Pearl

by Jo Knowles

  I wipe my face. “It’s the rain,” I lie.

  “Oh, Beany,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. You’re right. I should have told you a long time ago. No excuses, okay? I was wrong.” We look at each other in the dark. I don’t even know where to start now. How to tell her what’s happened. How there’s so much more now to be sad about. To regret. So I just shake my head over and over, as if I’m saying no to everything in my life.

  “Pearl,” she almost whispers.

  “What?”

  “Pearl,” she says again, staring at me.

  “No,” I say. “I’m no pearl.”

  It could be the rain, but deep down I know there are tears mixed in the raindrops covering her face, too.

  “Yes,” she says.

  I wish I wasn’t crying. I wish I could look at her and say I’ll leave for her. I’ll leave so she and Claire can have a happy life at last.

  She grasps my shoulder and squeezes.

  “Pearl,” she says again.

  “Why are you calling me that?”

  “To remind you.”

  I wipe the wet from my eyes. “Of what?”

  Her hand moves from my shoulder to my back. It feels warm and strong and unfamiliar. “Do you know why I named you that?”

  I shake my head. I always hated my name. Both names, really.

  “When I held you for the first time and looked into your face, all my feelings about you changed. I’d thought of you as a mistake. A burden. Something that would ruin my life forever.”

  “Are you supposed to be making me feel better?”

  “I know you appreciate honesty, so I’m giving it to you, okay? Anyway, all those feelings went away when I held you. I was terrified of you, but I could also see how special you were. This living thing. In my arms! It was like all this bad stuff I’d held inside turned into something beautiful. Your grandmother always loved pearls. She said they were one of nature’s miracles. I remember when I was really little I’d sit in her lap and touch her earrings, and she’d explain how pearls were made. And I guess, when I saw you, I felt like I’d made a miracle too.

  I touch my earrings.

  “Gus hated the name, of course. He was so disgusted with me still, he didn’t want any reminders of Mom associated with the things that I’d done. But when he held you that first time, he broke down in tears. I promise you I saw his hate toward me melt away, even if it wasn’t forever. When he looked at your sweet face, I saw love seep back inside him. I saw it in his eyes and the way his whole body softened. He loved you so much. I know you have a hard time believing it, but I love you, too.”

  She tries to squeeze my shoulder again, but her arm around me feels awkward. She still doesn’t know how to touch me. How to hold me. How to be my mother.

  I want to hate her for being so stupid. For not knowing how to love her own kid.

  But I don’t.

  “So, Gus called me Bean because he hated my real name,” I say. “But what about you?”

  “Oh, I tried to call you Pearl for a while, but the fatter and cuter you got, the more Bean seemed a better choice. We called you Little Bean. For the first few months, it seemed like you kept the peace between us. But then I went back to work and Gus wanted to know where I was every minute. And pretty soon we were back to the same old battles.”

  The tree above cries raindrops on us as we sit quietly.

  I close my eyes and think of Henry and Sally and what they must be doing right now. I imagine them sitting on the floor, holding each other in their grief. Maybe wishing they never knew me.

  I face my mother, realizing she is the one with all the answers. She stares out into the dark with a distant look on her face.

  “Mom,” I say, “tell me more about Bill.”

  chapter twenty

  We make a deal that if I follow her inside, she’ll tell me more.

  “He was tall, with thin hair,” she says as she rubs her hair dry with a towel in the bathroom. I hold a towel wrapped around me. The bathroom floor is soaked.

  “Those aren’t really the details I was hoping for,” I say.

  She elbows me like a friend sharing secrets would. “I know. C’mon.”

  I follow her to her bedroom. I don’t know the last time I was in here. It’s more purple than I remember. It feels more like a teenager’s room than a mom’s. There’s a photo of her and Claire on her dresser. It looks like they took it at the mall when they were shopping with Sally. They look so happy they’re practically glowing.

