by Liana Liu
Vanessa appears in the doorway. “Where is everyone?”
“I was just saying that punctuality is not this family’s strength,” says Mr. Morison.
“I’m sorry if you think that’s the case,” she says coldly.
“It’s not an opinion, it’s an observation,” he says calmly.
From the hallway comes a thunder of footsteps; then Henry bursts into the room. “I’m here!” he announces. “I was studying so hard, I lost track of time.”
I manage, just barely, not to roll my eyes.
“Where’s Ella?” Mr. Morison looks at Vanessa.
“Where’s Ella?” Vanessa looks at Henry.
“Where’s Ella?” Henry looks at me.
“Uh,” I say.
“She’s probably out on the deck,” Henry says.
“Shouldn’t someone fetch her?” Mr. Morison asks. He sounds perfectly cordial, but Vanessa glares at her father-in-law with narrowed eyes, her lips pressed into a line.
“I’ll go,” I say. “The deck with the white awning?”
“That’s the one,” Vanessa says. “Thank you, darling.”
As I leave the dining room, I hear Mr. Morison say, “How could you make her go find your daughter? Can’t you do anything yourself?”
I start walking faster, down the corridor to the deck, though it seems unlikely I could have missed seeing Ella there before. But I slide the glass door open and step outside anyway. There is no one sitting on the sofa. No one leaning against the wooden railing. Obviously she isn’t here.
Yet I linger for a moment to look at the view. Past the steep slope of grass, past a glittering stretch of sand, is the ocean. As soon as I see it, I smell it: a sweet saltiness that is nothing like the festering saltiness of the fish markets in my neighborhood. I gaze out at that infinite ripple of blue-gray-green. The sight is dazzling. I imagine diving right into that water. No matter that I don’t know how to swim.
Suddenly I feel a slither across the back of my neck, get the vague sense there is someone behind me, watching me. I whirl around.
Of course there’s no one there. Yet something compels me to make sure. I walk to the far end of the deck and find, crouched in the narrow space between the sofa and the wall, a girl. She isn’t watching me. She doesn’t seem to notice me at all. There is a sketch pad propped on her knees and a pencil in her hand. She is completely focused on her drawing.
“Ella?” I speak quietly, so as not to startle her.
She is startled anyway. She jumps up and clamps her pad shut.
“Hi! I’m here to tutor you this summer. Did your mom tell you?” I smile.
“Yes,” she says. Her voice is soft. Her expression is solemn. Ella Morison is a small girl with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and a pale round face. She looks younger than her age, eight, and nothing like her mother. Although the dress she’s wearing is surely something Vanessa picked out. It’s white and gauzy and embroidered. Another kid might have looked cute in it. But on Ella it’s all wrong: the top too small, the bottom too big, the fabric too fussy. It makes her pale skin slightly sallow. And there are a few gray smudges on the skirt.
“Can I see what you’re drawing?” I ask.
Ella clutches her sketch pad to her chest.
I understand. “Maybe later. It’s time for dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. A little,” she says.
“Great. You’ll have to show me the way to the dining room, though. I’m still confused about where everything is around here.”
Ella nods and leads me inside the house.
As we walk through the hallway, I ask if she’s been enjoying her summer vacation and what she’s been doing and whether she’s excited for our lessons.
“Yes,” she says, and “Not much,” and “I guess so.”
Ella Morison is not what I expected. After Joan Pritchett’s gossip and the way Vanessa seemed to delay my meeting with her daughter, I had worried that Ella would be unruly or defiant or just plain mean. This quiet and solemn girl I hadn’t expected at all. But I’m extremely relieved to be wrong.
When we come into the dining room, Vanessa leaps up from her chair. She kisses Ella’s cheek and rests her hand on her daughter’s dark head. “Ellie, how do you always manage to disappear right before dinner?” she asks.
“Sorry,” says Ella. She looks at Mr. Morison. “Sorry, Granddad.”
“It’s not your fault, sweetheart. Someone should be keeping track of you,” he says.
