After Mary Louise was asleep, Kristin went into her room. She picked idly through the stuff on the top of Mary Louise’s dresser—some earrings, a bracelet, a box of soap from the farmacia. Even some shampoo and conditioner. She knew why Mary Louise kept the stuff there. She’d learned that in boarding school, too. Unscrewing the top of the perfume, which was in an old-fashioned bottle with a ground glass stopper, she dabbed some on her wrist. Lifting it to her nose to sniff, Kristin looked up and saw her own face looking back at her from the round mirror wreathed in lit-up snowflakes. Her eyes were blue and wide. Blond hair fell to her shoulders. She didn’t look like her dad, so it must be Karen’s face she was staring into.
Kristin lowered her wrist. She put the bottle back, working the top in so it wouldn’t evaporate. Through the open door, she could hear Mary Louise starting to snore. The snore was more hiccupy than usual, like a little kid’s snore. At least it meant she was still alive. There was a note from Brad-ex-Boyfriend-Now-Asshole stuck in the corner of Mary Louise’s mirror. Seeing it Kristin felt a strong urge to take it down and rip it up. Scatter it over the floor in little pieces. Turn it into hate confetti.
Her hand actually jumped, like something out of Frankenstein. She’d seen Karen’s handwriting only once—on a card she’d found in her father’s desk. Looking at the blue slanty letters, she’d felt the same flash fire of rage as she did now, the same desire to reach out and rip up the word love.
Kristin’s palm itched. She turned out the light, shut Mary Louise’s door, and went down the hall and into her own room where Mr. Ted sat in his usual place, hogging the pillow.
“You could at least have hung up my dress.” The little white bear frowned. A thread on his nose had come loose and was dangling. “Get a shave,” Kristin said.
The dress was flimsy. It slithered around, coming off the hanger twice on the way to the wardrobe. Kristin made space for it, then plucked a piece of tissue paper out of the glossy shopping bag the shoes had come in. She sat down on the edge of the bed and folded it carefully. She’d known how to make origami once, when she was a kid. Been pretty good at it, swans and flowers and cootie catchers that opened like those plants that ate bugs. Venus flytraps. Friends gave them to each other at school, before vacations. You wrote a message on every panel so the words unfolded and closed and unfolded again. “Here’s my phone number,” “Stay in Touch,” “You are Number One.”
On her bedside table, the rosebud was tight as a fist. She knew it didn’t smell, but she held it to her nose anyway, then brushed the petals against her cheek. Kristin closed her eyes, remembering the smell of him. Cigarettes, some faintly lemony aftershave, and earth. Wet earth. The dark kind you found under trees after rain. She looked into the mirror and saw the little white bear sitting behind her, still frowning. Kristin put the flower carefully into the tissue nest she’d made for it.
“Poor old Tennyson-Like-the-P. But she’s better off without him. Brad is a loser.”
She and Mr. Ted looked at each other for a second in the glass, then she turned around and picked him up.
“You sure?” she asked.
Mr. Ted said he was.
Mary Louise had burrowed into the sofa cushions. Curled under the quilt, she looked like a little animal trying to disappear. Kristin stood looking down at her. She fingered the dulled brass button in Mr. Ted’s ear. Then she propped him on the pillow beside Mary Louise’s puckered fist and turned out the light.
* * *
The Beautiful Gift—or rather, the Looking Forward to the Beautiful Gift, which was usually the best part anyway, was why she really kind of hated surprises, because you got so rooked out of the Looking Forward, although this time Kristin didn’t think it would be, because the real thing would be so Fucking Amazing—fizzed away in the bottom of her stomach. It made her feet itch. Made her feel like she wanted to run. Or walk in little hops. All of which was great, but also presented some problems. On the practical side.
The credit cards Kristin had been supplied with for her year in Florence were her father’s. They had her name on them, sure. But the bills went to him. Her father didn’t care if she went shopping. She hated to admit it, but he and the Bitch were actually super-generous. They paid all the bills. They also read them. And there were some things you just didn’t want to share. At least not with Daddy.
So cash was kind of a problem, at least any decent-size chunk of it. She could get advances on the cards. But cash advances, at least big ones, would cause questions. Maybe prompt a phone call, which she really wouldn’t want to answer. She planned on being busy.
