“I trust everything is all right,” she said, “at the Pierces?”
“Naturally.”
She nodded. “You belong with young folk.” She lifted the bell. Miriam appeared in the swinging door.
“Send that taxi away.” So she was letting me stay. “I’ll have Lapsang souchong.” The door swung shut. Her lips pursed. “Your mother isn’t here anymore.”
“I thought she was in Mexico.”
“Well, she came back.”
The room started to swim with that same pressing heaviness. “Where is she now?”
Grandmother leaned forward, her pupils tight dots. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock filled the room as I watched all the possibilities quiver through her face—where Mother might be, and what she might tell me about where she was.
“I need to see her,” I said. It was the wrong move.
Grandmother broke my gaze. “You may have three thousand a month, in addition to the school fees. I should have insisted, but the Pierces wouldn’t hear it.”
“Where did you find Topsy?” As long as we were changing the subject. “That day, when you found me, you had him in your hand.”
It was Grandmother who’d discovered me in the forest behind the Devil’s Ramble. Her arms were scratched up and she was barefoot, but she was still wearing her church clothes. She reached out her hand. Topsy was in it. When we climbed back onto the lawn through the Japanese maples, the driveway was a swirl of blue and red lights. The night was moving in, but it was light enough to see Mother squatting in the middle of the driveway, shoulders hunched. One of the police officers standing over her looked up, and saw me there beside Grandmother, and said something into his radio.
Then Grandmother said, “Your brother died today, Saskia. You understand? He did not survive. Your father is, of course, responsible. Your mother is understandably upset.” She spoke in a rapid, steady voice, as though she was a reporter who’d happened upon a late-breaking story. But what she said next, she said quietly. “We will go inside and the police will have questions. You will tell them what your father did. Then we will be done with it. We miss William, we will always miss him, and we will be tempted to go over and over what happened here. But the only way to put this behind us is to give the police what they want, the truth, and be done.”
Mother looked up then, at her own mother and daughter, standing together at the edge of the Devil’s Ramble. She was broken, I could see, but she’d looked that way before. I could fix her. I had tried. I took a step. But even across that wide lawn, I saw her flinch. Her hands tightened across her knees. She began to sob. The officer crouched over her. Grandmother picked up her shoes. I thought I might try to get closer, but Grandmother steered me to give a wide berth. Mother stayed in the driveway until the middle of the night, when Mr. Jacobs arrived to carry her into the pink bedroom, and she stayed in the pink bedroom until the day we awoke to discover she’d gone to Mexico.
Now, Miriam returned to the sun-filled parlor with a rattling tray, and I knew my chance to hear where Grandmother had found Topsy—was he holding him? was he on the roof?—if there’d ever been one, had passed. Grandmother admired the tea set with its forget-me-not pattern, and ignored the plate of little cakes flowered with yellow frosting.
“My portfolio, Miriam, from the desk.”
Miriam walked the length of the room to the secretary, then presented a fountain pen and Grandmother’s leather checkbook. All the while, steam snaked from the neck of the teapot. Once the door closed again, Grandmother folded the thin piece of paper into my hand. “This is for the year. With a little added on, for taxis home from school. We must keep our business private, Saskia.” I knew, then, that she had seen the photographs of me walking to the loft. I tried to make my face look like hers, with no trace of sentiment. But then I thought of you on her lap, how bravely you’d pat her cheeks, not knowing it wasn’t proper. You were the only reason I knew her cheeks were soft.
“I could come and get the money every month.”
Grandmother’s mouth thinned.
“Or I could come live here again. I could help you, you know. Jane’s always saying how helpful I am.”
Grandmother folded her hands. “When I was a girl, my father died. Did you know that? My mother was too heartbroken to care for me. Perhaps you’ve heard this story? No? Well, she sent me to school.”
“Did you like it there?”
“Did I like it? Does it matter? I discovered that what I wanted was no more important than what my mother needed. And that I was quite independent, quite strong. Put your mind to it, and you’ll discover you’ve got more mettle than you know.”
