by Lisa Unger
“Wow,” said Sean. He was speechless after that.
“Keep dreaming,” said Kate. She walked off, laughing.
“Thanks, Mom,” Chelsea called after her. “Thanks a lot.”
Who went to Paris over break? And who was skiing in Vail? How much did your prom dress cost? And did you have the new iPhone 5? These were the things that mattered to the student population at Blair Academy. Somehow Chelsea seemed to float above it all, watching the competitions unfold. Not that she didn’t like nice things or bug her parents for the things she wanted.
You don’t seem stuck-up like the other girls at Blair. You’re different. I can tell, Adam wrote to her.
How could he tell, she wondered, that she wasn’t like the other girls? And was it true?
Chelsea heard Lulu’s phone chime and looked over inquiringly. Lulu was always getting interesting communications … from exes, distant relatives, girls who thought Lulu wanted to steal their boyfriends. But Lulu didn’t say anything. Then Chelsea got a message from Adam.
So do you want to get together tonight? She felt a little rush of excitement.
She read the message out loud to Lulu, who smiled for the first time all night. “So?” she said. “Are you up for it? I’ll call Conner. We can double.”
“Wait a minute,” said Chelsea. “What about your whole gateway-to-thereal-world thing? If I get together with him, that’s the real real world.”
“Well,” said Lulu, “if you really like him, let’s do it.”
Chelsea pushed out a small laugh. “Yeah, my parents will go for that. Sure.”
“Who says they have to know?”
Lulu looked back at her phone and started tapping away. She was living in a fantasy world where she thought everybody’s parents failed to notice their comings and goings. Chelsea wasn’t even allowed to spend the night at Lulu’s now that her mother realized that Lulu’s parents were rarely home in the evening and the housekeeper/nanny went home at eight. Of course, that was three years ago. They were old enough to be home alone. But not, her mother contended, overnight.
“Scared?” Lulu asked when Chelsea didn’t say anything.
It sounded like a dare. Lulu looked up quickly with a wicked smile and a wink that told Chelsea it was. Chelsea started to get the uncomfortable feeling she’d been getting around Lulu lately—when Lulu wanted something from Chelsea that she couldn’t give.
They’d tried to sneak out recently, at Lulu’s urging. Sean had caught them climbing out of Chelsea’s window with one of the rollaway fire escape ladders they kept under Chelsea’s bed. When they made it down (which was not easy and was more than a little scary), he was standing on the lawn. Weirdly, he was eating an ice pop; he seemed to be enjoying it and the whole scenario. He must have been in the kitchen and heard them unroll the ladder, which clanked loudly against the side of the house. They hadn’t discussed the evening again, so Chelsea wasn’t sure how he’d caught them. It hadn’t been that long ago—a couple of weeks, maybe.
“Never going to happen, girls,” he’d said. “Sorry.”
He’d walked them back inside without fanfare or argument. If he’d told Chelsea’s mom, it had never come up, which meant he probably hadn’t told her. Because Mom would have blown a gasket. There would have been long, protracted conversations about honesty and trust, loss of privileges, possibly grounding. Sean didn’t flip out like that. It wasn’t his style. He acted like it was normal that they tried to get away with stuff, and it was his job to make sure they didn’t.
“I can’t,” she said. “If he catches us again, he’ll tell my mom.”
Lulu rolled her eyes, looked disappointed.
“Just write: Sorry, can’t make it,” said Lulu. She sounded angry.
Chelsea was already typing a long explanation about how she’d like to but her parents were really strict, and anyway, she normally wouldn’t meet up with someone she didn’t know. She backspaced over it and did as Lulu had said, then closed the lid on the laptop.
Like that, he was gone. He didn’t exist anymore. Lulu was right about not giving him her phone number; then he was part of the real world. She couldn’t close him out. He wouldn’t be just words on a screen.
There was a light knock on the door.
She took a quick scan of the room: Lulu’s cigarettes were nowhere in sight. The television was on, tuned in to Lifetime, but with the sound down.
“Come in,” said Chelsea.
Sean poked his head in. “How’s it going in here?”
“Good,” she said. “Just hanging out.”