Kristin smiled and shaded in the doodle on her pad. He had pointed this out, gently but firmly. And, as usual, he was right. She could have saved up, of course, accumulated cash little by little, if she had time. Which she didn’t. The twenty-seventh was coming up fast. It was the weekend right before her party. Which made the Beautiful Gift perfect. Except for the credit card problem.
Kristin finished the doodle and started another one, of spiky flowers and a lightning bolt. She had been chewing over the problem all morning, and was only half listening to the Hines drone on about Botticelli when she heard Mary Louise snuffle and realized she had the answer sitting not five feet away.
* * *
Mary Louise felt awful. She felt more awful than she had ever felt. It was easy, for the first few days, to blame the hangover, if only because it put off having to admit to herself—or anyone else, and worst of all, her mom—that Brad had dumped her. The only person who knew was Kristin. And Kristin was being, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking amazing.
There were moments when Mary Louise actually thought that made her feel worse. Not because she didn’t appreciate Kristin being nice to her, but because it made her feel even more like her world was upside down. Or better—inside out. Brad—good—was bad. Kristin—mean—was nice. Next the rain would stop and it would be eighty degrees out. Then the Arno would flow backward. If Mary Louise hadn’t felt so awful, she would have felt crazy.
She wanted to call her mother, except she didn’t. Because her mother had always loved Brad, ever since they had been little and he had lived down the street, and Mary Louise had no idea, none at all, how to tell her that not only was Brad not going to someday be her son-in-law, but that he had moved into an apartment at 101 Larkspur Court in Oxford, Mississippi, with someone called Tiffany. Mary Louise knew because Brad’s sister, who was “on her side,” had told her. Brad’s sister hated Tiffany, and was really mad at Brad, and had sent Mary Louise a picture of 101 Larkspur Court taken off Google Earth to make Mary Louise feel better because “it looked like such a fucking dump.”
Sitting at her desk, Mary Louise stared like a zombie. The building was two-story caca-colored yellow brick with 1950s’ plate-glass windows and one of those brown roofs that looked like a too-big hat with the rim cut off. It made you hot just looking at it. Not that Mary Louise cared. Because she would have moved anywhere with Brad, including into a fucking dump. Which probably would have been all they would have been able to afford anyway, at least at first. Until Brad graduated and finished law school, or became a pro football player, or a surgeon, all and any of which had been in his plans. Although, let’s face it, the football player was the most likely. Mary Louise had already figured she’d have to be the lawyer or the surgeon.
OK, so Brad wasn’t maybe the smartest bear in the woods. But he’d been her bear, and she would have taken care of him. How many brains did you need in one family? Just looking at number 101 made her howl, again. Hunched over her computer with a Kleenex almost stuffed in her mouth, she zoomed in on the picture as much as she could, trying to see anything—Brad and Tiffany screwing? Brad on his knees giving Tiffany a ring?—through the front window. There was what might be a person’s back—Tiffany, white and naked? Or maybe the edge of a curtain. Mary Louise really couldn’t tell.
She was trying to zoom in even more when Kristin pushed open the door to her room, which, if she hadn
’t been so upset, would have surprised Mary Louise. Partly because it meant she hadn’t locked the door. Actually she hadn’t locked it at all in the last three days, and nothing was even missing. The New Reformed Really Nice Kristin had even stopped using her soap. And partly because it was after seven p.m., and Kristin was never in the apartment after seven p.m. Because she was always out with Him.
Whoever He was. Which nobody knew. Because nobody had ever even seen, much less met, Him. Some of the girls had started calling him KAAMB. Kristin’s Amazingly Awesome Mystery Boyfriend. Or the LIHOM. Legend in Her Own Mind. At first the others had asked Mary Louise about him all the time. Then they’d stopped. Because she never had anything to say. Just that Kristin vanished every afternoon after classes, or if she came home, vanished at sunset. Usually all dressed up. Party Vampire.
More than once Mary Louise had watched her out the window at the end of the hall, the one that looked down on to the street. But she’d never seen anything except Kristin teetering away in high heels. She’d never even seen a car. Finally she got sick of it. Maybe Kristin was working for an escort agency? Maybe she was just fucking nuts. Right now Mary Louise really didn’t care.
