“Chloe was always the one on a diet,” I said. “Not me. I love to eat. Lasagna used to be my favorite food.”
That afternoon, while I vacuumed the floors and dusted the bookcases, Smita cooked me her first non-Indian meal. A spinach lasagna. We sat in Smita’s sparkling clean kitchen, slowly eating her delicious food. She lit candles. Her dangling earrings shimmered in the glow of the candlelight. She took a bite, and I took a bite. First Smita, then me. I smiled at her. “I love eating this way,” I said.
Smita sipped her wine. She took a bite of lasagna. I lifted my fork.
“I can’t much imagine the point of a day,” Smita said, “if there was no dinner to look forward to.”
“I haven’t been living,” I said.
When we were done eating, Smita asked me if I wanted dessert as well. I knew that she had made brownies. I had seen the mix box in the trash. Smita, I knew, didn’t like sweets. She had made brownies just for me. That is how much she liked me. Smita smoked, finishing her glass of wine. She looked happy to watch me eat. I felt like her little girl.
“No more diets,” Smita said. “Ever.”
I got my period the very next morning.
Five days later I turned seventeen. I was old enough to drive. I’d gained six pounds. Smita sent me out in the morning for blue-cheese cheese puffs from the local health food store. I brought her jasmine tea and some cheese puffs in a blue bowl, and then I went outside to wash the windows. It was a bright, sunny day. I was the best maid ever. I had a bucket, I had cleaner. I had rags and a ladder.
I was up on the ladder, scrubbing the top windows, when I saw Daniel’s car pull up to the curb. He honked the horn. I watched him get out of the car and open the door to the backseat. Daisy came leaping out. She ran straight to the ladder and jumped on it, barking. Daisy. I almost fell. My heart started beating fast. I had a past. I had a family. Chloe hadn’t found me, but there was Daisy. My dog. My good poodle, wagging her tail like crazy. I rushed down the ladder and wrapped my arms around her.
“Happy birthday,” Daniel said.
He was holding a bunch of yellow tulips.
For a second, I was happy. My brother had remembered my birthday. The flowers were bright and pretty, and they would look nice in Smita’s house in one of her ceramic vases. Smita loved flowers. She wanted us to grow a garden in her backyard.
I felt myself grinning at Daniel. My birthday, my poodle. My brother. I hadn’t told Smita I had turned seventeen. I was afraid she would feel that she had to do something. I did not want to become too much work for Smita.
I knelt down to pet Daisy.
“Hey, girl,” I said. “Look at you. Beautiful poodle.”
“I worried about you, you know,” Daniel said. “Yumiko called me to tell me you were coming, and you never came. I didn’t know what happened to you.”
I didn’t want to think about Yumiko. I looked at Daniel with the dog, and I realized that he had been back to the house. He must have seen Chloe. I didn’t want to think about Chloe. I didn’t want to know how she was. I didn’t want her to know how I was. It was all over. Ruined. We weren’t identical. It occurred to me that while I was cleaning the windows, Smita might have run out of tea. It was my job to bring her fresh cups of tea. My mouth had gone dry. I wanted Daniel to go away.
“I can’t keep Daisy, you know,” I whispered. “This isn’t my house. You have to leave.”
“Sue?” Daniel said. “Slow down. Say, Hello, Daniel. Take these flowers I brought you. They’re for you. For your birthday.”
I willed him to lower his voice, but already it was too late. I could hear Smita coming downstairs. Smita hated dogs. She would hate Daisy. In India, she said, kids beat them with sticks. It was already too much that I was there.
I wanted to reach for the yellow tulips and rip them apart. Daniel had to leave.
Smita stepped out of the house, barefoot, wearing a red tank top and an orange skirt with blue flowers. This time of day, she was supposed to be writing.
“Dan,” she said. “Hello. It’s good to see you.”
Smita didn’t know my brother.
“Were you washing the windows?” Smita squinted into the sun. “That’s brilliant. Sue,” she said to Daniel, “has been doing a bit of cleaning for me. She’s absolutely brilliant.”
