Surviving Valencia

by Holly Tierney-Bedord

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not construed to be real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Surviving Valencia by Holly Tierney-Bedord

© 2012

All rights reserved.

Part One

Chapter 1

2007

I woke up this morning and thought that winter had returned. Yesterday was nearly sixty degrees. Still, anything can happen in March. When I pulled back the curtains I saw that it wasn’t snow, but a low, blizzard-white hovering of fog, weighty as souls, settling on the city. Adrian was still fast asleep beside me. “I thought it was snow,” I whispered. He didn’t move.

We were in his sister Alexa’s guestroom, clean blonde Scandinavian furniture with pale blue everything else. We switch houses with her for a few weeks whenever she and Adrian get restless, which is at least a few times each year and for longer stays each time. At this point we leave our shampoo and soap in the bathroom here since we know its next visitors will probably be us. I hate to sleep in when we’re in Madison. It feels like I am wasting precious time.

“Going out for a coffee,” I whispered to my sleeping husband.

There is a clarity that comes with being here, being anywhere north actually, something in the air that descrambles what Savannah does to my brain, and I need to get some of it. In a moment, I am on Alexa’s old bicycle, coasting downtown. Being here makes me feel young again, and free of all the layers that pile up over time and make us all so grubby. When I am in Savannah, I feel completely connected to Adrian and would never dream of leaving him. My lack of friends or roots there makes me cling to him. But here, I am stronger, more independent. Sometimes I feel like he and I have no connection whatsoever. And I like it. It’s like one less layer to weigh me down.

I know I am really just enjoying the freedom to pretend I am not satisfied. One part luxury, one part affliction, reserved exclusively for spoiled wives. I suppose you could call it the burden of having everything; Instead of worrying about paying rent and finding love and being fat, I daydream about being free.

I arrived at the coffee shop, locked the bike to a bench outside it, and went inside. Even though it was only eight o’clock in the morning, it was crowded. People were sitting around with their laptops, connected to something far removed and unknown. For a fleeting instant I felt jealous, until I remembered that it was most likely work they were connecting to. Yuck. “No woman of mine will ever have to work,” Adrian told some friends at a party once while he was drinking. (Normally he’s very refined, but people can be completely different when they’re intoxicated.) I pretended to be horrified at his tackiness, but in reality it’s no more embarrassing than my three-carat diamond ring.

I turned away from the people with their computers and caught my reflection in the mirror next to a coffee mug display. It reminded me to pull back my messy hair into a ponytail.

“What can I get you?” asked the boy behind the counter. He was probably about nineteen. He smiled, ignoring a woman in her fifties with a briefcase who looked like she was ready to order.

“Do you have any fair trade coffee?” I asked him.

“It’s all fair trade.”

“I’ll take the Kona blend,” I said after studying the list of flavors for a moment. I pretended not to notice the frantic tapping of the businesswoman’s heel on the floor or her irritated, exaggerated sigh.

“The Kona blend is our best seller,” he told me.

“Wait,” I said after he filled the cup, “I think I want the Arabian Mocha Java instead.”

“No problem. That’s my personal favorite, by the way.” He poured the first cup down the drain and got a new paper cup for me. He took care, nestling it in a cardboard java jacket, whistling a little ditty as he did so. At this point the tapping woman said, “Unbelievable,” and left.

I know, I know, that will be me someday. Old and having to work and not even able to buy a cup of coffee. I can see it coming like a big gray storm rolling in, even if no one else would ever suspect such a thing for me. That storm has been there since the day I got married, heavy and watchful on the horizon, perhaps waiting for me to lower the checkered flag, but willing to plow over me if I should forget to do so. It lingers and I live here in the sunshine just outside of the shadow it casts. So that is why I am taking advantage of the here and now.

The boy passed my drink to me kind of slyly, and said nothing of the total. I set a five-dollar bill on the counter and he pressed it back into my hand. His hand was hot and sweaty, very nineteen. Nothing at all like Adrian’s dry, smooth man hands.

“It’s on me,” he said.

It’s a good thing I didn’t have this thing, this aura or skill or whatever it is, ten years ago, because I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I would have abused this kind of power. The way all the girls around me used to do, as if it was the God-given right of college girls.

I took a sip of the coffee and smiled. It was very, very strong.

“Like it?” he asked.

“I do.”

His eyes were sweet and desperate. His neck was stubbly and I could just tell he would smell a little bit sweaty if I got a couple of inches closer. I breathed in deeply, trying to catch a bit of him, but only smelling coffee.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” he asked.

I nodded, but I wasn’t going to stick around. After all, I am a married woman.

I pedaled around, carefully sipping. If I spilled on myself I would become annoyed and the fun would be over. Girls in their early twenties, healthy looking and pretty like a J. Crew catalog come-to-life, were out and about, toting messenger bags and cute boyfriends. They had made the decision early on to be the sun, and not a planet or a moon or a strip mall on a planet.

They couldn’t see that I finally learned their secret language, so to them, I was nothing. Not a member of their team, of their sorority. No threat at all. Invisible.

How many free cups of coffee have you gotten lately, I wondered about the girl with the pale yellow hair nearly down to her waist. She was on her phone laughing, throwing her head back like a flip top cap on some whitening toothpaste. “Flip top,” I said as I pedaled past her. She looked up at me and glared.

“Is it really that funny or are you just trying to look happy?” I whispered. I was too far away for her to hear me. People are drawn to happy people. I could remember being at parties when I was younger and fake laughing with my friends over nothing at all. Not hysterically. Not like a hyena. Just like a happy girl. It always brought the boys over. That and making out with each other.

Back to flip top. She was walking down the street now.  Still talking, still laughing. She probably doesn’t even know they charge for coffee.

Stop being jealous, I told myself. Those girls will be lucky to be where I am in ten years. I doubt any of them will live like this.

Chapter 2

The way it was

In 1985 I turned ten years old. I had Cyndi Lauper cassettes (we called them tapes back then), an extensive collection of bells on the cream-colored shelves of my dresser, and an old stereo I inherited from the twins. The stereo played either records or something called eight-tracks, but no tapes at all. Nevertheless, I arranged my tapes in a neat, vertical stack, reading their accordion pullout lyrics religiously while I waited for the boombox I never got.

Not knowing the melodies, I sang the words to the songs that didn’t play on the radio to tunes I created in my head. I’ll Kiss You became a somber, religious wail. Money Changes Everything had a country twang and went to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

I was ugly and awkward and bored, like nearly everyone my age. Life varied between okay and gross, with little discernible difference from one to the other. I couldn’t wait to get older.

Valencia and Van had nothing in common aside from being twins, yet that did not stop their polygrip bond of togetherness. Sometimes I resented it terribly; usually I just accepted it as the way things were. I always wanted more though. I often went through the drawers of Valencia’s dressing table when she wasn’t home, reading her notes from friends and smearing her face lotions and perfume sticks on my arms. I was like a serial killer in training, trying to absorb something of her into myself. You would think that being her younger sister would be enough proof for me that I had some of that blood inside, but I usually couldn’t feel it. Smelling of her Avon Soft Musk and Bonne Bell Lipsmackers was a stronger reassurance.

Valencia was the most popular girl in her grade; every grade has that one. She achieved it with an effortless grace that, even from behind the scenes where I got to watch, I knew she deserved. She would have been the most popular girl in any grade, any school, anywhere. She was the real deal. She was genuinely elusive. Not a catty teenage girl trying to distance herself, but some tall, lovely person who landed in our lives by an error of fate. Placed in the wrong world, like those bells on my dresser I kept receiving as gifts but never could remember how the whole mess started. My mother knew it. I assumed my father didn’t notice, because it seemed that fathers never noticed much.

From the time the twins were born until they died, Van was closest to her. Like so many others who knew her, I once held aspirations of changing that, of becoming the one who mattered most to her.

Van was more ordinary. Tall and often kind though sometimes moody, and very good at basketball. We played checkers and watched The Dukes of Hazzard. Usually I annoyed him and he avoided me. I had a crush on every friend he ever brought home.

Van and Valencia were nearly seven when I was born. I think I showed up like an unexpected shipment of Tupperware might land on a front porch, a gift from some forgotten aunt for some holiday that had already passed. They waited until the box was soggy from rain, then eventually someone unwrapped me and took me inside to observe a family already in motion. I didn’t feel bad about it. It felt normal, and being a naturally lazy person, I enjoyed the low-pressure lifestyle that comes with being a forgettable afterthought. It would have been a satisfactory way for me to be, as long as the family had stayed in motion, as long as I had stayed out of sight, out of mind.

Chapter 3

I arrived back at Alexa’s and found Adrian still asleep. The cool, watery light filtering in from around the curtains made the room seem colder than it really was, and I found myself wanting to get back into bed. I carefully settled in, sipping the last of my coffee, and pulled the duvet around myself while he continued to sleep, obliviously. It sometimes struck me as creepy how soundly he slept. I kissed his forehead and his hair, and his scent made me fall in love with him again. The coffee shop boy and the yellow haired girl disappeared and I felt like my reality was once again secure. I reached carefully across his warm body and set my empty coffee cup on the window sill, and then curled myself around him. He really has some spell over me. I am positively wrapped around his finger.

We lay like this for a while, until his rhythmic breathing became boring to me and my mind wandered back to my bike ride. Sleeping too late makes me restless. Not when I do it; when Adrian does it, I mean. It’s as isolating of a feeling as being the only sober one at a party.

I wandered around Alexa’s house, no longer interested in snooping since it was more a second home to me than her house any longer. I found myself upstairs in the loft, a bohemian kind of place with bean bags and guitars and bongo drums. I stretched out on a yoga mat and did some halfhearted crunches until the soft sloshing sound of coffee in my belly became too disturbing for me to continue.

From up here I can look down into the bedroom and see the corner of the bed, watch Adrian’s bare foot twitching like a dog as he dreams. It gives me that strange Gulliver’s Travels kind of feeling that I loved as a child. And now, when I look at Adrian’s foot, I am not a giant, but he is a tiny little man in a tiny little bed. I could wrap him in a tissue and put him in my pocket. If I had another cup of coffee, and if it were not too terribly hot, I could dunk him in as though it were a tiny Jacuzzi just for him. I wish I really could, make a little bed and put him here beside me as I go about my morning. He hates it when I talk like this.

Adrian and I met seven years ago when we were working together at Border’s. We were already in relationships. That is really an understatement. Adrian was married and I was living with a guy named Sam. But Adrian and I started having an affair and, just like that, we ended the relationships we were in and got engaged. It was almost too easy. One day we were having lunch together and I said, “Let’s do it. Let’s break up with Sam and Belinda!” and he said, “And let’s get married!” No one had ever said anything like that to me. We were giddy over the harm we were about to inflict.

Now life is good and easy in a way I am still not always used to. No more stress about paying bills. No more wondering Will I ever get married. I never realized what a concern it had been until I no longer had it to worry about. Ta da. I am no longer a work in progress. I have arrived.

That is what being married kind of says to the world.

But what no one tells you, is that there is a badness that comes with marriage, a sort of boringness of feeling like you no longer have any surprises in store.

I guess that is just my immaturity talking. I have always been very immature. That is what my parents told me, anyway.

I’m trying. Really trying. To just go with it. To plan for a future the way everyone else who is married does. Luckily, Adrian seems unaware of my doubts. I have always been good at hiding things. And the doubts are very back burner. I can carry on huge conversations while having an entirely different conversation alone in my head. For the most part, I am truly doing this. This marriage, I mean.

The changes are not all bad, really, and the back burner is not always even hot. Sometimes there is just a tea kettle back there, a tea kettle of tiny secret worries, and what is one little tea kettle when it’s on a Wolf gas range in the middle of a great big wonderful life?

So yes, there are good things. Great things. The kinds of things I tell my friends, my eyes bright and glistening with emphatic sincerity. How the biggest difference is this feeling of wholeness. I think I was transparent before, and now, finally, I am solid. I can be seen by him, my words can be heard, I have weight and mass. Before, I thought it was normal for me to be the wispy compilation of other people’s opinions of me, and nothing more. I was only alive when someone spoke my name. But now I feel I stand alone as an actual human being. Or perhaps it’s just that I really am so much to Adrian, and I am feeling that.

I really do feel this way sometimes. And it feels amazing. I think this is something like it must have felt to be Valencia.

I lie awake at night and try to envelop myself in this feeling, pulling Adrian’s sleeping body around me, trying to save this goodness and trying to push out all the doubts. Sometime it almost works, and then I wonder how long it will last.

Chapter 4

I can vaguely remember a time when there was a cardboard box on a closet shelf at my parents’ house. Valencia had put her cheerleading outfit inside it for safekeeping the summer before she went to college. I think it was the kind of box a cake would go in: large with a cellophane window showing what was inside. That’s a blur, but the cheerleading uniform is not. It had a purple and gold pleated skirt and a purple v-neck top with the silhouette of a roaring lion across the front.

Like nearly every material thing that could remind me of the twins, now it is gone. Donated long ago to some metal box in a church parking lot so it could be recycled as a Halloween costume. Or perhaps it was burned in my parents’ backyard barbeque pit during one of my mother’s cleaning crazes. I don’t know and I will not ask. Questions like that are met with avoidance or lies, so I rarely bother asking them anymore.

Valencia was the head cheerleader. In the 1980’s cheerleading got a little more respect than it does today. Back then, being your school’s head cheerleader was really quite an accomplishment.

When I went to the basketball games and watched my brother playing and my sister cheering, I was so proud. They made me feel like I was someone important. I loved bragging about them to my classmates. Valencia told me that I was going to be a cheerleader when I got older, but we both knew it was ridiculous. To be a cheerleader, an über-cheerleader-extraordinaire like her anyhow, you had to know how to dance. And I was no dancer.

My mother had tried enrolling me in dance classes when I was four, but the teacher recommended karate for me instead.

“Karate is for boys,” said my mother.

“I would like to do some karate,” I said.

“Shhhh,” said my mother. The teacher laughed, but not the sort of laugh that meant I was cute.

“She’s drastically behind in her motor skills department,” said the teacher. I can recall other children peering over at me curiously. I pictured a motor boat and wondered why I was being compared to a boat.

“I’m not a boat,” I said.

“You’re making this worse for yourself,” said my mother, then turned back to the dance ladies. Getting desperate, she pointed out that Valencia was a great dancer and that we were sisters.

“I think she is slow. She walks like she’s dragging herself around,” said the teacher. Back then, adults could say things like this. It was different than it is today.

“She has the gait of an old man,” added her assistant. I pictured a fat, flat-footed old man wearing overalls, swinging on a gate.

Thus I began walking on my tiptoes in an effort to be more lady-like. Not just in the dance studio, but everywhere I went.

“What are you doing? Where did you learn that? Do you want to drive me to take pills?” my mother asked me.

“Can’t you drive yourself?” I said back. See, I was not slow. That was a good comeback for someone who was not yet five. It got me a slap across the face. Slaps were also a commonplace occurrence back in those days. Everything was rougher and children were not special. Really, it was not so bad.

“Valencia, help me walk like you do,” I told my sister one day, after I had followed her around the house on my toes for an hour.

“Just walk,” she said, looking at me suspiciously. “You know, walk, like anyone does.”

My father, who was sitting at the kitchen table clipping coupons for my mother, had to get up and go for a drive by himself at that point. I knew it was my fault, and I knew that no matter how well I learned to walk, I would never make my parents as happy as Van and Valencia could make them.

When I was five or six, Fame was all the rage. My mother walked around the house with a laundry basket singing along to her huge, 1970’s style headphones.

“Stop it mom,” I told her.

“Sing along with me!” she yelled over the sound of the vacuum cleaner she was pushing, smiling and bopping her head. “Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember!” Back then, before they were gone, she was sometimes happy.

Along with the torture of watching her sway and jiggle and croon along, Fame reignited my mother’s interest in turning me into a dancer. Several months or a year had gone by and she seemed to think it might not hurt for me to have another go at it.

She outfitted me in a stylish ensemble of a purple leotard, black tights, pink legwarmers, and off the shoulder sweatshirt that said Heartbreaker, and took me to a different, fancier dance teacher across town.

“Behave yourself and do everything Madame Strathmore says,” she told me, smacking my butt on my way out of the car to really send the message home. But on the second visit, when she returned to pick me up, we were stopped as we were leaving. In front of the whole class and all the other mothers, Madame Strathmore said, “She got cut from Dance Fever on Eleventh Avenue for being uncoordinated, so don’t try to trick me into teaching her.”

It turns out those dance class ladies travel in a tight circle.

I had my coat halfway on and my Snoopy backpack still on the hook by the door. Aside from being a little embarrassed, I was unfazed by this turn of events. The surprise ending of my getting kicked out of dance class for being unteachable was an obvious conclusion no matter how you sliced it. What was there to do but shrug and trudge on ahead? My mother hauled me out the door.

“You won’t be seeing us around here again,” she yelled to the teacher. As if it was her decision.

“My backpack!” I reminded her, but it stayed hanging on the hook, my entire scratch-and-sniff sticker collection inside.

When I turned seven, the age my mother told me was the start of being a lady, she and my father paid Valencia to tutor me on dancing, walking, being cute. I remember being put into one of my good dresses and seated at the dining room table after school, waiting for Valencia to come rushing in, rolling her eyes in good natured conspiratorial exasperation with me at the absurdity of our parents, as she dropped her bookbag on the floor and said “Are you ready to do some pliés?” This went on for a few weeks, and throughout it I acted like I hated it also, and rolled my eyes along with her at the silliness of it all, but really, it was great. To have Valencia’s undivided attention, even if it involved money changing hands, was painfully special to me. But Valencia was too busy and by the fourth week, when I sat at the table waiting until it was dark outside and she still had not come home, the whole subject was dropped. “I give up,” said my mother. And she did give up, focusing instead on Valencia and Van for the next five years.

Chapter 5

Adrian and I moved halfway across the country because we wanted to start a new life together. We had to get away from our exes because they both were viciously bitter about being dumped; we each thought the other might end up getting killed. His ex-wife Belinda, in particular, is prone to flying off the handle. We chose Savannah because it’s where he went to school, at Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD, years before we met.

When I first got to know Adrian, life was very low for him. He couldn’t sell any of his work, and even with his extra job at Border’s, he and Belinda could hardly pay their bills. He was ten years older than me, spending his evenings helping housewives choose the latest Nora Roberts book. It wasn’t hard to see that he was not at a good place in his life.

Unlike the rest of his family, Adrian is determined to make his own money. Why he cares I couldn’t begin to explain. But then, a year after he and I got together, things changed. Fame can happen very quickly, and money really does change everything. He is an artist, and he’s very good. Movie stars want his work in their homes. He makes huge paintings of very close-up things you might see in a forest. Like the way a pinecone would look to an ant. Therefore, I would think he could better understand my Gulliver fixation.

I never saw myself as the kind of woman who wouldn’t have to work, who would have a man taking care of her and buying her presents, but he has turned me into her. It’s like going from being Amish to living a mainstream life, I imagine. Once you get a taste of Pizza Hut and a feel for blow dryers, there’s just no going back to the farm.

When Adrian and I are in Savannah, I guess you could say we are a little bit famous. We often walk down by the river at night, and now and then I see people point us out to one another. Savannah is a city full of tourists, all the time, usually drunk, often riding in hearses on ghost tours or snapping pictures in the graveyards. Most locals hate the tourists, but I couldn’t imagine Savannah without them. There are usually plenty milling about even in the off-season. It’s rarely the tourists who recognize us though. It’s the residents who read in one of the local papers about Adrian’s latest opening or some painting the governor bought. The locals will point us out to some friend or relative who might be visiting them, and the visitor will nod as if he too could have recognized Adrian. Soon, if things continue the way they have been going, everyone truly will recognize us.

I have had plenty of this secondhand fame before, from being Valencia and Van’s little sister. It feels good at first but leaves you always a little bit cold, like stepping from icy ceramic tiles into a lukewarm bath. You shiver and want the water to be hotter, but you can’t bring yourself to get out of the bathtub. Living off other people’s fame would leave most people very hungry, I imagine. Far hungrier than me. This time I am handling it with a dignified edge and cool detachment that could only come from experience.

In the 1980’s, in Hudson, Wisconsin, Valencia was a little bit famous too. We lived on a cul-de-sac, but that did not stop the teenage boys and occasional middle-aged man from finding countless reasons to turn around there. Even as a small child, I wondered if Valencia knew how impossibly lucky she was to play this role. Did she ever wonder “Why me?” the way the rest of us pondered and mourned being so meaningless? Did she ever consider the unlikeliness of her one, single life holding so much potential? But I think she took it for granted. The admiration, the blatant worship she was pelted with. To her, it felt normal and she lived her life straight through it, doing everyday things like babysitting the neighbors and reading my Choose Your Own Adventure books when she was bored. Like a child born in the peaks of Switzerland becomes as immune to the beautiful view as a child born in a wasteland becomes immune to the ugliness.

One of her biggest fans was our mailman, Ned. Nearly sixty years old with the biggest, thickest glasses ever made. He was a grandfather to fourteen children and a volunteer phone answerer during public television pledge drives. Once my dad called in to donate ten dollars, all of which was specifically meant to be applied to shows about fishing, and we watched Ned take the call on the air. There was a five second delay and my dad had the hardest time watching Ned while trying to speak to him, and Ned kept saying, “Don’t look at your monitor, Roger. Just talk into the phone.” But my dad couldn’t take his eyes off the television. “This is really happening,” he told us, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand, looking at all of us in disbelief while Ned, on the screen, kept saying, “Roger, Roger, are you there? Just talk into the phone.”

That Ned, he would still be blushing five houses down after a blasé Valencia met him at the door in her green Duran Duran pajamas. This made my mother furious.

“Can’t you just wait until that poor man leaves before you get the mail? Or get dressed first. Do you want to give him a heart attack? And what about your reputation?”

“Mom, these come all the way down to my knees. Relax.”

I was just a little kid but I could recognize jealousy disguised as concern.

“Do you want me to ground you?” my mother would ask her.

“Not really,” Valencia would answer, and smile at our mother as if this was a joke they were in on together. Unlike me, she had an unparalleled charm that got her out of any predicament.

One summer day when I was nine, a carload of high school boys drove up and parked across the street from our house. I didn’t recognize them as friends of my brother or sister. I was sitting on the front steps, designing my new fall line-up of evening gowns in a big unlined notebook I had gotten from the twins for my birthday. What are those high school boys doing? I wrote in magenta beside a strapless mermaid style dress. They were talking and laughing and shoving each other. Their music played loudly. But I knew why they were here: To see Valencia. She was our own personal Corn Palace. I colored the bottom of the dress purple, my peripheral vision telling me they hadn’t left their vehicle.

Finally one of them yelled, “Hey, is Valencia around?”

He pronounced it wrong. Like Valensha instead of Valen-see-a.

I ignored them and started a new dress. This one was a Southern Belle kind of dress, very full and off the shoulder. Only it wasn’t turning out so great because they were distracting me.

“We drove all the way from Wausau! We want to meet Valensha!” yelled another boy. One of his friends covered his mouth with his hand. They were all laughing and looked like total idiots. Valencia didn’t have friends like this.

“If you stay parked there, my dad is going to shoot you,” I yelled back to them. I began coloring in the Southern Belle dress. Light blue. That is the color all Southern Belle dresses should always be. That notebook, if I could find it, if it hadn’t been burned with every other artifact of the past, would prove it.

“Go get her. Go get Valensha,” yelled the boy who was driving. Then all the boys started yelling her name. Yelling it loud and wrong. Valensha! Valensha!

They got out of the car, and for the first time, I felt scared. It was a weekday and no one was home anywhere on our street. My dad was at work. Mom and Valencia were visiting my aunt and wouldn’t be back until after dinner. Van was supposed to be watching me, but he had gone to the pool.

I picked up my notebook and ran inside, locking the door behind me. Then I ran to the patio doors and the garage door and locked those too. I hid in the pantry in the kitchen, my arms wrapped around my knees. All the windows in our house were open, and I could hear the boys yelling her name. I waited for them to break in but finally it got quiet. I stayed hiding in the pantry though, and that’s where I was when Van opened the door.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Hiding,” I said.

“Why is the house all locked up?”

I just shrugged. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell the truth. It’s as if my mouth could not form any words.

Later that night I heard him telling our parents what happened. He made me sound ridiculous, and added fake details, like how I was eating uncooked macaroni by the handful. He made me sound like a gremlin or a monster. I understood why he did it; it was the way to talk to my parents and have them listen and talk back. They loved to gang up on someone. It was what kept them close and the best way to buddy up with them. But usually he was too good to stoop so low. He probably figured if he didn’t throw me under the bus first, I would do so to him for leaving me home alone.

Teachers used to tell us that children preferred even negative attention to being ignored, but this is not always true. I never liked conversations about how stupid I was; I doubt any child would.

My clever parents never noticed the beer cans in our front yard or trampled hedges associated with that day.

“Well, it’s obvious she’s not old enough to stay home by herself,” said my mother, definitively, using the newfangled remote control to turn on Dallas when they were finally done rehashing the pantry episode.

Then there was Dougie the Lawn Boy. He mowed our lawn for free, loving every shrub and rosebush for allowing him take his sweet time while he gazed at my window, thinking it was her window. (When I was seven Valencia gave me a big sign with her name on it that had turned up unexplained on her locker, and I, as another one of her loyal fans, had stuck it to my window where it stayed for years, hence the confusion.) Now and then, my dad would come outside and tell Dougie that he didn’t need to mow our lawn, that we mowed our own lawn, that we had a perfectly good lawn mower, and would he please leave. But a week later he would be back, as if the conversation had never happened. Pulling up on his Cub Cadet, a wagon of clippers and trimmers behind it, tank top with the big number five on it… Dougie the Lawn Boy was relentless.

We won the Hudson Lawn of the Year award in 1984, 1985, and 1986. No joke.

Chapter 6

A little over two months ago a letter came for Adrian. There was no return address but I instantly recognized it as trouble. First of all, the address was typed, apparently on an actual typewriter, considering that there was an extra letter n added to his name and then struck out with slash mark. Postmarked from Minneapolis. It seemed like the kind of letter that Anthrax would arrive in. Now that Adrian was becoming famous, things were getting trickier. Women he dated once fifteen years ago found excuses to run into him at the Circle K.

He was in Atlanta for the day, meeting with someone about something (trust me, I have since learned to pay better attention), and as I sorted through the mail I separated this piece out and laid it aside in its own pile. This initial step looked innocent enough: bills, magazines, junk mail, letters to ponder over. That old instinct I associated with Valencia’s dressing table took over. What is it about stalking that is as primal and intuitive as the desire to eat, or sleep, or come?

I held the letter up to the window, but of course that didn’t work.

Adrian and I operated our relationship on a level of trust and maturity I had never expected from any union I would be a part of. I could have just asked him what it was when he got home. Instead, I went into the laundry room and found a clothes steamer beneath a pile of linen napkins from a dinner party we had hosted several months back. I still don’t know what made me do this. I especially should know about turning points and the way one day, one moment, can completely change the direction something is going. A steamer can open an envelope and unravel all the trust that two people have spent years building. But if I sealed it back up, and set it back with the unopened mail, only I would ever know. Didn’t I make decisions like this all the time? Paying a little extra on our mortgage when I did the bills, for the good of both of us. Replacing dishtowels once they became stained. Shaving my legs as an expression of goodwill. I reasoned it was all part of being a woman and keeping our life running smoothly. A little practice for motherhood maybe.

Opening an envelope with a steamer doesn’t work. The steamer spit water all over the envelope, drenching it and making the address bleed like a watercolor painting. I was defeated going into it. Screw it, I decided, and tore the envelope open. We’ll just say whatever this is got lost in the mail. That has to happen sometimes, right?

Inside was a piece of notebook paper, fringed edges and pale blue lines. The sheet of paper was blank and was folded loosely around some photographs. I saw the back of them first. Food for thought was scrawled in black ink tilted nearly sideways to the right. Scary man handwriting, I decided.

From within the sheet slid a picture of my husband, wearing the shirt I had bought him just two weeks before for Christmas. He was uncomfortably close to a woman I did not recognize. The next photo was nearly the same. In neither were they kissing, or actually even touching. It could have been anyone, any situation. I tried to decipher where they were but could not recognize any of the buildings in the background.

The pictures were grainy and blurry, as if they had been taken with a crappy phone or some really old digital camera. The strange thing is that this is what stood out to me, this is what I dwelled upon in those first moments after seeing the photos: “Some poor person with out of date technology is trying to blackmail Adrian.”

Another thought instantly followed: Was the food for thought meant to imply that an affair had not started, but that Adrian should consider it? Were these photos sent by the woman, and she was trying to offer herself to him? Why would anyone send pictures to his house? Wasn’t it too risky? Perhaps the photos were sent by someone knowing I would intercept them. Some troublemaker.

My head was swimming in confusion. I needed someone to talk to. Adrian was who I turned to for everything, and without him as an option I was alone. I needed a friend, but I could think of no one. So many of my friendships depended upon me being Adrian’s wife, or upon me being the kind of person who would be Adrian’s wife. They were the kind of friendships that looked like pages torn from an Elle Décor magazine. Elegant gatherings at barnwood tables beneath small twinkling white lights. If children were invited it was only to picturesquely capture fireflies in mason jars. These were not friendships with room for weighty problems. They were friendships of class and casual sophistication, honoring the unspoken code of We Shall Not Be Flawed. I considered seeking out a priest or some other religious person.

Instead I put the photos back in the envelope and slid them into a big decorating book on a shelf in the hallway. I thought I would come up with a plan.

That was January.

I thought if I slept on it, I would work it all out. But for the weeks following this I could barely sleep at all. My mind raced as I lay still beside Adrian. So many times I almost asked him, almost showed them to him. He did not seem to notice that I had not slept in weeks, which I appreciated. He is good at taking me at face value. He doesn’t usually ask if anything is wrong, and if I tell him I am fine, he simply believes me. It’s such a masculine trait.

Of course, I did not stop thinking of the pictures, even when the sleep came back in early February, hitting me in heavy twelve hour waves which he also did not find peculiar. I slept and slept, dreaming bad dreams of him cheating on me with everyone I had ever known.

What I have finally taken the pictures to mean is not necessarily that my husband was having an affair, but that someone wants to upset him. Threaten him. Scare him, blackmail him. Or maybe it was nothing: Just some lonely person trying to bring drama into an empty life by creating a façade of connection to someone important.

I continued to wish I had someone I could talk to about it, but there was no one, and the days rolled by as they always have. I waited for something else to happen. Something terrible. And then, of course, more did happen. But for quite some time Adrian was just Adrian, proving to me again and again in his ordinary actions that nothing was wrong, proving to me that if something truly was wrong, he was not the catalyst. When he got excited over some fancy cheese spread from the grocery store, for instance, it made me feel safe and reassured me that he was not the enemy. No one to blame could care so strongly about cheese spread, I reasoned.

And the pictures stayed between the pages of Shabby Chic for Modern Homes where I occasionally visited them when I was alone.

Chapter 7

The great thing about Valencia was that she was an excellent braider. She could French braid my hair into two tight pigtails in under three minutes. She knew tricky braids too. Fishtail braids and braids using four strands. Braids that curled around my head and supposedly made me look Swedish. Princess Leia donut braids and sideways braids that ended in a ponytail behind one ear.

She had a brush with a faux tortoise handle she started with, brushing my hair until it was perfectly smooth. It never hurt when she brushed it. Now I sometimes try to make Adrian brush my hair, but it’s not the same.

I liked the Pippi Longstocking braids best, and she would do them in the morning at the breakfast table, while I sat on the stepstool my mother used to get things off the upper cupboard shelves.

“Do you two have to do this at the kitchen table?” my mother always said.

“My hair is clean,” I would say.

“That’s not the point.”

“I don’t mind some hair on my toast,” Valencia would say.

After my hair was brushed, she would lightly draw a line from the top of my head down to my neck, with her fingernail, making two equal sections. She said it looked better to not have a too-perfect line. “You can’t seem like you’re trying too hard,” she told me. She did the left side then the right, her fingers flying.

“There you go, Nellie Oleson!” She would say when the second hair band snapped into place. I don’t look anything like Nellie Oleson; Nellie Oleson had curls, not braids. But I loved it.

“Do it again,” I would tell her, pulling the rubber bands out and shaking my hair loose on mornings when I wasn’t about to miss the school bus.

“Don’t shake your head out at the table. You’re getting hair everywhere,” my mom would say. This genuinely stressed her out. I was so much braver with my sister there, because she made everyone slightly more normal than we were without her.

“No, no, no! Leave it in place!” Valencia would tell me.

“Too late. You have to do it again. Pleasssse.”

“One more time. Then I have to go.”

“Okay. Okay. Maybe this time just one braid. It will look more grown up.”

“You look like you’re in a wind tunnel when you have just one braid,” my mom would helpfully tell me.

“She does not,” Valencia would say. And she would do what I asked, adding, “You look cute either way, though I don’t know why you always shake it out and make me start over.”

“I don’t know,” I would say, wanting to push my luck and try for a third time. The bands would snap into place and my school bus would be waiting, or she’d be out the door to cheerleading practice or some other fantastic destination before I had the chance to try.

Chapter 8

I turned eleven in May of 1986. My mother lumped my birthday party together with Valencia and Van’s graduation party. There were two large cakes with lions for the graduates, and a small cake with Tweety Bird on it for me. Had most of the guests realized the Tweety cake was for me, I might have been embarrassed.

My two best friends were my entire guest list. They were as unpopular as I was and were unfazed by Tweety and the lack of planning on my behalf. I opened my presents from them: Makeup. It was all I wanted. Just lots and lots of makeup. Eye shadow and lip-gloss, mascara I was too squeamish to bring near my eyes, and bright pink crème rouge that destroyed my chances of having a decent school picture for the following two years. I tried to show my mother the colorful array of tubes, compacts, and click-shut shadows, but she was busy dishing out generous hunks of purple frosted cake to our neighbors and relatives.  So my friends and I disappeared into the downstairs TV room and ate the Tweety Bird cake while we watched Mr. Mom.

