Instead, her mother came downstairs and waved an empty pill bottle in Harper’s face. “Did you take these?” she demanded, showing her the label. CLONAZEPAM. 1 MG. AS NEEDED FOR ANXIETY. She waved the bottle again to emphasize the absence of sound, the fact that no pills were inside.
“Of course not,” Harper said, feeling her face grow warm. She was angry herself; didn’t her mother know her better than that? Never mind that Harper had often been tempted, over the years, to try one of the little yellow pills, especially when she felt, well, anxious. Wasn’t that what they were for?
But she had never done so, partly for just this reason: she wouldn’t have wanted her mother to find out. Not because she thought her mother would feel deprived, but because she knew how much her mother would worry to think that Harper might be like her, susceptible to what she called the screaming meemies. Now, though, it seemed that this worry was secondary (if it existed at all; Harper couldn’t tell) to her mother’s dismay at finding an empty stash.
“I wouldn’t do that,” she added, understanding only as she defended herself who had stolen the drugs. She remembered coming upstairs with the snack Joy asked for, and her parents’ open door. Her father had not left it ajar by accident. Joy had gone into Harper’s parents’ bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, extracted the bottle of meds, and shaken them out somewhere—probably into her pocket. She hadn’t had much time before Harper arrived with the treats. And almost as soon as Harper came back with them, Joy had taken off.
But she couldn’t let her mother know what had really happened; she still felt enough leftover love and loyalty not to do that to Joy.
Her mother tossed the bottle aside. “And why would somebody just steal the pills themselves instead of taking that, too?”
“So nobody would be able to tell where they came from,” Harper said. Probably, she realized, Joy had also reasoned that leaving the bottle might mean the theft wouldn’t be noticed so soon.
And what would Joy have done with the pills? Not swallowed them herself; Harper was sure of that. No, Delaney Stowell must have recruited Joy to contribute to her business of selling drugs out of the condo—that’s what Harper had witnessed the night before, coming upon Joy and the long-haired stranger performing a transaction in the closed-off bedroom. Maybe the next step was some kind of initiation test, a hazing ritual designed by Delaney and Tessa and Lin: Now you have to come up with your own merchandise. If this had been the challenge, of course Joy would think immediately of Harper’s mother as a source. Had she even hesitated? Harper wondered. Then it occurred to her what probably happened: Delaney told Joy what she had to do, but she held off because she didn’t want to take advantage of Harper that way.
But after Harper told Delaney and everyone else at the Halloween party about Joy’s mother and the black guy, all bets were off, and Joy felt entitled to do whatever she pleased. Understanding this, Harper felt a chill in her blood. She herself was responsible for the fact that her mother’s meds were gone.
Without wanting to—doing her best to resist it—she remembered suddenly the day Joy had offered (insisted, really, now that Harper thought about it) to come over and help her study for the test on The Odyssey. Was she hoping to sneak into the medicine cabinet even then? Had she had a change of heart while explaining the loyalty of the old dog Argos, or was it just that no opportunity had presented itself, that day, for access to Harper’s parents’ room?
But this was too much to contemplate, and to feel, so she forced herself to stop doing both as she took the phone handset up to her room. She sat with it on the bed and looked across at the doll on her window seat, imagining that Addy was accusing her with her eyes: How come you always let that girl take my head off? The thought made Harper smile. Then she remembered that “that girl” was Joy, and took a deep breath as she dialed.
When the woman on the other end answered with a tired, mechanical-sounding greeting including the information that the line was recorded, she almost hung up. But at the last minute she caught Addy’s eyes again, which gave her courage to continue with the call. “I want to—I’m not sure how to say it. I think I might know something about the drug stuff that’s going on.”
“Drug stuff?” The woman must have heard that she was speaking to a teenager, and a scared one, because her voice became warmer, less mechanical. “Can you be more specific, honey?”
