“Now that I think more about it, she’s really going to welcome you. Another female in the house to complain about the way men have ruined the world. I’m outnumbered as it is until Garson gets old enough to back up his dad. If he has the courage to, of course.”
He smiled. I thought he was babbling to reduce the anxiety both of us were feeling, but nothing he was saying helped me become less tense. In fact, it had just the opposite effect. Last night, I had felt as if I was walking through a fog. Today, especially right now, I saw myself like a puppet dangling on strings that rose into the dark, heavy clouds. Fate was playing with me. I had lost control of myself completely. I was being shaped and trimmed to fit perfectly into a puzzle. In the moment, when I glanced at him, my father looked more like a stranger. I was so tempted to say, Please, stop. I want to get out. I won’t fit in here. I can’t live a lie and come up with creative answers to questions about who I am.
But I didn’t. I closed my eyes and let him talk about the town, our street, his and Ava’s plans for developing the backyard, and some new furniture she was considering. He wasn’t going to permit a moment of silence. After a while, I wondered if he was trying to convince himself or me that this was going to be a wonderful life for everyone.
“We might put in a pool,” he said. “Imagine that. In a couple of years, you and Karen will be having friends over for pool parties. Now we have to go to Saddlebrook for that.”
I said nothing. I was looking out the window, but I really wasn’t seeing anything. Instead, I was wondering about Mazy. What sort of funeral would she have with so few friends and no relatives? Who would care that she had died? Maybe I should have waited, but if I had, someone from some social agency would have pounced. Surely the school principal or guidance counselor would have directed them to me. What would I have done then? I had to believe Mazy would have been quite upset about it. I was confident that she would have preferred that I did what I did. It made it easier for me not to feel bad about it.
“Someday,” I said, without turning to him, “we should visit Mazy’s grave.”
“What? Oh. Don’t worry about it. I’m on it. I made some calls early this morning. Everything’s taken care of, a proper funeral and burial site. Mazy donated the money from the sale of her house to an education foundation that provides scholarships to low-income families. Did you know she was going to do that?”
“No. But it sounds like something she would have kept to herself. What does it say on her tombstone?”
“Say? Oh. Just her name and dates.”
“Seems unfair,” I said. “She was a respected teacher, and she was my grandmother.”
“Well, we can see about adding something in the future. And someday soon we will visit.”
Don’t promise, I thought. Please don’t promise. Moments later, he turned into his driveway. Now that it was daylight, I saw it had been laid with the same bricks that covered the house. There were knee-high bushes along the sides. Everything was trimmed and coordinated. The lawn was so neat that a very small broken branch from one of the sprawling maple trees was obvious. The fountain gurgled. Now I could see the smiles on the children’s faces. The afternoon sunlight was strong enough to make some of the windows glitter.
Do homes reveal the happiness or unhappiness of the family within? I wondered and thought about Mazy’s house, how tired and lonely it looked when I had first seen it. The patches of lawn had grass the color of straw. Her porch went only a few feet to the right and left of the front door, and it had nothing on it, not even a chair. One of the spindles under the railing was split. On a cul-de-sac, it looked lost and alone, just the way Mazy was most of the time, living with only a cat and some very bitter memories, like gray and black paintings, just strokes, framed in hard wood on every wall.
“I had the garage built recently,” Daddy said. “These vintage Queen Annes didn’t come with them. Ours is a three-car size. Now I wish I had made it four,” he added, smiling at me.
Why? I thought. Didn’t you ever imagine my living with you?
“I had to put it next to a side door that was already there, otherwise we’d have to break a wall. Consequently, it opens to a pantry. Ava complained, but it actually works out when you’re bringing in groceries.”
The garage door went up. There was another car, smaller but just as new-looking, parked.
“Home sweet home,” he said. He drove in. “The kitchen is right through the pantry. All the bedrooms are upstairs. The windows in yours face west, so you’ll have afternoon sun, which is nice in winter if winter ever comes. The world’s getting hotter and hotter.”
