Pearl

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  Forks and knives clatter on the dishware. I close my eyes, as if by not seeing them, I won’t be able to hear them talking about something pointless while my world implodes.

  I clear my throat. “So how did it happen?”

  My uncle shovels steak into his mouth. My aunt takes a liberal sip of wine. Logan cuts a chunk from his steak. Erica stares at her plate.

  “I’d like to know how my mother died,” I say more loudly.

  A fork rattles.

  “Not over dinner,” Aunt Beverly says.

  My uncle shakes his head harshly. “No, she ought to know.” His tone stabs the air like the knife in Logan’s hand. He looks pasty and foul.

  “Janet was found in an abandoned building down in the Bowery. She had a needle sticking out of her arm. She was lying in a pile of her own filth. The autopsy report stated that she overdosed. She also had HIV, and her liver was failing. In the last few months, records show an arrest for drunken and disorderly conduct. She’d been admitted to the emergency rooms of no less than three city hospitals, requesting pain medication. Janet had been in a house where cops found two kilos of cocaine. She had been on suicide watch at a psych ward, and a passenger in a stolen car.” He pauses, nearly out of breath, his face blotchy and the color of eggplant. “That’s what happened. That was your mother’s life, Pearl. That is your inheritance.”

  A tear trickles down my face as I recall the last conversation she and I had before I left. She’d begged me not to go away to school. She promised sobriety and a new life, that we’d have an apartment of our own again. If I hadn’t left, would she still be alive? Would I have been able to protect her from herself?

  As soon as we get back to the hotel, I swallow one of the red pills. I’ll do anything to escape the pain of the burial, the trip to the lawyer’s office, the scene in the restaurant, and the truth. I want to cancel today, yesterday, and this entire year. I’d like to grab an eraser and, with nice, clean sweeps, brush everything away, leaving nothing but satisfying puffs of chalk dust. Instead, I curl into a ball and quietly cry until the pill forces sleep.

  The next morning I wake up to my uncle in the bathroom again. I’d rather be in my bed at Laurel Hill. After I get dressed, I tell my aunt I’m going to grab a coffee.

  “We’re having breakfast downstairs at nine sharp.” Her pallor suggests all the wine she drank gave her a hangover, and the set of her mouth lists somewhere near regret, but probably more from having to be here with me than the alcohol.

  I bolt out the door. I want New York to myself one more time. I hail a cab and direct the driver to take me to the Bowery district.

  I stand on the sidewalk among the still-shuttered stores. A garbage truck belches smoke and chugs along the street as men in orange vests toss black trash bags into the cavernous maw of the vehicle. I want to clear my head. I want my lump of confusing thoughts to be as easily disposed of as the trash.

  I look from brick to stone to wood and concrete, wondering which building it was and who found her. Was it the police? Someone she used drugs with? I exhale the unanswerable questions and flag down another cab.

  After breakfast, back at the hotel, Erica says, “I have something to give you.” Tourists and businesspeople shuttle past as we wait for the elevator.

  Up in the room, she hands me a paper shopping bag. “Here, these were your mom’s things,” she says. “Aunt Janet was really funny. She always made me laugh, well, when I was younger. I’m sorry, Pearl.”

  I grip Erica in a hug, belatedly realizing that she’s the only family I have left who’d return the embrace.

  I don’t dare look in the bag just then. I stuff it in my backpack and rush out to the car waiting to ferry me back to school.

  As the city falls away, I outline what I learned will be my life for the next year and a half. Stay in school, get good grades, stay out of trouble, and receive a monthly stipend. Go to summer school and back to Laurel Hill. It seems straightforward enough. Far better than the streets, but I already miss the freedom of my old life, being able to come and go as I please; spontaneously roaming from apartment to parties, basements, clubs, or rooftops with my friends; and having something like a mother to return to.

