Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

  “So.” She put a magazine down and peered up at me. “I take it you are the voice I’ve been hearing around the house. Benny, are you going to introduce us?”

  Benny shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Mom, this is Nina Ross. Nina, this is my mother, Judith Liebling.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Liebling.” I held out a hand and she stared at it with wide eyes, in faux astonishment.

  “Well, someone here knows their manners!” She reached out with a soft, limp hand, gave mine a quick squeeze, then dropped it almost immediately. I could feel her taking me in, even as she continued flicking rapidly through the pages of her magazine: the fading magenta streaks in my hair and thick black liner rimming my eyes, the stained parka with someone else’s phone number already inked into the tag, the moon boots with duct tape covering the split in the toe. “So, Nina Ross. Why aren’t you out on the ski slopes with the rest of your classmates? I thought that was the thing to do up here.”

  “I don’t ski.”

  “Ah.” She studied a photo spread of a fancy New York apartment, folded the corner for future reference. “Benny is an excellent skier, did he tell you that?”

  I looked at Benny. “You are?”

  She nodded when he didn’t. “We’ve been vacationing in St. Moritz since he was six years old. He used to love it. He’s just trying to make some sort of a point by refusing to do it now that we’re actually living in the snow. Aren’t you, Benny? Skiing, rowing, chess, all those things he used to love and now all he wants to do is sit in his room and draw cartoons.”

  I could see the cords in Benny’s neck, straining. “Mom, cut it out.”

  “Oh, please, honey, have a sense of humor.” She laughed, but it didn’t strike me as a very joyful laugh. “So, Nina. Tell me about yourself. I’m very curious.”

  “Mom.”

  His mother was staring at me, head cocked slightly to the side, as if I was a particularly interesting specimen. I felt like roadkill in her gaze; frozen in place, somehow compelled to stand there forever until she ran me over entirely. “Um. Well, we just moved here last year.”

  “We?”

  “My mother and I.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “And what brought you all the way up here? Your mother’s work?”

  “Sort of.” She waited, expectant. “She works at Fond du Lac.”

  Benny finally lost his patience. “For God’s sake, Mom. Stop prying. Leave her alone.”

  “Oh fine. Pssht pssht. Shame on me for wanting to know the tiniest thing about your life, Benny. Anyway, go. Go sneak off to wherever you two sneak off to every afternoon. Don’t mind me.” She turned back to her magazine, snapping through three pages in quick succession, so fast that I thought they’d tear right out. “Oh, Benny, you should be aware that your father will be back for dinner this evening and that means family meal.” She gave me a meaningful look as if to say, You are not invited, please take the hint and be gone before dark.

  Benny, already halfway out the door, hesitated. “But it’s Wednesday.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I thought he wasn’t coming back until Friday.”

  “Well”—she picked up a magazine—“we talked about that and he’s decided he wants to be up here more. With us.”

  “Terrific.” His words were drowning in sarcasm.

  She looked up at this, and her voice dropped to a warning growl. “Benny.”

  “Mom.” He mimicked the tone in her voice in a way that made me uncomfortable. Was this normal, to be so rude and condescending to your mother? But she seemed to take it in stride, kissing the tips of her fingers and flapping them in Benny’s general direction. She reached for a fresh magazine and began rapidly flipping pages. We’d been dismissed.

  “Sorry about that,” he said as we made our way toward the kitchen.

  “She wasn’t that bad,” I ventured.

  He grimaced. “You must be judging on a curve.”

  “But she’s up and out of bed. And your dad’s coming home. That’s all good, right?”

  “Whatever. None of it really matters.” But the way his features contorted suggested to me that it did matter, far more than he was willing to let me know. “What it means in reality is that he’ll make an appearance for the meal, because she’s woken up enough to lay down the law, and then he’ll vanish off to wherever he goes in the evenings. He doesn’t stick around. Because she doesn’t really want to spend time with him, either. She just wants him to come when called, so she can prove she has some agency in their relationship.”

  Benny had done a lot of therapy, I was starting to understand. “Why don’t they just get divorced?”

  He offered a small, bitter pill of a laugh. “Money, silly. It’s always about money.”

  For the rest of that afternoon, he retreated into himself, as if he couldn’t stop chewing over his mother’s behavior. I thought of it, too; the way she flicked through the pages of the magazine, as if compelled by some impulse she couldn’t control. We smoked pot and then he drew in one of his notebooks while I did homework, sometimes feeling him studying me from the other end of the couch; and I couldn’t help wondering if seeing me through his mother’s eyes had damaged the picture he had of me. I left early that afternoon, well before dusk; and when I arrived back at home and found my mother in the kitchen, making macaroni with her hair up in curlers, I felt a warm pulse of gratitude.

  I gave her a hug from behind. “My baby.” She turned in my arms, and squeezed me into her bosom. “What’s this about?”

  “Nothing, really,” I murmured into her shoulder. “You’re OK, right, Mom?”

  “Better than ever.” She pushed me back so she could examine me, traced the edge of my face with a pink-manicured finger. “And what about you? School is going well, right? You like it? You’re getting good grades?”

