Lily nodded. Tears slipped down her face so fast, the part Cindy could see, the tops of her rosy cheeks, were all wet. No tracks, just a clear, sugary glaze. The cat’s fur beneath Lily’s cheekbones was also changing hues. From white to dark gray from the waterworks.
“What?” said Cindy. “Lily, this is like pulling teeth. What couldn’t he tell him? What?”
“That he was in love with us.”
“Us?”
She nodded. “He was in love with us both.”
Cindy closed her eyes and shook her head. These kids were idiots. There was no such thing as love and they were too young to know what it was anyway.
“What about you, Lily?”
“I love Jack, Mama. I’m going to marry Jack.”
Cindy looked at Lily. Straight in the eyes.
“Did you tell him that?”
“Of course, Mama. I mean I said yes.” She smiled shyly. “He sort of asked. Jack knows I’m going to marry him.” She looked like she was holding her breath. Waiting for her mother’s response. Hoping.
“‘He sort of asked,’” Cindy repeated her daughter’s phrasing. She remembered when her own ex “sort of asked.” And then did ask. And then asked again. But this Jack had a future. He was a nice, cute boy; he was a good student, going to college. Her ex was a bum. Long on charm, short on everything else worth anything. This Jack came from a good family. The parents cared about her daughter, they fed her nights that Cindy was out. Jack lived in College Terrace, Palo Alto, for God’s sake. By now his ratty old house was worth at least a couple million dollars. His parents were still married. He clearly was in love with Lily, Cindy had seen it with her own eyes. This boy was a catch. Worth holding on to.
The last thing she wanted was for Lily to end up alone like she was.
“All right,” said Cindy.
The alleviation of Lily’s fears, even for a split second, was visible on her face.
“Did you tell Kevin, Lily?” Cindy asked.
Dewy tears weighted down Lily’s flower petal lashes.
Just the mention of that boy’s name, Cindy thought. She’s never going to get over this. She doesn’t even know enough yet to know she’s never going to get over this. “Did you tell Kevin that Jack was the one you love?”
“Yes, Mama. But . . .”
The silence between them was like a pulse of something cold and awful, chilling Cindy’s heart and flooding her veins.
It’s worse than I thought, Cindy said to herself, lips pressed together and shaking her head. Please God, she doesn’t love him back. Please God, it’s not her fault the dumb kid killed himself.
For the rest of my daughter’s life she’s going to have to carry this utter stupidity on her back, the guilt and shame of it, and walk bent over by the burden.
“But?” said Cindy, in her own mother’s voice. “But what?”
Lily shrank deeper into the cat. She was disappearing into the cloud of his white coat.
“Kevin and I talked, Mama. We talked a lot. We talked about things I never, I mean he didn’t care if I was nice or not. I could be mean and he thought I was funny or just mean, I guess. He didn’t judge, and he didn’t care if the things I said were smarter . . . You know, Jack thinks I’m sweet, he thinks I’m perfect.”
“Well, you practically are,” said Cindy. And then it dawned on her. “LilyRose Leighton Kelly, did you sleep with that boy?”
Lily looked up at her mother, away from the cat’s darkened fur. Her eyes were so blue. Her face was so wet. For a moment, all Cindy could think of was Lily as a little girl, naked in the bath, her blond hair slicked back, her eyes so blue they hurt to look at. They looked just like that now.
“Lily!”
Lily nodded yes. “I mean sort of. Only on the phone.”
“On the phone?”
“I sent him pictures.”
Cindy slapped her across the face.
The slap knocked the tears right out of Lily. The slap rocked Cindy to her feet. She stood up. “Pictures?” said Cindy. “Are you insane?” She started to pace on the little cement walkway. “Pictures can’t be erased, Lily! Pictures can live forever! Pictures can ruin your future. They can ruin everything.
“Why?” said Cindy. She was talking to Lily but she was looking across the sky at the day moon, round and cratered and low, sitting on the horizon. Her daddy used to call it “the children’s moon,” because he said little girls were too young to stay up at night to see the real thing, so God gave them this one to gaze on. Her mother still called it the “jejune moon,” rocking on the porch swing in that assisted-living facility back in Durham, because that’s what her own granny had called it, something to do with its lack of luminosity, its weakness, Cindy supposed. How pale that watery silver satellite seemed, haunting them from the wrong side of Earth.
