The Orphan Daughter

by Cari Noga

  Chapter 9

  LUCY

  Wednesday I don’t have anything to do. Aunt Jane wants to take me to Central Park later, but I’m not going anywhere near grass. She’s meeting with Mr. Langley first, though, in Mom and Daddy’s bedroom, where the desk and computer are. Deirdre has the morning off, so she can’t keep me from listening. Luckily the door’s open a crack.

  “. . . payout of both life insurance policies, and the various retirement funds, there will be money from the sale of the apartment. It all goes into a trust for Lucy until she’s twenty-one. The income the trust generates will be sent to you for her care until then.”

  Twenty-one? I have to live in Michigan for ten whole years?

  Aunt Jane nods. She’s sitting on the bench at the end of the bed, facing Mr. Langley at the desk.

  “We won’t know that amount for sure until the apartment sells. Still, I’m estimating about eighty thousand dollars annually.”

  “Eighty thousand dollars? Are you kidding?” Her voice is shocked. It sounds like a lot of money to me, too. But sell the apartment? Someone else will live here? In our house?

  “Again, depending on the price of the apartment, we expect the trust to be valued at approximately four million dollars. Assuming two percent investment growth—being conservative, of course—that’s eighty thousand dollars per year.”

  Million!? I can’t hear what Aunt Jane says next.

  “Do you have a financial planner or investment adviser?”

  She shakes her head. “Just an accountant who does my CSA taxes. Maybe she knows someone.”

  CSA? What does that mean?

  “Well, that’s a start. I wouldn’t go cold-calling, if you can avoid it.” Mr. Langley leans forward. “With this much money all at once, you could attract an unsavory sort.”

  Aunt Jane says something else I can’t hear.

  “The trust will distribute annually. So this first payment may take a while. January, perhaps. Any more financial questions?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Moving on, then. Medical history. We’ll have all of Lucy’s medical records transferred when you’ve chosen a doctor. I’ll review it, but I don’t recall anything remarkable.”

  A doctor in Michigan. No more Dr. Muñoz.

  “On the school front, we’ve arranged for you to meet with Lucy’s teacher tomorrow. She’s in sixth grade, as you know, and I’ve confirmed that the teacher intends to pass her through to seventh next year. Academically she appears to be on the front end of the middle of the pack. You know about her interest and abilities in media production.”

  Pretty and smart. My stomach elevator stops sinking for a minute, and I feel a little burst of pride. Aunt Jane glances at her watch.

  “The last thing is personal effects,” Langley says. “Your sister of course wanted Lucy to have her special jewelry, including her wedding and engagement rings.” He stands up and takes off the picture that hides the wall safe. Mom kept her fancy jewelry for awards dinners in there. Earrings and bracelets and necklaces. I loved how everything sparkled. Sometimes she would let me fasten the clasp of her necklace. I get all those diamonds? Excitement flashes for a second, making me feel more mixed-up.

  “You’re giving them to me now? How will I get them back home?” Aunt Jane says, not taking the gray velvet bag Mr. Langley’s holding out.

  “Carry them with you on the plane. It’s safest to keep items like this with you when traveling. When you get home you might want to rent a safety deposit box, but you wouldn’t want to ship it.”

  She looks in the bag and takes something out.

  “That bracelet was Luis’s gift to Gloria when Lucy was born, and is to be presented to her on her eighteenth birthday. There’s a special note in the will.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s a nod to the Beatles song, you know.”

  “Song?”

  “It was in the slide show yesterday.” He hums a few notes.

  Tears rise, hot in my eyes. Daddy used to sing it to me all the time. Aunt Jane shakes her head.

  “‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’?” Mr. Langley raises his eyebrows.

  “Oh, right.” Aunt Jane puts the bag on the desk.

  “Only now it’s Luis and Gloria in the sky. With the diamond left here on Earth.” Mr. Langley sighs.

  “You mean Lucy,” Aunt Jane says after a second.

  “Yes. I know you haven’t seen it since you’ve been here, but she sparkles, Jane. She’s a vivacious, curious, beautiful girl. She was Gloria and Luis’s pride and joy.”

