How could I live like this, trying to act as normal as I could while anticipating something or someone would jump out of the shadows and rip the cover and disguise off me?
I went upstairs quickly to get ready to leave. I could hear Ava soothing Garson in her bedroom. When I came out of my bathroom, I heard her downstairs talking to the maid. She was telling her about my arrival. I stood at the top of the stairway and listened.
“She puts on a good show,” Ava told her, “but she’s obviously quite shattered. She’s had a miserable life. Don’t ask personal questions. When she talks to you, a smile will suffice.”
“Oui, madame,” Celisse said.
They both began speaking French. Ava sounded fluent.
I continued down the stairs.
Celisse looked too petite to clean a house this big and care for a baby, too. Maybe she was an inch taller than I was, but she certainly didn’t weigh much more. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, if that. She had a pretty face with soft features and dark-brown hair pinned up neatly. She wore a dark-blue dress that resembled a uniform because of the pockets. She was cradling Garson, who was moving a teething ring gently around his gums and staring up at her.
“Hello,” she said when I appeared.
“Hi.”
“This is Celisse,” Ava said.
“I’m Saffron,” I said.
“Welcome.” Her smile was sincere. Now that I looked at her more closely, I thought she was even younger and certainly too innocent to be in this house. She looked like a rose growing in a patch of weeds.
“Your uncle and I met Celisse during a trip to Èze, France, and we talked her into coming home with us two years ago,” Ava said. “I studied in France when I was your age. Do you know any French?”
“A little,” I said. “From reading.” I looked at Celisse. “Un peu.”
“Très bien,” she said, smiling.
“Two years with Celisse, and Karen doesn’t know that much,” Ava said. “Maybe now that there are two of you here, Celisse will be more successful with her.”
I said nothing. One thing was clear to me: I really could have an enemy in my half sister in a heartbeat. Just side with her mother whenever she complains about her, I thought, or show her up in some way or another, Saffron. See where that gets you.
“Let’s go,” Ava said. She slipped on a jeweled denim jacket and started for the door to the garage. I followed quickly, nervously expecting a more intense cross-examination to come.
Which it did the moment we backed out of the driveway and she turned to head down the street. From my walk, I recognized where we were going. We would pass the Dew Drop Inn. How did Daddy ensure that the manager would never mention me or, if he saw me, pretend he never had? Deception had to have more tentacles than an octopus, especially in these small rural towns.
“Did you recognize Derick when you first saw him?”
“I wouldn’t have, but he was the only man his age waiting at the bus station.”
“Didn’t you even have an early picture of him?”
“There were some, but he and my mother were too young. I mean, there were certainly resemblances.”
“And you left without much money?”
“I had some,” I said, afraid she would see what I had found in Mazy’s closet. “There might be something left in my mother’s checking account.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about money. Keep whatever you have for emergencies,” she said. “Not that I can imagine your having any.”
Emergency? Like the discovery of who I really am and my quick departure? I wondered.
“You’ve had a hard young life, but you’ve developed a strong sense of independence. I like that. My father is not terribly fond of strong, independent women. My mother wasn’t one.”
“I never thought of myself that way,” I said. It was something Daddy had said, too, and for some reason, the word sounded evil.
“Well, think it now. You seem like a bright girl. Did you do well in school? I don’t know the details. Derick’s taking care of that or did by now.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t sound like your mother had that much time to oversee your behavior and your schoolwork.”
“No, she was always working so hard and was often very tired at the end of the day.”
“I can imagine. Other girls—Karen, I fear—would take advantage of that and slum around.”
I said nothing, but I was wondering why she was so negative about her own daughter. What would she be like if she discovered the truth about me?
“Have you ever been in trouble, at school or otherwise? It’s best I know now.”
“No.”
She’d actually go wild if she ever knew I had been blamed for putting a curse on a boy who died in a car accident.
“For now, I’m going to believe everything you tell me,” Ava said, “because you’ve given me no reason to think otherwise, but the moment you do…” She looked at me with fire in her eyes. “Let this be enough warning. And know this… Sandburg Creek is a small town. People gossip here as much as if not more than anywhere, especially when it comes to anyone involved with a Saddlebrook. Sometimes I think some are like hawks waiting for an opportunity to swoop down and seize something that would hurt us.”
“Why?”
She looked at me and turned away to focus on the road. I thought she wasn’t going to answer.
“It’s human nature. Jealousy,” she said. “You’d better be prepared for that once everyone understands who you are and where you live.”
I said nothing, even though my mind was flooding with questions. She’d been pregnant without a husband, hadn’t she? How did they manage that secret? She glanced at me and then turned to pull into the salon parking lot.
“Let’s see what Renae suggests for your hair. She’s quite good. While she works on you, her assistant will do your fingernails. Maybe we’ll have your toenails done as well. They’ll know the best colors. Then I’ll take you to school to follow up on your enrollment. Either your uncle or I will pick you two up at the end of the school day.”
“There are no uniforms?” I had been expecting it since this was a private school.