Perhaps it was that simple: deciding.
“Sometimes I wonder, what if we had sent you away?” She narrowed her eyes, then shook her head after a moment. “But I suppose we are who we are.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She blinked at me, with her small, patrician eyes. “My dear, you know exactly what I mean.” She raised the bell. “Miriam? Have Mr. Jacobs drive Saskia back to the city. Be sure to pack him dinner—it’s a considerable round trip.”
45
The downstairs air, rushing in from the parlor, is cool. I can’t help but call it the parlor, even after all this time. Someone has opened a window, perhaps; a bumblebee—genus Bombus—zips by.
46
Philip and I spent Christmas Eve snoozing through a Fellini retrospective, then walked home through a night drizzle we wished was snow. Cab tires thumped the manhole covers. The sidewalks glistened red and green. Jane always brought umbrellas.
“I haven’t been painting,” he said as we kicked off our wet shoes, “because I’ve been punishing myself.” The windows shimmered with rain as we waited for him to tell me why. “It wasn’t my money I gave to the Homesteaders; it was Jane’s.”
“But you’re still married, right? So what’s hers is yours.”
“She said she’d met someone. I thought, look, we all mess around. Probably this guy is good at sex, and that’s fine, a marriage doesn’t have to be about sex, you know?” He’d forgotten me. His eyes welled up as rain lashed the windows. “I should have given her forgiveness. I should have begged her to stay, turned out my pockets to show the love I carried everywhere I went. But instead I told her I’d ruin her life. She’d be sorry, that kind of thing.
“She called my bluff,” he said. “Told me that if I thought blackmailing her would make her stay, I was a fucking fool. It hadn’t even occurred to me to call it blackmail, that’s how stupid I was. I should have gotten on my knees and begged.” Instead he took us away, to Maine, to Home. “It was a place I heard about from a few friends, you know, spiritual folks. I thought I could use some centering.” He swiped his fingers over the top of his head. “And I heard they could use money. I thought—what’s the thing Jane will fucking hate for me to do with her money? Most of all? What will she fucking hate?” His mouth twisted, then he met my eye. “The thing is, I really liked it there, kid. Not as much as you did, but I liked it.” He tapped his chest. “But that pride”—he shook his head—“the fact that she just let me walk away.… Some part of me believed that if I gave away some of that precious inheritance she’s taken for granted her whole fucking life, she’d drive right up to the Main Lodge and at least she’d stand out there and yell at me, you know? And it would be something. Something’s better than nothing, I thought.” He laughed bitterly.
“Gabby was all for taking the money, but Abraham.… There was so much analysis. Was it ethical? Was it sustainable? And all the time, I’m saying, ‘Take it already,’ because I was afraid I’d have second thoughts.”
“And did you?” I asked, because now he was looking out the window again, smudged with the gray, cold night.
“Not until they accepted it. That’s some irony, right? Gabby came to the cabin after you kids were asleep and said it was done. They already had the check, you know? I got in bed and lay up all night and thought what the fuck d
id I just do?”
“Did you ask for it back?”
“Of course. But Abraham”—he smiled now, quick and brutal—“he said he wouldn’t dream of letting me Thing myself all over again.” There, in his voice, a touch of dislike.
“I called Jane and confessed everything. I said I’d get the money back. But she was done with me. She’d been done for much longer than I realized. I drove us back down here thinking the sight of us”—of Xavier, he meant—“would convince her. But she was already gone. The baby, you know? I didn’t count on a baby.”
When I awoke to a milky Christmas dawn, propped against the kitchen counter was a massive, wet canvas in thirty shades of green—the colors of the lake on a windy morning, if you leaned over the Home dock and tried to make sense of the muck. Philip’s hands, crisscrossed with verdant stripes, poured me a cup of blood-thick coffee.
