by Lisa Unger
He figured that his mom and his dad were splitting up. And somehow it had something to do with Geneva, who didn’t come back to work.
He walked back through the bathroom and got his iPad.
He heard sounds from downstairs, so he left his snoring brother and sneaked down, creeping on the stairs. He figured maybe he should show his mother the pictures he took when Geneva left. He had so many pictures—pictures of Geneva, pictures of the neighbor’s dog, a picture of Stephen’s naked butt, his own butt. He had pictures of his mom in the kitchen. His dad in his study, staring at his computer, which is where he usually was. He had a picture of his dad’s butt crack as he bent over to try to fix the wall. Cut that out, you little stinker, he’d yelled. Delete that picture. But Oliver had laughed so hard that Dad started laughing, too. His mom always held up her hand. I’m a wreck! Stop, Oliver! Ugh, that’s the worst angle for me. He had a whole catalog of backward slow-motion footage of Stephen jumping off the bed, the couch, the front stoop—one where he fell and started to cry. That one always cracked him up, how fast Stephen’s face changed—happy one second, then wailing at the camera in pain and misery.
Oliver crept down the stairs, past the gallery of photographs on the wall—pictures of his mom and aunt as kids, Oliver, his brother, his cousins, Grandma and Paulo on trips, the time they all went to Disney. He liked looking at them; he didn’t remember a lot of the moments. But the photographs were like a memory, he could almost remember being there because he saw the picture so many times, heard the stories told again and again. There was one picture of his mom holding a puppy—their old dog Chewie. She was ten, Grandma said—which seemed impossible. How could his mom ever have been a kid like him?
At the bottom step, he saw the light on in the kitchen. Oliver thought he’d find his mom, bent over her phone, or staring off into space the way she sometimes did, the expression on her face unreadable. But instead it was his grandmother. She was at the stove, wearing the same pink robe she did most nights, the smell of warm milk meeting him at the door frame. She would put honey in it, some other spices—weird things like pepper and something else he couldn’t pronounce. She called it golden milk; it was maybe his favorite thing ever. He took his seat at the table. Grandma never got mad at him for getting up.
“Mom’s not in her bed,” he said, moving toward the table, pulling up a chair. More pictures everywhere, on the walls, on surfaces. At his house, all their pictures were on the television screens, the computers, iPads, phones. There were hardly any paper photographs in frames. One from Mom and Dad’s wedding, where Mom looked like a princess and Dad was a lot thinner.
Grandma turned to face him; she always smiled when she looked at him and Stephen, Lily and Jasper. Her eyes got all crinkly. But tonight, she looked a little worried.
“I heard her leave,” she said with a nod. “It woke me.”
“Where did she go?”
“Sometimes when she was younger, she’d go running at night. When she was stressed, or upset about something, she’d just get out of bed and go jogging.”
“You let her?” Oliver wondered what it would be like to just leave a place without permission, alone. It didn’t even seem possible, even for his mom, who was always home, or with them, or with Dad. Dad could go out alone; he could be gone for days and it didn’t matter that much. Like now. But Mom? That was different. Take care of your mom, Dad had said on the phone earlier. How was Oliver supposed to do that? He hadn’t asked; it was one of those things you were already supposed to know. Like the “bro code.”
Grandma shrugged, turned back to stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. “Your mom’s an adult. And I’m a firm believer in letting people be who they are. Right or wrong.”
He looked out the window; all he saw was black. “Is it safe?”
“Selena—your mom—is smart and strong, as able to take care of herself as anyone I’ve known. Even when she was your age, she used to go out back by herself without asking.”
“I’ve never been outside by myself.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, gave him a smile. “Things are different now. Parents—do things differently. Maybe better.”
She came over with two mugs, sat across from him. “Be careful. It’s hot.”
“Are Mom and Dad getting a divorce?”
She reached for him, put her hand on his hair. His grandma always smelled like flowers, her skin soft. He waited for her to lie. Of course not! she might say. Or: Don’t say things like that. “Look,” she said instead. “There are some grown-up things going on right now. But we’re all going to get through it together.”
Not a lie. But—
“That’s not an answer, Grandma.”
She nodded. “I know it. But it’s the only one I have for you. Not even grown-ups have all the answers. Unfortunately.”
He already knew that.
He took a sip of the milk. It was spicy and sweet, but it burned his tongue a little. Not too bad. He didn’t say anything—she’d just told him it was hot. Stephen would be jealous if he knew about Oliver’s special time with Grandma. Their special drink. Oliver loved having something that Stephen didn’t have, and he would never complain about it.
“Is it because of Geneva?” he asked. “Because she didn’t come to work?”
Grandma sighed, rubbed at her temples. She was quiet a minute, and he thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer him. That was another thing they did. Just change the subject.
She took a sip from her milk. Then, “Look, honey. When your mom comes back, we’ll all sit down and talk about it. But all you need to know right now is that you and Stephen are safe. And your parents love you as much as ever. Can that be enough for right now?”
He nodded, because he knew that’s what she wanted him to do, to understand more than he did.
He pushed his iPad across the table.
