“What did she say?”
“She said she would think about coming to see us.”
Mother was silent.
“Is there something I can do for you, Mother?”
She sat back, her eyes glazing over. “It’s hard to look at one without the other,” she muttered. “It’s so painful. It’s like looking directly at the sun.” She put her hand over her heart.
“You should get up and about, Mrs. Fitzgerald. Best to find ways to keep yourself busy,” Mrs. Lofter said.
Mother shook her head. She seemed to be dwindling right before my eyes, shrinking into herself. “It’s hard,” she muttered again. “One without the other . . .”
I heard the phone ringing and then the doorbell.
“I’d better go see about that,” I told Mrs. Lofter. “It might be important.”
She nodded.
Mother raised her head quickly, her eyes widening with hope. “She’s back? Kaylee’s back?”
“Haylee is going to see and come back to you,” Mrs. Lofter said.
I turned and fled rather than just leave the room. Mother was making me feel terrible. I didn’t pick up the phone. It went to voice mail. I could hear that it was Daddy’s brother calling from Hawaii. Instead, I went to the door.
This time, it was the two detectives, Cowan and Simpson.
“Have you found her?” I asked the moment I set eyes on them.
“Not yet, Haylee,” Lieutenant Cowan said. They came in. I didn’t like the way they were looking at me. Lieutenant Cowan opened a small notepad. “Your sister’s friend Sarah Morgan,” he began, and paused.
“Yes?”
“Close friend of hers?”
“She’s closer to Kaylee than to me. Kaylee is more generous when it comes to spending time with losers,” I said. “She felt sorry for her, so I put up with her to please my sister. Why? Does she know something that will help?”
“She says Kaylee was very upset these past few days. She wouldn’t tell her exactly why, but she says she had never seen her so agitated. She says your sister promised to tell her why soon.”
I looked at Detective Simpson and wondered if he had a girlfriend. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
I shrugged. Was that all they had gotten from her? “No mystery about that. I threatened to tell Mother and Daddy about her Internet romance, so she became nervous. I was going to do it, too, but she talked me out of it by saying that when she met him, if he wasn’t what she thought he was, she’d stop, but I think she was playing me.”
“Playing you?” Detective Simpson asked.
“To get me to go along with her plan about the movie and all.”
“And you thought she might think of running away with him if she did like him?” Lieutenant Cowan asked.
I nodded. “She also threatened to do that if I so much as hinted at what she was doing on the Internet. I never saw her so determined about anything, and I didn’t doubt her.”
“Sarah says she’s your sister’s best friend,” Detective Simpson said. “She says that if Kaylee were even thinking of running away, she would know. She would have told her. They were that close.”
“Like, no,” I said. “She wishes. She never went out with us. She didn’t even go to the parties we went to, and lately, Kaylee didn’t even invite her here. I wouldn’t depend on anything she says.”
“Did you and your sister fight over a boy named Matt Tesler?” Lieutenant Cowan asked quickly, like an attorney trying to break a witness in a court trial.
“What’s the point? Why does that matter now?”
“We’re trying to understand everything, Haylee, so we can figure out what Kaylee’s done and why,” Detective Simpson said.
I shrugged. “That happened a while back. We don’t even talk about it anymore. She’s long over it. Sarah Morgan is pathetic,” I said. “Kaylee wouldn’t go looking for a romance with an older man to spite me or something, if that’s what she’s telling you.”
“We want to be sure you and your sister confide in each other as closely as you say,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “Maybe there are things you don’t know.”
He was beginning to annoy me. “Of course there are things I don’t know. I don’t know where she is or if she deliberately is staying away or what.”
“Okay,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “You keep thinking about it all. Check everything. Maybe there’s something, some clue, in her things.”
“I will,” I said. “Right now, we have a big problem with my mother. There’s a psychiatric nurse here taking care of her. I have to go back upstairs to see what she needs.”
“Where’s your father?” Detective Simpson asked.
“He had some work-related things to do. I’ll tell him you were here. He should be home very soon.”
Neither policeman spoke. Lieutenant Cowan reached for the doorknob.
Just before they stepped out, Detective Simpson turned back to me. “You left that name off the list,” he said.
“What name?”
“Matt Tesler.”
“Oh. He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t the love of my life or anything. I guess the school can tell you about him and his family, but I don’t see how it helps us now.”
He nodded and closed the door behind him. I stood there fuming. That wicked little nobody, Sarah Morgan. She never liked me. She’d want to cause trouble. I’ll fix her, I thought. I’ll tell whoever calls me all about her, how she almost sent the police on a wild goose chase while my sister suffers.
I turned and hurried back up the stairs, thinking and planning with every step I took. I thought I would tell Mother and Mrs. Lofter that the police were just here to tell us how hard they were working to find Kaylee. I’d sound as hopeful and optimistic as I could. Mrs. Lofter would like that. Later, with Mother not around, I would show her how devastated I felt. I smiled, thinking maybe Mrs. Lofter would start brushing my hair, too, not that I’d want her to. She’d never do it right.
The moment I walked in, they looked at me, but before I could get a word out, Mother spoke and shocked me.
