Skylight Confessions

by Alice Hoffman

  “This time I’ll have you taken away,” John warned his son.

  Actually, away was where Sam Moody wanted to go. Some distant and blue and unreachable place. It was hotter on the roof than he’d thought it would be at this hour in the morning. Usually he was still in bed at this time, late to summer school to make up the math class he’d failed; he could sleep right through Cynthia yammering at him to get up and out on time. This morning he had set his alarm, but he was awake before it rang, up with the birds. He was done with math and summer school and a life of bullshit. He could smell the spicy odor of the boxwoods and the bitter scent of chlorine. His little sister had pool parties on the weekends and every kid on the block came to swim and piss in their pool. When such festivities occurred, Sam stayed locked in his room until Blanca knocked on his door and said, It’s okay. They’re all gone. You can come out now.

  The old man and Cynthia went back into the house. It was air-conditioned. Why should they sweat out here with him when he refused to listen to a word they said, let alone climb down? Sam was idly waiting for the police, wondering if his father would have the balls to really call and report him or if John Moody was merely sitting in the kitchen, steamed and silent as usual. Sam’s father blamed him for everything. Not just his failing grades, and the car accidents he’d had, and of course the drugs — not that the old man knew the extent of that, either. Aside from all of his own misdeeds, Sam also took the rap for weird happenings that had nothing to do with him. Broken dishes in the kitchen, soot falling out of the chimney, murmured voices in the hall late at night.

  It was most likely Cynthia who was sneaking around, then placing blame. Cynthia trying to mindfuck them all. Yet again. She had a mean streak, a pissed-off streak, a black and white streak, acting as though she was so smart when she was an emotional idiot about most things. For instance, she thought Sam was attempting to kill himself this morning. She thought that was why he was out on the roof, when he never intended that at all. If that’s what he had wanted to do, it would have been easy. He wouldn’t have had to call attention to himself. No, if Cynthia could admit what a bitch she was, she would know why Sam had to escape. And if she ever had the guts to acknowledge what a bastard the old man was, she would be scrambling to get free herself.

  It was interesting to have a bird’s-eye view. Everything was so much smaller. Sam had smoked some weed before he climbed onto the roof, just for a buzz. No major drugs at this hour of the day. One time he’d taken a tab of LSD and come up here and it had been a mistake. He was so disoriented he couldn’t tell which direction led to the stars and which to earth.

  A car was pulling up and parking. Not a police car or an ambulance, just a crappy VW Bug. A young woman got out. Tall. In her twenties. She was wearing jeans and a tank top and sunglasses; her dark hair was pulled into a ponytail and she looked confused. Maybe she was a police cadet in training. Sam was so intent on watching her that his feet slipped. He was wearing basketball sneakers and they squeaked on the glass. Quickly, he caught himself from falling, his arms flailing, as though he were trying to catch the air.

  The woman, Meredith Weiss, looked up.

  A mirage, she thought. Like the window ledge. A stork that looked like a teenaged boy.

  But no, he was real enough, and smoking a cigarette.

  “Is your name Moody?” she called up to the roof.

  “Sam,” he called down.

  “I’m Meredith.”

  “Good for you.” Sam’s voice hurt from the raised decibel level. He was not a shouter. He was more the silent type. He had once lasted an entire month without saying a single word to his father or Cynthia. He thought his muteness would drive them crazy, but the plan had backfired: they’d seemed relieved.

  “I’ve never been to Connecticut before,” Meredith told the boy.

  “It’s green and boring. So you might as well turn around and go back to where you came from.”

  Meredith laughed. “It’s hot here. Almost as hot as New York. Want some limeade? I’ve got two containers.”

  Sam was sweating so hard his shirt was drenched. The sun was intense up here. The air wasn’t moving. Sam’s legs were wet with sweat and his feet inside his sneakers were slippery. “Okay,” he said.

  Sam slowly crawled down toward the attic door, then hoisted himself through; once inside he shut the trapdoor and locked it. He went down to the second floor, then to the first, through the kitchen, where his father and Cynthia were fighting.

