by Luanne Rice
When Isabel died, Chloe stopped talking for a month. She felt as if her heart had been pulled out of her; that it was impossible to keep living with such a loss. She would lie on her side, feeling as if her body had been torn in two, as if she was a paper doll. Everyone whispered, and said she was traumatized. She didn’t remember much about that time, except for Uncle Dylan sitting on the edge of her bed, holding her hand.
“Your parents love you,” he said. “Just like I love Isabel.”
Chloe was eleven. She had become like a baby herself, and she’d gone back to understanding everything in a much different, more primitive way. Words were beside the point. She had looked up into his eyes—so like Isabel’s—and reached up to touch his cheek. His beard felt wiry to her fingertips.
“She’s gone,” Chloe said, her voice shaky with the first words she’d said in weeks.
Uncle Dylan shook his head. “Never. When you love someone, they’re never gone.”
“That’s not true,” Chloe said, starting to cry, as if she knew much more about loss and missing someone than he did, having no idea of how that could be possible. “She is gone,” she sobbed. “Gone . . .” The word was a black hole, and it took her back to a wordless time, and the black hole that had swallowed her birth mother. “Didn’t she love me enough? Why did she leave?” Oh, Chloe was getting all her losses mixed up . . .
Uncle Dylan had just held her. Her parents had hovered behind him, and after a minute, her father had tapped his shoulder, and her mother had taken Chloe into her arms. She remembered urgent whispers, and a feeling of embarrassment, as if she had somehow hurt her mother’s feelings. Of course she sensed that Chloe was connecting to the other disappearing person in her life, Chloe’s real mother, the one who had given her away.
Uncle Dylan had never shaved his beard after that. He trimmed it; it was handsome, salt-and-pepper. But he always kept his beard, and Chloe knew why: because Isabel had touched it. Chloe just knew; Uncle Dylan never had to tell her. Isabel had kissed his scratchy face, and Uncle Dylan would never shave again.
That was real love.
Running inside to change into her work smock, Chloe’s heart was beating too hard. She washed her face, calming herself as she splashed the clear spring water onto her skin and rubbed the white soap into creamy foam. She looked into her own eyes, staring out from the mirror. She thought if she looked long enough, she could see her real mother’s face and ask her why, how . . .
She rinsed her face and walked out to the car. It was a new minivan, perfectly clean. Her father washed it every Saturday; her mother used the portable vacuum nearly every other day, to keep it pristine. Her parents’ secret behind-closed-door fights were terrible, but their possessions were impeccable. It all seemed related to the fact that her mother preferred straight rows of pansies to the insane snaggle of an overgrown orchard. While Chloe loved the wildness, dreamed of getting lost in it. What was she doing in this family?
Maybe she really was a cat. When she was little, she used to have dreams of being in a fancy blue pram. Of her parents with their hands on the silver handle, pushing her along, stopping to show her off to the neighbors. And of the neighbors’ gasps of shock when they saw that Chloe wasn’t a little girl, wasn’t their daughter at all, but a tiny wild tiger baby, with black and orange stripes and bright green eyes—just like the plush toy she had in her crib.
Now, being driven to her after-school job at the big grocery store in town, she gazed pensively out the window. Her mother tuned the radio to the pretty music station, where every song sounded like an ad for feminine products. Chloe groaned. Her mother smilingly ignored her.
Chloe dug into her pockets. Earlier she had torn up a sheet of notebook paper into small business-card-sized pieces. While her mother drove, Chloe began to write. One line per piece. Her mother didn’t even glance over.
She probably thought Chloe was doing homework.
Across the river, one town away, Jane was baking. She assembled the bowls, pan, butter, flour, and eggs. She had brought her mother downstairs to be with her, in spite of Sylvie’s prohibitions.
“You okay, Mom?” Jane asked, measuring flour.
“Oh, I’m fine, honey,” Margaret said, looking around. She sat at the table, holding her new doll in the crook of her arm. “It is so good to be sitting in my own kitchen.”
“How’s your leg?”
