The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  Julie went to the doors to let him out. “Thank you for coming by. I look forward to seeing Eddie a little later this morning.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  By the time school started, sunshine had blotted out the rain and burned off the last shreds of fog. Julie flung both barn doors open and the students streamed inside, laughing and chattering over their shoulders. They greeted Depot with hugs and pats, then assembled themselves in their seats in record time.

  Hands shot up, and Julie called on each child as quickly as she could.

  “We have a surprise, Ms. Weathers!”

  “We have a surprise for you!”

  “There’s a prize!”

  Julie leaned down to smile at the kindergartner. “A prize?” she repeated, walking to the blackboard and writing down the word. “How wonderful!”

  Though Peter didn’t add his voice to the chorus, even he looked pleased, all hints of brutality vanished for now, in addition to the strange, manipulative qualities Chloe Manning had described. Peter’s blue eyes were bright, eagerness openly written on his face.

  “What a coincidence,” Julie said, spelling out that word on the board as well. “Because I also have a surprise for you.” S-u-r-p-r-i-s-e. She turned back to the class. “Can I get a volunteer to climb up to the loft?”

  Waving hands filled the air, and the boy in seventh grade began to go. Julie guided him back to his desk, explaining the classroom rules about being called on again, then selected one of the fourth graders instead, the girl’s face glinting with pride at her assignment. Once she was up there, Julie ducked behind the velvet curtain and called out directions. “See that lever?”

  “Yes!” the fourth grader shouted down.

  “Lift it!” Julie said, and threw back the curtain so the class could see.

  Light from twin spotlights crisscrossed the stage, dust twinkling like stars in their beams. Callum had finished installing them after their reunion in the fog.

  The children oohed and aahed, getting out of their seats to clamber up onstage and dance in the glow. The seventh-grade boy began doing something that couldn’t quite be called dancing—more like a cross between American Ninja Warrior and gymnastics—but Macy started slapping out a rhythm with one hand on her leg, and the other on the wall, until by the end she was keeping his beat.

  “Okay, okay,” Julie said at last. But she was unable to suppress a smile. “Come on down, class, return to your desks.”

  A pause for the inevitable stragglers, till there was only one, whom she led.

  “It’s a double coincidence, yo,” Macy said, taking her seat and calling out without raising her hand. “Because our surprise is about the play.”

  The kids had practiced all weekend at the lobster pound, stealing time between helping with trap repair and sleeve knitting. They had finished writing a scene and set it to music.

  “Don’t forget to tell her about the you-know-what!” Scott said.

  Julie had never seen a jaded sixth-grade male so enthusiastic.

  “Oh yeah,” Macy said, clearly enjoying her role as assistant director. “The boys have been working on the set. It’s in pieces at Scott’s house.”

  Julie stood regarding the class. An idea had begun to build in her mind that might tick a few boxes. “Do you think you guys could let me see that part you have down?”

  Desks squeaked and chairs slid back as the students trooped back onstage. And while Julie clapped loudly, watching the seventh-grade boy take exaggerated bows and his classmates mimic him, following an enactment of lines that almost all made sense and flowed, delivered with something approaching spontaneity, she decided something.

  If the grandmother and her coterie weren’t so big on a play, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let the parents see what their kids had been up to? Social skills, memorization, exercise, and critical thinking were all selling points that came from the theater world. Julie could shine a literal light on the students’ growth and development while demonstrating her competence as a teacher in the process.

  “How come you wanted to see us act it out, Ms. Weathers?” asked a third grader, bent over and out of breath.

  “Because you guys are amazing,” Julie replied.

  The students let out a cheer, fist-bumping each other, older students leaning down to make sure they didn’t miss the younger. Even Eddie Cowry got a thump, causing him to smile so hard, as he kept turning back to offer his hand for another, that he tripped coming off the stage.

