by Sue Halpern
“Can Rusty have lunch with us in the staff room?” Sunny asked Kit on a rainy Wednesday when what had become their usual spot on the library steps wasn’t feasible.
“He’s not a member of the staff,” Kit said, surprised at how sharp her voice sounded.
Sunny looked hurt for a moment, then rebounded with a smile.
“Neither am I,” she said.
“Special circumstances,” Kit said. “It’s for staff and people serving out their court-mandated community service.” She couldn’t believe how mean she sounded. Mean and small.
“Are you saying Rusty has to steal a book to be able to have lunch in the staff room?” Sunny shot back. She had her hands on her hips. She was rolling her eyes.
“No, Sunny,” Kit said. “I’m saying no.”
The girl turned and walked back to the table where Rusty sat reading with earphones plugged in his ears. Her hands were shoved in her pockets and her shoulders sagged, and Kit told herself she didn’t care. She left the room.
When she returned, Sunny and Rusty were huddled together and Rusty was showing something to Sunny—Kit couldn’t tell what. And then, as if she had popped up from a rabbit hole, there was Sunny again, standing in front of Kit’s desk, and before Kit could say no again, Sunny started talking, fast and telegraphically, the way she did when she was excited.
“You’ve got to see this,” Sunny said. “It’s amazing. Scan the archives. Put them on a disk or on the computer.”
Kit frowned. The sourness she had been feeling intensified. “We don’t have a scanner, Sunny,” she said, “and we don’t have money for a scanner. You know that.”
“That’s the thing,” Sunny said. “That’s what’s so amazing. We don’t need one. Rusty has one.” And here she paused for effect. “On his phone!”
Kit had to admit, she didn’t see this coming. She knew that there were phones with cameras, but such things came late to Riverton.
“We take a picture of each newspaper clipping and upload it to a file on the computer, or put it on a disk,” Sunny was saying. “No more cardboard boxes—I mean you could keep them if you want, but you wouldn’t have to. Rusty says we could even make it searchable.”
There was that word, “we,” again. Only this time Kit knew it didn’t include her, and she was a little sorry.
* * *
Sunny/hat trick
We’ve always been a threesome, my parents and me. Willow likes to call us a trio or a triplicity or a hat trick; I knew the meaning of “troika” when I was eight. We’re a unit: one of us is always the cheese. I guess I knew I’d grow up—people are always asking you what you want to be when you grow up, so of course you think about that, but when I did, it was always short on details, including where I was going to live and who I was going to live with, since I guess I just assumed I’d be a writer and live at home, and that home was wherever Willow and Steve were. Even if it was at the Tip-Top Motor Inn.
Not that it was going to be. We were just there for two nights, unlike Rusty, who has been there for weeks. When we got back from the Tip-Top, Willow had a lot of orders to fill, so she holed up in her workshop, hammering and soldering late into the night. I went to sleep to the muffled banging coming through the wall and the scratch of her chair when she stood up to stretch. Maybe that’s what woke me, and then I heard Steve’s voice, and the two of them talking in what they must have thought were hushed tones but weren’t.
Hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, and then Steve’s voice: “Sunny is going to—” hammer, hammer, so I missed some words, “—part from us.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Willow said, before hammering some more. This was Willow. Willow! The one who cried when I got my own bed. She didn’t even sound particularly sad.
There was more banging, and then Steve said, “It’s the natural order of things,” and if Willow said something back, I didn’t hear it.
I wanted to walk in there and ask them what they were talking about, but I knew it was useless. Like when we were at the Tip-Top and I asked Willow why we were there, and she said that it was all part of our life plan, and I asked her what she meant by “it was all,” except I didn’t say it that way, I said, “What is?” and she said, “It’s good to be curious, Sunny, but sometimes it’s not good to be too curious.”
The more I thought about it—because I wasn’t going to go back to sleep—the more what Willow said reminded me of the Mr. Men book Mr. Topsy-Turvy the kids always want me to read at story hour, but what Steve said made a certain amount of sense.
Steve has always believed that biology is destiny. He’s told me that a billion times. When I was little I thought he meant that that’s why frogs did the frog kick when they swam and ducks flew in a V. But lately I’ve been arguing with him about this. “This is the argument people used to keep slaves!” I told him, and he disagreed and said that those people were misguided.
“It’s the same argument men have used to keep women out of the workplace!” I said, trying again.
“Again, Sunny,” Steve said in that condescending way he sometimes uses when he wants to make you feel like he’s smarter than you’ll ever be, “those people are misguided. My point is that we don’t mess with Mother Nature.”
“Fine,” I said, but to his back, as he walked out of the room.
So it occurred to me that maybe he was right. Maybe separating from your parents is the natural order of things.
* * *
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
—Emily Dickinson
Sunny was acting strangely. She came in on time and read to the children and did what she always did, but did it all in a trance, as if her body were a marionette and its strings were being pulled from somewhere far away. Her skin was sallow, her eyes heavy-lidded, and she couldn’t stand still, bouncing on the balls of her feet instead, until Evelyn finally told her to cut it out, that Sunny was making her dizzy, and suggested maybe she needed “one of those herbal things you people like to take,” but the girl seemed not to hear her and just floated away in the direction of the reference section and Kit.