“People selling prescriptions. I think I know who’s in charge, or at least where it’s happening. Some of it.” She told the woman about Lakeview Arms and the Halloween party. How she’d “heard” that pills and money had been exchanged there. The woman asked her to identify herself. She asked if Harper could give her any names, promising it would be confidential.
Do it, Addy told Harper with those commanding eyes. “Delaney Stowell,” Harper whispered into the phone, then hung up as if suddenly it had gotten too hot.
Delaney Stowell was the reason Joy had changed so much this year. Delaney was the one who’d corrupted Joy, getting her to sell drugs and do who knew what else. It was really Delaney’s fault—wasn’t it?—that Joy had come into Harper’s house and stolen medication from her mother.
Lying awake that night, she did her best to convince herself that it was for Joy’s own good, and not because she was angry at her friend’s betrayal, that she gave Delaney’s name to the police. If Delaney got caught and stopped what she was doing, Joy might see things for what they were and come back to her first friend. It was a long shot, but worth it. She fell asleep trying not to acknowledge that this was only a wish and not what would actually happen, but it was too late; the time for that kind of pretending had slipped away from her, and there was no getting it back.
Saturday, October 31
When Violet called and said she wanted to see me, I assumed she chose tonight because she’s hated Halloween since childhood, when her brother flew out of a closet wearing a Freddy Krueger mask and attacked her with a fake razor-glove that didn’t, of course, look fake to her at all. She let me suggest the restaurant and I chose Rubio’s, perversely, because I know it is Susanne’s favorite. “You’re leaving, aren’t you,” I said, before the witch-costumed waitress could bring us our complimentary zombies.
Violet didn’t answer right away, and like a child I thought that maybe she wouldn’t, if I just didn’t look at her. When I finally did work up the courage to meet her eyes, I saw immediately that I was right.
“You had to know this was coming,” she said. “We talked about it.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Well, not about this, exactly. But you know what I mean.”
Of course I understood what she was referring to. After Grandee died, it didn’t take long for Violet and me to see that what had been holding us together, when we were together, was the joint project of taking care of her. We went so far as to convince Grandee that we’d gotten married at City Hall, so she wouldn’t object to our sharing a room and a bed. For the first year, we felt married, and I almost proposed for real. But something held me back, and toward the end of Grandee’s life I was glad we’d only had a pretend wedding. I sensed Violet felt that way, too. We worked as a threesome—Violet staying home during the day to do the job we hired her for originally (taking Grandee to her appointments, giving her insulin shots, and cooking her low-glycemic meals), while I worked as a security guard at the Memorial Art Gallery—but we didn’t work as a couple. Violet moved out two weeks after the funeral, and I was afraid she’d return to New York right away, but when she took another home-nursing assignment in Rochester, I allowed myself to hope (because I feel safer with her than anyone) that she might stay on upstate.
I’ve been letting her live rent-free in Grandee’s house while I’m up here at school; that way she has a place to live while she saves money to move to New York, and the house gets looked after. But I’ve also been holding my breath, waiting for her to tell me she’s leaving, and tonight was the night.
“You could come, too,” she told me. �
��I mean, not to live together. But I know a lot of people down there. You’d have a connection, if you wanted to—you know. Start over. Start a new life.”
“I have something here,” I said quietly. I knew she’d think I was referring to my studies, so I wasn’t surprised when she reminded me that there are art schools in New York, too. Ones besides Decker, ones that might offer aid. Maybe even ones that have classes as good as those at Genesee Valley Academy of Fine Arts.
I ignored her sarcasm, which has always made me cringe, and repeated that this is where my life is. I have no right to wish she would stay; I understand that. She is ignorant of Susanne, of the fact that I took up with my art teacher, and that although Susanne broke things off with me and reconciled with her husband, I still harbor what I know is the impossible idea of our ending up together.
Grandee would have been appalled by all of it; Violet would just get mad. I felt sad for myself but sadder for Grandee, even though I knew this was ridiculous. Grandee loved Violet. She loved Violet and me together. One of the last things she said, in the hospital, was that she wished she could live to see our children.
