Edgewater

by Courtney Sheinmel

  “My demands?”

  “Boarding school, a horse,” she said.

  “That’s what Mom’s money was for. I’d like to use some of it to at least get my horse home.”

  My voice cracked at the last bit, but Gigi didn’t take notice. “And I was never good enough for you,” she went on. “And the house was never clean enough.”

  It was a choice between screaming and crying, and I picked screaming. “Because the house is filled with junk and filth! How can you stand it?”

  I reached out and yanked the radio cord from the wall again, so hard that the radio shook and sent an avalanche of yellow-stained mail onto the floor. A picture flashed in my head: Beth-Ann Bracelee showing up here for a “surprise visit.” It was a horrible game I played with myself sometimes, when I imagined people from my outside life coming into my inside one, and I could almost hear myself, shrill in my effort to be lighthearted: What, you’ve never seen envelopes stained with cat urine before?

  “Lorrie,” Gigi said stubbornly, “you know I like my radio in the mornings.”

  “It doesn’t even work right!” I picked it up and stuffed it into an already stuffed garbage can, pushing it down with the force of all my weight—I’d make it fit. Then I went for the soiled mail on the floor. Three Pottery Barn catalogs—because just one wouldn’t be enough. Those catalogs always made me so damn jealous. Sure, Edgewater’s rooms had once been grander, but I’d kill to live within those pages, where everything looked so neat and orderly. Beds were made, tables were set, floors were swept clean, and not a shit stain or a hairball in sight. I stuffed them in on top of the radio.

  “Don’t get rid of things I need,” Gigi said.

  “One day we’ll all be dead, and it’ll be someone’s job to come in here and clean this place out. I’m just getting a head start.”

  “Why do you have to be so morbid, Lorrie?” She tapped her waffle, testing the temperature, then picked it up and took a bite.

  “Why do you have to be so insane? Why can’t you just talk straight and tell me where the money is?”

  I was squatting on the floor, sorting and tossing and looking for anything that might offer a clue to where Gigi had moved the trust. Mostly there were just old bills, still sealed. I ripped envelopes open and looked at the due dates.

  “These are all late,” I told her.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Gigi said flippantly, wiping her hands on a dish towel that had probably never seen the inside of a washing machine.

  I ripped open another envelope. “Here’s the summer show schedule Woodscape sent out. Guess you won’t be needing it now.” Into the garbage it went. I reached for the next envelope—thick, cream-colored stock with HILLYER ACADEMY written in the return address corner—and took a deep breath.

  Oh God. Hillyer.

  When Lennox’s older sister, Harper, was headed into ninth grade, the moms had decided she needed a proper preparatory education, one she couldn’t get at our local high school. Two years later, naturally, Lennox was all set to join her. I filled out my own forms and sent them in without asking Aunt Gigi’s permission. I even forged her signature and told her the application check I’d requested was for an after-school program. She hadn’t asked for more details, and I hadn’t come clean until I’d been admitted.

  For three years Hillyer had been my real home base. This was just about the time of year that the housing administration sent out September dorm assignments. I knew Lennox would be my roommate again, but it’d be nice to see it in writing, along with our building and room number—a tangible reminder that my summer at Edgewater had an expiration date.

  My chest filled with icy dread: Please let this be the dorm assignment.

  The envelope was addressed to Aunt Gigi; since she was my guardian, Hillyer sent all relevant correspondence directly to her. Not that she cared. I slipped a finger under the envelope flap and pulled it upward.

  Gigi was chattering away, oblivious: “I’m thinking I should have a theme for my birthday party. I went to a Christmas-in-July party once. Not that I want a used theme. Maybe the theme should just be me, since I’m the birthday girl. Either way—”

  Dear Ms. Hollander, We regret to inform you . . .

  I swear, my heart stopped frozen in my chest for several beats. My voice—when I could speak—was smaller, more scared than I’d anticipated. “What the hell have you done, Gigi?”

  She blinked. “Darling, I know it’s old-fashioned, but I do prefer Aunt Gigi.”

