A few evenings later, Angela came home, dumping her work on the kitchen chair, heading straight for her room. The girls trailed after her, sprawling across Angela’s bed, plucking at the chenille tufts on the spread, watching Angela as she shucked off her suit and then squeezed into her one good dress.
“Are we going out somewhere?” Molly bounced on the bed. She leaned over and plucked up a book she had left there and leafed through it.
“You’re not. I am,” Angela said. She smoothed the bodice of her dress. “There’s a nice new hotel that has dancing that some of the girls at work were talking about. And right now there’s a dental convention going on, filled with lots of nice single dentists.”
Molly frowned. “No,” she said.
“Please, don’t look at me like that,” Angela said. “I’m doing this for you girls.”
Angela spritzed perfume on her hair. “It’s drying on your hair, but the scent is worth it.” She fluffed her hair with her fingers.
“Mom,” said Molly. Suzanne stared sullenly at the wall.
“I can’t stay home,” Angela said. She bunched her hair in her hand and tied it up with the same rhinestone clip that had won her the beauty contest. “Believe me, I’d like nothing better than staying here with you, and Lord knows I have plenty of work, but what other choice do we have? It’s no good for any of us to go on this way. I can’t even take you to a lousy movie. Don’t you want something better? I do.”
“You could take us to a movie if you were home,” Suzanne said. “If you really wanted to.”
Angela studied herself critically in the mirror, and then took her hair down, cascading it across her back. She tightened her belt to show off her tiny waist. She hiked up her skirt and dipped her neckline. “I still have what it takes, don’t I?” Angela said, but her voice sounded doubtful.
Suzanne stared glumly at Angela. “Can’t you stay home?”
Angela looked around the house and made a comical face. “I don’t see any eligible bachelors around here, do you?” She ruffled Suzanne’s long, shiny hair. She kissed Molly and tried to smooth some of her fizz of red hair. “You think I like working so hard? You think I want a husband for any other reason other than to make it easy for you girls?” She took the book out of Molly’s hand. “You read too much,” she said. “You’re going to ruin your eyes.”
“They’re already ruined.” Molly took the book back, holding it close against her chest.
“Zip me up,” Angela ordered Suzanne.
It became a pattern. Angela would hear of some event at some hotel. A convention. A dance. She’d leave perfumed, poured into her dress. And a few hours later, she’d come home tense and quiet, not wanting to talk. “Didn’t you meet anyone?” Molly asked.
“I met plenty,” Angela said, kicking off her shoes. “Just the wrong kind of plenty. And I’m not stupid enough to fall for that twice.”
“So don’t go anymore,” Molly said. But Angela was already looking past her, thoughtfully scratching one leg. “Maybe I’d have better luck at the Marriott,” she said, brightening.
One evening, Angela was just getting in past ten when the phone rang. Angela shucked off her coat and flung it wearily over one of the kitchen chairs. She didn’t even stop to say hello to Molly and Suzanne, but plucked up the phone. The girls could tell it was the office by the strange new tone in Angela’s voice. “Yes, I did,” she said, tugging off her glittery earrings. “I worked through lunch on it. And both my breaks. Yes. It will be on your desk by nine,” she said. “Of course. No problem.” As soon as she hung up, she leaned along the kitchen wall and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she frowned.
Angela stared angrily at the kitchen counter and then went to the stove and noisily filled a big pot full of water and set it to boil. She got out a plate and slammed it on the table. She yanked open the silverware drawer and grabbed a fork and knife and clattered them by the plates. Suzanne gave Molly a warning look. Angela flung open the cabinet and then stopped, staring. “Where is it?” she shouted. She flung open another cabinet, riffling through it, knocking cans off the shelf, letting them roll across the floor. “No spaghetti!” she yelled. She tugged another cabinet open, and then another and another, and then in a fury, she picked up a can of green beans and flung it across the room. She whirled around, flaring at Suzanne. “There’s no sugar! There’s no tea! Didn’t I tell you to buy paper towels?” Her voice got louder and louder. “What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any brains? Didn’t you read my list? I can’t do everything around here on my own!”