My friends’ names were Heather and Jenny and they were better friends with each other than either was with me. They lived next door to one another and their moms were far-off cousins. I could feel them getting bored, and I needed to do something to keep them from wanting to leave. I had been through this before: Jenny would start looking at Heather from the corner of her eye and say she was “sick.” Then Heather would get ridiculously worried (but it was fake, I could tell) and one of them would call a mom so they could leave me and hang out together.

“Do you want more cake?” I asked.

“No,” said Heather.

“No,” echoed Jenny. She put her hand on her stomach and scrunched her face into a grimace. “My tummy hurts,” she murmured.

“Should we try out the makeup?” I asked. It was the last thing I wanted to do, to open it all and share it with them, but I was desperate.

Jenny perked up a little at that. “Sure.” Without hesitating she reached right into the stash I had arranged in front of me on the floor and grabbed a package of Cover Girl eye shadow. She tore it open and dug the fresh little pad of the applicator into the sparkly, chalky blue compartment of shadow.

“Heather, come here,” she said, pulling her true friend down from the recliner. She filled in the area from Heather’s eyelashes to eyebrows with a thick smear of blue. I watched as she dipped the applicator again, this time into the sable brown, and made up Heather’s other eye.

“You look just like a rock star! You look like Cyndi Lauper!” They went running to the bathroom to look. I followed them, sick to my stomach over my new eye shadow’s speedy turn from pristine to ruined.

“Doesn’t she look exactly like Cyndi Lauper?” Jenny squealed. No, she did not at all look like Cyndi Lauper. The very comparison made my nostrils flare in disgust. Big boned Heather with her crooked teeth and hairy little mustache on her upper lip. I shrugged. This was the point where I could either go along with them and watch all my new makeup be destroyed, or save the makeup and have them think I was boring, as usual.

“I don’t really feel like playing this. Should we keep watching Mr. Mom?” I asked.

“Do my lips in purple!” said Heather, ignoring me. Jenny ran back into the TV room and scooped up the rest of my birthday gifts. She returned to the bathroom, grinning, and carelessly tore open my purple sparkly Cover Girl lipstick, letting the cardboard backing float down and land in the toilet bowl. I just watched. I hated them and I hated myself.

I grabbed the raspberry crème blush, the one article she had missed in her haste, and headed upstairs to my bedroom. The party was in full swing, spilling over from inside to outside and room to room. I caught a glimpse of Valencia’s friend Naomi Shelton, looking woozy and sitting on my Uncle Ted’s lap. Gross. Somehow through the din of it all, I heard my mother’s shrieking laughter.

Some little girls from down the street were in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, playing with my Barbies. They could not have reached the Barbies, or even known they were up on my closet shelf, unless some awful grown-up had helped them find them. Which meant my mom had taken the Barbies down, on purpose, without asking me. From pure frustration I started to cry.

“Those are mine and I didn’t say you could play with them.” I said. The three little girls stopped playing and sized me up.

“Your mom said it was okay,” said one of them. Her blue, icy eyes met mine like a dare.

“But I said you couldn’t.” I wiped at my tears, noticing a popped off Barbie head stuck upon one of the girl’s fingertips.

“We’re going to tell on you if you don’t let them play with us,” said the Barbie killer in a squeaky voice, wiggling her Barbie head finger in my face. Her friends giggled menacingly.

I looked around my room. It was worse than I had initially realized. I saw that my dresser drawers were opened and the top drawer of my desk had been snooped through. A whole sheet of stickers were now decorating the back of my desk chair. I found myself both horrified and impressed at their gutsiness. They couldn’t have been older than seven.

“Fine. Fine. I don’t care. But you can’t play with them in here.” I picked up the box that held the Barbies and set it in the hallway outside my door. “I have a headache and I need to lie down right now.”

My eleventh birthday was the day I first put into use the favorite excuse of grown-ups: I’m sick. Case closed. It’s the one point no one ever argues. Everyone knows it’s a lie, but it works anyway. I had been watching Jenny use it for years. She was born knowing about it. It was how my own mother had survived the holidays for as long as I could remember, a warm rag on her forehead while my grandma served the food.

The girls glared at me but gathered up the Barbies and outfits around them and left. I locked my door and smoothed the bedspread where they had wrinkled it. I closed my dresser drawers and carefully peeled the stickers off the back of my chair. Outside, a volleyball game was in action. Valencia and Van’s friends were everywhere, filling picnic tables we had borrowed from neighbors, stretched out in lawn chairs and hanging around by the barbeque grill. My aunts and uncles drank wine coolers and talked with the other adults.

I pushed aside my line of Trixie Belden books on my windowsill and kneeled on the carpet with my chin propped in my hands, watching as a brown station wagon slowly made its approach. Uh oh. It was Jenny’s mom’s car. The last thing I needed was for my mom to notice and come looking for me to see what went wrong. I shouldn’t have worried. The car pulled up along the curb and Jenny and Heather ran out to it and jumped in. In a moment they were gone and the party went on as if nothing had happened. Then I was hit by a new worry: Had they opened all the makeup? I needed to get to it before these little neighbor girls went downstairs and found it. I cracked open my bedroom door and saw that they were now down the hall on my parents’ bed playing with the Barbies. Ha!

I raced downstairs to the little bathroom off the T.V. room and there I found all my new makeup, out of its packaging and much too destroyed for the damage to have been accidental. I made a little hammock with the front of my shirt and slid the smeared and broken cosmetics into the sling. Back upstairs, back to my room I went, finding that it thankfully was still vacant. I closed and re-locked the door. Then I opened the drawer of my bedside table and plunked my birthday gifts inside, slamming it shut so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

That was the first day of being eleven. Eleven turned out to be a very hard year.

Chapter 9

Because of the photos, I was a little uncomfortable with Alexa staying at our house. They were still hidden in the book, and in no way did I think she would have any interest in a “Shabby Chic” decorating book, but I was afraid of what might happen if something else showed up. Because things had been happening.

A few weeks ago on a Saturday, Adrian and I were coming home from a trip to the coffee shop just as the mail was arriving. I saw the letter – it looked just like the other one from what I could catch in that quick glance -- and my stomach tightened up. We were both wearing sunglasses so at least he could not see the way my eyes shot open. He shuffled through the mail and swiftly tucked that familiar envelope with its typed address into one of his art magazines. Then he handed me a clothing catalog and a postcard from his parents.

“Look. They’re in Delaware,” he scoffed. I guess the joke was, Who would send a postcard from a place like Delaware? He was just trying to be distracting. So this meant he had intersected one or more of these letters already. I suppose I shouldn’t say intersected; after all, it was his mail. But if he had never seen one before and did not know what to expect, he simply would have torn it open. So that one slippery move said quite a bit. And there was something else I learned too: He was far smoother than I realized. There was no hint of discomfort or fear about him. He slid the letter into his magazine, passed me the postcard, cracked a joke, unlocked the front door with our going-for-a-walk key. He didn’t miss a beat, didn’t crack a sweat, all aspects of his behavior a choreographed dance of benign casualness.

That was my chance to confront him but I didn’t take it. In fact, I even made things easy for him. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said, leaving him there to do what he would like with his letter.

Chapter 10

My parents decided that we needed to go on a family vacation during the summer of 1986. It was our last summer together as a family before Valencia and Van went off to college. So in mid-June we took the camper and headed to Glacier National Park. My dad was really excited and talked more than I remember him talking before or since. He was like a brand-new person, sharing trivia with us non-stop the whole way there.

“Do you know that the glaciers are disappearing? They are drying right up. You’ll all be lucky if there are any left by the time you bring your own kids here so take a hell of a lot of pictures! Your mother and me came here back when you were babies, Valencia and Van. You probably don’t even remember that, do you? We had a good time, right, Patricia?”

When he wasn’t talking, he was playing a cassette tape of old music with a horrid song on it called Patricia, singing along, trying to make my mother smile.

That was a funny summer. Funny strange, I mean. There were times I saw my family, my parents especially, in a way I hadn’t before and never would again. They seemed like a T.V. family. Like the Keatons from Family Ties, maybe. It’s funny how even then as a child I looked at our family in terms of they instead of we, how I saw myself as an insignificant filler character, like the way the little blonde sister fit in beside Alex and Mallory.

What I did not know then was that my mother had just ended a nine-year affair with a neighbor. She and my father had been about to call it quits, but she changed her mind and decided to try to work things out with him. And he was so happy that summer because of this glimmer of hope of my mom loving him again. Now it all makes sense. But at the time I thought he was just happy to be with all of us and to be in that camper going to look at glaciers.

I wasn’t even sure what a glacier was and was having a really hard time picturing it.

“A glacier is a big hunk of snow,” Valencia told me.

We lived in Wisconsin where there was snow all the time. I couldn’t understand why we would want to see more snow in June when it was finally all gone, but I wasn’t about to argue as long as everyone seemed to be having a good time.

My dad kept his word and took roll after roll of film. Stupid pictures that made my mother angry. “Stop taking pictures of the car, Roger. It costs money to develop those.” Everyone was concerned about money in the 80’s. But for once he ignored her nagging and the camera kept snapping away, freezing my brother in a goofy cowboy hat and my sister in her favorite tangerine sundress. There were pictures of my mother taken by the fire after we kids had gone to sleep, her face less tight than usual, dark, barely visible against the lapping orange flames.

“Say cheeseburger!” was his catchphrase on that trip. We all said cheeseburger a thousand times it seemed.

“Van inherited your dorkiness,” Valencia told him when Van put on a filthy pirate style eye patch he’d had the good fortune to find on the floor of a truck stop bathroom in Bismarck. My dad beamed when he heard this and my mom bristled silently in her seat.

We pulled over again and again. Every hill of wild flowers and every mountain was a notable backdrop. Any memory was worth saving.

“Let’s get one by this historical marker. You too, Patricia. Take your ponytail out. You look real nice. Van, ask those Japs to take a picture of all of us. No, no, keep your eye patch on. It’s funny.”

I inherited just his desperation. He was trying to capture my mother but did not know we were all slipping away.

When he got home he took the film to a store downtown that only developed pictures and sold film. I don’t know if they even make stores like that anymore. He got twenty-five of the photos turned into big, matted eyesores in rustic wood frames. These frames were so rustic that they could not be dusted without the duster getting a sliver. He hung them throughout the living room, dining room, hallways, even one in the first floor powder room. Unlike the other ladies I knew, Mom was never much on decorating and our house really showed it.

Their house is still caught in 1986 because of all those pictures. Despite my mother’s penchant for removing the past, those photos remain.

Then one vacation wasn’t enough and we had to take two more. My dad said he wanted to get our money’s worth out of the air mattress he had bought. We went to Chicago and to Phoenix, Arizona, that summer too, but the mood had already shifted. He did not play the Patricia tape, and when I try to remember those trips, it seems we all just silently read books or listened to headphones while he drove. I cannot remember those trips nearly as well because there are not endless photos to remind me.

Chapter 11

“Happy Saint Patty’s Day,” said Adrian, setting a glass of Guinness in the middle of the magazine I was looking at.

I took a sip. “Thanks. Are we going out tonight?”

“Sure,” he said, sitting down beside me at Alexa’s kitchen table. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I can’t think of any reason not to, but let’s not stay out too late.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think I need to go to Hudson tomorrow.”

It had been a few years since I last saw Valencia and Van’s graves, and I figured since I was in Madison it would be a good time to make the drive. They are buried in Hudson, a mile from my parents’ house. So of course I would also have to visit my parents while I was there, which was an even bigger pill to swallow.

I didn’t want Adrian to come with me, but I knew he would insist on driving me. He is always husbandy like that, giving me what he thinks I need.

“Sure, we can go to Hudson tomorrow,” he said.

“Let’s go out on the back porch,” I said, picking up my Guinness and fleece pull-over and leading the way.

“Wasn’t Alexa’s kitchen yellow the last time we were here?” asked Adrian.

I looked around. Now it was a pale shade of grayish violet. Much swankier. “You know, I think you’re right.”

“Sehr Modisch,” he said.

“Yep, sure is.”

“She never stops improving, does she,” he said.

“She never stops improving,” I repeated.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, of course not.”

For all the house swapping we do with Alexa, in some ways I barely know her. She is tall and blonde with angular features and eyes like Adrian. A look that is both beautiful and a little harsh. She is often a bit too much, like when she gave Adrian and me tickets to a month-long South American Rain Forest hiking trip and wouldn’t quit pestering us until we went. There were snakes and bugs. It was terrible. I thought I was going to die. That kind of pushiness I could really do without.

But she accepted me right from the start, when I was afraid I would be seen as a homewrecker for breaking up Adrian’s marriage. Later I came to understand that I shouldn’t have taken her acceptance so personally. She simply accepts everyone. So do their parents. Not out of kindness, but because the drama created by conflict is beneath them. It’s still kind of a foreign concept to me, coming from a family where very little was acceptable and gossip took the place of meaningful dialogue. It made me think they were my best friends until one day when Adrian said, “Honey, you can stop sending them thank you notes after every encounter.”

I had thought thank you notes were a sign of class. No one in my family had ever written one.

“Are you sure?” I had asked him, “They’re just going so far out of their way to be nice to me and I don’t want them to think I don’t appreciate it.”

“Giving us an old album of my baby pictures isn’t that nice; it’s just something parents do. So don’t worry about it. You’re going to scare them!” He gave me a squeeze and a kiss to let me know that he wasn’t scared of me, just his family was.

“Oh.” I felt like an unpolished dodo egg.

The other thing that they all have in common is that they’re loud. I thought being loud was obnoxious and rude, but they make me feel like being quiet is meek and insecure. They sneeze loudly, they tell loud stories, they laugh loudly. Those throw-back-your-head-and-go-crazy kind of laughs. My mother taught us not to do that.

“Shhhh! Stop! Everyone is staring!” she would say if we ever got carried away. If she was feeling particularly tense and vicious, she’d shame us into silence with something like, “Your breath smells like onions and bacteria. And you’re spitting on me!”

But Alexa, especially, can laugh and snort and even belch a couple of times while managing to look like a Stella McCartney advertisement.

And she’s so provocative. At parties she’ll casually blurt out some revelation like “Married sex must be so boring. Like unwrapping the same birthday gift over and over.” Or “We women are like dogs. We just want a good master who will take care of us and praise us.” Every man in the room will drop whatever conversation he’s in to focus on her instead.

Her beauty makes her strangeness work for her now, but I cannot stop myself from secretly hoping there will come a time when she will be seen as a Grey Gardens type of nut. I suppose that is further into the future than my experience with her will reach.

Most intimidating of all about her, however, is that, like Adrian says, she never stops improving. I know plenty of people who are always trying to better themselves, but few who are so successful at it.

She has a million hobbies, from playing the cello to saving orphans in third world countries. She speaks many languages poorly and a few very well. I think she may have tried botox and certainly cocaine.

She is one year older than I am, but has a level of confidence I will never reach. She’s also much cooler than I am. Coolness has to be inherent, I have decided, and therefore, I have let go all aspirations of ever attaining it.

Adrian and Alexa grew up with everything, fearing nothing, sharing everything, traveling everywhere. They were like rich, affluent hippies. They had a head start in coolness. It really isn’t even fair. Anyone in their shoes probably would have turned out cool. They are what Adrian supposes our children will be, though I have doubts that I could grow anything so fabulous in my mediocre womb. Yes, the Corbis children, with their summers in Spain and their new-age godparents were everything I didn’t even know I wanted and everything I will never be.

On a side note, but related to self-improvement, according to several of the women’s magazines I subscribe to, it’s not about coolness, but about being fabulous. Fabulous makes me think of Samantha from Sex and the City, and couldn’t be further from what I actually want to be. However, since fabulousity can be bought, I am giving it a try.

I find a sort of irony in worrying about details like this, in the midst of so many bigger things going on. But I guess that’s human nature. Chugging along, making dinner reservations, flossing. Even terminally ill people floss.

Alexa would never stoop so low. Alexa would laugh her loud, aggressive laugh if she stumbled upon the Fabulous Girl’s Instructional Guide that is hiding under my bottom dresser drawer. This manual has one paragraph long articles on “How to swallow your sneeze” and advice like “Wake up fifteen minutes before your man and put on a bit of mascara and run a comb through your hair, then get back into bed before he wakes up, so he thinks you are naturally beautiful.” It does not explain how to never sneeze or how to wake oneself up discreetly, every day, fifteen minutes early without also waking up “your man” at the same time. I find it nearly impossible to follow. I just hope when we get back to Savannah it is exactly where I left it.

Adrian and I sat down on the porch and Alexa’s cat jumped up onto his lap.

“What do you think of this cat?” he asked, picking him up and holding him up to my face.

“I guess he’s alright,” I said.

The cat jumped back down and ran away.

“So Hudson it is, tomorrow,” he said. He finished his Guinness and set down the empty can. “I need to get some stuff from the art store. Are you coming with?” he asked, curling a piece of my hair around his finger.

“I don’t know…” I looked out at Lake Mendota. There was still ice over parts of it, despite the warm wind and robins flying about. I turned and looked at him, green eyes, dark curly hair. So terribly beautiful. Why had he settled for me?

“I was thinking I might go alone tomorrow,” I said.

He stopped playing with my hair. “Alone? That’s too far for you to drive alone, Baby.”

“It is not, Adrian.”

“We’ll both go. I want to come with you.”

I turned away.

“How long do you want to go for?” he asked.

“Just one night. I can’t handle more than one day of Roger and Patricia.”

“We don’t have to stay with them,” he said.

“I think they will expect me to.”

“We could get a hotel.”

“Honey, you don’t have to go,” I tried one more time. Being in Hudson, visiting the twins, took me to a place inside myself where Adrian did not belong. “Let me go by myself. Then you can work on your paintings.”

“No. I hate for you to deal with all that on your own. I’m not getting anything done here anyhow. I never do. It’s just an escape, coming here. I didn’t count on getting work done.”

It would have gone on and on like this, so I decided not to fight it. “Let me call my parents and see if they’re around.”

They were, and they sounded excited to hear from us. I told them we had just arrived in Madison a couple days earlier. If they knew how often we stayed at Alexa’s they would expect to see us every time.

“Listen to your Southern accent!” said my mother. Around the time I had acquired what she considered a “Southern accent” I had noticed for the first time what a strong Minnesota accent she had. Now when I spoke with her, it was like listening to Rose Nylund or the cast of Fargo.

“We’ll be on our way tomorrow, late morning or early afternoon,” I told her.

“Can’t you narrow it down more than that?”

“Noon. We will leave here at noon.”

“I’ll make some pork chops for dinner,” she said before we hung up. Pork chops were the favorite of the twins, not me.

“Oh. Sure thing,” I said.

“Let me talk to her, Patricia. Hello? You there? Is it just the two of you coming up here?” asked my dad, taking over for my mom. I had no idea what he meant by that. Did he think we’d had a baby and never mentioned it? Did he think Alexa was in Madison and coming with us?

“Um, yeah. Just us two.”

“Alright then.” There was the clatter of the phone being set down. I waited for my mother to pick it back up. A minute went by and I could hear their muffled voices in the background. I heard my mother complaining that now she would have to clean the guest room. I hesitated, waiting for her to realize I was still waiting. Finally I heard footsteps approaching. The phone was picked back up and placed on its old fashioned cradle, and the line went dead.

I stood there holding the receiver. No matter how much time passed, they always made me feel the same.

Chapter 12

Valencia and Van were going to college in La Crosse. They and our parents had decided this as a family. Mom and Dad were happy it was somewhat close, and the twins were happy it wasn’t so close that we would drop in unexpectedly.

“It’s better than one of those liberal California schools you were looking at,” Dad told Valencia. By better he meant cheaper.

“She was never serious about California,” said Van.

“I’m just glad you two will be together,” said our mother.

What Mom and Dad did not know was that Rob McCray was also going to La Crosse. He was Valencia’s secret boyfriend, who she was supposed to have broken up with. Van must have known that Rob and Valencia were still together; I don’t really see how Valencia could have kept something like that from him. I like to think, though, that he was kept in the dark about it as much as the rest of us.

When Valencia was a freshman in high school, she and Rob had been inseparable. Somehow, Mom and Dad didn’t know this meant they were having sex. Even I knew they were having sex, and I was just a little kid.

One afternoon at the beginning of their sophomore year, they skipped school and went to Rob’s house. Since he was an only child and his father had taken off years earlier, they probably thought they were safe. Unfortunately, his mom, sick from her chemo treatments, came home early from work, heard them, and burst into his room.

The three of them were waiting in our driveway that afternoon when the school bus dropped me off. I guess I must have been about nine years old. I recall waving at them as they sat in silence in Mrs. McCray’s pale blue Buick, not understanding what they were doing or why they wouldn’t wave back at me. I was startled by Mrs. McCray’s appearance: She was bald and bloated from the chemo, without so much as an eyelash. She did not bother with wigs or fancy scarves.

My father drove in right as the school bus pulled away, and then my mother, who had been grocery shopping. Perfect timing. I was sent to my room while the sordid details were broadcast in our living room. I lay there on the floor by the vent, listening. The afternoon sunlight bathed my wall in soft pink light. We didn’t usually have this much excitement happening in our house and I was enjoying every second of it.

I heard Valencia crying. Whether they were real tears of shame or the tears of false, obligatory repentance, I was not sure.

When Rob and Mrs. McCray left, I pulled myself a little closer to the vent, waiting for an even bigger blowout. But Valencia did not get screamed at, smacked across the face, or locked in her room. She was just told she could never see Rob again.

“What will people think?” I overheard our mother saying. Her tone sounded not irrational and disgusted, but soothing, reasonable, concerned. Her syrupy voice was so out of character that it made me take notice. It told me that there was something very powerful happening between Valencia and Rob. Something extraordinarily threatening, that my evil mother must stop. I clenched the fistful of crayons I was holding until they all broke in half. Then I ground them into the back of a notebook with my palm, wishing I had the guts to grind them into the carpet.

“Okay, it’s over,” said Valencia.

“What’s the matter with Rob’s mother?” our father asked.

Oh my god. I rolled over on my carpet and threw the crayons at my shelf of stuffed animals. These people, these parents of ours, didn’t deserve to reproduce.

“She has cancer, Dad,” Valencia shouted.

“Cancer?”

“Yes. Cancer.”

“She looks like hell,” he said.

“So you’re never going to see him again, right?” said our mother.

“Right.”

We all thought that was the end of it. Well, I didn’t. I mean, it was obviously not the end of it. But he did not call again and Valencia and Van refrained from mentioning anything about him, and eventually it did seem that Rob McCray had been forgotten.

But one day, not long before the end of their senior year, I was looking through Valencia’s backpack and found a love letter. It was folded into a square with the corner tucked into itself, the way letters were all folded back then. I wonder if kids still know how to fold those letters. I guess not. I guess they just text now.

The letter was dirty. It was my first exposure to real sex and created expectations and needs in me that have never been satisfied. Oh, to be Valencia. Though she was really just a girl, generous promises of seduction and love were being offered to her on a silver platter.

They’d had a fight and Rob was sorry. He wanted to make it up to her. He wanted to kiss her stomach, kiss her back, kiss her everything. He was in love with her. He poured his heart and soul out in smudgy blue ink. I can still picture it as clearly as if it had been meant for me and I read it yesterday.

After reading it several times, while I stood frozen and listening like a jackrabbit to my family carrying on in other parts of the house, I carefully refolded it and put it back inside Valencia’s sunglass case in her backpack pocket where I had found it. It had been over two years since she and Rob had been forbidden to be together. Who would have dreamed Valencia had been disobeying my parents all that time? The love letter was the granddaddy of all discoveries, whetting my appetite to search for more. Soon I was hiding in her closet, listening as she made plans to meet him and then told our parents she had cheerleading practice. I silently lauded her, more enamored than ever.

Chapter 13

Valencia started packing up her room in late June of 1986, as soon as we got back from our trip to Glacier National Park. She started with her winter clothes, folding them into tidy stacks and inserting lilac sachets into the pockets of sweaters. She took the photos that were stuck into her vanity mirror, curling up like spyglasses, and flattened them into her album with the sparkly roller skating girl on the cover. Then, thinking better of it, she rode her bike down to the Ben Franklin, returning with a plain gold album. She removed the pictures and set the roller skate girl album on my bed. Treasures were arriving there daily. Hourly even. Hot rollers and a boxed set of Garfield all-occasion cards. A zippered quilted bag filled with bottles of thick, oily nail polish, mainly all variations of the same shade of coral pink. A pile of Seventeen magazines. Knitted mittens with snowflakes on the back of the hand (those I was not excited about, considering they were made by my grandmother and I had the same pair in a different color).

Valencia went so far as to yank off her class ring and place it in my hand.

“Here you go. I’m not going to wear this in college. I think that would be weird.”

“Don’t you want it for later? Or to give to your daughter someday?” I asked.

“No. You can have it.”

It’s still on my right ring finger today.

At one point our mother got irritated by it all and intervened. “Why are you getting rid of all these things?” she asked, picking up a pile of teen romances off my bed and stomping down the hall to wave them in my sister’s face. “We just gave you these books for Christmas! This Christmas! What are you thinking? Do you think when you go to college you are going to turn into a different person? Don’t you think you’re going to need anything anymore?”

“I have already read all of those. I read the one with that Chinese girl on the cover twice, Mom.”

“Your father and I paid good money for these. Or did you think Santa Claus brought them on his sled?”

I stuck my head into Valencia’s room to try to help, “It’s not like she’s throwing them in the garbage, Mom. She’s giving them to me.”

They ignored me. “Take these books with you,” our mother ordered.

“What?” Valencia shook her head and laughed a mean, uncharacteristic laugh. She never behaved like that, but as the minutes at home ticked down, her true feelings were beginning to wear through.

“Put them in there and take them with you to La Crosse,” said our mother, waving her free hand at a plastic milk crate half full of sweaters, “or you will never get another Christmas present from us again.”

“But she already gave them to me,” I said.

“You have lost your mind,” Valencia said to our mother.

Our mother stood there, frozen, holding the books. I started to wonder if she’d had a stroke, like I learned about in school. I hoped so. I was already picturing her getting wheeled off on a stretcher when she sprang back to life and threw the books, hard, against Valencia’s chest. Valencia’s face kind of crumbled, a look of sad shock leaving her mouth hanging open.

“You’re grounded!” yelled my mother and brushed past us. We heard the back screen door slam and we looked at each other, both of us in shock.

“I’m eighteen,” Valencia said softly. “She can’t ground me.”

I sank down onto Valencia’s baby blue shag carpet and began to pick up the books.

“Don’t worry about those. I will do it,” she said, regaining her composure.

“Okay,” I said. I picked up her stuffed Scooby Doo pillow that had been on her bed for as long as I could remember. Now it was shoved beside her dresser, most likely about to become mine. “What’s her problem?” I said.

Valencia sighed. “I cannot wait to be out of here,” she said, resuming packing. I nodded, as if I understood and could relate, as if I was about to be “out of here” soon also, and didn’t have seven years of solitary confinement ahead of me. She picked up the pile of books and set them back on the shelf where they had lived before she tried to give them to me. “Do you want that pillow?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Take it. It’s yours now. I think Van probably has a bunch of stuff he’d let you have too.”

Something in her tone made me think I was being dismissed. “Okay, I’ll go check. Thanks for the pillow.”

She closed her door behind me. Instead of going down to Van’s room I went into my own room and shut the door. The house had been a flurry of activity since we had returned from our trip. Soon, very soon, they would be at college and the house would be quiet. Just the three of us. Mom and Dad and me. I inhaled, exhaled. It was uncomfortable to think about. I had been avoiding the reality, living in the moment of chaos and prizes piling up. I looked around, studied my plain, dull face in the mirror above my dresser, and tried to push the bad thoughts away.

“The Mystery Machine,” I whispered, reading the words on the pillow. “Mystery. Machine. Mystery Machine.”

I sat on my bed, waiting for something to happen. So much of my life has had that feeling. That peculiar feeling of confusion, boredom and anticipation, all rolled into one unsettling emotion.

I wanted to experience what a potato must feel after garlic and butter and an hour in an oven have turned it into something delicious, when it gets popped into a mouth that, moments later, exclaims, “This is Heaven on Earth!” When just a few hours earlier that potato had been in a sack, brown and dirty, dreaming there was more but unable to fathom what that might be.

Chapter 14

Let me tell you a story: The story of Adrian and me. The story of my becoming Mrs. Adrian Corbis.

Adrian and I got married in July. It was so hot that people were actually fainting. We were married in Madison in that little church right on Lake Mendota, at James Madison Park. His sister Alexa was my only bridesmaid, and his friend Scott, from college, was his groomsman. Since he had done all this before, we kept it pretty simple.

I had the best dress. I mean, when they say that you will know when you find the right dress, believe it. I had tried on fifty or sixty dresses and they all fell flat. And then I tried on the one, and it was perfect. Satin and strapless, perfectly straight, the tiniest train. I wore it with a poufy veil and a headband with sapphires that cost more than the rest of my bridal ensemble combined.

Our cake was vanilla hazelnut with a whipped buttercream frosting that had shavings of white and dark chocolate all over it. People who normally could not care less about dessert were scarfing down three or four pieces. Good thing we had such a huge, tall cake. Adrian is the one who suggested we add another tier to it. He is so smart like that. There was barely any cake left by the time the evening was over. Which was not such a big deal, considering I would not have wanted the leftovers since I work so hard to not be fat.

Our cake, though extravagantly large, was quite simple. The kind of simplicity that takes a practiced hand. The cake cost a fortune. I’d rather not say how much. Let’s just leave it at that. A fortune. But worth every penny.

Look at me, talking about the cake before I even mention our main course! The main course was a fabulous linguine primavera that was so light and delicious that even die-hard carnivores like my Uncle Burt were raving and requesting more. And we had the best Caprese salad. I love Caprese salad. Adrian introduced it to me. Can you believe I had never had Caprese salad before Adrian? Now it’s everywhere, but there was a time it was something rather new.

We had the loveliest string quartet. I don’t think a wedding is truly a wedding without a string quartet. Adrian’s mother taught me that. She may be a hippie, but her parents are not, so she knows these things. Adrian did not have a string quartet at his first wedding. Can you imagine? I think that was the beginning of their demise.

I’m kidding. No seriously, I am not that superstitious. Or snobby. But still, who has a wedding without a string quartet? Honestly? Probably me prior to Adrian. As my mother would say, Shhhhh. Pretend I did not even say that. He and his family have taught me so much. I have so much to be thankful for.

As the day turned to evening, it cooled off a little and everyone got so drunk. We had red wine and white wine and champagne, of course. The best of everything. We had kegs of beer, but only good beer, and a martini bar. You name it, we had it.

Adrian and I danced all night, and everyone kept wishing us well and telling me I looked beautiful.

“Your eyes match the sapphires in your headband,” was a comment I heard from at least three different guests. Honestly, I already knew that, but it was nice to see that people took notice.

Even my mother seemed pleased with how it all turned out. It was just so perfect. The best day ever. I felt like someone else entirely. It was the perfect celebration of the metamorphosis from the miserable girl I used to be to the happy woman only Adrian could have turned me into.

Chapter 15

“Are you ready?” Adrian asked me.

“I don’t have anything green to wear,” I said.

“You don’t have to wear green.”

“Well, I sort of do. Isn’t it like going out on Halloween and not wearing a costume?”

“No. Halloween is a much bigger deal.”

“You’re wearing green.”

Sometimes I think anyone could marry anyone and it would be the same. Probably everyone was having a similar conversation. Pick a house. Any house. Same conversation.

“Borrow something of Alexa’s.”

“Adrian, she’s three inches taller than me. Plus, that would be annoying. I wouldn’t want her borrowing my clothes.”

“You’ll look cute in anything. What about that really dark green pair of pants you have with that top you made. That flowy thing with that thing on it? Did you bring it?”

“Oh! The poncho with the wooden button. Good idea!” I dumped out one of the suitcases I had yet to unpack and found the outfit that Adrian was talking about. I hoped we would run into someone I used to know when we were out. Just to show off how much better I had turned out than anyone might have expected. But it was bound to not happen. I only ran into old acquaintances when I was wearing warm-up pants and souvenir t-shirts.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, kissing my neck as I put on my earrings.

“Ooh, lucky me. What is it?”

“Close your eyes.”

So I did, and I felt him fastening a necklace behind my neck. We’re just like a jewelry commercial, I thought.

“Open them.”

“Adrian, it’s beautiful,” I said. And it was. Three varying lengths of delicate gold chain, the bottom one holding a tiny diamond pendant. I took off my earrings, which now did not match.

“Thank you,” I said, and gave him a hug. For some inexplicable reason, this made me think of the photos. Was this the behavior of a guilty man? Because it felt like it. So haphazard, so out of the blue. “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“You’re the occasion.”

“Oh, that’s sweet.” I hate lines like that. Hate them. Has a line so corny ever evoked a genuine reaction? Only from someone stupid. I felt a tense anger rising within me and I fought to control it. I am my mother’s daughter, though I try to deny it. It is a constant battle to not become her.

I hugged him again, and kissed his lips, determined to stay the couple in the commercial. Adrian helped me along by holding up my hair. We faced one another in the mirror.

“You look very pretty,” his reflection said to my reflection.

“Thank you,” said my reflection.

We stared at each other for another few seconds and it began to feel very awkward. I turned away and shook out my hair.

“So you like it?” he asked.

I nodded, touching the delicate chains. It was mall jewelry, but probably expensive. Shouldn’t an artist have artsier taste? Shouldn’t I be receiving something edgier that cut my skin and made my neck ache? But if he had better taste then I would worry he was gay. “I do,” I said.

This is your fault, I told myself. You are unable to be satisfied.

“Do you really like it?” he asked. “We could exchange it if you don’t.”