“There was an attempt to do that, but you’ll see when you’re there why it fell on its face. We’ve got plenty of fashionistas. Some parents think they’re dressing their children to stand in storefront windows. You’ll have nice things, but neither you nor Karen is going to be in some competition every day.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Nothing cheers up a woman like getting her hair and nails done. Am I right?” she asked with a real smile.
“I wouldn’t know, Aunt Ava. I have never been to a salon.”
Her smile fell somewhere into her face. “Who looked after your hair?”
“My mother, when she had the time.”
“If you tell my father that, he’ll chant how necessity is the mother of invention. You’d think he was a pauper. Okay, let’s go. There are many different kinds of virginity to end, and we’ll start here,” she said, opening the door.
I smiled and followed her into the salon, wondering if in the end, I wouldn’t somehow like her, if not respect her, far more than I did or ever would my father.
CHAPTER SIX
From the way Ava described me to her hairdresser, Renae, when we entered the salon, someone would think I had just arrived from a hidden corner in Tibet or some other place where salons, hair conditioners, shampoos, and nail polish had never been seen, not to mention running water. Anyone listening looked like she would think it was a sin not to have gone to a beauty salon to have your hair and nails done. A little panic seized me. Would Ava’s descriptions lead everyone to ask personal questions that would lead me to contradictions? I tried keeping my eyes down and not looking at anyone else in the salon.
Renae did say my hair needed a lot of preparation. It was dry and stringy with split ends. Fortunately, she avoided saying “dirty,” which surely would h
ave brought a parade of questions for Ava with negative connotations. Who did you say this girl was? Where is she from? Parents? Derick had a sister?
Maybe most, if not all, were afraid of her. No one asked anything like that. Both Renae and Ava stood back and studied me as they flipped through pictures of hairstyles. All other eyes were on them, too. Every once in a while, they’d pause on one page, and Renae would bring the picture up beside my face.
This one emphasized my eyes too much to the detriment of all my other fine features; this one exaggerated my jawbone and distorted my otherwise good looks. It was taking so long that I thought they wouldn’t find any that worked, and they’d give up and just have my hair washed and brushed. I was almost hoping that would be so.
Suddenly, they both agreed on one.
“Which one is it?” I asked. The whole salon was waiting to hear and see, but Ava didn’t tell anyone anything.
“Relax. Just leave it up to Renae,” she told me. “Better it’s a surprise.”
Renae’s ebony eyes brightened with excitement. Someone would think she was really re-creating me. Moments later, she was washing my hair as vigorously as she would if it was crusted with soot. I thought she’d make me bald. After she blow-dried it, the manicurist started on my nails while Renae began snipping and brushing. To me it felt like she was taking an ax to it. Gobs fell. With both the manicurist and Renae at me, I was afraid to move, practically to breathe. Ava stood in the background, thumbing through fashion magazines and occasionally looking at me and nodding at the progress. I watched in the mirror as if I was looking at someone else on television. Gradually, the hairstyle took shape.
“What do you call this?” I asked. I think the sound of my voice surprised both the manicurist and Renae. Until then, I was more like a seated statue, a mannequin, something used for training hairdressers.
“It’s the new bob,” Renae said. “As you see, you have a voluminous crown and a neat nape. I’m working on elongated wedges now.”
As Mazy might say, that was Greek to me. But it did seem like my face was changing, too. My eyes looked bigger and my lips softer, fuller. I glanced at my nails after they had been neatly trimmed and cleaned. Ava had chosen the color, which the manicurist agreed was the best match for my complexion, Sandy Nude. She would do the same for my toenails.
My whole look was altering, but it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be surprised. I was becoming a different person in so many ways. Why not look different, too? It was almost supernatural, slipping into a new persona in a new family in a new world. Even my memories had to change, of course. Past feelings were to be forgotten or at least put into storage.
For the last five years, I had spent most of my life in one house, seeing the world through Mazy’s eyes. She had shaped my opinions of almost everything, including myself. Now cutting and washing my hair, buying me new clothes, and enrolling me in a new school was a new leg of the journey taking me away from the person I thought I was and creating someone I had yet to know myself. Was I happy to be here? Did I like all this and want all that was promised? Indecision married to fear made me so vulnerable, so helpless. With all that had happened to me and the little I came with, what else could I be but clay to be formed by both Ava and my father?
Suddenly, a really frightening thought occurred. I wondered, when my hair was completely shaped and the features of my face highlighted, would Ava look at me and instantly realize that I could be no other than Derick Anders’s daughter? Would my true identity jump out at her? I was feeling so naked now, even with the shadows lifted away. What would I say if she made the accusation?
Even the most successful and efficient liars crumbled when they were confronted abruptly with the truth.
However, nothing like that happened. When everything had been completed, all the other customers and other hairstylists congratulated Ava as if she were Pygmalion bringing a statue to life. Apparently, to them, I hadn’t had much of an identity when I stepped into this salon anyway. Clearly implied was that before all this, I was so plain, so ordinary, that I was no better than someone carved poorly in stone, a resting place for birds. People would have passed me by, barely noticing I was there. Now I had been touched by the good fairy’s wand. How could I be anything but grateful?
