The Promised World: A Novel

by Lisa Tucker

  By the time he got back, Pearl was downstairs making waffles with New Grandma and talking like nothing was wrong. And they were talking about Lila, which Pearl had told him never to do. Pearl was smiling but not that fakey-friendly smile, her real smile. She even smiled at William when she said, “Grandma has decided to give me Aunt Lila’s clothes. Isn’t that cool?”

  It seemed like a weird thing to care about, some old clothes, but Pearl was excited when they all went down to the basement to get the things. There were only three boxes, which William was glad about ‘cause it meant they didn’t have to go back and forth, lugging up stuff. He wanted to get out of this spooky basement as fast as possible. Even Daddy had said the basement was creepy. Grandma kept all the boxes up on wood squares; she said the basement got wet when it rained. William saw little trickles of water coming down on the wall in back, which seemed so sad, like the stones were crying.

  Grandma and Pearl went up to Pearl’s room to go through everything, and William sat on a chair by the giant bookshelf, counting the rows of books. For a while, everything was calm and sort of boring, but then New Grandma showed up, right when he was ready to count the sixth row (his favorite), and told him he had to do something for his sister. “Go upstairs and tell her she doesn’t look too skinny in that dress.”

  He wasn’t sure why he had to do this instead of Grandma, but he stood up and headed upstairs. He could hear Pearl crying before he got halfway up. He felt so bad for his sister that he ran the rest of the way. She was standing in the middle of the room in a violet dress that looked softer than anything he’d ever seen. “You look nice,” he said, ‘cause she did and ‘cause he wanted her to stop crying.

  She peered into his face and sniffed. “You really think so?”

  He nodded and she sniffed a few more times, looking at herself in a mirror on the closet door. She turned to the right and the left, and the soft dress sort of whirled around like a spinning top. Then he remembered what he was supposed to say.

  “You don’t look too skinny.”

  She let out a wail so loud it hurt his ears. He told her he’d only said that ‘cause Grandma had asked him to, but that didn’t make her stop crying. He could barely make out what she was saying. “How could you do this to me?”

  He didn’t know what he’d done, but he tried to make her feel better. He went over and threw his arms around her waist and said, “It’s okay,” the way he always did when Mommy was sad. The dress was just as soft as it looked, but a shiny kind of soft. He wished he had a blanket like this.

  She pulled his hands off and jumped back like he was dirty, even though he’d washed off all the syrup on his fingers right after breakfast. “If Grandma told you to hit me,” she sobbed, “would you do that, too?”

  He was confused and horrified. He never hit anybody, not even mean kids at school. “No.” He shook his head. “No.”

  “But it’s perfectly fucking fine to tell me I look fat? Because she told you to?”

  “Language, Pearl.” Grandma was standing in the doorway. “Please calm down. It’s hardly a tragedy that one dress doesn’t flatter you. Try some of the others. Several of Lila’s things were loose on her. Perhaps those would—”

  “Just stop it!” Pearl was still crying and her voice came out all squeaky, like one of Maisie’s baby toys. “Leave me alone!”

  Grandma turned to him. “William, will you wait in your room?”

  “No.” He stomped his heel and stared right at Grandma. “I wanna stay with Pearl.”

  “I don’t think that’s appropriate.” She nodded in Pearl’s direction. “Your sister is going to be changing clothes.”

  Pearl already had the dress unzipped and halfway over her head. He saw his sister’s pink underpants and he was so embarrassed that he turned away and headed for his own room.

  He could hear Pearl yelling all the way down the hall. His tic was going crazy and he decided to make a fort out of that stupid dead animal blanket. He hadn’t made a fort for a long time, but he didn’t care if it was babyish. He needed someplace to hide from the feeling he’d hurt his sister without even knowing how.

  He took the heavy gold bookends from the desk to fasten the blanket on the windowsill side and pulled the desk chair up on the bed to hold down the other side. Then he crouched down under it and took off his glasses, so everything would go blurry. He held his knees to his chest and listened to the wind rattling the glass and then, a little while later, raindrops tapping on the window. He liked the sound of rain best of all the sounds in the world.

