“Well, you’re not on KP duty tonight, so you can go to sleep after you’re finished with dinner or just go up to your room and relax. If you look in the top drawer of your dresser, you’ll find a clean pair of Karen’s pajamas. I’m sure they’ll fit. There are slippers in the closet for you. We have most of the morning to spend together, and we can talk more then.”
“About what?” Karen asked, returning with a platter of bread.
“What she wants for Christmas. What do you think?” Ava snapped at her.
“I’m just asking,” she moaned, and put the bread on the table and sat.
“Don’t sit. You bring everyone’s dish up, and I’ll serve the pasta and meatballs, Karen, just the way we’ve done in the past.”
Karen rolled her eyes, stood, and went around the table to get my plate.
I looked at Daddy. He was staring at Ava in the strangest way. His eyes looked cold, and through the slight parting of his lips, I thought his teeth were clenched. The muscles in his jawbone were taut. Once again, my memories flipped like cards, and I saw him looking at my mother in a similar way. It frightened me then; it frightened me now.
For a while, we ate in silence once we were all served. When I looked at Daddy, he gestured with his eyes from the food and then toward Ava. Message received.
“This is very good,” I said. “Maybe the best meatballs I’ve eaten.”
“Thank you. Have you done any cooking?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, maybe too enthusiastically. Daddy’s face was filling quickly with warnings. Slow down. Review everything you’re going to say, and then say it. “With my mother working so much, I had to help, and I enjoyed cooking.”
“Really? Karen’s not so much as broken an egg,” Ava said. “On purpose, that is.”
Karen glared at me.
Uh-oh, I thought. In five more minutes, she’s going to hate me.
“I’d be glad to share anything I’ve learned with her.”
“Really?” Ava smiled. “Maybe we’ll have the girls make us dinner one night, Derick. What do you think?”
“Sounds great.”
Karen’s face folded into an indecisive smile. Then something widened her eyes.
“I hope not this Saturday night,” she said. “It’s Margaret Toby’s birthday party.”
“Thanks for reminding us, Karen,” Ava said. “That would be a wonderful way to introduce your cousin to everyone.”
“But she’s not invited.”
“She wasn’t here when the invitations were sent, was she? You make it your business to get her invited. How do you think she’ll feel when you go off to a party and she’s left in her room Saturday night?”
Karen looked at me, annoyed.
“She’s in the tenth grade, isn’t she? Most everyone there will be from the ninth grade.”
“Boys, too?” Ava asked, smiling.
“No, but…”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve been left alone many, many times.”
“Well, that’s coming to an end,” Ava insisted.
I looked at Daddy. He was nodding.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“What if Margaret doesn’t want to invite her?” Karen asked petulantly.
“Well then, she’s an idiot, isn’t she? You don’t want to hang around with idiots, do you, Karen?”
Daddy rose to pour more wine into Ava’s glass. For the first time, I saw her smile at him lovingly. Even after all these years and all that had happened, it stung to see him return that look.
I continued to eat. Karen started to sulk again, eating mechanically as she glared at her food. Daddy returned to his seat.
“This is the one thing that makes your father jealous of me,” he said, eating a meatball.
Ava smiled.
“He has his own chef,” Karen said petulantly.
“Not the same thing,” Daddy said. He sipped his wine. Ava and he were looking at each other like they were alone at the table. Karen sighed and stabbed her fork into her food.
This is like being in a movie, I thought, and watching it at the same time.
Afterward, I did feel bad about leaving Karen to clear the table and help Ava take care of the dishes. It wasn’t in my DNA to be lazy. Mazy had seen to that. But working beside her these last two years had drawn us closer together. For some reason, it helped resurrect stories from her own childhood. Some were funny, but most were sad.
However, Daddy looked anxious and grateful that we could retreat to the living room and be alone for a little while before dessert was served. Garson was still asleep, so he thought it best to leave him.
“Sometimes moving him is like stirring up a hornet’s nest,” he joked, loud enough for Ava and Karen to hear.
We went to the living room.
“I have nothing to do with any of the furniture in this house,” Daddy said, almost proudly, when we entered. “Ava insists I have no taste and no sense of color coordination. Some of what she chose, she chose to be sure it was quite different from her father’s home. She said her father had to approve everything her mother bought for them, down to towels for the bathrooms.
“It’s a comfortable-looking room, though, isn’t it?” he asked.
I thought it looked unused, a room on display and far from comfortable. It was a room you’d want to tiptoe through and be sure you had clean, washed clothes before sitting on anything. Nothing was out of place. The two overstuffed white couches were juxtaposed with the marble mantel of the fireplace. Hardwood floors gleamed. The brown and white pillows on the sofas were placed identically at right angles on both. At the center was a glass table in a wood frame that matched the floor. The only thing on the table was a bowl of imitation fruit. The fireplace looked like it had never been used, even though there was real wood neatly placed within. On the top of the mantel was a single lamp that looked like an antique gas lamp. There wasn’t a magazine, a book, or a piece of paper anywhere in sight. Everything appeared like it had just arrived from the showroom. Even the one painting on the far wall, with its thick frame, a mixture of lines and shapes, had no emotion. It was framed wallpaper to me. There were two miniature versions of it, one on each side. Other than that, the walls were bare.