Angela lifted her hand. Suzanne stiffened and then ran from the kitchen.
Angela lowered her hand. “I have to know I can count on you!” Angela shouted after Suzanne.
It was in New Jersey that Suzanne turned fifteen and became beautiful. Away from the hot California sun, her skin grew pale and luminescent. It made her blue eyes seem bluer. It made her black hair seemed even blacker, glinting with light, and because there wasn’t money for haircuts, it spurted to her waist in a silky curtain, but Suzanne swiftly became something exotic, a star.
Being suddenly beautiful did something to Suzanne. It gave her a kind of power, an entry through a door that Molly couldn’t begin to pass through. And both of them knew it.
That year, Suzanne began to pull away from Molly. Maybe because she could. She didn’t have to get Molly up in the morning anymore, or take her or pick her up from school. Molly was old enough now to fix her own meals, if she wanted one, to stay at home by herself, to decide for herself how she’d spend the long, boring hours when Angela was gone.
Suzanne put down a line of white tape on the floor of their bedroom. “Cross and you die,” Suzanne coolly informed Molly. She put signs on her desk drawers. KEEP OUT. THIS MEANS YOU. Suzanne began to dress differently, too, in shorter, tighter dresses. She began to stain her mouth with color, to line her eyes in kohl black. She spent hours in front of the mirror, and she began to look at Molly more critically. “Do you have to wear that dress?” she said, pained. Molly’s hands flew to her polka-dot dress.
“What’s wrong with it?” she said, but Suzanne just shook her head.
“If I have to tell you, then you’ll never get it,” Suzanne said.
“Do something about your hair,” Suzanne told her. “Wash your face.” She ordered Molly about, but even when Molly braided her hair back and put on her wheat jeans that Suzanne liked, Suzanne still didn’t want to have much to do with her. “Why would I want to hang around a baby?” Suzanne said disdainfully.
Molly began to be grateful that her junior high was on the other end of the city from Suzanne’s high school. She had a few friends now, and her teachers all liked her because she was smart, but she and Suzanne were in different orbits. She was glad she didn’t have to witness the triumphs Suzanne sometimes told her about in a kind of blow-by-blow wonder, the boys jumping all over each other to flirt with her, the most popular girls wanting to sit next to her. Things that would never in a million years happen to Molly.
At home the phone began to ring and ring, and it was always a boy, and always for Suzanne, but she was never allowed to do anything about it.
“Forget it. Fifteen is too young to date,” Angela told Suzanne. “If you can just keep yourself back a few years, till you’re eighteen, say, you’ll have more sense. No one will take advantage of you.”
“Eighteen! I’m not waiting until eighteen.”
“Listen to me,” Angela said. “I learned so you don’t have to. You stay home and help out with Molly. You run the house for me instead of gallivanting all around. You’ll see. When the time is right, some great guy will show up on our doorstep for you. And he’ll be the right one. A college guy, maybe. Someone with a future.”
“Yeah, right,” Suzanne said.
“I can look after myself,” Molly said, offended.
“I’ve been taking care of things since I was seven. She’s twelve.”
“No. Case closed.” An
gela strode out of the room.
Suzanne glared at Molly.
“It’s not my fault,” Molly protested.
But Suzanne’s cold look didn’t soften. Molly followed her to their room. “Suzanne—” she said, and Suzanne drew an invisible line across the room. “My side. Your side. I can’t hear you. I can’t see you,” Suzanne said. Suzanne flopped on the bed and put on her headphones and turned up her Walkman, ignoring Molly.
Molly turned and went out of the room. The hours stretched ahead of her. She went into the bathroom and picked up A High Wind in Jamaica, one of four books she was avidly reading at once. She ran her hands along the cover. She was glad to have the book, glad to have something she could count on. She took the book and sat in the hall and read. And then before she knew it, the house disappeared. There was only a stormy sea and pirates.
