All the Secrets of the World Read online

  ALSO BY STEVE ALMOND

  William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life

  Bad Stories

  Against Football

  Rock & Roll Will Save Your Life

  God Bless America

  Candyfreak

  Not That You Asked

  The Evil BB Chow

  Which Brings Me to You

  My Life in Heavy Metal

  ALL THESECRETS

  OF THE

  WORLD

  STEVEALMOND

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2022 by Steve Almond

  Zando Projects supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the CRTeative works that enrich our culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, uploading, or distributing this book or any part of it without permission. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for brief quotations embodied in reviews), please contact [email protected].

  Zando Projects

  zandoprojects.com

  First Edition: April 2022

  Cover design by Evan Gaffney

  Interior design by Aubrey Khan, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

  The publisher does not have control over and is not responsible for author or other third-party websites (or their content).

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021953082

  ISBN 978-1-638-93002-0

  eISBN 978-1-638-93003-7

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  To Paul Salopek

  “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  BOOK ONE

  WELCOME TO SCORPIONVILLE

  BY THE TIME SHE WAS thirteen years old, Lorena Saenz had learned how to make herself invisible. At school, she sat in back and kept her head down, even in second- period science, her favorite class. The teacher, Miss Catalis, was loud and eager and faintly absurd. She wore hippie dresses that bunched at the hips and told long, loopy stories about unsung female scientists.

  “Did I ever tell you guys about Maria Mitchell?” she would say. “She was this totally brilliant schoolmarm who lived on Nantucket and loved stargazing. One night, she snuck onto the roof of the tallest building in town with her telescope. And guess what she spotted up there? A comet. A flipping comet! She went on to become the most famous female astronomer in America.”

  The pleasure Miss Catalis took in such tales was excruciating. She strode up and down the rows, waving her arms, her bracelets clacking. Then she would freeze, dramatically, and demand to know what her students thought. “I’m looking for a deduction. What do you deduce?”

  Eventually, someone would observe that Mitchell was kind of a rebel.

  “What if she simply saw something nobody else could? Is that really rebellion? Sometimes you have to break the rules, if you want to prove the world wrong.” At this point, Miss Catalis would pause and let her eyes drift across the desks until they settled on Lorena, who would look down and squirm with a pleasure that confused her. It was an unnerving sensation: becoming visible.

  A few months into the fall term, Miss Catalis announced partners for the annual science fair. Lorena would work with Jenny Stallworth. The pairing was so unexpected that a few students snorted. Jenny was blond and willowy and rich; braces lent her mouth a swollen insolence. Lorena was short and pudgy. She lived in a small apartment at the edge of the district with her mother, who was from Honduras. In the world of television, her complexion might have been described as a kind of fancy wood, walnut or mahogany, though in the world she occupied it was merely a shade darker than that of her Mexican friends.

  Miss Catalis hoped that Jenny would be inspired by Lorena’s passion for science. But the class saw it differently. They were certain that Miss Catalis had seized upon the fair as a chance to unite two girls of vastly different backgrounds, temperaments, and social standing. It was the kind of thing certain eighth grade teachers did, part of their idiotic fairy-tale agenda. Lorena felt the eyes of her classmates upon her; the pity lit her cheeks.

  Jenny greeted the union with a poise that would have pleased her mother. “This’ll be fun!” she assured Lorena. “We’ll come up with something cool.”

  A week later, Jenny peeled away from the cluster of beauties with whom she commandeered the breezeway, and approached Lorena. “Wanna come over? Like, to my house. My mom thinks we should talk to my dad. About the science fair. He’s a research professor.”

  “What does he study?” Lorena asked.

  Jenny smiled without showing her braces. “Scorpions,” she murmured. “Totally gross, right?”

  Lorena recognized the invitation as a compulsory kindness, yet it was also an opportunity to see Jenny’s house, and perhaps to better understand the ease with which she carried herself through the world.

  It was the winter of 1981. Ronald Reagan had just been sworn in as president. On the outskirts of downtown Sacramento, where the girls lived, a portrait of the former governor still hung in the classrooms at Sutter Junior High. He gazed down upon them with his eternal smile, like an indulgent father, confident that no manner of evil would ever intrude upon the prosperous kingdom they shared.

  THE STALLWORTH MANOR was a mint-green Victorian. It sat on a majestic lot in a tree-lined neighborhood known as the Fabulous Forties. Lorena had biked past the place on her way to school. Mrs. Stallworth met them at the door. She was even more elegant than Lo had imagined, her hair elaborately feathered, honeyed highlights, the sort of woman who might appear in a commercial for perfume. She inspected Lo with a frank and indulgent gaze. “How nice,” she said.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Lorena replied softly, though she had seen only the foyer. Inside, light poured through a bay window, onto a pair of polished end tables. Fresh flowers had been arranged in a cut crystal vase.

  Mrs. Stallworth’s name was Rosemary but everyone called her Ro, so the two of them were going to get along, Ro and Lo.

  Jenny snickered.

  “Must everything embarrass you?” Mrs. Stallworth said.