  “I am not doing this,” Cynthia was saying. “It’s the same thing over and over again, and we put up with it.”

  Sam’s father had his back to everyone, as usual; immobilized, as usual.

  “I see you’re calling the police,” Sam said.

  They looked up at him as though he were a ghost.

  Before they could stop him, Sam went through the house, then out the front door. The woman with the VW was standing in the driveway, leaning on her car. She had produced two small cartons of limeade. Well, at least there was somebody who didn’t lie about something.

  “Much better than lemonade,” she said.

  Sam accepted one of the cartons of juice and opened it. It was rare for him to find anyone amusing. “And so green.”

  Meredith nodded to the roof where Sam had been. “How do things look from up there?”

  Sam sneaked a look at her. She was serious. She wanted to know. Who was she anyway?

  “Distant,” he said. “Especially if you’re stoned.”

  “Umm.” Meredith gulped some of her drink. She knew he wanted a reaction and she wasn’t about to give him one. Who was she to judge? A dysfunctional museum cashier who had nothing better to do than drive around chasing specters.

  “And you’re here because?” Sam was actually interested, which didn’t happen very often.

  There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie. Not completely.

  “I’m lost,” Meredith said.

  The parents were watching from the living-room window. They looked like fools.

  “Father, stepmother,” Sam said when he saw Meredith looking at them. “Sister’s at ballet lessons. She’s the good one.”

  He’d timed it that way, so Blanca wouldn’t be scared with him being on the roof. She was just a kid.

  “Fuck,” Sam said when Cynthia and his father came out. “Heads up. Morons approaching.”

  “Can we help you?” Cynthia called to Meredith.

  “I don’t know. I was lost. I happened to see your beautiful house, so I pulled in the driveway and we got to talking.”

  In point of fact she had driven to Madison center, gone into the pharmacy, and looked up Moody in the local phone book. Mockingbird Lane. Not so difficult to find.

  “Get in your room,” the father, John Moody, said to Sam. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  “Maybe you should call Social Services,” Sam said to Meredith before he sauntered away. “Report parental abuse. Thanks for the drink.”

  “Do you mind telling me how you did that?” John Moody asked Meredith once Sam had gone inside.

  “I just got off Ninety-five and I got all turned around . . .” Meredith began.

  “I don’t mean getting lost. How did you talk him down?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just a kid,” Meredith said.

  She looked at John closely; he had that same worried look he’d had at the tearoom on Twenty-third Street. The red-haired woman was nowhere around. Meredith looked up. There were no window ledges. Just sheets of glass joined by flat steel beams.

  “Maybe you can get him to go to summer school,” Cynthia said. “God knows I can’t.”

  “Because you screech at him like a damned banshee,” John told her, right in front of a stranger.

  “If my authority wasn’t continually undermined, maybe I wouldn’t have to.”

  Cynthia was wearing shorts and a white cotton shirt. She had taken up tennis. Her knees were bothering her, so she’d given up running, still she needed somethi
ng that took her out of the house. She wasn’t looking to play at Wimbledon, only to have a few hours to herself, away from this mess of a family. She’d asked that nurse who took care of Arlyn, Jasmine Carter, to stay on as a nanny, but the nurse had informed Cynthia that her job was to take care of sick people and that it was Cynthia’s job to take care of her stepchildren. Arlyn had probably turned the nurse against her. Well, who these days was on her side?

  Cynthia had become the nervous type. Now, for instance, she was jangling her car keys. “Look, I have to get Blanca from ballet and drop her back here before I go to meet Jackie at the club. Thank you,” she said to Meredith. “Seriously. You’re good with kids.” Cynthia got into a white Jeep parked at the far end of the boxwood hedge. “I want you to hire her,” she told John. “I don’t care if her name is Lizzie Borden.”

  “It’s Meredith Weiss,” Meredith told John as Cynthia drove away.

  “We haven’t been able to keep any help for more than a month,” John Moody said. “Sam is so difficult. And it’s all fallen onto Cynthia.”