“Does anyone ever come in here?” I asked.
He laughed. “We do spend most of the time in the den, which is off the front door, except when we’re entertaining special dinner guests. The den is where we have the television set. Karen has one in her bedroom. Ava didn’t want one in ours. If you want one in yours…”
“I never had one,” I said. “Mazy would have gotten me one if I had asked for it.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “Try never to use that name. We’ll talk about it later.” He looked back toward the kitchen. “Let’s go to the den,” he said, clearly thinking we might be overheard.
Try never to use that name? The very idea made me cold, but it was true. All my memories of Mazy had to be forgotten or at least never mentioned. I followed him through the hall.
Although the den was as immaculate as the living room, it did look used and more comfortable, with its soft brown leather couch and a wall of bookcases interrupted by a large painting of Sandburg Creek from what looked to be the point of view of a hawk. There were two reclining easy chairs and a large center table with magazines and real flowers, or great imitation ones, in vases on the side tables. The large-screen television set was on the wall on the right.
“We modernized the sound system in here, too,” Daddy said. “Subtly. Keeping the house in character is almost a religious thing for Ava to maintain its authenticity.”
Just as we sat on the sofa, Karen appeared in the doorway.
“Vanilla or chocolate ice cream?” she asked me.
“Vanilla.”
“I like chocolate. So does Daddy, right, Daddy?”
“Sure, but I could eat both.”
I smiled, recalling how Mazy had used the prospect of pizza and ice cream to help tempt me to go
home with her the night she appeared at the train station. She had asked the same question—vanilla or chocolate? Those choices seemed to separate people before anything else would.
Karen huffed and put her hands on her hips. She was a little wide there, I thought.
“I called Margaret. She says you can come to her party,” she said. “Later you can tell me all about the parties you used to go to. Five minutes,” she told Daddy, and left us.
I looked at him.
“Tell her about the parties I went to? I never went to any party.”
“Just make up something racy,” he said. “That’s all she wants to hear. Something naughty. That’s how teenage girls are. They like to tempt each other with outlandish things, titillate.”
I shook my head. He was telling me how teenage girls behave. What did he think I was, an alien? I couldn’t do this. This was not going to work.
“How could I become someone else this fast?”
He stared at me. He didn’t have to say it, because I could see it on his face.
He was able to do it, and therefore, so should I.
I was his daughter, wasn’t I?
CHAPTER FIVE
I took advantage of Ava’s suggestion at dinner and claimed to be very tired right after we had our dessert. After all, I had supposedly flown all night and ridden on a bus for hours crossing the country right after my mother had died. Actually, I really didn’t have to pretend. I felt numb with exhaustion from tiptoeing over a thin glass floor of lies. However, my real reason was to put off any more real questions and explanations. The tension was tiring. Of course, I knew that paranoia would be sitting and standing right beside me maybe forever, but I also knew that catching my breath would help me to avoid mistakes.
I excused myself and went up to my room, changed into the pajamas Ava said she had left in the dresser drawer, put on the pink furry slippers, which looked brand-new, and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed.
When I came out and returned to my room, however, Karen was sitting on the bed, thumbing through a fashion magazine she had brought with her. For a split second, I thought she knew the truth and had come up here to let me know, too. How could I live here with this daily fear? I held my breath in anticipation when she closed the magazine and looked at me with beady eyes. From the moment I had first seen her, I had scanned her face, looking for similarities with mine. In both cases, we looked more like our mothers. I was sure that I flashed some of Daddy’s expressions. Would pretending he was my uncle be enough cover for all that? Did Karen already suspect something?
“Those pajamas fit you perfectly,” she said, looking up at me. “They were a little too big for me up here,” she said, pressing her palms against her breasts. “I’m still filling out; at least, I hope I am. I like your hair tied back like that, but be prepared for tomorrow at the beauty salon.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. Finally, I added, “I’ve never been to a beauty salon.”
Would the break between my thoughts and my tongue always be wide enough?
She put the magazine aside.
“Never?”
“No money for that.”
She smirked with disbelief and then nodded as the possibility became real.
“I do have friends who don’t ever go, but I don’t think it’s the money thing. They’ll go before birthdays or events but certainly not regularly.”
I nodded as if I understood what it was like to be so carefree about such expenses.
Once again, she stared at me suspiciously.
“What?” I asked.
“We have to get to know each other if we’re really going to be like sisters,” she said.
I was hoping the irony wasn’t dripping from my face. Be like sisters? She obviously had no suspicions. Relief washed over me in a cool flash, just the way it would for anyone who had gotten away with something blatantly obvious.