  “So amazing,” Julie continued, “that I think we should let your parents have a sneak peek. This Wednesday afternoon say. Just what you showed me right now, and maybe a song”—a quick look at Macy, who nodded—“to get them excited for when you perform the whole thing. What do you guys think?”

  The roars were loud enough that they could only have signaled assent.

  * * *

  Julie finished the morning lessons, then let the students continue rehearsing during lunch, while she took Depot on a walk to the library. She mocked up an invitation and printed out two dozen copies, which she handed to the students to give to their parents. Toward the end of the day, she gathered everyone in the loft for a circle talk about acting.

  “We all sort of know what acting is,” Julie began. “I mean, we watch movies and TV.” There was no movie theater on Mercy Island, and at least a few homes didn’t have televisions; it was possible some of these island kids had never seen a film at all. “But how would you describe acting to an alien, say one who doesn’t have access to any media?”

  Pauses for everyone to exclaim over how unbearable such a life would be, and for the seventh-grade boy to inform Julie that his granny didn’t have a TV, or his step-aunt and uncle, but his older cousin did, and did she since she’d just moved here? Which was a step in the right direction, Julie noted—at least that question stayed on topic.

  Lara Milton, the shy third grader Julie hadn’t heard much from until she’d gone up onstage that morning, raised her hand. “My mom says that acting is lying.”

  Julie wove her fingers together, studying the circle of upturned faces. Even Macy, old enough to look Julie straight in the eye, appeared to be awaiting her teacher’s response.

  “I know what your mom means,” Julie said at last. “You’re not being yourself in a play. You’re playing a role, acting like somebody else.”

  The children remained hushed and quiet, not stirring from the positions they all occupied in the loft. Peter lay recumbent, like the young prince he was, taking up more than his fair share of space. But nobody asked him to move, even when his arms and legs twitched, perhaps in response to Julie’s statement. The kids that he accidentally bumped against seemed to take it as an expression of favor, smiling, edging closer to the wayward limb.

  “And you can look at that in different ways,” Julie went on. “First of all, aren’t we all, always, playing a role, even in real life? Are we ever truly ourselves?”

  Eddie stared down at his cramped patch of floor.

  “Assuming we even know who those true selves are. When I was your ages, acting was the only thing I did that made me feel real,” Julie said. “Acting isn’t lying. It’s the opposite. It’s about finding the part inside you that lets you reveal your truth.”

  “Like what’s the truth in Rapunzel Returns?” someone asked.

  Julie answered slowly. “You have a child stolen away from his home, his family, right? In the scene you worked on, Rapunzel is growing up, not allowed to know where he really comes from. And you wrote those lines about the pain his parents felt after losing their child.” Julie looked down at the ring of earnest faces encircling her. An array of ages Hedley would never reach. “That was one of the truest things I’ve ever seen on a stage. When you described, what did you call them, dry tears—well, you nailed it. Because you cry forever after a loss like that. There’s nothing else li
ke the pain. There’s just nothing else that horrible in the whole world.”

  Vaguely, as if from far away, she heard the sounds of small feet descending the ladder, then climbing back up again. But Julie didn’t realize she was crying until Eddie Cowry handed her a bunch of clumped-up tissues, damp from the sweat on his hand.

  The children sat with quiet gathering around them while Julie dabbed her face.

  “Wow,” Macy said after some time had passed. “You should put that in a play. You could give one of those, you know, one-woman shows.”

  Julie worked up a smile for the eighth grader, quelled slightly when she noted Peter’s blank, unseeing eyes. He hadn’t reacted, either to her speech or her breakdown.

  “Understand?” she said once she could speak again. “Acting is about things so deep that sometimes we don’t even know what they are until we perform them.” Julie brought her hands together. “Now. I think you should all get going for chores and homework. I’m hoping you might be able to get in a little extra practice on your own before bedtime. And maybe the sixth graders can work some more on their creation?”

