by Lisa Unger
Her mother walked into the room and bent down to pick up the sweater that Chelsea had tossed carelessly to the floor.
“Where did you get this?” her mom asked. She held it up, and it looked impossibly small, like a doll’s top. Chelsea was almost embarrassed for it, imagined it wilting under her mother’s disapproving gaze.
“I borrowed it from Lulu.”
“Hmm.” Her mother folded the sweater and put it down on the bed, sat beside it. “You know … beauty isn’t about flaunting your body.”
“I know.” Really. How could she not know this? They’d had this talk about a hundred times. Beauty comes from within. It’s about intelligence, confidence, knowing who you are. Also: You can’t buy beauty. Or: True beauty doesn’t come from a bottle. Or: Beauty doesn’t come in one size or shape. Yes, Chelsea recognized all these things as inherently true. Too bad the rest of the world was so slow to catch on.
“You’re beautiful without even trying,” her mother said. “Maybe Lulu feels like she has to dress in flirty clothes to get attention.”
Chelsea gave her mother a look that she hoped adequately expressed her skepticism. “You’re not going to tell me that Lulu is not effortlessly gorgeous.”
Her mother smiled. It was that very certain kind of “patient mom” smile. For some reason, it always made Chelsea a little mad.
“There are different kinds of beauty,” said Kate.
“There’s not a boy alive who wouldn’t want to be with her,” said Chelsea. Did she sound jealous? She wasn’t. Was she?
Kate raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean ‘be with her’?”
“You know,” said Chelsea. She felt her cheeks flush. “Forget it.”
She glanced at the sweater lying on her bed between them. It was garish and cheap-looking. After a couple of washes, it would be faded and pilled. It wouldn’t last a season.
“Anyway,” said her mom. “I like your outfit. It’s—”
Chelsea lifted a palm. “Don’t say cute.”
“I was going to say pretty, hip—stylish. It’s a lovely color for you.”
Her mother stood and ran her fingers through Chelsea’s hair, then planted a kiss on her forehead and headed out the door. Chelsea shoved the sweater in her bag. Maybe she’d change into it at the mall. Or maybe she’d just give it back to Lulu.
“Be ready in fifteen,” her mother called from the stairs. “I have to get to your brother’s practice this afternoon.”
He’s my half brother, she wanted to say but didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to say that. It made everyone angry and sad, including her. Anyway, she didn’t even think of him that way. Brendan was her brother in every way, especially the annoying ways.
“Okay,” she said instead.
She sat down at her computer and touched the mouse. The screen saver gave way to her Facebook page. She scrolled through the news feed. Stephanie was, according to her post, miserable studying for her summer-school calculus exam (how it was possible to study and be simultaneously posting on Facebook was another matter). Boring, Stephanie wrote. Who needs calculus in the real world, anyway? Chelsea wrote: Hang in there, girl!
Her friend Brian was psyched to be heading to soccer camp. Chelsea knew this not to be strictly true; Brian was always on the bench, always the last player called into the game. She wrote: Knock ’em dead! Josie was getting her nails done. I swear these Chinese ladies are saying mean things about me. Josie always thought people were saying mean things about her, probably because she was always saying mean things about everyone else. Chelsea didn’t post anything.
Chelsea had 109 Facebook friends, and all of them always seemed to be doing something worth posting about. It made her anxious sometimes to see that feed, to know what everyone else was thinking or doing, whether they were worried or excited, depressed or in love.
There was a perpetual stream of information about her friends and acquaintances, people from school whose friend request she’d accepted because they’d requested it but whom she didn’t think of as real friends, her cousins in Washington, even her step-grandmother. It always caused Chelsea to wonder about what she was doing, what she should write in her status to make herself seem part of it all. No matter what she posted, she felt as if she were always falling short somehow. Once upon a time, her dad, Sean—who hated Facebook—always said, people used to talk. We didn’t post our thoughts and feelings on some digital bulletin board for everyone to see. You knew what you were doing and what your intimates were doing. And guess what? That’s all you need to know.