  The tears are dribbling down my cheeks, and my stomach elevator feels like it’s hit the basement. I can hear Daddy’s voice, singing.

  “I know some people would probably say they both worked too much, but nurturing Lucy was the most important thing in their lives. I just hope that will continue to be the case when she moves to Michigan with you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aunt Jane’s voice gets louder.

  “In New York, Lucy is exposed to a dynamic, multicultural world. It’s the cultural capital of the country, with museums and music and theater and universities. You know she’s bilingual. She’s had au pairs from three or four countries. She takes tae kwon do twice a week, piano lessons weekly, and rotates between swimming, cooking, and art classes at the Y.”

  “Unlike a rinky-dink town in flyover country, halfway to the North Pole?” Now I can hear her fine.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you meant it.”

  “I was only thinking out loud about a best-case scenario.”

  “In a best-case scenario, either Gloria or Luis would have crawled out of that car crash.”

  Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Step on the grass, make her car crash. I squeeze my eyes shut as the hot tears come faster.

  “I’m talking about you moving to New York to live with Lucy,” Mr. Langley says.

  “What?”

  What? My eyes pop open. Is he serious?

  “It would allow Lucy to retain some stability. Her home, her school.”

  “Absolutely not. Out of the question.” Aunt Jane sounds really mad now.

  “May I ask why? You don’t have deep roots in Michigan.”

  “Who are you to measure my roots?”

  “You and Gloria grew up in San Diego. After you married into the Coast Guard, you relocated several times.”

  “How do you—”

  “Your son’s in the military, stationed overseas. Your husband d—”

  “You’ve been investigating me?” Aunt Jane is practically yelling.

  “You’re surprised? That’s part of my job.”

  “Well, I have a job, too. One that requires me to live in Michigan.” Her hands are curled up into fists.

  “Plain Jane’s CSA.”

  CSA again. And that name, Plain Jane’s, that she said the first day. But what does it mean?

  “I don’t sit in front of a television camera, Mr. Langley. I don’t negotiate contracts worth millions. But the CSA is mine, and I’m not giving it up. And in order to run it, I need land. Farmland, specifically. Land you can grow things on. The kind of land that’s in short supply in New York City.”

  “But why do you need to make a living farming? We’ve discussed the trust income that will be coming to you. If the apartment were retained, we’d have to have a more aggressive investment strategy, but . . .”

  “Why do I need to make a living farming?” Aunt Jane flings her hands in the air. “Look, I’m trying to do the right thing, but I don’t need to explain myself to you. I don’t need to justify my life.” She stalks toward the door. Toward me. “I need some air.”

  I duck into my room across the hall, my heart racing like a train coming into the station. I’m supposed to go live on a farm?

  Chapter 10

  JANE

  How dare he.

  Anger seethes from my body, almost a visible presence, it feels like. I’m outside the
apartment building with no idea how I got here—whether anyone else was on the elevator or whether the mute doorman opened the door. Instinctively I aim north, for Central Park, down Fifty-Sixth Street and then up Eighth Avenue, glimpsing the green as I turn the corner. I walk faster, past a bus stop, a hot-dog cart, a homeless guy. I almost run, tunnel vision trained only on that green.

  For the next hour, I walk off my anger, feeling my body settle back into something like its usual cadence and rhythms. Central Park has no vegetable beds, no curving hillside views. The water is a tiny pond compared to Lake Michigan. But there is green.

  Ahead a bigger knot of people is gathered. A street performer, someone hawking their juggling or strumming for a little cash. But as I get closer, there’s no apparent entertainment. No musicians, no magicians, no mimes. Nothing to see until I’m literally almost on top of it, a black-and-white mosaic circle, inlaid in the asphalt path. Yellow forsythia branches lie on top of it.

  Seized with a sensation of trespass, I step back and notice letters in the center. I walk around to read them right side up.

  “Imagine,” it says. The forsythia branches have been arranged to form a giant peace sign, with three radiating below the G and a single branch laid on top of it. Votive candles in glass jars flicker around the word.

