Pearl

by Jo Knowles

  “Will you come in?”

  I scoot over to the window and crawl through. She leads me to her room, which is all picked up, but still overwhelmingly purple. I wonder if she and Claire will redecorate it.

  She sits on the edge of the bed, looking nervous. “This is hard for me,” she says. “All this ‘being out’ stuff now. When you’ve kept something a secret for as long as I have, you forget how to live normal.”

  I stand next to her bed, looking down at her. She seems small. “Mom, you used to tell me there was no such thing as a normal childhood, remember? Well, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a normal anything. Especially not in this house.”

  She smiles. “I’m so proud of you, Bean. I’m so proud of you for being okay with this. With—me and Claire.”

  I remember the journal entry about Gus and cringe. I don’t know how she survived it. Or how she could have stayed. If she did something like that to me, I would never stay. No matter what.

  “I believe you now,” I say. “About Gus. I understand why you hated him.” I feel the sickness in my stomach rise again and put my hand over my mouth. I turn away from her until I can control it. “I feel like I don’t know who he was anymore. Like the Gus I knew was a big lie. It feels like—like he died twice.”

  She waits for me to turn back to face her. “I’m so sorry. I knew it would be hard for you to read what happened. But how could any of the rest make sense without you knowing how it all started?”

  “I know,” I say. “But I want to remember my Gus, too. I hate what he did to you. I do. But I can’t hate him. The more I think about what happened, the more I just feel sorry for him for being so … ignorant. I feel sorry and, well, disappointed. And sad. Really, really sad. For everyone. But I still love him.”

  “I am so proud of you,” she says again. “I wish I could have been half as thoughtful and forgiving as you when I was your age.”

  I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other. I run through all the mean thoughts I’ve had about Claire since she’s come into my life. “No. Don’t be proud.”

  “I am,” she says. “I know it’s going to be hard. I know Claire isn’t your favorite person in the world. And she hasn’t exactly given you a reason to change your mind. But give her a chance. Please.”

  I see all the sketches of my mom and Claire together. I see the bracelet Claire gave my mom for her birthday. Best. Friends. “Mom, I—”

  “Let me finish. You don’t know what it’s been like for her, living in … in secret all these years. I know that’s no excuse for how she’s treated you, but try to imagine what it’s like to love someone and not be able to spend time with them whenever you want. To not be able to hold her hand in public. Do you know how much that hurts? What it does to you?

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined what might have happened if Claire and I had run away together. I daydream that maybe we both could have found jobs and an apartment. And … oh, you know. Lived happily ever after. I know that’s what Claire believed would happen. But we were just kids. We never would have made it. I knew it then and I still know it. But Claire … she was a dreamer. Still is. It’s what I love about her. She may be rough around the edges, but that’s because she’s had to be. To protect herself.” She sighs and shakes her head.

  “When we got back together, after you were born, I was so afraid of what Gus would do if he found out. On my salary, I knew how hard it would be to raise you on my own. Heck, for the first three years of your life, I wasn’t even an official ‘adult.’ By the time I might have been able to leave, I was so used to how things were, I was afraid to change. Maybe I felt a little safer keeping my relationship with Claire a secret. Not just from Gus, but from everyone. Claire’s so much braver than I am when it comes to being okay with who you are. But me … not so much. Do you know when we were at the mall this week and we held hands in public for the first time someone called us dykes? I know you think the world is more open but it’s not all that open.”

  I think of Claire talking with Sally in my mom’s room. How happy she sounded. How she wanted to shout about my mom. How every time she looked at me, I probably reminded her that my mom had been with someone else. A guy. How could she not resent me?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I—I know it’s been awful for her. For both of you. And I understand why she can’t stand the sight of me.”

  “Oh, that’s not true!”