Vanessa grimaces. She bends down and examines her daughter’s dress. Particularly the gray smudges on the skirt. “Ellie! Did you get this dress dirty too?”
“Sorry,” Ella says again.
“You need to be more careful.”
“Sorry,” Ella says again.
“It’s all right.” Vanessa sighs. “I’ll ask Mrs. Tully to wash it out tonight.”
“Come on, El, I saved you the best seat right over here,” Henry says. “Will you please come sit down now so we can eat and I don’t die of hunger?”
Ella smiles. It’s not particularly big or bright, no teeth revealed, but it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile. She goes to sit next to her brother.
The food is now on the table: grilled chicken speckled with herbs, a fresh-baked loaf of crusty bread, a salad in a rainbow assortment of lettuces, and roasted broccoli and zucchini. It’s a lot, and it’s all delicious.
As we eat, Vanessa asks her daughter what she was so busy doing that she almost missed dinner and Ella replies that she was reading, and Henry tells his grandfather about some bird he saw at the beach today and old Mr. Morison guesses it was either a black-bellied plover or a black skimmer. Vanessa remarks that Ella is such a little bookworm, and Henry says that he thought the bird might have been a ruddy turnstone.
“It doesn’t sound like a ruddy turnstone,” says Mr. Morison.
“True. I just like saying ruddy turnstone,” says Henry.
I eat the delicious food and wonder why Ella told her mother she had been reading when she had actually been drawing. I notice that she still has her sketch pad with her, in her lap, half hidden in the folds of her dress.
“So how’d you get into academic tutoring?” Henry asks me.
“Well, my first job was at a summer camp, and I really liked working with the kids. And I’ve always enjoyed school and studying. Tutoring is a way of bringing my favorite things together,” I say. I’ve given this exact explanation many times, but I’ve never felt so cheesy giving it as I do now, with Henry Morison staring at me.
“You’ve always enjoyed school and studying?” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Tutoring brings your favorite things together?” he says.
“Two of my favorite things,” I say.
The way Henry’s looking at me makes me feel like a fake. Yet everything I said is true—I like kids, I like school—even if I’m exaggerating a little. But I’m not about to tell the Morison family how much I need the money. Their money.
“Well, I think it’s terrific,” says Mr. Morison.
“So do I,” says Vanessa. “You see, Henry, not everyone wants to spend all day lazing around.” It’s the sort of comment that might be acceptable if said with enough affection and humor, but she does not say it that way. Her tone is reproachful.
But Henry merely grins. “I refuse to believe that.”
The woman from the kitchen comes into the dining room. “Is everything all right? Can I get you anything else?” she asks, and the Morisons sing a chorus of compliments about the dinner. I murmur along, feeling as though I don’t quite know the words.
“Oh, and let me introduce you,” says Vanessa. “Mrs. Tully keeps our little house here running and cooks us these amazing meals. And this is Ella’s new academic tutor. We’re so happy to have her here with us this summer.”
“Great to meet you,” Mrs. Tully says in a friendly voice, with a friendly smile, and it’s all so friendly that it must have been a differ
ent woman who was rude to me in the kitchen. Except it wasn’t.
“Thanks,” I say. “Dinner was delicious.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” she says.
Mrs. Tully clears the table, carries the dirty dishes away, and returns a few minutes later with dessert: a golden sponge cake covered in cream and berries. I’m already full. I have a slice anyway.
“When do lessons begin?” asks Mr. Morison.
“Tomorrow. We’ll work two hours each morning and two hours in the afternoon.” I watch Ella for a reaction, but she is placidly eating her cake.
“Poor Ella,” says Henry.
“Actually, it’s going to be fun!” I say. “Right, Ella?”
At the sound of her name, Ella looks at me blankly. Clearly she hasn’t been paying attention. But she nods anyway.
“I think I’ll have another piece of cake,” says Mr. Morison.
“Really, Bill? What would your doctor say?” asks Vanessa.
Mr. Morison replies in an icy tone, but I don’t hear what he says because Henry leans toward me and whispers, “Maybe you have the right idea after all. This academic tutoring business is a good way to get away from your family, huh?”