  “What kind of aunt are you?” I began softly. But I cut myself off and started again. “I don’t know why this is shocking to me—that you managed to find money for those ridiculous shoes but can’t be bothered to make a DOWN PAYMENT ON MY TUITION!”

  Gigi blinked. “Do you really think these shoes are ridiculous?”

  “Goddamn it!” I cried. “I can’t believe you’re worried about the shoes, of all things. I’m embarrassed to be related to you. That’s why I don’t call you Aunt Gigi. I don’t want to remind myself that we’re related at all!”

  Gigi’s shoulders slumped. Even in her towering heels, she suddenly looked very small. “I’ve been doing my best,” she said, and tears spilled over her cheeks, as if she was a child. “It was only me, all this time. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t the plan.”

  She moved past me, a sobbing comet of gold stars and swishy blue satin. I pulled the car keys from my pocket and slammed outside, gulping air, dying for escape.

  7

  NO STRINGS ATTACHED

  SATURDAY MORNING, I WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF a dream. I was at Oceanfront, and a jumps course had been freshly set up for competition. A trailer pulled into the circular dirt driveway in front of the stables, and I raced out to it, because I knew my horse was in it. Sure enough, Charlie Copeland jumped out of the cab and opened the back to lead Orion down the ramp. But with each step they took, the ramp seemed to grow longer and longer, and I woke up before they could reach me.

  I wasn’t ready to be awake just yet, and I closed my eyes and tried to slip back into sleep—back to the possibility of reaching my horse and his handler. But it was futile.

  I twisted around in bed to face the window. The shade was down, but there was a thin band of early-morning sunlight, pinkish yellow, streaming through the sliver of space between the bottom of the shade and the top of the windowsill. This was my favorite time of day to ride Orion, before most other people in the world had so much as swung their legs out of bed and had a first cup of coffee. My heart ached from missing him, and I hoped he was handling our separation better than I was.

  Yes, he was a horse. Just a horse, some people might say, but we’d barely been apart since the afternoon I’d spotted him, four years earlier. Lennox and I had been taking lessons at Oceanfront for years, but we were at the Hampton Classic as spectators, not riders. Orion was standing in the main corral. Chocolate brown, except for the blaze on his nose, a small spot on his neck, and matching snow-white markings on each of his legs, as if he was wearing knee-high stockings. He was three years old and sixteen hands high—almost as tall as he’d be full-grown—but he still had the bony awkwardness of a colt. He reared up, and I watched his trainer stumble back, then step forward and tug on the reins to regain control. Orion came down, nostrils flaring. He whipped his head, and when he did, he looked straight at me, as if he somehow knew who I was. The two of us held each other’s gaze for at least five full seconds, until the trainer tugged on the reins again to lead him away, and even then, Orion turned to glance at me once more before he was pulled around the corner to the stables.

  In the days that followed I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It made me believe maybe there was such a thing as love at first sight, if not between a girl and a boy, then at least between a girl and a horse. I told Aunt Gigi I needed to have him. She made the arrangements, even though my birthday wasn’t for two more months.

  It’s not an exaggeration to say that Orion had finally plugged up the hole th
at had opened in me when Mom left. I think it was about having something in my life that made me feel worthy. There were times, approaching a jump at twenty miles an hour, my legs tense against Orion’s abdomen, when his powerful, muscular body felt like an extension of my own. I knew that horseback riding came with tremendous risks. We’d all heard horrible stories, and that was why we wore the latest helmets and learned how to fall as safely as possible, and even then we knew we were putting our lives into the figurative hands of creatures over which we ultimately had no control. But Orion always got me safely to the other side.

  I swung my legs out of bed and got dressed for a morning run. Just as I opened my door, I heard something scampering away and my eye caught the tip of a striped, bushy tail turning at the end of the hall. A raccoon. For all I knew, it was one Susannah had purposely taken in and named.

  What, Beth-Ann? You don’t have raccoons in your house, too?

