I think I said, “I love you.” I didn’t specifically recall that part, but the memory is there. I did love my mother, and we told each other that a lot. Every day, the same as I did with Riley.
I remembered the stiff plastic of my slicker and the new smell of my umbrella. I remembered that I had peanut butter and honey for lunch, and I ate with Rachel and Taylor. On the way home from school, I sat with Drake Fitzgerald from down the street, who was a year older than I was and very nice, even though he was a boy. Our bus stopped at the end of our dead-end street, and half a dozen kids got out, which was why I was allowed to walk the half block home by myself.
As the other kids scattered and ran because of the rain, I took my time. A gust of wind caught my umbrella, and for a second, I thought I’d blow away, whisked into the dark, wet sky, carried above the clouds, over Lake Michigan, and what a fun and happy adventure that would be! I wanted to have adventures, like the girl who got the seven-league boots, like Pippi Longstocking, like the cousins in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
I remember all those thoughts.
Mommy always told me to come right home from the bus stop, but that was silly. I wasn’t little anymore, after all. I was eight, almost eight and a half. Besides, she almost always waited for me on the front steps. I didn’t see her there today—the rain, probably—but I was a big kid compared to the kindergarteners, who were so tiny. The rain made such a loud patter on my umbrella, and the air smelled like copper. Rainwater gurgled in the gutters, carrying the first of the fall leaves along on a happy ride. The weather, my new coat, my beautiful, fancy umbrella. All the other girls in my class had loved it. Even Jake Nydvorst had said it was pretty.
Our house looked nicer that day, for some reason. Maybe it was just because I was happy to be in the pink-tinged world under my umbrella. I jumped in a puddle, and the water splashed onto my pants, and it felt warm and icky, like pee. It looked like I had wet myself, too, but I was almost home; I would take an early bath and get into my jammies, and maybe Mommy would make pancakes for supper, which she often did when Daddy was away.
I was glad, because it was more fun without him. When he was home, Mommy was sadder. Even though I felt bad about that thought, I knew it was true. Daddy worked, but not like other fathers. He wrote books and flew around the country a lot, doing research, he said. I had never seen one of his books, because they weren’t finished.
In order to make my special rainy walk a tiny bit longer, I passed our mudroom entrance and went in the front door. Plus, that’s where the closet was where we put the umbrellas. It was quiet inside, with a faint sound I couldn’t quite identify. A sound like the dryer, but not the dryer. I took off my red boots and carefully closed my umbrella, wrapping the strap around it tightly, making sure the snap was secure before I put it in the closet. I hung my slicker up, even though it was hard to reach the hangers, and went to see what was for snack.
The kitchen was empty. I called for my mom, but she didn’t answer. She wasn’t in the kitchen, or in the dining room folding laundry, or watching TV. I went upstairs, because Mommy took naps, though she was always awake when I came home. Maybe she was taking a bath? Sometimes she did that at odd hours, which always struck me as strange, as if grown-ups should have more important, grown-uppy things to do.
She wasn’t anywhere in the house. I called down to the cellar, a little afraid to go there by myself, but she didn’t answer. Then I looked for a note, because I was eight years old and I could read, of course, and maybe she had left me a note. Even though she had never not been home before. She was always home.
She didn’t have a job like some of the other moms, and that was fine with me, because even though she hardly ever dressed up and sometimes was a little stinky, she was always home. BO. That was a new term I’d learned on the bus. Body odor. But my mom’s BO wasn’t that bad, and when she took a shower, she smelled so nice.
Besides, my mom didn’t have to work. I knew from hearing my parents fight that we were a little bit rich from my grandmother who lived far away and came to visit every once in a while, which made my parents’ voices tight and hissing. So my mom got to stay home, and even if it meant she was sloppier than other moms and had BO some days, I didn’t mind. I liked taking care of her, making her a cup of tea, climbing into bed with her to watch TV sometimes. I could always cheer her up, she said. She cried sometimes but she was sad about Grammy being in a wheelchair, which Grammy didn’t seem to mind. She was always so nice, Grammy, and Pop pushed me really high on the swing in their backyard, so I didn’t know why my mother was so sad.