“I love it,” I said. “Really, I do. You’re too good to me.”

Chapter 16

When Adrian and I arrived at my parents’ house the next day, they were sitting outside in lawn chairs facing the street, as if they were watching a ballgame. It was cold and they were both bundled up in winter coats, hats, gloves. I was embarrassed both by them and for them.

“Was there a parade on this cul de sac this morning?” Adrian joked.

“Ugh,” I rolled my eyes and he put his hand on mine.

“It’s just one day. I’ll help you through it.” He parked in front of their house and opened the trunk. “I’ll get our bags, don’t worry about it,” he said. This way he could avoid some of the greeting process. I couldn’t blame him.

“Hi Honey,” said my mom, giving me a kiss. Then my dad approached, drink in one hand and cigar in the other, and gave me a big bear hug. “Whiskey or a brandy old fashioned?” he asked.

“Brandy old fashioned,” I said.

“What about you?” my dad yelled to Adrian. He avoids saying his name. Adrian is the first Adrian he’s ever heard of, and I think some part of him cannot really believe it’s a name. A man’s name anyhow. Perhaps he is afraid he will mispronounce it.

Adrian hesitated. “Whiskey,” he decided.

My dad disappeared inside, returning a minute later with an icy old-fashioned glass for me, complete with a plastic swizzle stick of maraschino cherries, and a double shot glass of Old Kentucky Chicken for Adrian.

“Tastes just like Jack Daniel’s. I dare you to tell them apart,” my dad said.

Adrian smiled his isn’t-this-quaint smile and downed the shot. In his family they are eccentric in a refined, clever way. Their handmade lawn ornaments go on to become priceless folk art. Their family gatherings might include a sword fight, or the reemergence of some far off relative who had been living in a tent in Greece for seven years. All members of the family will at some point write a book. They did not take family trips in RVs or ever personally know someone who sold insurance.

My dad refilled Adrian’s shot glass and handed him the bottle so he could keep up with it himself.

My mother led us inside. “What do you think about pork chops on the grill?” she asked.

“Okay. Whatever’s easiest. A salad is fine, too.” I had not eaten meat in six months and couldn’t believe this was how I would be breaking back into the carnivorous world. With pork chops. Second only to meatballs in disgustingness.

“What about Swedish meatballs?” asked my dad, on cue.

“Really, it’s all the same to me,” I said.

“Passive aggressive,” my husband sang into my ear, disguising it as a kiss. His breath smelled of alcohol.

“Well, the pork chops are thawed out. That’s what we were planning on.”

I cleared my throat, trying to gather some nerve. I imagined myself saying aloud, Do you know, I actually am not a fan of pork chops. Or Swedish meatballs. Those were things your other, dead children liked. I imagined my mother’s disinterested response: Since when? she would say. She wouldn’t look up. She would be multi-tasking or munching on a carrot with her mouth half full.

I remained silent. This was no longer my home. I was a guest now, and I would eat what they served me.

“She’s always been that way: Picky,” my dad said to Adrian. “Once, when we were on a trip to Glacier National Park, she ordered a big plate of fish sticks and French fries. Only, you see, they weren’t the kind of French fries she was used to, so let me tell you, she starts crying and carrying on, and before you know it she’s thrown the whole plate on the floor.”

“I’m ready for another drink,” I said. I remembered the story he was telling, only he had a key detail wrong: It had not been me. There had been a little girl who was about three years old sitting at the table next to ours all those years ago. She had been upset that the fries were not crinkle cut. Furthermore, she had not thrown a plate of them onto the floor, she had thrown a small fistful onto the floor, and then had been backhanded by her father.

I looked at my mother but she was busying herself with the pork chops and a bag of Shake and Bake.

“Do you remember that, Mom?” I asked.

“Hmmm?” She shook, shook, shook the bag without looking up.

Adrian put his arm around my waist and gave me a squeeze. “Is that the truth? Would you actually throw your fish sticks on the floor?”

“French fries,” I corrected.

Adrian turned back to my father, “She still throws her food on the floor when I take her out, Roger. It’s why we can never go anywhere fancy.”

“All right, gang. We’ve got half with Shake and Bake and half without,” said my mom. She had arranged the pork chops on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil that was molded into separate trough-like compartments to keep the Shake and Baked pork chops from contaminating the plain ones.

“Love this Reynolds Wrap,” she continued, licking her fingers. “Makes clean up a snap.” Her hair looked big and she looked old. I began to feel queasy. Being here always made me sick.

“Patricia, goddammit, put barbeque sauce on the ones without the Shake and Bake,” said my dad. He looked at Adrian and shook his head in exasperation. Adrian gave me another squeeze.

“We’re going to look at your yard,” I said, taking Adrian’s hand and leading him outside to their spinning windmills and pint-sized wishing wells. It was the only excuse I could think of to get a minute away from them without causing offense. It was no use. My father followed closely behind us in his cloud of cigar smoke, coughing and spitting big slimy wads of yellow phlegm on the grass and melting snow piles.

“There’s not much coming up yet. Few things popping through. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snows again. Don’t let a warm couple of days fool you.”

“I know, Dad.”

My father thinks that moving to Savannah completely wiped out my understanding of how Midwest weather works.

“Do you have a garden in Savannah?” My parents have only visited us once, when they were on the way down to my aunt’s house in Florida.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” he repeated. It was the kind of answer that made my father mad.

“Roger, are you going to grill these or do I have to do it?” called my mother. She had an oven mitt on each hand, holding the cookie sheet of pork chops, her elbows sticking straight out. She looked like a bird.

Judging by the reactions of my childhood classmates and teachers, she used to be pretty. At parent-teacher conferences, the male teachers, who often had not noticed I was even in their class, would devote a full hour to chatting it up with her. The mousy, frumpy moms would wait in line just outside the door, glaring in at us through big 1980’s tinted lenses. Little popular girls who had nothing to do with me normally would shyly say, “Your mommy is pretty” and, for a day or two until it wore off, I would be worth remembering. I was used to this treatment over Valencia, and I accepted it. I had a harder time when it happened because of my mom.

I looked back at her standing there on the patio, holding that cookie sheet like it was so, so terribly heavy. Her head cocked to one side, an expression of exasperation on her face as my dad shuffled back to her, taking his time on the stepping stone path. This was their thing, their dance, the way they lived. Doling out and accepting a lifetime of disappointments. How much of their relationship and anger was because my mother had been pretty and now was not? Despite losing Van and Valencia, I believe that was her greatest loss of all.

Even now as an adult, I am barely able to follow how it works. Why would one girl care if another girl she hates has a pretty mother or sister? Why was that enough to sometimes afford me a fleeting glimpse of kindness and respect? I did not understand it then and I do not understand it now. If Adrian and I have a baby someday, I will do my best to teach her all I know, but I will not be able to teach her this.

Chapter 17

After dinner the four of us sat huddled around the patio table, pork chop bones anchoring the Styrofoam plates from blowing away, an endless train of mixed drinks prepared by my father coming our way. We were all shivering a little but no one made a move to go inside. After months of winter, these not-quite-frigid nights were cherished. Adrian was trying to make conversation, not understanding that my parents have no interest in anything except landscaping and bowling. During a lapse in the conversation, I took the opportunity to reveal my true motivation.

“I’m going to visit Valencia and Van’s graves while I’m here,” I said. This was met with silence. My mother picked up her drink and finished it, then waved it at my father to show she needed a refill.

“I haven’t been there for a long time,” I continued. “I think I might go tonight.”

“The cemetery is going to be soggy tonight. You might as well wait until tomorrow or the next time you’re here,” said my mother.

“Can I have the keys?” I asked Adrian, holding out my hand, “I’m going to go there now.”

“You’ve been drinking quite a bit, Sweetie. I don’t think you should go anywhere,” he said.

“Give me the keys.”

“Who needs another one?” asked my dad, rising from the table.

“Adrian, give me the keys,” I said.

“I’ll take one more, easy on the ice,” said Adrian.

“She’s had too much to drink,” said my mom to Adrian, shaking her head.

“No, Mom. I have not. Adrian, quit ignoring me. Give me the keys.”

“But you’ve been drinking,” he whined.

“Actually, I haven’t had nearly as much as the rest of you.”

“Roger, where did you get this glass? I swear, we used to have a set like this. Tall ones, short ones,” Adrian called to my father, holding up a glass available at any garage sale.

“That’s the only one we have left anymore, so don’t break it,” joked my father through the screen door.

“Put some extra maraschino cherries in mine, Roger,” called my mother.

Was I invisible? I pulled my sweater tightly around me, shivering. Adrian fit in so well, I realized. Perhaps not intellectually, but he was every bit as disloyal to me as my parents were. I wondered what was next. I pictured the three of them signing a document and a paddywagon arriving to take me to an insane asylum.

“I came here to visit their graves and that is what I intend to do,” I said. No one even looked at me. I reached for the keys in Adrian’s pocket and he grabbed my wrist. It didn’t hurt so much as anger and surprise me.

“I love those little cherries,” sang my mother. Then she burst into a giggle fit.

“Adrian!”

Finally he turned to me and made eye contact. “If you’re going, I’m coming with you and I’m driving. I haven’t had as much as you.”

“You’ve had much more than I have. Let me go. Let me do this alone.”

He stood up. “Roger, Patricia. We’ll be back shortly. It’s going to be too dark to find our way tonight, but your daughter, God love her, gets these ideas…”

“No. I really need to do this by myself,” I said.

“I’m not losing another child!” said my mother, sounding shrill and wasted. This surprised me. I often felt that she thought of me as some kind of relative, but not her child. A younger sister, perhaps.

“Adrian, please,” I whispered.

My dad was back with a bucket of ice cubes. “Try these cubes. Tell me what they taste like.”

“I like this game,” said my drunk mother, popping one into her drink. “Well Roger, let me think. Don’t tell us. These taste like ginger.”

“Noooo. Guess again.”

“Figs? Fig Newtons?”

“Closer.”

“Are these made of prunes?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

And then, miracle of miracles, Adrian handed me the keys.

“Thank you,” I whispered, feeling genuinely grateful. The cemetery was only a mile away. I ran to the car and got in, immediately locking my door as if I were in a scary neighborhood. I adjusted the seat and took a second to catch my breath. It was such a relief to be alone. I felt the pressure in my head instantly begin to dissipate.

Start the car.

Hurry hurry.

Get away before someone stops you.

I decided I might never come back. The best thing to do, the only solid option, was to drive forever.

Adrian tapped on the window then and I had no choice but to open it.

I lowered the window and he leaned in. “I just wanted to give you a kiss. Be careful.” He kissed my temple. “Don’t stay away too long.”

“I won’t.”

“Too many more of these are going to make me sick,” he said, holding up a fresh drink with a plastic sword of cherries bobbing in it.

“Well, you can always just stop drinking them, you know.”

“Can I?”

“Can’t you?”

“The ice cubes are frozen prune juice.”

“That’s gross.”

He leaned in for a kiss on the lips.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I rolled the window back up. It was starting to get much colder out.

He stood there, seeming less like the enemy than a sad and trustworthy dog.

You have to be married to understand how quickly it can change like that. And change back.

He waved as I pulled away. I was glad he wasn’t with me.

Chapter 18

Valencia and Van have the first two gravestones in our family plot. When they died my parents bought four plots: the two for my brother and sister, and two for themselves. My parents’ graves already have their names and dates of birth chiseled into the brown granite, with vacant spaces awaiting their dates of death to be filled in. Back when they did this, I asked why there weren’t five gravestones. They explained that I would want to be buried with my husband and it would happen so far in the future that I shouldn’t worry about it.

“What if I don’t have a husband when I die?”

“You will,” said my mother.

“How do you know?”

“Everyone gets married. Don’t worry about it.”

“Could I stay in Valencia’s place?” I asked. After all, it was empty. But they were saving it for her, in case someday her body turned up. The possibility of Valencia was a firmer placeholder than the reality of me.

I felt then and still feel that they should have bought another plot. Not a headstone, but a plot. A space for me. Who cares if it was expensive? Who cares if it would have seemed strange and morbid to the neighbors?

“Don’t feel bad, kiddo,” my dad had said. “Just be glad you’re up here instead of in there.”

“I want to be in there with them,” I said.

“Oh, is that what you think?” he said, not so kindly.

That was what I knew.

“Please buy me a spot too. I want to be with all of you.”

“You’re not acting very grown up,” said my mother, overhearing. I can picture her, looking haggard, looking like she could not take anymore.

“I just feel left out.”

“Will you listen to yourself? Think of what you’re saying. You should be very, very ashamed of yourself.”

“I just –“

“Quit taking this personally,” said my mother. “It’s not about you.”

I took it very personally though, when I was eleven years old, to see the place where the four of them would rest together eternally, with no space for me.

Tonight the graveyard was black. For the first time, it seemed like it might not have been a good idea to come here alone. I found a flashlight in the glove box and made my way through the cemetery, following the skinny beam of light, trying to remember where they were. At the point when I started to feel like I should just give up until it was light out again, when I looked back and the car looked so frighteningly far away, I found them. I crouched down, making sure to keep my butt off the squishy wet ground, and shined the flashlight across the headstones.

Van was first. Evan Roger Loden. He’d never been known as Evan a day in his life. June 15, 1968 – November 26, 1986. A chintzy, faded ribbon on a plastic wreath flapped in the night wind. It said Son. The last time I had visited, the same wreath had been here, but it had been new. Had my parents been here between then and now? I pulled the wreath from its rusty metal stake, and also removed the tattered one leaning up against Valencia’s grave that said Daughter. There were rules against leaving these tacky pieces of garbage here year round. I was surprised some groundskeeper hadn’t taken them down a long time ago.

I looked around me, making sure I was still alone. The cemetery is creepy at night. It is not the ghosts I am afraid of. There are so many places to hide. I shined my light around and then let it fall on my sister’s headstone. There was a chalky pile of bird poop on it. I rubbed at it with the corner of the faded ribbon. The night wind picked up and a prickly sheet of icy rain began to fall.

I crouched back down a bit, and pulled my collar around my face. This was no longer surreal. When had it stopped being surreal? That is when the emptiness takes over for agony. Once you become numb, you never feel anything quite as acutely again. I suppose being numb robbed me of much that other young people enjoy. It is what it is.

Valencia Patricia Loden said the words neatly etched in granite. Who, since she was born ten minutes after Van, had managed to score herself her own birthday, but not her own death day. June 16, 1968 – November 26, 1986. I followed my old superstition of standing in front of Valencia’s grave, since there was not a skeleton beneath me, just dirt.

I waited to feel something. I touched the gravestones, running my fingers over the texture of their names.

“Van?” I whispered. Could he see me? Did he remember me? I wish I believed he was watching me.

The wind was blowing harder and I pulled my sweater sleeves around my fingers, clicking off the flashlight so I could be alone with them in the dark.

“Valencia, who am I?” I whispered. I felt stupid for saying this aloud and caught myself looking around, as if someone had heard me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to connect to them. But I just kept feeling empty. My legs started to burn from squatting to avoid the wet earth, so I let myself sit on the damp grass, let the icy, pellet-like drops of rain dampen my hair and face.

You might as well go, I told myself. What were you expecting?

But I stayed there, shivering, pathetically jealous of my dead brother and sister. They knew things I did not, might never know.

Chapter 19

I was more excited about the weekend that Van and Valencia were moving to La Crosse than possibly even they were. It was going to be a mini-vacation. We were all going to spend the night there. I was not entirely sure what I was expecting it to be, but I had the vague notion it would be cool. In the days leading up to their departure, I was too caught up in my imaginings of dorm life and pizza parties to think beyond that weekend. The reality of a house that would be losing forty percent of its inhabitants, two thirds of its children (and the important children at that), in one swift weekend was too much for my eleven-year-old brain to comprehend.

Three days before we planned to leave, my dad borrowed his brother’s truck and began loading it up with boxes. I had already packed an overnight bag. It looked like a sausage about to burst. It was filled with everything from hand-me-down bikinis of my sister’s to a hot pink Shaker sweater, and plenty of makeup. I had the vague, secret notion that I could trick a college boy into thinking I was sixteen or seventeen. That was as far as my fantasy had evolved. I was sitting on my bed, reading ‘Teen magazine, my mind split between the trip to La Crosse and school starting in less than a week. It might not be too late to reinvent myself as a Stylish Girl. With all of Valencia’s old clothes, I might finally stand a chance.

I heard the sound of knocking on my doorframe and I looked up. No one ever knocked on an open door. You were lucky if they knocked even if it was closed. My mother was standing there with a sheepish look on her face. “Hi. Mind if I sit down by you?” I knew instantly this was no good. She sat on my bed and peered at my magazine. “What are you reading?” I showed her the article about starting the year off right, with fresh new styles. There was a picture of a fuchsia-mouthed girl with a fun ponytail erupting from the side of her head.

“Cute,” said my mom. “I could do that to your hair if you want.”

“It might make the older girls pick on me.”

“Hmmm. Listen, Honey, your dad and I were thinking that you might want to stay at Heather’s house this weekend. I called Heather’s mom already and she said it was fine. Then you’ll be all ready to start school on Monday.”

“What?” I felt my face growing hot. This could not be happening.

“I worked it all out with her. She said you can order take away food on Saturday night.”

“It’s called take out. And I don’t want any. I want to come with you!”

My mother sighed, loud and dramatic like a dog. “Don’t whine. It’s been a long day already and I am not in the mood to listen to you.” She stood up, leaving a big butt print on my bedspread. I wanted to smooth it out but I imagined it was infested with her germs. I looked up at her hard, determined face.

“Why? Why can’t I go? Valencia and Van want me to say good-bye to them. I want to see where they’re going to live. Why are you doing this?”

“It’s settled. I already talked to Heather’s mother. It’s final.”

“But why?”

“The last thing I need right now is a tantrum out of you.” She picked up my overnight bag and set it on the bed. “Pack this with reasonable clothing you can actually use, including something to wear to school on Monday, because you’re going directly from Heather’s to school on the bus with her. Understand?”

“No. What did I do? Why can’t I go with everyone else? I’ll be good.”

“Your dad and I need a break and we’re going to stay there an extra couple of days. And you’re going to stay at Heather’s. You’ll have fun on the farm. Maybe they’ll put you to work and you’ll realize how good you have it here.”

“I didn’t realize you needed a vacation from me.”

“Get your clothes in order before Friday because once you’re at Heather’s you can’t come back here and pick new outfits. Understand?”

She got up and walked to the door.

“Should I pack it with clothes for Tuesday and Wednesday too?” I yelled, “Should I just pack it for the whole week in case you never come home?”

“You’re walking a fine line,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

I sat on my bed, kicking the mattress with my heels until they hurt too badly to continue. I had told a lot of people about this weekend. Now I would show up riding Heather’s manure-stinky school bus on the first day of school and everyone would think I was a liar.

In Seventeen and ‘Teen I read about girls who got to visit their older sisters at college and stay overnight. They would do things like make popcorn and set each other’s hair with hot rollers. I would never be that girl because my parents would never allow it to happen. I got up to look for Valencia. She was my only chance at changing their minds.

Her bicycle was gone so I went to Van’s room to ask him if he had seen her. He was lying on his bed, reading a book. His room smelled like mint chewing gum and cologne.

“She went to babysit the neighbors while their mom’s at the dentist or something,” he said.

“Oh. How long ago did she leave?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an hour ago.”

“Well how nice and free it must feel to just pick up and go babysitting,” I said.

Van looked at me quizzically and went back to his book.

Valencia started baby-sitting when she was eleven years old. Now I was eleven and not only was I not allowed to babysit, but my parents still made Valencia or Van stay with me if they left for more than a quick errand. They were hypocrites. They made me sick.

I went back up to my room, completely defeated, and shut the door. Almost immediately someone knocked on it.

“What do you want?” I mumbled.

“Can I come in?” asked my mom.

“I don’t care.”

She opened the door and stuck her head in. A tight, stressed smile was on her face and in her hand was a plastic baggie filled with what looked like sand.

“Shake and Bake for dinner, so you better snap out of it if you want to eat with the rest of us.”

Chapter 20

I didn’t feel like staying at the cemetery any longer, but I didn’t want to go back to my parents’ house either. I drove around, scanning my periphery for cops and bars. If it wasn’t for the letters Adrian had received I would have gone straight back, perhaps would even have invited him along in the first place. But now everything was changing. Adrian was no longer my whole world. I could feel myself breaking away from him to protect myself. I wanted an explanation so badly that I had actually considered confronting him. How great would it be to have it all explained away and to go back to feeling peace again. But what if there was no explanation, and I unraveled our world? I would be left with nothing.

He found me at Frank’s Friendly Tavern, an hour and seven shots of Wild Turkey later, ready to puke into the lap of the old man on the barstool beside me.

“Honey,” he said, coming up behind me, holding my parents’ car keys in his hand. “I was worried about you.”

He settled my tab and helped me out to their car. As drunk as I was, I realized the irony in not borrowing Alexa’s clothes, yet taking her car all the way to Hudson and leaving it in the parking lot of a redneck bar.

My head was spinning. I hadn’t had this much to drink in years. “Adrian, do you love me?” I asked.

“Yes. Of course I do.”

He started the car and my head slipped against the cool passenger window.

“What’s going to happen when we get back to Savannah?”

“The same things that always happen. What do you mean?”

I rolled my window down and, mercifully, began throwing up before I could say anything more.

We headed back to Madison the next morning. I had been up all night, sick, telling anyone who would listen that I needed my stomach pumped. Adrian too was hungover and the miles passed in silence. The warm weather was gone and icy rain was coming down. My mother was upset that we were heading back in such rotten weather. “I have a work appointment in Madison this afternoon I can’t miss,” Adrian told her. It was a lie. Not that I minded.

Near Black River Falls, Adrian pulled off for coffee, and when we were back on our way he put in a mix CD that one of his fans had sent him. I looked at the case, a hand drawn cat and puffy, happy handwriting: To Adrian, I love your art. I heard Beyonce does to! Sierra Gladstone.

Sierra Gladstone’s mix CD was a compilation of music that probably predated her arrival on Earth. Old songs by Boyz II Men, Billy Ray Cyrus, Simply Red. This CD is Adrian’s current favorite and plays in the car, in his studio, on the back porch while he’s barbequing, and anywhere else he happens to be.

“This girl should be a DJ,” Adrian had enthused when he first listened to it.

“Are you sure you really want to touch that? What if she’s crazy? What if she did something to it?” I asked him.

“Relax. It’s not like I’m eating homemade cookies. It’s just a mix CD. What could she have done to it?”

“There could be subliminal messages on it.”

“She drew a cat. With a Sharpie. I think I’m fine.” He turned up the volume and closed his eyes. “When’s the last time you heard this song? I had forgotten it existed! This Sierra girl is great at putting the right song in the right order. Following ‘It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday’ with ‘Achy Breaky Heart’… I mean, it just works.”

Adrian loves music nobody loves. It’s pathetic really, and so out of character for someone who is usually cool. Perhaps this is that kind of coolness where you shun actual cool things and embrace nerdy things. I don’t know. For him, a really fun shopping trip is blowing twenty dollars on twenty CDs at the Frugal Listener resale store. Billy Joel, Wilson Phillips, Juice Newton, The Ramones.

Unless he is in the car with me, I am embarrassed to have Juice Newton blaring. Honestly, most of his music embarrasses me. But nothing embarrasses Adrian. I wish I could be more like him. I think it takes someone really brave to leave those CDs all over the front seat of his Audi.

Chapter 21

I was unable to change my parents’ minds, and together with Van and Valencia, they left for La Crosse. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to the twins, since they were at the hardware store with my dad when my mom decided to take me to Heather’s house.

“Quit sniveling. They’ll be home before you know it,” she lied.

When she dropped me off, I was crying like a baby. She only took me to the end of Heather’s long driveway, because she hated the way the farm made her car smell.

“I know it’s stinky but please take me all the way there. Are you really going to make me walk the whole way? This bag is heavy!”

“I guess you packed too much. And probably nothing old. See if you can borrow something of Heather’s. We’ve spent as much on clothes for you as we’re going to spend. Now give me a kiss goodbye. Do it. Give me a kiss before someone sees you acting like a brat,” she said, noticing Heather’s father nearby in a field on his tractor, watching us.

“No,” I said, slamming the door and not looking back.

My weekend with Heather and her family was atrocious. Jenny was over at their house most of the time.  Their parents’ farms butted up to one another and their houses had been built on the inner edge of the property lines, making it possible to stand in one’s kitchen and watch the other buttering her toast. They were hardy farm girls who were immune to the smell and sounds of it all. I was not. I had a difficult time even eating while I was there, since everything was tinged with the aroma of the barn. They liked to play games like hide-and-seek in the cornfield and have goat milk squirting competitions. They casually used humiliating words like teat and udder in conversation. Dirty words like that got a person grounded at my house. That weekend made it more obvious than ever that I did not fit in with them.

Monday was our first day of sixth grade, which meant we had graduated from the elementary school to the junior high school, but they were oblivious to the magnitude of it. Heather was planning to wear last year’s clothes, a corduroy jumper that I had seen her in a million times. Jenny had new clothes, but they were stiff, bright kids’ clothes from a farm equipment store. I decided that I would ride the bus with them because I had to, and spend my first day smelling like shit, but once Tuesday rolled around I was flying solo, even if it meant I would never have a friend again.

When we got to school, I was ecstatic to learn that we had each been assigned our own locker. Just like high schoolers! Just like the girls in Seventeen magazine or in Sweet Valley High books. I looked into the tiny metal cavern, not seeing a nine square foot box but a world of possibilities. The first chance I got I was going to buy one of those magnetic locker mirrors with a little tray attached for lip gloss and ponytail holders. I would tape up a picture of Kirk Cameron! And John Stamos! Now I might find notes, love notes, shoved through the little slats in the locker doors. Probably having no locker in the past is what had prevented me from receiving such notes. After all, what were those little slats for if not for dropping notes? We each got a brand new padlock too.

While I had somehow forgotten that we would finally have lockers, the popular girls had not. Two minutes after I had located mine and hung my backpack and overnight bag inside, I looked around me and discovered that they had already decorated theirs. Puffy heart shaped stickers that changed colors if you touched them, letters spelling their names. (Kaci, Kari, Jessi, Keeli, Jami, Jenni – to be popular your name must start with a J or K and end with an I. No exceptions.) And of course there was plenty of the obligatory statement, “93 Rules!”

I walked past Jessi and Keeli’s lockers for an unneeded drink at the water fountain so I could get a better look. The decorations did not end on the outside. They each had locker mirrors. Jessi’s had a blue leopard print border and tray sticking out beneath it, to hold the necessary trinkets of popularity. I slowed my pace. If I knew the ingredients of popularity, I could buy them and create some for myself. Like a witch with a bubbling cauldron. Like the guy who created Frankenstein. I took a look from the corner of my eye. The little tray was overflowing with cool markers, scrunchies, tubes of lipstick, packs of gum…

“What are you staring at?” she asked me.

“Me? I wasn’t staring at anything.”

“Get your drink at the bubbler and move along,” she said, making a walking motion with her fingers.

She rolled her eyes at Keeli, who was attaching a magnetic message board to the outside door of her locker. A marker dangled from it on a little cord. If I did that, people would write “You suck bitch” or just steal it, but undoubtedly she would be receiving daily messages like “U R HOT” and “C U at practice, luv U like a Sis!”

I stuck my head in the ancient water fountain, squinting at the sight of other kids’ spit, catching a few meager drops of what tasted like pure rust. How was I going to become popular? They hated me. A new year had not changed anything. Now here I was, slurping rusty water because I had been told to do so. You are pathetic, I reminded myself, taking another drink. Just then Heather and Jenny came walking toward me. Heather had gone through puberty big time during the summer. She now had both a bigger mustache and bigger boobs than any teacher in our school. Jenny, in comparison, looked like she was seven or eight years old, with a huge horse mouth filled with crooked shark teeth.

“Where’s your locker?” Heather asked me.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and brushed past them.

“Hey, where’s your locker?” demanded Jenny.

I turned back to them and yelled, as loud as possible, “Get the fuck away from me!”

The entire hallway hushed. That moment lasted for what seemed like hours. Then Keeli and Jessi started to giggle, that exclusive but infectious tinkly little giggle of popular girls. Soon the whole hallway was laughing at the three of us losers and my outburst. My new teacher appeared, grabbed my arm, and dragged me straight to the principal’s office.

This marked the beginning of my solitary years.

Life with Van and Valencia at college was worse than I had imagined it would be. For the first decade of my life, I’d had the luxury of being mostly invisible. I didn’t have to hide in my bedroom, because I could sit on the couch watching TV for hours without anyone uttering a word to me. I rarely got presents or compliments or eye contact, but in turn, I had hardly ever been told to do a chore and had only been mildly punished a time or two in my life. In rare instances I had been grounded, which was no different from not being grounded, since I never went anywhere. I was like a pet hamster or gerbil, only I never had to worry about starving to death because I could pour my own cereal.

Once the twins were gone, my parents suddenly realized I was around and felt compelled to do something about it. They became overzealously aware of my grades, which were poor but not exceptionally poor. C’s, the occasional D, a B once in Spanish class when the teacher got me confused with another student and I didn’t correct her. Suddenly they expected me to get A’s. My mother had the gall to even ask me, “How do you think we feel when we go to our bowling league and Jenny and Heather’s parents are bragging about them being on the honor roll and you can’t even make the honorable mention list?”

Well, she had a lot to learn about motivating others, because hearing that made me want to try less than ever. And after my lasting impression at the water fountain, the teachers had no charity for me. I did just well enough to not fail. It was devastating to poor Roger and Patricia. Without Valencia’s prom queen winning ways decorating the local paper, or Van’s high scoring basketball skills leading the local team to the state competition, they had nothing. They were, for the first time, not just painfully aware of my existence, but of my meaningless existence. There was only one solution: I became in a constant state of groundedness, enforced and monitored like never before. Unable to leave the house, unable to talk on the phone, unable to even leave my room until my homework was finished and until I “snapped out of it.” It being dumb, untalented, and ugly.

I wrote letters to Valencia, and tried to explain to her what I was going through, but she only responded once. She sent a UW La Crosse postcard and on the back she wrote, “Sorry life is tough. See you at Thanksgiving. I will take you shopping when I’m home! Take it easy! Your big sister”

My mom saw it and asked me why I was telling Valencia that life was “tough” and what did I have to complain about? Then she grounded me for two extra weeks.

Chapter 22

Big News! The seventh graders were inviting us sixth graders to the dance they were hosting! We didn’t know this happened every year. The Karis and Jessis were so excited. So was I, but I had to hide it. I had some tricks up my sleeve though: I had been saving magazine articles in a pink binder to help me prep for something like this. Every opportunity to break out of my everyday rut was an opportunity to show the world the real me. I imagined myself walking in and all the boys peering out from lowered shades, Miami Vice style, to see who the new hot girl was.

The first Saturday night in November was the night. Everyone in my school hated me, from the principal down to the lowliest janitor who I swore pushed his broomfuls of dirt at me, but that did not stop me from believing in the possibility of change. I begged my mother to unground me for just that one night. Shockingly, she relented.

I rummaged through Valencia’s closet, trying to find something that would turn my puny, flat-chested self into a beautiful movie star. Then I mixed up two tablespoons of Wesson, three raw eggs, and four tablespoons of mayonnaise in a cereal bowl and slathered the slimy concoction into my hair like Seventeen magazine recommended, so I would have “shiny, healthy, soft, glowing locks that any boy would want to run his fingers through.” I wrapped my drippy strands of hair in a big, orange towel and felt my head getting warm and itchy. While it soaked in, I polished my toenails and my fingernails, perched on the vanity top in the bathroom, making model-like faces at myself in the mirror. The whole room smelled like egg salad from my fermenting hair.

Unfortunately for me, Valencia had taken most of her good clothes with her to college, but I was able to pull together an outfit of stretch pants (a little droopy on me, but they would do), an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt with a tank top beneath it (think Flashdance), and a Debbie Gibson style hat that Van had worn in a play a year or two earlier. It looked like an ill-fitting rip-off of something the popular girls would be doing. I was all set.

I took a hot shower, massaging the oily mixture deep into my scalp, imagining my ordinary brown hair turning shiny and soft, maybe even magically becoming curly. I was always bugging my mom to let me get a perm but she said they were too expensive. All the cool girls had perms. Spiral perms.

I washed my hair with some fancy shampoo I had been saving for a really special occasion. It was called GLITZ and it had tiny pieces of copper glitter in it. The egg salad smell started to go away and was replaced with the rich, fruity aroma of GLITZ. I read the bottle. GLITZ will turn BLAH hair into U RAH RAH hair. There was a little cheerleader on the bottle. God, I wanted so badly for this to work. I washed my hair an extra time, working up a mountain of lather, and as I rinsed away the suds, I prayed for the magic of GLITZ to change me.

Getting dressed was the best. I felt just like Valencia. I put on her clothes and used her old blow dryer that she had left for me. I curled my bangs into an extra tall pouf and sprayed them heavily with Aquanet. My hair was soft. I had never felt such soft hair! Except for the bangs of course. Nobody had soft bangs in the late 80’s. I put on a ton of red blush and some blue eye shadow and ten sprays of Avon Soft Musk perfume. Now that Valencia was gone, I was stepping into her role of teenager of the house.

“I’m ready for you to drive me to the dance, Mom!” I yelled, admiring myself in front of the bathroom mirror. She walked by with a stack of folded laundry in her arms. “You look cute, Honey. Why does it smell like potato salad in here?”

I shrugged. She ruined everything.

“Let me put these away and then I will take you.”

I put on my scuffed black flats. Valencia’s shoes were still too big for me.

“Okay, you ready?”

I nodded and grabbed my purse. It cost two dollars to get into the dance. I hadn’t told my mom this because then she probably wouldn’t have let me go. Luckily, I had plenty of quarters saved up from doing Van’s chores.