“No! That’s not it at all,” I say before I can stop myself, my voice too loud, too harsh.
For a moment Henry looks startled. Then he smirks. “Ah, I get it now. And I thought you were such a nice girl,” he says.
It is at this moment that my irritation with Henry Morison becomes dislike.
I return to the pink bedroom exhausted: from waking up so early and traveling most of the day and smiling my way through dinner. I brush my teeth, wash my face, and change into my pajamas. Then I get out my laptop and check my email. I have two new messages: one from my best friend, Doris Chang, and one from the parent of a student.
First I read the email from Sadie’s father. He asks if I have any book recommendations for his daughter. I do; I have a spreadsheet of recommendations organized by reading level and genre. I select half a dozen titles that I think will appeal to Sadie and send them to her father.
Then I read the email from Doris. It’s an I-miss-you-already-smiley-face-exclamation-mark kind of email. Typical Doris. I don’t reply. I’m too tired to reply with the necessary cheer, and if I don’t reply with the necessary cheer, Doris will immediately call to ask what’s wrong. Because that’s how sugar-and-spice nice she is.
I turn off my computer and get into the floral bed. The mattress is firm. The pillows are soft. The sheets are smooth. Outside, the crickets are shrieking, but I’m used to car alarms and ambulance sirens and garbage truck grumblings, so the noise doesn’t bother me. I fall asleep almost instantly.
And wake up gasping. The room is dark, so densely dark that I cannot make out the ceiling or walls or the shape of the furniture or even my hand. I sit up. I was awakened by something: a sound and a voice. A thudding sound. A wailing voice.
Just a dream, I tell myself. Go back to sleep.
But then I hear it again. Clunk-clunk-clunk. Followed by a tuneless moan.
“Who is it?” I call out.
Immediately, all sound stops. Even the insects seem to quiet.
I wait. Nothing happens.
After a while, I lie down again and pull the blanket to my chin. Just a dream, I tell myself. Go back to sleep. But it is a very long time before I do.
3
ELLA MORISON SITS WITH A PENCIL IN HER HAND, GAZING AT the workbook open in front of her. Every few moments, she carefully marks something down. Every few minutes, she gently turns a page. Aside from these movements, she is very still. Her posture is impressively straight, though occasionally her shoulders begin to slump, but then she’ll jolt back up, as if she’s been chided by a voice that only she can hear.
She looks like the perfect student, serious and focused. However, this is our third day working together, so I now know better. Joan Pritchett was right when she implied I’d have trouble with Ella. But the trouble, like Ella, isn’t what I expected.
“Done.” She lays her pencil in the crease of the workbook.
I go sit next to her at the table. We’re in the room Vanessa calls the library. Oddly, it contains no books, but it’s a comfortable place to read or study, with its tall windows and high ceilings and leather-upholstered furniture drifting in a sea of antique rug. As long as you bring your own book.
“Let’s see. Question one. ‘Where does Dottie find the dog?’ And you wrote, ‘Dottie finds the dog at the pet store.’ Will you show me where it says that?” I say.
Ella hovers her finger up and down and across the reading comprehension passage but doesn’t stop on any particular line. Probably because Dottie finds the puppy in the school yard, not the pet store. There is no pet store in this story.
“Sorry.” Ella picks up her gummy eraser and scrubs off her answer. She writes, “Dottie finds the dog at the school yard.” Then we continue to the next question. It goes pretty much like the previous question. And so on, and so on, and so on.
Clearly, she can do the work.
Clearly, she is not doing the work.
I’ve never had a student like Ella before. The well-behaved kids are usually good students, not necessarily because they’re smarter, but because they try. They want to please. I know from personal experience; I was always a well-behaved kid.
Ella is extremely well-behaved, yet she doesn’t try at all, and she doesn’t seem to care about pleasing—or, more accurately, she doesn’t seem to care about pleasing me. Though she comes when I ask her to and does what I tell her to and responds politely to my questions, I get the impression that she does it all automatically, while her mind is somewhere else.