So my father traveled and was important, and my mom was always here, and I liked it that way. The only times Mommy wasn’t home was when she had her appendixes out, and then Daddy was here. Drake from the bus had told me that you only had one appendix, but my mother’s had grown back. When I asked about it, Mommy told me it wasn’t common, but it could happen. Drake didn’t know everything, even if he was in fourth grade.
I couldn’t find a note. Maybe she was taking a walk. Which was a little rude, since she should have been home when I got there, especially because she had all day to take a walk, and I wanted a bath and pancakes. And her. I wanted her.
She wouldn’t have gone out, because her car was broken in some way. Last week we’d taken a taxi to the movies, and it was really fun. I liked taxis.
Maybe she took a taxi to the grocery store.
I waited on the couch for a little while. The house was very neat and clean today, which was nice. I had stopped biting my nails for third grade, but I wanted to bite one now. I chose my pinkie finger and nibbled the nail down to the quick.
My happy umbrella feeling felt like a long time ago.
I had a bad feeling in my stomach, and I knew I should do something. Mrs. Fitzgerald was nice, both Mommy’s sort-of friend and also Drake’s mom. Their number was by the phone for emergencies. It was strange to call a grown-up, and when she answered, my heart started thumping. “Hello?” I said. “Mrs. Fitzgerald? Is my mommy there? It’s Emma London.”
I hadn’t meant to say mommy. I meant to say mother, but mommy slipped out, and my voice sounded small and weak.
“No, sweetie, she’s not. Are you home alone?”
“Yes. My daddy’s away for work and I don’t know where she is.” I felt like crying suddenly.
“I’ll pop over. I bet she had to run out.”
Thank goodness. Mrs. Fitzgerald was so nice. She was always dressed in regular clothes, too, and smelled good. I hoped she wouldn’t tell Drake I was a baby who needed a grown-up, but I wanted a grown-up with a sudden, all-consuming wave.
I turned on the kitchen light. For some reason, it made the quiet of the house more noticeable.
The noise—that thrumming, not-dryer noise—was still there. Louder here in the kitchen. Now that I thought of it, it hadn’t stopped since I’d gotten home.
It was coming from the garage.
The dread welled up in me, even though I wasn’t sure why.
Suddenly, I realized why I’d thought our house had looked prettier. The garage door was down, and it was usually up. The opener was broken, and Daddy hadn’t fixed it because, the truth was, he wasn’t good at that kind of thing. It had been stuck open for a while now. The house looked nicer when you couldn’t see the trash cans and boxes and Mommy’s broken car.
There wasn’t a good reason for a noise to be coming from in there.
I did not want to open that door. I hated our garage. One time, when I was little and it was Halloween, Daddy had hidden in here with a mask and jumped out at me when Mommy and I were just getting back from trick-or-treating. I screamed and felt the hot rush as I wet my pants. Mommy had yelled at him, and I cried, and he felt bad. He said he was just trying to have fun, and Mommy said, “She’s four, Clark! For God’s sake!” I loved her for protecting me and also felt bad for Daddy, because he was always wron
g in some way.
He’d had an old man mask on, the skin gray and leathery. I still remembered how ugly that mask was, with heavy wrinkles and a sagging, wobbly mouth. The hooded, uneven eyes.
Somehow, I was very, very afraid that an old man was in the garage now. Not just Daddy with a mask.
The garage was connected to the house by a breezeway. I went down that hallway slowly. The plants Mommy had out in a little wicker stand were dead, I saw. The African violets she loved and that usually bloomed in such fat, happy clumps. Why hadn’t I noticed they were dead?
Yes. The noise was definitely in there. Was it the car?
“Mommy?” I yelled, suddenly angry. Why would she be in the garage all this time when I was home? Why was she scaring me by not answering? She knew I was afraid of the garage! She never made me take the trash out if it was dark. She was so nice that way, when Daddy always told me not to be a baby.
