by Ani Katz
As we left the store, I looked down at her bare arm and noticed the two small beauty marks near her elbow had been connected by a fingernail curve of blue pen—a smiley face.
* * *
—
I took the parkway south and drove us out to the beach, the same one we always visited. It was a windless day, the ocean the deep sapphire of the off-season, the parking lot nearly empty. Far off to our west, a lone figure in a bomber jacket was feeding seagulls. The birds crowded at his feet, a carpet of supplicants, and when he stepped toward them they threw themselves up into the air as one great mass. We got out of the car and walked toward the water, squinting against the brightness of the sand.
When she was four or five, Ava lost one of her dolls here. We were halfway home when she realized it. She threw a fit, and though it was already getting dark, I turned the car around so that we could go back and search. Ava roamed around the sparse groupings of people still left on the beach—mostly college kids drinking, or couples looking for privacy—and asked everyone if they’d seen her doll. She prattled on in a plaintive singsong, her soft face torqued by worry.
Have you seen my doll? Have you seen her? She was here. I know she was here.
Miriam stood a little off to the side, pretending to look for the doll. She knew it was a lost cause.
Have you seen my doll?
As my daughter toddled past me I reached out to pat her on her head and just missed, my palm swiping an arc over the dark tendrils of her ponytail as she slipped by. I let her tire herself out, knowing she would take the loss hard, that it would be the first time that something she loved would never come back.
Years later, I would think of that hopeless search as I watched the news one night and saw a quartet of men in Day-Glo windbreakers trekking over those same windswept dunes, the iron winter ocean roiling behind them.
They were looking for bodies.
In the end, they found around a dozen, scattered throughout the marshland near the parkway. Mostly skeletal remains in sacks, skulls and teeth buried in the sand. They uncovered a mother and blanket-wrapped baby together, but the rest of the victims were young women. Prostitutes.
You’ve heard about these murders, these women. They advertised themselves as escorts online, posting photos of themselves smiling toughly, hiding their bad teeth.
They took the work to pay their rent, to feed their kids, to secure whatever substance they had allowed to enslave them. They wanted to escape their lives of struggle and drudgery, to run away from the degradations of the stockroom, the fast-food counter, the hotel laundry, the gas pump. They wanted money and respect, wanted to star in a more exciting movie of their own lives. To them, a thousand dollars meant the world. They told themselves they were just dancing. Just going on dates.
Poor girls, lost girls, powerless to escape their pasts, crushed by the facts of where they came from. Like Eurydice following Orpheus, they’d almost climbed out of hell, only to lose their grip at the mouth of the cave and fall farther than before. They died afraid, with sand in their mouths.
I pitied them, but they also disgusted me. I didn’t understand how they could risk their lives like that when they were so close to getting away.
And though I knew on some level it was paranoid and extreme to equate what Ava had done with what these women had done to themselves, I also knew the line between the two was there, waiting to be drawn. Some of these women had come from good families with concerned parents. Who knows how many seemingly minor transgressions they’d amassed throughout their youths, their lapses collecting unnoticed like plaque in an artery, building toward a blockage? There was always a tipping point. If you weren’t careful, you could succumb to its gravity without even knowing you were falling.
Near the water’s edge, but still a safe distance from the surf, I put my arm around my daughter and we looked down at our conjoined shadows spilled across the sand.
Ava, I began. Sweetheart.
Yeah?
This is serious. We need to talk about what you did.
She sighed in resignation, her head listing to lean against my chest.
Why did you do it? I asked softly.
She shrugged. We thought it was funny, she said. It was just supposed to be a joke.
But you see how it’s not funny, right? I said. You see how it could be dangerous?
How?
People might think you’re being serious, that you’re actually offering what you’re advertising. They might try to come find you.
But how can they think that? We’re just kids. We wouldn’t actually—
Some people don’t care, I said. That’s what they’re looking for.
Gross.
Do you even know what a sugar baby is?
Isn’t it just, like, a sweet girl?
Oh, Ava.
She turned to look out at the sparkling blue plain of the ocean and lifted a hand to brush back her hair, the way an actress might perform a moment of quiet reflection. I watched my daughter scan the horizon, watched her observe herself being observed in her pose of contrite contemplation.
We just wanted to look pretty, she said, a tremor in her voice. We wanted to look older.
You don’t need to look older, I said. You’ll be older soon.
Too soon. She was in such a hurry to get there, running recklessly into her future.
I just want you to be safe, I said. That’s all I want. Okay?
Okay.
I kissed her on the forehead. I considered telling her about the murdered women, as a cautionary tale. But I knew she was much too young for all that. She wouldn’t understand; it would only frighten her.
* * *
—
A memory comes back to me. A warm afternoon in Evie’s top-floor studio shortly after our father died, breeze stirring the kente cloth curtains, sounds of traffic and shouts of pedestrians wafting up from the sidewalk and through the open windows.