  Voices soared with plans. School was officially dismissed, and the children scrambled to their feet, taking turns down the ladder from the loft. There came the sounds of backpacks being swept up, the barn doors were heaved open and banged shut again, and then all was hushed and quiet in the schoolhouse.

  Julie made a trip back up the ladder, ducking for headroom in the low space as she hunch-walked over to a shadowy, hidden corner.

  “Not ready to go?” she asked the boy who lurked there.

  * * *

  Peter wasn’t as good at concealing his actions anymore, or else Julie was getting better at detecting them.

  “—believe what you said?” Peter asked, barely audible.

  The boy had never appeared so bleak and desperate. A few moments ago, he’d lain in resplendent repose across the floor of the loft, but now his knees were drawn up to his chin, his back curled over them, and his face buried.

  “—acting getting at the real…” He went on, mumbling. “…you can’t say?”

  Julie pieced his words together, thinking of all the roles she had played, as a Weathers, as David’s wife, even as Hedley’s mom. “I believe acting lets us say things we otherwise couldn’t. And realize things about ourselves that we otherwise never would.”

  Silently, with no change in expression, Peter began to cry. His hands seemed to move of their own volition, not a part of the rest of him, as he felt around for the tissues Eddie had brought up. Peter pressed a fresh batch to his face.

  “It won’t matter,” he said dully. “They’ll never let me go.”

  “Go where?” Julie asked. Hollywood. New York. Anywhere besides Mercy.

  But Peter just lifted his shoulders helplessly.

  “Sometimes,” Julie began, feeling for words. How much harder it was when there wasn’t any script. “A stage is the only place we can say what’s true. To an auditorium full of strangers whose faces we can’t even see.” A pause. “But sometimes we start by saying it to someone who’s really there first. A person we think might tell us the truth back.”

  Peter raised his chin, and doubled down on his fists.

  Then, with the force of a cork exploding, a volcano erupting, he told her the secret he’d been harboring for so long.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Peter had been in his hideout, a placement that provided perfect access for overhearing a conversation. Especially on the kind of unblemished sunny day so rare on a northeastern island, windows raised to let in the balmy air, grown-ups going outside to sit on a porch, voices carrying from rooms opened to air out, or along the tendrils of a breeze.

  The Captain began to talk first, and maybe because he sounded so lucid—Peter struggled to identify the concept for Julie—so much like his old self, the grandmother seemed to be in a listening mood.

  For a while.

  Then the Captain mentioned a place called Duck Harbor.

  “Duck Harbor?” Julie repeated. “Is it here? On the island?”

  Peter’s fine features squeezed together in concentration. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of any place like that. It must be on the mainland.”

  Julie nodded.

  The grandmother had answered in a low tone; Peter had to scramble out along the branch that poked nearest the mansion in order to hear her. She said she never should’ve let them stay in Duck Harbor.

  “Let who stay?” Julie asked.

  “Bobby Croft?”

  The name nudged a nodule in Julie’s brain. “You don’t know who that is?”

  Peter shook his head. “And then Cap started to argue. And he never argues with my grandmother. He was all, he wanted to see her, he didn’t want to have to travel so far away he’d never have a chance to get there, and Duck Harbor was a really good spot.”

  “Her?” Julie said. “I thought you said it was a man named Bobby.”

  “I think Cap just got…you know, like he sometimes gets now…” Peter’s voice trailed off.

  “Confused,” Julie supplied. “He gets a little mixed up.”

  Peter nodded gratefully. “Just sometimes.”

  “Peter,” Julie said. “I’m not getting why this conversation upset you so much.”

  It was warm in the loft, hot air from the stove rising, and Peter’s skin had gone slick; it looked almost gelatinous with sweat. “Because of what they said about Bobby.”