“Kaylee,” she said. “Thank God, you’re home.”
10
Kaylee
I heard what sounded like more than one person going up and down the stairs just outside the locked basement apartment door. Then I heard the key turning in the lock and sat up, hoping it was my rescuers.
I had fallen asleep and dreamed vividly about this. In my dream, my sister, Haylee, had broken down in front of Daddy and Mother and confessed all she had done to get me into this situation. She had thought she could handle any guilt she might experience, but my empty room, my books unopened on my desk, and me not being in my chair at breakfast and dinner had torn away her shield of indifference and left her crying so hysterically that our doctor had to give her something to calm her. She’d been shaking like someone who was freezing.
It was then that she had told the police exactly where to go. I envisioned them capturing Anthony right outside this house and then hurrying down the stairs to find me. There was even an ambulance waiting in case it was needed, and of course, Mother and Daddy were right there, waiting just outside. Haylee was in the rear of a police car, looking ashamed.
The door opened. I held my breath. Was my dream a premonition?
There was someone there, but it wasn’t anyone who’d come to rescue me; it was Anthony, wearing a broad smile on his face when he looked at me, or I should say right through me, for he didn’t see a look of disappointment. He saw the girl of his dreams overjoyed at his homecoming. I thought that even if my disappointment and my fear stopped my heart from beating, he would keep me in a chair or on the bed, talking to me as if nothing unusual had occurred. I wondered which need was stronger, his need to have someone to love who would love him or my need to escape and go home. Which would win out in the end?
In a strange and eerie way, he reminded me of Mo
ther. No matter what Daddy said, what our grandparents said, or what our teachers and other people told her, she refused to see Haylee and me as two separate girls. She either ignored or explained away any differences we exhibited. She planned our lives as if one of us was the shadow of the other. When we were very young, neither Haylee nor I knew how to oppose her. I never denied that we needed to be our own persons, but I was never as defiant and determined as Haylee was when we’d grown older and should have been bolder. Was that wrong? Did she hate me for being so tolerant? Did that make things harder for her? Was this her way of getting revenge?
Anthony hugged large catalogues. He put them on the dining table and then returned to the doorway to pick up the bags of groceries he had brought as well. There had been no sirens. There were no policemen behind him. No one had found me. I felt like I was sinking into the bed. My rescue had been only a dream, wishful thinking.
“Got you your homework,” he said, nodding at the catalogues as he brought the groceries to the counter by the sink. I hadn’t moved. He started to unpack. He looked back at me, surprised. “Go on. Don’t wait for me. Give it a look-see. I know you can’t wait. If there’s one thing women love to do, it’s buying things to dress up a home. My father kept my mother on a leash, but I ain’t him.”
He waited to see my reaction. I’d better look and act enthusiastic, I thought, and rose quickly to go to the table. There were three thick catalogues of carpets with samples and two catalogues of curtains. I remembered when Mother was redoing the living room and Haylee and I had sat at the table with her as she examined the possibilities. I recalled some of the reasons she had preferred one type over another. At least I knew what to say so it would look like I really was interested.
“You can’t claim you ain’t got enough choice there,” he said. “So,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “What’ll we have for lunch? You want turkey and cheese? I’ve got these delicious rolls.” He held one up. It looked soft, the kind both Haylee and I enjoyed. My stomach actually churned in anticipation.
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
“You don’t thank me. I thank you,” he said, smiling. “You’re making me feel alive. I ain’t felt as alive since . . . since I don’t know when.” He laughed. “Maybe I never did. Star-crossed lovers really complete each other, you know. That’s what we are, two people who found each other in space, only it’s called cyberspace, right?” I could see he thought that was clever. He waited for my reaction.
“Right,” I said, with as much of a smile as I could force.
I sat and opened a catalogue. Just looking at all this reinforced my sense of dread. It strengthened my fear that I would be here for a very long time, so long, in fact, that after a while, even people who loved me would have trouble worrying about me or even thinking about me. Their lives would demand that they put me aside for most of their day, and eventually, I’d be gone so long that I would be as good as dead to them.
What else could happen? They couldn’t spend their lives waiting by the phone, waiting for the police to bring them good news, or any news, for that matter. Maybe every week they’d go on a search party themselves, until they decided that it did no good. Maybe Mother would make Daddy put my picture on billboards or take out ads in newspapers, even pay for radio and television pleas, but eventually, even the news people would go on to other stories. Everyone had to continue with their lives, didn’t they? The hardest things to hold back were the hands of a clock.
Of course, I wondered how fast Haylee would get used to my not being at her side. I wanted to think it would take her much longer than she had hoped. I wanted to hate her and wish great pain and suffering on her, but I couldn’t do it. I could imagine her sitting in a dark pool of regret, and as hard as it would be for anyone to believe, I felt sorrier for her than I did for myself. In the end, no matter what she did, I always felt sorrier for her. She hated that. Maybe deep down, that was why I did it.
“Don’t you dare pity me,” she would say. “I’m not a bit weaker than you are, Kaylee. If anything, it’s the other way around.”