Margaret shrugged, smiling bravely. “It’s fine. I hope you can get me back upstairs before your sister gets home. She won’t let me out of bed.”
Jane laughed. “You make it sound as if she’s holding you prisoner.”
“She is!” Margaret said. “She is so wonderful, and I love her, but my God. You’d think I was her six-year-old child instead of her mother. I was the school principal! I’m used to giving the orders.”
“I remember you did that very well,” Jane said.
Her mother laughed. Jane hadn’t meant anything by the comment, and she was glad her mother hadn’t taken it that way. But for Jane it hung there, shimmering for a moment between them, until it disappeared like a leaf in an eddy.
“Yes, I was considered to be a strict principal,” Margaret said. “I saw so much change at the school. Back when you and Sylvie were little, our biggest discipline problems were kids passing notes in class, talking in the library, fighting in the cafeteria. By the time I left, they had installed metal detectors, to keep out guns and knives. So much victory.”
“Violence,” Jane corrected gently.
“Now tell me what you’re baking,” her mother said, seeming not to hear.
“Biscuits,” Jane said. “Sugar-free, so you can have them.”
“A treat! How wonderful!” her mother said, squeezing her doll. “Sylvie is so strict with me—sometimes I’ve thought she’s getting me back for all the times I said no to candy bars or cupcakes . . .”
“You know she’s not,” Jane said.
“I know. She’s taking good care of me.” Margaret sighed. “And I know that’s why you’ve come home. What did she tell you?”
“That you’d had a fall; and that you’re in a lot of pain.”
“I cut my leg when I fell, but it’s my feet that really hurt,” Margaret said, grimacing. “It’s the diabetes. They want to try putting magnets in my shoes—can you imagine?”
“Really?”
“It’s a type of pain control. Sanctioned by the medical community and, mirabile dictu, the insurance companies! They look like insoles, and you slip them into your shoes, and they magnetically draw the pain from the body.”
“How . . . alchemistic!” Jane said, grinning. “It’s as if, deep within the high-tech testing lab, there’s a secret room with a sorcerer . . .”
“Wearing a tall, pointy blue hat with silver stars,” her mother said. “And jars of stardust and sea salt and ancient recipe tomes . . .”
“Sounds like a cooking show,” Sylvie said, coming in with an armload of groceries. “What are you talking about?”
“Mom’s magnets,” Jane said, getting up to help her. “Do they actually work?”
“Well . . .” Sylvie began, unpacking the bags.
“They do!” Margaret said. “Or they will . . . I have to trust that they will. I can’t bear the idea of going back to that pain medication. It’s so awful—it makes my mind so foggy and makes me forget things. Even after I’ve stopped taking it, I still get so . . . inquisitive.”
“So what, Mom?”
“So unintelligible,” she said. She spoke with authority, like the school principal she was, but her eyes betrayed alarm, as if she knew she was saying the wrong thing and hoped her daughters wouldn’t notice.
“So forgetful?” Jane supplied.
“Exactly,” Margaret said. She kissed her doll, whom she had named Lolly after the one she’d lost. “We all knew what I was talking about.”
Seeing her mother hold the baby doll made Jane’s stomach drop. What would all those decades of students and parents think, to se
e Margaret Porter—their dignified, intellectually demanding school principal mother—playing with a doll? Although Jane had bought it for her, she somehow hadn’t expected this. . . . Her mother whispered to the doll, as if she were telling her a secret. Jane shivered. She remembered whispering to a baby once. She closed her eyes, knowing her mother had held and raised two babies, and she had made sure Jane never had that chance.
“Good Lord,” Sylvie exclaimed, unpacking the groceries. She bent to examine the package of hamburger she held in her hand.
“What’s wrong?” Margaret asked.
“Look at this—” Sylvie said, peeling a piece of white paper from the meat’s plastic wrapping.
“What does it say?” Jane asked.
“‘Cows are beautiful. Do you really want to eat one?’ ”
“How odd,” Margaret said.
“This is not good,” Sylvie said. “I went all the way to SaveRite in Crofton, just to get fresh berries, which they didn’t even have, and I wind up buying meat that’s been tampered with!”