“I think you might have a fever,” Kit tried, and Sunny looked up at her with her tired eyes and said she didn’t think so. “You look”—Kit searched for a diplomatic way to say it—“washed out.”
Sunny gave her a half smile, said, “Sorry,” and backed away as if she’d been cornered.
Kit found her in the children’s section, sitting in one of the kiddie chairs at a kiddie table, reading The Velveteen Rabbit.
“This is the book you showed me your first day, about the stuffed animal that becomes real, right?” Kit said brightly.
Truthfully, she hated when people did this to her, which for a while they did all the time: pretend they could reverse the darkness by spreading their pretend sunshine all over you. What did Dr. Bondi say? That it was a basic human reflex? That it came from the most basic part of the brain, not the neocortex or the limbic part, and was an expression of fear, not empathy. “You can’t take it personally, Kit,” he said when she told him how much she despised people who did to her what she was now doing to Sunny, but of course she did.
Sunny didn’t look up, and Kit, whose first instinct was to retreat, found herself unable to move. It could have been a photograph or a still life, a teenager looking down at a book, her blond hair falling forward, a white bra strap cutting into the skin along her bony clavicle, watched over by a middle-aged woman whose glasses were partway down her nose, whose arms were crossed over her chest, whose left hand was holding on to her right biceps, her right hand holding on to her left biceps, her skin—because she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, beige, made from an airy linen fabric—extruded from the pressure, which was the only clue to her emotions since her face was implacable—not angry, just blank.
And then Kit moved. She pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose and raked her fingers through her hair, parking some of it behind her ear, and changed her stance, so she was leaning left,
toward Sunny in the chair. She wanted to say the right thing, but knew there was no such thing, and that sometimes—most times—it was better not to try. She found herself wishing Rusty was around, but he was up at the Tip-Top, helping the owners move some boxes, and then had a lunch date. He called in to Evelyn to tell her. Like he worked there.
“It’s lunchtime,” Kit said. “Let’s go.”
And much to her surprise, the girl got up and followed her to the staff room.
“Are you hungry?” Kit asked, sitting down and taking a sandwich from her bag and holding it out to Sunny, who remained standing.
“Not really,” Sunny said.
“Not really?” Kit echoed. The girl was acting like a zombie. “Sit down,” she said.
Sunny pulled back the vinyl stack chair opposite Kit’s and dropped into it. She balled her fists and leaned into them and squeezed her eyes shut. Unsure what to do, Kit continued her interrogation.
“Did you have breakfast?” she asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? It was only a few hours ago.”
Silence. Kit fingered the wax paper around her sandwich, hoping that the sound might trigger Sunny’s appetite. “Pavlov’s bell,” she said to no one in particular, and especially not to Sunny, whose entire body seemed to have contracted.
“Have half my sandwich,” Kit said, taking half and sliding the rest across the table. Even if Sunny wasn’t hungry, Kit was, and she took a bite. Busy chewing, she almost missed Sunny’s words.
“I don’t think Steve is my father,” she mumbled.
“What?” Kit said.
“Steve. I don’t think he’s my father.”
For the first time since they’d been in the break room, Sunny looked straight at Kit, her eyes open and unblinking. Still, Kit thought, she looked absent.
“Why do you think that?” Kit was surprised to see Sunny reach over, take the sandwich half and eat the whole thing in two bites. Kit pushed the four mint Milanos she’d dropped into her lunch sack before leaving home in the morning in the girl’s direction, and Sunny took these, too, and fed them into her mouth, one after the other, like pieces of paper going into a shredder. Kit knew this kind of eating. It was what happened after you said something you’d been holding in. Once it was uncorked, all you wanted to do was fill the gap you’d just opened up.
“I saw his passport,” Sunny said, as if that was an explanation.
“I’m confused,” Kit said. “What does his passport have to do with it?” In her own case, an old passport would have revealed a crucial piece of information: that her name, now, was not her name before. But people expected that with women, not with men. It was how the world worked. With men it was suspicious.
“The name on the passport wasn’t his name. The birth date wasn’t his birth date. But the picture was his picture. I mean it was him from around the time I was born. It was an old passport.”
“Sunny,” Kit began, “I really don’t think that proves he’s not your dad.” She tried to say this without sounding patronizing. The girl was being dramatic, but Kit didn’t want her to think she thought so.
“You don’t understand,” Sunny said, not bothering to hide her contempt. Sometimes she thought Kit was different. Sometimes she thought Kit was just like the other adults she knew, presumptuous and complacent, like they knew everything and you knew nothing, like they were always right because they were always right. This was one of those times. She turned her gaze up to the ceiling.
“What don’t I understand?” Kit said, sighing, understanding she was failing here and failing badly.
“I googled the name on the passport,” Sunny said, as if talking to an idiot. “Two days ago. Here.”
“And?”
“He’s wanted by the police. Angus Parker is. In Pennsylvania.”
