In Her Eyes

by Sarah Alderson

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  ‘Why don’t you come back to mine?’ she says. ‘Bring June too. We can order pizza and watch a movie. There’s that new Jennifer Aniston one on Netflix.’

  I shake my head. ‘I think it’s best I get her home to bed. She sounded really sick on the phone.’ As I say it, though, I catch myself questioning it. Did she sound sick? She may have just got into a fight with Abby and wanted an excuse to leave. She knows she can pull the sick card any time with me and I’ll drop everything. Maybe Laurie was right to give me that tight-mouthed look a moment ago.

  We drive for a few minutes in silence until I pull up outside Laurie’s house, a small craftsman bungalow in the east end of town. The lights aren’t on and Dave’s car isn’t in the drive. Laurie frowns. ‘Where is he? He said he’d be home.’

  ‘Maybe he’s working late.’

  Laurie doesn’t answer me. She just gets out the car, pulling her phone from her bag.

  ‘Call me tomorrow,’ I shout after her. ‘Let’s go for a hike or something. If you’re not too busy,’ I add, remembering she has to work.

  Laurie’s not listening. She’s dialing a number – probably Dave’s. ‘Good night,’ she says to me, slamming the car door and hurrying up the path.

  On a whim I pull a U-turn and decide to drive by the tasting room on my way to pick up June. I’m hoping I’ll spot Dave through the window sitting at the till, tallying receipts. But the lights are off, the closed sign hanging crooked on the back of the door. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself firmly. There’s no point in jumping to conclusions – that’s what the doctors used to tell us after June’s diagnosis. We need all the facts before we can determine the correct path of action.

  Chapter 3

  June must have been waiting for me, looking out the window, because I haven’t even put the car in park before the front door flies open and out she runs, head down, bag flung over her shoulder. She’s wearing a pair of gym shorts with Hannah’s NYU hoodie over the top. Abby – a friend of June’s since pre-school days – is leaning, scowling, against the doorpost. I wave at her and smile. She gives me a perfunctory wave back before slamming the door shut. Charming.

  June gets into the passenger seat, slumping low, and grunts hello at me. At least I think it’s Hello. It could also be Drive. I step on the gas. Sometimes I feel like all I am is a glorified chauffeur, but I don’t say anything. She’s twelve, I remind myself. I need to make the most of it. She’ll be gone before we know it, flying the nest just like Hannah did before her. And then what?

  Her hood is pulled up and she turns away from me to stare out the window. I know that I have to let her come to me, not try to push, but the silence eventually gets to me and I cave. ‘How are you feeling?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she mutters. I catch a glimpse of her face as she says it – that beautiful, heart-shaped face that I used to spend hours staring at as she slept on, oblivious, webbed by tubes and wires. She looks pale, her eyes red-rimmed. Is she sick? That familiar sense of dread creeps through me and I struggle to shake it off. Don’t go there, Ava.

  ‘You have an OK time with Abby?’ I ask.

  She grunts again and I sigh. She used to be so eloquent that adults would often mistake her for being older than she was. It was all that time around doctors and hospitals. I’m not sure switching her to a private school was worthwhile; her linguistic skills seem to have regressed to pre-verbal days.

  We could have bought a Caribbean island with the money we’ve spent on June’s education, not to mention the cash we’ve bled to pay for Hannah’s college tuition. But how can I resent it? They’re both happy, healthy, bright, going places. I want their lives to be glorious. I want them to achieve more than I ever did, to be successful and fulfilled and to reach their potential in ways that I was never able to.

  As we head up the winding road to our house, I glance surreptitiously across at June, trying to resist reaching over and laying my hand on her forehead to check her temperature.

  She’s frowning, her hands working at the cuffs of her hoodie, fraying holes in them. What’s going on in that head of hers? I suppose she’s just entering that awful early teen phase, and I steel myself, knowing what’s coming. Hannah was just the same, though I think I’ll take it worse with June because we have a much closer bond than I ever had with Hannah, who was always so aloof as a child, so self-contained and independent, that at times I felt redundant. I used to long for her to be like the other kids at kindergarten refusing to let go of their mothers. She’d push me out the door and march off to her desk without so much as a bye or a backwards glance.