  “I hear running water,” Meredith said. “Is something flooding?”

  John Moody nodded for her to follow around to the rear of the house. There was the pool, with its waterfall streaming over the infinity edge into the second, lower pool. Meredith saw past the first edge when she stood on tiptoes. Swimmers feel the pull of water, and Meredith could still feel it. Her skin started to itch.

  “I was a swimmer in high school.” Right away Meredith felt stupid for saying anything about herself. Why would this strange man care?

  “I don’t think Sam’s ever been in the pool. Not once.”

  “And you have a little girl?” There were gnats in the air and Meredith waved them away. She hadn’t been swimming for years. People said swimmers had muscle memory; throw such a person into water and she’d start swimming laps. Meredith felt thirsty as she gazed at the pool; utterly parched.

  “Blanca. She’s ten.” John Moody looked out at the lawn. “She’s not the problem.”

  John had been having stomach troubles lately, out of the blue. Maybe it was an ulcer, or something worse. He wasn’t about to go to a doctor and find out. Ever since Arlie, he’d had a fear of doctors. He was on his own regimen; he stayed away from salt and caffeine. Soon after Cynthia stopped running, he’d taken it up. Ten miles a day. Anything to get away. Every day he saw signs of something he didn’t want to see: all he’d done wrong in his life. Standing there with him, Meredith could feel a wave of sadness, so strong it almost knocked her down. She thought she saw something on the roof of the house. Just a cloud. A fluttering of white.

  “And the children’s mother?” Meredith wanted to say, Did she have red hair? Does she follow you everywhere? Does she appear and disappear before your eyes?

  “Gone,” John said. “Cancer.”

  “Maybe I’ll go check on Sam before I get back in the car. Make sure he’s okay.”

  “Of course. That’s very thoughtful. But let me show you the house before you go. It’s actually quite famous. The most famous house in Madison.”

  The Glass Slipper was as impressive on the inside as it was from without; there was light everywhere, green all around. Sam’s room was upstairs. Meredith felt dizzy on the staircase. So much glass. A spaceship hurtling through the infinite universe. A specimen jar in which moths and beetles were kept.

  John pointed Meredith toward Sam’s room, and she thanked him and went to knock on the door. “Just saying good-bye,” she called when it became clear Sam wasn’t about to open the door for his father or stepmother.

  When he heard that it was Meredith, the lock slid back. There was the smell of smoke in his room. Acrid and woody.

  “Enter,” Sam said.

  The place was a mess. Clothes strewn everywhere. The walls painted black under a ceiling of glass.

  “Amazing,” Meredith said of the ceiling.

  “All the bedrooms are like this.”

  “Wow. You’re lucky.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me, so that is one fucking stupid assessment,” Sam said. Menacing. Pulled back.

  Was that supposed to scare her?

  “I meant about the ceiling,” Meredith said. “It’s a great room. I couldn’t pretend to know whether you were lucky or not in life since I don’t know you.”

  But she could guess, couldn’t she? Not so lucky. The mother gone, the stepmother furious, the father so distant, looking for something that might or might not be there.

  Sam laughed. “Yeah, everyone in town envies me for my ceiling.”

  They listened to music for a while; he had an old turn-table and records that Meredith had listened to as a girl. She could have stayed a while longer, she really had nothing to go back to. That’s when she thought she’d better leave.

  “I’ve got to go,” Meredith said. “I’ll probably get lost on the way back to the city.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill myself up there, you know,” Sam said.

  “I know.”

  Meredith was well aware that if you were serious about it, you didn’t try to pull in an audience. Maybe she did know Sam in some deep way.

  “At least, not this time,” Sam said. “I see the point of it, though. Exit stage right. You pull your own strings.”

  Meredith noticed the collection of knives on his desk.

  “Your father lets you have these?”

  “My father is an ass. Plus they’re antiques. Japanese ceremonial knives. They aren’t sharp enough to do any damage.”

  “Well, good,” Meredith said.

