I drink three full glasses of water, one right after the next, until my thirst begins to diminish. As I’m refilling my glass for the fourth time, I hear a soft tapping against the kitchen window. I look up to see Robin standing on the back porch, his face so close that each breath creates a small circle of fog against the glass as he exhales. It’s obvious that he wants to come in.
The security alarm is set. When I type in the code to shut it off, every button I press is accompanied by a loud beeping sound, and I’m terrified that someone will wake up and discover us down here together. But they don’t.
The sensor on the back door beeps as I let him in. He’s never set foot in my house until now. He’s not wearing a jacket, just his usual jeans and a white T-shirt. “You must be freezing,” I say, rubbing my hands along his bare arms, trying to warm him up. “What the hell are you doing here, Robin? It’s the middle of the night. I was dead asleep.”
His eyes crinkle at their corners as he smiles. “You look awake to me.”
I frown. “How did you even know I’d be down here?”
“I got lucky. I was out for a walk. I was going to throw stones at your window, but then I saw you.”
A small part of me feels disappointed that he spotted me in the kitchen. Nobody has ever thrown stones at my window in the middle of the night. The idea is so impossibly romantic; does it actually happen in real life, and not just in the movies? It would have made such a lovely memory. It could have been my red Camaro moment. But it didn’t happen.
It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Not after what I saw earlier. “You’re lying to me,” I say, letting my hands fall away from him. “You weren’t out for a walk.”
“What?” He starts to smile, but then he realizes I’m not kidding. “Alice, why would I lie?”
“Because I saw you with her!” I hiss, struggling to keep my voice low. “And you saw me too. Tell me what’s going on, Robin. What were you doing with Rachel?”
“You think I was with Rachel? Alice, I swear, I’ve never even met your sister. I wasn’t with her. Not tonight, and not any other time.” He pulls me toward him, taking my hands and pressing them flat against his chest. “I’m right here,” he whispers. “I’m with you.”
I want to cry, but I’m so parched that I can’t even bring tears to my eyes. “But I saw you,” I murmur.
“No, you didn’t.”
I look up at him. “Then who was it? Who did I see in the window with Rachel?”
“Alice,” he says, smoothing my hair, careful to avoid the back of my head, “you’re upset. You’re not thinking straight.” He’s right about that much.
I turn my head, leaning against him with my whole body as he wraps his arms around my waist. “I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.
“Then don’t do anything. Just be with me tonight.”
“I can’t. My aunt and uncle will go berserk if they wake up and find you here.” I’ve always hated having to say “my aunt and uncle” instead of “my parents.” The former is such a mouthful, five syllables instead of only three, not to mention the necessary explanation every time I discuss them for the first time with someone new. Over the years, I’ve gotten good at keeping it short. “My aunt and uncle. I live with them.” End of story. People usually don’t pry beyond that, at least not to my face. They wait until I’m not around to get the full story from a third-party source. As annoying as those five syllables can be, I’ve never once considered referring to them as my parents to avoid the hassle of an explanation.
“So let’s go somewhere else.” Robin waves an arm around the room. “The night is ours.”
I bite my bottom lip. “I don’t know.” But I do know, and so does he. I’m only faking hesitation. “You want to drive somewhere?” My aunt’s car keys, I’m sure, are in her purse, which is just an arm’s length away on the kitchen table.
“Sure.” He steps back, looking me over. I’m wearing boxer shorts and a tank top. “You’ll need a jacket, though. It’s chilly out there.”
There are hardly any other cars on the road as we drive away from town, heading east on the highway, our destination still unclear. I didn’t bother to bring a jacket. I didn’t even bother to put shoes on before we left; I’m driving barefoot. Robin leans his seat back and rests his shoes against the dashboard. He isn’t buckled in. “I love this time of night,” he says, closing his hand over mine. He’s done it plenty of times before, but it always thrills me just the same. There’s something about him that makes me feel so protected when we’re together, especially when we’re doing something so irresponsible. “Everyone is asleep right now,” he continues, giving me a sideways glance. “Even the criminals.”
The windshield is fogging up. I should turn on the defroster, but I don’t want to pull my hand away; his touch feels too good to let go. “So then what does that make us?” I lean forward, squinting to see the road.
“It doesn’t make us anything. It’s almost like we don’t exist right now. Nobody knows we’re out here.”
“You shouldn’t have come over tonight,” I say, unable to dismiss my worry. “The police are looking for you.”
“I figured. That’s why I wanted to see you.” He rubs his index finger across my knuckles. “I’m gonna have to leave for a while, Alice.”
“What?” I lose my grip on the wheel; the car drifts to the right, onto the rumble strips. In a smooth motion, Robin leans over and uses his free hand to help me steer us back onto the road.
“You can’t do that,” I say. “You can’t just leave. Where will you go?”