I felt like a baby now. “Mommy!”
Open the door. Open the door. Some older, sadder part of me told me what to do, and with a great rush of terror, I flung it open.
Her car was in there. Running. The garage was foggy, but I could see she was in the car, and I was terrified before I knew why.
“Mommy!” I screamed, because she wasn’t moving and her eyes were closed, and I knew I had to save her, but what if the old man was there, the Halloween man, what if he had started a fire and that was why there was smoke in here? It smelled bitter, coating my throat.
I yanked open the passenger-side door, and my mother tipped toward me, sliding out and to the ground.
I felt a hot rush down my legs and I screamed, a thin, helpless sound. Grabbing my mother’s arm—it was cool, she was chilly—I pulled as hard as I could. Did the old man kill her? Was she asleep? Sick?
“Mommy! Please!” I shrieked.
And then Mrs. Fitzgerald was there, grabbing me around the waist and practically tossing me back out of the garage. “Call 911!” she said, and then dragged my mother into the breezeway. She slammed the door to the garage, and my mother . . . my mother’s face was gray, like the Halloween man.
“Call 911, Emma,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said again, more gently this time.
“I wet my pants,” I sobbed.
“It’s okay, honey. Call 911.” Then she bent over my mother and breathed into her mouth.
From that point on, I only had flashes of memory. The ambulance lights. Mrs. Fitzgerald helping me into clean pants and driving me to the hospital. The relief of seeing my pop and grammy come into the waiting room, how I felt like everything would be okay then.
But it wasn’t.
My mother had died in that garage. On purpose.
I didn’t have memories of her funeral. I knew that I didn’t go to school. Gigi came out and shook her head at the sight of me and had many whispered conversations with my father. She stayed at a hotel because Daddy and I were staying with Grammy and Pop, but Gigi came over every day. She told me not to cry, but I did. She told me to be strong, but I wasn’t.
Grammy and Pop tried hard to be cheerful around me. But their eyes were so sad. Grammy looked old, and Pop had to stand in the backyard for long periods of time after dinner. Grammy was sick and needed a wheelchair, and Pop worked and couldn’t skip his job like my father. Pop yelled at my father one night, and Daddy took me back to our house, and we watched TV and ate pizza, and I cried for my mother.
After a while, my father told me we were going to visit Gigi. We got on an airplane and flew to Connecticut, where I had never been. My dad rented a car and drove us to my grandmother’s house, which was huge and pretty with lots of blue flower bushes. It was like a castle on the water.
“Stay here,” my father said, leaving me alone in the big front hall. There was a lot of hushed talking, then some sharp voices.
When Gigi came into the front hall, I had to pee so badly I was afraid I’d wet myself, same as I had the day Mommy died. My grandmother looked at me, her lips pressed tight.
“Donelle will get you settled,” she said, and another lady picked up my suitcase and led me upstairs where, finally, I got to go to the bathroom.
When I had washed my hands with the lemon-scented soap and dried them on the softest towel, I came back out. The lady was gone, but my things were unpacked. I sat on the bed and looked out the window. That was the ocean, I guessed.
I sat there for a long time before the woman, Donelle, came back to tell me it was time for dinner. My father had already left, but Gigi said he’d come back to visit.
It took me a long time to realize my father had deserted me. That I’d be living here permanently.
To be honest, I was glad not to have to live alone with my father, who had drunk a lot of yucky-smelling brown stuff and didn’t know how to do laundry. I wanted to live with Grammy and Pop, but I understood that wasn’t happening.
I yearned for my mother with an ache so big and powerful I didn’t have words for it. At night, I was afraid to go to sleep, of the tears and shaking that would envelop me. I missed my old life, missed sitting next to Drake on the bus, missed recess with Rachel and Taylor. No one at my new school could double Dutch; there weren’t even jump ropes given out at recess. I missed our house, the smell of pancakes, my old room.
