Invisible Girl

by Mary Hanlon Stone

  She puts her hands on the floor and makes a small grunt as she starts to get up. I stare hard to direct her eyes back into mine so she can tell me the something important, but she’s already standing up with her eyes trained over my head.

  The car outside beeps again and she kisses my cheek with a vague swipe of lips like she’s already out the door and her lips are running behind her. I can feel the red smudge on my skin. I can smell the whiskey mixed with her perfume. She turns and walks to the door. Her steps are wobbly. My father reaches out and this time grabs her arm. She swings her fist at him. “Don’t touch me, Senator.”

  My father sags back like a bag of flour someone punched.

  The car beeps again and she hurries down the front porch steps, almost tripping on the broken one at the bottom. She holds her hand over her head as if it could protect her from the pounding drops. I crawl to the door because it doesn’t occur to me to stand up and walk. A big man gets out of the driver’s seat and opens her door for her, then tosses her suitcase into the backseat.

  My dad watches with me. I want to smack some courage in him to go get her, but I’m afraid if I turn my head to look at him, she’ll be gone. Stupidly, I try to think of the right Warrior Word, as if there were one that could freeze her in her tracks so we could carry her back in, but nothing pops into my head.

  She trips on something and her foot turns in the little cage of its high-heel shoe. She stumbles and falls into the passenger seat and slams the door. She doesn’t look back at me as the car speeds away, red lights winking through a wall of rain.

  I don’t even realize that I’ve stood up in our doorway with no pants or underpants on until some kids whip down the streets on their bikes and yell, “Beeeaver,” then laugh as their tires send up white sprays of water, sparkling under the streetlights.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Everyone is over. Deep voices rumble. Kitchen chairs scrape battered tile. I’m upstairs with my chin resting on the clothing chute. Thank God all of my dad’s brothers are loud. Especially when they’re drinking. Otherwise it’d be impossible to pick out the words from the big male thunder.

  I close my eyes to hear better. My dad’s voice sounds higher than his brothers’, as if he really wasn’t one of them but a stranger, weaned from his mother too early and deprived of vital nutrients. He’s saying, “Not even a phone call.” Then he tells them about what time she left last night and what the guy in the car looked like.

  I know he won’t tell them that she squeezed her eyes half shut like an eel and called him “Senator.” He couldn’t possibly explain that to his broad-shouldered, thick-necked brothers, whose wives bring them beers during football games.

  I could go down and tell them though. I know all about it. On queen nights when she brushed my hair she’d tell me that we were all going to end up in the White House. Since my dad’s Irish, he’d be like John F. Kennedy, who was the president way back in the 1960s. My dad’s going to finish law school, get into local politics, then win all the national races until finally, he runs for president. She’s going to be the first lady and have magazines write about what she wears. She says that the only difference between her and Jackie O., who was John F. Kennedy’s fancy wife, is that she’s Italian rather than French.

  I’ve read all her Kennedy books. When I was younger, we used to pretend we were Kennedys and have conversations with them. My mom knew all their nicknames. When she was tired drunk instead of mean drunk, she talked about redoing rooms in the White House and what type of china she would pick out.

  My dad says one more thing but it’s blurred, like the words got smudged by his tonsils on the way out. No one says anything for a minute, and then my uncle Pat clears his throat. He’s used to making decisions and speaking at meetings. He’s a union rep. There are seven boys in my dad’s family, all of them still in Boston and all of them, except my dad, working in construction.

  My uncle Pat starts talking in low but urgent tones like he’s one of the nuns trying to get a nervous kid to stand up and go out on stage for a spelling bee. I hear “family,” “time,” and “Michael’s for a while.” I don’t know who Michael is.

  My uncle Pat has five kids. All my uncles have at least four. My dad is the youngest and he and my mom just have me. My uncle Pat speaks louder and tells my dad to finish law school and get on with his life, that she’ll come back.