He doesn’t answer me right away. We drive past a sign that says FOREST HILLS – 7 MILES, and our destination tonight suddenly becomes clear. Maybe I’ve known it all along.
“I’ll go home,” he says. “I’ve been gone for too long.”
“Home,” I repeat. My voice is flat. “I thought this was your home.”
He stares out his window. “You know it’s not.”
The fog on the windshield is so thick that I can barely see the road. I finally turn on the defroster. Robin lights a cigarette. The smoke fills the car, burning my eyes. We’ll have to drive home with the windows down to get rid of the smell. I could tell him to toss it, but I don’t. I’m not sure why.
In the past nine years, I’ve only taken the Forest Hills exit three times. The first time was less than two years ago, right after my sister and I got our drivers’ licenses. We never discussed where we were going that day; we both knew without having to say it out loud.
Our old house was really more of a cottage, a single story built on a few wooded acres, our yard basically part of the forest. You had to know where you were going in order to find the place. It was on a dead-end gravel road in the middle of nowhere; our closest neighbor growing up was a fifteen-minute walk away, a tiny run-down A-frame occupied by an elderly guy named Ed Shandy. Rachel and I used to visit him sometimes when we went for walks without our mom or dad. Ed kept a refrigerator in his basement stocked with Red Chief cherry soda. As far as we could tell, it was the only thing he ever drank. Our mom never bought soda, so it was a treat we looked forward to with ridiculous anticipation every time we went to see Ed. Rachel only ever drank one, sometimes two, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I was maybe seven or eight, already hard-wired with an appetite for excess. One time I drank so much soda that I ended up puking on the walk home.
I was the one driving the day Rachel and I visited our old house. “Don’t park,” she instructed, once we were almost there. “Just slow down while you drive past.”
But I couldn’t help it; I had to stop. I hadn’t come this far just to get a glimpse. I pulled to the side of the road and shut off the engine.
“It looks so much smaller than I remember,” I said. “Was it always this tiny?”
Rachel flattened her hands against the passenger side window, like it was a barrier that could not possibly be breached, and peered at the house. “We were smaller. Of course it seemed bigger at the t
ime.” She leaned back in her seat. “I’m ready to go.”
“Are you kidding? I don’t think anybody’s home. Come on, let’s get out. We can look in the windows.”
“No.” She grabbed my arm. “I want to leave now.”
But once I’d voiced the idea, I couldn’t let it go. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” I said, wriggling free of her grasp as I climbed out of the car.
“Alice, come back.” She was pleading with me, her eyes wide with panic, like I might disappear onto the property and never return. I felt a rare twinge of annoyance. This was her home too. How could she not want to peek inside, to compare the way it looked now to the fossilized version in our minds? To me, the house served as proof that we’d existed as a normal family once. We slept in this room. We ate in this room. We played in these woods. We were here. It was real. My aunt and uncle have never made much of an effort to preserve the memory of our parents. Maybe they think it will be too painful for us. What’s more painful, I think, is trying to ignore the past, to pretend it never happened.
Another family had moved in. A new wooden playset—the fancy, expensive kind—had been installed in the backyard. A neat rectangle of land had been cleared to make room for a tidy vegetable garden, the plants arranged in symmetrical rows, the whole thing surrounded by low wire fencing to keep out small animals. A newish central A/C unit hummed away beneath the living-room window. My parents used to claim they didn’t believe in air conditioning—they said it was better to just wear fewer clothes and keep the windows open—but now I wondered if they only said that because it was a luxury they never could have afforded.
I took my time circling the house, looking into every window. The roof had been replaced, three skylights installed where there used to be nothing but rotting shingles, the glass squares spilling light into the formerly dim foyer. The sliding glass doors leading to the side patio were now french doors. The kitchen was almost unrecognizable: ceramic tile instead of linoleum, granite countertops instead of chipped laminate. It was the same thing in the bathroom; everything was new and clean and beautiful. There were no wet towels on the floor beside the shower, no toiletries cluttering the sink, no visible ring around the tub (which my mother used to swear was impossible to get rid of). I don’t know why whoever lived there even bothered to leave the house standing; they’d changed so much they might as well have torn down the place and started from scratch. Somehow, I think I would have preferred that. The way things were, it was like the new owners wanted to destroy all traces of us, to lift away every impression we’d ever made and replace it with something newer, something better, like the remnants we’d left behind weren’t good enough. I had no idea who these people were, but I knew I disliked them, even as I understood how irrational the feeling was. They’d bought the house. They had every right to do whatever they pleased to it.
I only looked around for five or ten minutes before returning to the car. “They changed everything,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to see for yourself?”
“I’m sure.” She folded her legs, pulling her knees against her chest, and turned the radio up so loud that it was impossible to hold a conversation. As we drove away, I slowed down when we passed the spot where Ed Shandy’s A-frame used to sit, but it was gone. In its place, someone had built a two-story Colonial with ugly beige siding. They’d cut down all the trees and installed an in-ground swimming pool.