  I’ve often thought that if our family was a circus, I’d be the plate spinner, Hannah would be the ringmaster, Robert would be an illusionist (for his skill at creating invisible worlds that people spend millions of dollars buying unreal real estate in) and June would be the clown. Gene would be the hanger-on who doesn’t earn his keep and who has to sleep under the big top at night.

  June always made others laugh. Even when she was throwing up what looked like all her internal organs, the ulcers carving craters into her mouth, she could still somehow find a way to crack a joke. She had a book of them, 10,001 Jokes for Kids, and she’d memorize as many as she could. Every time she saw us looking sad she’d pull one out, and she’d keep pulling them out until we smiled again.

  So now, when I see clouds scudding across her face, gathering like an ominous storm front, I worry. I can’t help it. Fear entered my life when the children were born but it fused with my DNA when June got sick. Now I live with it constantly. It whispers into my ear most nights, keeping me awake, seeding nightmares that the cancer will come back and this time we won’t be so lucky.

  ‘What’s black and white and red all over?’ I ask.

  June rolls her eyes and keeps glaring out the window. ‘A newspaper,’ she grunts.

  O-kay, that didn’t work.

  Normally June talks ten to the dozen, bombarding me with so much information about her teachers and school and who said what and who did what and who has a crush on who that I often have to get her to slow down. The silence now is disconcerting.

  She’s had an argument with Abby, I’m guessing, most likely about the choice of movie to watch. Abby’s parents – buttoned-up evangelical Christians who preach God’s love and forgiveness while campaigning vigorously against transgender bathrooms at the school and regularly posting pro-life propaganda on Facebook – don’t allow Abby to watch anything rated over a U. They even pulled the poor girl out of sex-ed class last semester. Later Sam, Abby’s mother, called me up in a rage to complain that June had taken it on herself to explain to Abby the ins and outs of how babies are made. You would have thought from her reaction that June had forced Abby to build an altar and worship the devil.

  I apologized, of course, and then took June out for ice cream and talked to her about consent, choice and Planned Parenthood, hoping she’d find a way to leak the information to Abby. Because otherwise that girl is very likely going to go the way of Bristol Palin – abstinence spokeswoman and teenage mom.

  I glance across at June again. She’s pulled back her hood and is still staring out the window, lost in thought, and I realize she’s no longer an open book. She’s keeping secrets from me. Laurie’s words echo loud in my head. You can never really know anyone completely.

  She’s right, isn’t she? I reach forwards and turn the heat up in the car. I know that better than anyone.

  Chapter 4

  Even after five years of living here I still get a thrill as I pull in through the gates. I used to look up at these houses on the hill when I was a kid and wonder about who lived there and how they could possibly afford it.

  Sometimes, when I walk through the rooms at night, I find myself tiptoeing and looking over my shoulder like a burglar. You’re supposed to put a stamp on a home but I feel like other than my paintings, which are dotted around the place – more at Robert’s insistence than mine – we’
ve failed to do so. It feels too big, too vault-like, too grand. I wanted something more modest but Robert insisted nothing but a big house in the hills would do. So I went along with it, even though it meant having to drive into town rather than walking and having to hire a gardener and housekeeper as the grounds were too expansive and the house too big to take care of on my own.

  After all those years of living hand to mouth, relying on my parents a lot of the time to bail us out, when Robert’s business finally hit the big time he wanted to make a statement, show the world he’d made a success of himself at last. And I get that, I do, and it’s hard not to fall in love with the place. It’s a beautiful old ranch house on one hundred acres, with the Topa Topa mountains rising up majestically behind us and the valley tumbling away below.