“This might be the last time, then,” Violet said tonight after I walked her to her car, and I left her feeling flattened, thinking I would just go home to bed. But on the drive from the restaurant I decided instead that I would work for a few hours, to take my mind off the fact that she is leaving and that in addition to losing her friendship here, I will have to figure out what to do with Grandee’s house. Before she died, she told me she didn’t expect me to hang on to it forever. I know she didn’t want me to feel that burden. Sell it and take up a new life somewhere, she said, and I suppose that at some point, I will. But in the meantime, at least until I graduate with my degree, I try to avoid thinking about it—losing the place where I grew up, where Grandee made a home first for my father and then for me.
In my apartment at Cass’s house after saying good-bye to Violet, I took out my sketch pad and looked at what I’d done recently. Not much. It’s taken me almost two months to heed Joy’s advice and start the first portrait for Souls on Board: my father. Since Susanne ended things between us, I’m more grateful than ever for the distraction of new work, even though it’s been slow going. At my easel I’ve propped up one of my earliest sketches from back when I was twelve, just a few months before the plane crash. On a Saturday morning, my father brought me to work with him so I could “help” him tune a Steinway for a concert that night. I wasn’t particularly keen on accompanying him, because I knew his ulterior motive was to try to convince me that I should become a piano technician myself someday, and even though I hadn’t discovered art yet, I knew that his occupation wasn’t for me. I just hadn’t figured out how to tell him this, because he seemed so intent on the idea of handing his own father’s tuning hammer down to his son.
In the piano hall I fidgeted—I was twelve, I didn’t want to be there, and the sound of him playing the same key over and over, as he turned the hammer on the pin, made my teeth grind. Finally, I offered to go out and buy him some coffee, because I knew he wouldn’t refuse. I didn’t mean to sneak up on him when I reentered the room, but he was so absorbed in what he was doing—listening for the right tone—that when I said Dad behind him he turned fast, startled, and the hammer flew out of his hand, upending the coffee so that it splashed straight up at my chin, scalding the skin. I still have the scar, and I still remember the pain and the shock of it. I still remember him crying because he felt so shaken, even though I kept telling him it was my own fault. That night, after returning from the emergency room where they dressed the burn, I sat in bed and, doing my best to ignore the hot sting under the bandage, sketched what I’d seen in his face as he realized what he had done. Love, guilt, helplessness, confusion. But mostly love. Though the sketch is old now, it’s still the closest expression I have to what I want to remember about my father.
So I tried to work in my studio, but I’d forgotten what tonight was. After being interrupted three times by trick-or-treaters ringing the bell, I brought the sketchbook downstairs and settled into Grandee’s favorite reading chair, the only piece of furniture I moved up here from the house after she died. On the table next to the chair I keep the stack of books she’d read last, including two she borrowed from the Monroe County Library. The overdue notices had been among the mail that piled up while she was in the hospital. I’d planned to write to the library, tell them I lost the books, and pay them back. But I haven’t done it yet, mainly because I know Grandee would frown on such behavior.
She always did the house up for Halloween (jack-o’-lanterns, fake cobwebs, spiders and skeletons suspended over the door) and she liked to answer the bell dressed as Glinda from The Wizard of Oz. Of course, despite the wavy red-blond wig, high tiara, and billowy pink dress with angel wings sprouting from its shoulders, none of the trick-or-treaters ever guessed who she was. “What’s wrong with these kids?” she’d say. “I look just like her!” I never had the heart to point out to her that my friends didn’t recognize her as Glinda because Glinda was white. I did ask her once why she’d chosen the costume, and she told me she’d always liked the idea of a good witch; who didn’t?
It took me until the age of thirteen to realize that whenever I thought of the mother I’d never met, I imagined her as Glinda. Not with the pink dress and the wings, but with the same face and smile—a benevolent, wish-granting fairy. No doubt this has contributed to my fantasies about the open arms she’ll greet me with, if our paths ever cross either by accident or on purpose.