I turned off the radio. “I wonder what happened to Ed? It seems strange that he would move away, don’t you think?”
My sister looked at me sharply. “He was ancient, Alice. I’m sure he’s dead by now.”
For some reason, the possibility hadn’t crossed my mind. In the months after the accident, I used to imagine Ed sitting in his house, watching game shows on his old TV with its crooked wire antenna, an overflowing supply of Red Chief cherry soda waiting for us in his basement. I used to think that, no matter how long we were gone, Ed would always be there when we finally returned. For a while, I used to ask my aunt to buy us cherry soda when she went grocery shopping. She was happy to oblige me, but it never seemed to taste the same; the syrupy flavor seemed artificial (which I’m sure it was) and overwhelming; I felt sick after just a few sips.
When we got home that day, I felt sorry that I’d forced my sister to wait while I snooped around outside our old house. But she had wanted to go as much as I did—at least I’d assumed she had. “I thought you wanted to go,” I told her. “Didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer me.
“Don’t be mad at me because you were too afraid to leave the car,” I said. The words came out harsher than I’d intended.
“I’m not mad. And I wasn’t afraid.” She glanced at our front porch, where Charlie was sitting with Sean Morelli, helping him brush Sheba. She was shedding like crazy; wisps of loose fur drifted through the air as they worked, floating away in the breeze like miniature tumbleweeds.
“Then what’s the matter? Why are you ignoring me?”
She held very still as she spoke. “I thought being there would feel different. I thought I’d be sad, or angry, or … something.”
“But you weren’t?” Charlie and Sean were watching, waiting for us to get out of the car.
“No.”
“Well, then, what did you feel?”
Rachel didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. “I didn’t feel anything. All I could think about was that we didn’t belong there, that we were trespassing. None of it is ours anymore, Alice. Do you know what I mean?”
“We used to live there,” I insisted. “We had every right to look around.”
“You’re wrong.” She seemed certain of the fact.
“I’m not wrong. That place was a part of our lives.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was part of a different life. Not the one we have now.” She got out of the car and started toward the house. When she reached the porch, she sat down on the swing and slipped into conversation with Charlie and Sean, the three of them laughing about something while I stayed in the car, trying to wrap my head around the idea that a person could simply wipe away the past and start all over again. We hadn’t had much of a choice, true, but Rachel seemed to have let go without a struggle. It wasn’t nearly as easy for me; I was leaving claw marks, resisting with all my strength, desperate to combine all those memories into something that felt whole. It wasn’t working.
Robin and I are parked in front of my old house now, at almost two thirty in the morning, my headlights switched off so we won’t look too suspicious, even though it’s unlikely anyone will notice us this late at night.
“Rachel never came back after that,” I explain. “Not that I ever invited her.”
“But you did come back,” he says. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I came back twice by myself. The second time was just like the first. Nobody was home. I looked around for a while, and then I left. It was no big deal.”
He rolls down his window to toss out his cigarette. “And what happened the third time?”
“I saw them. I saw the people who live here now.” I try to swallow, but it’s difficult; I’m still so thirsty that I can barely stand it.
“I drove up just as they were leaving,” I continue. “I watched them get into their car, the mom and dad and their daughter.”
“Did they notice you?”
“Yes. I pretended I was pulled over to make a phone call. They didn’t pay much attention.”
He lights another cigarette. “That’s because you look so innocent.” He grins. “But I know better.”
I know he’s trying to be flirtatious, that his comment was innocent, but I’m not in the mood for flirtation right now—not when he’s just told me he’s leaving soon. “They looked normal,” I say, trying to pretend his words have no effect on me. “They seemed happy. They drove away, and I waited for a few minutes before I got out of the car, and then I did the same thing I’d done the other times.”
“You looked in the windows?�
�
“Yeah.” I pause.
“What?” Robin asks, sensing my hesitation. “What else did you do?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly, which is a lie, and he knows it.
“Tell me.” When I turn my face toward him, he cups my chin in his hand. “You can trust me, Alice. Don’t you know that?”
But I don’t trust him, not like I used to. He just told me he’s leaving. He doesn’t care that I’ll be alone. He’s looking out for himself.
I tell him anyway. “I threw a rock through the french doors. The glass shattered everywhere.”
He exhales a ribbon of smoke, staring as it dissipates in front of us. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” That’s not true, either; I’d done it because I wanted to hurt them, the new owners with their perfect, happy life and their renovated house filled with expensive things.
“I went inside, Robin.”
The whites of his eyes flash as his gaze widens. “Jesus, Alice. Did you steal anything?”
“No.” The question seems ridiculous. Why would I want something of theirs? “All I wanted was to see my dad’s mural. Before the accident, my dad was working on a mural in the living room. It took up a whole wall. He never got to finish it.”
Beautiful Lies Page 23