I’d gotten him a pair of cashmere gloves for Christmas, which he must have assumed I’d shoplifted, since I hadn’t told him about Grandmother’s money in my private bank account. He tried them on, turning his hands over and over, and said he was working on a special present for me but Santa hadn’t delivered it yet, and I flared with you you you—you, who loved Santa with a fierceness—and some magic, stupid, childish part of me thought for the briefest of split seconds that, in some impossible way, he had gotten you back. He knew. He did not speak of it. He sat with me until I fell asleep again. When I awoke, it was just us and grilled cheddar sandwiches and the smell of oil paint. Then he was painting on another canvas, coppers and oranges and golds, which he said would be Home’s sunrise, if he could manage it.
Before I slept, I pulled open my curtains. The night rain cast The Good Path, usually golden from my painted footprints, in grim gray scale. It would be quiet at Home tonight; snow covering the roof of the Main Lodge and the Homesteaders inside it. They’d be singing “Silent Night” (proud Abraham; diligent Gabby; efficient Sarah; irreverent Teresa; hungry Jim; wild Tomas; naughty Nora; solemn Ephraim; terrible Ben; kind Issy—and you, out there, in the woods, wandering, waiting). Then it was my turn to weep.
47
Carefully through the dismal dining room and into the relief of the kitchen—and there they are, around my table. At the center lies what’s left of this morning’s loaf, hacked open.
“She lives!” Xavier’s enthusiasm is too much.
Cornelia makes to stand. I wave; she flashes a smile— it’s enough to get us both out of the hug. The child has black curls, fronded eyelashes, and rosebud lips. He launches from the chair. Issy releases me to enfold him. I try to remember Mother holding you. But even on the best of days, her tie to us was never orbital, never like this.
“Mama,” whispers the boy. He turns his cheek to Issy’s. He considers me. “Who this?”
“Ah.” Issy buries her nose at his temple. “This is my friend Saskia.” Her hand covers the real estate of his chest. “And this is my son, Sekou.”
The Mother wafts off Sekou’s lips. Blink blink go those dark eyes—his mother’s eyes, his grandmother’s. Then he’s squirming down to the floor. Back to the table. Back to Cornelia. “We coloring, Mama!” Sekou grabs a crust and gnaws.
48
My Christmas gift from Philip didn’t arrive until February. I walked into the loft after a long, lonely Friday to discover Issy at the kitchen counter, gulping a glass of milk.
A jubilant sound warbled from my throat. Issy whirled us through the loft, firm and loose in her particular way, smelling of BO and burlap and old wool. She unpacked the four loaves of sourdough Sarah had sent along, and flopped down on my bed, and asked about The Good Path, and ogled the white Christmas lights. She ran her hands over my red velvet curtains. She shuffled her cards.
“There’s a new girl named Cornelia. Her parents got divorced. Her dad was fucking around and then he moved in with some whore in the Valley. Her mom changed her name to Butterfly from Valerie or something and drove all the way from California with a box of oranges in the trunk. She’s perfect.”
“Butterfly?” I asked hopefully.
“She’s, like, a mall person.” She pressed her nose against the glass overlooking the city. “I love it here. I’ve never been to New York City. It makes me feel small.” Her breath made a cloud. She drew a face. “You ever been to a mall?”
“You’d hate the mall.”
“Cornelia says I’d love it. There’s a food court where you can get anything you want to eat.”
“But the whole point of the mall is to buy things.”
She was still at the window, caught in her game of breath and faces. I was on the edge of my bed keeping very, very still.
“Where’s Xavier?” she asked.
“He moved in with Jane.”
She turned. Her eyes were kinder then. I told her everything, including the bit about Jane’s money. The story was messy in a way Issy understood. Eventually we were on the bed, limbs flung over each other as though we’d never spent a moment apart, her sour milk breath offering comfort: “To be honest, Butterfly’s kind of, you know—like Jane.” She lowered her voice, although the loft was empty save for us. “Slutty.” Issy’s whisper made my neck hairs stand up. “I overheard Gabby and Sarah talking after I fell asleep. Butterfly’s been putting her mouth on Jim’s penis.”
