten or eleven at night, she had so many afterschool activities. My husband and I would joke, ‘Was that trail of dust Whitney going by?' ”

Meaning, you really didn't see her at all when she was in high school,
I think with a sinking heart.

I lead Mrs. Congreves through more questions: “Did you ever go to the football or basketball games and watch Whitney cheer?” “Did you see her in the musical, playing Maria in
The Sound of Music
?” “Did you see her school plays?” “Do you remember her being prom queen?” “Did you ever just see her hanging out with her friends?” But everything is vague and distant; there's nothing more along the lines of the Land of the Two Seas. It's clear that Mrs. Congreves and her family were on the sidelines of Whitney's life by her high school years. Mrs. Congreves seems to want to help, I'll give her that, but it's like I'm asking her to dig up the old, dried-out bones of someone she didn't even know that well to begin with.

Ugh, why did I have to come up with a corpse analogy?
I scold myself.

For every lively, interesting memory I try to push Mrs. Congreves to give me about Whitney, she keeps veering off into tales she knows better about other people. I feel like I've now heard everything about Rachel and Tiffany Congreves's high school years, as well Joann and Dan Congreves's high school years more than fifty years ago. And the high school experiences of various friends and relatives of Mrs. Congreves who might have graduated from Deskins High School anytime over the past century.

“But, about Whitney,” I say, interrupting a long, rambling story about why Tiffany Congreves lost out on becoming prom queen
her
senior year.

Mrs. Congreves squints at me, as if she doesn't understand why I'd stop her in the middle of such a fascinating tale.

“About Whitney,” I repeat. “Tell me . . .” I am desperate. I can't make a whole essay out of the Land of the Two Seas. I have to get something else that's at least that vivid. “Tell me about her funeral,” I blurt out. “Surely you went. What did people say about Whitney then? Why was everyone so sad when Whitney died? Why did they say she
mattered
so much?”

I wince at my own words. They're too blunt. Too heartless. I wouldn't be surprised if Mrs. Congreves told me I was being rude.

She doesn't do that. Instead, she tilts her head. Her squint deepens, and she blinks several times.

“You thought Whitney was
dead
?” she asks. “
Dead?
Whitney Court didn't
die.
She . . .”

And then Mrs. Congreves, who's been talking practically nonstop for more than an hour, clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head like she's refusing to say another word.

“She what?” I demand. I half rise out of my wicker chair. “What you do mean, Whitney Court isn't dead?”

Mrs. Congreves just looks at me.

“If Whitney Court isn't dead, then why is there a memorial scholarship named for her?” I ask, baffled.

Mrs. Congreves is still pressing her lips together like she's trying to keep herself from talking. But she opens her mouth enough to say faintly, “I don't think it's called a
memorial
scholarship, exactly.”

Is she right? I remember that it was listed only as “The Whitney Court Scholarship” on both the information sheet that Ms. Stela put directly in my hand and the one I got from Ms. Darien, along with everyone else in AP lit class. There was no “memorial” in the official name. But I thought that was just another of Ms. Stela's careless mistakes.

Didn't the description of the scholarship say it was “in memory of” Whitney?
I wonder.

Or was the wording more like, “in honor of Whitney Court”?

I can't remember. I start shaking my head, just like Mrs. Congreves.

“Okay, I am totally confused,” I admit. “If Whitney Court didn't die, then why's there a scholarship in her name, whether it's in her memory or her honor or whatever? Why didn't anything about her current life show up on the Internet when I looked her up? What happened to her?”

Mrs. Congreves has her lips pressed together so tightly now that it seems like it'd take a crowbar to get her to open her mouth again.

“I thought you knew,” she finally mumbles. “I thought you were just being . . . tactful.”

“Tactful? About what?” I wail. “Why are you acting so mysterious? What
did
happen to Whitney Court?”