  “Come sit,” she says, patting the bed. We sit cross-legged, facing each other. The bedspread is a silky purple. I never thought of my mom as wanting to be surrounded by so many girlish colors. It’s like a rainbow in here.

  “Okay,” she says. “What do you want to know?”

  “I guess I do want to know more about what he looked like. I mean, did he look at all like—” Henry, I want to ask. But I can’t get my mouth around the name.

  “He wasn’t much to look at.” She uncrosses her newly tanned legs and stretches them out beside me. “He was average, I guess. Brown hair. Brown eyes. I thought he was all right at the time. But … I don’t know, Beany. I thought these weren’t the kinds of details you wanted.”

  “I know. It’s just—” Henry’s eyes are brown. Sally’s eyes are brown. I wish I could remember that Mendel’s law thing for determining eye color. “I was just wondering if he looked like me.” Or Henry.

  She looks at me, squinting her eyes in the dull bedroom light, as if she’s looking for traces of him in me. “Well, you’re a lot prettier, I know that. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the specifics. It was usually dark.” She half laughs.

  “Yeah. That’s funny,” I say.

  “Oh, come on, Bean. Lighten up.”

  “Lighten up? Are you serious?”

  “What?”

  I shake my head and get off her stupid purple comforter.

  “I shouldn’t be here! I should never have been born! Gus is dead! He’s the only person who really loved me! My life sucks! And it’s—” The photo of her and Claire catches my eye. It isn’t my fault. It’s hers. “It’s all your fault! You and—and Claire! You never cared about me! You never cared about the other person Bill left! Or his kid! All you cared about was hurting Gus and sneaking around with Claire!”

  “What? What are you talking about!”

  “Never mind! I don’t know why I even try to talk to you! You’re just a selfish, crazy … I don’t know!”

  I stomp out of the room and down the hall. I’m about to go into my own room but instead I open Gus’s door, step inside the room, and slam the door shut.

  Her footsteps slap down the hall.

  “Pearl Collatti, open this door!” She bangs on my bedroom door, not realizing I’m not there.

  Stupid.

  I have the dumbest mom on the planet.

  “What’s going on up there?” Claire yells.

  Across the room I see my reflection in Gus’s mirror. I creep closer and stare at myself, looking for a trace of Henry. Are my eyes like his? My nose? Ears? Mouth? No. Nothing. There’s nothing.

  “Open this door right now!” My mom yells across the hall.

  I roll my eyes.

  My bedroom door rattles, then creaks open.

  “Bean? She’s not in there.”

  “Where is she?” Claire asks.

  “I don’t know, obviously.”

  I get on the floor and hide under Gus’s bed just in case they figure out where I’ve gone.

  It smells dusty. Dusty and empty.

  I lie on my back and stare at the coils in the box spring above. A cobweb hangs over me, abandoned and forgotten.

  Whispers sneak under the door. I hold my breath even though I’m not sure why I’m hiding anymore.

  “Just leave her alone for a bit. She’s freaked out.”

  “She’s my daughter. I should at least try to talk to her.”

  “You did try! She’s j
ust not ready. C’mon, honey. Let’s go to bed.”

  “But I don’t know where she is!”

  “She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself. She’s probably at Sally’s.”

  Nice Claire. She probably hopes I’ll run away.

  Their footsteps and voices fade down the hall.

  I lie there for what must be an hour, breathing in the dust. The smell of lost days. My back aches against the hardwood floor. When I can’t take it anymore, I carefully roll out from under the bed and cross the room on silent feet.

  I open the door and stick my head into the hallway. There’s a light coming from my mom’s room, but I’m sure they’re not waiting up to see if I make it home safely from wherever I could be.

  I go into my room and crawl into bed. But I can’t sleep.

  The situation is beyond Days of Our Lives. All we need is for Gus to show up at the door and say, “Surprise! I’m not really dead!” And then Bill will come walking in and say that he’s back and wants us all to be one big happy family. Even Claire. I can almost hear the hourglass theme music in the background.