As we approached the car, I noticed that my mom was wearing the blue dress that had been hanging behind the bathroom door while I was getting ready. I had thought the dress was dirty, and in an impulsive act of spite, I had used it to wipe up the mayonnaise mixture in the sink. Its smudgy flower print did a good job of hiding the greasy stains. She was completely unaware of the huge splotch in the middle of her back. Didn’t it feel cold and damp against her skin? Was she, as I had long suspected, part reptile? I started to get nervous. I was going to be more grounded than ever. Then I noticed she was wearing makeup. A sinking feeling took over me.

“Why are you all dressed up, Mom?”

“I’m chaperoning the dance,” she said in an irritated, exasperated tone, as if she had told me this a dozen times.

I froze. “What?”

“Mary Kelter-Gurnsey called me the other day and said they were short on chaperones, so I said I would be happy to do it. Get in the car. We’re going to be late.”

“Mom… No…” I felt like I had been punched in the gut. She had never chaperoned one of Valencia and Van’s dances. She hated me. It was obvious. People laugh at children for thinking these things, but now that I am an adult I can see that I was right. She was a bored, mean woman with little else to keep her busy. With her affair ended and Valencia and Van away, wrecking my life stepped up as a new hobby for her to ambitiously throw herself into. Other moms started book clubs or got part-time jobs at Talbot’s. Not her. She was too busy punishing me for being such a bad fit, in what could have been such a beautiful family.

She was in the car now, checking her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. “Get in or I’m going to leave without you. I don’t want to be late. How would that look?”

I opened the passenger side door and got in without saying a word. She popped in a cassette tape, turning up the volume, her signal that I should be quiet.

“We’ve both got cheatin’ hearts, yes we do,” she sang with the music, trying to croon like someone on Hee-Haw. She shook her hair and fluffed it up, thinking she looked sexy. I watched the houses we passed, each one harboring some family not as awful as my own. From the corner of my eye I noticed her sniffing about like a rabbit. The smell of my hair remedy hung thick around us. She cleared some phlegm from her throat and continued singing:

“Although we feel the shame, yes we do, we can’t stay away…”

How was she capable of imagining herself alone in the car? It was like I didn’t even exist. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, oblivious to my anger and repulsion. Oblivious to anything but her own excitement over being the belle of the junior high ball.

I wrung my hands, praying for a deer to run out in front of us. We would hit it and it would bust through the windshield. My mother would be impaled on its antlers. Miraculously, the deer would be okay and would wriggle free, a scrap of ugly material caught on its antlers, but otherwise unharmed. Years from now, after the deer had enjoyed a long, happy life, some hunter would shoot it and wonder why it had flowered polyester clinging to its antlers, and it would be written about in the local paper. Would I come forward? Would I tell? No, let it be a mystery. My poor mother would not be so lucky. She would end up in one of those homes like my great-grandma Lindstrom had been in. Diplomatically, I decided that she would not be suffering, due to all the medication they would give her. She would do word search puzzles and we would visit her on Sundays. As she drooled quietly, we would come to love her in a piteous way, and everyone would be better off.

Before I knew it, however, our station wagon was pulling into the school parking lot. All around me cars dropped off other kids and drove away. This was supposed to be the happiest night of my life so far. We walked inside and, to my further humiliation, my mother informed the old lady collecting money that I did not have to pay since she was chaperoning. I am quite sure she invented that rule on the spot.

“Cheapskate,” the old woman muttered. My mother didn’t care what some old lady thought of her. She breezed past her, drawn to the male teachers like a nail to one of those big magnets in a cow’s belly. I followed behind, looking for someone to talk to, but remembering I had no friends. The smell of egg salad that clung to my mother’s dress wafted after her and I stepped to the side to avoid it. Thank goodness I had doused myself in Avon Soft Musk perfume and washed my hair with Glitz! Didn’t she know how stinky she was? I looked around me, hoping to catch some boy’s eye, but they all avoided my desperate come-hither glances. How could I have thought things would be different tonight? It was the same old school, same old gym, same old me.

“Patricia, great of you to make it! We had the hardest time meeting the quota of chaperones for this. They had to borrow me from the grade school,” I heard Mr. Gorton gushing to my mother. He had been my teacher when I was in fourth grade. All the women loved him because he looked just like the Brawny paper towel man. He was standing beside Mr. Davis, the gym teacher, who was cute despite being nearly completely bald. Then something wonderful happened: They both wrinkled their noses and said in unison, “It smells like potato salad in here!” Then the youngest, prettiest teacher, Miss Fields, walked towards my mother but stopped a few feet short of her, waving her hand in the air, “Ewww! Does anyone else smell rotten eggs?”

My mother shot me a quick, withering glance as she struggled to appear calm and cheerful in front of the other adults. “Hmm. I don’t smell anything,” she murmured.

I wandered over to the popular girls, who turned away from me and formed an exclusionary circle of outward facing backs. Heather and Jenny were carrying on with some farm boys. Jenny looked at me, her expression bordering on welcoming, but I resisted the temptation to fall back into my old bad habits. I slinked out the side door of the gymnasium and sprinted down the dark corridor.

The school seemed bigger at night. Quiet. Peaceful. It was better out here, alone, than under pressure in the gym. I decided I would hang out in the library by myself all night. I was relieved to not have to compete against the popular girls. Soon they would be ruling the dance floor, laughing and spinning beneath the sparkly disco ball and crepe paper streamers. Even the teachers bowed down to them. The image in my head was bad enough. Having to watch it play out would have been even worse. But my mother was stuck.

I smirked, perusing the study carrels for lost notes or other treasures. What was this? Somebody’s wristwatch? Finders keepers. I slipped it into my pocket, squinting in the semi-darkness for more forgotten goodies. Yes, here I was, blissfully alone, while she was stuck chaperoning and stinking like my nasty hair, only without the half-gallon of Avon Soft Musk to drown it out. What was she doing right now, I wondered. Was she looking for me? Probably not, since that would require tearing herself away from the men. I pictured her trying to fit in, flirting desperately, now and then sniffing her dress and shrugging, a buggy eyed, goofy smile trembling on her face.

Being away from watchful, judging eyes, feeling the sweet rarity of freedom, I put my feet up on the chair across from me and relaxed. I picked up a brand new issue of Vogue that had not even made it out to the magazine wall yet, and began tearing open perfume samples, rubbing them up and down my arms. I settled back, content, my only source of light the flickering red hue of the exit signs. I was at peace. It took very little to make me happy back then.

Chapter 23

When Adrian and I got back to Madison from Hudson, I started packing to go home to Savannah. Suspiciously needing privacy from me, Adrian had called Alexa while I went in to use a bathroom at a gas station on our drive back and she had booked a flight leaving the next day. I wondered what he had said that had made her evacuate in such a hurry. Normally, we allowed our visits to overlap on one end or the other for a day or two so the three of us could catch up.

“Is Alexa upset to be getting kicked out of our house with so little notice?” I asked as we sat by the window in her foyer, waiting for the taxi to take us to the airport.

“No. She’s fine with it.”

“What did you tell her that made her rush off?”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Rush off?”

“Don’t be sensitive.”

“I’m not. I didn’t tell her anything except that you had just visited your family and were acting a little weird. I said you needed to go home to your own house. We’ve been at each other’s houses for almost two weeks, it wasn’t like she was surprised that we wanted to come home.”

“Why did you call her when I was in the gas station?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Because… it was something to do while I waited for you to use the bathroom? Am I in trouble?”

“No.”

“Well it was beginning to feel like I was.”

“Did she have trouble switching her ticket?” I asked.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a problem,” he said, turning from me and removing a book from the side pocket of his carry-on bag. He found where he had left off and started to read. I hate it when he gets suddenly absorbed in something like his art, or a book, just to end a conversation.

We sat there in silence.

“The taxi is here,” I informed him.

He closed his book and picked up our bags.

“Is the kitty going to be okay?” I don’t know why I asked that. I wasn’t a big fan of Alexa’s cat normally, but in that moment I was concerned, watching him cowering pathetically beneath an end table.

“Alexa will be home in a few hours,” he said.

“What if her plane crashes?”

“Open the door before the taxi takes off without us.”

“What if her plane crashes?” I asked again, opening the door.

“I would be sad, and you would be the proud owner of a cat. Let’s go.”

We closed the door and got in the taxi while the driver loaded our bags into the trunk. Adrian took my hand and kissed my knuckles, “Alexa is going to be fine. So is the kitty. I know you’re thinking about your family, and that’s why you worry about these things. But you don’t have to worry. Everyone is going to be fine.” He kissed my hand again and put his arm around me, squeezing me tight. “Relax, Honey. I hate to see you sad.”

“I’m not thinking about my family. I am thinking about the cat,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, patting my arm.

I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes.

The first thing I did when we boarded the plane was order a Bloody Mary. Bloody Marys seem like an airplane drink to me. Adrian covered me up with the meager blanket the airline provided and tucked it around me like I was a child. I pushed it down away from my mouth as he turned off the small fan blowing above our heads.

“I’m not cold, Honey,” I told him.

“Your mother told me something when you were at the cemetery.”

Unease swept over me. I wriggled away from the blanket so I could breathe better.

“Oh, what’s that?” I asked him, raising my eyebrows just a bit, hoping I appeared only mildly curious.

“She said you used to have a problem with stealing.” He laughed and shook his head. “Is that true? I mean, she was wasted when she told me that.”

“Wasted?” I asked, changing the subject back to her problems instead of my own.

“Well, she’d had a lot to drink.”

“Really, that is kind of low of you,” I said. “I mean, mocking my poor mother.”

He stiffened. “Are you serious? Your poor mother? Since when can’t we just talk how we want to talk?”

“Could you keep it down?” I whispered. “I was joking. Obviously.”

He looked away and I looked out the window.

“Is it true?” he asked me after awhile.

“Of course it’s not true.”

“She said you buried things.”

“This is absurd. You were both drinking and it must have been a misunderstanding. I mean, really, Adrian. She sang that song about the cherries. Why would you take anything she said seriously?”

“It didn’t seem like the kind of story that could be made up.”

“Anything could be made up.”

“She said that you used to steal things and bury them for the twins.”

“Bury them. For the twins. Umm no.”

“Then why would she say that you did?”

“I have no idea. You know, I wasn’t three years old when they died. I was old enough to understand what was going on.”

“So you never buried presents for them?”

I looked at him, unable to believe he was badgering me about something so trivial and long-forgotten when he was likely to be having an affair.

“You’re giving me the creeps,” I said.

The flight attendant appeared. “Another Bloody Mary?” she asked. I nodded and turned away. Adrian reached into his carry-on for his book and we didn’t speak again until we landed.

Chapter 24

I was totally excited for Valencia and Van to come home for Thanksgiving. We all were. It would be their first visit home since they had gone away in August. My mother was practically hysterical over it. It was like some really famous brother-sister team was coming our way. Michael and Janet. Donny and Marie. She bought them new clothes and cassette tapes, stocked up on all their favorite chips and candy, packed care packages to surprise them with when they got ready to leave us again. She washed their bedding so their rooms would be fresh and got a haircut so they would think she was more attractive than they’d remembered. A few days before they were supposed to arrive, I overheard her on the phone with Sears, trying to schedule an appointment for a family portrait sitting.

“You can’t possibly be booked solid. I’ve already bought our entire family new outfits!”

It was true; I ran to my mother’s closet and checked behind her bagged up burgundy evening gown to the place where she hid new purchases before stealthfully working them into her wardrobe. Nestled there in a giant shopping bag from JC Penney’s were five new navy sweaters. Cardigans for the boys, crew necks for the girls, and an impossibly kooky sailor style sweater for me, the family dog. I went back out to the kitchen where she was pacing and twirling the phone cord on her finger. “Yes I will hold.”

“I don’t want to wear that little sweater with the funny collar,” I whispered.

She shook her head but otherwise ignored me.

“I said I don’t like that sweater. Can I wear a sweater like you and Valencia are going to wear? Let’s return it.”

“Stop looking around in my closet,” she hissed.

“Can we please return it? Pleasssssse?”

“Go bother your dad.”

“He’s still at work.”

“Yes, I’m still here,” she said into the phone, brushing me away with her hand like I was a fly. “Friday’s great! Friday it is. Three o’clock. Will there be a makeup artist on the set? Oh. That is disappointing. Should we get there early? Yes, I can hold again.”

Spread out on the kitchen table in front of her were drawings of stick figures, labeled with our names. “What are these?” I asked, holding one up.

“Those are ideas for how we’re going to pose for our pictures. Do you like any of them?”

“Really?” Nice of you to ask, Mom. I sat down, eager to participate. I selected the one with the boys in the back row and the girls in the front. “This one. Do we just pick one of these or can we do a whole bunch?”

“Oh, they will take all kinds of pictures,” she said, her eyes gleaming.

“I can’t wait,” I heard myself say, and surprisingly, it was true. As long as I didn’t have to wear that sweater.

But her attention had turned back to her conversation with Sears, “Yes, I am still here but let me tell you, I have never been put on hold so much in my life. I am prepared to shell out a lot of money on Friday and you could treat me like the paying customer I am. Now tell me, how many changes of clothes are we allowed?”

I wandered away and found myself in Valencia’s room. I decided I would do something special for her, to welcome her home. I ran back into my own room and climbed up on a chair so I could reach my Barbies off my closet shelf. They looked a little worse than usual, ever since those neighbor girls had played with them. Both of my Barbie wedding gowns had mysteriously gone missing at that same time, but I was getting old enough that such a loss was tolerable. I poured the Barbies out on Valencia’s floor, trying to decide if a better welcome would be to spell something with them or to create a clever scene with them.

Suddenly I had an epiphany: I would create a festive Thanksgiving setting. Somewhere I even had a tiny turkey on a little plastic platter, if I could just find it. I ran downstairs and rummaged through the old wooden toy box in the TV room and miraculously found the turkey. Back up in Valencia’s room I dressed all the Barbies and the one lone imitation Ken in fun fall outfits and arranged them around an upside down Kleenex box. I set the top of the box with tiny dishes and the turkey in the middle, and then I cleaned up the little outfits and shoes strewn about. It looked adorable. Finally I made a little sign that said Welcome Home Valencia. From Barbie. I set the sign on the carpet a few feet in front of the scene, just to make sure she saw it and didn’t step right in the middle of the Barbie Thanksgiving dinner.

Unsure of what to do next, I went back to my own room, flopped down on my bed, and started doing my homework. But I went back in and checked on the scene I had created every time I needed a break. Each time I looked at the happy little dolls in the warm glow of Valencia’s bedside lamp, I felt I had created something really good.

Chapter 25

The first thing I noticed when we got back to our house was that Alexa had borrowed one of my Coach purses. I was livid. You would think that as a chronic house-switcher I would be immune to that kind of emotion, but I’m not. No matter how much someone has, they still don’t want people messing with what is theirs. And after I had refrained from raiding her closet! I could handle the house switching, because Adrian likes it and I like Madison, and Alexa’s house is all sparse and clean while ours is cracks and crevices that are never quite perfect. But, to me, there is an unwritten, commonsense rule that you just don’t use someone else’s Coach bag and leave Powerbar wrappers inside.

“It’s good to be home,” said my husband, making a beeline for the stack of mail. I knew that it was a normal thing to do after having been away for almost two weeks, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

He caught me giving him a dirty look. He set down the magazines and catalogs, but remained holding the stack of letters. “What’s up?”

“Let’s have sex,” I blurted out.

“Sure, we can do that in a little while. Do you mind if I look at the mail first?”

“You can do that later. Come on.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the bedroom, but he was still looking through the pile of mail, ignoring me. I let go.

“Adrian…”

“Give me five minutes,” he said. “We just got home. Why don’t you go play on the computer for a few minutes? Or go look at the flowers. Maybe something new is growing back there.”

I drew in a deep breath. I had to talk to him about that letter. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Adrian… sit down.”

He looked up from the letters, “What?”

“I have to talk to you about something.”

“Is it about what we were talking about on the plane?”

“What were we talking about on the plane?”

“About what your mom said?”

“No. It’s about you. And it’s about the mail. I want to look at it with you. Hand it to me.”

He set the stack of mail off to the side of the table by the door and then pounced on me. He kissed me hard, like we were in junior high school, or prison. He started yanking off my shirt and his pants at the same time. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

“You’re totally grossing me out,” I told him.

“Tell me how you really feel,” he said, backing off.

“Seriously. You’re, like, attacking me, so I will change the subject.”

“You said you wanted to make love!”

“And you told me to go look at the flowers! Anyhow, I didn’t say I wanted to ‘make love.’ I said we should have sex.”

“So you want to fuck.”

I shook my head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“What’s your problem? If you need to look at the mail, then look at it. I’m not stopping you!” he yelled, throwing the whole stack to the floor by my feet.

I looked down at the catalogs and envelopes spewed across the foyer, hating him. He knew me too well. I would never bend down and pick it up. Then I looked up at his red, angry face and we locked wild eyes, waiting to see what would happen next. I considered that were it not for his accomplishments, his talents, his out-of-my-leagueness, perhaps I might find him rather ugly.

“I don’t care. Whatever is in there means nothing to me. Forget it. Just… Whatever it is that you need to be so secretive about, just get rid of it. Get rid of it. I don’t want to talk about it again.” I pulled my shirt back down and grabbed the key from its hook by the door. I didn’t look back as I went out into the warm Savannah night.

Chapter 26

Thanksgiving is the worst holiday. No presents. Bad weather. The patriarchs of the family reeking of peppermint schnapps, clad in their bright orange bloody hunting coveralls, telling tales of hauling twenty point bucks three miles over barbed wire fences. Football games blaring. Food that only old people would like. But in 1986 I was literally counting the days for it, more salivatingly desperate with each dismal, dreary hour. The Whitney Houston calendar in my room had pink X’s marking off each passing day until my sister and brother were due to return. I had casually set out the Uno deck on the coffee table, hoping a family game would spontaneously erupt from it. I had made Chex mix like we learned to in Home Economics, imagining all of us munching away, laughing and shoveling handfuls of it into our mouths.

They were supposed to arrive Wednesday evening. All night my mother waited for them, a saucepan of hot cocoa simmering on the stove until it turned into dark, sweet, chocolate mud. My father and I waited up with her. She made us drink milk because she didn’t have enough cocoa for all of us. Again and again I rearranged the Barbie feast and touched up my hair with a curling iron. Nervous excitement filled the air. At one point my mother remarked, “Look at us, you’d think the president was coming.”

My dad fell asleep first, snoring on the recliner. Then I dozed off on the couch. But my mother stayed awake all night, adding milk to that pan of cocoa, stirring. At one o’clock in the morning, I heard her on the phone, calling Van’s dormitory to see if, because of the weather, they hadn’t left yet. She called again and again, leaving messages with the answering service because the whole dorm was empty.

At four o’clock she woke up my father and, together, they called the police. I started to get really scared at that point, but still did not believe that anything could truly be wrong. I was scared in a perverse, excited way. In that way that makes you think, I can’t wait to tell the kids at school about this, before the gray reality of tragedy sets in. Scenes cut from soap operas and primetime television played in my head, vivid images of police officers in smooth blue uniforms with shiny badges. My brother and sister would be wrapped in blankets, sipping black coffee at a bustling police station, safe from peril but with a dramatic red gash across Valencia’s lovely forehead and Van’s arm in a sling.

I imagined my parents and me rushing to them crying, “We’re so glad you’re safe!” We would all be one big happy family, hugging each other and crying. The worst would be over and we’d go home and play a board game. We were one of those middle class families with the attitude that anything truly wonderful or terrible only happens to other people. We were complacent, dull, and selectively oblivious. We subscribed to the superstitious mentality that made safety and luck one in the same. Believe in Jesus, lock your screen door and latch the gate, take your Flintstone vitamins. I was only eleven. How could I know anything different?

The police told my parents to relax and go to sleep. They asked what route Van and Valencia might have taken, and said they would send someone out to take a look. Don’t worry, they said. These things turn out to be nothing. But then at six thirty in the morning they came to our door.

I remember the doorbell ringing, and I woke up. I was still in the living room on the couch. My mother opened the front door and saw the police standing there in their uniforms, both with their mouths poised to speak and no words coming out, and she instantly knew. She started screaming and sobbing, and her knees bent beneath her. She fell forward, right at their feet wailing, “No, no, no.”

At the time I wasn’t sure why she was reacting to them like that. I remember thinking that she needed to pull herself together because these policemen probably had some important news for us. I got up and wrapped my blanket tight around me. My pajama top was thin and I remember feeling self-conscious in front of these important men. I stepped back into the darkness of the dining room, unsure of what would happen next.

My dad came running out from the hall. He picked up my mother and held her as she screamed and moaned. Snot was streaming from her nose and nothing seemed real. What’s going on, I wondered. Are Van and Valencia dead?

Then my dad was saying to the policemen, “I think you’ve made a mistake.” His voice sounded flat and reasonable, like always. This frustrated me even more. After all, the police still had not spoken. At that point one of them asked, “May we come in?”

My father nodded and my mother continued crying, sobbing, wailing. The room was filled with her gasps. They must be dead, I thought. This must be the real thing. But I still wasn’t sure. It just seemed too impossible. Then I watched the police and my parents sit down in the living room. I waited to be noticed and to be sent away to my room, but somehow I became invisible.

As the police began their story I learned that yes, in fact, Van and Valencia were dead. I felt a selfish, irritated pang of resentment for being the last one to get it, the last to understand. A pang of bitterness that would be absorbed, digested, and forgotten, so that later in my life, when I remembered the night Van and Valencia died, there would only be the appropriate feelings of devastation and sadness attached to these memories, as it should be. A trick of self-preservation, a selective amnesia of sorts.

The scene that was unfolding was something like a movie, but happening in my living room. How was this ordinary moment holding such an unbelievable turning point? The snow had come down and the hot chocolate had thickened. I had finished one book and started another. My father’s snoring had been interrupted again and again by the purposeful banging of a wooden spoon against the saucepan on the stove, and somewhere, throughout this, my brother and sister had gone from this world to the afterlife. That was what we were being told. And in the span of time just before the doorbell rang to this moment, it had all caught up with us and now nothing would ever be the same. I wished the policemen weren’t here yet. I wished the time of not knowing had stretched a little longer.

I stood there in the dark, watching my mother breaking down, watching her expel the gritty devastation for all of us, and it was as if she was siphoning it away from me. I didn’t cry. I just stood there, becoming more and more numb. Is this really happening? No, I mean is this really happening? The more real it became, the farther away I seemed to float, up, up, far from myself, far from my parents and my house. I had a peculiar feeling, a silly almost hysterical feeling, like we were having the wool pulled over our eyes. This is weird. Is this really happening? No, I mean is this really, really happening?

Like police on television, the men seated in our living room reconstructed an entire chain of events, working backwards from the final scene: It had started raining as Van and Valencia drove home to us, and the rain had turned to ice. And then the ice had turned to snow.

“Yep, snow on ice. ‘Wintery Mix.’ It’s a real dangerous combination,” said one of the officers, shaking his head like we were talking about a parade getting canceled. Wintery mix. Chex mix.

Fuck off. I hope you die in some wintery mix, I thought. He was an idiot. He was saying the wrong things. He was the wrong person to be relaying this message. As a child I had contempt for stupid people. It takes the self-discipline of adulthood to overcome such animosity, to understand some people just aren’t smart.

“Then they lost control on that bridge by Red Wing,” he continued. I watched my mother pause from sniffling and gasping, open her mouth to speak. She made a raspy, gagging noise but no words came out. She wanted to interrupt, to say that they would not have gone that way, but my father put his hand on her arm and the officer continued. “The bridges always freeze first, you know, because there ain’t any ground under them. Just air, you know, and the rain falling on top, and, before you know it, the bridge is slick as a skating rink.”

“Slick as a skating rink,” parroted his partner, softly.

At five o’clock on Thanksgiving morning, the police found Van’s body lying on the banks of the Mississippi in tall, icy grass where he had landed. Dirt was in his mouth, all the way into his throat, said one of the policemen. He was a new, inexperienced cop, and didn’t know that families aren’t supposed to hear that kind of thing. He didn’t know that it’s details like that that never go away. I listened to it all, standing there in the shadowy dining room, softly touching Valencia’s class ring on my finger, feeling throughout it all that there was still the strong possibility of it being a dream. I never moved and my presence had no influence. It was as if I was watching a play; it would have been the same scene with or without me there.

“What about Valencia,” my mother cried, realizing at a point that they just kept talking about the weather, and about Van.

The officers looked dumbly at one another and finally the one who seemed to be in charge said, “Well, the car is in the Mississippi, you realize that, ma’am?” He made a noise, almost a laugh.

“In the Mississippi? In it? Isn’t the Mississippi frozen?” asked my mother, having regained enough composure to speak.

“No ma’am.”

“Oh,” she cried, covering her face, her body shaking.

“It don’t look real good for her, ma’am,” said his partner with bowed head respect.

My mother kept crying and my father kept holding her. They went with the police then, I guess to identify Van’s body, and my mother still believed Valencia was alive. My father seemed to have given up already, simply because these men wore uniforms, and that was enough to settle it.

I invisibly watched them putting coats and boots over their sweat pants and sweatshirts they’d been wearing. My dad had to help my mom. Her arms and legs didn’t seem to be working. Then they were going out the door and I was alone. I went into the kitchen and turned off the stove, and set the hot saucepan on the back burner.

My parents were too in shock to worry about what I was exposed to during the aftermath that followed. I am not blaming them, not this time, not for that.

When Van and Valencia died, every part of my world fell apart. Instead of the target I had been morphing into, I became invisible again. My mother went even crazier than she already was. I cannot say exactly how it affected my dad. He just went even more inside himself than before.

The policemen found Valencia and Van’s car at the bottom of the river two days later with the big machine that drags the water, but they never did find my sister. So I guess she is still out there, alone in that black water, even now, tonight, after more than twenty years.

Chapter 27

Spring flew by in Savannah with no letters that I was aware of, and I began to forget to feel worried all the time. We bought hanging baskets of flowers for our porch and invited friends over to cook out on the grill. I took my old sewing machine down from the attic and began making sundresses for myself. As I got better, I decorated them with rickrack and added pockets, buttons, a sash.

“You look like 1972 invaded,” Adrian told me, reaching under the dress, grabbing my naked ass. He was pretty accurate, considering the patterns I had bought online were authentic 1970’s designs.

Adrian was busy with his art, and I traveled with him wherever he needed to go.

We spent a weekend in Atlanta in April and then a weekend in New York in May. He bought me bags of clothes in New York, so I would feel chicer on our next trip. Our life was sweet, filled with travel and socializing, creativity and constant, distracting new presents. “You’re my little Georgia Peach,” Adrian told me.

We were lazing in the backyard on Memorial Day, swinging in the hammock and drinking wine when Adrian brought up the subject of a baby.

“This seems like the right time, doesn’t it?” he asked, playing with my hair. I knew what he meant by the tone of his voice. For once I couldn’t argue. He was in his forties. What were we waiting for?

“We have the names picked out, and plenty of room,” he continued. “Let’s go for it.”

My head felt cloudy from the wine and I started to giggle. “We have names picked out?” We had never agreed on baby names. He was set on recycling some of his family’s ridiculous old names like Winston and Gladillia. “Your families’ names are over,” I teased him, “They are obsolete. So drop it.”

“Adrian Winston Junior, if it’s a boy, and Gladillia Cornelia if it’s a girl. You agreed to this two years ago, Mama.”

“Mama?” We were both laughing and in a heap in the middle of the hammock. What was left of the wine was spilling onto the ground.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I call you now.”

“I never agreed to any of this! So if it’s a boy he’s being named after you, and if it’s a girl she’s being named after some dead aunt of yours? Where do I come in?”

“Stop calling our baby an it.”

“I’m serious, Adrian! Where do I fit in this equation?”

“You get to be pregnant, which I obviously don’t, and you get to make them little clothes that match all your little dresses.”

“You are on crack.”

“Your crack.”

“Stop, stop,” I wiped tears from my eyes, I was laughing so hard. “Winston sounds like a scrappy little dog.”

“Sure does.”

“Gladillia sounds like some kind of cleaning brush.”

“A spinning wand,” said Adrian.

“Something to clean a vagina.”

“You’d like that.”

“No I wouldn’t. It would hurt.”

“I think that’s actually where they first came up with it. There were some wooden gladillias in the 1833 Sears Roebuck catalog and my great-great-grandmother thought it was a nice name.”

“Okay, I will have your stupid baby.”

He moved in to kiss me and the hammock flipped us out onto the ground.

“Come on,” he said, when we finally stopped laughing, taking my hand and leading me inside.

As the saying goes, a watched pot never boils. A few days after Memorial Day, I was wearing one of my sundresses, the black and white gingham one with the yellow rickrack, coming back from a walk, definitely not watching my pot as the water lurched and bubbled. Adrian and I had just had a wonderful weekend together. Visions of babies were dancing in my head, and my fingernails were painted the most spontaneous shade of melon. My husband, who I had decided to let myself be madly in love with again, had left early to go to Atlanta and I was on my own, so cheerful and content I think I was actually whistling on my way back up our steps.

I opened the mailbox and pulled out good mail, the kind of stuff I love: Two fat fashion magazines; an artsy postcard from a local gallery; a padded envelope from Seattle, no doubt filled with more sundress patterns I had purchased online. And then I saw it: One of the terrible, hand-typed mystery letters. I began shaking and set all the other mail aside on the kitchen table. I held that letter in my hand and paced. I picked up the phone and began dialing the number of Adrian’s cell phone, hung up, started again, hung up…

From the back of a drawer in the kitchen I pulled an open, stale pack of cigarettes that had been left at our house after a party a year or two back. I’d been saving them for some reason. For this, I guess. I lit one of the crumbly cigarettes and inhaled, dying for some calm and clarity. Still shaking but feeling more in control, I returned to the front hall and closed the door, locking it. I need to be alone to really think. An open door invaded my ability to reason. Even an unlocked door could be so distracting that I could not think.

I then opened the letter, carefully. Inside was another one of those lined, fringed pieces of notebook paper. Wrapped around what looked like the back of Polaroids.

Stop. Set them down. Think.

Do you really want to see what is on the other side?

No.

Inhale. Exhale until you can’t see smoke anymore. Inhale again.

I missed smoking, being a smoker, carrying the etched silver antique cigarette case I used to love. Depending on what I found, I decided right then and there I might start again. If it was bad enough, I could smoke. I could do anything I wanted if it was bad enough. I could be free to smoke or become an alcoholic. Kiss the Coach and Prada purses goodbye, and curl up in an alley. Crawl right back inside myself and die.

Isn’t that the true you? Maybe just a little? Wouldn’t you like to be free? Admit it. That sounds kind of good.

I looked around me, at the white wainscoting and the Crate and Barrel hall table. The umbrella stand held umbrellas, of course. The fruit bowl of course held fruit and the vase of course held flowers. I was unmoved by my enviable life. The woman in the mirror was prettier than me and she was nodding to herself like a lunatic. She looked crazy, and thin. Rigid and elegant and scary. She looked like someone who would not invite me to her fancy parties.

I lit another cigarette.

Who are you being so good for?

No one.

I stared at the backs of the photos, hanging in that moment before everything changes.

Really. Why are you depriving yourself of everything you really want. He isn’t, you know.

I unfolded the paper and braced myself for pictures of Adrian and some stranger kissing, embracing, or worse… Nothing could have prepared me for what I actually saw.

Chapter 28

I won the Sixth Grade Science Fair on December 12, 1986. I had only been back in school for two days, and had entered an old shoe and a paragraph-long report on the history of shoes (which had nothing to do with science), yet somehow I took away the blue ribbon. The report said something like, “Shoes used to be made so they fit a left or a right foot, just put one on and it would fit, but not very well, but then one day a smart person realized left feet are different from right feet. It may have been Benjamin Franklin, since he discovered many other things. This shoe here is an example of a shoe made for a right foot.”

“Was that your sister’s shoe?” asked a seventh grader I had never talked to before. I nodded. She stroked it, caressing the worn toe until I had to look away in embarrassment. In reality, it was one of my mother’s stinky old loafers and if I didn’t get it home before she noticed it was missing there would be hell to pay.

We did not celebrate Christmas in 1986. My mother had purchased plenty of gifts, but they stayed in their shopping bags down in the basement storage room where she thought no one knew about them. I went down there and looked in the bags one day just before Christmas, finding some stonewashed jeans in my size and purple earmuffs that must have been for me. Most of it was for Valencia. There were new boots in her size and a neat stack of sweaters, jeans, and pajamas. Chunky, matching earrings to go with the sweaters. Romance novels and a cookbook called College Cuisine about making casseroles in a toaster oven. Mom had always had the most fun shopping for her, so by November she had already been almost done buying her gifts. There were only some socks and a new basketball for Van. He was hard to shop for, my mother always said. There was nothing for Dad, of course. Parents don’t give each other presents.

On Christmas morning, when I awoke and there were no presents, I tried to help my mom by reminding her of the jeans and earmuffs. “And the stuff you got for Valencia is fine for me,” I said. I didn’t mean to be offensive. But she slapped me across the face, which I really had not seen coming. My dad, normally not one to get involved, even felt that she had gone too far and said, “Patricia, that’s enough.”

Then we pulled ourselves together for the trip to my grandmother’s house. She had some gifts for me: Books like John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony and The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. They were old and had already been read, I could tell. They were wrapped in a brown paper bag from the grocery store, and given to me out of sight of my cousins, since she normally gave us just ten dollars each.

My cousins had piles of gifts to open, and my aunts and uncles forced them to share with me. I was given what they wanted least. I went home with a badly knitted scarf and Smurf socks with blue pompom balls on the ankles. Throughout it all my parents drank brandy slush and my mother cried.

“Can I stay with you for a while?” I asked my grandma.

“No, your parents need you,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said solemnly. I remember whispering this to her, urgently, my eyebrows raised. I felt like the only sane person in the world. Like I could see things, obvious things, everyone else was missing.

