Ginny gives her a look—sullen, suppressed. Natalia understands this loss. Every complicated feeling held in check and buried deep would erupt if Vicki were suddenly found, sending Ginny into hysterics, like the old women whose children were taken from them, while they stretched out their arms and screamed. “You should try and get dressed,” Natalia begins. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Ginny looks down at her housecoat. “I haven’t felt like going out.” She sits down, places her hands between her tight knees.
With her pictures in hand, Sissy moves over to the high-back chair in the corner of the room. She regards the drawings. Natalia can’t fathom why her daughter would put up such a fuss over a few simple sketches, or why she seems wholly incapable of sharing. She is grateful that Sissy is at least being quiet.
“It’s my fault,” Ginny says, not bothering to look at Natalia directly. “I should have watched.”
Natalia tries to ignore the lamp shade that’s askew, the faint layer of dust over everything, the trash, the lip of a bottle tucked in the couch cushion. She sits alongside Ginny. “Lots of things can happen whether you watch or not,” she says, not unkindly. “Things can happen outside a house or in them. You can’t hide children away. You can’t stick them in front of the TV all day and deny them play and fresh air. What would happen if we did that?”
Ginny looks over at her then. Her tone is almost cruel. “And look what happened when I didn’t do that, when I didn’t make her watch TV and stay inside.”
“It was bad luck,” Natalia says, surprised by the resentment she hears. “A one-in-a-million chance.”
Ginny says nothing, and Natalia rights herself. How many times did she spend with Ginny mulling over recipes or discussing the girls’ elaborate pool rituals, their habit of make-believe and conspiracies? Were their children the reason a friendship was formed at all? In the absence of the girls, did they really need anything from each other? She doesn’t know. “Sissy has a gift for you, too,” Natalia explains.
She waits as Sissy stands and pulls her T-shirt down. In the end, back at the house, Natalia had to bribe Sissy to procure the pictures. Now Sissy hands the drawings to Ginny. “I made them,” she says. “They’re originals.” Natalia catches the evil eye. Her daughter looks out the window, at the same thing she stared at when they waited at the door: the bike parked up on the porch, leaning against the railing. How pale Sissy became, seeing it, how contemplative she suddenly grew.
Ginny runs her hand over the drawings. “That’s very nice of you. You were her best friend.” She catches herself. “Are her best friend.”
“Yes,” Sissy says, nodding, unsure.
“I’ll clean up for you.” Natalia does not wait for a response. She immediately sets about gathering up the flyers and stacking them neatly on the table. She concentrates on the task at hand, pushes away any thoughts that disturb her. “Has Frank been over to help with the yard?” This is said perhaps too lightly.
“We’ve always been friends, haven’t we?” Ginny looks up at Natalia, and Natalia cannot tell whether she is speaking of them or of Frank.
“You must be tired,” Natalia says. She runs her fingers over the burn mark on the couch, the circular black shape made from an unattended cigarette. She does this so that Ginny sees her do it. She straightens the pillows.
“You don’t have to clean,” Ginny says. “I’m fine.”
“Nonsense. If I don’t, who will? You’ve got enough going on.”
“Vicki always thought of you as her best friend, Sissy,” Ginny says. She pushes the plate of cookies forward. “Do you want one of these?”
“Okay,” Sissy says.
“No, that’s for later. That’s for Ginny. You’re getting ice cream, remember?” To Ginny, Natalia says, “We don’t need anything. We came to help out. Sissy told me Frank comes over, too, to help.”
“Frank ‘s been a help, yes.”
“Of course. Did you—”
“What?”
Natalia shakes her head. “Nothing.” She brushes the ash from the table, into the tray.
“He said Vicki would come home,” Ginny tells her. “Frank.”
Something shifts in Natalia, though she doesn’t want it to. A tension mounts in her shoulders, a wildness pushes in her heart. Her look grows cold, serene. “Do you believe that?”
“I have to.”
“A ten-year-old? On her own?”
“Mom,” Sissy says. “Don’t.”
“She’s very smart; she’d find her way home,” Ginny says. “You did.”
“Really?”
“Mom,” Sissy says.
“Anything is possible,” Natalia tells her, “but what is likely is an altogether different story.”
