The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  The name hit a nerve. I remembered my father mentioning her but the context of the conversation was blurred. To my mother, I said, “Why is she here?”

  My mother took a deep breath. Vivian spoke again.

  “Your mother’s obviously having a hard time articulating this to you, so here’s the long and the short of it. She can’t pay the mortgage, and there haven’t yet been any bids on the sale. Therefore, I have agreed to let you both live with me.”

  My mind stuck on that one word: “Sale?”

  My mother walked over to me. I stepped back. I wondered how I hadn’t felt it, how a secret that big had slipped by me undetected. But of course, I’d been immersed in a secret of my own. Though the rational part of me knew I was to blame for my own ignorance, right then, I blamed my mother.

  She said, “We can’t afford to stay.”

  “But we can’t just leave. This is our home.”

  “As far as I can tell, I’m your best option,” Vivian said. She looked at her watch. “It’s almost noon, Diane, and we still have to return your rental car. We should hit the road now if we want to avoid traffic.”

  “Why do you get a say in this?” I said, my pulse quickening. “You don’t know anything about our lives.”

  Vivian smiled. Her eyes were soft with pity. “Oh, honey, trust me. I know more than you.”

  She must have skipped a word, I thought, the last one: I know more than you think. There was no possible way that she would know more about my father than I did, about the woman my mother had become. About me.

  “Go pack some things,” my mother said, her voice heavy in a way I didn’t recognize. She stood rigid in the middle of our living room—uncomfortable, I remember thinking, as though she had already shucked this life off like old skin and was now left standing in the filth. “Just the essentials, enough to get by. We’ll get the rest later.”

  For a moment I was frozen, my mouth open and unbelieving. My bottom lip trembled with anger as I said, “I’ll never forgive you.”

  I stormed into my bedroom. Tears clawed their way to the surface and I tried to force them down, but my throat burned and my head was swirling, astounded by my mother’s cruelty. How could she? I kept thinking, until finally the tears broke from my lashes. Until I remembered what I was supposed to be doing.

  Briefly, I considered barricading myself in the room or running away, but I knew that wouldn’t solve anything. In the end I’d still have to leave. I took a deep breath, blinked the final tears free, and began to pack.

  I placed the items in a duffel bag carefully, folding each piece of clothing into a neat square, piling the toiletries in the front pocket one at a time. My eyes were so bleary that I could hardly see what I was doing, but I managed to grab two of my father’s old shirts that I’d been sleeping in and the notebook where the lyrics of “Don’t Look Back” lay dormant. I slid the photograph of the Spades onstage inside the pages. The book of matches from the Sea Witch I slipped in my pocket.

  Done packing, I surveyed my bedroom one last time. I wanted to remember everything: the way the silvery sunlight streaked in through the window, the discernible patterns in the spackled ceiling and the strange arrangement of photos on the walls. My heart felt like it was collapsing. I thought about Kurt, how he’d been right there, how I’d waited too long. Now, I might never get the chance to meet him.

  Back in the living room, I saw that my mother’s suitcase had been placed by the front door. I wasn’t sure if it had been there all day and I was just too preoccupied to see it, or if she had been hiding it beneath her bed, in the back of her closet, and only now allowed it out into the light. I wanted to know, but refused to ask. I couldn’t even look at her.

  “Let’s go, then,” I said to Vivian, not even caring where we were heading, or how long it would take to get there. At the time, the overwhelming act of leaving eclipsed everything else. So the three of us filed out of the only home I’d ever known, past the studio where I would never again hear the soaring sustain of my father’s guitar. And then we drove away.

  I soon found out that Vivian lived just south of LA—in Orange County, in the city of Orange, only three freeways from our home in Eagle Rock—but on that first day, I felt like I’d entered another world. Her property sprawled at the end of a long driveway that snaked back to the base of the foothills, behind the sparse yards that lined the main road. And though her ranch-style home stood just one story tall, by no means the type of stereotypical mansion that I’d always assumed to populate Orange County (in fact, so far, I’d hardly seen any of those), it was still big enough to make the house I grew up in seem like a shipping container.