When we were leaving I tried again, desperately. But she was unfazed by my pleas.

“They need you now more than ever,” she said, handing me my bag of crappy gifts, loading me into the car with two staggering drunks. I recall looking back at her as she stood on her porch and waved, her little hand folding open and shut. Before we were out of her driveway she pulled her sweater around her and went back inside.

My parents avoided talking about the twins, save for one particular conversation I overheard in early January, when my mother said, “Roger, did you hear that Rob McCray dropped out of college?”

I was doing some homework at the dining room table. My ears perked up.

“Who?” asked my father.

“Rob McCray. That boy Valencia used to go with. He was going to school in La Crosse too. I heard from Mary Kelter-Gurnsey that he dropped out last month.”

I looked down at my math problems, considering for the first time all the others who were missing Van and Valencia. Poor Rob McCray. He had lost the love of his life.

“That kid with the rough looking mom? Yeah, I remember him,” said my father. “I never understood why she wouldn’t wear a wig. She looked like a hag. Wouldn’t you wear a wig, Patricia? If you didn’t have hair. You wouldn’t go around like that, would you?”

“I guess not,” said my mother.

“Out in public…” He shook his head, disgusted.

“Yes Roger, I’d wear a wig.”

“I would hope so.” Then I heard the television get turned up louder. End of subject.

For some time our house was like a time capsule of Thanksgiving, with small turkey statues gathering dust on top of the television all the way into spring. On Easter Sunday I went into Valencia’s room and cleaned up the Barbie Thanksgiving feast. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t planned any kind of a surprise like that for Van and I began to cry, hating myself for being so thoughtless. I went down into his room and lay on his waterbed, looking around at his posters and his falling-apart dresser. It was always cooler in his room since it was in the basement. Right through the middle of his bedroom ran one of those support poles that holds up the house. I used to twirl and do tricks on it until one day a friend of his called me a pole-dancing slut. I was about seven or eight.

“What does that mean?” I’d asked Van, knowing it was something bad.

“Just get out of my room,” he’d said, and shoved me right out the door. I guess we were both trying to show off for his friend.

“Tell me!” I’d yelled through his door. “Tell me or I will kick the door in!” I was always such an embarrassment.

They climbed out his window to get away from me, but left the radio on. I sat outside the door for an hour, waiting for them, until I heard them upstairs playing Atari.

Now it was quiet and still.

There were senior pictures of his still-alive classmates stuck in the frame of his mirror. The girls were all so pretty and the boys were all so cute. Feathered hair and Trans Ams. Permed hair and Camaros. I went over to the mirror and pulled a few of the photos down, curious what I would find written on the backs. It turned out that people just signed their names on the back of senior pictures. I put the pictures back where they had been and stood at his dresser. I was quiet and still. I did not know what to do. The familiar semi-darkness, the slightly mildewy smell, the blue curtains, the brown bedspread. My surroundings began to overwhelm me. I felt like I was losing my breath. I did not know if it was the reality of his absence or the illusion of his presence that was permeating my soul, making me feel so broken. I sat down on the edge of his bed, pinpricks of light swirling around me. I thought I might faint. I stretched out on his bed with his yearbook before me, trying to calm down, trying to relax. Knowing if my mother found me I would be in trouble. She owned these memories, not me.

I ached for everything I had lost, and for the secret shame of having been a fraction of Van and Valencia’s thoughts, while they had been my entire world.

Chapter 29

My parents, in a strange move I had only heard about on television, sent me to camp the summer of 1987. It was just like I had heard it would be, with canoes, crafts, swim lessons, the works. There were big green bunkhouses for boys and girls. At night we sang songs around campfires. It lasted for six weeks and, until I met Adrian, stood out, gleaming pink and gold like a pirate ship of adventure and independence, as the best six weeks of my life.

There I met my first boyfriend. A quiet, mousy little nerd by the name of Donny Hadbrack. We snuggled up by the campfire every night, and none of the counselors even noticed. If they did, they didn’t care. They may have even thought we were cute. There were other little couples at Clear Water Camp for Boys and Girls. Coupling up seemed to be an accepted part of the camp experience.

Donny knew nothing about me. I don’t know if he even knew my last name. I told him I was an only child, and because I had always wanted a dog, I told him I had a poodle named Mork. As far as everyone at camp was concerned, this was my story. I had never had any power over my own destiny before camp, and it was there, for the first time in my life, that I had a sliver of influence. I was telling them who I was, and they were accepting it. This was not the way it worked at school, or at home, or anyplace else. I wondered why it couldn’t always be so easy.

I wasn’t popular, but no one hated me. I felt normal, funny, sweet. I felt like I was finally experiencing what it should mean to be a girl. I was a spreader of laughter and cheer, a net-carrying chaser of butterflies, a screaming, giggling lake splasher. My shoulders burned red and peeled. My fingernails were black crescents of creativity and filth. I was someone else entirely, reborn and happy. Life at camp was one big Country Time Lemonade commercial come to life.

When I got home from camp, Valencia and Van’s rooms were cleared out. Valencia’s room had become a guest room and Van’s was nothing. Just an empty room with brown carpet smooshed down where furniture had been and a stained drop ceiling.

“Where is everything?” I asked.

“We donated it to St. Vincent de Paul,” my dad said. My mother was lying down in bed, resting. They had both picked me up from camp, but there had been a baseball game on the radio that my father had needed to listen to, and none of us had exchanged a word on the drive home.

I wandered through our house, feeling like I was visiting someone else’s home. The furniture in Valencia’s room had been rearranged so that now there was just a bed, a table beside it, and a dresser with a pale gold doily on top. It even smelled different: Pledge and Windex. The smell of Love’s Baby Soft was gone. I opened her closet door but there was nothing inside but a vacuum cleaner.

I went back into the living room where my dad had fallen asleep on the recliner.

“Dad?”

He was snoring.

“Dad?” I wanted to ask him if there was anything left, but he was snoring so loudly that I didn’t want to listen anymore.

I went outside, strolling down the sidewalk in front of our house, spinning the friendship bracelet Donny had given me. “Now you won’t forget about us,” he had said when he pressed it into my palm and kissed me on the lips. My first kiss. My heart had melted.

“Do you want to tie it on my wrist?”

“Okay,” he said.

“I wish I had something for you.”

“That’s okay.” He’d tied it, nervously, and then he had kissed me again. This time longer. We were both smiling really big when we stepped back from each other. We had stood there blushing and smiling, his hands on my hips and mine on his shoulders, like we were at a dance.

“I’ll never forget you,” he promised.

“I will never forget you either.”

“Will you write to me?”

“Yes, Donny. All the time. Will you write to me?”

“Of course I will. Will you be at camp next year?”

At that, I had deflated. I told him my first whole truth, “I doubt it. My parents can’t really be counted on to follow through on things like this. I can’t believe they even found this place and mailed a check in, and then drove me here. It must have required a lot of planning and even looking at a map. So honestly, Donny, I don’t know if we will ever see each other again. But I will sure try to be here.”

He’d never heard me talk so much. His face clouded over a bit and I sensed I had ruined some of the magic between us. I smiled and kissed him again, and this seemed to reset things. When we parted ways, he had looked back at me with heartbroken pain on his face, a look I’d never dreamed would be meant for me.

Thinking about it made me feel all flushed and butterfliesy again, and I pressed my palms to my face. I glanced toward the front window, somehow thinking my parents could read my mind, but no one was watching me.

I sat down on the sidewalk in front of our house, like a little kid. Ants ran over my toes and up my legs but I made a game that unless they reached my knees I couldn’t brush them away. I just spun the bracelet and waited for something to happen. I wanted to call Donny but Seventeen swore it was best to let him call me.

Somewhere was a land of crystal blue lakes and campfires, just waiting for me. Nothing to do but be happy and paddle around in canoes. That’s where I needed to be. I couldn’t just settle back into my mundane existence on ranch house road. It was like feasting on a buffet of pizza for a week and then being told to eat brussels sprouts for the rest of my life. There must be some way to break free. But if I ran away where would I go? My parents would catch me and ground me forever.

Then it became obvious: I needed to get kidnapped. I had been warned my whole life about it. How hard could it be? In the 1980’s kidnapping was supposedly as commonplace as jelly shoes. The message had been pummeled into our young brains, from the mouths of teachers and the backs of milk cartons: Predators prey on children! Don’t hang out in parks by yourself! Stay away from big vans with no windows. Beware of men looking for lost puppies!

I went back inside and changed into a black tank top and a mini skirt. It seemed appropriately risqué. While I listened to my dad snoring, I smeared red lipstick on my mouth, and then I ran out the door, straight to the park. When I got there I was huffing and puffing. The whole park was deserted, which at first made me disappointed, but then seemed like a good omen. Kidnappers liked their privacy.

I crawled on the monkey bars, slid down the slide, even played in the sand until I saw a used condom and started to gag. Was I too old to get kidnapped? After all, I wasn’t exactly a baby anymore. I was twelve. Sure, I looked ten, but kidnappers liked ‘em young. Really young, unless you’re a boy. Then they want you to be about thirteen. We had learned all this in school. This, multiplication tables, news about Ronald Reagan. Not much else.

I wondered what might increase my odds, racking my brain to remember the filmstrip ‘Staying Safe in the Neighborhood.’ I could picture two towheaded little girls, running with a kite, and a big white van, slowly approaching. Danger! Danger! Avoid that stranger, sang Chippy Chipmunk, the ‘Staying Safe’ mascot. I hummed the song we’d learned over and over again at the start of each school year, willing it to come back to me. I could picture the filmstrip better now: As the van approached, one of the little girls stopped to tie her shoe.

“Hello there, little girls,” said a man with a beard and dark glasses, leaning out the window of the van, “Would you like some candy?”

The little girl with the kite ran towards him, nodding in a fake, head bobbing manner, but her little friend, after pulling the bow of her laces firmly into place (Smart as a whip! Could tie her shoes and save her foolish friend!), stood up and began singing along with Chippy, “If you want to be safe, travel in twos! Say no to candy or you’ll surely lose!”

They made it look so easy. Just stand there and wait for the van. But here I was, plunked down on a teeter-totter, trying to make it teeter all by myself in a deserted park. No kidnappers, not even a scary, lurky dad.

The sun was going down. Just twenty-four hours earlier, Donny and I had been singing by the campfire. A year earlier I had been watching my sister and brother pack for college. I stayed there until the sky filled with stars and a big white moon. I looked at my bracelet and spun it some more, dreading going back home to my hushed, empty house. I started to cry and just let the tears run down my face, not caring, not even wiping them away. Mosquitoes were biting. Next time I would remember the Off.

While I swatted at them, I watched as a big white van rounded the corner and approached me. Was it slowing down? For me? I stood up and watched as it came to a complete stop by the edge of the park and a man got out. No beard or dark glasses, but he would do.

“Hi,” I called out, wondering if I should try to act sexy or innocent. Thinking quickly, I slid the straps of my tank top off my bony shoulders for what I hoped would be an alluring look.

“Are you okay?” he asked. I noticed he was wearing white powdery clothes. I figured he must be a drywaller or something.

“Are you here for me?” I asked him, wiping away my tears and practically starting to skip, “Cause I’m not going to fight or anything. Where are we going?”

“Huh?” He looked around nervously, like I was going to get him in trouble.

“Watch, I am entering your van on my own free will. Let’s go.” I tried to open the passenger side door but it was locked. I had heard about this in school. Kidnappers only have one working door to really trap you once you’re inside. No problem. I walked around to his side and opened the driver’s side door. Inside was crammed full of everything from empty drink cups to big cans of paint and brushes. A little dog sat on the passenger seat, wedged between all the garbage. He barked when he saw me.

“What are you doing?” yelled the man, red faced and sweaty. “Get out of my van right now!” He stood five feet away from the van, seemingly afraid to get near me.

“Where am I supposed to sit? Is there room in the back?” I asked.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Will your dog bite me?”

“Get out of my van right now or I am going to call the cops on you.” Sweat was pouring down his forehead in rivers.

He wasn’t very good at this. Maybe I was his first victim.

“I can fit on the seat by you if your dog will let me hold him. As long as he won’t bite me. He’s a little cutie. Aren’t you, boy! Is it a boy? Good dog!” I got in, squeezing myself onto the passenger seat and cuddling the dog who was getting comfortable on my lap. He licked my face. “You probably didn’t think this would be so easy, did you?” I said to my kidnapper.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Go home to your mom and dad, little girl!” he said, reaching inside the van and honking the horn.

“I’m twelve,” I informed him.

“Help! Help!” he yelled.

“Help? You’re not a kidnapper, are you?” I asked. The dog looked up at me, searchingly. I could not bring myself to move.

“Get. Out,” he whispered hoarsely, pointing out towards the park, its tire swings and teeter-totters now receding in darkness. I shifted, sliding the dog off my lap, and wriggled out of my seat.  Sighing, I stepped down from the van. Boy, did I feel stupid.

The man jumped in and slammed the door, then locked it with a disgusted swat of his fist. His dog looked at me, barked one, lone chompy bark, and the van took off down the street.

I watched the taillights getting farther and farther away until the van turned onto Fennimore Street and was gone. I pulled the straps of my tank top back where they belonged and, with nowhere else to go, went back home.

I wrote to Donny Hadbrack every day. His letters stopped coming after only a month. How could he go on with his life and forget our relationship? I couldn’t even fathom it. I decided his mother must have gotten in the way, or some other girl.

Four years later when I got my driver’s license, the first thing I would do was to drive the three-hour trek to his house. Even after all that time, he still stood out as the nicest guy I had ever met.

I was listening to R.E.M. tapes and my heart was pounding. I decided I wanted to lose my virginity NOW. I was so sure it would happen that I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought my first matching bra and panty set, and switched into it in the parking lot.

It turned out that Donny lived in just a regular brown house with dented aluminum siding and fake bricks on the front. I saw him looking much the same, shirtlessly riding a yellow lawn tractor. He was picking his nose and singing along to some headphones he was wearing. “Girls, girls, girls!” he sang over the noise of the lawnmower. I watched as he flicked a booger out onto the freshly mowed lawn, then dug in his other nostril for some more.

This meant I needed to find a new boy to love. Damn it.

He didn’t see me so I just drove by and kept going right on home, back to Hudson.

Chapter 30

Starting seventh grade was completely different from starting sixth grade. I could not tell you what I wore because I no longer cared about clothes or being popular. I mainly stopped caring about clothes from necessity. When Valencia and Van died, my parents relinquished most of their duties as my caretaker. The brief nightmare of them asking about my grades and chaperoning dances fizzled. They just decided they were done being parents. My back-to-school clothes from the summer before were my newest clothes, and they were all getting too short. Valencia’s clothes and even my Christmas jeans were gone, donated to St. Vincent’s. But now I could do as I pleased, since they barely noticed me.

I stayed in my room a lot watching my little TV, alone in the flickering blue haze. I made elaborate stir fries in the kitchen, once nearly starting the house on fire, while my dad dozed on the porch and my mom strapped on her ankle weights for one of her three hour power walks. I joined every club our junior high school had to offer so I could avoid being at home.

My neighbor Rhonda Newcomber was in every club too, and her parents drove me home. I could tell Rhonda didn’t like it. She was an only child and was used to it just being the three of them. Her parents were nice but asked me too many questions about my family. Do you miss your sister and brother? How are your parents holding up? Do you have any other brothers or sisters? Now, Valencia and Van were twins, right? Rhonda just looked out the window.

People still treated me like an outcast, but the deaths of Van and Valencia elevated my status from outcast-you-spit-on to outcast-you-just-whisper-about. Sometimes I liked my new position of being just a little bit removed from the other kids in my grade. Then I would remember what it had taken to put me there and I would hate myself for being evil. I guess that is why I began making the offerings.

It wasn’t something I planned ahead of time; like a lot of things in life, it just kind of happened. I was staying in from recess one day, working on a book report, and I saw an open backpack over by the pencil sharpener. So I went over and took a look inside while I sharpened my pencil, and there was a baggie with a gold bracelet inside. The funny thing is, I knew there was going to be something important in that backpack. Fate led me to it. I don’t know if it was real gold. It looked like something Valencia would like. I took it for her and buried it behind the lilacs in my parents’ yard. There seemed to be a truth and purpose in what I was doing, not unlike how I imagined religion would feel.

In September of 1987 I was sitting in the kitchen, working on my homework. Geraldine McCray, the mother of Valencia’s high school boyfriend, had just died a few weeks earlier. Her obituary was attached to our refrigerator with a magnet shaped like the state of Nebraska.

“Why did you put her obituary on our fridge?” I asked my mother.

“To remember her by,” she said.

“But you couldn’t stand her.”

“That’s not true. Where would you come up with an idea like that?”

“Well, you wouldn’t let Valencia date Rob.”

“How do you even remember these things?”

“What do you mean? It was just a year ago.”

“It was several years ago,” she said.

“Anyway, I didn’t think we liked remembering stuff like that here.”

“Fine. Enough.” She went over to the refrigerator, removed the obituary and dropped it in the garbage. Then she opened her mouth as if to say something, then snapped it back closed.

“What?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“What were you going to say, Mom?”

She drew in a deep breath. “You are obviously too young to understand about any of this.” This was her go-to insult for me because she knew how desperately I wanted to grow up and be taken seriously.

“Death? Is that what you mean? I understand plenty.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she went to the laundry room and reappeared with her big headphones over her ears. Their cord dangled, shoved into her pocket. As if I didn’t understand how they worked. Then I watched as she strapped on her ankle weights, leaning down, her fat butt like a blue jean billboard in my face. She grunted a little. I guess the waistband was cutting into her stomach. Next she touched up her lipstick in the blurry-mirrored side of the toaster, discreetly sniffing her pits as she did so. I had been growing suspicious of her. How could someone power walk this much and just keep getting fatter? Who wore jeans and loafers on a walk? Weren’t you supposed to wear sweatpants and sneakers? The lipstick was the final straw. I slammed my math book shut.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No. My walks clear my head. Keep doing your homework.”

I ran over to the door and stuffed my feet into my shoes. “I said, I’m coming with you.”

“And I said no.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

She opened the backdoor, prepared to just walk away from me. I wasn’t having it.

“What’s the matter Miss Lipstick Face? Nice jeans for your walk, Mom. Walking three hours a day doesn’t give you a butt like that! That’s a sitting-around-eating-Twinkies butt! Don’t you think I hear things? Don’t you think I know about you? Tell me where you’re really going!”

She gasped and spun back around. Then, with the finesse of a cheetah, she lunged at me and grabbed the back of my neck. She slapped her other hand over my mouth. I was too shocked to bite her.

“Shut up. Shut up right now,” she said. It was more of a terrible little hiss than actual spoken words. She looked at me with such seething venomous fury that I was frozen. She quickly scanned the room for my father. “So you think you want to go for a walk?” she asked, murderously. Her hand was a cold, waxy paw against my lips.

I shook my head No, which wasn’t easy with her hand glued to my mouth. She yanked me outside and dragged me behind the garage.

“How dare you talk to me that way?” She slapped me hard across the face and just like that, I was crying. “Didn’t I raise you better than this?”

Raise me? That almost made me laugh. People raised chickens or beef. I’d heard of barn raisings. Had someone been raising me? I just kept crying though.

She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket. “This is where I’m going, you goddamned little know-it-all. You think you’re so smart. You’re going to be sorry tonight ever happened.”

It was a pamphlet for a support group of parents who had lost their children. It was from the church three blocks away. My mouth opened but nothing came out and I closed it again.

I watched her brushing at her eyes as she clomped down the street.

Chapter 31

Three days had passed since the latest mystery letter had arrived. Three days of going crazy, crying in the bathroom, sneaking cigarettes. I carried my phone with me at all times, 911 just a few clicks away, my fingers on it like it was the trigger of a gun.

Adrian was back.

“Honey, what’s going on? What’s the matter?” he kept asking.

I didn’t want him to touch me. What I needed to do was go to the police. Instead, every time he left me for any length of time, I went back to the bookshelf and pulled down the decorating book. I had to be discreet. I would watch his car going down the street and when it turned the corner I would race to the bookshelf.

The long, white envelope hiding within the book bore a Minneapolis postmark and three ordinary stamps in a neat row. Inside were two old Polaroid photos, both unmistakably my sister. She was wearing her green sweater I’d seen her wear dozens of times. In one I could see her gold watch, a graduation gift from our grandparents. Duct tape was over her mouth but her eyes were open and focused on the camera. She was very scared and very much alive.

Her hands were bound with duct tape also, positioned peculiarly as if she had been told to pray while the tape was wrapped around them. In both she was curled up like they had been taken when she was somewhere small and uncomfortable. Then it became obvious to me that she was stuffed into the place where a passenger’s feet go in a vehicle. A big vehicle, like a truck. I could make out part of the dashboard and glove box above her head.

At the bottom of each Polaroid, scrawled in black ink, was her name: Valencia Loden. As someone might name a recipe card or a folder in a file cabinet. This made me think that whoever did this had a need to keep organized, that Valencia was one of many.

Typed on the notebook paper was the message ADRIAN CORBIS, The past ALWAYS catches up with you. It’s only fair…

It was impossible for me to believe that Adrian could seriously have anything to do with this. I needed to talk to him and show these to him. We needed to go to the police. My brother and sister weren’t accident victims; they were murder victims. And these letters were a direct connection from the killer straight to our door, which obviously led me to believe we could be next.

But why were they addressed to Adrian instead of to me? Wasn’t I more of a missing link than he was? I began to think perhaps he really was involved, and the implications of this, of our entire life together, gave me chills.

I decided I had to talk to him.

But I was afraid of what he would say, and I could not bring myself to do so.

And then I decided that I must, must, talk to my parents about this. But every scenario I played out in my head was a hysterical, out of control mess.

So I decided then I would go to the police, alone. I’d talk to them, let them sort this out. But I was skeptical of how they would handle this, of whether they would be honest, or smart, or thorough enough to really help me. And to go to them, before speaking with Adrian was a betrayal. It was resigning myself to his guilt. I imagined his eyes, pained. I imagined him being taken away from me and I felt as though my heart would break.

So in my usual fashion in times of crisis, I did nothing.

I stayed in my bathrobe and I drank coffee in place of food. And over and over and over again I went to the book and touched, smelled, devoured the pictures of my sister. Long forgotten details of her. Purple embroidered flowers along the cuff of her sweater, right where the duct tape ended. Despite the Savannah heat, I got goose bumps of cold and fear, feeling I was with her, feeling I was her. My memories, scenes frozen in amber, thawed and seeped from the forgotten depths of my mind, catching my present self in their rich sap, immobilizing me further. I was in quicksand. Like an Alzheimer’s case, the past was real and the present was only a bad, fuzzy dream.

Long forgotten glimpses of 1986 were coming back to me. I remembered our house filling with relatives in days following the twins’ deaths, and a woman I had never met before trying to force feed me pumpkin pie. I could smell the pie, the memory was so vivid. One of my little cousins was there and he broke a coffee cup. The pieces got swept into a corner and stayed there for days, weeks. The most absurd thing was one of my aunts somberly handing me a booklet about getting my period. I already knew all about periods. I had read Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret at least four times. Who would think to bring that for me? I guess to those who knew my mother best, it was obvious she would be taking early retirement.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the garage door opening. I shoved the pictures back in the book and replaced the book on the shelf, my heart beating so hard that the sound of it seemed to echo off the walls. I ran and sat down in the living room. If I was going to talk to Adrian about this, we needed to be somewhere safe. A public place with lots of people around. Just in case.

Just in case.

I hated myself for thinking that, but I did think it.

Wherever we went, it could not be too small or quiet. I couldn’t risk us being overheard. We needed to go somewhere busy. Bustling. Like a diner. Or a pancake house.

I heard him come in, go into the kitchen, set down something on the table. I heard the jangle of keys and the rustle of paper.

“Hi, Honey.” He appeared before me with one hand behind his back. I stiffened against the back of the couch. “For you,” he said, presenting me with a small bouquet of flowers.

“Thanks,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

“Well…” He sat down beside me and put his arm around me, “You’ve been acting a little funny since we’ve been trying to get pregnant, and I just want you to know that if this isn’t the right time for you, then it’s not the right time for me either. I just wanted you to know… it’s okay.”

He gave me a little hug and we both sat there in silence until I got up to put the flowers in water.

“Are you in the mood for pancakes?” I called from the kitchen.

He rushed into the kitchen. “Pancakes? Are you in the mood for pancakes?”

“Yes. Let’s go get some.”

“Really? Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, pausing from arranging the flowers.

“Does the baby want pancakes?” He came over and slid his hand inside my robe. I hated how I was instantly turned on. He started rubbing my belly. “Whoa, honey, you feel like you’ve lost ten pounds! I can feel your back through your stomach! Are you alright?”

“There is no baby. I’m just hungry for pancakes.”

“I have known you for years and I have never seen you eat a pancake.”

“Adrian, just forget it. I will make myself a sandwich instead.” I pulled my robe together.

“No, we should get pancakes. Let’s go.”

A half hour later a stack of blueberry pancakes were placed before me. Adrian dug right into his buttermilk tower, while I picked at mine and washed down each bite with sips of orange juice. After not eating for days, the sweetness of the syrup was giving me an intense headache. I set down my fork, trying to speak.

“Look at you, wearing clothes,” said Adrian, smiling at me. “The robe look is nice, and it says ‘low maintenance’ which I can respect. But this is attractive too.”

I nodded, looking down at myself. I cleared my throat. “Adrian?”

“Hmm?” He asked me, simultaneously flagging down the waitress and holding up his empty juice glass. He shrugged, smiling a sheepish grin. Like Oops, I drank it all.

The waitress giggled and took it from him, rushing off to refill it.

Hello? Can anyone see me here? I am his wife. Just give him a refill. You don’t have to giggle.

This was the problem with Adrian. He could charm anyone. Including me. I still liked him, still had a crush on him. Even when I hated him, I still became a sixteen year old girl if he looked at me right. He had the power in our relationship.

The waitress was back and the glass had a big slice of orange stuck on the side of it. She had clearly just reapplied her lipstick.

“For you,” she said. Fucking bitch.

“What made you start working at Border’s?” I asked him.

“I needed the money.”

“But why Border’s? Why not some other bookstore? Or, say, a CD store? You love music.”

“I probably applied at other places but they were the first ones to hire me. I don’t know; it was a long time ago. Why do you ask?”

I pushed a slice of mushy pancake through a river of buttery syrup. “It’s just, if you hadn’t, we never would have met.”

“We might have met anyway,” he said.

“Wouldn’t the Border’s on the east side have been closer for you?”

“Maybe a little bit. I think I wanted to work at the one on the west side because it was closer to my other job and I could just shoot over there straight from work. Not have to go home and see Belinda. We weren’t getting along much by that point, you know.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Have you ever thought how much better pancake houses would be if they served beer?”

“No. That’s gross. Do you remember the first time you met me?”

“I think so. We were in the break room, right?”

“What drew you to me?” You could have had anyone, I didn’t add.

“You were funny…”

“Funny?” I interrupted. “Are men really drawn to funny women?”

“I am. As I was saying, you were funny, and beautiful. You are funny and beautiful.”

This made me positively sure he was lying. Because I’m not beautiful. Cute, perhaps. Better than I used to be. But even if somehow, after years with me, someone could come to see me as beautiful, it would never be anyone’s first impression of me. And back then, prior to the yoga classes and high end skin care routines I now religiously followed, I was even less so. It was clear he came to Border’s because I worked there, and after killing Valencia, he needed to make it up to her the only way he knew how, by marrying her pathetic, miserable little sister.

“No, Adrian, seriously. There was that Natalie girl with the long brown hair. She was beautiful. Or what about Lauren? Remember her? That girl with the really blue eyes, way bluer than mine, and short black hair? They were both beautiful. Why didn’t you like either of them?”

“Honey, I don’t even remember them. I liked you because I liked you.”

“We had nothing in common. Right?”

“Honey, stop it. We just sort of clicked. Didn’t we?”

“Yes, too easily, come to think of it.”

“So we liked each other and we got along well and then we got married and everything was great. Is that what you’re complaining about?”

“I’m not complaining, Adrian. I am asking you what drew you to me.”

“I liked you. Until you recently went crazy.”

“Thanks.”

“Why can’t you just say what you mean?”

“I’m trying to.”

“I’m getting tired of this. If you have something to say to me, then say it. But enough of these head games.”

I finished my coffee and looked around the restaurant. It was a sad place to be. The waitresses looked tired and annoyed. The floor, table, and cracked, padded bench were all slightly sticky.

“I don’t think the accident that killed my brother and sister was really an accident,” I said.

“Why would you think that?” he asked.

“Well, for one thing, where’s my sister? How is it possible that she was never found?”

“It’s possible, Baby. If she landed in the river, which she must have, she could have washed all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.”

“So you never think there might be more to the story?”

“No.”

I looked through the sugar and artificial sweeteners dish while Adrian continued eating. Half the packets were already opened. I pulled them out and set them aside, making a little pile. “These look like a model of a stack of nearly empty flour or rice bags, don’t they Adrian?”

“I guess so,” he said, focusing on his hashbrowns.

“More like rice sacks than bags of flour, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“Like something a person might see in… Where do you think, Adrian? Thailand, perhaps? Miniature Thailand. Or Miniature India. Or… Gosh, I don’t know.”

“They just look like sugar packets to me.”

“Well, as I was saying, I think there’s more to what happened to the twins than everyone thinks.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

He continued chewing, now and again punctuating his meal with swallows of orange juice or coffee. He did not appear upset in any way. Well, maybe a little upset with me. But he was not acting like someone who had anything to hide. I sighed.

“Do you know that when we were in Madison the boy at the coffee shop gave me my coffee for free?” I asked.

He looked impressed. Guys are so suggestible. If one guy liked me, five would like me. If one guy called me a bitch, they would all think I was a bitch. “Really?” he asked.

I looked down at the napkin in my lap, suddenly unsure as to whether it had happened to me or someone else.

“Are you ready?” Adrian asked, setting some money on the table.

“I guess.”

“You didn’t touch your pancakes.”

“Well, I hate pancakes. You know that.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

So I was no detective. Great at starting fights but really terrible at solving crimes. I wished I could put those photographs in a part of my brain that could be boarded up and forgotten. I had spent my whole adult life trying to overcome my childhood, and now a bend in reality had rewritten it as even worse. Horrific and tangled. Needing to be acknowledged and solved.

I was afraid I simply could not do it. I didn’t want to. I just did not have it in me. Not smart enough, not strong enough. Valencia and Van could have stepped up to this kind of pressure. Either of them would have known what to do and they would have had no trouble making the right decisions. But I wasn’t that motivated or clever. I wanted to go to sleep and awaken to find that someone else had taken over while I was dozing. The right person would be arrested (not Adrian), my sister would be found happily living in some cottage in Maine (amnesia having wiped out a few years of her life, but otherwise unharmed), and all other loose ends would have been neatly tied up.

“What’s going to set today right again?” Adrian asked me.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t want to be in a fight.”

“We’re not fighting.”

We were back in the car, on our way home. Our windows were down and the smell of flowers from the gardens we were passing filled the car. Adrian likes to take detours and today he was driving us past some old mansions. I closed my eyes and inhaled, the hot car and the warm breeze feeling good after being in the icy restaurant.

“Do you want to stop for some ice cream?” he asked me. “You must be hungry still.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We drove down to the river and parked the car.

“Wait, I’ll get it,” said Adrian. He got out and met me on my side of the car, opening my door like he used to when we went out somewhere fancy for dinner. He reached in and took my hand. Together we strolled along the cobblestones by the river. He steered us into the shop with the elderly ladies instead of the cute young girls as a silent peace offering. I ordered a waffle cone with two scoops of mint chocolate chip and we sat down on a bench by the river. He put his arm around me. I wanted to melt into him; instead I sat there rigidly, eating my ice cream. It reminded me of being little. Really little. Four or five years old, riding in the car with Van and Valencia. Our mother warning us not to get ice cream on the upholstery.

“Adrian, this reminds me of this one summer,” I began, but was cut off.

“Excuse me, are you Adrian Corbis?”

We looked up to see a middle aged man with a thick, old-fashioned camera case strap cutting across his middle like a seatbelt. He wore an over-flowing fanny pack drooping below his big belly.

“That’s me,” said Adrian.

“I just read about you in here,” the man said, waving a magazine I wasn’t familiar with. “I brought this from Grand Forks and here I am on the plane reading about you and it says you live in Savannah, which I find interesting since I am on my way to Savannah as I’m reading it, and now here you are. Impossible! So do you have any big art shows coming up? Say, would you folks like to get a drink? I’m here ‘til next Wednesday and I don’t know a soul. This must be your wife. Hello, hello,” he stuck out his thick hand to me which I shook reflexively. Then he took Adrian’s hand and pumped it hard twice.

“We’ve already got plans we’re about to head off to, so we’ll have to pass on that drink, but it’s certainly nice to meet a fan,” said Adrian. “I hope you enjoy your stay here.” He stood up, pulling me up with him, and started to walk away. I stumbled on the cobblestones keeping up with him. A splash of mint chocolate chip landed on my chest. Adrian was normally quite a bit chattier than this with his fan club, and I felt a flutter of panic in my chest. The man fell in step beside us.

“My name is Bob Chance, but everyone just calls me Chance. I’m staying just three or four blocks over from here. Say, what’s there to do around here? Any nightlife to speak of?”

“There’s plenty to do at night,” said Adrian, not looking at Mr. Chance. “You should pick up a paper and take a look. Well, we’re headed this way, so nice meeting you and you have a good stay.” With that, Adrian grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me sharply into a side street. I dropped my cone.

“Adrian, be careful!” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

Bob Chance stayed by our side. “What kind of projects are you working on right now, Adrian? Anything big? Do you have a studio where people can come and watch you work? That would be a big hit, I imagine.”

Adrian kept walking without answering, pulling me along.