“Less talk, Mom.”
The moment Sissy says this, Natalia regrets her words. “You’re right,” she says, composing herself. She smooths her shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and not thinking practically. Of course Frank’s right. Of course Vicki is going to come back.” Breathless, nearing tears, she retreats to the kitchen and surveys the broken glass on the floor, a partial footprint, a shocking smear of blood on the dingy tiles. She can only imagine what Ginny must be like after emptying a bottle, staggering around, her home unfamiliar. On the table a fruit basket has been left to rot—the grapes have withered on their vine, the apples have grown blemishes, and the oranges sicken the air. A note from Milly reads, simply, “Everyone is hoping for the best and keeping an eye out.” How jarring, Natalia thinks, to live off scraps, on the things other people throw to you. How jarring to think people watch because you don’t. There is always such a fine line between a statement meant to soothe and a taunt.
She finds the dustpan, cleans up the glass. She wets a rag and wipes the floor.
“You’re her best friend,” Ginny says, forcing a smile.
The words come to Sissy again, from out of the ether. “Best friend”—the implication of the phrase a light burden.
“She was so nervous her first day in school, being in a new place, and you were kind to her, to sit with her at lunch. Remember all your sleepovers?”
Sissy nods, remembering most everything: the first day of class and Vicki’s stories about her father’s Purple Heart; the many instances when she picked Sissy for volleyball or dodgeball before those who excelled in such arenas; the long searches for ghosts and conversations under the covers; the posed questions: Did you ever kiss a boy? How Sissy would blush, thinking not of a boy but Greg, Eva’s friend with the dreamy gaze. I haven’t kissed any boy yet, Sissy explained. Me neither, Vicki said. But it’s a goal for next year.
Sissy isn’t even sure she likes the girl who was once a friend and was then hated, and who is now, in absence, elevated to the stature of beloved, cherished. Mrs. Anderson’s words allow Sissy a reason to mourn, in much the same way she sees on television: dramatically, with tears she only half possesses. An odd thing. Even if it is all true, that they were best friends and that because of that fact alone they are still such, she can’t say she likes Mrs. Anderson, the same woman who, after the incident with Precious, came over to pick Vicki up a full day in advance of her scheduled departure—the sleepover cut hastily short. And when she saw the damage done to Vicki’s hair—while ignoring the damage done to Sissy’s doll—she yelled, causing Sissy to cry from embarrassment, from the shock of another mother acting like her own. That this was also done publicly, in front of Natalia, who did nothing to come to Sissy’s defense, and that Vicki could witness Sissy’s humiliation, made the entire event unforgivable. Only Eva seemed to sense in Sissy the extent of the damage. “She deserved it, that little shit,” she told Sissy when, for the first time ever, Sissy begged entry into Eva’s room and not their mother’s.
And then, too, there are the kept secrets, the things Sissy knows about Mrs. Anderson, things told to her on those days Vicki would become somber and quiet, kicking stones down the road with an alarming force. All this makes Sissy leery of the woman in front of h
er now, the woman who is holding her drawings.
“Come sit,” Ginny says, patting the pillow beside her.
“I’m fine sitting here.” She hears her mother in the kitchen.
“Don’t be silly.” Ginny adjusts her housecoat, pulls it from where it’s caught under her. She moves over. “Here,” she says, “next to me. I need you next to me.”
Reluctantly, Sissy obeys. She sits on the edge of the cushion, and before she can maneuver away, Ginny catches her suddenly and pulls her close in an embrace. She holds her there, her chin against her head, Sissy against her housecoat. Sissy smells cotton, the earthiness of it, and smoke. She can hardly breathe. It is painful for Sissy to sense an adult’s world is crumbling before her. When an adult’s world falls apart—like her father’s, in the weeks after her mother left—there seems to be so little space for children, so little room to hide anywhere.