  “Um—”

  “Well, okay. I admit the two of you don’t get along very well. But it’s nothing against you. And she’ll change. I know she will!” She jumps up and hugs me. It’s a tight hug. A hug like a mom would give her kid to tell her she loves her. She holds me like that for a long time, as if she wants to make sure the silent words of it will seep through to my heart. Maybe she’ll never say the words again. But I feel them now, and I let them in. My hands hang awkwardly at my sides, but slowly, very slowly, I manage to slide them up and under my mom’s embrace and hug her back. Her cheek is wet against mine as our tears mix together.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  Claire stands in the doorway. Her spiky hair is a silhouette in the hall light.

  “Yes!” my mom says, letting go with one hand and gesturing for Claire to join us.

  Oh, man. I’m so not ready for this.

  Claire and I exchange glances. She raises her eyebrows in question. I can almost hear the happy theme music they play on Days whenever someone comes back from the dead. I shrug, and Claire comes forward slowly.

  “Come on, come on,” my mom says encouragingly.

  Claire steps into our fold. She’s stiff and hard and I don’t know where to put my arm, but that doesn’t matter for long because my mom reaches for my hand and pulls it around Claire. She smells like laundry detergent and my mom’s hair spray, only it smells different in Claire’s hair. It isn’t a bad smell, but it’ll take getting used to.

  When I can’t stand it any longer, I free myself and start to head back to my room. But as I walk away, I can feel their eyes on me. I turn around. My mom sort of nudges Claire forward.

  “I’m sorry,” I say before she can.

  She shakes her head. “You don’t need to apologize.”

  “Yes I do,” I say. I may not have said all the nasty thoughts I had about her to her face, but I still had them. She seems to understand.

  “I’m sorry too,” she says. And I can almost feel her apologizing for having an equal number of nasty thoughts about me.

  She nods, and I nod back. I know things probably won’t ever be perfect between us, but they definitely feel a lot better.

  Back in my room. I open my sock drawer to put my mom’s journal in it, then remember again the other journal my mom gave me. I replace one for the other and take it to my bed. It really is the exact same one as my mom’s, only the lines on the front are blank. I search my room for a pen, then sit back on my bed. Carefully, I start to write.

  I stare at the name. It’s so unfamiliar to me. I think about my mom and why she chose it. Of the bad turning into something good. Something valuable, even. Me. I don’t really feel like a Pearl. But for the first time, I feel like something. I feel like I belong.

  chapter twenty-six

  I’m still in bed when the phone rings early the next morning. I grab it before my mom can.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Henry whispers.

  I look around. It’s slightly light out, but seems early. “What time is it? Why are you whispering?”

  “Early. But I got the box.”

  I sit up. “Where are you?”

  “Home. She’s in the bathroom. I have to hurry.”

  “Well, look inside!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to go. Come meet me at the MiniMart.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But it’s—hang on.” I check my clock. “Henry, it’s five-thirty in the mornin
g!”

  “So what? Just meet me. I have to go!”

  The phone clicks off.

  I get out of bed, throw on the shorts I wore yesterday, and grab my sweatshirt. I get my mom’s diary in case we need to compare sketches with a photograph or something. Then I tiptoe out of the house and make my way toward the MiniMart.

  There’s no sign of Henry when I get there. Even though the sun is coming up, the area still feels scary and deserted outside. I decide to go inside to wait. I pace up and down the four small aisles, past the slush machine and the Hostess rack, past the aisle with all the stuff people forget at the real grocery store, but in smaller sizes, like shampoo and toothpaste and deodorant. Past the cracker and chips aisle, where Henry and I get Sally’s Doritos. Still no Henry.

  The person behind the counter looks at me suspiciously, so I buy a pack of gum and continue to pace and chomp. And think. I just know if I could see Henry, I would feel the answer. If I could see him right now, I would know. But I can’t, because he still hasn’t showed up.

  Maybe I dreamt the phone call.

  I go back outside and look down the street.

  Nothing.

  Empty.

  Forget it.