“You spying on the love nest again?”
Kristin leaned over her shoulder and peered at the computer screen. Mary Louise could smell her perfume. It was gag-me strong. She’d have expected sandalwood or citrus. KAAMB must have bought it for her. Brad had given Mary Louise a tiny bottle of Chanel No. 19, the real thing, for Christmas. He probably gave the same to Tiffany. Mary Louise snorted back tears and nodded.
“I know I shouldn’t. But I want to. It’s, like, I have to—” Her voice vanished in another snort. “At least, if I do it,” she tried again. “I mean, I know he lives there. So, he’s still—if I keep looking at it—” She took a deep breath. “I can kind of, feel him. Which is good, even if it hurts. It means he’s still—it’s like the hurt is him.”
She shook her head, unable to put into words this feeling that was like digging your nails into the palm of your hand when you were really afraid so you knew you still existed. “It’s kind of like—” Mary Louise tried and failed a third time.
“Picking a scab?”
Mary Louise nodded.
Footsteps creaked in the apartment above. There was a burst of sound, followed by a murmur as someone adjusted the TV volume.
“Yeah,” Mary Louise said. Then she asked, “Is that how—I mean, is it?”
They were both staring at the screen, studying the dirty yellowed bricks and the front walk made of round fake stepping-stones. Someone had planted flowers, a scratty line of daisies in the narrow bed under Brad and Tiffany’s window. Out of the corner of her eye, Mary Louise could see the ridge of Kristin’s cheekbone. If she turned around, she would see Kristin’s waist, not a foot away. See her jeans and her T-shirt that hid the belt. The puckered dark pink lines of the scars.
Did Kristin use a razor blade? A knife? A letter opener? There had been a girl at Mary Louise’s school who did it, on her legs. Inside the soft jiggly flesh of her thighs. She’d spelled out words. Or letters, anyway. PLK. TS. W, or M, hard to tell. They were probably initials, Mary Louise always thought, but whose? Her parents’? Her boyfriend’s? Or where they the initials of no one at all? Of just the whole world that had hurt or humiliated her?
Mary Louise had never asked. Neither had anyone else as they dressed and undressed and filed into the showers and out again after sports. Volleyball. Field hockey. The girl had been a good hockey player. A wing. Fast. And pretty popular, too, when she was dressed. When she wasn’t, they’d all just turned their heads. Or looked at their towels, or anywhere but at the marks. Sometimes, when they were new, the letters oozed and ran in the hot water of the showers, spinning pink threads down the drain.
“Yes,” Kristin said. Then she reached over Mary Louise’s shoulder. The computer gave a ping of protest as she switched it off. “Come on. I have a surprise for you.”
When she thought back on it later, Mary Louise thought Kristin must have worked most of the afternoon, or at least for a good couple of hours, cleaning and cooking, and she was surprised that she hadn’t heard or smelled anything. Then she wasn’t, not really. Because she’d been so busy wallowing in her swill of self-pity, sinking so it covered her ears and eyes and probably made her like one of those people who drown in really cold water—the ones you read about sometimes who are technically dead, or at least can’t hear or see or understand anything, until somebody heats them up, or whacks them on the back and they spew water and pop to life again. That’s what she’d been like then, she would think later. Half drowned. Wallowing, like a pig in shit. A pig in Brad. And she would wonder, if she hadn’t done that, if she’d woken up and spat the water out and noticed anything at all—if she’d done that, maybe things would have turned out differently. Or maybe not.
Kristin had found a tablecloth somewhere. It was pretty. Blue, with little flowers on it. And she had set the table with the plates that matched and even filled a vase with flowers. They were just carnations, from the vegetable guy down the street who dyed them different colors—orange, bright pink, and once, bizarrely, green. But still. The apartment’s main room was so clean it glowed. There were candles on the table. And votives on the windowsills and along the shelves of the bookcase and even on the drain board beside the sink. Kristin had even gone out and bought wineglasses. A big globe-y one sat beside each plate, half filled with red wine. From a bottle.
“Oh!” Mary Louise said.
It was like a date.