  Outside, the peepers sing incessantly as the rain continues to pour. It’s past one in the morning. There are mumblings through the wall that separates me and my mom. And Claire. I turn on my side and put my pillow over my head so I don’t have to listen.

  chapter twenty-one

  I’m drenched in sweat when I wake up the next morning. I sit up and eye the phone next to my bed. The numbers are automatic. I know the sequence of tones so well that as I press each button I can hum it like a song. I expect Sally’s usual pickup on the second ring. Sally always waits for the phone to ring twice. She says one ring makes her seem too eager, but three is rude.

  After the fifth ring, their voice mail picks up. I didn’t even know they had voice mail. An electronic-sounding woman’s voice comes on and tells me to leave a message. I hang up and redial in case I got the number wrong after all. I dial more slowly. The song sounds sadder this way.

  I get a machine again.

  “Hello?” I say nervously. “It’s, um, Bean. Henry? Could you call me back if you get this message? Thanks.”

  I hang up and watch the phone.

  I imagine Henry sitting on his bed, staring at his ceiling and hearing my voice come through the unused answering machine. Hating me.

  Then I imagine Sally bursting into tears at the sound of my voice, and immediately wish I hadn’t left a message.

  I go downstairs and open the freezer in search of a mini Snickers, then remember Henry and I already finished the bag. I stand in front of the open freezer door and let the cold mist touch my face. It could swallow me. When I grab the bag of coffee beans, I notice a new bag of Snickers hidden behind a Ben & Jerry’s frozen yogurt container.

  I take the beans and the bag from the freezer and start a pot of coffee. While I wait for the coffee to brew, I take two bars from the bag and put the rest back in the freezer. The coffee sputters into the pot slowly, then begins to drip. I watch it while the hole in my chest aches to the drips. The two Snickers sit on the table like happy friends. Everything around me is in twos. Two clean coffee mugs in the dish drainer. Two dish towels hanging neatly folded over the oven door handle. Two dirty wineglasses next to the sink.

  There’s no room for three here.

  As soon as the coffee’s done, I pour myself a mug, grab the Snickers, and head for the front porch. I sit on the steps and dunk the first bar into the coffee until the chocolate is drippy, then lick the melted coating off it. The birds are singing all around me. The morning traffic is heading for work. I look down the street in the direction of Henry and Sally’s house. Weeds grow in the cracks in the sidewalk. Puddles from last night’s rain darken the dips in the pavement, and sad little worms who’ve come out for a drink, or whatever it is they feel the need to do when it rains, lie stranded in the hot morning sun, not sure how to get back to where they came from.

  My feet are pointing in Henry and Sally’s direction. But my body says stay.

  I eat the naked Snickers. It doesn’t taste as good without the chocolate on it.

  The coffee is too hot to sip properly so I set it down.

  A crow caws from the direction of the carriage house. The door is open, like a mouth calling me over to it. I leave my coffee on the top step.

  There are certain smells that throw you back to a memory, like mothballs, or turpentine, or alcohol on your mom’s breath. The smell of the garage is Gus’s smell. Of fishing memories. The smell of dirty water and fiberglass rowboats and musty life jackets and wooden oars that creak.

  Gus. Gus. What would you say about all of this? What would you do?

  I find the key on the hook and leave the familiar smells.

  When I get to the dock, I imagine Gus coming here by himself. Methodically unlocking the boat, putting the oars in their slots, pushing away from the dock. Drifting away from shore. Alone. The water smells stagnant even though there’s a light breeze blowing across the surface. Another familiar smell that brings me back to days with Gus. Days when I was too young to know I was smelling filth.

  I fit my hands over the ends of the oars and row. I remember leaning over the side of the boat when I was little, watching the swirls the oars made as Gus rowed. We called them water tornadoes. I stop rowing and feel the boat silently glide across the water. I never understood what Gus got out of coming out here until now. Now, I can breathe the peace, even if it smells like the Dumpster at Lou’s. There’s something calming about being out here all alone while the world keeps going without a thought about you.