“I used to paint,” the man continued, keeping pace alongside us, his camera bouncing wildly. “Dabble is a better way to put it. It takes a lot to make it. I got to hand it to you: Not many folks could make it like you have. You’ve got to ride the wave as long as they’ll let you. That’s just a little piece of advice from me to you.”

We reached our car and Adrian unlocked it with the little automatic opener and headed to the driver’s side without opening my door for me. I got in while Mr. Chance complimented our car and asked what kind of gas mileage we got. Adrian slammed the door and drove away, practically running over him.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“People ought to learn to keep their distance!” said Adrian. His face was covered in welts.

“Adrian, you’re breaking out in hives!”

He looked back in the rearview mirror and slowed down a little. “Honey, you need to keep your guard up too,” he told me. “Not everyone is just some innocent fan. Some people are dangerous. It’s no joke.”

“Okay.”

He wiped at his forehead and exhaled, turning to me like he had something to say, but he said nothing.

“Where is this coming from?” I asked.

“I’m starting to think we need to take our security more seriously. Get one of those home protection services. Maybe put a fence up. Get a big dog. Whatever it takes.”

“You’re serious?”

He drove past our house slowly and kept going. “Do you mind if we drive around for a minute?”

“I don’t mind.”

“People know me. It makes some of the crazy ones want to mess with us, you know. We seem happy and some people don’t like that.” He looked over at me and touched my face. “I love you and it’s my job to keep you safe.”

“You made me lose my ice cream cone,” I said.

“I’m sorry. Should we get you another one?”

“No. I’m all right.”

Adrian wiped at a trail of sweat running down his temple. “Did you see the way he kept up with us? Most people would get the hint that they’re not welcome.”

“He seemed like a fan. Just a fan,” I said.

“You can’t always tell that easily.”

“So you think he wanted to hurt us?” I asked.

“No. I mean, I doubt it. But we need to be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Listen, the last thing I want is for you to become scared. I just want you to be aware, that’s all. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Is there any reason you’re so concerned? I mean, it’s just, I’ve never seen you get worried like this before.”

“I always worry a little. I just don’t say anything.”

“Okay.”

We drove around in silence until Adrian belched and started to laugh. “Too many fucking pancakes,” he said.

“Adrian?”

“Yeah, Honey?”

I looked out the window, the words choking in my throat. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I whispered.

“What is it?” he asked.

Instead of confiding in him, I heard myself say, “It’s about the twins. Do you ever think about what you were doing that Thanksgiving when my brother and sister died?”

“You’re thinking about that again?”

“Yeah, I still am.”

“I suppose I was with my family. I usually went home for Thanksgiving before I was married.”

“Do you mean your parent’s house?”

“That or my grandparents, or some aunt or uncle. It just depended on what happened to be going on.”

Adrian’s relatives were in Madison, Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Minneapolis. He could have been anywhere across the Midwest.

“Do you think you were in Minneapolis?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe if I sat down I could figure it out but I can’t remember right now. But honey, back to what I was saying, I think someone might be trying to mess with us and I don’t want to overreact, but, you know, I don’t want to underreact either. I just want to be careful.”

“Trying to mess with us?”

He drew in a deep, seemingly painful breath. “I’ve gotten a few letters in the mail.”

I nodded but did not say anything.

“I should have talked to you about this sooner, but I didn’t think they were anything to get excited about. They’re just stupid letters.”

“Go on.”

“Twice I got letters with photos of me having lunch with a client and they said something about me having an affair. Like, some idiot was hoping I could be blackmailed over that. They were ridiculous. So, I thought I had a grasp on what was going on, but then I got something else than kind of threw me. It seemed like it was from the same person and it had a picture of you with your head ripped off and ripped into little pieces. That rattled me. But it seemed really amateurish. I showed them to the police, just to be safe, but nothing ever came of it. They said most likely that kind of thing is something bored kids do.”

I nodded some more, glad I had not gone to the police. I was caught for a moment in my own little world over what Adrian had just told me. Me, with my head ripped into little pieces? I felt flattered to have not been left out for once.

“Are you sure it was me?” I asked him, not convinced.

“Yeah, I recognized your clothes, then I put the pieces together and it was you.”

“Where was I? What was I wearing?”

“You were wearing a sun dress with a blue sweater over it. You were sitting by the river, on a bench, reading.”

“So someone followed me. Here in Savannah? Oh my god, I remember that day! It was really warm. It was before we went to Madison. I had no idea someone was following me and taking my picture. Wow. That’s scary,” I said.

“Yes it is.”

“How could you have kept this from me?” I had a faint notion that I was being hypocritical but I didn’t care.

“You’re right. I absolutely should have told you.”

“I mean, really, Adrian. It involves me.”

“You’re right.”

“You should have said something.”

“I know. I guess I was under the impression, though, that you may have already known,” he said, locking eyes with me for a moment.

“Why would you think that I knew? I didn’t know! I had no idea.”

“Because of the way you were acting so strangely about the mail when we got back from staying at Alexa’s.”

I shrugged.

“You know, most things like this just pass and are forgotten,” he continued, “and life goes on like it never happened.”

“Most things like this?”

“I just meant that most things pass, and everything works out fine.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“Well,” said Adrian, falsely cheerful, “if Bob Chance is who he says he is, that means I got a write up in the Grand Forks newspaper that I didn’t even know about. That’s pretty cool.”

“But sad that no one tried to contact you for an interview. What kind of reporting is that?”

“True. No one gives a hundred percent anymore.”

Adrian turned down a street I did not know, and put the windows down. “Nice evening it’s turning out to be, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said, amazed at the banal turn of our conversation. I wasn’t having it. “Do you have anyone in your past who would want to do something bad to us?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Where are the letters postmarked from?” I asked.

Adrian gave me a peculiar, sideways glance. “Um, I don’t know if I looked.”

“Really,” I said, unable to keep out the incredulous edge.

“Really.”

“Will you let me know if you get any more?”

“Yes.”

“Promise me?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

I looked at his sweet, sad face. He was tired and the streetlights caught lines on his face I normally didn’t notice. The vulnerability I saw in him gave me power I rarely felt and I reached out for him, touching his arm, hit be an unexpected wave of love.

He could not have done it. Here he was, telling me all about the other letters. He’d only been hiding them to protect me. I needed to tell him I’d been intersecting the letters too and that what I had found was not the work of ‘bored kids.’ But my head pounded so ferociously I thought I might be sick. I could taste mint chocolate chip rising in the back of my throat. I pressed my hands to my face to keep my head from exploding.

We were approaching our house again. He turned into the driveway.

“Great. Now I’m afraid to go inside,” I whispered.

He rested his hand on my leg. “I’ll protect you.”

Chapter 32

The next day while I was sewing some rickrack on an apron, I came up with a plan: I would hire a private investigator. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

Without too much trouble, I found one. His name was Jeb Wilde and I found him online. I told Adrian I needed to get my hair trimmed, and Jeb and I met at a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Dragon. I was surprised he could meet me immediately like that, but I decided to not overanalyze it. I brought both envelopes with the photographs and note inside and a stack of old clippings from 1986. I also had an envelope with $1500 to get the investigation started.

I was wearing dark sunglasses that undoubtedly drew attention to me but made me feel like I was unrecognizable, and a black hooded sweatshirt I had just purchased at a thrift store and planned to dispose of in the parking lot dumpster when I left. Jeb was sitting in a booth with his head down, doing a Sudoku puzzle. He had told me that was how I would recognize him. A thermos of coffee sat in front of him, open, the lid a convenient little cup. I slid in across from him. He flipped his puzzle over and looked up at me.

He looked like a Midwestern man, a farmer or something. Early sixties with thinning hair and an ordinary, round head. Wiry and small. Could this little guy solve mysteries? Could he put my life back together? I doubted it and suddenly found the $1500 in my handbag very hard to part with.

“Well…” he said, polishing his lined bifocals with the edge of his shirt, “tell me what you know.”

That was it. No formal introductions. Apparently we weren’t going to order food, which was fine, but seemed weird. Wouldn’t the people who worked here get mad at us if we just used their booth for a business meeting? I wondered if this might be the wrong guy. I looked around for someone else, some slick looking man in a fedora and a trench coat, head bent down over a Sudoku puzzle…

“Do you have the money?” he asked.

“Umm, yeah.” I handed him the envelope. What was to stop him from taking it and never saying another word to me? “Do I get some kind of receipt?”

He scribbled something illegible on the back of the Chinese calendar placemat and handed it to me.

Okay.

He cleared his throat and leaned in closer to me, “From what I understood on the phone, you need to know if your husband killed your sister. Hmm?” He raised his scraggly brows at me. Hearing these words spoken aloud made something inside me break, and I started to cry.

“I don’t think he did it,” I whispered.

Jeb just nodded and took a drink.

Chapter 33

By Christmas of 1987 some of the novelty of being the girl with the dead twin siblings was wearing off. I’d gotten used to being unpopular, in the sense that I had stopped expecting to change it, but I still wasn’t immune to wanting to be liked. I overheard talk of boy-girl parties that I was not invited to. I briefly entertained the thought of trying to have one myself, but I knew no one would show up. Or worse, they would because they thought it was funny. There was a Christmas dance at our school, and I asked my dad if he would take me. He said he would, which I really wasn’t expecting. It was a “dress-up” dance, exclusively for seventh and eighth graders. I had nothing to wear to it. I was down to two pairs of jeans and a handful of tops I circulated between. Everything else was outgrown or worn out. My shoes and first bra I had purchased with change from my piggybank, but now the pig was almost empty.

The weekend before the dance, my younger cousins BobbieMae and TobiSue got dropped off at our house to visit while their parents went to a bowling tournament. They were nine and seven, freckly, red haired little pumpkin heads, and looked more like different aged twins than ordinary sisters. They both shrieked instead of talked, and TobiSue, the seven year old, still ate her boogers, but I was thrilled to have some company. On Friday night my mother took the three of us to the video rental store that had just opened up a few blocks away. TobiSue and BobbieMae were immediately drawn to Pretty In Pink.

“She has red hair like us,” said TobiSue, waving the box above her head.

“We have to get it then, Aunt Patricia,” said BobbieMae-the-bossy.

I could not tell you what other movies we got, because all I remember is Pretty In Pink. My cousins and I watched it twice, and then when they went home on Sunday afternoon, I watched it twice more by myself. It was the dress that got me. The dress that Andie sewed herself.  On Sunday evening I went upstairs and knocked on my mother’s door. Lately she was always in there resting. At first she didn’t answer, but then, the third time I knocked, she called out, softly, “Rewind those movies and leave them on the kitchen counter top so I remember to take them back.”

“I will. Can I come in?”

No answer. I tried to open the door but it was locked.

“Mom, do you have any material you don’t want? You know, like, fabric?”

“There’s a bag of scraps in the hall closet. Good night.”

My imitation Swatch watch told me it was 7:19.

I went to the hall closet and found a paper grocery sack filled with some cut up old curtains, small pieces from a patchwork quilt I’d seen my mom working on when I was very little, and an old burgundy tablecloth with brown gravy stains on it. I gathered up a needle and thread, some scissors, and a Capri-sun, and headed downstairs with the bag of fabric to get to work.

Right away, I knew I would use the curtain tiebacks for straps. They were perfect for that: hemmed with lace accents and thick but not too thick. The tablecloth’s gravy stains would probably be invisible at the dance, since it was half-dark in there, so that provided me with a huge piece of fabric. I wrapped it around me, toga-style, and used a long strip of curtain lace as a belt. I admired myself in the bathroom mirror. Not bad. Then I put Pretty In Pink in the VCR one more time and watched it while I started sewing.

The dress looked good enough to draw zero attention to me at the dance. That was the best I could hope for. I hadn’t entertained aspirations of pulling a Molly Ringwald. Walking in and having no one look at me was more than I had hoped for. My dad dropped me off, and even handed me a five-dollar bill on my way out of the car. I walked in and paid the $2.00 fee, got my hand stamped and hung up my coat, and sat on the bleachers most of the night playing Cat’s Cradle with one of the chaperones. A boy named Davis Neighbors asked me to dance to The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range and I said yes. Then halfway through he took his hands off my waist and danced a little bit away from me. Then after another line or two of the song, he walked away entirely, leaving me standing there alone on the dance floor, smelling like his aftershave. I was just glad to have been asked to dance by anyone.

At ten the dance ended. I went outside and waited for my dad. Cars came and went while I sat on the bench by the school. I considered asking someone for a ride, but I didn’t see anyone who lived in my neighborhood. Besides, how angry would my dad be if he showed up and I wasn’t here? So I kept waiting. Soon it was still and quiet all around me, with everyone gone. I’d had this funny feeling he was going to nod off on the couch and sleep right through picking me up, and now it was happening.

The worst part was that I was wearing my mother’s shoes, a pair of impossibly high heels with velvet bows on the sides. They were a little too big, but I could no longer squeeze into any of my dress-up shoes, so I’d felt I had no other choice. I had always coveted these sassy, slutty shoes. She was much too old and frumpy for shoes like this. I had sneaked them out of her room a few days ago, thinking I would sneak them back into place sometime after the dance and she would never know. I was trapped. If I called home, I would risk waking her up and having her come to get me instead of my dad. She’d kill me if she saw me in these. And I doubted this handmade dress would go over well either. I couldn’t bear to be grounded again. I had just finally served my sentence for the night I’d accused her of having an affair when she was actually going to her support group.

I tried to get back in the school, but it was locked. I couldn’t walk home. It was too far even in nice weather with good shoes on. So I just sat there.

Soon the few houses that had been lit up became dark. I tried walking all the way around the school, in case one of the lesser-used doors was unlocked, but they were all firmly fixed in place. Through the tall window by a side door, I could peer in and see a row of payphones. I was starting to think being grounded wasn’t as bad as freezing to death. I considered going to one of the dark houses and asking to use their phone, but I couldn’t do it. When you’re twelve it sometimes feels like you will get in trouble for any decision you make. I went back to the bench and sat down again.

I listed the states and their capitals in an inaudible whisper that got lost in the winter night. I translated words from English to Spanish and then counted to one hundred in French. I tried to put the presidents in order but couldn’t get past Andrew Jackson.

I watched the hands on my watch go round and round. I waited for a car to go past, but the street was dead silent. At 12:00 it started to snow. I opened my mouth to catch the big, fluffy flakes. At least it wasn’t windy. At 2:00 I heard yelling far off in the distance as some bars closed and people headed home. This made me a little scared, but after a moment it was silent again. The snow continued but got a little smaller and a little wetter. Now I was getting upset. I was crying and shaking from the cold. My nose was running endlessly, and the sleeves of my coat were covered with snot.

At 3:45 my dad pulled up. He looked groggy and did not utter a sound as he leaned over to open the door for me. The roads were slick and he gripped the steering wheel with a tired, furious look that had intensified since Valencia and Van’s deaths. Just a few blocks from the school a cat darted out in front of us. He hit it and I gasped, winced, looked back over my shoulder to see it lying still in the street, but he said nothing. We got halfway home in silence before he said, “You know, if you had some friends you would have been home in bed right now.”

Chapter 34

May is my favorite time of year. It always has been. School’s almost over and my birthday is in May. Everything is blossoming and winter is behind us. I was looking forward to turning thirteen. There would be no party. Most likely no gifts, but usually relatives sent me cards with money. Mainly, I just wanted to know what it felt like to be a teenager.

I remember that the morning of my thirteenth birthday was hazy and hotter than normal. My mom had recently started working at a dental office at the front desk, I guess having admitted to herself she no longer lived up to the title “Stay at Home Mom.” To some degree, she had snapped out of the funk she’d been in for the past eighteen months, and was starting to exercise along with the ladies from Super Abs and Ultimate Buns. She had to dress up for her new job, or at least that’s what she told my dad and me when she showed up with five big shopping bags from TJ Maxx the day after she got hired.

Now she was rushing around the house, her new cordless curling iron in one hand and a toaster strudel in the other. No matter how busy she was, she always had time make a perfect crisscross trellis of icing on her toaster strudel. Even in her depths of depression, she got that right.

I was packing my backpack with books, getting ready for the bus to pick me up. I’d been reminding her for two weeks about my birthday, so we could both avoid the embarrassment of her forgetting it. I put my backpack on and when I craned my neck I could see the bus way down the block. Two more stops before it would pick me up.

“I better get going…” I called, testing her, giving her the chance to remember.

“Okay. Have a good day at school,” she yelled. The words were muffled by toaster strudel.

Umm. Should I say something? The bus was getting closer. I opened the front door and stepped outside but didn’t yet close it behind me.

“Mom?” I yelled, but she didn’t hear me. I yelled it louder.

“What?”

The bus was approaching. I hesitated.

“It’s my birthday.”

“What?”

“It’s my birthday! I’m thirteen.”

Silence.

“I’m a teenager!”

The bus horn honked loudly and I looked up to see the mean old driver glaring at me. He honked again.

“Don’t miss that bus! I can’t drive you to school if you miss it,” my mother yelled.

So I got on.

When I got home there was a chocolate cake from the supermarket on the kitchen table alongside actual wrapped presents.

My mother was waiting for me. She had changed from her work clothes into jeans and a t-shirt, but her face was still made-up and her hair was teased and pulled back in a banana clip. She wore giant, shiny gold earrings that weighed on her lobes. She looked like a doll whose head had been popped off and put on the wrong body.

“Your dad will be home a little early tonight. Should we order some pizza?” she asked. I was in shock.

“Sure.” I set my backpack down and went to get a glass of water.

“Water? Have an RC instead, why don’t you.”

“Alright.” I poured out my glass of water and opened a can of soda.

I sat down at the kitchen table, across from her. The room was perfectly quiet except for the faint sizzling sound coming from the can of cola.

“How was work?” I asked her.

“Oh, I love it. It’s a lot of fun.”

“That’s good.”

She drummed her fingers on the table and spun the cake around so I could have a better look.

“What a nice cake,” I said.

“Chocolate,” she said. “These cakes from the Piggly Wiggly are the best.”

“Looks good.”

“There should be enough left over that you can take some with you in your lunch.”

“What a good idea.”

“So you’re thirteen now. Time sure flies.”

To me it didn’t.

My dad walked through the door then, a fistful of Mylar balloons in his hand. “Happy birthday! I picked these up for you,” he said, handing me the balloons. There was Garfield, Inspector Gadget, the Muppets, Barbie, even one with a rainbow that said Hope You’re Feeling Better. Had he stolen these?

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, holding the balloons, unsure of what to do next.

“We were just about to order pizza,” my mom told him.

“Great. Get on the horn and order it. Extra meat. Onions. Jalapenos.” Hallow peenos.

“Will do, Rog. Be right back,” said my mom.

My dad opened a can of RC and pulled up a chair. “So you’re a teenager now.”

“Uh-huh.” I took a sip of my soda.

“What’d you learn in school today?”

I hadn’t been asked that since I was a little kid. I racked my brain but somehow I couldn’t think of anything to tell him. So I made up something: “We learned about how people in South America live and stuff.”

“Pizza will be here in thirty-five minutes,” said my mom, hanging up the phone. She looked at me. “Do you want to open your presents?”

“Yeah!”

She sat back down and handed me the smallest one. My dad intercepted it and gave it a playful shake then pretended to hide it behind him. “Alright, alright, you can have it,” he said, handing it over to me. Was I in the Twilight Zone? Who were these cheerful, fun-loving people?

The present was wrapped in bright pink and yellow striped paper with a white bow on top. I took my time unwrapping it, wanting to make opening the gifts last until the pizza arrived.

Inside were barrettes, trendy ponytail holders, and two flavored roll-on lip-glosses. My mom was beaming. “Do you like those?” she asked.

I nodded. “These are great,” I said, and I meant it.

“How about this one next?” She passed me one that had to be clothes, judging by the shape of the box. Inside were jeans and an oversized thermo-knit sweatshirt in lavender with matching scrunchy socks. How did she even know about cool outfits like this?

“I love this outfit!” I said. I actually got up and hugged them.

“Now this one,” said my mom, passing another package to me. It was heavy and turned out to be board games: Scruples and Pictionary. I’d be playing these by myself, I figured, but it’s the thought that counts.

“How about this one?” asked my dad, handing me another that looked like more clothes. Inside were Ocean Pacific shorts, tank-tops, and t-shirts.

“Summer’s almost here!” said Mom.

I held up a top with a surfboard printed on it. Turquoise and peach were very big colors in 1988 and these mix-and-match sets put me right in style.

The doorbell rang. “That must be the pizza!” she exclaimed, hopping up and running to the door.

My dad raised his eyebrows and rubbed his belly.

“Don’t open any more presents without me,” hollered my mother.

She reappeared carrying not one pizza but three. “That was fast. Let’s take a break from presents and eat these while they’re hot.”

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I said.

“I’m on a diet so I got veggie,” she explained. She lined up the extra large boxes on the countertop and opened them all. First was the one for my dad, then her veggie pizza, and the last was plain mushroom: my favorite. I drew in a breath and exhaled, completely caught off guard. This was all too much. I didn’t know if I should feel better or worse that she knew things like my favorite kind of pizza. I mean, of course it was better if she knew, right?

“Should we take a picture?” I heard myself ask.

“Dig in!” said my dad, loading up a plate with five floppy slices of the heart attack special. My mom took three veggie slices and then threw another one on her plate for good measure. As hard as she tried, she had never quite grasped the definition of diet.

“Save room for cake and ice cream,” she reminded us between bites. She had a black olive stuck to her chin. Seeing it pasted there like a tiny tire filled me with sadness and guilt and love.

“Let’s take a picture,” I said again, scrambling through drawers in the kitchen, trying to find the camera.

“Take some pizza before it gets cold,” said my mom. The olive slice dropped to her lap. She noticed and popped it into her mouth. I gave up trying to find the camera and got a plate of pizza instead.

And so the evening went. After pizza they lit thirteen candles and I made a wish. We had chocolate cake with raspberry swirl ice cream, then I opened the rest of my presents: More clothes, an Esprit purse, and some sandals for summer. I wouldn’t look homeless anymore! ALF was on TV, and we sat down to watch it together, my parents patting the spot on the couch between them to indicate this was where I should sit. I conveniently let it slide that the only time either of them had ever commented on the show had been to voice their displeasure that it had ever been made.

Part of me was removed from the whole scenario, watching it as if it might actually be a dream. I kept trying to get that part to snap back inside my head, but it floated above me, cradling my soul and judging the evening as make-believe.

Chapter 35

That summer I began riding my bike or taking the bus everywhere. Suddenly I was no longer trapped. On Saturdays I would bike to the closest bus stop, and after three transfers I was in downtown Minneapolis. I found a listing of summer jobs posted at a library and decided I wanted to make some money. What I really wanted was to be one of those models at the mall. The ones doing fashion shows, prancing around like real-life celebrities. I had heard that was how Tiffany became so famous, and she was ugly like me, so I figured I stood a good chance of landing the job. Now that I was riding my bike all over, it made escaping my miserable life seem possible. It gave me hopes and dreams.

This was before we got the Mall of America, so news of a talent search at Sears seemed like a big deal. I put on my new Ocean Pacific clothes and rode my ten speed all the way there, arriving sweaty and with bugs in my teeth, but very, very hopeful. I touched up my makeup and got in line. There was a long folding table, the kind you see at bake sales, with four men sitting behind it. They drooled over us little girls. Well, not all of us.

I had hoped I might luck out and be the only person who had caught wind of this, and win by default. No such luck. Throngs of people were there, mostly girls my own age with their mothers.

We each had to climb up a riser to a short, T-shaped catwalk, spin, and walk back down the steps. That was round one. Round two involved singing or dancing and didn’t happen until the following weekend, so I figured I had a whole week to come up with a routine. Flocks of Jennis and Jessis and Karis stood in line in front of me, holding their moms’ hands, cracking their knuckles and stretching their calf muscles. They wore bubble skirts and bolero jackets, not gender-neutral gaudy shorts with dogs surfing on them.

Suddenly I was up. One of the men made a gesture towards me like he was shooting me and I stepped up onto the catwalk. I paused, wanting to nail it. Loud music was playing; I took a step, another step, then skipped down to the top of the T to show that I was FUN. I felt I had to do something memorable or I wasn’t going to advance to the next round, so I tried to do the splits but came up a little short.

“Okay, that’s enough,” yelled one of the men.

I had to roll to the side to get out of the uncomfortable position I was in, and instead of walking back down the catwalk I just jumped off the side and ran away.

So instead of being the next Tiffany, I got a job babysitting a four-year-old girl named Kennedy. She lived far from me, in a scary section of town, but it was better than sitting at home. Every morning I woke up early and rode my bike to her house where I watched her until her mother came home at three. Kennedy and I went to the park or the pool, painted with watercolors at the picnic table, or played with her extensive My Little Pony collection. A fence surrounded their house, and through its chain links we watched such things as one Pitbull killing another, and some policemen catching a teenage boy and throwing him so hard against the hood of his car that an ambulance needed to come for him. “Is that boy gonna die?” Kennedy kept yelling at the police. I think he would have if we hadn’t been there watching. Babysitting Kennedy was great. It made me feel independent and grown up, plus I got paid.

Kennedy’s mom’s name was Sharon and she was only twenty-three. All over their house were wedding pictures of her and Kennedy’s dad, Tom. He was tall and thin with sandy hair and a mustache, and stood there looking at her like he couldn’t have been more proud. Sharon’s dress had a high neck and long, lacy sleeves. Her veil came down between her eyes in a point. I thought she was beautiful. Nine bridesmaids in baby blue dresses fanned out to her right, nine handsome men in brown suits fanned out to his left. Someday, I hoped, I would be just like them.

The best part of babysitting Kennedy, besides that she was my only friend, was that every day at 1:00 when she took her hour-long nap, I was free to do whatever I pleased. At first I just watched their cable television and nibbled on snacks, but as time passed I grew bolder. Soon I was carefully snooping through their drawers. Then one day I sampled all their alcohol and tried some pills I found in the medicine cabinet. The combination of the pills and all the booze made it hard to catch my breath, so I stuck to sips of wine and schnapps after that, always remembering to bring plenty of Big Red gum to disguise the smell.

I was dying to try on Sharon’s fishnet stockings and a purple thong teddy, but I just didn’t have the nerve. Instead I took my babysitting money and went to the underwear section of JC Penney’s, where I got the closest thing I could find to a teddy: An extra small body girdle with a tummy control panel and a padded rear end. I bought it in such a hurry that I didn’t know how lame it was until I got it home. Then I was too embarrassed to return it, so one day I added it to a bag of clothes I had outgrown and threw it in the donation box at one of the local churches.

A couple weeks later when I was riding my bike to Kennedy’s, I saw a toothless old lady pushing a shopping cart, wearing that exact body girdle over a pair of my old jeans and one of my t-shirts, grinning like a jack-o-lantern.

“Your ass looks great,” I yelled as I flew past.

She nodded and reached back, giving the padding a big squeeze.

A few days before the start of eighth grade, I came home from an extended bike ride to find my mother waiting at the front door for me. She was smacking a newspaper against her ample hip. I put the kickstand down and took my time getting to her. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, but that never mattered. She was mad and I was in trouble; that was all I needed to know.

She waited until I was inside, and then closed the door behind me so she had the privacy to start a loud fight.

“What’s this?” She waved the paper in my face. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“‘I don’t know? I don’t know’” She mocked me, using a silly little mouse voice. “Give me a break. Do you think I was born yesterday?” She slammed the newspaper down on the coffee table.

I picked it up and started to look through it. On page four was a photograph of a fountain in downtown Saint Paul and the caption August Heat Makes the Cities Sizzle. There I was, along with other random citizens, sitting by the fountain, eating a banana and reading Endless Love by Scott Spencer. Oh, how I cherished that book, reading it and rereading it, dreaming of being so much to someone.

“What’s the matter? I’m just reading a book.”

“How did you get to downtown Saint Paul?”

“I rode my bike.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did. I swear.”

“Who took you there? Did some boy take you there? Some man? Do you have some boyfriend you aren’t telling me about?”

“No. I swear.”

“Who’s he?” she asked, stubbing her finger on the face of a guy in the photo.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

“And you’re both eating bananas?”

“Uh, I guess. I don’t know this guy. I didn’t realize we were both eating bananas.”

“He looks like he’s twenty years older than you! What’s the matter with you? He’s probably married! Do you have some kind of a problem? How am I supposed to trust you when you pull stunts like this? Grounding you isn’t enough anymore. I’m thinking of sending you away to one of those boarding schools. I’m serious. Your father and I are talking about it. This is the last straw!”

“Mom, listen to me! I don’t know that guy! I was just at the park reading a book! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You’re both eating bananas! Do you think I’m a fool?”

I stood there in disbelief.

“Do you think I’m a fool?” she repeated, putting her head in her hands. “Now I can’t even open the paper without finding you, out who knows where, embarrassing our family. Do you think your sister or brother ever pulled a stunt like this? Ever?” She looked at me, disappointment and disgust spewing from her eyeballs. “You’re going to get a month for going there and another month for lying to me if you don’t tell me the truth right now.”

“I am telling you the truth. I rode my bicycle there. I am telling you the truth.”

“Kiss your bicycle goodbye. You father is taking it to work with him tomorrow and he’s giving it away to the first person who’ll take it. You’re grounded. Two months. Write it on the calendar. No television, no phone. I told you, write it on the calendar.” She brushed past me out the door and shoved the bicycle over with her hip. “You got off lucky,” she yelled back at the house. Never one to under-do a dramatic departure, she got in her car and squealed the tires as she drove away. I saw the neighbor across the street duck her head behind her mini-blinds, and the neighbor kitty-corner from us rise from her porch furniture and go inside.

“I guess embarrassing your family is hereditary,” I yelled after her, kicking my knocked over bike. The street was silent, save for the fading rumble of my mother’s car. And all was still, save for the lingering sway of the neighbor’s blinds.

Chapter 36

Jeb Wilde said he had some information for me.

“Should we meet at the Golden Dragon?” I asked.

“Yeah. How’s two o’clock.”

That was fifteen minutes away. “Sure.”

Click.

Jeb Wilde was a man of few words.

Exactly one week had passed since our first meeting, and this was the first time I had heard from him. I grabbed my purse and headed out the door, intentionally leaving my cell phone behind so Adrian couldn’t reach me when he got out of the shower. I jumped in the car and drove to the restaurant. Jeb was already sitting inside.

I slid in across from him and the waitress came over. I ordered tea.

“I hope you got cash for that,” said Jeb.

“I do.”

“Don’t want to be using credit cards or checks. You got to be discreet.”

“Do you mean so Adrian doesn’t find out?”

Jeb just looked at me without saying anything, which made me feel stupid. And didn’t answer my question.

“What do you have for me?” I asked.

“So far, not much. But I like to check in, so you know I’m working for you. Forgive me if you know this already, but it’s something.” He had a manila envelope and from within it he drew two copies of birth certificates along with some old photographs.

“This,” he said, showing me a tall blonde man, “is your sister and brother’s dad. So you might already know all this, but this is how I work a case. I got to get to the bottom, look at every angle, you know.”

He had photographs of my mother with a man, posing for a dance, sitting together in a car, waving while she sat beside him on a blanket, both of them wearing swimsuits. I examined the information on the table, careful to slide it out of the way when the tea arrived.

“You need to order food,” said the waitress.

“None for me,” said Jeb.

“I’ll take an egg roll,” I said.

“Egg roll? What else?”

“Dipping sauce. Thanks.”

“Hmph!” said the waitress as she walked away.

“Who is this guy? Why do you think this is their dad, and not just someone she used to date?” I asked.

“This picture is from a Christmas dance, 1967. She would have already been pregnant. Then she marries your dad in July, after your brother and sister are already born. What a sucker. I bet she tried to get him to marry her before they came along, but he was dragging his feet. Back then you didn’t have babies out of wedlock. So the question is, what happened to this guy?” Jeb poked at the photograph. “Turns out he’s working in Tacoma at a bank. Oh, and their birth certificates have his name on them.”

“But Van’s middle name was Roger, after my dad.”

Jeb laughed. He laughed and laughed until tears ran down his leathery cheeks. Finally he pulled off his glasses and wiped them on the corner of his shirt.

“I can’t believe everyone kept this from me. What’s so funny?” I asked.

“This schmuck’s name is Roger too.”

I poured myself a cup a tea, annoyed with Jeb’s amusement over my dysfunctional family.

“It says Loden on their gravestones,” I said.

Jeb showed me the copies of Van and Valencia’s birth certificates and I saw that their last names were originally Nelson. I slid the copies back to him.

“This is a lot to take in,” I said.

“I think she married your dad because he was a little bit older, and was settled, and could provide for her. I’m no psychiatrist, but you learn things when you do this long enough.”

“Are you saying you think my mom or dad had something to do with this?”

“With what?”

“With their deaths!”

Jeb looked exasperated. “No. I’m just trying to show you I do my homework.”

My egg roll arrived and I pushed it away, so Jeb ate it. Repressed memories of overheard conversations between aunts and uncles came back to me. Maybe I had always known Valencia and Van weren’t my real sister and brother. It certainly explained a lot.

“You can take these back,” said Jeb, returning the original photos and clippings I gave him. “I got what I need from these.”

“Oh, thanks.” I wasn’t thrilled to have the pictures back, as I had looked at them a little too much when they were around, but it was better than not knowing where they were. I tucked them in my purse.

“Where did you find those pictures?” I asked, nodding at the photos of my mother and the twins’ real father. “And how were you able to get copies of their birth certificates?”

“You don’t need to know how I do my job,” said Jeb.

I opened my mouth to respond and closed it again, no words coming to me.

“That might sound harsh but it’s the way it works,” said Jeb.

I shrugged, trying to behave as if I knew what I was doing. “So is my dad really my dad?” I asked, dipping my finger in the unused dish of plum sauce and sucking it off my fingertip.

“I can find out, but it will cost you,” said Jeb.

“Never mind.” I signaled for the check.