Especially for me, I thought.
He shut off the engine as the garage door started to close. It felt like a small bird was fluttering in my chest, but Daddy didn’t notice how I was feeling. Actually, he avoided looking at me. He got out and opened the rear door to get my bag and the computer. I got out slowly. He paused, but before he could say anything encouraging, I spoke.
“Did you tell your wife and daughter anything about my mother’s death?” I said. “If you mentioned something, I might contradict it.”
“No, no. I just said she died. We’d find out the details from you. For now, all I know is what it says in the notepad,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Whatever you say is gospel. You won’t contradict me because I just learned the day before yesterday that your mother had died. So I don’t know all that much.” He shrugged. “I can or probably will say you didn’t like talking about such a horribly sad scene when I had just picked you up. Besides, you have the experience now, with Mazy dying. Think of her when you answer if either Ava or Karen asks for more grisly details.”
Base it all on Mazy? Yes, that was how I had thought to do it. Did we think alike? Was it impossible for me to be anyone but his daughter? Did that mean I would always use lies as tools?
“Then I’ll say she died at home just like Mazy did.”
“Good.”
“But why didn’t you go to the funeral? She was your sister.”
He looked nervously at the door.
“You ran away, and the police contacted me, right? So… I have to make arrangements. I’ll handle it. Ava and Karen already know that your mother and I didn’t talk to each other for years. I didn’t even know where she lived. There’s nothing to worry about when it comes to that. Just tell them to ask me. Let’s go,” he urged, nodding at the door. I had the free hand, so he waited for me to turn the handle.
My fingers froze around the handle. I felt like I was stepping right into a gigantic spiderweb.
“You’ve got to go in, Saffron. It’s got to begin. We can do this,” he said. He really meant You have to do this if you want to live with a family.
I turned the handle. My body was so tense that I was surprised I could walk, but I took only one step and stopped.
Like he had said, the garage door opened on a large pantry with white wooden shelves on which were stored canned goods, paper cups and paper plates, and boxes of basic necessities like salt, flour, and some cereals.
“Go on. Go in, Saffron,” he urged, but I felt like I had frozen in place.
Because I didn’t move quickly enough, he stepped ahead, and I followed him into the kitchen. It had beautiful dark-oak cabinets and marble counters, with a center island covered with matching marble. There was an arched doorway that opened to a kitchenette. I could see the paneled windows and the round dark-oak table. The kitchen stove, range, and refrigerator were matching stainless steel. Everything looked expensive and new. It made me smile thinking about Mazy’s appliances that she said were created in the Dark Ages.
“Here she is,” Daddy announced.
I had been hoping that both Ava and Karen would be unattractive and, in fact, that everything about my father’s new life would be far less than he had described. Surely, it wasn’t really that picture-perfect as this town seemed. Deep in my heart, I harbored the hope that the choices he had made had proven disastrous, despite h
ow he bragged about the Saddlebrook name and the new family he had created.
Ava and Karen looked up from the salad on the black-and-white marble island top and gazed at me as if they’d had no idea I was arriving. Baby Garson was asleep in a portable bassinet on the floor. I could barely see his face framed in a blue blanket. Music was coming from a speaker embedded in a wall in the far left corner. Later Karen would tell me it was a song written and sung by someone named Ed Sheeran, and she’d be quite shocked I hadn’t recognized it. That would be the initial chip in the false facade Daddy and I were creating. If there was music anywhere, it would be in California.
For a moment, as Ava and Karen scrutinized me with that feminine curiosity, I amusingly imagined being in an old western movie in which the gunslingers eyed each other before anyone would draw. Neither had anything to fear. My clothes were drab, and my hair needed a fresh washing and at least some brushing and trimming. They, on the other hand, looked like some mother-daughter advertisement in a fashion magazine.