  As soon as I pull into the garage, June jumps out of the car and runs through the side door into the house. I follow her, frowning at the thumping music coming from overhead. Gene’s home. Of course he’s home. He’s always home. He’s like an obnoxious foot wart that we’ve tried treating but which refuses to go away, so now, utterly defeated, we just hope it will one day vanish of its own accord. Though there are times I wish we could squirt liquid nitrogen on him and watch him fizz.

  I know plenty of twenty-six-year-olds live with their parents these days, given the state of the economy and the outrageous size of college debt, but Gene has no college debt (he also has no college degree either, having dropped out in his sophomore year) and the state of the economy doesn’t really affect him, since Robert and I provide him with free bed and board.

  If Gene were my son he would not be living over the garage. He would be a successful graduate, in his first, maybe second job by now, living in his own house and dating someone normal, not one of the many dubious-looking, sleeve-tattooed females who shuttle through his apartment on a high-speed conveyor belt.

  Gene isn’t my son though. He’s Robert’s son from his first marriage. He was eighteen months old when I first met him and lived with his mother on the other side of the country. He only moved in with us when he was twelve, after his mom married some guy she met at the bar where she worked and who, it turned out, hated children. She drove across the country and dumped him on our doorstep unannounced. She said she’d be back for him but never returned.

  Gene barely scraped through high school, not because he isn’t bright, because he is – he takes after his father in both brains and looks – but because he kept skipping class to hang out at the skateboard park or to go surfing. I think his mother abandoning him was a major factor in his teenage rebellion. But that was also around the time that June got sick, so we weren’t paying that much attention to his attendance, or to anything to be honest, except for cancer treatments and prognoses. I think the guilt about that and about leaving Gene with his mother for the best part of his childhood is why Robert’s so soft on him now.

  Gene moved back in with us after he flunked out of college. When we argued with him he told us college educations were worthless. Hell, look at Ava were his exact words – something to which I frustratingly had no comeback. He moved into the apartment we had converted over the garage and for a time he just stayed in all day watching TV, apparently on a mission to win the world record for most amount of weed to ever be consumed by a human being in one sitting.

  Given how much he smoked – the garage resembled a giant hot box most days – it was amazing he was even sentient. When Robert and I sat him down to talk about his habit and how it might be contributing to his lack of ambition, he pulled out his medical marijuana certificate, signed by a real MD, and told us he needed it to deal with stress, which, I told them both, was like the Pope claiming he needed a prescription for Viagra. Gene’s comeback to that was that the Pope, like most Catholic priests, probably did need a prescription for Viagra. Maybe he should look into a career in improv.

  Robert finally gave him an ultimatum. Either he quit smoking and got a job, or moved out, as we were no longer going to fund his drug habit and didn’t want June exposed to it. Gene took the ultimatum to heart, or maybe he was just scared he’d end up homeless, because the very next day he got a job working behind the bar at the Bison Lodge in town, and we never again smelled the heady aroma of weed wafting from the apartment.

  Maybe he goes somewhere else to smoke, I’m not sure, but he doesn’t seem like quite so much of a space cadet as he used to; he’s up before ten most mornings, he puts out the trash, cleans the leaves from the pool, takes June to soccer and basketball at the weekends and occasionally wanders into the house with a cake he’s baked and flops on the sofa to watch American Crime with me.

  When he lost his job two weeks ago (he said they were laying people off but I suspect he was fired for being unreliable) I started talking to him about turning his talent for baking into a career as a chef. I thought he’d laugh at me like he usually does when I offer him ideas for a career path that requires getting out of bed before seven each morning, but he actually took the idea seriously. Yesterday he showed me some culinary courses he’d bookmarked on his iPad, so maybe there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe he won’t still be living with us when he’s sixty, although perhaps by then we won’t mind so much as we’ll likely be senile and grateful for having someone to lift us out of bed, change our diapers and spoon-feed us baby rice.

  ‘Always look for the silver lining,’ my dad used to say, and that’s what I’m trying to do.