  He wished he could stay in this fort until it was time to go home, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to have lunch; he had to have dinner; he had to come when New Grandma called him for chess lessons and anything else. And all day, stuff kept happening between Grandma and Pearl that he didn’t understand and made him so nervous he thought his heart would burst. His sister cried so often it was like she wasn’t even the normal Pearl anymore, but some sad alien who took over her body. He was so scared by nighttime that he couldn’t fall asleep and he lay in bed for hours before he decided to creep down the hall and see if his sister was awake, too.

  She wasn’t, but he sat down on her bed ‘cause he felt better just being in her room. The sound of her normal breathing was so nice that before long he was under the covers, lying next to her. He knew Pearl didn’t like it when he crawled into bed with her, but she always let him anyway if he had a bad dream. He figured he’d tell her in the morning that he had a bad dream, which wasn’t a big lie, since this was as scary as a bad dream for sure.

  It was all his idea, but New Grandma didn’t care. The next morning, she was in Pearl’s room, standing with her arms crossed, saying Pearl should know better than to sleep with her brother. “It’s simply inappropriate,” Grandma said. “At your age, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Pearl was sitting on the edge of the bed in her sleep shorts and the MOBYlives T-shirt that used to be Daddy’s but shrunk in the wash so Daddy gave it to her. She looked super upset, but at least she wasn’t crying. She said she was sorry a bunch of times and she kept saying stuff like, “I didn’t mean it,” and “I won’t do it again.”

  William was rubbing his eyes, trying to talk but nobody would listen. After a while, he went back into his own room. He wanted his mom so bad, worse than he ever had in his life.

  The rest of Sunday turned out to be even more awful than Saturday. Pearl was like the invisible person in the house and New Grandma wouldn’t leave William alone long enough for him to sneak out to the tree house or do anything fun. Even when she took him shopping to buy him any toy he wanted, he couldn’t stop wondering why Pearl couldn’t come, too. New Grandma told him because he was a wonderful boy, but he sure didn’t feel like one. He got this huge Lego model he’d always wanted that cost more than a hundred dollars and he was kind of excited, but then Grandma told him to build it downstairs, with her. While he clicked the blocks together, she did her yoga and listened to weird music and talked so much that he could still hear her voice that night when he closed his eyes to try to sleep.

  By the time he got home from school on Monday, everything was a zillion times weirder. Pearl was sitting in the big book room and New Grandma sat down with her and they started talking about what Pearl was going to eat and not eat and how many hours she would spend on Grandma’s exercise machine and all this other stuff that Pearl had to do, but nobody would tell William why. Even after he got his sister to come outside with him, so New Grandma couldn’t hear, Pearl just shook her head when he asked what was going on.

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “You like muffins, and Grandma has that good cinnamon kind.” Muffins were on that list of foods Pearl couldn’t eat.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Pearl said, swallowing hard. “It’s part of my diet, to prepare myself to be competitive. Also I have to lose ten pounds before I can fit into Aunt Lila’s clothes.”

  They were walking on the hill and the sun was sh
ining on her yellow hair. Her face and her hair were the regular Pearl, but she was wearing these ugly black pants he’d never seen before and a shirt that looked like it was made for a giant.

  “Mommy says diets are bad.”

  Pearl shrugged. “Mom eats junk food and never exercises. I think Grandma knows more about keeping in shape than Mom does. I’m glad she wants to help me.”

  His sister didn’t sound glad at all. Her voice was like a zombie’s and her eyes looked sort of red, like she’d been crying again while he was at school. For the first time, he felt lucky that he was only stuck with New Grandma in the car, not all day like Pearl was. He knew they played chess a lot, but he didn’t know what else they did. Whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t any fun.

