So I knocked louder.
And louder still.
And finally I cracked open the door, leaned my head in with eyes firmly closed, and whispered Liza’s name and said that Mother and Charlotte had returned.
At this point, of course, I expected to hear some rustling commotion, or at least Liza’s or Mr. Mills’s response to me, but only silence filled my ears. Then I heard such a terrible sound, Walter, that I don’t think I will ever forget it: a choking sound, a strangled gurgle, a thick, wet gasp for air, and somehow I knew that Liza was in grave danger. Only later I realized that if she was, then so was I—for what would Mr. Mills do to me, if he could cause such harm to Liza?
I sprang forward at the same instant my eyes snapped open, without a plan but certain that I could somehow arrest his attack—fling myself over his back like a wild monkey, claw and scratch at him, whatever it took.
I stopped short, though, for Liza was quite alone.
Though the room was mostly dark—it never gets truly dark, not anymore, not since we painted our galaxy—there was an especial brightness coming from Liza’s bed, and I looked—and looked again—to see a glowing fluid flow from her nose and mouth. And I realized with terrible clarity that Liza, lying down in the bed, was choking on the stuff.
I screamed for Mother and Charlotte and rushed to Liza’s side, lifting her up. (How light she was, Walter. Since Liza has begun walking on her own more, I hadn’t noticed her growing frailty. Her bones must be as hollow and delicate as a bird’s.) Liza awoke, still sputtering, as Mother ran in and turned on the light.
It wasn’t paint that poured from Liza’s nose, of course. It was blood—rich red blood, quite ordinary in the light, and yet something had happened to her blood, Walter, for I swear what I write to you is the truth: In the dark, it glowed.
It took nearly half an hour and more linens than I could count for us to staunch the blood that flowed so freely from Liza’s nose. I have no idea how she slept through the start of such an incident. Indeed, she was quite exhausted by the time it concluded, lying wanly against her pillow with all the color drained from her face save for bruise-dark circles blooming under her eyes. My poor Liza. My poor Liza.
There was a great deal of laundry to do, with all the bloodstained linens, and yet it was decided that Liza should not be alone, so I kept her company while Mother and Charlotte attended to the evening’s work. She was too tired for much conversing, so I kept up a steady stream of chatter, and when we’d been alone for several moments, I crawled into bed with her so that I could lower my voice as I told her all about seeing Minnie and Helen at Dr. Mackintosh’s office.
“I wonder who you’ll see there next,” Liza said thickly, her nose swollen with clots. It was early still, but already her head was drooping, and it was clear to me that she would soon be asleep again. So I turned out the lights, and in moments, she was unconscious. She did not even wake when I lifted her head so that I could place my pillow under her own to elevate her, should she suffer from another nosebleed in the night. There hadn’t even been a chance to tell Liza about Mr. Mills’s unexpected visit. (You have surely realized my folly by now, Walter. Mr. Mills was never in Liza’s room. He had never even entered our apartment!)
I knew that I should join Mother and Charlotte in the kitchen to help with the various chores that would surely keep them up into the smallest morning hours, but I was afraid to leave Liza, and so I decided to lie down on my own bed for at least a little while, in case she should quickly wake and need me.
How heavy was the worry weighing upon me, Walter, as I lay beneath our glowing galaxy. I am less enamored of the Lumi-Nite paint than once I was. The yellow undertones remind me of jaundice; the greenish glow conjures thoughts of nausea and seasickness. Most of all, I long to be enveloped by pure darkness. I have a strange fear that Lumi-Nite may become so prevalent that we will never be able to enjoy the dark again—at least, not until we are dead and buried in our graves.
Liza’s words kept running through my mind: I wonder who you’ll see there next. I am sure that she meant nothing by it—I am sure that I assign it more importance than it merits—but really, Walter, do you think it strange that I should see two dial painters there in one afternoon? And then there is the question of Liza, still so bafflingly ill. And Mary Jane, disappearing so suddenly and visiting no one?
And even, I suppose, poor Edna Parsons, dead and gone for nearly six months already.
That is a lot of girls from the same factory, wouldn’t you agree?
Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
If there is any chance, Walter, any chance at all, that something in the paint—or in the dial-painting studio—or perhaps some other factor of which I am unaware—could be affecting all these girls, then I must get Charlotte away from ARC. She has been in their employ a full two months already. We are running out of time. I pray that it is not too late. But Charlotte will never leave willingly. She loves it there.
If Liza were well enough to reclaim her position—
But she is not.
I am in a muddle, Walter. Please advise me. I eagerly await your counsel.
But not as eagerly as I await your return.
Love,
Lydia
Chapter 17
How long was I in the kitchen, lying in wait? Long enough for darkness to overtake the room; long enough for me to prowl from fridge to dishwasher to stove, loathing their shiny newness; long enough for everything inside me to crystallize into something jagged and ferocious. Lauren told me that I should be mad, but mad didn’t cut it. Not anymore. A toxic concoction of rage and resentment and regret bubbled through my veins until my brain was blazing with fury, and nothing but blood or tears could quench that fire.