The apartment is small but bright. There are a few limp plants clinging to life; rocks and shells and sea glass collected at the beach are scattered along the windowsills. The careful wreck of a young woman’s first home.
Evie is carrying a tray with tea things over from the corner kitchenette; she sets it down on the trunk she uses as a coffee table and sits on the floor in front of me. She is laughing, copper and silver bracelets jangling on her wrists. Her loudly patterned dress is too large for her, open at the neck, loose on her shoulders.
It’s great actually, she is saying. The dates pay really well, and it doesn’t even feel like work most of the time. A lot of them are actually really nice. And of course it’s only for now. When we get a record deal I’ll stop. Here, drink this.
We clink our chipped mugs together. I take a sip of vile, bitter tea, and Evie laughs at the face I make.
It’s supposed to be good for your immune system, she says. And your energy.
Then she is handing me an envelope labeled with my name in exclamatory all caps.
Take this, she says. Give some to Mom and the twins. I have plenty. I even have a safe deposit box now, at the bank.
Her hair is longer than it’s ever been. Dark strands of it are caught in her fingernails; modest nests of it lie forgotten on the floor.
I’m writing a book too, she says. About my life. Starting when I was a kid. With Daddy and everything.
I don’t say anything, even though I know she expects me to, even though she’s staring at me, waiting for me to speak.
Don’t do that, she says finally.
Do what?
Act as if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
I just don’t know what to say to you.
Well think of something.
Evie, come on.
You always acted like you didn’t know what was happening. You never helped me.
She scratches at her wrists, tearing at the skin in the gaps between the armor of the bracelets. There’s a rash in the bend of her arm, a thatch of jam-colored welts.
But I did help, I say. I tried to protect you.
She laughs at me.
I did! I insist. Don’t you remember that night I threw him down the stairs?
He fell down the stairs, Thomas. And at that point it had been going on for years. It hardly mattered anymore.
What else could I have done? I say helplessly. I was just a child.
You were, weren’t you?
She turns away from me and looks around the room, her chin raised, admiring her things.
Forget it, she says lightly. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over.
Evie, I plead, reaching my hands toward hers. She moves them away before I can touch them, clasping them together and hiding them in her lap. She closes her eyes.
I just feel like my life is finally beginning, you know? she says, her eyes still shut tightly against me, as if willing me to disappear. After all that bullshit. Everything just feels possible now.
I don’t ask her what she means. For some reason, whenever I remember this moment I hear the Queen of the Night’s aria, from Mozart’s Magic Flute, the soprano’s raging coloratura runs rising from the radio like an alarm, but I know this is impossible, because Evie never listens to opera. Not since she was a child.
* * *
—
Back in the car, Ava drowsed, cradled in her sun-warmed leather seat, as I drove us back over the bridge. I still didn’t want to go home, still didn’t want our day together to end. I knew we wouldn’t have many days like this left. Hardly conscious of making the decision, I took the first exit off the parkway and eased through the familiar bends of Main Street, then down the long, hedge-shaded lane to the old house.
It had been a while.
The pool was covered for the season, a pit shrouded by a moonlike skin. The backyard was quiet, matted with fallen leaves, chambered by cold shadows. I stood on the patio, surveying the low boughs of dead trees dangling like dark arms over the fence. I’d have to hire someone to cut them down before it snowed.
How about a cookie?
Or a piece of cake?
My sisters’ voices, drifting out through an open window. Ava was with them.
No—no thanks, she said. I’m fine.
You have to eat, baby girl. You’re getting too skinny.
I’m fine.
How about a drink? Coke?
Diet Coke.
Okay, but with a scoop of ice cream in it.
No thank you.
Come on—just a spoonful.
Fine.
I went inside, hovering in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen as the twins fussed over Ava, clearing their watercolors, empty soda bottles, magazines, and half-eaten plates of food off the crowded table to set her up with her snack.
Though their heads were still crowned with the same knots of ruby and sapphire, my sisters had changed in other ways over the years. They had grown fleshy in strange places, like ill-formed sculptures—their faces were jowly, and they had the thin arms and distended bellies of starving children. In the cluttered sunroom, they painted enormous abstract canvases of naked women, close-ups of psychedelic genitalia. They could cook now—they baked cinnamon breads, simmered great vats of spaghetti and meatballs, and roasted whole ducks—and they washed everything down with wine coolers or sodas spiked with vodka and rum. I’d been relieved to find them fully clothed when we’d arrived that afternoon—they often flounced around the house in states of undress, and you couldn’t always count on them to throw on a robe before they came to answer the door.
When Ava was still very young, I’d sat my sisters down for a serious talk and told them if they wanted to have any kind of relationship with my daughter, they would have to be on their very best behavior and respect the boundaries that I dictated.