She was still reading that night when she heard noise from outside. Suzanne came out of the room, stepping over Molly as if she weren’t even there. Molly heard the front door open and close, and she ran into the bedroom, to peek out the window. There were three boys standing outside on the curb, knocking against each other, all arms and legs and hair, and as soon as Suzanne came out, they seemed to snap to attention. They socked one another in the arm. They tried to touch Suzanne, who danced away, laughing. Suzanne tossed her hair and threw her head back. She acted as if they were the funniest guys she had ever met. Molly pressed her ear against the pane, trying to hear what they were talking about, but they were too far off.
Finally, the guys left. Suzanne started back up the walk, a strange, secretive smile on her face, and then she suddenly looked up. She spotted Molly at the window. She stopped and looked at Molly, and then the glow about her switched off as abruptly as a light.
That year, Angela was home less and less, and when she was, she seemed different. She didn’t have to go to the hotels or conventions anymore, because she had started dating Lars, her boss, a man she said she had been all wrong about. Neither one of the girls could understand it. Every time the phone rang, she jumped, and Molly could tell it was Lars just by the way Angela began speaking. Her voice took on a kind of music. She laughed louder and longer than she usually did.
“You like this guy?” Molly demanded. “I thought you said he looked like a wolf.”
“Not everybody can be gorgeous. And don’t you know that Jefferson Airplane song ‘You’re Only Pretty As You Feel’?”
“I thought you said he had a pole as big as Toledo up his butt,” Suzanne said.
Angela waved her arms. “Oh, that was just the way he was at work. And he had to be that way, to get things done. Outside of work, he’s a lamb in wolf’s clothing.” She turned and looked at the girls. “He won’t let me pay for anything—not even a pack of cigarettes. Can you imagine?”
Suzanne mimed putting her finger down her throat and gagging. “Yuck!” she said. Molly snorted, trying not to laugh.
“Fine. Make fun,” Angela said. “But he’s turning my life around and that will turn your lives around with it. And then you’ll both thank me. You really will.”
Angela kept promising they would all have dinner together to get to know one another. That maybe they would even take a vacation. “He’s dying to know my family,” Angela said. “And he knows some very classy restaurants.” But there never were any dinners. Never any vacations. Usually, Angela and Lars went to dinner right after work, and then someplace else. The only times the girls saw Lars was the few times he came to the house to pick Angela up.
The first time Molly saw Lars, she thought he looked even worse than Angela’s description. Everything about him was long and narrow and dark, as if he were in perpetual shadow. He was in a heavy brown suit and white shirt and his tie was a neon yellow. His hair was thatchy and gray and his eyebrows thick and unruly. When he looked at Molly, his eyes seemed to bore right into her. “Hello, you must be Molly,” he said stiffly. His smile was one long tight line.
“Pleased to meet you,” Molly forced herself to say.
“I’m Suzanne.” Suzanne stepped forward and then Lars’s face changed, but he wasn’t focusing on Suzanne. He stepped past her, his smile widened. “Angela, you look lovely,” he said warmly, and Suzanne stepped back, stung.
It didn’t take Molly more than two minutes to see how smitten Lars was with Angela. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t stop leaning toward her, as if she were a magnet and he was iron, irresistibly pulled.
“We hope we’ll know you a lot better,” Molly said, and Lars turned from Angela and looked at Molly with a kind of surprise, almost as if he had forgotten she was there.
Molly watched Angela and Lars leaving from the front window, her nose pressed up against the glass. Lars held Angela’s arm as if she were a piece of spun glass. He smiled when he talked to her. Angela’s laugh was so loud you could hear it through the window. She kept touching Lars, too, faint, tentative taps as if she might be getting shocks. She kept looking at him as if she had to make sure he was really there. When they got to the car, he stopped and cupped her face in his hands. And then he opened the door and helped her in, and the car drove away.
It was the year Angela disappeared from the house even more, and the year, Molly thought, that Suzanne did, too. Suzanne now balked at doing the housekeeping. She frowned and sniped at Molly. “You buy the damned groceries,” she said. “You pick up the dry cleaning and tend the house. I did it long enough.” She left the grocery lists, scribbled in Angela’s hand, for Molly to take care of. She let the laundry pile up, six overflowing bags every few days, and pointed Molly toward the detergents. Molly stared at the bleach, at the soaps, at the complicated-looking dials on the washing machine. “How do you do this?” Molly asked, but Suzanne waved a hand. “You know how to read. The directions are right there in front of you. Just separate the darks and lights or Angela’ll get pissed.”