  Gigi had shut herself in her room after our fight in the kitchen, and her door was still closed. I wondered what my mother was doing at that very moment. Breakfast in Piccadilly Circus, perhaps? Actually, with the time change it was already lunchtime in London. Maybe Mom and Nigel had eaten shepherd’s pie in a pub. Or maybe they’d taken the Eurostar train to Paris and were eating croque monsieurs on the banks of the Seine.

  Must be nice, a life with no strings attached.

  Meanwhile I’d driven to every other bank in town over the past twenty-four hours, inquiring about a trust or accounts for Lorrie and Susannah Hollander. Everywhere I hit had no record of any money in our names. I knew I had to expand my search, but I didn’t want to waste the gas on a wild-goose chase. Gigi could’ve moved our money to any bank on Long Island, or in New York City, or even beyond. The list of possibilities was nearly endless. I felt like one of those old, wild-eyed people on the beach, combing the dunes with a metal detector. I could spend the rest of my life looking for our money. And there was still the possibility that there was nothing left to find at all.

  The clock was ticking for me to figure it all out. I’d called Hillyer Academy from Brian’s cell phone—that’s how desperate I was: I’d asked Brian for a favor—and inquired about financial aid for the fall semester. “I’m sorry, but those funds are already committed to other students,” Ms. Strafford, the director of admissions, had told me. “And I can’t guarantee your spot will be open much longer. We’ve already reached out to the waiting list.”

  I’d used Brian’s phone for one more call, this one to the North Carolina Equestrian Transport Company, to make arrangements for Orion. “And your credit card number?” the woman on the other end had asked. I faked a call on the other line and hung up. For now, Orion would be staying put.

  And that brought up another issue: The longer it took for me to come up with the money to spring Orion from Woodscape, the higher the bill for his food and board would be.

  There were so many bills to keep track of. None of my friends realized what a small miracle it was that each month their parents had the money on hand to pay them. My body felt heavy as I headed downstairs. I didn’t even notice the stench of the house anymore. That was the worst part of living at Edgewater: knowing that the smell was still there but that I’d become immune to it.

  Brian looked up from the table when I walked into the kitchen. He was wearing his trademark low-slung jeans and a red T-shirt, both so wrinkled that I was sure he’d slept in them. For a second his face reminded me of Susannah’s when I’d surprised her the night I’d come back from Woodscape and she’d been bent over a box of new critters she’d brought into the house. A look of Oh, crap, I’ve been caught. But then it was back to his regular, disaffected stoner face. “Wassup, Lorrie?” He picked up a bottle of Corona and took a swig.

  “It’s a little early in the morning for that, isn’t it?”

  “Hangover,” Brian said. “Best cure is more alcohol.”

  “Is that so?”

  “What bothers you more about this—that I’m drinking before noon, or that it’s beer and not something fancy like you private school kids like—gimlets, or Grey Goose vodka, or whatever?” He put down the beer and lifted a delft china teacup to his lips. “Chaser,” he explained.

  “That’s an heirloom. You’re not supposed to actually use it.”

  “The regular glasses are dirty,” he said, nodding toward the sink, which was overflowing.

  “Doesn’t make them disposable,” I told him. “Clean them, and you can use them again.” I grabbed a glass from the sink, turned the water to hot to rinse it, and wiped it with the bottom of my shirt—no way I’d be using a dish towel—before filling it with water again.

  “I am cleaning,” Brian said. “I’m polishing the silver.” He held up one of the heavy Hollander-family dinner forks.

  At bedtime, Mom used to tell Susannah and me stories about her parents, the two of us pressed against her like the newborn kittens pressed against Pansy. I liked to curl a lock of Mom’s hair around my finger. There was one story about our grandmother and the acquisition of her prized Tiffany sterling set: When they were first married, my grandparents didn’t have much money. But Grandma saved up whatever she had left over each week from her secretarial wages and began buying one utensil at a time. After Grandpa made it big in real estate, she was able to quit her job and buy the rest of the set in one fell swoop.