  The grandmother had told the Captain that she should’ve made him do what she wanted to Bobby all those years ago. “And I think what she wanted him to do—” Peter broke off, his blue eyes glassy and frightened. “I think it was something bad, Ms. Weathers. Like really bad because Cap said he would’ve wound up in jail. Prison. Even though my grandmother told him that was stupid, a Hempstead would never go to jail.”

  Julie strained to put the pieces into some cohesive form. There was a man named Bobby Croft. He lived in Duck Harbor, which the grandmother now felt was too close. To Mercy obviously. And a long time ago, the grandmother had wanted her husband to do something bad to him, something that might’ve been criminal.

  Peter began to rock back and forth, arms around his knees. “And then my grandmother—she got really mean. She started saying all this bad stuff, like did that really matter, if he had gone to jail, look how he’d ended up anyway, and Cap said he should’ve supposed her a long time ago”—Peter was caught in a maelstrom of memory now, trying to recapture words—“and then Cap started crying—he was crying, Ms. Weathers, the Captain.” Peter said it as if he couldn’t have witnessed a less likely scenario if the sea had drained of water. “And my grandmother told him if I ever found out—they were talking about me, Ms. Weathers, me, and then—” Peter closed his mouth, tears flying off his face as he shook his head in mute refusal.

  “Then what?” Julie crawled toward him across the loft.

  “Then she said something about arithmetic,” Peter whispered.

  “Arithmetic,” Julie repeated blankly.

  Peter gave a nod. “‘It’s simple arithmetic’. Something like that.”

  Julie frowned, uncomprehending.

  And Peter hurled himself into her arms, his tall, skinny body heaving and jolting like a live wire. “Grandmother said it would be one more damn fool lady and one less little boy.”

  * * *

  Peter went into the boys’ room to wash his face, then trudged outside to meet Martha, who was waiting by the edge of the sea. She gave Peter no greeting, just took his hand dutifully, and led him out of the cove. Julie waved goodbye to them before heading off along the library path, up the road through town, and into the woods with Depot.

  Interpretations of what the boy had told her played out in Julie’s mind.

  The Captain should have opposed his wife—assuming that was
the word Peter misheard as supposed—in some important way. Maybe he’d been in love with another woman, which was why he’d slipped and referred to a her. The damn fool lady. But who was Bobby Croft? The woman’s husband? And how did any of it subtract Peter from the equation? Not allowing adultery to bloom could well be yet another weapon in the grandmother’s arsenal, even love subject to her denial or granting of permission. After all, an affair would besmirch the image of a united pair at the helm of a powerful family.

  Depot started jumping as soon as they neared the house. Julie unlocked the front door, letting the dog enter first. He raced inside, headed for the kitchen.

  “Okay, yes, I’m going to feed you right away,” Julie said. She walked over to the cabinet, dragging out the big bag of dry food, then pulled open a drawer for the can opener. The dog was still jumping and panting.

  Julie set his water bowl on the floor so he could get started, but Depot didn’t lower his head to drink. Julie frowned, looking down at him. Then, slowly, she lifted her head back up.

  She must have already seen it when she turned on the tap to fill Depot’s bowl, but the sight was so impossible, so at odds with any expectation of what should have been in the kitchen, that it hadn’t registered.

  Depot wasn’t eager for dinner. He wanted her to know that someone had been here.

  Julie turned to face the counter beside the sink.

  A bottle of scotch stood on it, amber liquid catching the sinking rays of the sun.

  * * *

  Julie backed away as if she had spotted a detonator. If there had been a countdown, one of those digital timers in movies showing mere seconds left, she couldn’t have left the house any faster. She didn’t bother closing the front door.

  What was even worse—far worse, in fact—than the temptation with which she’d been presented was the fact that someone loathed her enough to want to do this, was that hell-bent on trying to bring about her downfall.

  Julie was focused only on getting away from the whiskey, but when she made it across the porch, legs shaking, mouth as dry as sand, a whip-like flash of black caught her eye, and she swung around. The figure started to run toward the lane that separated this house from the mansion.