It seemed as though Chelsea’s parents were fighting for some ideal that didn’t quite match the reality of things. They were always trying to talk her out of the way things really were in favor of the way things should be. It was exhausting sometimes. Give up, she wanted to tell them. You lost. The world is crap, and no amount of communicating is going to change it. But they were so earnest, so well meaning, how could she say that?
She had a new friend request. She clicked on the happy blue heads, and the little window popped up. Somebody named Adam McKee wanted to be her friend. She had no idea who he was, but he was super cute, with spiky black hair and dark, thick-lashed eyes.
She felt a little tingle of curiosity. Who was he? And why was he sending her a friend request? She clicked on his name to see what friends they had in common and where he went to school. He went to high school in Brighton, the next town over. They had one friend in common: Lulu. Figured. Lulu was friends with absolutely everyone, even though she had something terrible to say about most of them.
There wasn’t any other info about Adam McKee that she could access without becoming his friend. She’d ask Lulu about him later. She didn’t accept friendship from a guy she didn’t know, even if he was smoking hot. She posted on her page: Heading to the mall for shopping and smoothies with Lulu. Anyone care to join? Meet us at the food court! It was lame but the best she could do at the moment.
“Chelsea, let’s go!” her mother called from downstairs. Something had changed her mother’s mood; she sounded tense. She’d been like this—normal one minute, short and edgy the next. Chelsea found things went better if she pretended not to notice. She was good at that.
How could it be three-thirty? How did the days pass in this hectic rush? There was a moment after Kate had returned from dropping the kids off at school or at their various summer camps when the light in the house was golden and the day seemed to stretch before her with the endless possibilities of what she could accomplish. And then before she knew it, it was eleven. And then it was two. By three she was in the car again to get them both and cart them around to their myriad activities.
She wasn’t idle. She was never idle. And yet it never seemed like there was any progress made on any of the bigger things she had planned. Sure, the house was spotless, the laundry was always done, dinner was always prepared, the fridge was always stocked with what everyone liked and needed. She did all that. She took care of her family. It was just that she couldn’t assign any real value to those tasks. They were baseline, the things that needed to be accomplished in order for her not to be a complete failure at the major role of her life. Not that she didn’t accomplish things—she was active in the school, in the organic-produce co-op. In fact, this past year she’d accomplished a great deal. But it didn’t seem like enough.
“Chelsea, let’s go!” she called. She didn’t mean to sound tense, though she knew she did.
A minute later, her daughter glided down the stairs. Kate felt a familiar twist as she looked at Chelsea, who had no idea how beautiful she was and was all the more beautiful for it. Sometimes when Kate looked at the swell of Chelsea’s hips, the milk of her skin, the golden flax of her hair, she felt afraid. She wanted to wrap her daughter up in cloth and hide her from the world; she longed for burkas and nunneries and sumptuary laws. How could you ever protect anything so lovely? How could you keep the dirty hands of the world away from someone so desirable? You couldn’t. That was the sad
truth. All you could do was teach her to protect herself.
“What’s wrong?” her daughter asked from the bottom of the stairs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing,” Kate said. She forced a bright smile and touched her daughter’s perfect cheek. “I’m not looking at you any particular way. We’re late.”
Chelsea drifted past Kate, wafting behind her the scents of talcum powder, shampoo, Ivory soap. They were the clean, innocent aromas of childhood. Something about that made Kate feel calmer. She followed her daughter out to the car.
“You know, I’m not thrilled about the whole mall thing,” Kate said, fastening her seat belt.
“What’s wrong with the mall?”
What was wrong with the mall? It was a bastion of mass consumerism, a pusher of junk food, the natural habitat of every pervert, predator, and abductor, and a preferred target of terrorists (according to the news). And wasn’t there some recent newsmagazine show about how kids were having sex in the bathrooms? They were locating each other with some phone app and hooking up. She hoped that was an urban legend. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Chelsea about it.