Still, she thinks: If she doesn’t writhe around, she won’t die, and if she can sit still long enough, she won’t die, and if she can stand to have her hair stroked by a woman who months ago yelled at her, who embarrassed her, and who is really all in all a stranger, she won’t die, and if she can accept the breath on her forehead, if she can do this—if she can withstand all this—it will be over and she will not die and she will be fine, she will live through it. And she thinks about her mother’s stories of dancing bears and carousels, and she thinks about Scooby-Doo, and she thinks about Lake Paupac with its crystal water and women who try to touch the moon, and she thinks about Eva, who she wishes were here, and she taps her foot violently, though the rest of her body is mostly still, and she thinks of secrets, and she thinks of Vicki Anderson and how they were always pretending to run away. She stiffens more. It is a balancing act to be what an adult wants and needs you to be—to be a baby or to be a grown-up, depending upon whether they want you close or far away from them: Come here, baby, be a baby, or No, no, be a big girl, and she taps her foot harder.
“I can’t breathe,” she says finally.
Mrs. Anderson releases her and pulls back suddenly, a look of shame crossing her face as if she’s just betrayed someone. She holds Sissy’s hands. “You miss her, don’t you?” she asks.
Be a good girl, she thinks, nodding.
“That’s why you drew the pictures?”
“My mother told me to draw the pictures,” Sissy says, “because she said I was staring a hole right through her back. I didn’t think about the pictures—I just drew them. My mother said you would like the pictures.”
“Yes,” Ginny says, nodding. “I do very much. And you miss her, don’t you?”
“I guess,” Sissy says.
“I think about her all the time.”
“Mrs. Anderson—”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she continues. “I know what Vicki probably told you.”
Her voice in Sissy’s ear, her warm breath. She thinks, Be a good girl. Be a good girl.—Tap, tap, tap …
“When she punched her hand through that window, on the dare. You remember.”
Sissy doesn’t tell her that she was the one who dared Vicki. She sits still, taps her foot, says nothing.
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No.” Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“I didn’t mean to hit her,” Mrs. Anderson says.
“Okay,” Sissy tells her.
“She told you?”
“She never said anything, Mrs. Anderson. She never said anything at all.” Sissy inches away, wishing her mother would come out from the kitchen. “Mrs. Anderson—”
“What, baby? What can I do for you? I’m here.”
Sissy bites her lip. She bites again, harder, and tastes blood. Confusion fills her, a desire to run. She looks outside. “If Vicki doesn’t come home,” she asks suddenly, “can I have her bike?”
At midnight the house is always quiet, the girls asleep—sometimes alone, sometimes together. How fragile his girls seem, sleeping. Though they don’t know it, Frank checks in on them every night, just as he did when they were babies. He opens the door a crack, lets a thin slit of light fall into the darkness. The light glides across their backs and covers, and, seeing they are safe and home where they belong, he feels happy enough and has a sense that all the hard work, that all the scraping by, is worth it. He stands for a moment, and he feels content. He does this before retreating downstairs again to eat, or sometimes to read the newspaper, or, if he is horny, before going to bed with a Playboy stashed under his arm, his date a brunette with smooth curves and pink nipples. Occasionally he’ll read books on car maintenance, or he’ll sit outside on the front steps and take in the night, the illuminated streetlights of the town he loves, this town he has lived in all his life.
And tonight he is so tense, he needs this grounding. Chaos erupted at work, after one of the blast furnaces was shut down for maintenance. The gases locked in the chamber, all of which were combustible, came in contact with the hot air and exploded in flames and choking and blinding smoke. The burns. The seething fire. A new kid’s error, some eighteen-year-old. As the foreman, Frank had gone over all the proper procedures with him several times, in exacting detail. He’d guided the kid through the ordering of switches, the steps he needed for safety, the same protocols Frank had taught new hires time and time again. The new kid, a doughy-faced boy with a thatch of yellow hair, didn’t wait and took to working alone. And then the building pressure, the heat, the blast throwing him back off his feet, the fire scorching the kid’s face and hands while the alarm sounded. When the boom rattled through every pipe and shook the floor under Frank’s feet, he and his friend Lennie came running. Frank pulled the emergency switch and set about extinguishing the fire. He secured the furnace while Lennie rushed to get a first aid kit and applied ointment. He wrapped the kid’s hands. A piece of flesh had peeled from the kid’s face. They didn’t know what to do about that, and debated for a few minutes before Frank lifted the flesh up and placed gauze on it, with tape. They waited until the ambulance came. And, as if this incident hadn’t set him off, later in the evening, toward the end of his shift, that medical truck from a hospital pulled in as it did on several nights throughout the year—they never knew when—and two men dumped body parts into the furnaces: arms and legs from amputees, tossed into the blasting heat. The workers—Frank included—were told from higher-ups not to ask questions, to keep their mouths shut if they valued their jobs. Still, as he watched the severed arms fall—the smooth cut of bone from the saw, the jagged bits of flesh illuminated in the heat—he thought it was wrong to condone this, that so much was wrong with this practice.