“Maniacs are everywhere,” Margaret said gravely.
“Well, as soon as I check your sugar, I’m going to call the store manager. We are not eating this meat.”
Jane watched Sylvie walk over to the counter, to get the test kit. Her posture expressed the dual burdens of being her mother’s primary caregiver and encountering insurgent note-leavers. She really belongs in bed, she mouthed to Jane; Jane shrugged and mouthed Sorry . . . Preparing to prick her mother’s finger, Sylvie handed the doll to Jane.
Her mother smiled at Jane. “It’s silly, isn’t it? Someone my age holding a baby doll? But she does so remind me of the first Lolly . . . and even more, of my two girls. The two happiest days of my life were the days you both were born.”
“Hold still, Mom,” Sylvie said.
“And here you are now . . . it’s such a dream, to have you both home with me,” Margaret said. Her blue eyes were light and chalky with cataracts. Her once luxuriant chestnut brown hair was now soft gray. Tears puddled in her eyes, spilling onto wrinkled cheeks. Jane leaned forward. Her mother’s cheeks were so soft, like velvet.
Jane and her mother stared at each other, the baby doll between them.
“Sometimes I wasn’t sure you’d ever come back again,” her mother said.
“You knew I would.”
Her mother shook her head. “A Christmas here and there, my retirement party . . . always in and out so quickly. I always wanted you to stay. To have you upstairs, in your old room, with no real plans to leave.”
Jane’s skin still tingled as she handed the doll back. This was why she had stayed away as much as possible. Because although she loved her mother and knew Sylvie needed help in deciding what to do next, Jane could never, ever forget what her mother had done.
Jane began helping Sylvie put away the remaining groceries.
“Should I make us some tea?” Sylvie asked.
“That would be wonderful,” Margaret said.
Jane stood still, holding a package of frozen berries. The cold stung her fingers. Her mother loved her so much; Jane had never doubted that. But no amount of love could make up for what was missing. Years, memories, two lives.
“Jane?”
“If we wait a few minutes, the biscuits will be ready. And I’ll thaw the berries . . .”
“Just like shortcake!” her mother said. “Sounds luscious. But there was something else . . . something I was going to say about Jane being home. Now, what was it?”
Her mother tilted her head, torn between thoughts. Jane saw the struggle, just behind her mother’s eyes, to hold on to the threads.
“You’ll think of it again,” Sylvie said, lifting the receiver and reaching for the phone book.
“Who are you calling?” Jane asked.
“The SaveRite manager. This is product tampering,” Sylvie said, tapping the scrap of white paper.
“It’s someone who likes cows,” Jane said. “You don’t have to read the note. You can still eat your hamburger.”
“Just because you’re a vegetarian,” Sylvie said, dialing the number. “And besides, we don’t know whether the meat’s been poisoned.”
“Safety first,” Margaret said.
Jane tried to smile as she looked away. It was so sweet, yet so hard and weird, to be home. Her throat tightened. She felt like an iceberg, drifting from the icy sea into southern waters. She loved these two women more than any other person in the world.
Except the one she had given away.
CHAPTER 4
The manager’s office was air-conditioned, as cold as the frozen-food aisle. His name was Mr. Achilles Fontaine, a name that Chloe thought made him sound like the fifth musketeer. He had a swooping way about him that further fit the bill: sallow droopy cheeks, a huge bristly mustache, short gray hair, and a habit of wearing bright, billowy shirts with very full sleeves.
“Look at this, Chloe,” he said, spreading the notes and grocery receipts across his desk.
Chloe nodded. Reading upside down, she was able to recognize her own handwriting, and to revisit some of her favorite messages: This duck was somebody’s mother; Moo-Moo, don’t eat me!; and Vegetables can be found in Aisle One; why not try a delicious, nutritious salad, instead of this slab of dead pig?
“I am very, very disappointed in you. I liked you very much. I thought you were part of the team.”