“It’s just an inorganic way to spend a Friday afternoon,” Kate said. “And we’re leaving on Sunday. We need to start getting ready tonight.”
The mere thought of it made her stomach clench. The trip. The dreaded trip. Its looming presence was pressing down on her, making her edgy and snappish with Sean and the kids.
“You know, Mom,” said Chelsea. Her daughter was too wise, knew Kate too well, to be fooled by those lame reasons for not wanting Chelsea to hang out at the mall. “The incidence of stranger crime is at an all-time low. Mall abductions and murders are a statistical anomaly.”
“You sound like Sean,” said Kate. As ever, she was simultaneously proud of and irked by her daughter’s intellect, which she suspected was vastly superior to her own. Although Kate remembered being smart, sharp, quick-witted when she was younger—vaguely.
“I need things for the trip anyway,” said Chelsea, the pragmatist. “So it’s not like I’m hanging out aimlessly.”
“What do you need?”
“Fleece tops and a pair of Keens.” She shrugged. “Outdoorsy stuff.”
“You can use your card.”
Kate and Sean had given Chelsea a credit card when she turned fifteen, one that attached to their own account. But there were strict rules for use, and purchases had to be approved ahead of time, except in emergencies. They’d never had a problem with Chelsea; she was her mother’s daughter—a straight arrow. Brendan, their youngest, was another story. They wouldn’t be so quick to get him his own card when he was old enough. He was sweet, but he was wily. And he had a rebel’s heart.
The mall stood white and meticulously landscaped, like some smug monument to excess. Kate pulled up to the entrance and watched her daughter gather her things and undo the seat belt.
“I’ll meet you back here at six,” said Kate. “Do you have your phone?”
“Of course,” said Chelsea, leaning in for a quick kiss. She opened the door and hopped out.
Kate rolled down the window. “Text me,” she called after her daughter. Chelsea lifted an acknowledging hand but didn’t turn around and then was swallowed by a huge revolving door.
Even though she hadn’t thought about it in ages, Kate found herself remembering the tearful preschool drop-offs. Chelsea used to cling like a spider monkey to Kate, wailing, Don’t leave me, Mommy (possibly the four most devastating words in the English language).
Mommy always comes back, sweetie. Try to have fun, Kate would soothe, while gently extracting herself from Chelsea’s small but powerful arms. She’d leave feeling simultaneously sick with guilt and desperate for a few hours to herself.
Brendan, on the other hand, even as a toddler, would run off without a backward glance. He was the more secure kid, not a child who, like Chelsea, had suffered through a bitter and violent divorce. Brendan’s world had always been solidly intact; Kate’s marriage to his father, Sean, was loving and rock-solid. Chelsea, on the other hand, had been born into the misery of Kate’s first marriage. Kate was sure it had imprinted on her somewhere, even though Chelsea thought of Sean as her dad, and most of her life had been happy and peaceful. But her father, Sebastian, remained a destabilizing influence even today. Kate tried to breathe through the guilt and anger that inevitably arose when she thought about these things. She tried to release it. What could she do? Life wasn’t perfect—not for Chelsea, not for anyone.
She was pulling up to the soccer field when her phone rang. She thought: What now? She didn’t have any reason to think that. The day had been relatively uneventful, except for the call from her ex-husband, which was always guaranteed to put her in a crappy mood. That attitude—the what now attitude—belonged to Kate’s mother, always beleaguered or put-upon by things like the ringing phone or the doorbell, as if she were so in demand that she couldn’t possibly keep up. Kate shook it off, as she did anything within herself that reminded her of Birdie.
“Hello?” She forced herself to sound bright and open, hopeful.
“Hey.” Her brother. There was something about his tone. She knew exactly why he was calling.