  I tell myself to stay focused. Beyond graduation, the future flies in the wind like a kite. I have no option other than to keep aloft, because now there’s something to lose and a legacy I have no interest in fulfilling. Yet, there’s an ache, a weight inside, anchoring me to the ground and I’m afraid of sinking, sinking, sinking.

  Chapter 29

  Back in my dorm room, I drop my backpack by the door. I open the paper bag and pull out a pair of sunglasses; my mother was fanatical about wearing them. She sat on, lost, or otherwise broke every pair she owned or stole. I slide them on my face, and the room darkens.

  I reach into the bag again, and my fingers rest on a slim silver ring, which I gave her back in kindergarten. Actually, it was pewter, which we found out when the guy behind the counter at a pawnshop said he’d give her fifty cents for it. It was worth two dollars at the little Christmas bazaar my elementary school held as a fund-raiser. After a yearlong drug binge, she’d lost so much weight the ring fell off her finger. From then on, she wore it around her neck. I take it off the chain and slide it on my ring finger, but it doesn’t fit. I try my middle finger, then my pointer, and finally my thumb, where it stays put after I push it over the knuckle.

  I pull out a CD with a familiar album cover, a miniature version of JJ’s favorite LP, Pearl. I laugh. Janet upgraded to compact discs. She’d only ever listened to vinyl, claiming it was more authentic. I cross the room to Charmindy’s stereo and slide it in.

  At the bottom of the bag are two envelopes bound in a rubber band, a couple of the letters I’d written to her when I started at Laurel Hill. She must have lost or not received the others. On the top, there’s an ID, a savings card for a discount liquor store, and a wrinkled photo of me with a six-year-old smile, missing teeth, and bangs. I would like to paint it, as if by capturing some of that blissful innocence and letting it dry on canvas, I can reclaim it for my own. The child’s smile tells me she’s unaware of how her mom will crash, how she’ll be the only remaining visitor to the world JJ left in ruin, and how, because of that, she won’t even recognize herself.

  I smooth the fringe on my forehead. A deep gouge rends the center of my chest as I gaze at that picture, Janis’s smoky voice singing “Cry Baby” from across the room. Tears, impossibly hot and heavy, drop from my eyes. With desperate hands, I take one of the red pills. Oblivion. I curl up on the bed, clutching the bundle to my chest, and the last thing I remember is “Tell Mama” playing from the stereo.

  Buds emerge from the branches on trees, daffodils poke through the fragrant mud, and the suddenly lively student body suggests spring fever wafts close in the air. For me it feels like the longest, darkest season has just begun. I avoid eye contact and small talk. I bury my nose in books, the inky lines blurring together. I gaze at my shoes and the remaining mounds of melting snow bleeding into the cracks in the cement.

  I avoid facing Charmindy in the dorm, which isn’t hard because she’s so busy. But while trudging to Painting IV one morning, she catches up with me. “Listen, I know I’ve been giving you the cold shoulder. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. What you went through. When Terran said all those things about you and your mom, I was upset, but not about that. Of course not.” She shrugs. “You couldn’t control anything she did, any better than we can convince Shale to give us passing grades. But I was disappointed you didn’t tell me about your mom. It’s kind of a big deal, you know? You could probably navigate the streets of Chennai with all the stories I’ve told you. It stung that you never shared parts of your life with me. That’s what friends do.”

  I feel a drip, drip, drip as part of me thaws. I don’t smile, but have the memory of one. Stopping midstride, I wrap my arms around her, ho
lding tight, thankful for once, finally, to sorta be understood.

  When I pull away, she lifts one eyebrow. “Wow, a hug from you. That’s a good start.” But beneath her no-nonsense exterior, I know she squeezed just as hard.

  In Shale’s tardiness to Painting IV that day, the students gum up the courage to chat. I talk with Charmindy about how, since my aunt and uncle want to send me to summer school, I’ve been filling out applications. I’m only applying to the ones in New York City.

  “I hoped to do this art program at Parsons. It’s hard to get in, though, plus I don’t think my aunt and uncle would approve. It wasn’t on their list.”