“Why? Why would you ever do something so unintelligent?” said Cindy.
Lily looked down. “He asked me to.”
“He asked you to?”
“Yes,” said Lily. “Yes, Mama,” and she was that little naked girl in the tub again. Only now her shoulders were shaking, her whole body was shaking, out of control, so Cindy sat down again on the steps next to her.
“Hush now,” said Cindy. But Lily’s body kept shaking, her knees were jumping like she was in the doctor’s office and the nurse was testing her reflexes with that tiny rubber hammer. Her teeth were chattering. It seemed to Cindy Lily’s whole body was shuddering and rattling. In between her sobs, Lily appeared to have trouble catching her breath.
Cindy put both her arms around her. She pulled Lily in close. She tried to steady her daughter. “Do you think he showed them to anyone?”
“Kevin isn’t like that,” said Lily. “Besides, it was Snapchat. He promised me no screenshots.”
Cindy knew about boys and their promises. “You trusted him on that?”
Lily stopped crying long enough to roll her eyes. “If he screenshotted it, Snapchat would have notified me.”
“What about that phone? Do you think he had it on him when, you know, when the train came?”
“Oh, my God, Mama,” said Lily. But when she saw Cindy’s face it must have scared her, because she said, “Yes. He’d just texted me, and I know Kevin, he keeps that phone in his right front pocket.”
Cindy sighed. She whispered fiercely in her daughter’s ear. “You must never tell Jack,” said Cindy.
“I won’t,” said Lily into her mother’s chest, where her tears were soaking Cindy’s new lime-green silk dress, now. Ruining it. “I won’t.”
“You must never tell anyone else. Promise me. Your hand on a stack of Bibles, Lily. This is just between us. Let’s hope the authorities don’t find that phone.”
“I won’t, I promise, Mama,” said Lily.
It was hard for her to form the words, with her teeth going like that wind-up chattering-teeth toy that assholes like Phillip kept on their desks, but Cindy could feel some of the anxiety and tension flow out of her daughter’s body and into her own. Cindy would carry this load for her. She could feel the beginnings of her daughter’s relief along with the beginnings of her grief. And she could feel Lily’s fear and pain enter Cindy’s own bloodstream, another tributary poisoning her. That is what mothers were for.
“Now, you told me Jack’s daddy is away, right?”
“Yes, Mama, that’s why Jack had the car. His mother, well, she drank a whole bottle of wine last night. She’s been so worried, Dan hasn’t called home, she conked out early. And Jack’s been worried about her and about him, too, the dad . . . Do you think he could be having an affair, Mama? Or a nervous breakdown? Or maybe he’s just dead somewhere?”
“He’s not dead,” said Cindy.
“How do you know?” said Lily.
“I just know. Infidelity. I can smell it.”
Lily’s eyes were so big. She nodded in agreement. “I think so, too, Mama.”
“This is his fault,” said Cindy.
“How?” said
Lily.
“If he hadn’t gone away, Amy wouldn’t have been messing in the liquor cabinet, and Jack wouldn’t have been out all night, and Kevin would have gotten some sleep, and today would have been just another day.”
“You think it’s that easy?” said Lily.
“Sleep is like medicine,” said Cindy. “People who get a good night’s sleep don’t lie down in front of trains first thing in the morning.”
Lily slowly nodded.
“Do you hear what I’m saying?” Cindy said.
“Yes,” said Lily.
“That much and that much alone you can share with Jack,” said Cindy.
“I love you, Mama,” said Lily. She wrapped her arms around her mother.
“I love you, too, baby girl,” said Cindy. “More than anything in this world. You are my life, baby.” Cindy rocked her back and forth, both arms around her now, like Lily had just been born.
“You sent that picture because Kevin asked you to,” said Cindy. “But you didn’t have to. Right? You don’t have to do things just because men ask.”