Both wore short white aprons over what I would see were matching distressed-effect jeans and red boat-neck tops with three-quarter dolman sleeves and ties. It was the sort of outfit I had dreamed of having after I began public school and looked at some fashion magazines. Mazy had bought me fashionable things, but on her own, listening to more conservative salesladies. My wish to see who I had hoped would be my father’s plain-looking new wife and daughter collapsed like a punctured balloon.
Ava’s eyes were so striking that it was almost impossible not to be caught up in them. They were almond-shaped, a deep shade of violet blue. Later I would discover she had her mother’s eyes. Her graceful jawline enhanced her full, soft lips. If there was a flaw to harp on, it would probably be the sharpness in her nose, emphasized, I would learn, when she was annoyed or angry because of the awkward way her lips would turn in and the coolness that would overtake her eyes.
With what I could see was a slim model’s figure, she was almost as tall as my father. Perhaps the heat in the kitchen had brought a metallic rose-colored tint to her cheeks. Her champagne-blond hair fell loosely over her shoulders into thin curls.
I fled back to my most vivid memories of my mother, who, even though she had lost the light behind her eyes, remained dainty and petite in my mind, an embossed image I hoped would never fade or be lost in the shadow of my father’s new wife’s beauty.
Daddy had been right about Karen. She looked just about my height and size. Not that she was unattractive, but Karen’s mouth sagged more in the corners. She had fuller lips than her mother, but whether it was that she was annoyed or it was her habitual expression, her lips turned up slightly too much and took away from her nose, softer than her mother’s. Her eyes were a nice shade of hazel. She had short light-brown hair and a rounder face, with dimples in her cheeks. I suspected that anyone who saw us standing together would say she was the cute one.
The way the two of them continued to stare at me almost made me do what I would do when I was a little girl, slip behind my father so he could shield me from prying eyes that made me feel so different. Strangers wanted to touch me, pet me, and for some reason, older men always wanted to tickle me.
“Saffron, this is my wife, Ava, and my daughter, Karen,” Daddy said.
“Do you like Italian food?” Ava asked, instead of saying hello.
“Yes, very much.”
“You’re not a vegetarian or anything?” she followed, grimacing as if she was anticipating a slap.
“No, ma’am,” I said.
Karen immediately laughed. “Ma’am?”
“Please call me Aunt Ava,” Ava said. “We’re not very formal in our house. I’m preparing some meatballs, and Karen’s doing our salad.”
“She makes great meatballs,” Daddy said.
“It’s my mother’s recipe, a recipe she inherited from her mother,” she said.
I smiled. Hopefully, I thought, she couldn’t be that bad if she cherished family recipes. There was something more natural and friendlier in the thought, despite the way she had expressed it.
“Is that all you have?” Karen asked, nodding at my bag in my father’s hand.
“Yes,” I said. “It was all I wanted to take.”
“But you didn’t leave your computer,” Ava said. She smirked and looked at Karen. “Karen would do the same. You girls today have different priorities.”
“If I was leaving quickly, I would still take everything, especially my phone, Mommy.”
“Right. Do you have one of those, too, Saffron?”
“No.”
“She will,” Daddy said.
“Of course. Then the two of them can text each other even when they’re in the same room. Why don’t you show her the room, Derick? We’ll finish preparing dinner.”
“I can show her,” Karen said.
“After you’ve finished our salad, you’re setting the table,” Ava said sharply. “Remember, we’re using the dining room tonight and not the kitchenette. And be careful with my good dishes and glasses, Karen. Don’t be thinking of something else while you work. Derick? We’ll be eating soon,” she said, widening her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t formal, but she was surely quite chop-chop.
“Sure. Right this way, Saffron,” he said.
I smiled at Karen, but she was already in a pout and turned away.
I followed Daddy out of the kitchen. To the left was the dining room. I paused to glance at the long, dark-cherry wood table and the large teardrop chandelier. Ruby velvet curtains draped the windows. Karen entered from the kitchen carrying a tablecloth and napkins. When she saw me, she shrugged and made a face expressing her suffering as if she was doing the worst manual labor.