  A young Japanese woman with a shock of magenta in her hair approaches me with a camera.

  “Take picture?”

  I nod, automatically holding out my hand. She beckons a young man. More yellow forsythia branches stick out the top of the backpack he leaves on a bench. Instead of standing, they lie down on the mosaic, faces propped on their elbows, feet in the air.

  “Make sure to get peace sign,” the woman instructs me.

  I nod, firing off a bunch of shots before handing back the camera. She scrolls through the shots eagerly, showing one to her boyfriend.

  “That’s pretty, what you did with the flowers,” I say. Forsythia is one of my favorites, a harbinger of spring.

  They smile, pleased. “We came from Tokyo to do it,” the man says, pushing up thick-framed glasses.

  “All the way from Tokyo?”

  The woman nods. “We are dreamers, too.” She puts the lens cap on the camera and hangs it around her neck. “He was hero. She was so beautiful. Thank you for picture.”

  They return to the bench with the backpack, where they drape around each other, one earbud apiece from a shared iPod.

  I look back at the mosaic, pieces starting to click into place, like coins dropping into a newspaper machine. The Beatles again. John Lennon lived near Central Park, didn’t he? Langley’s humming echoes in my head, and the lyrics tangle with the blur of changes over the last week. Imagine Lucy in the sky, flying to Michigan. Imagine a plain Jane hauling home diamonds. Imagine living for today . . .

  Today. Soothed by the walk, the green, awe of the couple traveling thousands of miles to create their tribute, I step back to admire it and let myself imagine living for today. Just today, not yesterday or yesteryear. No if-onlys, no regrets, no resentments. Free from the shadows of marriage and motherhood misfortune, free to live in the present, with Lucy. Mi sobrina. Mi—the word rises again, unspoken—niña.

  A pigeon flaps in front of me, snatching one of the forsythia branches, ruining the peace symbol. I notice a plaque that says the mosaic is indeed a memorial to Lennon. This part of the park, called Strawberry Fields, was his and Yoko Ono’s favorite place.

  Hardly a place for real strawberries. Far too shady, my farmer’s mind says. And just like that, I’m homesick. Intensely, wholeheartedly homesick, and instead of going forward, I only want to go back. Back to my plots that await tilling. Back to the knobby hills and the views of the bays. Back to my potholed driveway. Back to my bedroom and stand-in greenhouse, with barely room to walk between the bed and the seed plugs. Back to Miguel, always willing and able to help out. Back to Martha and the CSA subscriptions she brings to my mailbox. Even back to my work-share customer family who won’t have a clue what to do. Because at least they want to be there. The rest belong there, like me. As for Lucy in the sky with diamonds, I hope she’s comfortable with her feet flat on the earth.

  Chapter 11

  LUCY

  Friday afternoon Mr. Langley knocks on my door again.

  “How have you been getting on with your aunt?”

  I shrug, my shoulders poking out from under the bed covers for the first time all day.

  “Are you feeling at all reconciled to moving to Michigan to live with her?”

  Sitting up, I shake my head, hard. “I want to stay here.”

  “I wish that could happen.”

  “She could move here.” Like you said. I look at the pink rug, watching him through my eyelashes, tears starting to well.

  Mr. Langley’s feet shift, and he sighs. “That’s not going to happen, Lucy.”

  “Why not?” Why didn’t Mom and Daddy make that part of the will?

  “It’s just the way it is. But I have a compromise plan. Can I sit down?”

  I shrug again. He’ll tell me. He lowers himself on the bed, making the mattress bounce.

  “You’ll live here through the end of the school year with Deirdre. This way you have more time to adapt to the situation.”

  He says it like it’s a sure thing or something. I pull my hair back into a ponytail, thinking about it. Deirdre is OK. Sometimes I wish she had a boyfriend here, like Caitlin, my last au pair, so she’d pay a little less attention to me. I’m not a kid anymore. But anything that puts off moving to a farm is a good thing.

  “Then what?”

  “Then in June, you move to Michigan to live with your aunt.”