“The police. In Pennsylvania,” Kit echoed. (When she recalled this conversation later, she was struck by the strange, staccato way they were talking, but right then it seemed natural, as if both their voices were telegraph machines, dispatching messages with speed and efficiency.)
“Yes,” Sunny said.
“Are you sure?”
Sunny took out a piece of paper from her backpack and handed it over to Kit. It was a copy of an article from the Morning Call, a newspaper published in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“That’s near where we used to live,” Sunny explained, “when I was really little. The only thing I really remember is that I lost my bike. I mean my bike was lost when we moved. The training wheels had just come off. It’s funny what you remember.”
Kit was barely listening. She was focused on the article, which was about the search for a twentysomething-year-old named Angus Parker, an ecoterrorist, the paper called him, wanted for acts of vandalism at research labs. The only picture authorities had was a grainy black-and-white photo from a security camera at a pharmaceutical company, where he’d allegedly flipped a breaker that shut off power to the company’s incubators, where it was growing bacteria to implant in test animals. “He’s set back our research by at least three years,” the company CEO told the Morning Call. “We’re estimating that it will cost us twelve million dollars. Our business is to develop medicines for sick people. This man is a terrorist.”
“Jeez,” Kit said, carefully folding the article into quarters and handing it back to Sunny. “And you’re sure that Steve is Angus Parker? I mean, couldn’t he be a friend of Angus Parker’s and have an old passport of his?”
“Why would they look alike?” Sunny said.
“Maybe they don’t look alike,” Kit tried. “Maybe that’s your brain playing tricks on you. It’s an old photo. You don’t really know how the young man in the picture is going to look ten or fifteen years later.”
“I know,” Sunny said. “I’ve seen pictures of Steve and Willow from before they got together. You know they’re not married, right? The Steve in those pictures is the same person as Angus Parker. Angus Parker is Steve.”
As Kit was considering this, Evelyn breezed into the room, followed by Chuck, chattering about Jack and Jeffrey, her policemen sons, who were hot on the trail of—but they didn’t learn who, because she said, “Feeling better, kiddo?” to Sunny, and plopped herself down on the couch they kept there that was so old no one, not even Evelyn, could remember when it got there or how it fit through the door. Before Sunny could answer, Evelyn began to explain how one of her grandchildren had a summer cold and how her son wanted her to babysit him and how she told him it was elder abuse, which triggered a raspy laughing fit from Chuck and a “Very clever” from Kit, who was already halfway out of the room, with Sunny on her heels.
“You may be getting one, too, hon,” Evelyn called out to Sunny, who turned, said, “I don’t think so,” and didn’t stay to hear the woman’s recitation of her granddaughter’s last few temperature readings.
“What am I going to do?” Sunny said when they had made their escape. Kit was subbing for Evelyn at circulation as she often did when Evelyn was on break, and Sunny was standing right beside her because she was suddenly afraid to be alone. She had confessed. Her secret was out. She thought she’d feel relieved but didn’t. She just felt scared. Something was going to happen now. Something was going to happen and she had no idea what it would be. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet again. Her hands were shaking. Kit noticed and, without thinking, covered them with both of her own.
“I don’t know yet,” Kit said.
The girl’s hands were cold, and Kit could feel her pulse looping through at breakneck speed.
“Breathe,” she said reflexively. She hated when people said that, but it’s what came out of her mouth.
Sunny was close to hyperventilating. Kit wished she’d saved her paper sandwich bag.
“It’s all right, Sunny. It’ll be okay.”
More words she detested. But Sunny’s breathing slowed, and the warmth seemed to be coming back to her fingers. Her face was still grayish, and a thr
obbing artery on the side of her neck looked like a river about to overspill its banks. Kit let go of Sunny’s hands and patted the chair next to her. “Sit,” she said.
A patron came by then, returning two books—an older woman into genealogy. She was with a boy about eleven, who raced off down the stairs and reappeared within minutes with a copy of The Hobbit.
“I really like that book,” Sunny said, smiling for the first time.
The boy smiled back. “I know,” he said. “You read it to us a couple of weeks ago.”
Sunny sat up straighter in her chair. She and the boy chatted about the book while Kit processed it. Sunny was animated and engaged. For a moment it seemed to Kit that Sunny would be okay, but as soon as they left, the girl slumped down in the chair again, shoulders rounded, head hanging and resting on balled fists that looked ready to slug someone.
Kit waited a minute, trying to gather her thoughts, but it was hard. If Steve was not Steve, and if Steve was Angus Parker, then Steve was, potentially, a fugitive. For a second she wondered if, knowing this, she had a legal obligation to turn him in, then decided no, it was none of her business what happened to Steve. But Sunny was another matter. She was just a kid, and if what she thought was true was true, Sunny was in jeopardy of being a kid without a family.
“I think we have to do more research before we jump to any conclusions. We need to know more,” Kit said after a while.
There was that word again, Kit thought, that “we.” It was the royal “we,” she told herself. A turn of phrase. But she knew that was a lie. She had chosen the “we.” It was an unsettling revelation. How strange if Dr. Bondi was right—that over time one’s true nature reasserted itself. What did he call it? A “regression to the mean”—as if personality were some sort of math problem.