“The night she left,” he said. “I recorded her.”
“Who?”
“Geneva.”
Grandma looked at him, frowning, then down at the iPad. “On this?”
“Yeah.” He turned it to her and pressed Play.
“Did you tell anyone about this?” she asked.
He shook his head, and her frown deepened. She leaned in and watched. He watched, too. Geneva crossed the street, stood at her car digging through her purse. Then she turned around.
Oliver had gotten distracted here, ran off after Stephen who was being a jerk about the remote. But he’d left the iPad in the window, recording.
Geneva walked into the street. Another person approached. He wore a jacket with a hood. It looked like a “he.” Or did it? Maybe a kid? An older kid.
Geneva looked angry, brow wrinkled, body stiff. She was saying something—Oliver wished he could read lips. Geneva pointed toward their house, and the other person, taller than Geneva, turned quickly, then back to Geneva.
For just a second, they’d seen a face.
“Oh,” said his grandmother.
“Who is that?” Oliver asked aloud, even though of course his grandma didn’t know. But when he looked at her, Grandma had her hand over her mouth. She looked—scared. Which scared Oliver a little. He got a funny feeling in his stomach.
Then, Geneva and the other person walked out of view, leaves blowing around them. A ginger cat walked up the sidewalk on the other side. Oliver had seen it before but he wasn’t sure where it belonged. There was just the empty street, cars passing by intermittently—for a while. Mom stopped the recording finally. There was a flash of her annoyed face as she turned it off before taking it away as punishment for fighting with his brother.
“Oh, my goodness,” said his grandma, still staring at the screen even though there was nothing else to see.
“Mom?” The voice startled them both.
Oliver looked up to see his mother standing in the door. She w
as wearing her running clothes, cheeks flushed, her shirt damp with sweat.
“What are you guys looking at?” she asked. But Grandma just shook her head. A tear fell from her eye and Oliver felt awful, looked at his mom. He’d made his grandma cry. He felt the heat of his own tears coming. He fought it back, because he already knew that boys weren’t supposed to cry. Man up, Oliver, his dad would say if Mom couldn’t hear.
“You guys,” said his mom, moving in, sounding scared herself now. “What is it?”
THIRTY-TWO
Pearl
The girl Pop brought home was mousy and pale. She had a strange, glassy look to her, as if she might shatter into a million glittering pieces. As Pearl drew tentatively closer, she could see that the girl was shaking a little. Quaking really, a kind of full body vibration. There had never been anyone in their house before. And Pearl didn’t love it. In fact, she hated it. It felt like a terrible invasion, a broken promise.
“Gracie here,” said Pop, as Pearl put down her things. “She’s in a dark place. We’re going to take care of her for a while.”
“Oh?” said Pearl.
The girl looked at her, then quickly looked away. A single tear trailed down her face from an eye as vague as a morning sky—a kind of palest blue. Barely a color at all. She wasn’t beautiful, not in the way Pearl knew herself to be. But then again, she was just a girl, doughy, small-breasted. Unformed. Maybe Pearl herself had been so, before Pop taught her how to be what she’d become.
“She’s a diamond in the rough,” said Pop, as if reading Pearl’s mind. He glanced worriedly over at the girl. There was an untouched cup of tea steaming in front of her.
“I see that.”
“Don’t be unkind,” he whispered. “She’s just lost her mother.”
There’d been another girl, one who’d interested Pop. Where had they been that time? She couldn’t even remember—someplace bland and humid. But it hadn’t worked out. Pearl wondered if there had been girls before even her. If there had been, they were gone without a trace.
“Once upon a time,” said Pop, directing himself to Gracie, “when tragedy struck, I took Pearl in. I cared for her and helped her to move forward. Now we’ll both take care of you, okay, sweet girl?”
That was a lovely little narrative, if not quite the whole truth. But what is the truth after all? Just a story we all agree upon.
Gracie nodded, seemed to straighten a bit. She ran a hand over her thin hair, cleared her throat. Pearl thought she might say something. But after a moment of them all staring at each other, Gracie leaned over and threw up on the kitchen floor. This was followed by a coughing fit, one that turned into terrible, uncontrollable it seemed, sobbing.
Pearl looked on in horror—something churning in her middle. Disgust.
“Okay, okay,” said Pop, going to Gracie tenderly. “You’re okay. Let’s get you some rest.”
He wrapped the girl up in his arms. The sobbing subsided some, replaced by whimpering. The girl, already tiny, seemed to shrink and disappear into Pop as he ushered her from the kitchen. He glanced back as they left.
“Pearl? Get that—will you, honey?”
He still called her Pearl when they were at home, though he never ever slipped when they were out, or on a job. And when she was home with him, she still thought of herself by that name. Even though she called herself Elizabeth at that time. Not Liz. Not Beth. Elizabeth, common but still regal, elegant. She had a boyfriend at school; someone she’d kept from Pop. He wasn’t a mark. They went to the movies, and he took her to dinner. They studied together. They’d fooled around, heavily, but not made love. He called her Elizabeth, and it had a nice sound when he whispered it in the dark. Maybe he was a mark, in a way. Her con was that she was a normal girl, a student, his girlfriend. She had a waitressing job, a cash situation at a pizza place. She didn’t want anything but to be the girl he saw when he looked at her.