I know what to do with defiant children and shy children and rowdy children and whiny children and hyperactive children and crying children and rude children and anxious children and bullying children and bullied children.
I don’t know what to do with Ella.
On the first day, I tried bribery. I showed her a sparkly silver pen I’d bought precisely for this purpose and told her it would be her reward when she got a 90 percent on any section of her workbook. Ella seemed interested in the pen, yet her performance did not improve.
On the second day I tried having a heart-to-heart. I said I understood how it could be frustrating to spend your summer vacation getting tutored, but we could make this fun, and if there was anything in particular she wanted to learn or study, she should tell me, because we were in this together. Ella replied, “I don’t mind tutoring,” yet her performance did not improve.
This morning I tried a stern speech. I told her this was important work we were doing and that she was a smart girl, but she needed to stay focused and try harder, and that we couldn’t waste any more time. Ella nodded and said, “Okay. I’m sorry,” yet her performance did not improve.
So when the grandfather clock in the corner chimes twelve, signaling that it’s time for lunch, I’m relieved. I feel a little bad about how relieved I am.
Lunch is served outside. We sit by the swimming pool, a lapping blue rectangle, at a round table inside a large gazebo, surrounded by flowering shrubs, cooled by the ocean breeze. How unbelievable that this is my life—but just for now, I remind myself.
Today it’s only Henry, Ella, and me eating turkey sandwiches with pesto aioli on whole wheat bread, with a side of baby carrots and homemade potato chips.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Aren’t we enough for you?” asks Henry.
“You’re much more than enough!” I smile my best fake smile.
He grimaces. I’m pretty sure he dislikes me as much as I dislike him.
“Granddad is at his doctor’s appointment,” Ella says. “Where’s Mom?”
Henry turns to his sister. “Guess.”
“Did she go to town?” she asks.
“Warm,” he says.
“Did she go to lunch at Frankie’s?”
“Warmer, maybe even hot.”
“Burning hot, you got it!” Henry holds up his hand so Ella can high-five it.
She high-fives. “Does that mean Daddy’s coming tonight?”
“That’s the rumor,” he says.
“Goody.” Ella looks happy.
“Yeah.” Henry looks not happy.
Mrs. Tully comes outside to collect our empty plates.
“Thank you,” says Ella.
“You’re welcome, Ella,” she says.
“Thanks, that was great,” says Henry.
“You’re welcome, Henry,” she says.
“Yes, thanks, lunch was delicious,” I say.
Mrs. Tully grunts. She walks back to the house with the dishes stacked in her arms. Even with her hands full, she somehow manages to slam the door.
Henry leans back in his chair and stretches out his arms. He yawns a lion’s roar of a yawn, a face-contorting, wide-mouthed wail. I get up and step away from his thrashing limbs. It’s amazing how even his tiredness is annoying.
“Hey, I’ve got a genius idea,” he says when he’s finally done yawning. “Now that we’re free from all those parental people, let’s take the rest of the day off and go to the beach.”
I know he’s talking to Ella, not me, but I instantly say, “No way!”
They both stare at me. I force myself to smile.
“I mean . . . that’s a wonderful idea, Henry, and I wish we could, but Ella and I need to get back to work. We have a lot to do. Once we’re done, you’ll still have plenty of time for the beach this afternoon, and the whole weekend—no lessons on the weekend!”
“God, you’re really no fun at all, are you?” says Henry.
I keep smiling, despite my aching cheeks, despite my straining lips, despite my hurt feelings. I know I’m right for taking my responsibilities seriously, and he’s wrong. Yet he makes me feel like I’m wrong.
Still, I keep smiling. “I guess not,” I say.
“At least you know,” he says. He smirks.
“But I want to go to the beach now,” Ella says.
We both turn to look at her. Her eyebrows have tensed into little dark hooks. Her bottom lip juts out a millimeter. This is the most belligerent I’ve ever seen her, the most animated, and part of me is tempted to give in. If only giving in to her didn’t also mean giving in to him.