That sight flashed in my mind: pink, quivering dollops of flesh rubbing each other. My stomach flipped. “What does Cornelia think?”
“I can’t tell Cornelia.”
“Poor Teresa.”
“Teresa proposed a threesome. But Butterfly only likes dick.”
“Poor Cornelia.” Although this was the happiest I’d been since learning she existed.
Issy brought her face to mine, so close she grew one-eyed. Her lips were right there, too, and I knew, again, that longing to drink someone in. I thought to do it, to start it; how good it would feel to press forward against another body and borrow its solid parts—but the door to the loft squealed open along the concrete floor. Behind Philip’s footsteps came another.
Issy sat up. “I shouldn’t be gossiping.”
“It’s not gossip if it’s true.”
“Gossip is a Thing. Abraham said so.” My heart seized at the mention of his name. She was off the bed, already digging through her backpack. “Can we go outside? Philip said you’d show me around.” Around her neck she wound a hand-knit scarf: magenta and crimson and peacock blue. For just a moment, I wanted to see how the girls at school would hurt her.
“How old is Cornelia?”
“Younger than us. But she’s got boobs. Ben follows her around like she’s Morgan le Fay.”
“He likes her?”
“She’s very well put together.”
“Girls? Saskia?” Philip had come into the loft. The main door squealed.
Issy lowered her voice. “You should be careful: jealousy is a Thing.”
“I’m not jealous.”
She went to the curtain. She pulled it aside. “And anyway, I thought you hated Ben.”
49
Cornelia points to the desiccated bread. “I hope it’s okay. He was desperate.” Issy and I each nod, unsure which of us she’s addressing.
“Beautiful picture,” says Issy, looking over Sekou’s shoulder. Brown scribbles. “Did he use the potty?”
“He said he didn’t have to.”
“Honey,” Issy says, bending down to the boy, “do you have to use the potty?”
Sekou shakes his head.
Xavier watches me. “You’re not mad anymore, are you?” I wonder if this trick works on Billy.
I lean over Sekou. “Can I draw, too?” A grin sweeps his face as he hands me an orange crayon and points to the edge of his drawing. They watch with relief when I brighten that corner. Maybe the drawing is beautiful.
Cornelia’s watch chimes. She scrolls its tiny screen. My computer keeps me up on the world, but I lost the thread on tidbits like watches actually being phones and computers and an infinite collection of mu
sic and movies. Everything moves so fast.
“We have to get going,” Cornelia says. “It’s nearly four.”
“You’re going?” I say.
“You too, sweetie.” Her voice drips syrup. “Didn’t they tell you? We’re driving up to Maine.”
“To Home?” Surely even in this desperate state, we wouldn’t wander those woods at midnight.
“We’ll get to town tonight,” Xavier says, his voice a taming thrum. “Tomorrow we’ll figure out next steps.”
“Where are we staying?”
Cornelia crosses her arms. “Some of us have families to get back to. I can’t exactly treat this like a vacation, lovely as your grandmother’s home is.” It’s my home, first of all, but the twins, oh yes, Cornelia’s precious twins—Madison? Mackenzie? Rosencrantz? Guildenstern? Her matched set of little girls.
“Where,” I repeat, “are we staying?”
Xavier’s eyes skitter over the marble countertops but eventually come to meet mine. His voice is so small I can barely hear it: “Ben’s.”
“How does Ben feel about that?”
“Ben’s feelings on the matter will change when we remind him what’s at stake,” says Cornelia.
“He has no idea we’re coming?”
A guilty glance passes between Issy and Xavier.
“You don’t think you’ll actually convince him to go up to Home?”
“Why not?” Cornelia fiddles with a phantom necklace she must have forgotten to put on. “He has as much interest as we do in keeping this quiet. More—if you think about how getting exposed would ruin his life up there. It’s personal for a local.”
“It’s personal for me.”
“It’s personal for all of us. Saskia, honestly—”
Fierce Little Thing Page 9