  I cross my fingers. I have secret fantasies I’d never admit to anyone. They started when I was ten and I’m too old for them now, but I keep them anyway, like a nightgown that’s become way too short but it’s so soft, you wear it. I desperately want my dad to finish law school so he won’t be blank anymore and he’ll be like Nancy Drew’s father, Carson Drew, the distinguished lawyer who solves cases with Nancy’s help. Then, I’d get to come into his office, look over important papers and say with a smile and a small shake of my head, “Looks like we’ve got another one, Dad.”

  Being like Nancy Drew seems more perfect now than ever. Nancy’s mother died when she was three. My mother has left us. It will just be me working with my dad, up against evil-looking thugs with tattoos or normal-looking businessmen who secretly run high school slavery rings. I’ll have a housekeeper like Nancy’s housekeeper, Hanna Gruen, who will worry about me when I’m not home on time and cluck over my missed meals and going without my raincoat.

  Then, if my mom comes back and my dad wants to be president after we’ve solved around a hundred cases, that will be okay too. I know for a fact that Jackie O. wasn’t a drinker, because how could you be passed out or hitting people with all those reporters hanging around the White House?

  The image is ruined when I hear something like a choking sound. I lean my head a little farther down. Now it’s a gasping. I open my mouth in concentration and my gum slips out and plummets down the chute into the laundry room. I wish I had a sister I could laugh with about the gum.

  I strain my ears. Bottles clack. A throat clears. My uncle Kevin says, “Jesus Christ, Liam, buck up.” There’s another gasp and something cold grows under my skin. My father is crying.

  I jerk my head up and bang it on the top of the chute. How can he be crying when he has to get his butt in gear and finish law school?

  My mother’s face pops into my head, and hate and guilt twist over each other like snakes fighting. Maybe I shouldn’t have wished for a Hanna Gruen housekeeper. Maybe my mom thinks I don’t want her anymore. Maybe I really don’t.

  Of course I do. I just want her fixed, so she doesn’t hit me anymore. Once, she didn’t drink for three whole months, and we made cookies together and did our nails and she brushed my hair and made lots of plans for the White House, where I could talk on the news about what kind of dog we were going to get.

  Why isn’t my dad going out and getting her? What’s wrong with him?

  Furious, I run down the stairs and into the kitchen. My father has his head on his crossed arms on the table. My uncle Sean, the oldest brother, has his hand on my dad’s shoulder. The other uncles are either still sitting at the table or leaning against the counter. A couple of them hold cigarettes, and the air is familiar with beer and smoke.

  I open my mouth to demand that my father go out and get my mother and fix everything. The word Dad comes out, but the rest dries up in my mouth when he looks up at me with eyes that sink into his head. I see the stray cat with the torn ear that just kept slinking down when I tried to pet him.

  I stumble back.

  My dad smiles weakly. “Hey, kiddo, it looks like you’re going to get to go to Los Angeles for a while. Remember Michael Sullivan?”

  I stand frozen with my heart beating a zillion times a minute.

  Uncle Sean puffs on his cigarette, then says, “She’d be too young. He hasn’t been out here since she was almost three.”

  My father puts on a fake-excited smile. “He’s your uncle Sean’s best friend.”

  “Went to St. Pat’s together,” Uncle Sean breaks in, with the same fake smile. “He’s got a girl
about your age—”

  I keep backing up until I feel the refrigerator handle dig in between my shoulder blades. Outrage shakes me. I’m too shocked to even cry. My stomach has no bottom, just a huge fire-breathing dragon flying up from its depths. “You’re giving me away?” comes out of my mouth in someone else’s voice.

  “No, sweetheart, no,” my dad says, looking pale and sickly like he does when I’m being hit and he can’t see me even though I’m right in front of him. “Just for part of the school year. I need some time to fix things up around here.”

  Part of the school year? Does he know what he’s talking about? I can’t go to a new school with new people! I’m starting ninth grade in one week in a place where I’ve already figured out how to hide. At St. Henry’s, there are two buildings, the K-8 building, which has the elementary and middle school, and then the high school right next to it. Last year, at the end of the day, I slipped into the high school when all the kids were gone and I walked by the tired custodians sweeping the floors to scope out the building. I know where the lockers are and the bathrooms. I’ve been in the library with the scarred wooden tables and the stained-glass windows that make it feel like a church.