“Actually, I always wanted a sister. I don’t know why they took so long to have Garson. When I ask, Daddy always says I was four handfuls, even for him.”
Even for him? But he wasn’t there for so much of her early years. I wondered how much of the truth she knew about herself, much less about me. Did she know she was unexpected, that she had been born before her parents had married? Did she have any idea about her parents’ past, even an inkling about my father’s previous life? What did she know? What had he told her, created for himself? Did she overhear him tell Ava his fictionalized account of his sister? Did she ask him any questions? How had he twisted the truth with her?
I wasn’t the only one living a lie here.
This was a family built on lies.
Now that I had learned some of what had been going on while Daddy was still married to Mama, I wondered why Ava did go through with Karen’s birth. How did her father react? How did my father win his acceptance? Daddy didn’t really explain it very much. How much did people in this town know about it all but keep cloaked in secret whispers?
My mind was racing with questions, but I thought if I asked her even one of them, she would ask ten about me. She was probably going to do that anyway, but why bring it on tonight?
“Did you ever want a brother or a sister?” she asked.
When I was in deep thought, I could look directly at someone and never hear a word he or she said.
“Hello. Earth to Saffron?”
“What? Oh. Sorry. I guess I am just so tired. I think I’m sleeping on my feet.”
“Well, you don’t have anything to do until Mother takes you to get your hair and nails done, probably not until late morning, so you can sleep in. And no one will expect that much from you at school for a while.” She paused, giving me those beady eyes again. “I asked my mother about your name. She said you must have been born with that shade of hair and enough of it. Who named you, your mother?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So your father left pretty soon after?”
“I don’t know the exact day, but I have no memories of him,” I said, hiding my face as I walked around the bed and sat with my back against the pillow.
She didn’t get up, but she had to turn around. I closed my eyes, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy to get rid of her. If I tried too hard, she might get suspicious, I thought. That might be my concern over almost anything I did or said.
“So you never ever saw him?”
“Yeah… I don’t even have a picture of him. Not that I care. He deserted us.”
“Didn’t it bother you not to have a father?”
I pretended I was giving something I had thought about so often new, long, serious thought.
“Yes. Especially when other girls bragged about theirs or I saw young girls walking hand in hand with their fathers. Sometimes I pretended I had a father, that his hand was holding mine. And I even read children’s stories aloud to myself at night the way a real father might. You know, changing my voice?”
“Oh. That’s sad.”
“Just another in a long list of bad memories, most that would give you nightmares.”
“Huh?”
“So what’s the school like?” I asked, to get her off the subject.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A school’s a school. I hear our class sizes are infinitesimal compared to public school, and everything we have is newer and cleaner. What about your school? Were your classes big?”
I thought about Hurley. Did I want to reveal that I had been in advanced classes with small class sizes? I was afraid of being intimidating. Let her find out after I’m at school. Careful with the details anyway, I thought, always careful. I was doing what Daddy had advised me to do, asking the question over in my head.
“About twenty-five or so, but there were some larger and some smaller. Grades were about a hundred or so in one school and nearly two hundred in another and even more in another,” I said, remembering I had supposedly been to more than one and in areas where there would be large classes, bigger populations.
“Two h
undred? You’ll be shocked, then. We have maybe thirty in a whole grade, and that’s divided into regular classes and advanced placement.”
“Really? Are you in advanced placement?”
“No, and I’m glad.”
“Why?”
“Those classes are so small that you can’t hide,” she said. “You’d better hope they don’t put you in one,” she added as if she knew a reason I would. “Besides, those AP kids are the snobbiest. The smartest girl in the school, Melina Forest, walks like a ballet dancer through the halls, so daintily you could eat off the heels of her shoes. She has a pretty face, but she’s already five foot ten and so flat-chested you can practically see her wing bones when you look at her from the front.”
“Sounds like you’re obsessing about her.”
“What? What’s that mean?”
I thought a moment. Why do I have to be so like Mazy and say what I think so often? That’s dangerous here.
“Does some boy like her, a boy you like?”
She pursed her lips in and out, looking like a fish breathing.
“Tommy Diamond’s always with her. He’s in AP classes, too, and the star of our basketball team. I’m not the only one who likes him,” she said. “Some of the girls go ga-ga when they look at him, even though their mothers would never let them go out with him.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll see,” she said, enjoying holding back.
“Oh. So is he snobby, too?”
“Not really, but if he was, I could forgive him,” she said. “I could forgive him for anything,” she added, and I laughed. “I mean it!”
“Okay. Sorry.”
She stared at me a little too hard, feathering all sorts of suspicions.
“Did you have a boyfriend you left behind?”
“No.”
I answered too quickly. Her eyes widened.
“Not even someone close to being a boyfriend?”
“No. When you have to travel about like we did, it’s not easy establishing a relationship.”
“Establishing a relationship? I’m just talking about a boyfriend, not a marriage.”
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