  “You got to call Staci. She’ll be nice to you. You can go somewhere with her in her car and then—”

  “I can’t. Staci’s so thin.” Pearl lowered her eyes. “I can’t face any of my friends now that I know what I look like.”

  He threw his arms around Pearl. “I hate Grandma!” he said, ‘cause he really did all of a sudden. He knew it was bad to hate anybody, but he couldn’t help it.

  “It’s all my fault,” Pearl whispered. She didn’t push him away, but she felt like Maisie’s doll, all floppy. “I guess I’m not as smart as I thought.”

  “You are so! You’re smart like Daddy!”

  “I wish I was.” He could feel her shaking. “I always thought I was like Dad and Lila. Dad always said I could do anything, but I don’t think it’s true.”

  He wanted to drop his arms, ‘cause he felt weird hugging his sister, but he was worried she’d fall over or start crying so hard she wouldn’t be able to breathe and then she’d die. “I’m gonna call Mommy.”

  She pulled away. “You can’t do that. You promised!” She knelt down in the grass and looked at him. “Please, William. I’m begging you.”

  Her face was covered in streaky tears. He felt so sorry for her that he said okay, but then he asked why.

  “Because I still don’t know what happened to Dad. And even if I’m too stupid to understand, I have to keep trying.” She stood up and held her arms out, like she was praying to the sky. “Oh, Daddy,” she stammered. “Daddy.”

  Pearl never called their father Daddy and it scared William. It scared him so bad he couldn’t sleep that night. His sister was awake, too; he could hear her walking up and down the hall like a nervous ghost, but he knew he’d get her in trouble if he came out and said anything. New Grandma had told him at dinner that Pearl needed to be left alone, to think about what kind of person she wanted to be. William didn’t understand at all, but he didn’t understand any of this. He didn’t understand why Pearl couldn’t eat anything but salads and why she had to read all these big boring chess books and why Grandma talked about his sister like Pearl was in the dumb class at school, when William was in the dumb class and Grandma kept saying he was so smart.

  And day after day, it got worse and worse and worse, like Pearl was a toy and her battery was dying. But she kept telling him nothing was wrong and she didn’t want to see her friends or go anywhere and it wasn’t Grandma’s fault and he couldn’t call Mom or tell the social worker and don’t worry about it. He was so confused his head hurt whenever he wasn’t in school. And when he was at school, he worried about his sister so much that his teacher said if he didn’t pay attention, he’d be spending next year in third grade, too.

  He knew for sure now that New Grandma couldn’t read his mind, ‘cause she still talked in the car like he was a good boy. Even when she said, “I know you’re upset about your sister,” she didn’t really know how he felt or she’d be super mad.

  He spent most of Saturday in the tree house and he snuck out there again on Sunday morning, after Pearl told him to mind his own business when New Grandma was laughing at Pearl while they were playing chess. “You’ll never win unless you learn to control yourself,” Grandma said, and then ha, ha, ha, like a witch. He was so mad that he didn’t come down when it was time for lunch, even though he was hungry. His plan was to stay in the tree house forever, but then Pearl came and found him before dinner and said if he didn’t come down right now, she’d come up and get him.

  He didn’t notice Pearl’s arm was hanging all weird until they were walking back down the hill. He asked if she hurt herself and she said yes, but he could tell she was lying. Then he knew for sure that New Grandma had hit Pearl, but Pearl said, “It’s no big deal. She was trying to teach me an opening any serious player should know and I kept being too stupid to get it. She just twisted my arm a little to get me to pay attention.” Pearl smiled, but it was a nervous smile, like the kind you give a mean teacher. “It worked, too. I almost won, and Grandma says I’m just about ready for my first tournament now. She said if I work really hard, I can try out for the teenage team in Philadelphia next week.” Pearl was walking quickly, but she was holding the busted arm by the elbow. She looked past William. “Dad was on the team when he was nine years old. I’m six years late, but better late than never.”

  “Daddy said chess trophies are worthless. Worthless means—”

  “I know what it means. And Dad only said that because he quit playing chess when he got older, because he was angry with Grandma about something that happened with Aunt Lila.”