  I lift my face to the sun and relax my grip on the oars, wondering how far I’d go if I kept drifting and let the current carry me away. When the sun starts to burn my face, I sit up and peer into the water. There are no answers down there. There’s no Gus. He can’t tell me what he got out of coming out here day after day trying to escape the lies of his life, just like my mom tried to escape the truth by hiding on the roof. There’s only so long you can try to escape before there’s nothing left to escape from, because you’ve lost it all. After a while it must be like escaping from nothing to nothing.

  I hold the oars tight as the boat rocks gently. I’m not going to be like them. The only real way to escape is to face the truth, whatever it is. Maybe they never left this place because they never knew how to deal with what was real. It’s like their own lies kept them stuck here. I start rowing. I turn the boat around and row against the current. Past all the familiar run-down houses that seem full of hopelessness, as if their hope has been swept slowly away by the current. But I’m not going to be. When I leave, it’s going to be on my own two feet.

  Back at the dock, I grab hold of the post and step out, but when I do, the rope slips out of my hand and the boat starts to drift away. I get down on my belly and reach for the rope in the water but I can’t quite get it. I curse at myself for being so stupid. I will not give up now that I’ve finally started to feel motivated for the first time in my life. I lean farther out and practically fall in. Just as my fingers curl around the slimy rope, a hairy, dark arm with an American flag tattoo appears next to mine and pulls me back up. He smells like sweat and next-day beer breath like my mom used to have when she still came into my room to wake me up in the morning for school.

  I don’t want to turn around and see the face that goes with it. But there are some things you can’t avoid.

  It’s Mr. Clancy, Henry’s next-door neighbor. The cat man.

  “This boat doesn’t belong to you,” he says.

  His hair is peppery gray and his face is leathery, speckled with pointy gray hairs poking out of his jaw and chin.

  “Yes it does,” I say as I catch my balance. He doesn’t look threatening, but he doesn’t look exactly harmless.

  “This is Gus’s boat,” he says.

  “I know. He’s my grandfather. Was. I mean, is. I mean—you knew Gus?”

  He nods and leans closer to me, looking more carefully
at my face as if he’s trying to find Gus in it. “Sorry for your loss, then. You take good care of this boat.”

  He helps me lock it back up, then turns and starts up the path to the street. He’s a skinny old man, and his pants are baggy. I’m not sure how they stay up. The back of his shirt is covered with cat hair. He walks slowly. I want to follow and ask him about Gus, but I don’t know how to start. So I fall back a bit and follow at a distance, watching him walk down the sidewalk until he passes my house. One more piece of Gus I didn’t know.

  When I get home, the house seems very still, as though it’s sleeping. My coffee cup is still on the steps. I pick it up and go inside to find my mom.

  chapter twenty-two

  In the kitchen, I wash my coffee mug and put it in the dish drainer.

  “What happened at Sally’s last night?”

  I spin around. My mom is standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Her baby-doll nightgown is too close to being see-through. The space between her eyes crinkles.

  To avoid her gaze, I look down at her feet. She has on her stupid Peds with the pink pompoms on the heel.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I just tried to call her. We’re supposed to go to the mall. As I was leaving a message on her machine, she picked up and told me to never call her again.”

  I freeze.

  “Did she say why?”

  “No she did not, but I’m guessing it has something to do with what happened last night, with why you were so upset.”

  My cheeks prickle. I lean against the kitchen sink. The wet edge of the counter soaks through the back of my shirt.

  “Beany,” my mom says, not coming any closer.

  “Who was Bill?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “My father.”

  “This again? What does he have to do with Sally?”

  She shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Bill was married,” I say.

  “I know that! Are you going to try to make me feel guilty again? What does this have to do with Sally?” But she puts her right hand on the doorjamb to steady herself, as if it’s dawning on her.