No sex talk, I’d said. No skinny-dipping. And absolutely no stories about Evie or Dad. Or else no Ava. Ever.
They had avoided my eyes throughout my whole speech, refusing to show any sign of recognition or assent—like a pair of chastened dogs who knew they were in trouble but didn’t have the mental capacity to understand why.
What if we mess up? Kit had whispered finally. Like, on accident?
Don’t.
What if we do?
Just don’t.
So they tried their best to be normal, for the sake of their niece. They’d been brought up as dolls themselves, and now they had their own little doll to adore.
And despite what you might have expected based on her cool-girl public persona, Ava adored my sisters. Having a pair of extremely weird aunts conferred a certain exoticism, a flavor of fantasy, as if she were a Disney princess attended by magnanimous fairies. Ava loved the old house and the way she was treated when she came to visit: diet soda with her breakfast in bed, hours of television and movies after midnight, her favorite books piled on the canopy bed in the third-floor room that she had claimed as her own—Tolkien, Anne Rice, Where the Red Fern Grows.
She was basking in the glow of their ministrations now, happily sucking up the sallow foam of her ice cream float. My sisters danced around her, tidying their hoarded clutter and chattering away. They all seemed to have forgotten I was there.
So, are we playing hooky today? Kit asked. What’s the occasion?
I got in trouble, Ava sighed.
You? In trouble? Deedee mock gasped. Miss Perfect? I don’t believe it.
It was stupid, Ava said, looking at her hands and reddening slightly. I made a really big mistake.
Well, sweetheart, we don’t have to talk about it, Kit said, pulling up a chair, motioning for Deedee to join their conference at the table. Tell us what else you’ve been up to.
Daddy picked me up from school and we’ve just been driving around. We went to the mall and I got a new phone case.
Lucky you.
And then we went to the beach.
Did you sunbathe? Or go in the water?
No, we just talked.
It’s a good place for a conversation, isn’t it? Deedee said, her hands working through Ava’s dark hair, beginning to braid it. Your daddy learned that from us.
When we were younger we used to beg him to take us out there, just so we could get out of the house, Kit added. Every time he came to visit we’d invent some excuse for going out, and then we’d ask him to drive us to the beach.
Just so you could talk? Ava asked. Why couldn’t you talk at home?
My sisters exchanged glances over Ava’s head, a silent transmission passing between them. I couldn’t understand why they were being so conspiratorial, why they were throwing a curtain of intrigue over the mundane routines of their youth, making up a story for Ava’s benefit.
It was just different, Kit said finally. It was different being out of the house.
What would you talk about? Ava asked.
Oh, I don’t know, Deedee said, still looking at Kit, who sat slumped in her chair, engrossed in picking at her cuticles (she’d never managed to improve her posture, no matter how often I pointed it out, trying to help her). We’d talk about what we would do when we got older and were allowed to get a place of our own. Back then we really wanted to move out.
Why?
We’d just been home for so long. You know, for years and years. We hadn’t really been in school since before we were your age.
But that sounds so fun! I wish I didn’t have to go to school.
It was okay for a while. But when we got older it wasn’t so fun.
We weren’t kids anymore.
For a while they sat without speaking—Deedee focused on the careful gathering and weaving of Ava’s hair, Kit focused on the diligent mangling of her
own fingernails. Paused in these poses of rumination, they seemed to be putting on a performance, acting out the sense of longing and regret that suited their invented narrative of thwarted hopes.
But you ended up staying anyway, Ava prompted, breaking the silence.
Of course they had stayed. They had stayed because they had never really dreamed about leaving home or doing something else with their lives. They had never wanted to.
That we did, baby girl, Deedee said, patting the finished braid against Ava’s nape. That we did.
Did you stay because of Grandma?
You could say that, yes.
Something else was troubling me now. By this point in the visit I’d have expected my mother to make an appearance, shuffling into the kitchen to say hello to her granddaughter, but there was still no sign of her.
Where is Ma? I asked suddenly.
In her room, Deedee said, not looking at me. She’s taking her nap.
This seemed wrong to me. Of course these days my mother slept a lot—even more than she used to—but for some reason I’d been sure that she would be awake when we came over. There had to be a reason for my certainty.
Doesn’t she have physical therapy today? I asked. Shouldn’t she be getting ready?
No, that’s Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Are you sure? I pressed. It’s always been Wednesdays and Fridays. When did it change?
It didn’t change, Kit said. We changed it.
But why?
Why do you care? Deedee asked. You’re not the one who brings her.
She had a point. They did do all the driving—after years of avoidance and crying fits when I tried to teach them, they’d both managed to pass their road tests on their third try after Ma started showing symptoms—but it wasn’t fair to say they did everything.
No, I just pay for it, I said.
Ava was watching us, her eyes following our volleys, her gaze uneasy. When she caught me looking at her she stared down at the table, her mouth suddenly small in her face.