  Jenny’s room was huge. Rock stars glowered from the posters on her lavender walls. Stuffed animals had been ranked beneath the lace canopy of her bed. The girls thumbed through magazines and listened to Blondie, the band all the white girls listened to. Jenny asked Lo her birthdate, then nodded like it all made sense. “You’re a total Virgo. Earth sign. That means you’re grounded.”

  Jenny was an Aries, a fire sign. Passionate and courageous, but maybe also a little impulsive. She was the baby of the family and could have exploited this, but she had been well-bred. She wasn’t cruel; she hadn’t any cause for cruelty.

  Lo listened to Jenny and gazed at her astrology charts, dizzy with arrows and stars. She told Jenny that she had a grandma who was a curandera and could curse people with the evil eye. It involved killing a baby goat. Jenny lamented the notion of a murdered baby goat, then made a list of the people she might want to curse, which included her older brother and a boy who had teased her about her braces.

  Jenny’s father was supposed to be home by four but he forgot. Jenny’s mother was mortified. That was the word she used. She called her husband and left a message with the department secretary and invited Lo to stay for dinner. They were having steak. Did she like steak?

  Lo preferred not to impose but Mrs. Stallworth smiled and clapped her hands and instructed Lo to phone he
r mother. Lo’s mom wasn’t home, so she faked the conversation, and Mrs. Stallworth promised to drive Lo home; they could put her bike in the back of the station wagon. It was the least they could do.

  Mrs. Stallworth had this way about her. She put people at ease by seizing control of situations. She had served as president of the PTA; there were plaques of appreciation discreetly placed amid photos of her children.

  It was after five when Mr. Stallworth pulled into the driveway. He drove a Jeep, which didn’t strike Lorena as the sort of car a professor would drive. His manner of dress was likewise odd: shorts, hiking boots, a field hat that cast his face in shadow. He strode across the foyer, nodding sheepishly at his wife’s scolding, and uttered a distracted apology to the girls, who watched him from the top of the stairs. Then he took off his hat and Lorena sucked in her breath. He had a sturdy jaw, dark whiskers, pale brown eyes. Swarthy. Was that the word?

  “My God, Marcus, go take a shower.” Mrs. Stallworth gestured at the stains under his armpits. “You smell like an animal.”

  Lorena stared at his calves as he retreated.

  Later, the girls were summoned to his basement office. He was wearing a polo shirt and thick black glasses. Jenny announced, rather defiantly, that they wanted to pursue a project on astrology.

  “It’s smart to pursue a topic that interests you, but astrology isn’t exactly science.” Mr. Stallworth smiled shyly. He was turning a paperweight in his fingers; the tendons on the back of his hand made the muscles of his forearm dance. “You need a hypothesis. And you need proof. Evidence. What do you think? It’s Loretta, right?”

  “Lorena,” Jenny said.

  “We could have people fill out a survey to see if their personality traits fit with their sign,” Lo said. “If there’s a correlation.”

  “A correlation. Good. But we’re not always the best judge of our own character, are we?”

  “What if other people fill out the survey?” Lorena said quietly. “To correct for bias.”

  Mr. Stallworth looked at her curiously.

  Jenny released a sigh of theatrical impatience. “It’s the science fair, you guys, not the national academy of whatever.” She took up the idea of a survey at some length, while Mr. Stallworth closed his eyes and listened.

  The walls of his office were covered with topographical maps, each of them riddled with colored pushpins. They looked like the connect-the-dot drawings Lorena had done as a kid as she waited for her mother to return from work.

  “Why not aim for something a little more empirical?” Mr. Stallworth suggested finally.

  He glanced at Lo, seeking an ally. She felt caught gazing at the cleft in his chin. Mr. Stallworth stood abruptly and announced that he needed to start the fire for the grill.

  “I knew he was going say that,” Jenny said, after he’d left. “Empirical is like his pet word.”

  Lo waited for Jenny to turn away, then picked up the paperweight. It was a coffin-shaped lump of amber with a tiny scorpion suspended inside. By some trick of light, the scorpion looked as if it were shrieking. She felt a sudden urge to slip the paperweight into her pocket and press it against her thigh.

  JUST BEFORE DINNER, Jenny’s brother, Glen, arrived home. Muddy cleats hung from his shoulders. He was a senior in high school, impossibly glamorous. Mrs. Stallworth scolded him for tracking grime into the house. She wasn’t really mad. It was a fond performance, something moms did on TV, the kind who poured fresh-squeezed orange juice into tall glasses.

  “Who are you?” Glen grunted at Lo.

  “That’s Lo,” Jenny said. “Try not to be a dick.”

  “Language!” Mrs. Stallworth called out from the kitchen.

  Glen sauntered up to Lo and let his eyes roll down her body. “Do you think I’m a dick?” He was gone before she could answer.

  The meal itself was elaborate: glazed carrots, fresh rolls with chilled tabs of butter, a salad that had nuts and crumbled cheese on it and steaks from the grill, one for each of them. The Stallworths sat around a huge oak table, with place settings for everyone. The children were expected to summarize their days in a crisp paragraph as the feast steamed. Jenny ate nothing. Glen annihilated his food.

  “Jennifer has a special friend over tonight,” Mrs. Stallworth commented.