  At St. Henry’s High, I’ll know how to hide so no one sees the knot of snarls in the back of my hair I can’t get out or the hem falling out of my uniform. I’ll know how to be invisible there.

  My eyes spin around the faces of all my uncles. They all have homes. Don’t any of them want me? Couldn’t I stay with my cousins? “Uncle Sean, can’t I stay with you?” I say.

  He folds me into his big bear arms. “It’s better you get away from all this for a while, Stephanie. Your dad just needs some time to—”

  I push away from him and race upstairs to my bedroom. My brush is sitting on the dresser by my bed where my mother left it, the night before last, when she was a queen and brushed my hair until it crackled. I hurl the brush against the wall. Then I slam shut my door and lock it, standing with my back pressed against it as though I could hold back the truth.

  I feel my knees grow weak and sink slowly to the floor.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The plane is freezing and I’m wearing only shorts and a T-shirt because it was eighty and boiling in Boston when I left. I’m right in the middle of two repulsive people. On my right is a woman who has on a too-tight, shiny shirt that squeezes her stomach into loaves of fat, who keeps making little burping sounds, like she’s building up for a major puke. The man on my left is skinny with glasses and major B.O.

  I am one hundred percent grossed out. I look back down at The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk where Nancy is off to South America, and try to focus on the words. “Like as not, Nancy will come back with her new trunk full of mysteries!” laughed Mrs. Gruen to the girl’s father.

  I’ve broken my rule about reading a Nancy Drew in public. I need it to calm my nerves. Plus, I don’t care if the two rejects sitting next to me see me reading this. Between the burps and the B.O. they probably are creating too much fog to make out the title anyway.

  I go back to my reading. Nancy’s father just had a beautiful new trunk with Nancy’s initials engraved on it show up at the Drew home in anticipation of her travel needs. My suitcase is metal and banged up. It was in our basement under an old sleeping bag that smelled like mildew.

  I take out my Warrior Word notebook. I’ve been making this notebook since I was eleven. During lunch I go into the school library and read so I don’t have to be just standing around the groups of other girls in the cafeteria like a dork with no one to talk to.

  When I was younger, I had two girlfriends, Karen Fratenelli and Maggie Hogan. But then their moms found my mom drunk when they came to pick them up on Saturday morning after they slept over. Their parents wouldn’t let them come over after that.

  Worst of all, everyone at school found out. People started acting weird to me, saying, “Want to play hopscotch” or, “Stephanie, you look beery nice.” Karen told me her father said, “No can do” when she asked if she could come over for even an hour after school. I don’t believe she ever really even asked him. She and Maggie had already started whispering when I walked up, and then when I asked what they were talking about, they’d said, “LSPJ” (long-story-private-joke).

  After that I stopped calling them. I made them into Top Enemies of Nancy Drew. I put pins in their school pictures. I tried not to think about the nights I’d spent at their houses where we brought back Martha Washington in séances, demanding that she give us a sign and screaming into each other when the candle flame flickered.

  After Karen and Maggie became enemies, I just read book after book in the library at lunch and after school. Adult books by important dead people, not Nancy Drews.

  When I didn’t know a word, I’d put a small dot in pencil in the margin of the book and tuck a scrap of paper in between the pages so I could look it up later. On Fridays, after school, I went in and wrote down all the words in my notebook and erased the dots in the novels. On Saturdays and Sundays, I wrote down the exact pronunciation and definition. I began thinking of these as my Warrior Words.

  I’ve never spoken any of my Warrior Words out loud to anyone. Instead, I tend to them like baby birds, sitting on them and keeping them warm until it’s time for them to hatch. Once in a while, if I’m completely alone, I’ll whisper them into my hand, just to make sure they’re not too frightened to actually come out of my mouth.