  “At least they don’t want you to be a doctor.”

  “No, they probably think I need to see one, though.” I’m sticking out my tongue and rolling my eyes, making a funny face, when I realize the room is silent. There’s a grunt at my shoulder, and I get back to work, painting my six-year-old self from memory.

  After class, Charmindy says, “I have no idea how you get away with not painting, then doing a really shoddy version of the assignment, then painting the most depressing self-portrait I’ve ever seen, and now, copying that photo of yourself you hide in your desk drawer.”

  I’m surprised she noticed.

  “The assignment is to do a self-portrait. Plain and simple. He didn’t say anything about reinterpreting the term self-portrait,” she adds.

  I remember him commenting on how he doesn’t adhere to any rules. Perhaps in a sly way, he’s pushing us to see if we’ll bend our assumption of what he meant and arrive at the liberating frontier of no rules with a blank canvas. Freedom to let our artistic selves shine through. Either that or he pities me, the moody orphan girl.

  In the following weeks, I put in the minimal amount of effort to maintain my grades, Charmindy urging me along. Sorel, Pepper, and Grant make their appearances, but still shrouded beneath grief, confusion, and an assortment of pills, I pour what little energy I have into studying, if only to stay in Uncle Gary’s favor.

  In early May, Charmindy becomes a relative stranger, caught up with studying and Brett, and, I’ll admit, maybe it’s because when I’m in our room, I’m knit into my bed and Janis’s album plays on repeat in her CD player. I don’t blame her. Otherwise, I’m in the studio, emptying the tubes of oil and pigment.

  Dr. Greenbrae calls me into his office several times, but the pills keep me in a constant daze, and I remain unbothered by little more than my own infinite sadness and the lines of paint I can’t seem to wash from beneath my nails.

  Sorel catches me in the library one afternoon. “Pearl.”

  “Yeah,” I say, rereading the sentence she interrupted.

  “Frickin’ look at me, will ya?” she hisses.

  I slowly lift my head; it feels full of the fluffy seeds of a thousand dandelions.

  “Prom is in a couple weeks, then graduation,” she starts.

  The word prom, coming out of her mouth, does not elicit the response I assume she’d hoped for.

  She clears her throat. “And, well, we miss hanging out with you.” She shifts in her chair. “I, uh, I’m not sure what’s going on.”

  Exactly everything and nothing at all are going on.

  Sore exhales sharply when I don’t respond. “We never see you anymore; you don’t come to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You’re, like, wasting away.”

  I shrug. I sense her interest waning. I want the comfort of her presence, but quietly, like holding hands. Conversation risks the reminder that I’m still here and Janet isn’t.

  “Anyway, I picked out a dress for prom, Pepper’s my date,” she says. I imagine the smirk outlining her lips, like it would have been any other way.

  Her chair squeaks across the floor as if she’s moving to get up. I’m losing her.

  Without looking up from my book, I say, “You’re going to prom? I pegged you for an anti-prom crusader.” I think of my anti–Valentine’s day idea. It seems like a million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  I glance up. Sorel’s grown rounder than I remember her being, or maybe that’s because I’m disappearing like a balloon; snip the string, and I’ll float away.

  “Just this once,” she says. “Anyway, my dress is black. I want you to see it.”

  “Of course.” I rest my head in my hand, hardly able to hold it up.

  “Pepper says Grant’s been mopey lately. He misses you.”

  “I miss me,” I say, closing my eyes.

  Sorel snorts. “Graduation is soon. Good-bye, Laurel Hill.” She pauses and fiddles with the snap of a leather cuff around her wrist. “Hey, what are you doing this summer?”

  I blink open my eyes, realizing I still haven’t received acceptance letters to summer school. My uncle probably intercepted them, and a car will appear and chauffeur me to an unknown destination. “I don’t really know.”

  “You should visit me in Seattle.”