“Not up to anything, right?”
“Like what?” Lulu said. She opened her eyes wide.
Sean smiled. “Good. Great.” He closed the door.
“He’s hot,” said Lulu.
“Ew,” said Chelsea. It was not the first time Lulu had made a comment about Sean. It made her sick. “Stop it.”
For a moment, there was only the sound of Lulu tapping on her phone. Chelsea watched her friend, the delicate curve of her neck, the slump of her shoulders. All at once she felt distant from Lulu, annoyed with her.
“You know,” said Lulu, “have you ever heard of spyware?”
She was wearing a pink T-shirt of Chelsea’s (it looked way better on Lulu); her hair was up in a careless knot; she was wearing an old pair of sweats that belonged to Brendan; and she looked perfect. Her skin was dewy, her green eyes bright and heavily lashed. She was a ten in borrowed clothes. When Lulu was crying, or throwing up, or sweating in gym class, she was still gorgeous. God is so unfair in His distribution of beauty, Chelsea’s father had written in his first novel. For some reason, the sentence had stuck with her.
“Sure,” said Chelsea.
“Are you sure your parents don’t have that on your laptop?”
She considered it a moment. “No way,” she said finally. “They’d never do that.” Chelsea looked over at her computer; it sat slim and unassuming on her quilt.
“I was thinking of that night we snuck out,” said Lulu. She came to sit on Chelsea’s bed, snuggled up beside her. “We’d been e-mailing back and forth with Gwen about the party and where it was. We told her we were going to try to get out your window. And just now? That guy asked if you wanted to get together tonight.”
Chelsea thought about this. She just couldn’t see her mom doing that. Kate was so chronically honest about everything.
“Is that how it works?” Chelsea asked. “They can just watch what you’re doing in real time?”
Lulu shrugged. “I don’t know, actually.”
“Do your parents have it on yours?”
“Please. My parents don’t even watch what I’m doing when I’m in the same room with them. I swear I could light up a joint at the kitchen table and my mother would crack a window.”
They weren’t that bad. Lulu was prone to exaggeration. They were quite nice, actually, just distracted, into their work. And they’d recently been cracking down heavily, monitoring Lulu’s comings and goings more carefully. In fact, Lulu’s mom had called earlier to check that she was really here. This was a first.
“Maybe not your mom,” Lulu said. “But Sean? I could see him doing it.”
Sean’s favorite line: “We trust you, Chelsea. It’s the rest of the world we don’t trust.” He’d said it about a million times as they systematically said no to everything she wanted to do. No, you can’t ride to The Killers concert with your friends. We’ll take you and pick you up. No, you can’t go into the city alone with Lulu to go shopping. We’ll come with you. No, you can’t go to a party unless we talk to the parents who will be present. Did they ever get tired of saying no?
“No way,” said Chelsea again.
“I’m just saying,” said Lulu. “I wouldn’t put up with that from my parents. Especially if one of them wasn’t even my real dad.”
Chelsea felt her cheeks go hot in a rush of anger, along with something else—sadness, embarrassment. “He is my dad,” she said. “In all
the ways that count.” Even though she meant it, the words felt hollow, as if she were just repeating what Kate and Sean had said a million times. It seemed like a thing you would say even if you didn’t mean it, so it didn’t hold any weight.
“God, Chelsea,” said Lulu. She was sulking now. “Do you have to be so perfect all the time?”
Perfect? She was so far from perfect. She expected to look over and see Lulu laughing at her, like it was some kind of a joke. But she was staring off into space, grim-faced.
Chelsea didn’t know what to say to Lulu when she got sullen like this, so she stayed quiet. Chelsea turned up the sound on the television and lay down next to her friend. After a while, Lulu draped her arm around Chelsea, and whatever angry feelings they’d had passed. And they were just as they had always been, best friends, closer than sisters could ever be.