Kristin obviously hadn’t made the food—the only thing she knew how to actually cook was spaghetti sauce—she must have gone out and bought it. But who cared? It was nice to have someone pile her plate with cheese, and olives, and the little ham tortellini that were Mary Louise’s favorite. There were the first fresh tiny tomatoes from Sicily, too. The cute, really red ones that exploded in your mouth and squirted seeds if you bit too hard. And the wine was yummy. Not that Mary Louise knew much about wine, but she was looking forward to learning. That was one of her projects for the year. Brad said wine was for pussies. Well, fuck him. It was nice to have someone pour it for her, and clink her glass. It was nice to have someone to talk to. When Mary Louise thought back on that night, she thought that mainly it was nice because Kristin was happy.
When Kristin speared her tortellini, and shook her head while she talked, and jumped up to get the little cakes she’d bought for dessert, yanking the fridge open and blinking from the too-bright light, she seemed like a different Kristin. Or at least, another one. A Kristin who hid inside the Kristin she usually was. A Kristin, maybe, without a red belt. Which made Mary Louise wonder, as she selected one of the little cakes and peeled the paper off, if this was the Kristin her boyfriend saw.
Mary Louise didn’t doubt that he was real. She could tell. Kristin was in love. Crazy in love. She wasn’t making it up. You couldn’t do that with something, someone, you imagined. Not really. Mary Louise speared the cake with her fork. The frosting was very thick and had a sugar crust. She hadn’t meant to think about Kristin’s boyfriend, any more than she’d meant to ask about him. There was no point, because Kristin wouldn’t say anything. She’d smirk that I-have-a secret-that’s-better-than-any-secret-you-could-have smirk that made people want to hit her. Sometimes Mary Louise was amazed she still had all her teeth, and a straight nose. Unless her dad had already fixed it. But she’d had kind of a lot of wine, and she was beginning to be just the little tiniest itty bit sick of thinking about Brad, so she just did it. She just put her fork down, complete with the piece of cake, and said, “So who is he?” Just like that.
Kristin’s fork was halfway to her mouth. Her arm stopped, as if a gear had jammed, like she was one of those creepy mechanical dolls. She felt herself blink. Mary Louise’s round face glowed. Her dark curly hair squiggled off into the shadows of the room. Behind the candles, Mary Louise’s eyes looked black. She had a smear of yellow frosti
ng on her chin.
“Dante,” Kristin said. Then, miraculously, the fork continued to her mouth, as if saying it had freed something.
The cake had chocolate chips in it. At least the one she was eating did. She’d bought four different ones, pointing to them through the glass at the pasticcerìa. Chocolate chip, lemon, raspberry, and coffee mousse. The girl had picked them out with tongs and put them in a box that, for no reason Kristin could figure, had a drawing of a pink poodle on it. “Dante,” she said again, and laughed.
Mary Louise frowned. She reached down with her tongue and up with her finger and got the frosting smear. “Is that really his name?”
“That’s what I call him. And,” Kristin added, “he calls me Beatrice.”
She felt the fizz. Felt stars threatening to burst out of her and bounce all over the table. She had never said his name. Not even this one, not out loud, to anyone. He had asked her not to, and she hadn’t. Until now.
Kristin licked her lips. “He took me out for this really fancy dinner and gave me a rose.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
Mary Louise was staring at her. Kristin nodded.
“I’ve never loved anyone before,” she said. “Not, I mean. Not like this. The real thing, you know?”
Mary Louise looked down. Then she cut another piece off the lemon cake, carefully, with the side of her fork. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”
For a second Kristin was afraid Mary Louise was going to cry again. Start sniveling, or howl and blow the candles out. But she didn’t. Instead she smiled and stuck the piece of cake in her mouth. “I’m sick of talking about Brad,” Mary Louise announced. “Let’s do you.”
Kristin stared. She did a lot of things, almost everything, really. But she didn’t do Kristin. Ever. Except with him. And she didn’t drink. Or at least, not really. A glass of prosecco, a beer. He teased her about it. Carina, my little nun. He’d tweaked her cheek once, which actually she hated, and she’d snapped, “Well, Beatrice can hardly guide you through Paradise if she’s smashed.” That had made him laugh. Now she knew she’d had too much. Half the bottle of wine. And Mary Louise was still talking.
The Lost Daughter Page 3