Putting the bowl of peanut butter cups by the door so I wouldn’t be tempted myself, I sat in Grandee’s chair and looked at my Artist’s Statement draft, but I didn’t get very far. At nine twenty I stood, stretched, ate the remaining candy (what did it matter if I was chubby now?), and was about to shut off the stoop light when I saw a hooded figure walking toward the door.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, hoping to forestall whoever it was, “I just gave out the last of it.”
“That’s okay.” It wasn’t a trick-or-treater, I saw as she stepped toward me, but a teenager. A young woman. When she stepped into the light and pulled her hood off, I saw that it was Joy.
“Oh,” I said, at the same time she was asking “Do you remember me?” When I said Of course I do, how could I not? the answer seemed to make her falter. When she didn’t say anything else, I asked if she wanted to come in, even though I felt nervous about it. She thanked me without a smile, her expression suggesting that she was fighting her own instinct to show friendliness or warmth.
In less than two months since Labor Day, her face has changed. She looks tougher, harder, more on guard—but still I recognized the person I spoke to that day, when she discussed her own art shyly and, when we began talking, showed so much interest and animation in hearing about mine.
No animation was evident in her eyes now. I waited, sensing that it was important to her to direct whatever would pass between us.
She sat, crossing her legs and arms as she settled into Grandee’s chair. I took the couch, leaning forward so as not to give the impression that I assumed her visit was a social one, when it obviously was not. Despite trying to match her serious demeanor, I was not prepared for what she said—what she demanded. “I came to ask you: you’re sleeping with my mother, right?” Though she’d made a point of meeting my eyes just before speaking, hearing herself say the words seemed to cause her to look away.
I made a noise—involuntary, indistinct. Not a word, just a noise. I knew that the right thing to do was to say she should be talking about this to her mother, not me, but I could tell how difficult it had been for her to ask the question, and I wanted to show respect for that. “No,” I said, realizing that the literal answer was only a temporary salvation. “I’m not.”
“But you were. Right?”
Now it was I who looked away from her as I nodded.
Sinking back in the chair and seeming to shrink, as if my response had touched he
r physically, she said, “I knew it.”
“Then why did you ask?” I didn’t mean to challenge her, though I could see she took it that way. Why put herself through this—confronting me—if she really did know the truth?
“I don’t know.” She lifted her hoodie around her head, putting her features in shadow. “I guess I thought maybe I was wrong. That there was a chance, somehow. I knew you’d tell me the truth.” A grudging acknowledgment of our brief, past connection, and the fact that she’d felt it, too.
Now that this exchange was over—the crucial information in the air—she let her guard down and began talking as if we knew each other far better than we actually did. Since I’d expected her to be angry after my admission, the fact that she spoke as if I were a friend took me aback, and I felt more awkward than if she’d sworn at me and stomped out of the house. Her parents were fighting all the time, she said. Her mother was so tense Joy could see the veins popping in her neck. Though they hadn’t come out and told her so, she knew they were in danger of losing their house, because her father’s business was going down the tubes and because of a stupid mistake he had made. An investment gone wrong with someone he’d trusted, whom he shouldn’t have. Of course I didn’t let on that I’d heard the same story, though Joy might already have guessed.
I cleared my throat, because I was afraid she’d just keep talking if I didn’t interrupt somehow, and end up telling me things she would regret, if she hadn’t already. She sat up a little straighter as if to take hold of herself, then apologized and added, “It’s just that on top of everything else, there’s no one to talk to. It sucks.” I didn’t tell her that her mother had mentioned the distance Joy had put between herself and the people she used to be close to—her family, her best friend. “Leave it to me to just start babbling to some random black guy,” she said in a tone of self-hatred, and then, when she saw my face, hurried to add, “I mean, black has nothing to do with it. But—you know what I mean. I don’t even really know you.” Though her saying “black” startled me, it did not sting as much as “random,” because I’d felt a true affinity with her during that conversation about our work. Trying to hide that I felt hurt, I told her that if there was any way I could help, she should feel free to ask.
How Will I Know You? Page 19