Sean stood in the hallway for a second after softly closing Chelsea’s door. He could hear Brendan playing a video game in his room, Kate down in the kitchen. He liked this time of night, the quiet hours after dinner and before bed. It seemed to him that this was the time in which life was lived, when the busy workday or school day was over and the family was under one roof. He cherished the chatter and laughter of dinner, help with homework or movie time, popcorn, bedtime for the kids. He looked forward to his time alone with Kate when they metabolized the day, analyzing, planning, discussing work, the kids, everything. He used to think there was more to life, that it was lived in parties and adventure, travel, girls, and nights out with the boys. But it wasn’t. Everything he ever wanted or was seeking was right here, in this house, right now. He walked down the carpeted hallway and thought that it needed a coat of paint.
On the walls between bedrooms was a gallery of photographs of them and the kids and all their various activities and adventures—Brendan’s killer soccer goal, Chelsea horseback riding, Sean and Kate’s wedding, the family beachcombing in Hawaii, Kate on the rocks at Heart Island. He especially loved an early photograph of him with Chelsea in which she sat on his shoulders, tiny arms wrapped around his head.
In Sean’s memory, there was a discernible moment when Chelsea became his. She was four when Sean met Kate, and initially, Chelsea seemed like some alien life form, cute but strange and unpredictable. He’d never had to take care of another person; he’d never even had a pet. Kate was the first woman Sean had ever been serious about. He wasn’t totally certain what to do with her other half.
Chelsea was a person, sure, he could see that, with a surprisingly bright mind and strong ideas already. She was also tiny and wild, in constant need of something, prone to wailing for no reason. She was fascinating and a bit annoying, adorable and kind of frightening. The kid was raw power; when she was unhappy, the world came to a grinding halt. It had been just Chelsea and Kate for a while. Chelsea’s father had been living at the bottom of a bottle since well before she was born. And she didn’t like to share her mother. In the beginning, Sean and the munchkin had what Kate liked to call an emerging relationship.
It happened the first time Kate left her in Sean’s care. Sean and Kate had been a couple for over a year. He couldn’t remember now what had been the reason for Kate’s absence; he remembered only being touched that she trusted him and thinking that it heralded a new level in their relationship. His orders were clear. Chelsea could watch part of The Little Mermaid (no more than twenty minutes). Kate had left dinner—chicken, broccoli, and a side of mac and cheese. All he had to do was heat it up. After that, Sean could help Chelsea brush her teeth. Then three stories of Chelsea’s choosing, then bed. Though Kate had written it all down for him, he knew the drill; he’d put the munchkin down before, albeit with Kate sitting in the next room.
After the third story, he tucked her in and gave her a kiss on the cheek, which she endured but didn’t return.
“I love you, Chelsea.” He meant it, man, he really did. He loved Kate. He loved Chelsea. He told the kid that every day. She never said it back. It didn’t even matter.
“You’re not my daddy, you know.” She said it easily, just making sure they were clear on the point.
“No,” he said. “I know.”
“I already have a daddy.” Driving it home.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know, kiddo.”
Her eyes got very wide, and then she took in a deep breath. The tears were what brought him to his knees. Literally, he sank to his knees beside her. Chelsea could scream her head off for any number of ridiculous reasons, and all he ever wanted to do was hide his head under a pillow until she stopped. The real tears came when she was in pain. He already knew that about her.
He put his hand on her forehead. “I don’t have to be your dad to love you and take care of you, right?”
She nodded uncertainly. Still those big tears fell. Was there anything more heart-wrenching, more crushing, than a truly sad child? He didn’t think so.
“We can have our own special thing going on.” He tried for a goofy smile.
She seemed to consider that. He dabbed at her eyes with his sleeve. “Like, we could be friends?” she asked. She drew in another shuddering breath.
“Right. Like that.” Keep it simple. If you could find a friend who would throw himself in front of a moving train for you, it would be that kind of friendship, he thought but obviously didn’t say.
In that first year with Kate and Chelsea, something primal and unfamiliar had awakened within him, a powerful urge to protect and defend. Prior to showing them that house (the showing that had changed his life), Sean hardly had a thought in his head. He made a killing selling houses in a boom market, drank with his friends, had a steady stream of casual girlfriends. Yearly, he took outrageous adventure trips with his old college roommates—cage diving on the Great Barrier Reef, trekking the Inca Trail, zip-lining in Costa Rica, snowboarding in the Alps. The looming specter of forty didn’t bother him in the least. Life was a party. Marriage and kids? Why? When are you going to grow up, Sean? his mom had wanted to know. Since he’d met Kate and Chelsea, she hadn’t asked him that once.