  I stare out the plane window now, seeing my parade of words in the cottony clouds. Clandestine, in elongated cursive, sneaks forward followed by a hissing surreptitious written in wavering print. Befuddled, in faded block letters, stumbles across, and I feel sorry for the old professor shuffling after it, who’s trying to put it back onto his shoulders.

  Calmness seeps into my veins. I’m invisible when I’m watching my words. I lean back against the seat and watch zephyr flutter by with wispy silver letters. I’m shocked and lit with panic when the plane finally lands.

  Michael Sullivan’s wife, Sarah, holds up a sign that says WELCOME, STEPHANIE in giant red letters. I want to walk right by her and make my living on the streets solving cases for poor people who can’t pay with money. I’d trade my skills for a hand-knit sweater or a baked ham.

  Sarah looks like a mom in a TV commercial with her short brown hair, big white teeth and a honey-how-about-some-fresh-brownies smile.

  I hate everything about her.

  We get into her car.

  “So, Stephanie,” she says. “I think you should just call me Aunt Sarah.”

  I want to turn to her coldly and say, “Why?” Or else come up with some other rude yet funny smart-ass remark like a freckle-faced American Artful Dodger. Not that I have freckles. Or, that I’m funny.

  My Catholic school training kicks in and I say, “Thanks.” I see her through my mother’s contemptuous eyes. Her lack of makeup, her checkered, sexless skirt. Her daughter better not try to be friends with me. I’ll grow my nails long, paint them red and scratch her eyes out. That will wipe the smile off of Aunt Sarah’s face.

  She takes a left turn and we are on some freeway with a million cars. “Have you ever been to Los Angeles before?” she asks in her friendly commercial mom voice.

  I shake my head and then realize she can’t see me since she’s watching the cars. “No, I usually spend my summers abroad” pops out of my mouth.

  I couldn’t help it. I watch her to see what she’ll say. Maybe she’ll find me snippy and send me back without having to scratch the eyes out of her precious daughter.

  She doesn’t have time to say anything, though, because a black Mercedes cuts her off and she yells, “Jackass” in a voice that’s not a mom’s on a commercial at all.

  I sneak another look at her. Her hands are tight on the wheel and her teeth are clenched on the right side. Maybe she’s really some kind of maniac? The Mystery of the Psychotic Driver. I subtly check my seat belt and then sneak a hand out to grab on to the door. She cuts off the guy who
cut her off, then ignores his furious honking and flipping her the bird and says, “You’re going to love L.A.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We are in Encino. The Sullivans live in a mansion and I know the style is Spanish from one of my mother’s books on rich people’s houses.

  This house looks like it’s right out of a Nancy Drew mystery. There are balconies with vines and two towers with little arched windows where a kidnapped princess could tap “help me” in Morse code with her feet against the wall.

  Aunt Sarah pulls into a five-car garage and says, “Follow me” in a too-happy voice.

  She leads me through a giant kitchen onto a patio with a ceiling of wooden slats covered in twisting leaves. Her backyard is the size of our school football field. There are no neighbors behind it, only mountains stretching far away in jags of pine trees. I feel like I’ve been plunked into paradise.

  A pool sparkles below jutting boulders. A waterfall spills from the mouth of a little cave. Flowers and plants I’ve never seen before are draped in brilliant colors all over rocks, walls and hedges.

  Aunt Sarah slides into a dark green chair and motions for me to sit across from her. “Whew,” she says. “This heat.”

  Whew what? Aunt Sarah is a wimp. Obviously she’s never been to Boston in the summer. There’s no humidity here. All I feel is a perfect breeze and a warm sun diluted by the lattice of vines overhead.

  A woman with dark hair and eyes and wearing blue jeans comes out. I figure she’s like a neighbor on a TV show who’s friendly enough to come in without knocking when she says in a Spanish accent, “Mrs. Sarah, what I get you?”

  “Just some lemonade and fruit for now, Carmen,” Aunt Sarah says, and I narrow my eyes, thinking that maybe this woman who supposedly “works” for her was actually abducted from her happy home in a village in northern Colombia and is too afraid of the drug lords to run away.