“Don’t say it, Teddy,” she said. No, not Teddy, which was what she’d called him all his life. Theo was what he called himself and had for over a decade. All his friends, his partner, his colleagues knew him as Theo. Only she and her parents still called him Teddy.
Kate saw Brendan waving at her from the soccer field. He seemed smaller than the other boys. She waved back to him, lifted a finger to say she’d be one minute.
“I’m sorry,” her brother said. He issued a long breath. “I can’t. I just can’t do it this year.”
“You have to,” she said. “You promised me.”
She could see the boys jogging onto the field. Brendan threw a quick, anxious glance at her and then took his position. She heard the shrill of a whistle, the low sound of a few parents cheering.
“Honey, I know,” her brother said. “But I’ve just realized that I can’t do this anymore.” She could tell by his tone that he was not going to change his mind. He added, “I’m not like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know,” he said. He sounded weary and a little peevish. “You have Dad on your side. I don’t even have that.”
She felt a childish rush of tears, which she blinked back. Anger, disappointment, sadness were the all-too-familiar horsemen preceding any encounter with her family. They’d come early. And she had a feeling they were here to stay. She didn’t say anything.
“Look, Kate,” he said into the silence. “I’m too old for this. I’m not going to travel for a full day to trap myself on an island with people who abuse me. There has to be a time in your life when you just start staying no.”
She started to push out a disdainful breath. Abuse? That was a little melodramatic, wasn’t it? But that was her mother, too. Always arguing semantics to avoid the ugly truth.
“What about me and the kids?” she said. She wasn’t above the pity play. “We miss you.”
“We’ll come to your place for Thanksgiving.”
“Teddy, please don’t make me do this alone.” Okay, now she was begging.
“Try to understand,” he said. “You don’t have to do this, either.”
She did have to do it. There were a thousand reasons why, all twisted around one another, a big tangle of hope and fear and obligation.
“I have to hang up now,” she said. She sounded cold; she didn’t mean to.
“Kate.”
“Brendan’s game is starting. And I happen to care about the promises I make to my family.”
“Oh, please,” he said. Now he was angry, too. “You sound just like her.”
That was a low blow. It was unnecessary, and a reminder that as much as she loved her brother, there were serious challenges in their relationship. How could there not be? How could the chi
ldren of Birdie and Joe Burke ever hope to be truly close? Where would they have learned those skills? Certainly not from their parents. Maybe it was better, after all, if he didn’t go.
“Bye, Theo.” She ended the call.
She sat a minute, rested her head on the steering wheel until she heard the referee’s penalty whistle from the field. Then she climbed from the driver’s seat and went around to the trunk to get the big cooler of water and the oranges she’d promised the coach she would bring. Promises were important. Why didn’t anyone seem to remember that anymore?
chapter three
Chelsea wasn’t supposed to talk to her biological father, Sebastian, without her mother present in the room. So when she saw his name and number on her caller ID, she pressed ignore. It had nothing to do with the custody agreement. It was just something Chelsea and her mom had decided on a couple of years ago.
When she was younger, after calls with her father, Chelsea would feel inconsolably sad for reasons she couldn’t articulate. Maybe it was because he sounded so sad and so far away. Or because other times he was angry and said awful things about her mom. Often he made grand promises that she knew he had no way of keeping, as much as he might want to, like “Next year we’re going to go to Disney World for a week—just you and me.” Chelsea knew his custody agreement didn’t allow for weeklong trips. Early on, he wasn’t even allowed unsupervised visits. Worse than that, she wouldn’t have wanted to go with him if she had been allowed.
Sometimes after his calls, when she was a little kid, she’d cry and cry in her mother’s lap; it felt like she would never stop crying. When her mother was there, even if Kate couldn’t hear her father’s side of the conversation, Chelsea felt better, as if her life were a solid place, predictable and safe. When she hung up, if her mother was nearby, she didn’t feel like the whole world was built on quicksand, a place where even the adults didn’t know what was true. That was why they’d made the agreement.