“Come along, Saffron. I’ll give you a tour later,” Daddy said. “Let’s get you settled and ready for dinner. Ava likes everything tick-tock. She gets that from her father,” he added, dropping his voice.
I continued after him, glancing at the living room, which was on the right. How different all this would be from living in Mazy’s house, with her tired old furniture. Old here meant valuable vintage. My family wasn’t rich before the house fire. Obviously, my father had married into great wealth. How much of that was the real reason for everything?
Directly ahead was the stairway, and on the right was a short hall that led to the front entrance. I saw there was another room on the left approaching the door. The stairway had a mahogany balustrade and coffee-brown carpeted steps, only ten to a turn and then four more. At the top, Daddy turned to the west side of the house and waited for me to catch up.
“Ava and I and Karen are on the east side,” he said, continuing.
He opened the only door on the right and stepped in as I entered, too. The room was easily twice the size of my blue room at my grandmother’s house. And so was the size of the bed compared to what I had at my grandmother’s. It had a footboard and headboard of light maple. There was a matching dresser on the right and a matching vanity table on the left, with a mirror in a square frame. The wooden floor was a dark brown, with a lighter brown area rug beside the bed. In the right corner was the closet. The two windows on the sides of the headboard had dull white curtains and faded white window shades.
“It’s not much now, but wait until Ava gets started,” Daddy said. “She’s been looking for a reason to dress this up.”
He lowered my bag to the footstool and put the computer case on the vanity table.
“We’ll get a proper desk in here for sure.”
I just stared, thinking I had gone from one human storage room to another.
“We don’t have many houseguests,” he said, starting an explanation. He could see how unexcited I was about the room.
“Is that what I am?”
“Hardly,” he said quickly. He blew some air through his lips and drew up the window shades. “Good view, actually. Oh,” he said, turning. “The bathroom is across the hall and on the right as you leave the room. We and Karen have en suites, so this bathroom i
s entirely yours. There’s a bath and shower. I’m going to renovate that bathroom very soon.”
“Where would I be stashed while the work’s being done?” I asked dryly.
“I’m sure Karen would share.” He smiled. “Hell, I bet you start sharing her bathroom and mirrors way before that.”
“I’ve only shared with a cat, Mr. Pebbles,” I said. “I might not be that good at it.”
Where do smiles go when they fly off a face?
For a sheer moment, he looked angry, ready to fall into a rage, but he clamped down on that hard.
“We thought about a cat, too, but Ava read one of those stories about a cat that smothered a baby. If you ever run out of nightmares, just listen to some of the things she has read in that rag paper.”
“No worries, Uncle Derick,” I said sharply. “I won’t run out of those. I have enough to share with everyone.”
Maybe it came out like a threat.
Maybe it simply frightened him.
He seemed to lunge for the door.
“Put your things in the dresser drawers and wash up,” he said. “I spoke with Ava before I picked you up at the Dew Drop Inn. She said she put everything you might need for now in your bathroom already. Get used to her. She’s a take-charge kind of person.”
“So was Mazy,” I said.
He nodded and started away.
I stood there listening to him go down the stairs.
In my memory, he was carrying me with the flames licking at his heels and the heat burning my face.
And I was screaming for my mother.
CHAPTER FOUR
Daddy was right about the bathroom I would use. Ava had stocked it with everything and anything I would need, even things I would never have thought about buying.
I welcomed the new hairbrush, ties, and comb and then studied some of the jars of skin cream in the cabinet. Two had French names, each claiming to prevent skin damage and cure dry, flaky skin. There was even something I had never seen, a facial toner. There were bars of soap and bottles of shampoos I also had never seen or heard of neatly displayed on the shelf in the shower. The pink towels and washcloths were super-plush and smelled flowery-fresh. What looked like a new bath rug, white with a pinkish tint, was placed beside the tub and shower.
Out of the Rain Page 6