  “It looks the same,” my mother said. “Mostly.”

  “When have you been here?” I said through gritted teeth, but as soon as the words emerged the answer was obvious. I’d always sensed a sort of settling in the way my mother presented herself, in what she wanted for my father, and for me. Before, I’d thought it was because she longed for more than our meager life. Now I knew the truth. This was where she came from.

  The irony stung in a way that felt physical, like touching hot metal that had been baking in the sun. After trying so hard to locate the roots that led to my father’s past, I ended up here: in a world that existed before him. Without him.

  “Well come on, then. I’m not going to leave the AC running while you two brood,” Vivian said. She slipped the key out of the ignition and opened her door, ushering in a wave of warm air that left me light-headed. My mother turned back to say something but I jumped out of the car and followed Vivian to the front door.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Vivian said when we were alone. I waited for her to continue, watching my mother’s slow movements as she hoisted our suitcases out of the trunk, but she didn’t. The front door swung open, revealing a bright-lit foyer. Vivian motioned for me to enter. “After you, dear.”

  Inside, everything smelled like citrus. Soft waves of sun twinkled up from the polished tile floor, and the walls, sparsely decorated with art and antique mirrors, were painted a lush desert cream. Vivian headed toward the hallway that led to the left half of the house as I trailed behind. Because of the tall ceilings, each room seemed monstrous.

  “Cozy, isn’t it,” I said, louder than intended. My voice echoed through the corridor.

  Vivian laughed. “Yes, well, it’s certainly a change. But you’ll get used to it, I’m sure.” She led me to the kitchen, another wide room with broad bay windows that looked out over a placid pool and the unfenced hillside. On the left, a structure the color of rust peeked through a tangle of wild green growth, nearly invisible.

  “Those were horse stables,” Vivian said. “But all you’ll find in there now are weeds. Termites, undoubtedly. I really need to tear that old thing down.”

  “You rode horses?” I asked.

  “Once upon a time. But the horses we had here were your mother’s. Her father always spoiled her.”

  “She’s never mentioned horses,” I said.

  “Are you hungry? I can make you a protein smoothie, or rinse off some grapes.”

  “Just water,” I said.

  “Please,” Vivian said.

  “What?”

  “You should always say ‘please,’ especially when you’re a guest in someone’s home.”

  I said, “I thought I lived here now.”

  Vivian’s lips rose in a half-moon smile, and an unexpected softness overcame her. It lasted only a moment. The front door slammed shut, and Vivian’s smile faded. She pushed her fingers against her forehead. “She still does that?”

  I shrugged. My father was the one who slammed the doors in our house, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I put that fact in a section of my brain labeled Things I Know That Vivian Does Not.

  When my mother found us in the kitchen, me drinking a glass of water while Vivian sorted through the afternoon’s mail, she spent a minute orbiting the room, touching everything lightly with the tips of her fingers.
She appeared to be checking for dust, but of course the place was spotless. Her hands glided over the granite countertops, the smooth wood of the cabinet doors, the pink pencil erasers that poked up from a faded white coffee mug advertising the Orange Park Acres Equestrian Alliance.

  “I decided to put Susannah in your old room,” Vivian said as she opened an envelope. “I couldn’t imagine you’d be comfortable there, though the place hardly resembles what you’d remember. You’ll be in the guest room, the one that connects to the front bath.”

  “Fine,” my mother said. Then, after a pause, “Thank you.”

  “Susannah, you’re staying down at the other end of the house, last door on the left. I’ve set out fresh linens for you both.”

  “I can’t believe you kept these,” my mother said, spotting the poorly crafted macaroni and marker magnets adorning the side of the refrigerator. Her fingers gravitated toward one of the more elaborate pieces—red-and-blue-painted pasta glued onto a Popsicle-stick picture frame. “I never was much of an artist, was I?”