Chapter 37

I was starting to not care who killed Valencia. Van and Valencia. Whatever. Because it was wrecking my life and costing a lot of money. Consuming all my energy and destroying my happy marriage. And they, apparently, were only my half siblings anyway. What I wanted was to find the psycho sending us hate mail and make him just fuck off. Make him leave us alone. What happened to my happy life with spontaneous for-no-particular-reason diamond necklaces and Lancôme samples arriving weekly? Free samples, reserved for only the best customers! Now I threw them aside, distracted by whatever else I might find hiding in our mailbox. I couldn’t take living like this. Fuck you, Van and Valencia. Especially you, Valencia. With your shiny hair and your long skinny legs. Haunting me my whole life long. Making me feel invisible and worthless.

“…Baby?”

“What Adrian?”

“Are you drinking?”

“Well, yes. So?”

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Well I’ve been up since six. So it’s not early to me anymore.”

“Okay?”

“What are you doing up?” I asked him.

He held up his hands. They were covered up to his elbows with paint. “This creative rush came over me, at four o’clock this morning, and I have been working ever since.”

“Oh,” I took another swallow of wine. “I thought you were at the gym or something.”

“Do you want to see what I’ve been doing?”

I stood up, not letting go of my glass of wine. “Sure.”

We went to his studio and he paused at the door, gesturing grandly inside. There on the wall was a huge stretched canvas with a sketch of a nude woman reclining. Not reclining so much as actually sleeping. It was nothing like his usual work. I took a closer look.

“Adrian, is that me?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

I set down my glass of wine on one of the tables. “Are you going to paint it?”

“Yeah. I’ve just started. It’s got a long way to go.”

“Don’t you usually work from pictures?” I asked him.

“Uh huh. I took several. You were out cold.”

At his desk were printouts everywhere of me, naked and asleep. “Are these from last night?” I asked, feeling a chill run down my spine.

“Yep. This is the one that really captured your essence,” he said, holding up one with my hair half over my face.

“That one doesn’t even look like me.”

“Sure it does.”

“Is this just the way it is, living with an artist?” I asked him. “Like, I need to just accept that this is normal? ‘Cause it’s not normal. It’s weird.” I picked up my glass of wine, wanting to throw it against the canvas. That would have been the perfect thing to do. It would have added buckets of panache to this artistic moment. But I didn’t have the nerve or the energy to clean it up.

“What’s the matter, Baby?” he asked. “I thought you would be flattered.” Adrian’s shoulder slumped defeatedly. He sighed the sigh of a man who was misunderstood, and becoming used to disappointment.

I sat down on the old couch in his studio, resenting him for turning this around so I was the one who now felt guilty. He looked miserable.

“Adrian, it’s not that big of a deal,” I said. “Just forget it.”

He came over to my side and kissed my ear. “Do you know how many women would want something like this to happen to them,” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“This is the kind of thing that would have happened to your sister, right?” An icy unpleasantness ran down my spine.

“I don’t think she ever experienced anything quite like this.”

“But is it really so bad?” he asked. I felt that he was trying to be flirtatious. I drew in a breath and took another drink of wine. Maybe I needed to lighten up. “I guess not. You just caught me off guard.”

“So everything’s fine? You’re even a little flattered?”

“Sure. Whatever. I mean, yes, I’m flattered.”

“Good.” He kissed the top of my head. “Mind if I get back to work then?”

“I guess not.” I said, sitting there a moment longer. I finished the rest of my wine and then stood up. “I’m going to go for a walk,” I told him. But he had turned back to his canvas and was too focused to even notice I was leaving.

Chapter 38

I never stole for myself, but after I was grounded for the banana incident, I began stealing for the twins more than ever. I was stuck at home for three weeks before school began, having lost my babysitting job since I had no means of transportation. My parents were gone all day and I was bored. Like the bracelet I had seen by the pencil sharpener, perfect situations fell into my lap.

The doorbell rang on my first day of being grounded, and there was the UPS man. I peeked out from behind the curtain by the door, watching as he set the package down and dashed back to his brown truck. Having no doors on their trucks had always scared me. Did UPS men sometimes fall out when they went around a sharp corner? He drove off and I opened the door to retrieve the package. It was for my mother. I tore it open and discovered an array of autumn kitchen decorations. Acorn potholders and dishtowels, a platter covered with brown and orange leaves. Kitschy junk. The kind of junk that, when she occasionally tried to decorate, she gravitated toward.

“These would be perfect for your apartment,” I whispered.

In my mind, Van and Valencia were no longer in college, but living here in Hudson in an apartment. I had picked out which one: a two story, white, boxy building a mile or so down the road. When I’d had a bike, I often rode past it. Sometimes they had cookouts with their friends and invited me. I fit in just fine and everyone was really nice.

I put the kitchen junk back in the box, arranging it neatly and taping it shut again. I had to find a new place to bury presents. I couldn’t use our backyard anymore because my father had begun to notice something was going on. He had thought it was a mole and had poured poison all over, and the bunnies and squirrels I loved had all died.

I took the box and my mother’s little gardening shovel and put them in a duffel bag. There was a wooded park between our house and the public swimming pool; I would bury their presents there. I had to hurry though, because it would be just like one of my parents to check up on me.

That park turned out to be the perfect spot, and during the next several months I went there to bury over a dozen gifts. Being grounded gave me extra time to devote to taking care of the twins. There was a baseball for Van that I took from school, and a suede purse for Valencia I bravely swiped from a teacher’s desk. There was even a small picture of a majestic mountain range beneath a purple sunset that I stole right off the wall of our neighbor’s house one sunny afternoon while she hung her laundry on her clothesline.

I added items whenever I had the chance, covering them with leaves and mulch, smoothing the ground with my hands, until late October when the ground became too hard to dig.

I had tried for thirty minutes that night in October, the wind gusting at my back and my eyes watering. A VHS tape of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off rested beside me, the perfect movie for Van and Valencia to watch with their friends while they played scrabble and ate pizza. I had taken it from the carelessly unsecured locker next to mine. When my mother’s little shovel began to bend more than the earth, I gave up. I covered the movie with rocks and twigs the best I could.

“I’ll bring you more in the spring,” I promised them, my words being carried away with the rustling leaves.

Chapter 39

Being a homeowner makes people care about things they never thought they’d care about. Fences, for instance. The fancy, tri-fold brochure in front of me was a surprisingly good read. There were white picket fences and cast iron fences, beautiful gates with lovely morning glories wrapping around them, and a whole pullout section devoted just to coordinating fountains.

“I love them all,” I told Adrian. “You pick.”

“Well, cast iron with sharp pokers on the top is probably the safest.”

“Then cast iron it is. But wait. How will that look with our house?”

“I don’t know. Good, I guess. This house here looks like ours and it looks alright with Classic Secure Cast Iron Deluxe,” he said.

“I wonder how long it will take to install. These construction projects can drag on. Maybe we should get out of town while they do it.”

“It says here they have the whole fence up within seventy-two hours of placing the call. Oh wait, there is an asterisk and the letters are getting smaller: Seventy-two hours if you choose a style they have in stock.”

“That’s encouraging. Let’s get it.”

“I’ll make the call,” he said, rising with the brochure then bending back down to kiss me. I think we both really believed we were fixing things.

Next, we were headed to the pound to buy the meanest dog we could find.

We went not to the shelter in Savannah, but an hour and a half southwest of us. It was a place we’d read about in the newspaper a year or so earlier one morning while doing the crossword puzzle and eating bagels at an outdoor cafe. A sad, weepy story of abused animals saved from violent, cruel lives. At that time I never dreamed I’d own a dog, much less a dog rescued from fighting rings. Yet here we were, back at home, now a family of three. We named our Rottweiler-Pitbull mix Frisky and bought him a cute pink collar to soften his impression on our curious neighbors.

“Come here, Frisky,” I said, waving a giant rawhide bone. He missed my hand by a fraction of an inch. I threw a block of moldy cheese on the back porch and when he lunged for it I slammed the door behind him.

“Adrian,” I called.

“What, Honey?” He appeared, holding some dishtowels he was folding.

“I’m not so sure about the puppy.”

“What’s the problem?”

“He terrifies me.”

“Baby, he’s supposed to make you feel safe. The poor guy has had a rough time of it so far. We’re his ticket to peace and happiness, and he is ours,” said Adrian, shaking his head impatiently and opening the back door. “Here boy, come on Frisky,” he called.

Plunk plunk plunk came Frisky’s big paws, his head bobbing left and right in goofy delight. He was excellent at playing the part of good dog when Adrian was around. I wanted to hate him, but was convinced his psychic dog skills would make it obvious to him, so I decided I would avoid him instead.

“I will be upstairs taking a bath,” I announced. My clothes were covered with white, crusty dog slobber. I turned and made my way through the living room with Frisky following behind me.

“Adrian, call him. Call the dog. Please. He’s following me.” I thought I heard the mailman on the front porch and I froze.

“Come on in here,” he called from the kitchen. “Both of you.”

I listened as the mailman retreated down the stairs and called out a greeting to one of our neighbors. So far Frisky, who didn’t even know enough to bark at the mailman, was proving himself to be a useless addition to our lives. I would have pointed this out to Adrian, but I wanted the chance to peek at the mail without him knowing it had arrived, so I kept silent and went back into the kitchen with Frisky following closely behind me.

“Would you look at this dog. There are splashes of slobber everywhere he goes.” I pointed to the slippery, smeared splotches all over our floor.

“You’re not even giving him a chance. You and Frisky are going to have to learn to get along.”

“Adrian…” I began, not in any mood for one of his reasonable parent-child lectures. They were a part of our relationship I had never much considered, but now that I was being lumped in the child category with an animal, something was registering as wrong with it.

“I will admit, we might need to get a dog trainer,” he said. “But until Frisky gets settled, we need to do everything we can to help him adjust. Right?” He smiled at me, placing the stack of dishtowels in their drawer.

Right?

I shrugged. I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know anything.

“Right?” He closed the drawer and raised an eyebrow at me. The juxtaposition of hot male artist and animal loving household chore doer was every woman’s pornographic fantasy. And here he was, all mine.

Was he my pornographic fantasy? Well no. Not usually. I could not remember the last time I had thought about him when I didn’t have to.

But that was normal. For married people. Right?

Right?

I’m sure he did not think about me either. I mean, what would be the point? I’m right here in front of him. It’s like living in Paris and thinking, “I want to go to Paris.” It wouldn’t make sense.

Just because you don’t fantasize about visiting Paris, it doesn’t mean you don’t love Paris. Or that you would want to move away from Paris. It’s just, if you live in Paris, you might as well fantasize about visiting Istanbul.

“So do you think you could try to get along with our dog?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. He sprayed some cleaner on a rag and wiped up some crumbs by the toaster.

Frisky whined. “Entertain me,” he was saying, having fully adjusted to his spoiled life when four hours ago he’d been living in a cement cell.

“So anyway, I really am going to take a bath now,” I said, sighing and walking away. Frisky stayed put and I decided I would not detour out to see what was in the mailbox. I thought of my mother’s old saying “If you go looking for trouble you will always find it.” I went straight up the stairs and didn’t look back.

So what was I to do? Adrian was so adorable, so tidy. Well sometimes. Other times he was a slob. I liked both sides of him. I ran my bath water, again wishing for a friend. A psychic, perhaps? That seemed like a good idea, actually. I added more hot water, mulling it over.

“Honey, mind if I come in?” asked Adrian, opening the door and coming in with a stack of towels.

“Not at all,” I answered since he was already in and organizing them on their shelf.

“You like these green ones to be over here, right?”

“Sure. That looks good. You’re doing so many chores today. I love it! What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m feeling really good about the fence, the dog, us.” He bent over the bathtub and kissed my forehead. “Love you, Sweetie.”

“I love you too,” I said back. I had noticed lately I only said it in response to him saying it first. He smiled as he was leaving and closed the door behind him with a comforting click, assuring Frisky would not be coming in. I settled back, sinking down into the hot water.

I’d apologized for overreacting about the whole naked picture thing. I came to realize that it was actually very romantic. Like he said, I should have just been flattered.

Any woman would want Adrian, but he was mine.

Any woman would want him.

I knew that much was true.

The next day we signed up Frisky for school.

“I can get him into this class in Mechanicsville today!” Adrian told me, setting down the phone and holding up the paper to show me the advertisement.

“That sounds perfect for Frisky,” I told him.

The second they left, my cell phone rang. Having never taken the time to assign ring tones, I assumed it was Adrian. I feared he was getting attacked by Frisky, and I flipped it open without even looking.

“Hi Baby, what’s up?” I said.

“It’s me. Jeb,” said a raspy voice.

“Oh Jeb. Sorry. I thought you were my husband. How are you?”

“We need to get together.”

The problem with the Golden Dragon is that after you go there you need to take a shower. With its garlicky shrimp aroma, it is not the best place for a discreet rendezvous.

“What have you got for me?” I asked.

“I’d rather talk in person.”

“Could we meet someplace else?” I asked.

There was a long pause. “No,” he said.

“Fine. See you in fifteen.”

Chapter 40

I will always associate eighth grade with pottery. I had signed up for ceramics for no reason other than it seemed like it would be easy. By luck, I had a study hall immediately following it, which allowed me to spend almost three hours straight working on my pots and vases. The teacher, not unlike most art teachers, was one of those ladies whose only ambition in life was to seem wacky. We called her Nancy and as far as I recall, we never did learn her last name. She wore huge, dangly earrings made of polished gems she’d mined on trips in her rusty Airstream. She and her partner Willie once sold oranges they picked in Florida and distributed across the continent, going door-to-door and making thousands of dollars that they used to start a shelter for ferrets.

Nancy and her over-the-top stories made eighth grade bearable. She had a bottomless bag of adventures from her cross-country citrus selling days. Who could resist the one about her three-legged cat named Jesus Christ? Or the side-splitter about her dentures falling into the Grand Canyon?

While all the other kids tired of her stories, I wanted to hear more. She told me about her life in a way that I could imagine perfectly. Her stories took root in my brain like old Polaroid pictures, and never left. They became the bedrock of my own dreams and fantasies, redefining what I thought I needed out of life. I realized I wanted to have adventures like she’d had. And I wanted someone to be adventurous with me. Before hearing Nancy’s enthusiasm for Willie, I hadn’t been sure if people might not be better off alone, but she made me doublethink that.

Maybe one day, like her, I would walk down a dusty road, carrying a gas can, with the man I loved beside me, whistling a little song. Perhaps it would start to rain. Maybe, if we were lucky, we’d run through a field and hide in an old barn. If the stars were aligned, just right, the gas can would have a little bit of gas left inside of it and it would spill, and then later when we lit up some cigarettes we’d start the barn on fire. We’d get out of there before anyone caught us and we’d laugh about it forever.

Just like Nancy and Willie.

She didn’t tell this story to everyone. But when she told it, she cackled and cackled, and then always got very serious at the end adding, “No animals were harmed.”

If Nancy could have a life like this, filled with one fun surprise after another, so could I. Heck, if Nancy could do it, anybody could.

She showed us kids that there were different ways to go about life than the formula all our parents seemed to be following. Nancy was living proof that being a loser was not a recipe for a sad, lonely life. Willie, whose photo was tacked to her bulletin board, may not have been much to look at it, but he loved her. And her job did not pay well, or carry with it much respect or prestige, but it seemed to make her happy. And she was well traveled! I admired that. Now along with Valencia and Kennedy’s mom Sharon, I had Nancy as a role model.

Day after day my vases and pots became taller, rounder, and lighter. I painted them with elaborate scenes, my favorites being farm life, spaceships, and cute little monkeys swinging from trees. She did not object as I went through blocks of clay. I began skipping lunch and German class to go to the ceramics room, some days passing four or five hours in there. Nancy and Frau Schoenmeister each turned a blind eye to this, since I was still the girl who had been through so much. By the end of eighth grade, I had created seven eight-piece dinner settings. The plates were the hardest to make look nice. I made these sets with a mindless, therapeutic focus, never suspecting they would serve me for the rest of my life.

On one of my last days of eighth grade, before I went off to high school and never saw Nancy again, I asked her to choose a set of dishes to keep. She chose one that was nice, but politely stayed away from my two absolute favorites. The set she picked had cows and pigs standing before cheery red barns. A lesser teacher, or person for that matter, would have said, “No, no, I can’t. You put so much effort into these,” but Nancy enthusiastically accepted the set and carefully wrapped each piece in newspaper to take home to Willie and her pets.

“We’re having corn on the cob and artichokes for dinner, and they’re going to taste good on these plates,” she said. I can remember waiting, a knot in my stomach, for her to ask me to join them. She didn’t.

I hope she still has those dishes. Sometimes when I am in Hudson I consider stopping by her old classroom, but she couldn’t possibly still be there. She was old even back then.

Adrian and I rotate through our remaining six sets. I don’t know what was in that clay, but there is hardly a chip on them. We have a strong preference towards the yellow set with the fat, purple flying saucers. The leafy jungle ones are a very close second.

The way Adrian loves my crazy dishes makes me feel like part of a real couple, instead of just one of the accessories in his life. Lately I often feel removed from him and our life, and somehow even myself. But remembering things like this brings me back. Calms me down. Gives me some proof that what we have is strong and real. Reassures me that I have something unique to give him, and that he truly wants it.

When we got engaged we registered for lovely square white china, and received every single piece down to the oblong gravy boat. We have barely used any of it. Thanks to Adrian’s coaching, our guests insist on the monkey plates.

Chapter 41

So here were Jeb and I, seated at the Golden Dragon again. I ordered a whole meal and some potstickers to make up for being a cheapskate the other times.

“I need some more money,” said Jeb.

“How much?” I asked.

“Another fifteen hundred.”

“I don’t have fifteen hundred dollars with me today, obviously.”

“No, I know you’re good for it, I’m just setting you straight on where I’m at. I’ve got some good news: I got a guy who was arrested in Minneapolis in 1989 for raping women. He liked to put duct tape over their mouths, and he wrapped their hands up like your sister’s looked. He just got out about six months back or so and he looks like a good bet. But I need to do some more research. Got to get something with his writing on it for one thing. Follow him around a little. So fifteen hundred should cover the trip to Minneapolis, and I’m going to need that soon, and then I’ll let you know where we’re at after that.”

Fifteen hundred dollars to go to Minneapolis and track down a murdering rapist, including meals and hotels? Seemed fair to me.

“Okay,” I said.

“Mind if I have a couple of those, if you aren’t going to eat them?” asked Jeb, nodding to the plate between us.

“Go ahead.”

I rummaged in my purse for a pen. As I was about to give up I saw a small velvet case poking out from a tear in the lining and I discovered a really nice fountain pen Adrian had given me a year or two earlier. I thought I had lost it, and finding it again gave me a small rush similar to buying something new. I removed it from its case and briefly admired the delicate engraved scrolls on it.

$1500 Jeb I wrote on the back of a receipt I found in my purse. After all this time the pen still wrote perfectly. I admired my handwriting, which is practically calligraphic.

Psychic I wrote beneath it.

Jeb was dipping my potstickers in a dish of hot mustard. I waited silently while he chewed on them.

Through the dirty window by our table I watched our waitress walking in circles in the parking lot, smoking and talking on her phone. I had a sick, fleeting feeling that perhaps I was enjoying this experience. That the real me, that insecure weirdo buried deep inside, might be living vicariously through the fancy woman with the fancy pen.

“What are you shaking your head about?” asked Jeb.

“I wasn’t shaking my head. How should I get the money to you?” I asked.

“Well, I got some work to do this afternoon. Meet me back here at seven tonight in the parking lot. And be careful. The guy who killed your sister knows where you live and is playing games with you. Think about that.”

“So, you don’t think my husband is involved in this in any way, right?”

“It wouldn’t make no sense to me if he was. Now take care of yourself, I gotta go.”

“Okay, thanks Jeb. See you later.”

He left but I stayed a little longer, sipping tea by myself, feeling invisible in the tall booth. There was something really unnerving about a private investigator warning you that a murderer was after you. Those Minneapolis postmarks had given me a false sense of security.

I finished my pot of tea and pulled some cash from my wallet. It occurred to me that Adrian could be in danger even in that moment as I sat there. He was most likely back from the dog training class, sitting at home in his studio painting with the music so loud he wouldn’t even hear anyone approaching. Frisky would be barricaded on the back porch and the cast iron fence going halfway around our yard (the workmen had run out of materials and could not finish it for a week) would provide little protection.

I paid my bill at the cash register and returned home to find Adrian outside teaching Frisky to sit, using tiny sausage snacks for a reward.

“How was class?” I asked, surveying our surroundings for anyone who seemed out of place.

“Good,” he said. “The instructor thinks Frisky will make a good dog someday, with a little work.” On cue, Frisky growled at me and showed his long, white teeth. Adrian immediately squirted him with the garden hose and Frisky slinked away, whimpering.

“We learned that in class,” said Adrian. “Just give him a squirt.”

“That’s not abuse?”

“I guess not.” Adrian sniffed. “Have you been eating Chinese food?”

“Yeah. It just… you know. Sounded good.”

“Huh. Okay. Well, I’m feeling creative so I’m going to get some work done. I’ll be in my studio if you need me.”

I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I called the fence people and yelled at them a little for their false guarantee of a three day fence. They offered to give us a hundred pounds of mulch to make it up to us, which I accepted. Then I flipped through the yellow pages, looking at ads for psychics, talking myself more and more into this being the answer. Convinced, I got back in my car and drove to the bank to withdraw more money for Jeb, and an extra five hundred, since I had no idea how much it may cost to have my fortune told.

I had plenty of time to kill before seven o’clock. I drove across town until I found Zemma’s House, a purple shack with gold shutters. It looked like something out of a Harry Potter book. I parked in front, and turned off the car, fully intending to walk right on up there and ring the bell. I was surprised at how nervous I felt. I was aware that I still smelled like food, and I felt self-conscious. Would I receive an accurate fortunetelling if all the psychic could think of was crab rangoon? I fiddled with the rickrack hem on my dress, wishing I had my cigarettes with me.

The curtain on the front door moved a little and I panicked. I started the car and drove off, taking the first right turn that presented itself, just to get out of Zemma’s line of vision. The houses were getting shabbier and shabbier.

“Are you going to do this or not?” I asked myself, aloud.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

I got a little lost and the next thing I knew, I was driving past the little purple house again. A small, pale woman with white hair in a scraggly bun sat on a yellow metal chair beside her front door. She watched me go past, her eyes squinting at me accusingly.  I hit the brake, but I thought better of it and went to the library instead.

This seemed like a better plan. Safer. Brighter. More devoted to the factual.

I got out of my car and went inside, sitting down at a computer carrel. From the plastic cup beside the computer, I took a scrap of paper and a little pencil that looked like it was for miniature golf. I began compiling a list of the things Jeb had told me about the potential murderer:

From Minneapolis.

Jailed for rape in 1989.

Recently released from prison. 6 months ago?

Without knowing the man’s name, the information I plugged into the computer did not get me very far. Eventually I got bored and went out to do some shopping. I figured it was necessary to come home with some new things, considering I had withdrawn two thousand dollars and been gone all day.

I bought a couple things for Adrian as well, and then got an iced mocha for myself. As I sipped it, I wondered if I was being followed. It was still very strange to me that I had been before, and had never suspected a thing. I touched up my lipstick and pulled my hair back into a twisty bun, feeling alert and alive. I tried to catch someone darting about in my peripheral vision, but if I was being followed, my stalker was very discreet.

Finally it was time to meet Jeb. I made unnecessary turns on my way to the Golden Dragon, trying to catch a potential tailgater, but again, I seemed to be alone and unmonitored. Jeb was standing outside the restaurant. He nodded to me when I pulled in and walked up to my window. I passed him the envelope.

“Jeb, what’s the name of the man?”

He took a quick look inside the envelope, and then he slid it inside his wallet. He did not answer me.

“Hey,” I said, “this is what I’m paying you for!”

“His name is John Spade, but until I can say otherwise, he’s a man who served his time, might not be the one who did this. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I’m not going to do anything, but I have the right to know,” I said.

He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. But that’s the man I’m going to see. I’ll be up there as long as it takes for me to find what I’m looking for. Probably leave the day after tomorrow and I’ll follow up with you when I get back. Now you take good care.”

“I will. You too.” I will admit, I felt ashamed that for the cost of a birthday gift or a weekend in Atlanta, he was going to risk his life for me.

The next morning, bright and early, the fence men showed up. The rest of the materials had miraculously been located, and by evening our house and yard were a bastion of security. Adrian had worked all day finishing a small project for a client, and now that the painting was completed, he was relaxed and content with himself.

We lounged on the porch, sipping minty iced tea and admiring our fortress. Frisky patrolled the grounds, snarling as gaping, nosy neighbors walked past to get a look. A feeling of peace like I hadn’t known for weeks, months even, had come over me. Each cast iron post was sharpened to a dagger-like point. The creaking gates were operated by a remote control that Adrian was busy examining. If that were not enough, Frisky’s enormous chompers had a never-ending stream of elastic drool hanging from them, making them both conventionally frightening and grody-scary. When he poked his nose through the rails, globs of saliva were left behind as a menacing reminder that there was nothing worth stopping for here, so move along.

He seemed to be warming up to me, since I’d spent most of the day feeding him lunch meat and Slim Jims while Adrian had been holed up in his studio. As the sun began to set, Frisky plunked down by our feet, his tongue hanging out, and Adrian wrapped his arm around me.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too.”

Adrian is the only person, in my entire life, who has said that to me.

Chapter 42

I’m pregnant.

Pregnant!

I can’t say it enough.

I. Am. Pregnant.

With so much on my mind, I was two weeks late before I even realized it.

I briefly considered not telling Adrian that I was late, letting the news be mine alone for a little while, but I couldn’t do it.

I had slept until almost eleven o’clock after many, many weeks of waking up at five or six in the morning. When I finally awoke, stretching out on our new bamboo sheets (what a luxury!) and looking out the window at the tall, black fence, I felt great. Like the old me from before all the trouble had begun. I was lying there, feeling lazy and content, when it occurred to me how much time had passed since I’d last been bothered by my period. And then I just knew.

Adrian was cleaning up his studio. I walked in announcing, “I’m late. Really late. Let’s get a pregnancy test!”

“Do you feel pregnant?” he asked as we drove to the store.

“I don’t know. I dreamed like crazy last night. Does that sound like I’m pregnant?”

“What did you dream about?”

“I can’t remember. Ice cream? Cheese?”

“Sounds like you’re pregnant to me.” He squeezed my knee, beaming.

“Honestly, I’m sure I am. I’m never late.”

“How late are you?”

“Adrian,” I pouted, “don’t you keep track of my period?”

We both started laughing, and then we looked at each other and laughed some more, almost causing a car accident. Right then and there, for the first time in a very long time, nothing mattered but us.

I went in to the drugstore alone, since no matter how famous Adrian gets, I seem to be staying under the radar. Ever since what we were now calling the Bob Chance Encounter, Adrian was convinced that he was even more famous than he’d previously thought. He now assumed the paparazzi and his fans were everywhere. He also thought that the day when I was photographed had been an overflow of the energy normally directed at him. In fact, everything that was happening to us, he attributed to his crazed fans. He truly believed he was Savannah’s Picasso. Or Brad Pitt.

“If I go in there someone might leak the information that we’re expecting a baby,” he explained, turning on the radio and reclining his seat.

“Fine,” I said, too excited to argue. I could not wait to do it at home, so I ran into the drugstore’s bathroom and peed on the little stick. Immediately, two faint lines appeared.

No way. Despite my confidence in the car, I could not believe it.

It was a two-pack of tests, so I ripped the spare open and forced a few more drops of pee on that one’s stick, and set it beside the other test. I watched as the first test’s pink lines progressed to magenta, and the second test’s pair of lines faintly came into focus.

I felt an almost physical reaction, as if I were being pressed to the ground by a wave of hot, hot air from above. Becoming pregnant seemed like something that only happened to other people. Could both tests be wrong? I sat down on the edge of the toilet seat and reread the back of the box. It showed one line for not pregnant and two for pregnant. A fainter second line may still indicate that you are pregnant said the writing on the box. Both tests I had taken each had clear, bold lines. So there really wasn’t any doubt about it.

I stood back up and pressed my forehead against the smooth, cool partition wall. Normally I would have been way too concerned about germs to get so cozy with a public restroom, but in that moment I didn’t even think about the germs.

There’s nothing like finding out you’re pregnant to make you take an honest look at your life. Standing there in a bathroom stall, realizing you have another life growing inside you, knowing that someone killed your sister and might intend to kill you… It makes you think you can and should run away.

Didn’t I owe this baby, if not myself, the truth? Adrian’s and my world did not resemble the charmed, sophisticated existence that local magazines portrayed. There was a little more going on than a new fence and puppy, despite what the neighbors thought. Who was I living this charade for? It’s not as if I had many friends. They were Adrian’s friends, not mine.

“Who are you doing this for?” I whispered. The bathroom was silent, save for the slow, steady drip of the faucet.

For a moment I entertained the thought of selling oranges from a van, from an Airstream. Just the baby and me. We’d wear clothes I sewed from old feed sacks and live an honest life. I’d change our names then change them again, just to be safe.

That’s what I would like to do. That’s what would feel like the truth.

But then again, I reasoned, if there was ever a time I needed Adrian, it was now.

I stood there, frozen, knowing he was waiting to hear my answer. If I took off, slipped through a side door of the drugstore and ran away, how long would it take for him to come inside looking for me? What would I do? I had a debit card in my wallet. I could withdraw a bunch of money, and then what?

Stop it.

You’re being ridiculous.

I let myself out of the stall, holding both tests in my hand. I set them on the edge of the sink, washed my hands, splashed water on my face. I looked at myself in the mirror, trying to see if I looked different now. But I looked the same as always. I smiled and cleared my throat. Touched up my lip-gloss for good measure.

Seriously, you could do it. You could disappear. Sometimes you forget that it is all up to you. The reflection of me nodded solemnly, the eyes wavering between inspiration and defeat. I looked away, preferring the sturdy absoluteness of sinks, soap dispensers, white tile walls, over that wavering woman in the mirror.

I wrapped the tests neatly in a paper towel and put them in my purse. I drew in a deep breath, held it, exhaled.

Okay. Let’s do this.

Then I ran back to the car and thrust the pregnancy tests at Adrian, exuding confidence and joy. And the funny part is, it wasn’t really a lie.

Chapter 43

It was summer vacation, 1989. Since I no longer had a bicycle, I needed to find a job I could walk to, and a way to afford some new clothes for high school. When she wasn’t lying on her bed, suffering from migraines and watching talk shows, my mother was still working at the dentist office. But I hated to be at home, even if I was the only one there. I hated the twins’ transformed, empty rooms. I hated the loud ticking clock, my out-of-date wardrobe, the way nothing was ever fresh or new. We were using watered down discount shampoo and were frequently out of groceries. And I could never relax; I knew that at any moment either of my parents could unexpectedly come home from work and there we would be, stuck together. Then I would inevitably get grounded. Everything set them off. A dish in the sink, a blemish on my face, or a dropped piece of mail that wasn’t even ours blowing across the yard. Just being there practically gave me an ulcer.

Having had the brief experience of caring for Kennedy the previous summer, I decided to become a high class babysitter extraordinaire. I was inspired by The Baby-sitters Club books, as well as Valencia’s old three ring binder I’d found on a shelf in the TV room downstairs. The cover of the binder was a rich coral pink, which was Valencia’s favorite color, favorite organic substance, favorite girl’s name, favorite everything, and it said 1982 Babysitter’s Guidebook. It had a gold badge sticker proclaiming I passed my childcare test with flying colors! On the back cover she had written I love Rob McCray forever and Remember: In case of swallowing poison, make babies drink some milk. Inside were tabs dividing the binder into all sorts of informative sections. I quickly learned how to perform CPR, heat up a bottle, and seek cover from an earthquake. This fabulous guide, somehow missed by my mother in her eradicating sweeps, elevated babysitting from lowly after-school job to respectable career. I flipped through it, excited. If Valencia could do it, with flying colors no less, so could I.

The entrance of the local supermarket usually housed plenty of handwritten advertisements from people needing babysitters, so I walked the two mile journey to it and took a look. As I stood there, perusing the picked over offerings which displayed a few expired garage sales and some kittens for sale, two Jennis and a Kaci came in with their clans of summer kids. They were all decked out in swimsuits and biker shorts, stopping in for a snack on their way to the pool. It was obvious as I stood there, binder in hand, gazing forlornly at the wall in front of me, what I was looking for. My dad’s favorite saying ‘You’re a day late and a dollar short’ truly summarized my existence.

For a moment it looked as if they would pass on by me and leave me alone. But I was such easy prey that one of the Jennis could not resist. She paused on the mat that made the door automatically open and turned back to me. “Ohhh. Were you trying to be a nanny too?”

“A nanny?”

“Oh, pardon moi,” she said, taking a step closer to me and pointing her sparkly purple tipped fingernail at the binder. “I see you’re trying to be a babysitter. Well, you’re a little late.”

“I see that.”

“Come on, Jenni,” said Kaci.

“Your little binder is from 1982?” Jenni continued, annoyed. I wasn’t sure why this was irritating her. I never could understand why the popular girls got so mad about everything. “Let me see it.”

I handed it to her. Of course.

“Oh, I get it,” she said, flipping through it, reading Valencia’s handwritten notes. “This was your sister’s book. Hmm. Here’s a good tip: Wait an hour after eating before going swimming. Ha ha. We’re about to load these brats up on Hostess Twinkies. I hope they all cramp up and sink. Well, here’s your stupid book back. Not that you will ever be needing it.” She shoved it back at me and somehow I fumbled and dropped it on the floor. She kicked it and laughed, and then she frowned and rubbed her toe.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Ouch,” she said, glaring at me. “You know, your sister was so much prettier than you. What the hell?”

“I know. I don’t know why that happened,” I said, picking up the binder and wiping it off on my shorts.