“Yes, Mama,” said Lily.
“Next time you say no.”
Cindy gave her daughter another squeeze and then she let go. She stood up and pulled her chin in toward her chest to examine the stain on the front of her shift.
“Better rush on down to the mall and get this to the dry cleaners,” said Cindy.
She started climbing the cement stairs. Halfway up the first flight, she stopped and turned to look at Lily.
“You know you are more than just your pussy.”
“Yes, Mama,” said Lily.
* * *
It was a good thing Naresh followed Amy when she exited the building after leaving Donny’s office. She’d walked straight out the door, without her handbag or her jacket or her phone, and down the outside staircase. All she could think to do was flee.
She heard him holler from two stories up and half a block away, as she took the turn left on California Avenue.
“Amy,” he yelled from the i.e. landing. “Wait up!”
As she stopped walking to do just that, wait up for Naresh, Amy flashed back to her brother Eric. He’d been on her mind ever since Donny had fucked with her head. Like Naresh, Eric always went after her when she ran away in fear or in anger. No one else had ever done so, not even Dan, who often just chose to let her stew. Even though there was seven years between them, Eric liked to say that he and she were “psychic twins.” Their other brother was psychotic. The middle child. A violent, sadistic bully. Whenever possible, they skipped over him as best they could. Although Eric was never Michael’s target. He was too old and cool for that. Eric was the only one who’d ever seemed to intimidate him.
Eric died when Amy was still in high school. Not like he did in Donny World. He was backpacking alone through Europe, trying to mend a broken heart. That bitch, Elodie, his high school girlfriend, she’d floated in and out of his life for years. Years! College, summer, and then later in San Francisco, when they were young adults trying to create visions for their lives, she’d sleep over one night, then vanish the next, date a friend of his, try to worm her way back inside. She couldn’t seem to live with him or without him. She’d crook a finger and beckon, and Eric always ran back to her. Maybe he would have tired of all that mysterious Elodie bullshit if he had lived? Maybe the two of them would have gotten it together finally, married, had kids? There was no way to know. Except, Donny would say, The Furrier. But for some reason that was not what Amy wanted to find out. She’d learned to accept that Eric was gone.
Although now that Amy had been party to Donny’s crazy algorithms—like a Universal Studios ride in reverse, like a Universal Studios ride with a full stomach, in reverse, on acid—maybe the reason she accepted Eric’s death was that it seemed now that Eric would probably have died anyway, just later in his life while rock climbing. He wasn’t a rock climber when Amy knew him, but maybe he just hadn’t lived long enough to have been introduced to the person who would have turned him on to rock climbing. Maybe that person was a woman, a woman he met in his own multiverse, who would have cured him of the evil Elodie once and for all, birthed his children, and climbed rocks with him on weekends. Donny World had done nothing to make clear to her why the hell Eric had gone rock climbing anyway. If he ever did go. If that dreadful multiverse even existed. If it was better or worse than this one.
A part of Amy always blamed Elodie—if she hadn’t kept jerking Eric around, he wouldn’t have been halfway across the world when he was; and if he wasn’t halfway across the world when he was, he wouldn’t have been murdered.
Amy had bumped into Elodie at an airport years after Eric’s death, years she’d spent fantasizing about just such an encounter, and all the clever and acidic things she’d planned to say to her. The timing had been inopportune, and the cutting remarks Amy had rehearsed again and again in her head scattered away like crystal beads let loose from a necklace Elodie herself might have worn back in the day, haute hippie and expensive, multifaceted; Amy couldn’t scramble fast enough to gather and string her sentences back together. She was juggling the twins, and Dan was up ahead, with Jack riding astride a luggage cart, aiming for their gate, when Thing Two ran straight into Elodie’s exceedingly tall and handsome husband, a green-eyed black man with dreadlocks snaking down his long, broad back. The guy said, “Whoa, little dude” as Amy’s kid plowed right into him, and Elodie turned around at the sound of his voice. For a second they were all locked in a tableau, staring as Thing Two overreacted, classically, by squalling and crying and rolling on the floor. No one owned the term “temper tantrum” like little Theo.