  I head for Henry’s house. On my way earlier, I’d rushed by on the other side of the street, just in case Sally saw me. But this time I cross the street and walk up to the front of the house, where Henry’s window is.

  I’m not sure what my plan is. Maybe to tap on his window and find out what’s going on. But before I get there, I hear Henry yelling inside. “I’m tired of everything being a big secret! Just let me see!”

  And Sally’s whimper. “No.”

  I knock on the door and ring the doorbell. I feel like my mom, being so pushy to get in, but I don’t care. I get it now. We all have to know the truth.

  The yelling stops right away and Henry comes to the door. “She caught me and took the box back before I could look,” he says.

  “You stop it!” Sally sobs. “Beany, you go on home.” She’s sitting on the couch in an enormous light-yellow nightgown that looks like it used to be a brighter yellow. She’s holding a red box on her lap. Her round fingers clutch it tightly. She won’t face me.

  I feel too uncomfortable to say anything. I’m afraid just the sound of my voice will hurt Sally. But I’m sure she needs me here. I take a deep breath and walk across the room to my spot on the couch next to her. Henry follows my lead and sits down on her other side.

  Sally stares straight ahead.

  My hands are shaking as I pull out the diary to the first page with Bill. I put the open book on top of the box.

  “Is it him?” I ask.

  A tear seeps out the corner of her eye and runs down the same path as the ones before it, down the side of her face, along her jaw to the point of her chin. But this tear lands on my father’s faraway face.

  “Please, look, Sally. Please.”

  She sniffs and takes a deep breath. Then, very slowly, she looks down.

  I hold my own breath.

  I wait. She touches the tear on the man’s face and smudges the black ink it was sketched in.

  She turns the page.

  Page after page. She keeps going even after the sketches of him end.

  When she gets to the page of my pregnant mom, she keeps looking and flipping and crying.

  Finally, she closes the book and hands it back to me. She sniffs again and looks at the TV, which, for the first time in my life since the hundreds—maybe thousands—of times I’ve been in the house, is turned off. This is her own soap. Her own story. She decides what happens next.

  “Your mom,” she says. She looks at Henry and then at me. “That story she made with her pictures. It could have been mine.”

  Could have been. My eyes meet Henry’s and we telepathically exchange one phrase: Thank God.

  “That man,” she says. “He was just like my own Bill. My William. Just like him.” Henry shifts uncomfortably.

  “William,” she says again. “He just left.” She smoothes the top of the flat red box. “No explanation.”

  Henry and I watch her fingers on the box. Waiting. Gathering courage.

  Slowly, they move to the gold-plated clasp that holds her secret safe, and lift the lid.

  Inside, there is a handful of cards. They’re the romance cards they have on the swivel rack near the checkout counter at the MiniMart. The really tacky ones that go on and on in curvy letters about true love and friendship. She opens one slowly. On the inside, above the long message, it says, “To William.” And then underneath it says, “Your Sally” with a little heart.

  Each one is the same.

  She pulls them all out and hands them one by one to Henry, who takes them silently.

  “I meant every word,” she says quietly, as if she wrote them all herself.

  Then, she pulls out a ribbon threaded through a thin gold band. Sally clutches it in one hand. In the other, she takes out a strip of three black-and-white photos in tiny squares. The kind you get at the arcade. “We eloped so I don’t have any wedding pictures,” Sally explains. “Just this.” Two faces smile drunkenly out at the world. Sally, her face much thinner, her hair jet black and pulled away from her eyes in a barrette, smiling like I’ve never seen her smile. And a stranger. He has a mustache and glasses and lighter hair. He looks older. He’s serious, even though he’s sort of smiling, looking away and beyond, like he has somewhere else to go. Just like the man in my mom’s diary. But different. He’s different.

  Sally’s William is not my mom’s Bill.

  Sally brings the photo strip to her chest and presses it there as she sobs. When the photo touches her heart, she cries even harder.