“Okay,” Chelsea said. “We can be friends.”
It was settled. She gave a sniffle and a nod and dragged her arm across her eyes, wiping away the last of her tears. “Can I have some juice?” she asked That silky blond hair and pink-cheeked cherub face: She ran him through. He was finished that night, in love with both of them forever. He wasn’t her dad, no. But Chelsea was his in a way he couldn’t explain and didn’t need to.
Even when Brendan followed, Sean didn’t love his own son any more powerfully. Parenthood wasn’t about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else’s. When you loved your kids, you’d give up everything to keep them safe and make them happy, and you didn’t care about the other things, the ones that went away. At least he didn’t.
Kate would not be thrilled to learn that he had installed spyware on Chelsea’s laptop. They’d discussed it in the past. And while she hadn’t been totally against it, she’d expressed squeamishness. It’s kind of gross. I’d like to think they’re talking to us. Honestly, he wasn’t too happy about it, either. He blamed his old friend Brian, who was admittedly a little crazy about protecting his twin daughters.
At first he’d thought Brian had officially gone off the parental edge, but then Sean was Googling about spyware, and the next thing he knew, he was installing it. Then he was keeping it from Kate. And then he actually was spying on Chelsea, catching her trying to sneak out of the house. He was not proud of himself, did not consider this a shining moment in his tenure as a parent. (Though stopping them on the lawn was pretty hilarious. He thought he’d handled that fairly well.) But who the fuck was Adam McKee?
Sean sat down at his desk again and looked at the screen. He could see Chelsea’s Facebook conversation on the screen in front of him.
You’re not like the other girls at Blair. You’re different. Oh, puh-lease. What kind of a game was
this kid running? If he was a kid at all. Sean had Googled him and couldn’t find anything anywhere. Not cool. Although what could you find online about a high school student unless he was a jock written up in the newspaper, or had a record, or was a registered sex offender, or had a recent DUI? Maybe no news was good news.
“What are you doing?” Kate wandered into their shared office and laid herself on the sofa.
“Downloading porn.” He switched off Chelsea’s screen. She wasn’t online anymore anyway, after telling Adam McFuckhead that she couldn’t make it out tonight. Good girl. She was probably having flashbacks about his truly brilliant lawn interception.
“Ha, ha,” said Kate. “I think I’m almost done packing.”
He clicked back over to the adventure travel site he’d been surfing while spying on Chelsea. “How’s Brendan’s ankle?” he asked.
“It’s pretty swollen,” she said. “We’ll make the call tomorrow.”
Brendan’s ankle seemed worse instead of better, the bruise at the bone flowering into a rich blue-black. Sean tried not to get his hopes up (awful as that was). Brendan had a legendary physical resilience, especially when he was motivated. And he loved Heart Island more than anyone. Except Birdie, of course, who, it seemed to Sean, loved only Heart Island.
“I have three possibilities so far for our big family trip next year,” he said. Where your intention goes, the energy flows. One of Kate’s favorite yoga-isms. He loved to watch her bend and flex her lithe body into impossible positions. Sean could barely touch his toes; he was that inflexible. It was fine, though—real men didn’t contort.
“Tell me,” she said. So he did.
chapter nine
The island loomed ahead, a great dark swell in the windy gray afternoon. It was waiting for her. It always seemed that way to Birdie on her approach. Even as a girl, she knew the place belonged to her. And one by one, they’d all gone away, leaving her alone with it.
Her sister was dead. She was long estranged from her older brother, Gene. Take the goddamn rock, Birdie. You deserve each other. In the bitter contest over their father’s will, Gene had conceded Heart Island. Over time, she’d gotten almost everything else she’d wanted, too—her mother’s jewelry, the art. People always underestimated her endurance. Her brother could have the classic cars, the music collection, the vintage instruments. His tastes were always so pedestrian.