  “Yes, well, I need magnets,” Vivian said. “Never saw a need to replace them, since they work perfectly fine.”

  Back home, my mother had decorated with a similar flourish. The knickknacks I had handcrafted in grade school, holiday decorations made with pipe cleaners and colored felt balls—she displayed these items proudly. Now, as she brushed her fingers against the pasta frame, gazing at the photo in the center, she smiled. She brought one hand to her cheek. Her other hand lifted the magnet, unintentionally spilling a slew of loose papers onto the floor.

  “Damn it, Diane!” The severity of Vivian’s tone made me jump. “Those are important documents.”

  My mother’s voice sounded crooked as she apologized. “I’ll put them right back,” she said meekly, scrambling to replace the pages. But Vivian bumped her aside.

  “You must have lost one under the fridge. It’s important,” she said again, and then, under her breath as she bent down to look, something else I didn’t quite catch. My mother’s face turned pale. Vivian said, “We can’t keep bothering him with these tiny tasks, Diane.”

  “Mom, he’s not . . .” my mother started. Then her eyes darted, momentarily, to me. She shook her head. “I’ll fix it,” she insisted.

  “There’s a broom in the garage. The handle might be slim enough to slide under there.”

  My mother nodded and headed back through the hallway.

  “Who can’t we bother?” I asked Vivian after a moment.

  She turned to me, blinking, with an empty expression as though she’d forgotten I was there. She said, “Would you like to see your room?”

  My mother was everywhere. She had long hair and short hair, broken arms and ballet recitals, softball games, scrunchies, and, later, jean miniskirts beneath bright-colored crop tops. She rode horses in wide arenas that sprung from the middle of densely foliated fields. She crouched down at the rocky tide pools of Crystal Cove wearing torn jean shorts and soiled Keds. One time, when she swam with a stingray, the photographer even captured her mid-laugh. I could see her molars; she had a silver filling, back left.

  At first, I found it odd that she was ubiquitous in Vivian’s house, the journey of her life chronicled along the wide hallway that led to my new bedroom, and yet Vivian was entirely absent from ours. But my mother had no siblings, no one else to share the space on Vivian’s walls with except the occasional appearance of a tall, slender man who I assumed to be my grandfather. I guessed that displaying a lost family was better than having no family to display at all.

  Still, one thing continued to bother me: Vivian did not act as though she had just discovered my existence. I wondered if my mother had sent her my annual school portraits in crisp white envelopes with no return address, nothing more than a caption. Susannah, age seven, second grade. None were found. And I was not the only one absent; I scrutinized every image, every blurry background, for some trace of my father, but he wasn’t here either. There was not even one photograph from their wedding day. The few shots I found from my mother’s time at UCLA must have been taken before they met because her hair was long and straight, tucked behind her ears to display her whole face. In the photograph of the Vital Spades onstage, her hair had been cropped short, draped like a curtain across her eyes.

  After wandering through all the neatly made bedrooms and the bright-lit office where a bulky old computer skulked, I went to find my mother and Vivian. They were still in the kitchen. A piece of paper—presumably the one my mother had fished from under the refrigerator—rested between them on the table.

  “She deserves to know,” my mother insisted in a hushed voice.

  “I’ve made up my mind about this, Diane,” Vivian replied.

  “I deserve to know what?” Crossing my arms, I leaned against the door frame. A look that I could not translate shot between them.

  “You’re going back to school tomorrow,” my mother said.

  “Tomorrow?” I almost laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”

  My mother’s mouth plunged into a frown.

  “I haven’t even moved in yet, and you already want to send me back to school? Don’t I get a transition period? Some time to adjust?”

  “This is the best way for you to adjust, dear,” Vivian said.

  “And of course, I get no say in the matter.”

  “The longer we wait, the harder it will be for you to catch up,” my mother added, though her words had grown hesitant. “You were doing so well before—”

  She paused. I waited, wanting her to say it, to bring my father into the room and make him real again.