  He ran up to her. “What?”

  “You’re too young to understand. I don’t blame Dad. But it wasn’t Grandma’s fault, either, I know that now. She couldn’t stop Aunt Lila from hurting him.”

  His head was throbbing and his stomach felt like it had moved up to his throat. Daddy loved Aunt Lila. This didn’t make any sense. “Grandma hit you and made you cry. I don’t like her. I wanna—”

  “It didn’t hurt, okay? It was nothing compared to letting that freak who lives next to Staci take his belt and…” She mumbled something else, but before he could ask what she was talking about, she said, “And it’s all for my own good. She’s trying to help me, just like she helped Dad.” Pearl went to push her hair out of her eyes, but her face crinkled up like she was in pain and she dropped her elbow back onto her hand. “She wants me to be a champion. She said she’d pay for me to go to Princeton if I just try harder. That’s what Dad wanted for me, and I think he’d be proud that I’m willing to work to get it.” Pearl looked back at the trees. “I don’t want to be lazy anymore.”

  “You’re not lazy,” he mumbled. ‘Cause she wasn’t. Pearl worked hard in school and helped around the house and did everything right. Even her plan to run away was all neat and perfect ‘cause she thought of all the stuff they needed to pack.

  He followed her back to the house for dinner. But before Pearl could sit down and eat, she had to change into those ugly black pants that didn’t fit her and the giant shirt. Pearl said these clothes were to get her to be careful about food, or she’d end up wearing this size for real. New Grandma had given her a little scale and everything she ate had to be weighed like fruit in the grocery store. It was all part of her training, Grandma said, and Pearl nodded like she didn’t mind eating nothing but a bunch of lettuce leaves and four bites of chicken.

  William didn’t eat much, either, ‘cause he was thinking about the last Challenge, and what he was supposed to do if Kyle hurt them. He’d forgotten some of the stuff on the list, but he remembered Daddy saying that if Kyle went away and a new person showed up, William should just scratch out Kyle and put in the new person’s name. But New Grandma couldn’t be the new person, ‘cause she was Daddy’s own mom. But she’d hit Pearl and a bunch of other stuff William knew was bad, even if he couldn’t say what.

  All through dinner, he could hear Daddy talking to him, not like Daddy was a ghost, but like Daddy was reminding him of stuff. Like when New Grandma was smiling at Pearl, William heard Daddy warning him not to trust grown-ups he didn’t know. “Even if they smile and act nice, don’t be fooled. They don’t care about you and some of them might want to hurt you.” And when New Grandma was wondering why Pe
arl always wore that ring around her neck, the cool snakes one, and Grandma said a bunch of stuff about Aunt Lila he didn’t understand that made Pearl take off the necklace and set it next to her napkin, like it was some icky piece of food she couldn’t chew, William heard Daddy saying, “Words can be like arrows. You can’t see them, and that’s why they’re so dangerous. With an ordinary arrow, if you get hit, you know you have to remove it from your body. With words, you can never pull them out once they get stuck in your mind.”

  But he didn’t get scared until New Grandma was talking about how cold it was going to be tonight; so cold the newsman had issued a frost warning, meaning the flowers might die. He knew it wasn’t supposed to be cold like this in the middle of May, but that wasn’t the part that scared him. New Grandma said something about the house always staying warm no matter what the weather and then she said, “And I’ve lived here for many, many years.” Then he remembered Daddy telling him that the grown-ups who lived here before were very bad. They tried to destroy the souls of the kids, that’s what Daddy said. And the worst part of all—they won. They killed a boy like Hansel in this creepy, awful house.

  William pretended he had to pee and snuck upstairs to his own bathroom, where he sat on the edge of the tub, looking out the window, with his hands stuck under his legs. He knew his father wanted him to be brave. Daddy always said William HAD to win, no matter what. And he had to protect his sisters. It was the last thing Daddy said in the special letter just for William.