I saw her even now, my proud, self-centered identical twin sister, pouting at the living-room window, gazing out at the world she dreamed was hers, a world far different from the one we were in.
“You know what, Kaylee?” she had once said to me when I’d asked her why she was staring so hard out the window. “I prefer looking through windows rather than looking into mirrors. That way, I don’t have to see you, too.”
It was so shocking a thing to hear that it sent not only a chill down my spine but a sharp pain into my heart. Brothers and sisters could love each other more than anyone else could ever love them, but they could hate each other more, too. The rupture in family ties was more painful because it went so much deeper. It went right through your blood and ripped apart your heritage. Nothing left you more alone. It was the very definition of homelessness. You could see it clearly in the faces of those discarded and left on some unfriendly street to slowly drift into invisibility. Even the memories of them cast off shattered like glass stars and fell into the gutter to be swept into some sewer of the forgotten.
The sewer of the forgotten was where I could end up, too. It was only a matter of time, time that pressed against my face and pushed me further and further away from those who knew and loved me, even Mother. She was sure to drift into some fog where, confused and defeated, she would wither years before her time and become as silent and useless as a bell that was never rung. I was crying inside for everyone but myself. How could I change it? How could someone who had never been very selfish suddenly become ruthlessly so?
I flipped through some more pages and then looked at Anthony working so diligently on my sandwich. He was measuring out the ingredients as though a tenth of an inch mattered. He cut the sandwich into four perfectly equal pieces and then framed some lettuce and tomato around them with great care. When he was finished, he gazed at it for a moment, like someone who had just made a beautiful work of art for someone he loved. He turned to me, smiled, put a napkin over his arm, and brought me the sandwich just the way a waiter in a very expensive restaurant would.
“Madam.” He put it before me and stepped back. “How’s that? See? I’m really an artist. Oh, I got your favorite soda, too, root beer,” he said, and returned to the refrigerator to take out a bottle, open it, and pour the soda into a glass.
That was Haylee’s favorite soda, not mine. Had he taken notes about everything she had mentioned? What hadn’t she told him about herself and the things she preferred? Actually, it didn’t surprise me. She was always eager to tell everyone else what was the best this or that. I wasn’t very fond of root beer, but I never refused it when she asked Mother for it. Drinking and eating things she liked and I didn’t particularly care for was so much a part of my life that doing this now seemed perfectly normal.
On the other hand, if I liked something and she didn’t, she would eat it when I asked for it the first time, but later she would warn me never to ask for it again, or she would find things I really didn’t like and deliberately ask for them. I could have argued and stamped my foot like she often did, but it was easier simply to do what she wanted. Now, ironically, it was easier to do what Anthony wanted. In some ways, if I closed my eyes, I was home again.
“Go on,” he said. “Start eating. Don’t wait for me. I know you’re hungry.”
He returned to make his own sandwich, and I did begin eating. I hadn’t been here that long, although every passing minute was more like an hour to me, and the passing of a day, despite how hard I tried to fight it, was like the pounding of another nail into my coffin. Any hope I had was changing from merely dripping away to leaking heavily out of my heart. I wanted to resist, even hate, every kindness he directed toward me, but my body continued to defy my will.
I was hungry. I was thirsty. I could tell myself I needed to eat in order to have the strength to fight, but I knew I would accept the food and drink no matter what, and I was u
pset with myself for it. The more I consented to whatever he offered, the more discouraged I felt. I was surrendering in little ways, especially by keeping myself as clean as I could and as healthy as I could. I knew he was pleased, and I did think that now, seeing how he simply would refuse to believe my resistance, it was futile to continue to defy him openly. I really despised myself for my next thought, because it was as if I was finding ways to justify my compliance by forgiving him, but I considered him emotionally desperate, someone to pity.
From what he had told me, he had no family, and from what I could see, he had no friends. Yes, he had abducted me and chained me to the wall, but he was capable of being merciful and even considerate. How could I really fight such a person? Would I have the will and the strength to stab him with the bread knife and, if not kill him, wound him seriously enough to enable me to escape, especially when he was asleep beside me? I’d have the opportunity, but could I do it?
He returned to the table and sat. “How’s the sandwich?” He needed compliments, but it wasn’t difficult to sound honest about this one.
“It’s very good,” I said.
“Fresh stuff. Can’t beat it,” he said, and began to eat. He had poured himself a beer. “When I moved down here, mostly to get out of my father’s hair, if you want to know, Ma would bring me dinner. One day, my father got so mad about her doing that, probably one drunken day, that he made her give me leftovers from the night before, even two nights before. ’Course, I didn’t realize it at first. She still dressed it up good, but I eventually found out. ‘You can always come upstairs to eat with us, Anthony,’ she told me when I complained.
“I knew what my father wanted. He wanted me to give in, tell him I was sorry or something, and beg him to forgive me and let me move back upstairs, see, but I didn’t do it. I ate the leftovers. Except for holidays and stuff. He thought that was okay.”
“Why did your father dislike you so much?” I asked.
He paused. I could see he was debating whether to tell me. “Truth is, he never believed I was really his son,” he said.
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