A beam of light arced through the kitchen, followed by the purr of a familiar engine. Mom was home. I could hear it all: the slam of the car door, the shuffly footsteps on the walkway, the key turning in the lock. I swallowed hard, gulping like something was stuck in my throat—my breath or my courage or my resolve, I guess. In my heart, I wasn’t ready for what would happen next.
But I knew, then, that I never would be. So despite my shaky legs and wobbly arms I stood up and snapped on the light. It flooded through the kitchen just as she opened the door. I think we both jumped.
“God, Julie, you scared—”
I didn’t say anything as I stared at her, hard and mean; harder and meaner than I knew I could stare at anyone. In the moment she realized it, when that terrible dawning spread across her face, I settled into myself and steeled myself for what was coming next.
“The hell have you done in here?”
“Please don’t yell at me, Julie,” she said flatly. “We can talk about this after you’ve calmed down.”
She moved toward the door, but I was quicker, blocking her way before she could escape.
“You don’t get to run away,” I shouted. “Not this time! Answer my question. What have you done?”
Her head snapped back, and our eyes met. She seemed to realize that this was finally happening. It had been building for months and couldn’t be put off for another day.
“Why do you keep asking that? You have eyes. You can see for yourself.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Well, I’m renovating the kitchen,” she said, shameless.
It was too easy, the way she handed it to me like that, like what she’d done didn’t matter at all.
“Oh, that’s all? You’re just renovating the kitchen? You’re just spending thousands of dollars on crap we don’t need? And that’s no big thing to you?”
“Julie, please. Please don’t do this.”
“No. Don’t turn this on me. I’m not doing anything, Mom! You did this!”
“Yes, I did, Julie. I did it for you!”
“For me?” I repeated. Surely I had misheard her. Surely she wasn’t so deep in her own delusions that she thought a new kitchen was something I cared about in any way, sh
ape, or form. “For me?”
“Yes, for you, and I’m not going to apologize for that.”
“Oh, of course not, why should you apologize for anything? Not for lazing around the house all day! Not for spending thousands of dollars on a brand-new kitchen! Not for ruining my life!”
“No, no—” she started to say, again and again, but I kept talking.
“I mean, it sure sounds like a nice life you’ve got! No jobs, no responsibilities, no sacrifices—”
“No—”
“I mean even when the bill collectors were calling, like, every hour, you know, just a gentle reminder that you should maybe pay your bills—”
“No—”
“I still thought, well, Mom’s the adult here, she knows what she’s doing—”
“No, no, no—”
“But that’s where I was the fool, huh? I always believed all your lies…Oh, Julie, you’re so smart. Oh, Julie, you’re so talented. Oh, Julie, you can be anything you want, anything you want—”
“No—”
“But that was just a big setup, wasn’t it? You never had any intention of letting me go.”
My words rang in my ears. I didn’t know where they’d come from. I didn’t know who was standing across from my mom, bellowing like a bull, sweaty and red and raging. And yet I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t shut up.
“Took a lot of planning, huh? No wonder you couldn’t find a job, not when you were too busy unraveling my entire life. When did it start? When Dad left you? Or before?”
“Jubilee—”
“No, shut up. Don’t even call me that stupid name. I swear, you’ve hated me since the moment I was born, and I was so close to getting away from you and this house, but you won, didn’t you? You won.”
“I’ve won?” she repeated. “You think I’ve won? You think I wanted this life? You think this life makes me happy?”
“You wouldn’t even go to that job fair—”
“Oh, I did go. You said to get there early, so I went and came home before you were even out of bed. Guess how many people were there? Three thousand. For sixty jobs. Do you see what I’m up against?”
“That was just one—”
“No, it’s every job fair. It’s every job ad. It’s not my fault that every time I apply for a job, there are hundreds of applicants more qualified than I am.”
“But you—”
“You think it’s so easy because you got a couple part-time jobs. Do the math, Julie. Even a full-time minimum wage job wouldn’t have kept this house going. And too bad for me, nobody’s interested in hiring a woman with an eighteen-year hole in her résumé. Too bad for me, I thought I was doing something good staying at home for you, making a home for you and your father—”
“Don’t bring him into—”
“You already did. So let’s face the facts about your dad, shall we? He’s such a special guy. Such a special guy who walked out on a perfectly good home, a perfectly good family. But you already know that. What else do you know, Julie? That there was no way he could keep two households at the same standard of living? And when he had to choose one, he chose himself? Did you know that? Did you?”
I didn’t respond.
“No? How about this. Did you know that he’s had some hard times too? Did you know that he took me back to court so he could pay less alimony? Less child support? Did you know that?”
The look on my face gave her the answer. But I was not about to let her twist things around and distract me from everything she’d done wrong.
“So is that why you took my college money like you were entitled to it?”
Mom sucked in her breath sharply and held on to the edge of the counter. “Here it is. I’ve been waiting for this—”
“You had no right!” I yelled over her. “You had no right to take that money—”
“You offered…You insisted…We sat right there at that table, and I said, are you sure, are you sure—”
“It was never supposed to be some magic solution to your mountains of debt!”