Chloe nodded sorrowfully, focusing on the top button of his shirt—orange, today. Or, to be more precise, a shade of bright peach. She felt sorry for Mr. Fontaine, because she understood his choice in shirts was a desperate plea to be taken as relevant, the same way certain teachers tried too hard, by wearing cool, funny socks.
“But you weren’t part of the team, were you?” he asked.
“Well,” she said. “That depends on what team.”
“The SaveRite team,” he said.
“I guess I wasn’t,” she said.
“What you did is not to be taken lightly. We can’t just treat this as a prank.”
“It wasn’t a prank,” she said.
He looked confused, but he didn’t pursue the issue. He reached up to scratch his ear. She stared gravely, thinking of all the imprisoned animals, unable to scratch their itches.
“We had to recall all these items,” he said, showing her the receipts, certain amounts circled in red. “Anyone who received one of your notes has been invited to come in for a complete refund. Do you know how much money that adds up to?”
“No.”
“One hundred and forty-nine dollars—so far. How long do you have to work for that much money, Chloe? Do the math.”
She didn’t reply. She was getting fired—she didn’t want to stand here and banter with a man who would never get it.
“You do understand the severity of this, Chloe?”
“Yes, I absolutely do,” she said.
“I’m glad to hear that. I can’t let you continue working here, but I’ll be very happy to think you’ve learned a lesson that will help you as you go through life. Would you like to tell me what that is?”
Chloe cleared her throat and looked him straight in the eyes. “You’re right. This is a matter of great severity,” she said calmly. “Animal mothers are separated from their babies—have you ever heard a calf crying, Mr. Fontaine? It’s so sad . . . and for what? So people can have cheeseburgers?”
“Chloe,” he said, turning pale and slapping both hands down on his desk. “I could call the police on you, but I won’t. Get your things and leave my store. If I ever see you back in here, I will call the police.”
She nodded, handing him her smock and gathering her jacket and book bag. His energy was very powerful, filled with anger; when her father got like this, Chloe had to get away. Glancing over, she could practically see him shaking. She paused, wanting to ask him for her paycheck, but she couldn’t bring herself to: He looked as if he hated her.
Walking through the store, she felt other kids watching her
. Adrian Blocker was stocking the milk shelves; he snickered as she hurried down the aisle. She stopped by the pay phone at the entrance, to call her mother for a ride. Jenny West was at the checkout; Mark Vibbert was her bagger.
“Moo, moo,” Mark said as Chloe went through her pockets for a quarter.
Jenny laughed.
Chloe stared straight at both of them. She tried to think of something to say, to make them understand. The longer she stood there, the more she felt like an outcast, and the redder her face got. She couldn’t find a quarter, so she decided to walk.
Her mother would just yell at her, anyway.
Dylan drove his truck north on Lambs Road, checking his rearview mirror to make sure nothing bounced out. He had found a good nursery in Kingston, and he’d loaded up on a few seedlings. White-tailed deer bounded across the road, shadows in the twilight. The road was rutted from a hard winter of frost heaves, and he drove slowly, not wanting to hit a deer or lose his rootstock.
Running the family orchard took up every minute of his time, and that was good. His father had left him a share in the land, along with Elwanger’s classic Growing Apple Trees; by the time Dylan finished working every day and reading every night, he was too tired to think about Isabel and Amanda.
He was too busy learning how rootstock, soil fertility, and pruning can affect tree size. That all apple trees sold commercially consist of two parts grafted together to form the tree; that the “scion”—the top section that would branch and bear fruit—was grafted onto a “rootstock,” the bottom section, which determined the relative size of the tree. Stuff that would have put him to sleep ten years ago.
Lost in thoughts of cross-pollination, he nearly passed his niece, trudging up the road. Slamming on his brakes, he felt the whole load of seedlings lurch forward.
“Shit,” he said. He’d started smoking again recently, so he ditched the cigarette, slung his arm across the seat, looked over his shoulder, and gunned the truck backward.
“Uncle Dylan,” Chloe said. Weary under the weight of her knapsack, she straightened up at the sight of him, eyes wide and bright, stabbing his heart.