  “Yeah, Mom.” I was, despite the afternoons I was spending getting stoned with Benny. I liked being challenged by my homework; I had grown to love the school’s progressive atmosphere and the teachers who engaged us with ideas instead of just handing out multiple-choice tests. Over six months in, and I was already getting mostly As. My English teacher, Jo, had recently pulled me aside and handed me a brochure for a summer program at Stanford University. “You should apply next year, after junior year. It could really give you a leg up getting into college,” Jo had said. “I know the director, and I could give you a personal referral.”

  I’d slipped the brochure onto my bookshelf and every once in a while, I’d pull it out and study the kids on the cover, in their matching purple T-shirts and radiant smiles, backpacks laden with books and arms slung around each other. Of course it was too expensive; and yet for the first time, that life felt like it was within reach. Maybe we’d find a way.

  My mother was beaming. “Good. I’m so proud of you, baby.”

  Her smile was so genuine, so truly pleased by my smallest of achievements. I thought of Judith Liebling. Whatever my mother’s faults may be, she certainly wasn’t cold. She would never belittle me; I would never come up short. Instead, she’d put everything on the line for me, over and over again. And now we had made our nest here, safe and warm against the elements. “Why don’t you call in sick tonight and we’ll stay home and watch a movie?” I asked.

  Distress crossed her face. “Too late for that, baby. The manager loses his mind when someone misses a shift. But I’m off work on Sunday, why don’t we go down to the Cobblestone and see what’s playing in the theater there? There’s a James Bond film, I think. We could get pizza beforehand.”

  I dropped my arms. “Sure.”

  The timer on the stove went off and she darted away to drain the macaroni. “Oh, and don’t worry if I’m late tonight. I offered to do a double.” She gave me a radiant, dimpled smile as she maneuvered the pot to the sink, steam blurring her features. “Keepi
ng us in macaroni!”

  * * *

  —

  One day in mid-April, I looked around and realized that spring had arrived. The mountain peaks were still capped with icy crusts but down at lake level rain showers had wiped out the last of the snowdrifts. With the new season, Stonehaven felt like a different house entirely. Daylight savings had arrived, and now when we got there in the midafternoon the house was still bathed in sunlight that filtered through the dappled pines. I could finally see the green lawn spreading like a blanket from the mansion to the lakefront, as it revived itself from its winter hibernation. Violets materialized along the paths, planted by an invisible gardener. Everything about the house felt less ominous, less oppressive.

  Or maybe it was just that I felt more comfortable at Stonehaven now. I no longer felt intimidated when I walked up the steps of the mansion; I started flinging my backpack down next to Benny’s at the base of the stairs as if it belonged there. I even encountered Benny’s mother once, drifting like a pale ghost through the empty rooms with a vase in each hand. She was in a rearranging phase, Benny informed me, tugging the furniture from one side of the room to the other and back again. When I said hello, she just nodded and wiped her cheek with the back of her forearm, leaving a gray smear of dust.

  One Sunday morning, at the beginning of spring break, my mother and I walked down to Syd’s to get bagels and coffee. As we waited for our order—my mother flirting with the genial bearded manager—I heard Benny’s voice lifting over the other customers’, calling my name. I turned and saw him behind me in line, standing with a girl I’d never seen before.

  I walked toward him, studying the strange girl. She didn’t look like a local. She was as polished and golden as an Oscar statuette: hair, nails, makeup, everything buffed to a pale gleam. She wore only a Princeton sweatshirt and jeans, and yet I could still feel the money wafting off her in a way that it never did off Benny: something about the flattering cut of her denim, the bright flash of the diamond tennis bracelet under her sweatshirt cuff, the smell of the leather from her purse. She looked like a cover model for an Ivy League catalog, bright and clean and forward-looking.

  She was studying the phone in her hand as I walked over, oblivious to the noise of the café. Benny flung an arm over my shoulder, his eyes flicking back and forth between us. “Nina, this is my sister. Vanessa, this is my friend Nina.”

  The older sister, then. Of course. I felt conflicting emotions tug at me—wanting to be liked by her, wanting to be her; the knowledge that I never could be, and finally the knowledge that I shouldn’t want to be her and yet I did anyway. She looked like the Future that my mother imagined for me; and her presence made me realize how very far away that really was.

  Vanessa glanced up then, finally noticing that her brother had his arm around someone. I saw something flash across her big green eyes at this realization—surprise, and maybe delight—and then all that fell away as she studied me further. She was well mannered, there was nothing so obvious as an up-and-down glance, and yet I could tell immediately that she was one of those girls who measure. Everything about her was deliberate and watching. I felt her adding up the sum of my parts, calculating my value, and finding it too low to be worthy of engagement.

  “Charmed,” she said unconvincingly. And then, just like that, she was done with me. Her eyes slid back down to her phone. She took a step backward and away.