  The tears rise up again, hot and angry.

  “Can’t you find someone else? What about Daddy’s family?”

  “Lucy, I’m sorry. I wish I could. But your mother had no other family. And your father’s family is all in Mexico.”

  He keeps saying that. So what? I’m still their family. Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Langley even told Daddy’s family about the car crash, since none of them came to the funeral.

  “I know it’s hard to understand. But there are laws. They can’t just leave Mexico to come take care of you.”

  “I could go there.” I sniff loudly, trying to keep the tears from leaking. One slides past my nose anyway.

  “Now, how would that be any better than moving to your aunt Jane’s?” He pats my hand and hands me a tissue.

  “They don’t live on a farm,” I say. Not that I remember, anyway. I was only a baby. And there’s Gabriella. A cousin.

  “No. Lucy, I’m sorry. But moving to Mexico is not a good idea. It’s not going to happen.”

  So it’s not that it’s impossible. It’s that he thinks it’s not a good idea. Well, my ideas count, too. I’m eleven years old, almost twelve. And now I have two months to figure out how to make it happen.

  That night, after Deirdre thinks I’m asleep, I sneak into my parents’ room. I log on to the computer and go back to Bonita Ortiz in the contacts. My aunt Beautiful. I fantasize about calling her.

  “Hola. Soy Lucy Ortiz. Can I speak to Tía Boni—?”

  “Lucy? ¿Luisa? ¡Gracias a Dios! We have been so worried.” Her voice gets faster and faster. “We heard about the car accident. It’s awful, poor Luis, mi hermano . . . but we were so worried about what would happen to you. No one called to tell us anything.”

  “The lawyer said you can’t do anything because you live in Mexico.”

  “Do nothing? ¿Por mi sobrina?” Her voice would get self-righteous. “Just try to stop me. You are family. We belong together. We will be together. Juntos pronto.”

  Together soon. I can hear her so clearly. But it’s too late to call now, so I’ll email her.

  Dear Aunt Bonita—This is your niece Lucy in New York City. You heard about Daddy and my mom, right? They say I have to go live with another aunt. I don’t want to. Please, can I come live with you? Write back soon.

  I
sign it, “Love, Lucy,” hit “Send,” and watch it disappear on the screen. Will she be able to read English? I should have written in Spanish! No, she’ll be able to read it. I wish I remembered what she looked like. Besides beautiful. I know she’ll be beautiful, like Mom, with her bright, white smile and her curly hair and all her pretty clothes and jewelry and shoes that she let me try on.

  I leave the desk for the walk-in closet. Mom’s closet. It’s giant. It even has a foldout stepladder that slides around the room on this little track so you can get to the things on the top shelves and racks. With all her TV clothes, she needed a lot of space. She would sometimes send me up that ladder. “Lucy, can you bring down my navy-and-white spectator pumps? Find the scarf I bought on our trip to Majorca? Be a dear and grab the box of summer purses?”

  I loved looking through it all as I searched for whatever she wanted. And Mom always knew what she wanted. I’ve been in Deirdre’s room, too. “I don’t have anything to wear,” she’ll say, staring into her closet. Though in her accent it sounds more like—ware-uh. “Oh dear, I don’t have anything to ware-uh.” Sometimes she’ll ask me, “How do you like this sweater”—sweat-uh—“with these jeans, Lucy? Should I wear boots with this skirt, or flats?”

  Mom would never do that. I’d find what she wanted, and she’d say, “Thank you, sweetie,” and put it on, knowing exactly how it should go. And she was always right. When she was done dressing, I’d look at her reflection in the full-length mirror. “Mom, you look beautiful,” I always told her.

  The night before the accident, I watched her pack. “Travel clothes,” she said about the pink jacket and lacy white blouse and black pants that she chose, because they wouldn’t wrinkle much. “I’ll miss you, Lucy,” she told me, putting her arm around me. “Hey, we match.”

  We stood side by side, right in front of her mirror. I was wearing my Venice Beach T-shirt from our vacation last year. She was wearing her hoodie. If I look again, hard, maybe I can see her.