Elodie was even more beautiful now that she was older, Amy had noticed in the moment with a lightning-like fury, Elodie’s increased loveliness like a match to Amy’s angry live gas jet. The soft, slow curve of Elodie’s younger face had melted away over time to reveal pronounced cheekbones and a jaw that was strong and set, and she wore her now-dark blond hair long and fluid in one of those perfect messy ponytails. She was holding the hand of what appeared to be her daughter, a pre-Raphaelite blondie herself, with long, loose curls and golden-brown skin, wearing a spotless white linen trapeze dress—she looked like a little angel. What Amy would have given, especially back then, to have one of those in her house of boys.
“Oh, Amy,” Elodie had said, and she’d hugged Amy before Amy could step away or even try to calm Thing Two down. “I think about you all the time,” Elodie went on, wetly, she was crying now into Amy’s ear, while holding on to her for dear life. “I think about Eric every day,” she whispered. “I’ve never gotten over it.” Then she pulled away.
“Darrell, honey, this is an old friend, Amy Reed.”
“Hi, Amy,” said Darrell, warmly, and seemingly oblivious to the emphasis his wife put on Amy’s last name, or her tears. Or maybe Elodie was the type of grown woman who cried all the time—one could have predicted that—so that hottie-hubby Darrell simply was just used to her, and he stuck out his hand. On his wrist were a series of striking sculptural silver bracelets.
When Amy had googled both husband and wife later that night, she read that they were a design team of very expensive houseware—sold privately from their website, or exclusively at Barneys. Worse, they lived in Bali, in an open-air house, many of the rooms lacking walls to the outside. The weather there was so balmy, who the hell needed walls, Amy thought. Instead, they had waterproofed screens that their servants could roll down at night to keep out the chill or rain. A piece about the house, the porcelain and silver they designed, happy gorgeous them, had appeared in Vogue, but when did Amy have time to read Vogue? When did she have time to read anything? Butterflies the size of a human hand flew in and out of Elodie and Darrell’s living room. (There was a close-up of one on Vogue.com; it had alighted on the hubby’s bejeweled wrist, bright blue, yellow, and black, like a tropical neon fish, and the photo itself was shot by Annie Leibovitz.) Elodie and Mr. Elodie had started their own sc
hool—he must have come from a pile of money—for indigenous children as well as ex-pats’ brats.
They were probably on their way back to Bali when Amy ran into them, at San Francisco International, most likely after visiting Elodie’s alive and healthy and helpful parents. But all this was a combo of conjecture, envy, and Internet stalking; Elodie’s tearful confession and her spouse’s quick handshake had been the end of the conversation, because Thing Two had run off just then—screaming—and was instantly lost in a crowd of potential child molesters. Thing One was pulling on her arm to run after him. Most embarrassingly, Dan was bellowing at her from up ahead, “Goddamn it, Amy. We’re going to miss the fucking flight.” And that was the end of Elodie, who still seemed to carry Eric around in her heart, as Amy ran off to follow her family. Ironically, they were on their way to Disneyland. The Magic Kingdom. Happy Land! To this day she didn’t understand what anyone saw in the place. Giant turkey legs and spinning teacups. Kids throwing up. Long lines for the rides, the concession stands, the souvenir stores. Although she’d been grateful for the endless wait for the women’s room. It was the most peaceful she had felt in months, Amy blessedly alone in a winding row of strangers, separated from her family finally by gender, her excuse inviolate: she needed to change her tampon.
The rainy night Eric died in Amy’s real life, or at least in this multiverse, he was camped out in a train station in Italy, when he rose from his sleeping bag to defend a woman, a stranger, whose boyfriend or husband or pimp was brandishing a knife and swinging her around by the hair and threatening to cut her throat. A bystander (they were told all this via the American embassy sometime later), a Polish man, said to the police in broken Italian that when Eric tried to step in between the couple, the boyfriend stabbed Eric in the leg, apparently severing the femoral artery. The woman and the man ran out of the station hand in hand, laughing, as Eric rapidly bled out.
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