“You’ve talked to each other?” I was stunned. I kicked over the sudsy bucket of water. Smita had conspired behind my back. It was conspiracy. Betrayal. As bad as Chloe betraying me for a basketball.
“Let’s have some tea,” Smita said. “Let’s go inside and we can have a civilized chat. Come inside, Dan, and Sue will make us some tea. I’ve never had you over to my house before, have I?”
“No,” I said. “He can’t stay.”
Smita gave me a cold look. We had never disagreed about anything before. My life with Smita had been perfect. “We have an agreement, Sue,” she said. “You don’t stay here on my simple charity. You provide me with a valuable service.”
Again, she invited Daniel to come inside.
“Please, Sue,” Smita said. “Go make us a pot of tea and put those flowers into a vase.”
She had never talked to me this way. I looked at Daniel, who was looking at the grass. Smita bit her lip. “I’m handling this badly,” she said. “I had a feeling you would be upset. Make us some tea, Sue, and I will explain.”
Smita smiled at me, pleading.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a dog,” she said to Daniel. “Hello, doggie.” Smita got down on her knees and looked Daisy in the eye. “Hello, lovely girl.”
It was beginning to make sense. Daniel had come to take me away. Smita’s house was clean. She didn’t need me anymore. She didn’t want me. She didn’t know how to ask me to leave, so she called my brother. I had thought she liked me. I wouldn’t make the bloody tea. I would smash all of her favorite blue ceramic bowls. I’d stomp on the wineglasses. I’d spit in the pot of chickpeas soaking on the stove.
This felt like the start of one of my parents’ meetings. I would not be sent home. I couldn’t go back. I had been the best maid ever. There had never been a better maid than me. I hated Smita. I hated Daniel. I hated Daisy, who wagged her tail at me, expectant.
“Sue,” Smita said. “I thought you were tough.”
“No,” Daniel said. “Not Sue. She cries all the time.”
I didn’t even know that I was crying.
“Fuck you,” I said to Daniel. “I hate you.”
I was standing on the lawn, crying. Daniel and Smita just stood there, watching me.
“She gets so angry,” Daniel said. “I don’t know what I ever did.”
I grabbed the flowers, my birthday tulips, from Daniel’s hand and threw them to the ground. Daisy whimpered, her tail had stopped wagging. She hated it when I cried.
“Oh, Sue,” Smita said. She walked over to me and put her arm around my shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere. Nothing bad is happening, I just thought you might want to talk to your brother because he is a nice person and he is part of your family.”
“You hate your father,” I said.
Smita shook her head.
“Your brother didn’t start masturbating you when you were six years old, did he?” Smita said quietly, only to me. “I like Dan. Yumiko treated him shabbily. Just like you are doing now. There are so few good men on the planet, and they are invariably treated badly. I can’t fathom it.” Smita put her hands on my shoulders and steered me into the house. “Go wash your face and then make us some tea, angel. No one is going to hurt you.”
Smita had never said anything like that before. Every night, I slept beneath all of those pictures. Raj Khan with his smooth, brown chest, rippling with muscles. The ridiculous purple turban.
Daniel followed us inside. Smita nodded, and he sat down on the couch I had cleaned. Daisy jumped up next to him.
“I’m on your side, moron,” he said.
Smita lit a cigarette.
“Make th
e tea, Sue,” she said. “Make the tea.”
My parents knew where I was. They had given Daniel money to keep me clothed and fed and educated. Daniel had with him a copy of my transcripts and a suitcase full of my clothes in the trunk of his car. He gave me a one-hundred-dollar bill. “From Dad,” he said. “For your birthday.”
“Bloody wankers,” Smita said.
I put the money in my pocket. My hands were shaking.
According to the document Daniel gave me, my parents had set up a trust. I couldn’t touch the money until I was eighteen.
“For now,” Daniel said. “For one year, I guess, I’m sort of your guardian.”
“They don’t want to talk to me?” I said.
“Dad said you were a cold child.” Daniel looked at his cup of tea. “If you want them, they’re a phone call away. That’s a quote.”