As he gets out of the car now and raps on the hood of his Chevy, he tells himself: Forget it. Lay it down. The night has cooled to mild temperatures. Tree branches break the moon into jagged pieces. The leaves flutter like small hands.
Inside, he sets down his thermos on the table, along with his lunch pail. The smell of garlic and cooked cabbage assaults him almost immediately. On the stove a pot simmers on low. He lifts the lid, feels the billowing steam and earthiness, and knows instinctively that Eva would never make this meal in a million years, and that Natalia is back. He catches sight of an onion laid in the corner of the kitchen—small-looking, quartered. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him what, in twenty years of marriage, he has learned about his wife: that Natalia must have grown restless. He always knew she’d come back, that she would tire of the doctor if the doctor didn’t tire of her first. Frank doesn’t need anyone to tell him that for however assured and stoic Natalia might seem in the public eye, she has been and always will be a woman privately riddled with self-doubts, the same uncomfortable girl he met in high school, despite her pretenses. And he doesn’t need anyone to tell him that she’s there now, somewhere in the kitchen behind him, perhaps lingering at the doorway. He can feel her, like a shock wave that causes first a heightened sensibility in him and then tension. His jaw clenches.
He replaces the lid. He hears her register a breat
h, anticipating him and what he might say, or what he might do. How is it, he wonders, that he should suddenly feel as though he’s done something wrong, that she should dread him, fear his anger? Why should he feel like this when she is the one who left? Why should he have to justify his reaction and have it be held to Natalia’s scrutiny? He could, if he wanted, throw her out right now, out of the house that he pays for, out of the rooms she has abandoned. He could leave her with nothing. It would be reasonable. It would be undeniably fair. Many times when he imagined this day, this night, he thought he would lunge at her immediately. He might hold her down, rip at her throat. Taste blood.
“Frank.” She whispers this in the almost girlish voice he remembers from long ago.
She stands by the kitchen chair, rigid, dressed in her plain nightgown, her breasts sagging, her hair pinned back. Seeing her, his molars press together. He opens the refrigerator, takes out a soda, pulls back the tab, and releases the pressure with a quick pop. But soda doesn’t please him tonight, so he walks outside to the shed without saying a word. For the first time since Christmas—Did his hand reach? Did he press his lips to Eva’s neck? Was there more? He barely remembers, the world was set to a dizzying, indistinct spin, his mind bleary and diffuse—he decides upon a beer instead. As he walks past the pool, he fails to notice for the second time that there is a glimmer of moonlight against the inches of glassy water, fails to notice the hose hanging over the rim— Natalia making good on another recent promise to Sissy. When he enters the kitchen again, she’s sitting, her hands against the table, folded tightly.
“Your silence is the worst,” she says. She will not look at him now, not register his disgust. “I wish you’d say something, anything.”
He takes a swig of warm beer, his calloused, large hand encircling the can, pressing it like a vise—firmly, so he can just feel the give. He places the rest of the six-pack in the refrigerator, then leans against the counter, staring, content to make her feel uncomfortable. It seems the least she deserves: this stiff, protracted silence. He will not confess— he will never confess—that after his rage, and after all the angry nights lying awake, thinking of her and the doctor together, after all the time anticipating a moment such as this, he has missed her. He will not confess the moments when, instead of looking at the brunettes with soft curves, knockoffs of Hollywood stars, he pulled out an old photograph: Natalia shy at twenty-one in a one-piece bathing suit that hugged her hips, her head back, unaware that he had snapped the camera. Finally he will not tell her that the most compelling thing about this very moment, the one thing that might make him speak to her, is the food simmering on the stove that he will not eat.
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