  My face burned. I could see, maybe for the first time, that everything about my appearance was wrong: I wore too much makeup, poorly applied; I wore clothes that were supposed to conceal my hips and stomach but instead just looked baggy; my hair wasn’t edgy and cool, it was just fried from drugstore hair dye. I looked cheap.

  “Is this a school friend of yours?” My mother was suddenly beside me. I was grateful for the distraction.

  “I’m Benny,” he said, and gamely stuck out a hand to her. “Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Ross.” A sharp flicker of surprise on my mother’s face—I wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever addressed her as Mrs.—and then it was gone. She took his hand, shook it formally, hung on to it for a half second too long until Benny began to blush.

  “I’d love to say that I’ve heard all about you,” she said. “But Nina has not been forthcoming with information about her new friends.”

  “That’s because I don’t have many,” I said. “Just this one.” Benny met my eyes and smiled at this.

  “You could have at least let me know you had a lovely new friend and that he had a name.” She dimpled at Benny. “I bet you tell your parents all about your friends.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Well, then. Us parents should all get together and commiserate. Compare notes.” My mother rolled her eyes, but I could see her take careful measure of the way Benny was smiling at me, the faint flush I could feel on my own cheeks. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then my mother looked around.

  “Now, where’s the creamer? I can’t drink this stuff without a ton of sugar,” she said. “Let me know when you’re ready to go, Nina.” She stepped toward the coffee bar at the end of the counter, a polite masquerade. There, she made a great show of fussing over the sugar dispenser, as if we weren’t just three feet away. I silently thanked her for her discretion.

  But Benny and I just grinned silently at each other until we reached the front of the line, Vanessa trailing just behind us. “Coffee for me and a cappuccino for my sister,” Benny said to the barista.

  “Soy,” Vanessa said, still not looking up from her phone.

  Benny rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you can ignore that part.” He fished a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet. Vanessa finally looked up from her phone long enough to notice what he was doing. She lunged forward and grabbed his wrist, examining the money in his hand.

  “Jesus, Benny, are you stealing from the safe again? One of these days Dad is going to notice and then you’re going to be in deep shit.”

  He shook her hand off. “He has a million dollars in there. He’s never going to notice that a couple hundred bucks are missing.”

  At this, Vanessa’s eyes shot over to me, and then away again. “Shut up, Benny,” she hissed.

  “What’s up your butt today, Vanessa?”

  Vanessa sighed and threw up her hands. “Discretion, baby brother. Learn some.” She was intentionally not looking at me now, as if she believed that disregarding my presence would somehow make Benny’s gaffe vanish from memory. The phone in her hand began to vibrate. “Look, I’ve got to take this, I’ll be back in a sec. Don’t forget we have to stop by the airstrip so I can look for my sunglasses.” She spun and left the café.

  “Sorry. She’s usually not so rude. Mom is making her go to Paris with us instead of letting her go to Mexico with her friends, so she’s in a mood.”

  But I’d already moved on from Vanessa’s dismissiveness, my mind instead wrapping itself around the vision of a million dollars in a dark vault inside Stonehaven. Who kept that much money just sitting around in cash? What would it look like? How much space would it take up? I thought of heist movies I’d seen, robbers filling duffel bags with bright green stacks of bills; I imagined a bank vault hidden inside of Stonehaven, a giant round steel door with a lock that took two people to open. “Your dad really keeps a million dollars in your house?”

  Benny looked uneasy. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “But what for? He doesn’t trust banks?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not just that. It’s in case of an emergency. He always says it’s important to have cash at the ready, right? If shit hits the fan and everything falls apart and you need to just go. He keeps some in our house in San Francisco, too.” He offered this casually, as if it was completely normal to need a seven-figure reserve. For what? I wondered. In case you need to flee a zombie apocalypse? An FBI raid? The barista handed Benny his coffees, and wh
en he turned back to me that familiar red flush was creeping up his neck. “But look, can we not talk about my dad’s money?”

  I could tell by the expression on his face that I had broken an unspoken agreement between us: I was to pretend that I didn’t know he was rich, and even if I did know, that I didn’t care. And yet, there it was: a million dollars lying around “just in case” and an airstrip where a private jet was waiting to whisk them off to Paris, two signposts marking the gulf that lay between us. I looked over at my mother standing by the creamers in her worn Walmart parka and thought about how she watched men throw away tens of thousands of dollars every night at the gambling tables, as if it were meaningless paper.

  And I realized, with sudden clarity, a second intention behind my mother’s life choices, the ulterior motive behind her (formerly!) thieving ways. We lived with our faces pressed up against the glass, looking through it at those who had so much more, watching as they so casually rubbed our faces in their privilege. Especially here, in a resort town, where the working class bumped up against the vacation class with their $130 ski-lift tickets and luxury SUVs and lakefront estates that sat empty 320 days a year. Was it any wonder that people on the wrong side of the glass would eventually decide to take a hammer and break it, reach through and take some of it for themselves? The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who wait to have things given to them and those who take what they want. My mother certainly wasn’t the kind of person who would passively gaze through that glass, hoping that she would eventually make it to the other side.