Everyone interpreted the look on my face as I gazed at myself to be a look of pleased wonder. Some laughed at my surprise. Others wished they had my raw material. I listened to them and looked at them poke and paw at themselves as they gazed longingly into mirrors. I realized that the pool of jealousy in beauty salons could drown you.
Sandwiches and drinks had been brought in while Renae brushed and trimmed my hair, but I couldn’t eat or drink while they worked on me. Ava handed me a sandwich and a bottle of water as I stepped away from the chair.
“You can munch on this on the way to school,” she said. “I want to get you set at school today. There’s no time to go to a restaurant with me still having time for some of my own errands.”
She shoved it at me, and we left the salon. Even though it had taken hours, it all seemed fast to me. I was happy we weren’t going to a restaurant, where the menu would convert to another list of questions, another interrogation. I had been so nervous that now I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.
When we got into her car, she paused and then looked at me, sitting there, staring ahead. I hadn’t even unwrapped the sandwich.
“I’ll take your silence to be a result of the shock at how good you look and not your dissatisfaction. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” I said, although there was far more to it that she must never know.
She smiled and nodded, the look of self-satisfaction rippling through her face.
“Your mother must have been an attractive woman. I venture to guess you look more like her than you do your ghost of a father?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t even have a picture of him, and neither did my mother,” I said. It had the effect of damming up what I was sure would be a sea of potential questions about my father and his family, each another threat to this fiction Daddy and I were creating.
“Didn’t your mother ever talk about him?”
“Not pleasantly, so I didn’t ask questions.”
“Did the other children at school tease you about not having a father?”
“No. Most were too interested in themselves to care about me,” I said. “And there were plenty of children who had divorced parents. Most had only a mother; some had only a father. I used to pretend that was me, too. My parents were divorced. It felt better than having a father who didn’t want anything to do with you. It’s painful to think of your father as someone who never had or has you in his thoughts now. I could meet him on a street and not know it, and vice versa. And you know what? I’d love that. I’d love to walk right past him, realize who he was, and then turn and call to him. ‘Hey, Daddy,’ I’d say. ‘Hi.’ I’d just want to see the expression on his face.”
She looked at me as if some power had put everything on pause, our movements and our breath, and then she burst into a laugh that nearly brought tears to her eyes. I had to smile. It was a relief to hear it, even though I had no clue why she was laughing so hard. She was quiet for a long moment afterward, deciding what to tell me, I thought. She nodded like someone answering herself.
“You remind me more of myself at your age than Karen does,” she revealed. “You and I grew up in different worlds, but we might have been shaped by similar demons. Mine must remain buried. I’m jealous of your honesty. It’s refreshing, hopeful. Don’t lose it.”
Honesty? Hopeful? I thought, surprised. I’m being anything but honest. Was I really that good of a liar? Daddy would be proud. And then I realized how incredibly crazy that sounded. What father would take pride in his daughter’s ability to be false? And what were Ava’s demons? Of course, I was too terrified to ask. Once you ask someone else questions, you give her permission to ask you endless questions.
“However…” S
he paused and looked at me. “Although we don’t know each other that well yet, I will give you some advice. You’re about to be enrolled in a school I venture to say will be quite unlike the ones you’ve attended. All the other students here come from well-to-do families. It’s like too much cream in your coffee. For the first few days, even weeks, I advise you to keep your opinions to yourself, especially about any of the other girls. Just listen and be as neutral as you can be. Put honesty on the back burner for now. At least, until you feel more secure, and at this stage in your life, that’s the most important thing. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to realize how to best juggle your need for the truth.”
When I had entered Hurley’s public school, Mazy had given me similar advice about being too honest. “Everyone,” she had said, “likes to be lied to about themselves, even if they know that what you’re saying is completely false.”
“You’ll discover soon that many of Karen’s friends are quite superficial,” Ava said now. “We’re an important family in this town, and I ascribe most if not all her friends and invitations to that. You don’t snub a Saddlebrook. My family’s tentacles, my father’s, I should say, pierce and poke just about every business in this community, one way or another. As I told you earlier, he spoils Karen, and she knows how to take advantage of that. He’s taught her well, despite me. Karen can be a bully, just like her grandfather can be. Understand?”
“I’ve read Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novels,” I said. “I know how families can damage themselves and how powerful people can get away with almost anything.”
Ava looked at me with surprise again.
“I wouldn’t have thought someone who lived the life you’ve lived would be as studious as you appear to be,” she said. It was the first hint of suspicion and sounded a little too much like an accusation. I was really afraid to speak or explain, but I thought it through carefully as I spoke.
“I wasn’t able to become that sociable with other girls at school, and I wasn’t up to hanging out in malls or something, so I spent my time reading. It was just a way…”
Out of the Rain Page 10