  As I head inside the house behind June I think I hear a raised voice over the top of Gene’s music. I stop. Nothing. Maybe the TV is on. It better not be American Crime – he promised we’d watch the last episode together.

  In the kitchen, June’s left the milk on the side and the refrigerator door ajar. I put the milk away and wipe up a spill, set the alarm by the back door, and then wander over to the other side of the house to Robert’s study. The door is shut. I press my ear to it. Not a peep. Silently, I try the handle. It’s locked. That’s unusual. I try to ignore the first thought that flashes into my mind, which is that he’s in there watching porn. I knock and call his name. There’s the sound of a filing cabinet slamming shut with the force of a guillotine, and then I hear Robert clearing his throat before the door jerks open.

  ‘You’re back,’ he says, surprised.

  He seems flustered and his shirt is half hanging out of his pants. I frown at him and try glancing over his shoulder to see if I can see his computer, but he’s angled the screen away from the door. ‘I had to pick up June, she wasn’t feeling well,’ I say, eyeing him with suspicion.

  ‘June’s home?’ Robert asks, looking mildly alarmed.

  ‘Yes, she’s gone up to bed. She’s fine, I think, don’t worry.’

  Robert rubs the bridge of his nose and glances at his watch. He hasn’t shaved and I notice the flecks of white in his beard now far outnumber the black, but it only makes him look more handsome. Men have it so much easier than women, I think, making a mental note to make an appointment with my hairdresser.

  ‘Did you eat already?’ I ask, hoping to salvage something of this evening.

  He nods.

  ‘Do you want to come to bed?’

  Robert shakes his head. ‘No, no,’ he says, distracted. ‘I have some things to finish off.’

  I really hope he’s not being literal, but he doesn’t look like a man caught with his pants down. He looks more like a man in the final moves of a challenging chess match.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, trying not to sound disappointed, ‘OK.’ I kiss him on the cheek. ‘Well, goodnight then. I’m sorry again about our plans. Maybe we can do it tomorrow night?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Robert says, hurriedly closing the door. A hissing voice in my head tells me he’s just not that into me anymore, but I try to ignore it.

  I cross the living room and draw the blinds. As I’m doing that I see someone rushing down the stairs from Gene’s apartment. Whoever it is is dressed all in black and is wearing a dark sweater with a hood covering their face. Adrenali
ne shoots through me before I realize that it’s not a burglar at all. It’s Gene. I’m just not used to seeing him move that fast. And I’m not used to seeing him wearing actual clothes. He usually lounges around the house in his ratty old college athletic shorts and a pair of Adidas sandals with tube socks – a fashion look that doesn’t seem to deter the girls.

  I watch him jog right past the carport where his Highlander is parked and take off down the drive, sticking to the gloomy shadows cast by the trees. He glances over his shoulder up at the house and I instinctively edge behind the blinds. Where is he going at this time of night and why isn’t he taking his car? We’re three miles out of town so it’s a little odd to go anywhere on foot.

  Halfway down the drive, just where the road curves and disappears into the orange grove, a set of headlights flash on, giving me a start. They briefly douse Gene in a halo of light and I watch him dart to the passenger side and jump in. The car – a dark SUV – takes off down the drive and I lose sight of it. Who was that? And what’s with all the cloak and dagger?

  I go and pour a large glass of Pinot, a gift from our neighbor’s private vineyard, and carry it with me upstairs, pausing to straighten a painting in the hallway (my wedding present to Robert – a sketch I’d drawn from memory of him on our first fateful meeting). I stop again on the landing outside June’s room. The wall here is covered in photographs that I’ve taken over the years. There’s a black and white one of Robert and me on our wedding day. I look like a child bride, albeit one glowing with happiness, and Robert looks as dashing as a movie star. There’s another of me – taken a few months later, visibly pregnant with Hannah – with my arm around a smiling, chubby-faced Gene. I was younger than Hannah is now, just nineteen, and every time I pass that photo I feel a pang of something – an ache – for the girl I was. I was so stupidly young. If Hannah got pregnant now, I’d strangle her.