I held the manila folder on my lap. My name had been printed on a laser label on the tab. A secretary had prepared these documents. On TV, when a young girl ran away from home, the family always tried to find her. The mother wept. Usually, she fell into a consoling police officer’s arms. There was a lot of waiting by the telephone. Frantic moments. Prayers. The parents always worried. Even if I did hate their sorry asses, they were my parents and they should have worried.
“They’ve known you were here from the start,” Daniel said. “I called them.”
“Chloe?” I said.
Daniel nodded.
Chloe knew. All this time, Chloe knew where I was.
“Chloe seems totally out of her mind,” Daniel said. “She went on about training for the Olympics. Having no time. A year and a half until the next one, almost impossible, she’d never be ready. She said Daisy was peeing in the house and barking at her shadow. I tried talking to her for a while. She never stopped moving. Sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups. I got tired watching her.”
“She’s a basketball star,” I said, looking at my teacup. I hated tea. “She’ll make the Olympics.”
Smita rubbed my shoulder.
“So this is our dog?” she said.
She held out her hand to Daisy. Daisy sniffed Smita. Then she licked her hand. I watched them together, curious. Daisy was my dog. I opened the folder, and looked at the document again. It was six pages, typed, stapled. Printed on letterhead paper. I nodded to myself. It was more than that I was ugly. I had been officially kicked out.
“I can’t go home?” I said.
“Actually,” Daniel said, “I think Chloe might be better off if you did go home.”
“She told you?” I said. “She said that to you?”
For a second I felt almost ecstatic. Chloe needed me. It didn’t make sense, when for so long, everything she had ever wanted excluded me.
Daniel shook his head.
“No,” he said. “But she’s there all by herself, exercising. She’s in pretty bad shape, I think. Not that she would tell me. She said something about everyone abandoning her.”
“Where is our mother?” I said. “Why is Chloe all alone?”
“Mom is living in New York.” He shrugged. “With Dad. They’re having an extended second honeymoon or something.”
“Chloe’s alone?” I said.
I was surprised. I looked at Smita, but her face didn’t show any reaction. I couldn’t imagine Chloe all alone in the house, even though she almost deserved it. She had abandoned me. Jogging to school, learning to play basketball.
Daniel looked at Smita.
“We don’t really know each other,” he said. “Except through Yumiko.”
Smita snorted.
Daniel turned to me.
“Do you want to hear the very best thing about Yumiko?” he said. “The very best thing?”
Daisy was still licking Smita’s hand.
“What?” I said. I had forgotten about Yumiko. I was watching Smita. In less than an hour, she had stolen my dog.
“Her parents aren’t dead,” he said. “They have a camera store in Lincoln, Nebraska.”
I shook my head. “No. They died in a riptide. In Kyoto. She told me. When Yumiko was five. She has an inheritance.”
Smita laughed. “Yumiko,” she said, “is a compulsive liar.”
Daniel slapped his hand against his forehead.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Does she tell lies.”
“It was the way she treated Sue,” Smita said to Daniel. “Like an object, an oddity. That’s when I knew that I had had it with her.”
I looked at Daniel and Smita, talking, drinking their tea. They knew each other. They had mutual professors. They were adults. I was a child. Daisy laid her head in Smita’s lap. Smita smiled at me. I ran my finger over the top of the stapled document, my name in boldface. Daniel put his feet up on the table.
“I love standard poodles,” Smita said. “They are the smartest dogs.”
Chloe
This guy named James called to ask me on a date. He had called me once after the article in People. I vaguely remembered him as being tall. Ever since I had started playing basketball, I noticed tall people.
“I’ve never even talked to you before,” I said. “I’m not sure if I know who you are.” I held the phone too tightly. It was my birthday. I had turned seventeen.
“Sure you do,” he said. “I couldn’t believe you, that last game. Fifty-six points. I have never seen a girl move like that before. What are you doing right now?”
“Crunches,” I said. My forehead was covered in sweat.