  “I noticed they were pretty badly tarnished, and I found some polish under the sink,” Brian went on. “The cap was missing, and it was hardened on top, but I scraped off the layer, and there’s fresh stuff underneath. See?”

  I barely gave it a glance. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you. I’m cleaning.”

  I wasn’t buying his fake happy-helper story. Brian was up to something. But I knew I might need his cell phone again, so my hard gaze was his only clue that I was on to him. I drank my water, rinsed the glass out again, and shoved it deep into the back of the cabinet. There, that could be my safe glass.

  From their box in the corner, Pansy’s kittens were mewing softly. The larger cats began to gather, as if out of nowhere, multiplying like gremlins. I knew that meant Susannah was awake and on her way down to feed them. Somehow they were always able to sense her impending presence. Sure enough, she walked in, the little calico cradled in her arms. “Hi, babies, hi, babies,” Susannah crooned to the rest of them. “Hey, Bri-Bri French fry.”

  “Morning, babe,” Brian said. Ugh. I hated hearing that word in his voice, especially when it referred to my sister. He rose from his seat and patted Susannah’s head as if she herself was a kitten. She leaned back into him for a couple seconds. There was something so intimate in that moment, I had to avert my eyes.

  “Good morning, Lorrie-glory,” Susannah said.

  I turned back toward her and tipped my head toward the kitten in her arms. “Hey,” I said. “How’s he doing?”

  “She,” Susannah corrected. “Better, I think. Here, hold her.” I took the kitten from her, a minute morsel. As soft and weightless as a bunch of cotton balls. “I named her Wren, because she’s so tiny, and the way she purrs, it’s like a song. Can you feel it?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Like cotton balls vibrating in my cupped hands.

  Susannah moved toward the back cupboards and began pulling out several varieties of cat food: a bag of kitty kibble, plus assorted tins of chicken and liver paste. She mashed dry and wet food together in bowls, enough to accommodate the now dozen or so cats weaving through her legs, pressing their bodies against her calves and arching their backs in complete cat-satisfaction. When she was done with the food prep, they all moved to the sliding glass door, where she placed their bowls in a line. Pansy was at the end, getting her own nourishment before she stepped back into the box to feed her kittens. But cats are fickle, and their attachment to their young is fleeting. In a few months’ time, I knew, Pansy would be so over them. She’d pass her formerly beloved kittens in the hall without so much as a glance of recognition.

  Ki
nd of like another mom I knew.

  “How do you always manage to have a gourmet buffet for the cats on hand when there’s nothing in this house fit for actual human consumption?” I asked Susannah.

  “You wanna come for breakfast with us?” Brian asked. “We’re going to Declan’s. My treat.”

  Declan’s was a restaurant on Main Street. The breakfast menu came vaguely close to reasonably priced. Still, I couldn’t believe Brian was offering to foot the bill. In fact, I couldn’t recall his ever offering to treat anyone to anything. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Susannah had started to fill an eyedropper with milk for Wren, but she turned away from the counter and gave Brian an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “I don’t think Lorrie will be up for it.”

  “What?” Brian asked. “Too good for dine and dash?”

  I glared at my sister. “Don’t tell me that’s what you’re really planning to do.”

  “There’s no food, like you said.”

  “You know, Lorrie,” Brian added, “you’d enjoy life so much more if you just killed the bug you have stuck up your ass.”

  “I want you out of this house,” I told him.

  “She’s just under a lot of stress,” Susannah said quickly. “She doesn’t mean it.”

  “You’re worried about him right now?” I asked my sister, incredulous. “Did you hear how he just spoke to me? He is not welcome here.”

  She turned to me. “He is, Lorrie.”

  Brian grinned as if he’d just won some dumb carnival prize. “I love how you think you can just make a decision like that,” he told me. “Like your name is on the deed or something. Meanwhile, you’re never here, and when you are, you’ll do anything to avoid facing up to the fact that you’re no better than anyone else.”

  “Get. Out.”

  But if Brian’s expression was gleeful, Susannah’s was of a girl destroyed. “Please stop it now. It hurts me too much when you fight like this.”