  “Everyone can see her,” Jenny scoffed. “She’s not invisible.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Stallworth said pleasantly. “Tell us a little about yourself, Lorena.”

  Lo felt her mouth go dry. Her shirt didn’t fit right. Mrs. Stallworth, all the Stallworths in fact, were looking at her. It was ridiculous, like an audience with royalty. “I’m in Jenny’s science class,” Lo said cautiously. “Obviously. I live with my mom. She works at Mercy. The hospital. On the labor and delivery ward.”

  Mrs. Stallworth clapped. “Isn’t that lovely! She helps babies get born!”

  Lo did not correct this impression.

  “And your father?” Mrs. Stallworth said.

  “He lives in Florida. He got remarried a while ago.”

  Mrs. Stallworth smiled, as if Florida and remarriage were just splendid.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters, Lorena?”

  “Quit grilling her,” Jenny said. “God.”

  “Asking questions isn’t grilling,” Mrs. Stallworth said patiently. “It’s taking an interest in someone.”

  “I have an older brother. He joined the navy. He’s training to work on a submarine.”

  “It’s just you and your mom, then?” Mrs. Stallworth said.

  “We get along pretty well. She works double shifts sometimes, so I make dinner for myself.”

  “Who stays with you?” Mrs. Stallworth said.

  “We have a neighbor I can call if something comes up.”

  “You’re alone there at night?”

  “No. No. My mom always gets home before bedtime. It’s not that big a deal.” She glanced at Jenny. “I’m a Virgo, so I’m pretty independent.”

  Nobody said anything for a few seconds.

  “What do you make for dinner?” Glen said suspiciously.

  Lo meant to tell the truth. Toast pizzas. Beans and rice, doled from the pot that lived on their stove. “Spaghetti,” she said. “Hamburgers. Nothing like this. Thanks again for having me.”

  Through all this chatter, Mr. Stallworth said nothing. He hacked at the meat on his plate and shoveled carrots into his mouth. There was something awkward in how he held his cutlery, as if, left to his own desires, he would have gone at the steak with his hands, then lapped at the red puddle beneath. Lo didn’t realize she was staring until she noticed Mrs. Stallworth staring at her. She held her blade aloft, almost like a baton. Lo cast her eyes down at her plate. She felt a shiver of fear, and this fear, for some unfathomable reason, pleased her.

  “SHE’S SUCH A phony,” Jenny said, after dinner. They were back in her room.

  “About what?” Lo said.

  “Everything. It’s all just this big display. Lucia does all the real work.”

  Lo wanted to ask who Lucia was, then she understood.

  “My mom used to work,” Jenny added. “She sold real estate. But her family is loaded. That’s the secret formula around here.”

  Lo nodded. “I lied about my brother,” she said suddenly. “It wasn’t a lie exactly. He is in the navy. But he signed up cuz he got kicked out of school.”

  “Why was he kicked out?” Jenny whispered, with a gleeful solemnity.

  “He kept cutting classes. Then he kind of joined a gang.”

  “For real?” Jenny put her hand over her mouth.

  Lorena knew it was wrong to talk about her brother’s troubles. But it was a kind of preemptive offering, one that allowed her to protect the most important secret of all: that Tony and her mother were undocumented, that he’d enlisted in the hopes of earning a path to citizenship.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay? Promise?”

  Jenny promised.

  MR. STALLWORTH DROVE Lo home in his Jee
p, turning south onto Alhambra. She watched the trees of East Sacramento give way to the shrubs of Oak Park, then farther south into Fruitridge Pocket, with its Eichlers and pavement. Lorena had never been in a Jeep before. The wind tore at her hair. Potholes rattled her bum. Mr. Stallworth stared at the road ahead, his hands clamped to the steering wheel.

  They pulled up to her apartment building. A Styrofoam takeout box, whipped up from the gutter, hugged the chain- link fence.

  “How do you know about bias?” Mr. Stallworth said suddenly.

  “Our science teacher. Miss Catalis. She has these sayings. The enemy of truth isn’t falsehood. It’s bias. That’s one of them.”

  Mr. Stallworth was smiling. “Listen, Lorena. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: astrology is nonsense. You know that already, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t have to play dumb,” he said gently, almost reluctantly. “It’s okay to be smart.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then Lo thanked Mr. Stallworth for the ride.

  “Of course. Do you need help with your bike?”

  “Not really.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Mr. Stallworth reached across Lo and jerked at the door handle. “It gets stuck,” he murmured, nudging the door open with his knuckles. Lo’s seat belt had tugged at her shirt, exposing a band of belly skin, against which the hairs of his forearm brushed, ever so lightly. A dark possibility rose between them like a coil of smoke then dissolved. It was that quick; Mr. Stallworth withdrew his arm. “In any case,” he said formally. “It’s nice to see Jenny spending a little time with a serious young lady.”

  “MY MOM LIKES you,” Jenny said, in her mocking tone. They were in a corner of the library, supposedly researching. “My brother says you’re getting tits.”

  This was true. They were tender all the time; they bumped into things.

  “What a pig.” Jenny picked at her braces and oinked. “Boys are all pigs. Let’s go to the bathroom.”