  Henry and I put our arms around her at the same time so that our arms cross as we hold her, together, and let her cry.

  chapter twenty-seven

  When Sally finishes, Henry gets some tissues.

  “I’m sorry, Beany,” she says as she wipes her face.

  “Don’t be,” I say. I want to tell her I understand, but I don’t want to embarrass her. Besides, who knows if I really understand anything at all?

  “It’s just so hard not knowing.”

  I nod.

  “For months I was sure he was killed in a crash or something. Or kidnapped. It had to be something like that. I called all the hospitals to see if he’d been admitted. I called the police. But when they came to the house, I knew what they were thinking. Of course he left. Why would he stay with a lady like me?”

  “Don’t, Mom,” Henry says.

  “Ah, Hen. It’s okay.” She slowly puts all the cards back in the box.

  I wonder how she got them back from William. Then I realize he must have left them behind.

  “Of course I must have known somehow that he left on purpose,” Sally says. “Of course I must have. His car was gone. He took all his clothes and things. The only things he left were—” She hugs the box. “Well. He didn’t leave me much. Just my own broken heart.”

  Henry looks at his lap.

  Sally leans forward and puts the box on the coffee table.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. It sounds lame, but I have to say something.

  She nods. “I just have to accept that he’s gone and I’ll never know exactly why. But a man who does that is no good. I spent a lot of time—years—thinking he’d show up with some explanation, and we’d all be happy again. But you know? I’m starting to realize maybe we were never happy. It’s not like TV. In real life, people don’t come back. Sorry, Hen. But that’s the truth. I have to face the fact that he’s gone forever. He’s not your secret spy, and he didn’t get killed on a special mission.”

  Henry and I exchange guilty looks.

  “He’s a deadbeat who didn’t want the responsibility of being a dad. Just like your daddy, Bean girl. You and Henry just got unlucky in the daddy department. But look how nice you both turned out anyway.”

  She puts her soft hands on both our thighs and squeezes.
I believe I can feel part of Henry’s gladness seep through her hand, into her heart, down her other arm, and out her other hand onto me.

  “I guess we all need to head on over to your house, Beany, and tell your mom the news. But first, I need to clean up.”

  She stands slowly, as if the heavy thing is still inside her. Her nightgown sticks to her a bit and shows the folds of fat on her back. Henry instinctively pulls the material away from her body.

  “Thanks, Hen,” she says. “I won’t be long.”

  She toddles down the hallway to the bathroom and shuts the door. Soon we hear the water running.

  The large space between Henry and me feels enormous. Sally has sat there for so long and so often there’s actually a big dip there. It feels like a canyon we have to cross to get to one another again.

  We sit and listen to the water running in the bathroom.

  And then, finally, Henry clears his throat and we turn to look at each other. And when we do, it is the same Henry I’ve always known and loved. My best friend. But there’s something different, too. Something that makes my stomach feel strange and wonderful. He shifts closer to me so he’s halfway in the dent. I shift closer to him so that I’m halfway in it, too. And then we both allow gravity to let us fall toward each other until our faces are so close I have to close my eyes and hope for the best.

  And the best is what happens next.

  In all the times I imagined my first real kiss, I never thought it would involve the lips of my best friend, Henry.

  Sometimes I think it’s best when the dreams you’ve lived with all your life get scrambled around and come out all mixed up and crazy.

  We kiss and hold each other and let the magic of the moment race through our hearts, through our arms, our legs, our fingers and toes. When the shower stops, we pull away from each other instinctively. Henry looks surprised and scared. It’s sort of like looking in a mirror because he looks exactly the way I feel. But as I start to smile, his mouth turns up just as slowly as mine does. Until we’re both smiling and pulling ourselves out of Sally’s cavern.

  When Sally finally comes back down the hall, she’s dressed in a new outfit. Probably one she bought with my mom and Claire. She’s done her hair up in a tasteful French twist sort of thing. She looks more alive than I’ve ever seen her.