  “It’ll be good for you to make some friends your own age,” Vivian said. “I’m not going to flatter myself by pretending you want to spend all your time with me.”

  “This is completely unfair,” I said. When no one responded I turned away and strode out the back door, letting it slam behind me.

  Outside, I sat in a dusty lounge chair and watched the pale stars flicker into view overhead. I thought about my father, trying to imagine what he would think of this place, of Vivian, of me, and how easily I went along with it all—not fighting or resisting. It seemed like I’d been doing a lot of that lately. I’d given up on my father, given up on “Don’t Look Back,” locked the Martin away in the hall closet and not thought of it since, not until right then, in fact, when it was too late. Now, I was stuck in Orange without a guitar. I was stuck in the wrong part of my parents’ past. I was stuck without ever having spoken to Kurt Vaughan.

  Right then, the what-ifs came rushing back, pummeling me like an avalanche. All the anger that I felt toward my mother and Vivian was usurped by the hot, visceral fury I had for myself. I picked up a jagged rock that rested near my feet and hurled it at the pool. The turquoise water only broke for an instant before reconfiguring, flawless again.

  I stayed outside that night until the sky turned black and the coyotes began cackling, not bothering to respond when my mother called me in for dinner. Then, once it seemed that everyone had gone to sleep, I crept back inside, snatched the phone from Vivian’s office, and called Nick.

  “Something’s happened,” I said when he answered, my voice low and wispy in the quiet night.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  I tried to remind myself that only three freeways separated me from my old home. I’d memorized the route that afternoon. At night, if there wasn’t construction, I could probably make the trip in an hour. Nick wasn’t that far, nor the Martin, the studio. Kurt. I just had to figure out where Vivian kept her keys. . . .

  “Susannah?” Nick said through a yawn. “Are you there? What’s happening?”

  It must have been late, and while I didn’t know what Nick’s plans were tomorrow—if he had an important water polo match or some ASB assembly, a major test during first period—I knew that if I asked him to drop everything for me, he would. Which is why, in the end, I decided not to do it.

  Instead, I let out
a long sigh and fell backward against my pillow. “I’ve been exiled to Orange County,” I told him. “Three freeways and a universe away.”

  Nine

  MS. GROBLER, THE guidance counselor at Santiago Hills High School, was a big, old woman with thick convex glasses that made her copper-colored eyes look like fossils preserved in amber. Her office smelled like garlic, and she wore a beige sweater that spilled over her chair’s armrest in a way that made me think, uncomfortably, of pizza dough. In addition to last night’s dinner, I had also refused breakfast. My stomach grumbled.

  “I want you to know that we are very sorry for your loss,” she said once I had closed the door and settled myself in the worn-out vinyl chair across from her. “Losing a parent, especially at your age, is a terrible thing. And I’m here for you, if you ever want to talk about what you’re going through.”

  I had expected Ms. Grobler to have a soft, nurturing tone, and her booming voice surprised me. Though I didn’t want to talk about it, I nodded anyway.

  “Good. Now, let’s discuss the future—particularly your future here at Santiago Hills. My job is to help you make it the best future that it can possibly be, to navigate those rough, weedy paths that life bestows upon you. . . .”

  Ms. Grobler’s hands circled the air as her metaphors spiraled away. I knew she would not be able to mend the blistering hole that ripped through my chest every time I heard the mysterious, ametrical opening chord of “Hard Day’s Night” on the radio, or even thought about how careless I’d been to leave the Martin behind—but for her, success meant only that I listen. So I let her talk, bobbed my head periodically, and allowed my mind to wander out of the room and down the open hallway. I didn’t miss my old school, but I wished Nick were here and that our conversations weren’t relegated to the opposing ends of phone lines. And it occurred to me then, sitting there in her office, that I had never been the new kid before. I tried to think of some from my old school, tried to remember how they were treated, but not one face materialized. In a way, I felt the anonymity would be comforting—and yet part of me wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be invisible.