Molly fumbled with the laundry. She carried four loads up and down the stairs and by the time she was finished she was so exhausted she could barely move, and there was still more to be done. How did Suzanne do this? How did anyone? She did the shopping and cleaned the house, scrubbing at the floors furiously, slamming groceries into the cabinets. She was now so busy all the time that she didn’t have time to call her friends, who got tired of her not even being able to gossip with them a little, who began to fade away from her, to close their ranks. She had to leave books half read for so long that by the time she picked them up, she forgot where she had left off.
When Angela got home, Molly was indignant. “I did four loads of laundry,” she complained. “I didn’t even do my homework yet.”
She thought Angela might get angry at Suzanne, she thought at least Angela would thank her or praise her, but instead, her mother seemed preoccupied. “Next time, use starch on these shirts,” Angela said.
Suzanne stopped coming home for dinner. She didn’t come home at midnight, even though Molly waited up for her, staring out the window, worried, wondering what had happened, so exhausted she couldn’t see straight, and so anxious she couldn’t have slept if she’d wanted to. Suzanne usually managed to make it home minutes before Angela. She’d whisk into the house. “You still up?” she said to Molly. Suzanne threw off her clothes and flopped into bed. She turned her back to Molly, facing the wall, dreaming.
One night Molly heard a great roaring outside. It was past midnight, about the time Suzanne might be coming home, hours before Angela would show up. Molly went to the window and there was this bruised old car, the doors open, and leaning on it was this beautiful blackhaired boy, and he was kissing her sister Suzanne. Molly held her breath. She touched her own mouth, the roaring sounding deep inside of her.
His name was Ivan. He had just moved to town and even though half the girls in Suzanne’s class were in love with him, he loved Suzanne and Suzanne loved him back. Molly found all this out snooping in Suzanne’s room, reading the love letters he wrote to her that Suzanne didn’t even bother to hide. She traced
her fingers over Ivan’s words.
Molly looked at Suzanne with a new kind of wonder. Love had done something to her sister. Suzanne seemed perpetually flushed, as if heat were shimmering from her skin. She was always half smiling, as if she knew this great and wonderful secret.
One day, while digging around in Suzanne’s things, Molly found a silvery locket, a heart as big as her fist. She put it over her head, and then opened it. There was Ivan staring out at her. There was Suzanne’s picture next to it. Molly slipped the locket over her head, took it off, and then hid it deep in her purse.
That night, Suzanne went crazy looking for her locket. She tore the house apart, flinging everything out of her drawers, and the whole time, Molly sat quietly, her heart pounding. Just one day, Molly told herself. I just want to wear it one day.
Suzanne left early for school the next morning and Molly spent the time cutting out a tiny picture of herself and squeezing it over the one of Suzanne in the locket. Molly wore Suzanne’s necklace to school, and almost instantly things began to happen for her. It was almost as if some of Suzanne’s power had rubbed off on her through the locket. She could do anything now. Nothing scared her. Karen O’Brien, who sat beside her in English class and even though she had the biggest mouth in the whole school never said two words to her, came in and suddenly nodded at Molly. “Cool locket,” she said, and Molly looked up. Karen was still watching her. “So, whose picture is in there?”
Molly flipped it open. Karen sucked in a breath. “Holy moly!” She looked at Molly with new respect. “Who is that?”
Molly hesitated for only a minute. She drew herself up, breaking into a triumphant smile. “My boyfriend,” Molly said.
By sixth period, it was all over school. That big frizzhead, that knockkneed Molly Goldman, had a boyfriend like you wouldn’t believe. Suddenly, people wanted to know her. Cora Fisher, the head cheerleader, stopped Molly in the bathroom. “I love that shade of lipstick,” she said. Michael Sherman, who had broken up the whole homeroom the other morning by loudly asking Molly if she took double her dose of ugly pills that day, nodded pleasantly at her. “How ya doin’, Molly?” he said.
Coming Back to Me Page 4