The week after Sue left, all I could do was watch television. I propped my ankle on the table and watched soap operas and nature programs and reality TV. My ankle was still tender. The basketball season was over. I didn’t care about finals. I had pizza delivered. I ate an entire cheese pizza by myself. Then, one night, I found a special about Sarah Hughes, the figure skater who won the Olympic Gold medal. She seemed ordinary. Her hair, at least, was nothing special. She talked about how normal her life was, how she was just a regular person who did chores and homework and went to school like everybody else. But I knew, and she knew, and the interviewer knew, that this slight girl was anything but normal. She was a national champion, a hero. There were six kids in her family, and I had no doubt in my mind which child her parents loved best. She was the one on the Wheaties box. She had her pick of Ivy League schools. I spit out my pizza, deciding then and there that I would go to the Olympics. Mr. Markman had said that I could take my talent as far as I wanted to go. Mr. Markman couldn’t possibly ignore me if I were an Olympic champion. He would have to laugh off my father’s ridiculous accusations.
“And then,” I said to James, not sure of what to say. “Then, I’m going to do some weight training.”
I did not know how to talk to boys.
“Why don’t I come over?” James said. “I can spot you. For the heavy weights.”
“Okay,” I said.
I gave him my address. I was not entirely sure who he was, but it didn’t matter. I was lonely. I didn’t like living alone. I had trouble sleeping, hearing noises when there were no noises. I was convinced that someone was breaking into the house. I didn’t even have Daisy to protect me. Daniel had come home the day before and taken her away. He had come to the house for Sue’s clothes. He asked me how I was doing, but I did not know how to begin, and I knew that there was no reason for Daniel to care. Neither of us mentioned my birthday, even though he usually remembered stuff like that. He had once given us a book about a Nazi doctor that had given me nightmares. But he didn’t care about me, he cared only about Sue, so I did push-ups while we talked. It was my fault he took Daisy. I told Daniel that I was training for the Olympics and that I did not have time for a dog, but as soon as she was gone, I wanted her back.
Sue got her. Sue always got everything she wanted.
I could not believe that someone had called to talk to me. “James,” I said. I closed my eyes, hoping that he would be who I thought he was. It occurred to me that I couldn’t do exercises with a boy like I had agreed
to on the phone. I could not be wearing sweatpants. I didn’t know how long it would take for him to show up, but I risked taking a quick shower. I had to wash my hair. I wanted to be pretty and clean. If I was still pretty.
James showed up half an hour later. He was tall, not like Mr. Markman but at least a head taller than me. His dark hair hung in his eyes. He was the one who came to my games. One time I’d seen him hold up a cardboard sign that read “Chloe Is Awesome.” He held it over his head every time I scored a basket.
“You’re done with your workout,” he said.
My hair was still wet. I had put on a pink T-shirt and pair of tight, low-waisted jeans Lisa Markman once made me buy that miraculously still fit. I stood at the door, looking at James, amazed that he was standing there in front of me. He was cute. He smiled, and I could see two even rows of gleaming, white teeth. He kept his hands in his pockets, and we stood staring at each other on opposite sites of the door. He was wearing baggy jeans and a gray sweatshirt.
“Can I come inside, Chloe?” he said.
I laughed, embarrassed. That should have been obvious. I opened the door.
James kept his hands in his pockets, his head swirling around in all directions as I led him through the house. I took him into the kitchen, where I offered him something to drink.
He said, “No, thank you.”
I took him back around through the living room and up the stairs. I showed him my parents’ empty office.
“Nice,” he said.
Then I showed him Sue’s messy bedroom.
“What a mess,” he said.
I took him into my parents’ bedroom.
“Very nice,” he said.
I showed him my parents’ bathroom.
James nodded. “That is a big bathtub,” he said.
I ended the tour in my own room. I sat down on the bed, watching James take in my bedroom.
“Where is everybody?” he asked finally.
I shrugged. “It’s just me.”
James picked up the framed picture of Mr. Markman I had on my desk. It was a photo I had taken in Hawaii: Mr. Markman was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, sitting on the couch where we had first watched basketball together. James put the photo back without commenting on it. He sat down on the bed next to me.
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