Gigi was sort of famous, I learned. The other kids at school all knew her, but this didn’t help me make friends. Now I lived in a house with a name and servants (though Helga terrified me, Charles would play checkers with me sometimes in his house over the garage).
I tried to be brave. I was a little scared of Gigi, but she was my grandmother. She would love me.
That’s what I expected. But it never quite happened.
CHAPTER 23
Miller
Tess was in her crib, finally, and Miller was holding an ice pack on his jaw, thanks to her head-butt. She was winding down, only screaming every six seconds now instead of with every breath. He watched the footage from the surveillance cam he had in her room, which showed her still standing at the bars, so tired she was nearly falling asleep between screams.
He wanted with all his dead heart to go into her room and pick her up, kiss her sweaty curls and say, “It’s okay. Daddy’s here. Go to sleep now, little bunny rabbit,” or whatever normal fathers said. But experience had taught him that this would only cause a surge in adrenaline, enabling Tess to stay awake and enraged for hours more. Hours.
So he had this. A surveillance camera so he could make sure she wasn’t hurting herself, so that he could see the moment she finally would sit, then flop to her side, then fall asleep for a few hours.
Fatherhood, once removed.
He’d found a nanny last week, a somewhat resigned college girl. Kimmy wasn’t a monster by any means, but she let Tess run wild while she was glued to her phone. At least she took Tess outside for a few hours in the fenced-in backyard. But she didn’t love Tess, didn’t try to win her over, or read to her, or give her a bath. She just kept her from hurting herself. And while Miller understood that philosophy quite well, he did want more for his child. Someone to love her.
But today had been a good day. Or a good evening, anyway. At Genevieve’s, he was amazed at how Tess had taken to Emma’s daughter. Riley. The girls were sort of related; second cousins or something like that. Ashley would’ve known; she loved genealogy, the only person he’d ever met who knew what second cousin once removed actually meant.
Going to Genevieve’s house for cocktail hour over the past couple of years had been Miller’s only social outings. It was the only place where no one would try to fix him up, and the one place where he wouldn’t be asked the inevitable “How are you?” He didn’t feel like such a failure with Genevieve; they’d gotten to know each other when he did some construction on Sheerwater five years ago, sprucing the place up, replacing the roof, some of the windows, putting in a French drain. He’d been under the impressi
on she was going to sell the place, but apparently not.
“You’re not the wastrel I expected,” she said when he was done. “I wouldn’t have hired your family, but I like to keep my business local. You were a pleasant surprise.”
He remembered laughing with Ashley over the comment. Like everyone in town, Ashley was fascinated and awed by the great Mrs. London and had pumped him for every detail of the house, her shoes, her outfits. That night, they’d made love, and Ash had said, “You were a pleasant surprise,” and he’d pressed his forehead against her heart and laughed and laughed.
Genevieve had come to the funeral, and rather than the usual drivel people said at funerals, she’d held his hand for a minute, looking him in the eye, and said, “This is a horrible tragedy.”
That was all. A few months later, he got a written invitation to come to cocktail hour, and he’d gone. That was back when Ashley’s parents still offered to take care of Tess, and Miller felt insane with grief that day, afraid to take care of Tess, so tired his hands shook. He’d gone, and Genevieve made him a drink strong enough to make him weave on his feet. He woke up in a lounge chair some time later, covered by a soft throw, and she’d had her driver take him home.
Since then, he’d had a standing invitation every Friday. He tried to go at least once or twice a month. Being around people his own age was too hard. And Genevieve had suffered great losses, too—her son, her husband. He admired her and was grateful to her . . . She never gave advice, just kissed him European-style and talked about town news or books. Occasionally, she’d ask for a recommendation—who’d do a good job plowing her driveway, who was the most ethical boat salesman. It was rare that Miller felt normal, but in Genevieve’s presence, he did. Donelle was a hoot, and the guests at the cocktail parties were always very nice. No one pried. He wondered if Genevieve had coached them, and if she had, he was grateful.
Life and Other Inconveniences Page 24