“My mountains of debt? You know it’s more complicated than that! Remember science camp? Art lessons? Prom dresses? Field trips? I have given you everything. I’ve made sacrifices for you that you can’t begin to comprehend! That college account was just the beginning!”
“Please, tell me more about that, Mom. How did you contribute to my college fund when you never even had a job?”
“Because you were my job, Julie! I was here. Even after he was gone, I was here. I was taking care of you, I was making you thousands of meals and reading you thousands of books and listening to thousands of problems—”
“I never asked you to—”
“But I wanted to, Julie, and that’s what makes the difference. I stuck around, and I gave you everything I had when he was too selfish to love either one of us.”
“You’re wrong!” I screamed. “Dad does love me. That’s why he sent that extra check for my college account every month. He didn’t have to, but he did. He wanted my dreams to come true!”
Her head was wobbling back and forth a little, and she looked so confused that I might as well have been speaking in tongues. Then her hands were on her cheeks, and clarity flooded her eyes.
“Oh, Julie,” she said. “Oh, Julie. The college account wasn’t your dad’s doing. It was mine.”
“Wrong!”
“No, honey,” she said, her voice soft with pity. “I fought for that in the divorce. I wouldn’t sign the papers until he agreed to fund it.”
“Shut up. You did not.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “I thought you knew. And even after…after we went back to court…I agreed to less alimony to make sure those payments for your college account would keep coming. That was a mistake. I know that now. I never could’ve predicted that he would ignore the court order and just stop sending checks. That he would disappear like that. Abandon us both again. And even after he did, I thought…” She took a deep breath. “I truly believed everything would work out somehow. Financially, I mean. I was sure I could get a job. I never dreamed of touching your college account until we were about to lose everything.”
All this time—stupid, stupid—all these years—stupid, stupid—I thought that those monthly checks meant something, the only shred of evidence that my dad still cared. They were, I thought, proof of his love.
And now it was gone.
“It’s his loss, Julie,” she said, rubbing my arm. “When he walked out on you, he made the biggest mistake of his life, and I feel so sorry for him—”
I jerked away from her. “Stop it! You’re trying to distract me. You’re trying to make me feel bad. He has nothing to do with all the money you just spent on this kitchen!”
The shine of love in her eyes hardened like quick-set concrete. “Right. The kitchen. Well, if you’d given me a chance to explain, I would’ve told you that I had a real estate agent do a walk-through last week. She said we’d never get a buyer unless we updated the kitchen. Imagine that, Julie. No one wants to buy a house with a thirty-year-old kitchen full of broken appliances. So I found these floor models for fifty percent off.
“Did I have the right to buy them? Should I have asked your permission? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still not used to being in my daughter’s debt. But I do know that I was comfortable taking this risk—this very calculated risk—because of how great the payoff would be.”
We stared at each other for a long moment.
“And that’s why this kitchen is for you. Because if I can sell this house and repay you, maybe, hopefully, you can get yourself to college and move forward with your life. I know how easy it is to get off track. How hard it is to find your way again. You think I want to hold you back? To keep you here?”
I swallowed hard, but I didn’t answer her.
“No. I don’t want that. I want you gone, Julie. I want you out of this house and off to college because I cannot bear to watch someone with so much promise throw
it all away.”
Not one more minute—not one more second—could we stay under the same roof. I pushed past her and charged up the stairs. It didn’t take long at all to shove a bunch of stuff in my backpack—dirty and clean clothes jumbled together, my uniforms for work, the diary. I had no intention of coming back anytime soon.
But the paintings.
How could I leave them behind?
Making multiple trips up and down the stairs was out of the question. And to be honest, they wouldn’t all fit into my little hatchback. So I tucked the smallest painting under my arm and careened downstairs, determined to leave and not look back.
Chapter 18
June 18, 1918
Dearest Walter,
Thank you for your wise counsel. I have acted upon it, though perhaps not entirely in the way you would expect, and though I cling to the conviction that I have done what needed to be done, I am not certain that what I did was right.
If you do the wrong thing for the right reasons, is it still wrong?
I struggle with this question every day.
I will never tell anyone what I did, except for you in this letter, and if you love me less, I will understand. I feel very unlovable tonight. Still, you should know, I suppose, what sort of person I am deep inside, that I could commit such an act against my own sister.
My plan took several weeks to execute, during which I had to be exceedingly sly. I stitched nearly invisible pockets into the hems of my dresses. That was the start. And then I taught myself some sleight of hand. A watch face here, a freshly painted dial there, a case, a spring, a band. A smattering of crystals. Spindly hands. Pieces pilfered daily, hourly, secreted away in my skirts. No one noticed; no one suspected a thing.
While Liza slept away the fitful hours under the light of our stars, I assembled all those pieces to the best of my ability, slowly building for myself a fine cadre of illuminated wristwatches. I might have set up shop as a watchmaker if I had been so inclined, but that was not my intent. When I had a good number—some twenty or so—it was time to act. I feared that soon Mr. Mills would notice the missing pieces, which would surely lead to greater scrutiny of all us girls. If I were discovered as the thief—
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