“I can’t get close enough to you,” he’d said the other night, kissing her. She wasn’t sure what he meant—physically, emotionally, maybe both. She liked him—Jason. He was smart, could play the guitar. He was a doorway to the kind of life other people had. She thought about packing her bags now, taking her very few things, and leaving Pop with his new project. She could go. She had her games, her own money now. She didn’t think he’d try to stop her.
“Sure,” said Pearl loudly. “Why not? I’ll clean up the puke. Like I’m the maid.”
But he had already left her behind to take care of Gracie.
There wasn’t much vomit, just a small puddle of nearly clear bile. She might have felt bad for the girl, if she didn’t hate her.
She was aware of a bubbling anger, something mean and small. What kind of bullshit was this? Some stranger in the house that was supposed to be their forever home. Their place safe from the world.
She heard a wail from upstairs, followed by Pop’s soothing tones. Another wail.
Had she been such a wreck at first? she wondered as she mopped up, threw away the paper towels, scrubbed with a little bleach. She washed her hands in hot water.
No, she hadn’t been.
“There aren’t many girls like you, Pearl,” Pop had said—more than once. “You might be one of a kind.”
Looking back, she saw Gracie joining them was the first dark omen. After that, bad things started happening. Wasn’t that always how it worked? One mistake leading inexorably to the next, like a trip down a steep flight of stairs. But maybe it started back in Phoenix. The Bridget thing.
“Don’t be mad,” said Pop, returning to the kitchen alone. Pearl was still washing her hands, scrubbing them raw in hot water. They hurt when she turned off the faucet.
“Why would I be mad?” she said, sharper than she’d intended.
“She’s for you,” he said, staying by the door. “A sister.”
Did he even hear himself? She almost laughed but then she looked at him—dark circles under his eyes, a fatigued sag to his eyelids. She knew he hadn’t been sleeping. She heard him at night, moving around his room. He’d aged since the problem in Phoenix—deep lines had settled around his mouth and on his brow; he’d grown thinner, taking on a hard, wiry quality. Something about it had rattled him hard. He hadn’t regained his footing.
He came to the table and she sat across from him. She could still smell the vomit, mingling unpleasantly with the bleach.
“You don’t just bring home a sister,” she said. “It’s not like getting a puppy.”
He bowed his head, looking down at his cuticles, which were gnawed and rough. “You are mad.”
“No.”
Yes. She was mad. Not just about the stranger in their home; there were a thousand things. Nothing she could name—just that, lately, she felt like an animal in a cage, pacing. That she was bound to him somehow, without wanting to be. That she could leave him, should leave him. But she couldn’t. She didn’t say any of it.
“You haven’t been yourself,” he said into the silence. “What’s going on?”
“I could say the same to you.”
She got up, put on a kettle for tea—just to get away from him. That stare, those intensely staring eyes and how they saw everything about everyone and knew just how to exploit whatever want, need, fear was lurking beneath the surface.
“It’s your father,” he went on, not turning around to face her. “That whole thing.”
She shrugged, glad he couldn’t see her. She wasn’t sure she could keep the rush of emotion off her face.
“It went well,” she said, her voice going higher than she liked. “Big payout. Just like you said.”
Yes, a big payout. She had a pile of cash, delivered with the promise to never communicate with him again. Then, when she could have gone far from him, never thought about him again, let it all go once and for all—
“You burned him down,” Pop said.
She heard the note of disapproval in his voice. It bothered her, more than it should.
She looked at her watch. She was late for Jason. She was late for Elizabeth; her normie self. Student. Waitress. Ordinary small-town girl. Nothing special. The teakettle started to whistle, and she took it from the stove, poured the hot water into the two mugs she’d retrieved from the cupboard. World’s Best Dad, one of them read. The world was full of little ironies, wasn’t it?
“What if I did?” she said, walking back. She put a cup in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.
Yes. She’d left her father’s life in ashes. He’d moved out of that beautiful house. A messy, public divorce had commenced. His daughters wouldn’t speak to him. Stella hadn’t been his only affair, not by a long shot. There was a whole other family, apparently, another woman, other children. Women he worked with, when the news hit, came forward to tell of his aggression in the work place, his unwelcome advances. A wealthy philanthropist, bastion of the community, revealed as a serial adulterer, a workplace predator. It wasn’t big news. But it was news enough. He’d been removed as CEO of his company, last she heard.
“That’s not how it works,” Pop said softly. “Not how it’s supposed to work.”
“Maybe that’s how it works for me.” She didn’t sit, started gathering her things. “Maybe sometimes it’s about more than money. Sometimes it’s about making people pay for the things they’ve done.”
“Never leave them with nothing left to lose. Didn’t I teach you that much?”
“I have my own way of doing things,” she said. “You’ve never had a bigger score than that. Have you?”
He offered a deferential nod. “The student surpasses the teacher.”