  “And that’s not my style. Blood and gore.”

  “Mine either,” Meredith said.

  “You really are lost. Am I right?”

  Sam held his breath. He wanted someone to be honest with him. Anyone. Even a stranger.

  “Lost as in I don’t know my way around Connecticut?”

  “Okay.” Sam grinned. No one told the truth. “Sure. If you say so. Stop by if you’re ever lost around here again.”

  Meredith went downstairs and found John Moody waiting for her.

  “Look, I don’t know how you got him down from the roof, but if you’d ever be interested, I would hire you in a minute. Wherever you’re working, I’d pay you more to help Cynthia out. And room and board, of course. And medical. Look, I’d pay your car insurance if you stay. Bottom line — you can handle Sam — it will be a first.”

  “Are you asking me to leave my glamorous job at the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?”

  Meredith was joking, stalling, but John stared at her, confused. Maybe he thought it was a shakedown of some sort. Maybe he didn’t care what it was as long as she stayed.

  “I could double what the museum pays you,” he said.

  “Sam’s that bad?”

  “Not when you’re dealing with him. That’s the point.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  John walked out with her. From where she stood on the porch, Meredith looked down the driveway. Someone was waiting out there. A young woman in the shadow of the boxwoods.

  “Do you see that?” Meredith asked.

  Before John could respond, Cynthia’s Jeep pulled in and parked.

  “Would you consider it?” John asked.

  “I might,” Meredith said.

  Cynthia got out, as did a blond girl of ten wearing a leotard and ballet slippers. The girl ran across the gravel driveway. She was skinny, all elbows and legs, and her hair was in one long braid to her waist.

  “I’m going to be one of the mice in the end-of-summer dance festival!” the child declared. “I’m a mouse! It’s the second-best part.”

  The girl stopped when she saw Meredith standing beside her father.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Blanca, this is Meredith,” John Moody said. John looked at Meredith and she looked back at him. “She may move in for a while. Help around the house.”

  “Well, thank the lord.” Cynthia dropped Blanc
a’s dance-gear bag on the floor. “Honey, I don’t know where you came from or where you’re going,” she said to Meredith. “But you just saved my life.”

  AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL TERM, CYNTHIA handed over Blanca’s schedule, neatly typed out. School hours, ballet lessons, art class, soccer team, doctor’s checkups, dentist appointments, friends’ birthday parties, tickets to the Dance Umbrella season. Whenever Blanca did have free time, she usually had her nose in a book or wanted to be driven to the library. But what of Sam? For him there was nothing. No schedule whatsoever. There had been appointments with psychiatrists, social workers, mediators, and an enforced sports program run by a former marine. Sam had refused to go. He had the dreadful habit of stabbing himself with pins, and there were scars all over his arms, but they couldn’t do anything about that, either. Nor could they stop him from performing a trick he had taught himself: he hung like a bat, upside down, from a large crab-apple tree. He could do it for hours. Once he had fainted after half a day spent in this contorted pose in the heat, and had suffered a concussion when he fell headfirst to the ground.

  His after-school activities? They couldn’t seem to control those, either. Drugs and alcohol, with a continuing escalation of the amount and the potency. The powdery stuff Cynthia had found in his room wasn’t cocaine, as she’d thought, but heroin. For those who didn’t want to know, it was possible to misunderstand just about everything. Some days Sam slept twenty hours at a time. You could pour a pail of water over him, as Cynthia in a fit once had, and he still wouldn’t budge. Some nights they could hear him scurrying around until dawn. There was a night when he’d walked and hitchhiked to Providence and back. He said he’d wanted to try johnnycakes, a Rhode Island delicacy, crumbly pancakes served with butter, but really there was someone he knew selling Ecstasy who could be found outside a RISD dorm. They knew he was haunting the bleakest neighborhoods of Bridgeport and taking the bus to lower Manhattan; they didn’t want to think about the reason why. It was a very small leap from pins to needles. It was simple really: you stabbed yourself, and instead of feeling pain, you felt nothing at all.