  “Not likely. I’m in my uncle’s custody now. Straight As or—” I search my mind for the or, then look down at an image in my textbook. “The guillotine.”

  Sorel laughs. “Will you come to my grad party?”

  “If I can.”

  “I’ll sort the details.” She winks, and her mischievous smile suggests it’ll happen. “Oh, and do Grant a favor and let him know you’re still alive. OK?”

  Chapter 30

  I remain conscious for final-exam week, again, my stash of pills dwindling. I’m not sure how I function with them, but can’t imagine having to deal without them. Charmindy lingers in the room more frequently than usual, her nose tucked in a book, studying like mad. Even though all I hear are the rustle of pages and the click clack of keys on her laptop, her neck bent with tension and her back to me, her presence reminds me I’m not as alone as I think I am. I wonder if it’s because she noticed I’m sort of becoming translucent and she’s concerned. Or maybe someone said to keep watch over me so I don’t straight up disappear.

  Shale gives us until six in the evening to hand in the self-portrait. I have eight to choose from. As I climb the stairs to the studio, I consider whether I’ll give him one of the sparse images—really just slashes of blue paint on the white canvas—one from the darkest time of my despair, the six-year-old version of me, or one done more recently, which almost looks like I’m fading into the paint.

  I flip on the studio light, then spot Shale, sitting under his desk lamp, immersed in a book. He doesn’t look up when I haul out my canvases, inspecting each one.

  He grunts over my shoulder. “I thought you told me you were here to paint honestly.”

  “This is one version of the truth.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think his lips twitched with amusement. “You’ll pass, but barely.”

  I jerk my head around. “What? Just barely pass? No one else painted eight portraits. That should count for something.”

  “No one else is you, Pearl Jaeger.” He strokes his beard as he studies each painting. “You haven’t pushed your boundaries yet. You can do better.”

  “I put everything into those. I . . . I . . . it was tormenting. Could you possibly try to understand what I’ve been going through this semester?”

  “I want to see who you are, not who you think you are. This—” He shakes his head. “This isn’t you.”

  “How would you know? You don’t know me.”

  “Yes and no.” He tilts his head like he’s weighing his words. “I know you are moody, confused, that you are sensitive and kind. I know that you’ve endured more than most, but less than some.”

  His pause is long. “I know you because you are me. I am you. We are the same. Almost. The only difference is I accept this”—he gestures to himself, patting his chest with the tips of his fingers—“this messiness, this uneasiness, the uncertainty, and even on some days, the goodness here.” He shrugs as if
what he means is obvious.

  I want the static in my head to quiet. He has no idea who I am. He has no right to insult my work.

  “You make art. You make good art, Pearl. Someday you will make great art, I believe. But that is only if you are willing to compose it from your blood, sweat, tears, from ugliness and beauty, freely, without boundaries and expectations and ego.”

  He pauses, as though letting each word saturate me. “How do you do that? It’s simple really. The only enemy you have is yourself. Stay there, with her, until you aren’t enemies anymore.”

  All I hear is rhetoric, hyperbole, nonsense. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I hope you will.”

  I suddenly feel like Shale is too close, not in the way Mitch was but close to me in another way. I need to be outside or in my dorm or fading away, numb from images and imaginings of the truth. I gather up my dumped bag, and the Parsons catalog refuses to go back in. I’m not sure I want to go to the design program in New York anymore. I’m afraid. It’s too risky. There’s too much there that could undo me. My pulse throbs in my ears, and I feel flighty, like the ground slips away beneath me. I start to leave.

  “Should I be pleased to know whether you got in?” He nods at my backpack, at the catalog.

  “Yeah. But uh—” I want to race away, far away, but I don’t know where to go, other than the place the pills bring me.

  “I spoke with one of my friends, a professor there. She was impressed with your sketches, but I think your home is with oils.”

  “I don’t know where my home is, but I’m not sure it’s the city, and it’s not—” I back toward the door, away from his gray eyes, away from so many reflections, versions of myself.