“Well, tootaloo,” she said, skipping inside to join her friends.

“Bye,” I said. I went back outside into the unseasonably sweltering June day, crying. Weeping. Snot pouring out my nose as the sobs escaped me in hiccups. And I promptly walked another half mile to the drugstore, and spent the meager amount of money I had in my purse on a bottle of purple nail polish.

I did end up finding a job shortly after the binder incident. And even as a nanny, of sorts. I had been out for a walk and had stopped in to a diner to buy some gum from their gumball machine. There in the vestibule, thumbtacked to a small bulletin board, was an index card covered with bluebird stickers. Written in shaky, delicate old lady handwriting, it said Grandma Betty Needs a Friend, followed by a telephone number. I tore down the card and ran home to call.

“You’re hired, Sweetie,” she told me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thanks what?”

“Thanks a lot?”

“Thanks, Grandma Betty,” she corrected me, giggling a crackly little giggle.

The job was to help her with her chores and keep her company. Thankfully, she had a nurse who helped her bathe in the evenings after I went home, so I just had to do things like dust her knickknacks and buy groceries for her. She let me drive her car, insisted actually (how else could I bring groceries back from the store?). I was terrified.

“I don’t know how to drive. It’s illegal. I am only fourteen!” I told her, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She just put the keys to her Buick in my palm and said, “I’ll watch Days of Our Lives until you get back.”

The Buick’s wide, cushy front bench seat seemed more like a sofa than part of an automobile. I could barely see over the huge steering wheel or reach the pedal. As people often do, I became attached to the car and wanted to add my mark to it, so I stuck a ladybug sticker on the rearview mirror and stored my Carmex in the ashtray. I think the only reason I never got pulled over was because no one actually saw me driving it.

Grandma Betty loved Kraft singles, white bread, and liverwurst. We fell into a pleasant routine: Each day at lunch I would grill myself a cheese sandwich and then grill a liverwurst and cheese sandwich for her. We would take them down the wheelchair ramp, to the picnic table in the breezeway, which was a little screened-in porch attaching her house to her garage. She told me stories about her life as a girl and about the job she’d had as a telephone operator, but mainly she wanted to talk about her husband Lloyd, who had passed away five years earlier.

“Would you believe,” she’d tell me, “that Lloyd thought he wanted to marry my sister Martha? Oh no! I wasn’t having it. I told him that I was the girl for him.” She laughed. “Martha didn’t mind. She always liked Herbie Stanford, the principal’s son. We had a double wedding! That was kind of the fashion back then. Nowadays I don’t think they do that. Oh, that Lloyd... He was trouble… I miss him every day.”

As she spoke, I munched on potato chips or crackers, anything I had been inclined to add to the grocery cart, thankful for unstale food to eat. Then she and I would share a Mounds bar for dessert.

Taking care of her was easy. She paid me $10 an hour, which was more than my mother made. Ten dollars to watch soap operas and drink Kool-aid, water plants, help her with her Search-A-Word Puzzles. In comparison, baby-sitting the previous summer had paid $2.00 an hour and I had thought I was raking it in.

“Who do you think is cuter?” she would ask me, while we watched Days together, “Shane Donovan or Mike Horton?”

“They’re about a tie,” I would say, munching on Pringles.

“Should Jennifer be with Emilio or Jack?” she would ask me.

Well, they were both cute. But I still wanted her to end up with Frankie. I said as much.

“So do I. Me too,” she’d say nodding.

“Is he ever coming back to Salem?”

She flipped through her Soap Opera Digest. “Not a word about him in here.”

At night after I left, she watched Wheel of Fortune and knitted sweaters, scarves, mittens, and blankets for me. She’d present them to me along with my daily eighty dollars. I often told my mother that these gifts were in lieu of a paycheck, to hide how much money I was making. I feared if she knew, she would hunt down Grandma Betty and convince her that fifty cents an hour and the occasional potholder were plenty of compensation for me.

For the first few weeks, my mother was oblivious to where I was going and the growing pile of winter accessories on my dresser. Then one day as I sneaked past her to my bedroom she noticed.

“What are you doing with that Afghan? Is that from Valencia’s hope chest?” I never knew Valencia had had a hope chest. My mother got up from the kitchen table where she had been reading a fitness magazine, and she came over to me.

I told her the story I’d practiced on my walks home: “It’s from Betty. You know, that old lady I work for. ‘Cause she is poor and couldn’t pay me today.”

“Oh. She’s paying you in blankets?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s new. How do you think I’d like it if the dentist paid me in fillings?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well think about it. You need to stand up for yourself.”

“She pays me in money, too,” I said, fearing I had taken it too far.

“If you’re happy with the situation, I guess there’s nothing to talk about. But I wouldn’t like it and I would say so,” she said smugly. Ironically, I had recently overheard my dad questioning her about her dwindling paychecks, to which she’d responded that she’d gotten some dental work done in place of several days’ pay. I had believed her side of the story, but now I wondered if she might be missing work because she was having another affair.

“I’m fine with it,” I said. Then I changed the subject. “How have you been feeling lately? Have you had any headaches?”

“Nope. I’ve been much better.”

“That’s nice.”

“Well, you know, I am trying to be healthier. I think eating better and exercising more helps with my overall health.”

“So, no migraines. That’s really great, Mom.”

“It sure is. Not to mention, I lost ten pounds.”

“Oh. Good for you.”

“Did you notice?”

“Yes, I thought you looked pretty good,” I lied.

“It takes work, losing weight,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been doing leglifts every morning and jumping jacks at night. I just have to stick with it.” I was surprised she was talking to me about this. I was unsure whether I liked that we were having a conversation, or if it was too late to even try.

“Well, I’m going to put this on my bed,” I said, nodding at the blanket in my arms.

“She shouldn’t make you walk home carrying that in this heat. You’ll get sick.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“You probably look a little silly walking down the street with a blanket wrapped around you in the middle of summer.”

“I didn’t wrap it around me.”

“Well, good.”

“Anyway, it’s not that hot. See,” I said, wiggling my fingers through it, “there are holes everywhere.”

“Ughhh,” she sighed and shook her head, as if the banality of the conversation had just deflated her. Then she turned back to her magazine and perked back up. “Do you know you can use your coffee table as an aerobics step?”

“Really?” I said, not interested but coming over to take a look out of politeness. She closed the magazine and called out to my father who was watching television in the living room, “Roger, do you want corn or peas with your meatloaf?”

I realized I had been flattering myself to worry about her intervening. Once I left her property, it was out of sight, out of mind, unless something rare and unfortunate like that newspaper photo happened.

By the end of the summer, I had almost $4000 hoarded away in a duffle bag in my closet.

The time came for high school to start and I had to break it to Betty that I wouldn’t be coming to see her anymore. She didn’t take it very well. I gave her only two days’ notice because I hadn’t had the nerve to tell her sooner. The first day she tried to bribe me to stay, offering to double my salary and make me whatever kind of sweater I wanted; I could pick out the yarn! The last day she became a different person entirely. She parked her wheelchair in front of the dining room window, refusing to talk to me. When it was time to leave, I tried to give her a hug. She turned away, handing me my money without even saying goodbye.

“I can stop by after school sometimes if you want, but I usually have homework to do,” I told her, as I was halfway out the door.

She just kept looking out the window. So I left.

Her cupboards were filled with Pringles and Doritos, gummy bears, Skittles. She had half-finished blankets she was making for me. I would never know if Jennifer ended up with Frankie or Jack.

I walked slowly home, feeling with every step that I needed to go back and fix things. But I didn’t. I just kept walking. I ended up at the park, sitting on a swing. The next day high school would begin. I did not belong there.

So don’t go.

It seemed reasonable enough.

Obvious, even.

I got up, ready to walk back to her house to tell her the news, that I would take care of her all year long, that nothing had to change. But then I sat back down. I spun in crooked circles, kicking at the worn patch of grass beneath the swing, frustrated and confused.

Could I really take care of her instead of going to school? I wondered how it would be as summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter. Would Grandma Betty and I still have fun when we couldn’t eat lunch on the breezeway? Would I be able to drive the Buick on slippery, snow covered roads?

I took my little notebook from my purse and made a list of pros and cons.

Pros:

Grandma Betty is nice

Grandma Betty pays you. She will now pay $20/hour. That is probably more than most grown ups make.

You get to drive a car

I’m going to say that again: You Get To Drive A Car!

You love that car

You forgot your Carmex in the ashtray

You get to eat good food at Grandma Betty’s

Grandma Betty makes you nice stuff:

Blankets

Scarves

Hats

Mittens

Sweaters

Maybe socks?

You would now get to pick the colors!

You get to watch Days of our Lives

Grandma Betty lets you drink coffee

Grandma Betty’s house is cute

Grandma Betty is your best friend!

Grandma Betty likes you!

Can you imagine how great it would be to never see any of those bitches from school again??

No homework at Grandma Betty’s!

Cons:

It is probably illegal to skip school. But you are too young to go to jail, so if anyone went to jail, it would be Mom and Dad. So this is kind of a ‘Pro.’

You might get stupid if you stopped going to school. Then again, maybe you would get smarter, considering how lame school is. So this is kind of a ‘Pro’ too.

Mom and Dad would freak out and ground you forever. Oh well. What’s new?

Only a weirdo would rather hang out with an old lady than go to high school!

And I wanted to be normal. So I got off my swing and went home, laying out some jeans and a rugby shirt I had purchased from the Gap. Maybe this would be the year that I stopped being me.

Chapter 44

Upon learning I was pregnant, Adrian and I immediately began preparing the nursery. His enthusiasm surprised me. I rode along on the tails of his baby cheer, slipping in and out of experiencing it.

The small bedroom across the hall from ours was supposed to be my office, but I never used it for anything but a storage place. Adrian hauled everything out while I perused our local hardware store for paint colors. Periwinkle blue would be nice for a boy or a girl, I decided, calling him for his opinion on the matter.

“I can’t picture what a periwinkle is,” he told me.

“Adrian, you’re an artist. You’re supposed to know all the colors.”

“I’m sure it’s great. Bring it home. We can always return it if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work. Don’t forget rollers and a couple of those edgers. Why don’t you grab some treats for the dog while you’re there, if they sell them.”

Ugh. I had forgotten about Frisky. There was no way Frisky was going to be anywhere near our baby. Hopefully, in nine months everything would be peachy and the foreboding gate would be enough to keep us safe from harm.

While I drove home I dialed Jeb’s cell phone to see if he had any news for me. He should be in Minneapolis now. I was hoping he’d be giving me daily updates but so far, not a word from him. My call went straight to his voicemail. I closed my phone calmly and replaced it back inside the pocket in my handbag. Through the actions of my body, perhaps my brain could be tricked into believing this was not a big deal.

But no. My brain was not falling for it. My mind jumped swiftly from the pleasant distraction of paint samples and nursery décor back to the images of my sister.

You have the fence and the dog. Everything is going to be fine.

I thought hard about the nursery. I wanted it to be elegant and edgy. Not too cookie cutter. Adrian’s friends expected so much out of us. It’s like, it was up to us to determine the proper way to live.

Watch them all get fences now.

Watch them all suddenly announce they’re pregnant too.

What a bunch of sheep.

If it was up to me I would just tear a page out of a Pottery Barn catalog and order everything on it.

But it wasn’t really up to me.

Aren’t women usually in charge of decorating the nursery? He really drives me crazy sometimes.

Adrian had mentioned he thought a black and white themed nursery might be cool, and that the contrast was good for developing minds. I’m not sure about it. I guess my issue is that it doesn’t seem very babyish. But as he pointed out, babies aren’t actually babies for very long.

Why can’t I stop thinking about that picture? I wish I had never seen it.

I gave up on planning the nursery and drove aimlessly for a while, listening to music. Even when I pushed her from the forefront of my mind, I was still experiencing life through a Valencia tinted filter that made everything sad, distracting, false. I was going through the motions, waiting for whatever turning point or resolution Jeb could bring.

For the third time in as many days, I found myself parked in front of the little purple house. This time I was turning off the engine. This time I was serious.

I spritzed myself with perfume and brushed my hair, and touched up my shiny forehead with some powder. Then I got out and smoothed my skirt. I walked up to the front step of Zemma’s House and rang the bell. I waited, not having heard anything ring, but not sure if I should try it again. A car went past that looked rather familiar; at first I thought it might be some of Adrian’s friends, and I shuddered at how stupid I would look standing on the doorstep of a psychic. Just as I was about to chicken out, and just as I was literally thinking “I am about to chicken out,” the door opened and there stood Zemma.

“Chicken out?” she said. “This isn’t voodoo.”

My mouth dropped open. Then I swallowed, though my throat was suddenly completely dry. Anyone else would have gotten the hell out of there. But in a flash I reasoned myself out of it.

Oh my! That was horrible.

I’m scared.

Terrified. Terrified. I am terrified.

I need to leave.

But she is very, very good. She is for real!

She is the only person in the world who can help.

I followed her right inside.

With a nimble click of her waxy pink fingers, she locked the front door. “We don’t want to be interrupted,” she said. She then took my hand. Even though it was completely out of my character, I let her. She led me to the back of her house and we sat down across from one another.

“Close your eyes, relax. Take some deep breaths,” she told me. I wasn’t sure about closing my eyes, but I did not want to be rude, so I did as I was told. I heard her stirring, and I opened one eye to see what was happening. She had placed a long marble tray before me, and with an eyedropper she was adding scented oils to it. Rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender.

“Close your eyes. Keep breathing. Relax.” When she seemed convinced that I was settled and comfortable she got up and went away for a bit. She came back with a hot cup of tea and set it before me.

“Drink this,” she said.

“I’m pregnant,” I told her.

“It’s no matter. It’s just tea.”

So I took a sip. “It’s very hot.”

“Take your time,” she said, smiling. She didn’t seem like a bad person.

I took another sip.

“This is not the path you were going to take today,” she said smiling, shaking her head.

“It’s not?”

“No. Not at all. You got brave, I guess. Unexpectedly?”

“I guess I did,” I said.

She had cats. At least three that I had counted so far. Her house smelled of them. I was a little afraid of their mysterious ways. They slink about and seem to know things only reserved for humans. I like cats best in a quantity of one or less.

I focused hard on Zemma, trying not to think about the cats. I focused on the tea.

“What you almost did,” she said, slowly, deliberately – I was unsure if she had an accent of just a strange way of speaking – “was go shopping. For your baby, and yourself, at a little shop. I can see it all right now. It’s almost happening, right now.”

“It is?” I asked. I felt very uncomfortable. Light, nervous. My gut was telling me to leave.

“If you weren’t here you would be there. And the chance of you being here is so slight, that I can easily see you there. That is what almost happened today.” She smiled. This all made perfect sense to her. I twisted in my chair. Had I not been here, I would have gone to the Lucky Duckling baby and maternity store. It had been on my original agenda, though I had not told anyone or really even formalized it in my own mind.

“They could have monogrammed the blankets for you. They are telling you this right now. If you were there. They would tell you to bring the blankets back after you know the baby’s initials.”

“I don’t know…”

“Two blankets. One is white. One is periwinkle.” She looked at me, smiling, raising her eyebrows. Clearly enjoying how this was going. I felt that there was nothing to say. She already knew everything.

“I think I need to leave,” I said. With a jittery clatter I set my teacup on its saucer. I searched in my handbag for my wallet, which is always buried when I need it most. “How much does this cost?”

She shook her head. “Don’t go. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“But you are,” I said.

She reached out and placed her hand on mine. “Relax.” Her eyes met mine. “I can help you.”

I slumped back down. Her words were the pinprick of relief I had been yearning for.

“Do you have something with you that you wear all the time?” she asked. I naturally thought of my wedding ring and I touched it, began removing it.

“Not a wedding ring,” she said. “I need something that is truly yours. What about that?” she asked, nodding to the ring on my right hand: Valencia’s old class ring.

“Okay,” I said, reluctantly removing it.

“It’s harder for you to part with this one than with that big daddy,” she mused.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Keep drinking your tea.”

It was cooler now and easier to sip. There were pieces floating everywhere in it. “Are you going to read my tea leaves?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“Does it matter that I set it down on the saucer, and maybe tipped it a little when that happened?”

“No, it will be as it should be.”

“Oh.” I sipped it, aware of more cats, at least five different ones. Zemma sat before me, her eyes closed, her fingers rubbing the ring. Her face looked light and pleasant at first, but it was darkening.

“This is not your ring,” she said.

“It is. I mean, it used to be my sister’s, but it’s mine now. I’ve worn it for years. I never take it off.”

“Why do you have it instead of her?” she asked, handing it back to me.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know everything. Some things come to me very clearly, and some things hide from me.”

My tea was nearly gone and she took the cup from me, pouring some of the tea onto the saucer. She handed the cup back to me. “Cup it in your hands with the handle to you and swirl it, gently, counterclockwise, yes, like that, now turn your cup over and set it on the saucer. And tap the bottom three times.” I did what she said, though I felt ridiculous, like a kid playing magic.

She took the cup from me, sliding it carefully across the table to herself, and she flipped it over with the handle close to her. She studied it for a very long while, periodically looking up at me. Then she turned it to me and pointed to the part of the cup to the left of the handle. “This shows me what you have done, and where you have been. This takes me back across your whole life, and it helps me see what your childhood was like.”

I leaned in, curious.

“The way the leaves spread out and become very thin, through here, makes me think you may have lost someone, or perhaps you relocated away from your family. Did your parents get divorced, and one moved away with a brother or sister of yours? Or did you get sent away to live with a relative?”

“No. It was worse than that. My brother and sister died when I was eleven.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

She went back to the cup and pointed to a shape further up on the left part of the cup. It looked quite a bit like a letter A, complete with seraphs at the bottom of it and a faint cross line through it.

“Has anyone or anything significant come into your life whose name begins with A? A person, or perhaps a city?”

“My husband.”

“There is heaviness here, like he anchors you, but I also feel that you may feel a little trapped?”

“Sometimes.”

“Another interpretation, with symbols as clear as this,” she carefully turned the cup and showed me, “can be had by examining them from different angles.” As she turned the cup, the A became a V. “You can see, this is now clearly a V, and we can apply the opposite meaning to it. Instead of weight, think of lightness or flight. Did you know anyone whose name began with a V, or does the letter V mean anything to you?”

“Both my brother and sister.”

“Hmmm,” she nodded. “So now, across from the handle, represents the present. You say you’re pregnant, and I do see this shape here, which could be interpreted as… an egg, for fertility… but there is a large spattering of sharpness here. Do you see how these look like little knives? I’m sensing danger, and evil.” She set down the cup. “Do you feel that you’re in danger?”

“Well, I feel like I might be. Can you tell me if something bad is going to happen to me?”

She gave me a skeptical look. “I’m not a substitution for physical protection.”

“No, no. I understand that.”

The doorbell rang and I jumped.

“We’ll just let it go,” she said, brushing her hand towards the door while she continued examining the cup. She gently turned it a bit this way and that, thoughtfully. The doorbell rang again but she ignored it, continuing to study the cup. I fidgeted, wishing the intruder would go away.

“Is it locked?” I heard myself ask.

“Yes, I keep it locked when I’m back here,” she said, raising her eyebrows at me rather suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

“I think someone might be following me. Or maybe not. I mean, never mind. It’s just something I think sometimes, but no one ever is.” I shrugged, like this was a normal thing to say. The bell rang again and Zemma gave me a harsh, critical look. I shrugged again and scratched my neck as she set down the cup with care, rising and disappearing through the heavy velvet curtains into the front of the house.

She seemed genuinely wise. I wondered how she ended up in this tiny shack with so little. I tried to wash my mind of the thought, quickly, quickly. I peered at the right side of the cup, which seemed to represent my future. The good news was that it was not blank. I gave a small shrug and a wry smile to one of the cats, but he just hissed and ran away.

I became aware of minutes ticking by, and finally I stood up, feeling I should go to see what had happened to my host. As I parted the velvet curtain she reappeared, her face white and troubled. She looked at me tensely, her mouth drawn in a puckery frown. She looked stressed, and even a little angry.

“Is something the matter?” I asked her.

“You need to leave.”

“What? Why? Are you going to finish my reading?”

She shook her head. “You need to leave here. Don’t come here again.”

“Did I do something?” I asked her.

She walked past me and removed my cup from the table. She was shaking.

I turned and went back to my chair, and picked up my purse off the floor. I reached inside, looking for money.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to take anything from you. You need to leave. Be careful, and do not ever come here again.”

“Who was at the door? Was there someone here for me?” I asked.

Silently, she walked me to the door and opened it. Numbly I stepped through and halted on her front step. I turned back to her but she had already closed the door. There was a click and a soft thud of the door being locked, twice, behind me. I surveyed the neighborhood, shielding my eyes from the sunlight. I looked up and down the street for the doorbell ringer, but no one was around. The sun was high and white, and a slight breeze was blowing. It was the same day it had been when I arrived at the little purple house, but I felt as though infinite time had passed. I turned and looked at the house in confusion. Feeling like a fool, I went to my car and got inside, starting the engine, but waiting. The street remained deserted; the little purple house remained still.

“Was it John Spade?” I whispered aloud. I was confused. Her weird house was getting to me. It all probably meant nothing. Bad people didn’t bother to ring the doorbell. Right?

I drove to the Lucky Duckling and bought the blankets that I had apparently been destined to own. Then I went home. I was not used to our stately new fence yet, and the imposing sight of it surprised me, offered a small drop of relief to me, as I remote-controlled my way into the driveway. And there was Adrian. Rich, famous, gorgeous, green-eyed Adrian. He was watering the flowers with a garden hose, shirtless. He paused to playfully spray my tires, and then he pretended he was going to spray me. I smiled and put my window down, stopping the car in the driveway.

“Hi, Babe,” he said, leaning in to give me a kiss. “It looks like someone has been shopping.”

“That would be me.”

“What’s the matter? You look a little dazed. You haven’t been drinking, have you? You know babies don’t like that.”

“Adrian! Of course I haven’t been drinking!” I put up my window and parked the car in the garage. He followed me inside, and like a gentleman, he brought in my shopping bags and paint for me. Along with the blankets, I had picked up some onesies and little socks that were on sale. I switched my sandals for flip flops and took a look through the catalogs and magazines on the kitchen table, waiting for Adrian’s reaction. My purchases had all seemed cute, classy, properly sophisticated, but I was only right about half the time. While I drank a glass of water and pretended not to see, I noticed his face scrunch up a bit at the swab of color on top of the paint can. I turned away.

“Why don’t you come outside with me? I want to show you my plans for the patio.”

“Sure.” I pulled back my hot, sweaty hair into a ponytail, and I followed him outside.

“So how are you liking this fence? It’s great isn’t it?” He surveyed our yard, looking very pleased. “I saw the truck from the fence company over in the Kilbourne’s driveway this morning. I think we started something.”

“It figures.”

“Are you feeling okay? You look pale. Are you nauseous?”

“No, I’m fine. I was just thinking how good I have it. How lucky I am.” I smiled up at him.

“It’s not luck; you deserve this.”

“Do you really believe that? I’m not even a nice person. Aren’t you supposed to be nice to deserve good things?”

“You’re nice. If you were any nicer you wouldn’t be fun.”

“You know I’m going to the doctor tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what you said.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“So I was thinking of tearing out that little side wall, and leveling it, and making the patio about twice as big.”

“I really like it back here like it is now. If we tore out that wall, wouldn’t we also lose that tree, and the hammock?”

“We can always move the hammock.”

“Well… Whatever. Where’s Frisky?”

“On the other side of the house, digging holes, I imagine.”

“You’re coming with to my appointment, right?” I asked. I noticed I still had my purse slung around me, so I reached inside for a gummy prenatal vitamin. They were like candy. I could barely control myself to not eat them all.

“Sure, I’ll be there. So, that paint looks more purple than I was imagining.”

“Yes. I gathered you didn’t like it.”

“It’s alright. If you like it, I like it. I think I’m going to get started in there. Are you going to join me?”

“I’m not sure. The fumes might be a little much for me.”

“No problem.” He gave me a kiss. “Come and visit me if you get bored.”

“Adrian, wait. I want to tell you something… I went to a psychic today.”

“What?” He stopped and spun around, looking disgusted. His reaction was much more severe than I had expected.

I shrugged. “I thought it would be fun.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

“Just… I don’t know. I guess, I mean…” I pressed my palms together in frustration. “Like I said, I thought it would be fun.”

“So what happened?”

“She was amazing.”

“Amazing,” he scoffed.

“Yes. She knew so much that it was crazy. She knew that I was going to paint the nursery periwinkle. She actually said periwinkle. She knew that I was going to go to the Lucky Duckling for blankets. She was seriously amazing…”

“Really,” he said, pulling a paint sample from the outer pocket of my purse, clearly labeled Pacific Periwinkle. “Was this sticking out of your purse like this all day?”

I felt my face grow hot. “I don’t know.”

“Honey, those people are scam artists. Have you gone to her before?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why have you been withdrawing so much money lately?”

“Just to shop.”

“Why do you need cash?”

“Some of the stores I like don’t take credit cards.”

“Will you do something for me?”

“What is it?”

“Don’t see any more psychics. Ever again. Promise me.”

“Adrian, don’t make me promise that. I don’t know why you’re so upset.”

“Do I ever ask anything of you?”

“Frisky. You asked me to let you have Frisky here with us.”

“Frisky is for our protection. I am being serious. Do I ever, I mean do I ever, ask anything of you?”

We stood across from each other, silent, our eyes locked. Typically situations like this put me a peculiar mood to giggle hysterically. But not this time.

“No, I guess not.”

“So do this one thing for me.”

“You’ve got it,” I said. I went outside, slamming the door behind me, and sat down in the soon-to-be-upgraded hammock. I popped another prenatal vitamin. As I replaced the bottle, I noticed the advertisement I had torn from a local magazine reminding myself about monogramable cashmere blankets available at the Lucky Duckling. I shook my head in disgust at myself, at my gullibility; I wadded up the glossy sheet of paper and threw it in our firepit.

After enough time went by that I was sure Adrian wasn’t going to come out to see how I was doing, I tried calling Jeb. Again it went straight to his voicemail. I left a brief message telling him to call me. I was worried about him. He had never been unreliable before. I picked at the fringe on the hammock. If he never responded to me, sooner or later, I was going to have to tell someone.

“Frisky, stop it!” I cried, distracted by the dog lunging at a bird in the birdbath. He put his front paws on the heavy edge of the birdbath and the whole top of it flipped off its base, nearly landing him. To my amazement, he ran up to me, whimpering, and tried to hide behind me. I petted his head and he looked up at me, adoringly. It was easy to forget he was still just a puppy.

The back door opened. “Look at you two. Best friends. Do you want to see how it looks, now that I have some on the walls?” asked Adrian, standing before me with a paint roller in his hand, smiling.

“Sure,” I said, squishing the Lucky Duckling advertisement deeper into the firepit and smearing my flip flop off on the grass as Frisky and I went inside to join him.

Chapter 45

My freshman year in high school, I made a friend. Her name was Marnie Hopkins. She was pretty, funny, and a sophomore. Unlike myself, she held all the potential in the world. Her family had just moved to Hudson from Dallas, and she had to take Geography with our class because she had missed it at her old school. On the first day of class, we were told to pair off into ‘geograbuddies’ to work on papers and projects together throughout the year. By the process of elimination, as our classmates all quickly buddied up, soon she and I were the only two left. So our teacher made us partners.

Our first project was due in early October.

“Do you want to come over after school and work on it together?” Marnie asked me. Her voice was like slow honey, and already she was gaining attention from all the boys in school. Were she and I possibly going to become friends?

“Sure,” I said, acting like it was no big deal.

Marnie was the oldest of nine children. I rode the bus with her to her house, a three story Victorian in an old neighborhood, listening to her chatter the whole way there. Everyone on the bus within hearing distance stared at her and eavesdropped. Her accent was so foreign, so mesmerizing to us Midwesterners, that she may as well have been from some other planet.

“My daddy works on computers and my mama stays at home. She’s a great cook and we’re having homemade pizza tonight, you’re going to love it. She makes a few different styles so there’s something for everyone. Watch out for the ones with the whole-wheat crust. Yuck. She likes to get creative and once she even tried putting corn on it. It wasn’t as bad as you’d think, but she didn’t try it again. My sister Karlie is eight years old and you’re going to have to play with her rabbit; it’s just something she makes everyone do when they come to our house for the first time…”

It went on and on. Marnie was perfect. Bright and cheerful, accepting and non-questioning. I had never had an insta-friend before. It seemed too good to be true. By her second week of school, everyone loved her. She nonchalantly scooped up friends like we were discarded seashells, as likely to choose a scummy broken seashell (me) as a rare piece of yellow seaglass. From the first time we rode the bus to her house together, she approached our friendship as if it were a sure thing. She had none of the self-doubt that weighed me down and caused me to assume that of course no one would want me near them.

She openly said hello to me in the hall and sat by me at lunch, oblivious to the rule of ignoring me. Some days she hung with the popular crowd; other days she slid into the seat next to me in study hall as if it were the most natural thing in the world. How could someone be fifteen and just not care about the social structure of high school? Even more befuddling, her behavior seemed to trump all the other rules in place. The popular girls took her back again and again without question, even if she’d just been seen talking to me or some other nerd. Why did they let her do what she wanted to do?

Her family was much the same. One of those made-for-TV clans, a house filled with pets and laughter, the constant smell of food cooking, the sounds of violin lessons and video games. There were so many people coming and going that I could take a second piece of chicken or laugh a little too loud without feeling paranoid.

Marnie’s mother listened to our speech about the Sahara Desert while she cleaned up the kitchen one evening. It was almost ten o’clock. We had been working on the speech for two weeks and had to present it the next day. I was spending the night, which meant I would get to show up at school getting off the same bus as Marnie, and everyone would know what great friends we were.

When we were finished, Mrs. Hopkins rinsed her dishcloth out in the sink and said, “That was great, girls. Two A-pluses for sure. I especially liked the facts about camels.”

“Thanks, Mama,” said Marnie. She got up to help her mother put away a mixing bowl up a high shelf. It would not have occurred to me to help my mother put away a bowl, even if I were taller than her. I wondered if there was anything someone small could do, to be as helpful and considerate as Marnie. I decided if my mother lost something down in the couch, I would reach my skinny arm down there and get it for her.

Mrs. Hopkins then turned her attention on me. It was the first time there’d been much contact between the two of us; normally, there was too much going on in their house for that. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister and brother,” she said. I was caught completely off-guard.

“You have a sister and brother?” asked Marnie. She had never been to my house, but if she had, she would have seen plenty of pictures of Van and Valencia. Still, I had assumed someone from school had probably filled her in about me. At that point we were well into the school year.

“Uh, well, they’re…”

“They passed away in an accident,” Mrs. Hopkins told her daughter. She turned back to me, “I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you. I just mentioned your name at church, said you were Marnie’s best friend, and some of the ladies there told me what happened.”

“Mama!” exclaimed Marnie.

“What?” asked Mrs. Hopkins.

“She’s not my best friend,” whispered Marnie, her face red and angry.

I rode the bus to school with her the next morning, but aside from two more awkward encounters as geograbuddies, we did not talk much after that.

Chapter 46

There are memories that come and go, memories with the hazy doubt of dreams. Once when I was about eight, I went downstairs into the laundry room. I was looking for my mother. Instead, I saw my father standing there by a basket of dirty laundry. He had a blue, wadded ball of fabric pressed to his face. What was he doing? He was inhaling.

“Dad?”

He spun around, letting go of what he was holding. Valencia’s Ms. Pac-man bikini undies fell to the floor.

“Don’t sneak up on people. Go upstairs and do your homework.” He looked at me like I disgusted him.

So I went upstairs and did my homework; I did not argue.

Now when I think of this, I tell myself it cannot fit. Like a spare part left over after some vehicle or appliance is reassembled. Was this valve really part of this? Well, it works better now without it.

Chapter 47

It had been seven days since Jeb and I met in the Golden Dragon parking lot, and I had yet to hear back from him. He had either skipped town with my money or been a victim of some unfortunate circumstances. Figuring out which was high on my mental list of things to do. But not quite as high as readying our home for a baby.

In that time, Adrian and I went from a couple with a messy, crowded storage room to prospective parents standing in a periwinkle nursery. He had let me have my way on everything. It was outfitted with white Pottery Barn furniture and cashmere baby blankets. A copper Friendship mobile from The Abstract Home moved lithely above the crib. The closet had already begun to accumulate an adorable selection of boy clothing and girl clothing. Whichever we did not need could be saved for our next time around, or regifted, or, well, who could think that far ahead?

“I’m off to the post office,” I called to Adrian, grabbing my purse. With the installation of the gate and Frisky, our mailbox was out of commission. That felt lucky to me. Bad things had happened in that mailbox.

I had ordered, rush delivery, several baby items and about twenty maternity outfits. Hopefully something would be waiting there for me. Well, not the maternity clothes; they were from France and would surely take longer. I wondered if other pregnant women knew about French maternity clothes. I hoped not! They were so much better than the stuff we had here. It was like, in France, they realized you could still be a stylish woman even if you were expecting.

Expecting.

I just loved the sound of that. Anticipating that something new and different would happen. Wasn’t that the definition of expecting?

There’d been an unpleasant sensation lingering around me, ever since the visit to the psychic, that perhaps trouble was closer now than Minneapolis. I felt that perhaps someone had come for me that day. But when I told Adrian about the strange ending to my meeting, he said it confirmed that the psychic was a crook, and that she had panicked, unable to tell me my future. I liked this explanation better, yet now, driving to the post office, it sounded rather ludicrous.

I parked my car and stepped out into the sweltering day. My just-washed hair, still a bit damp in the back, became hot with sweat as I walked down the street, and then turned quickly chilly as I entered the air-conditioned post office.

“Hello,” I sang to the woman behind the counter. We’d been seeing a lot of one another since the fence went up. I wondered if she noticed anything different about me…

“Oh. Hello. How are you doing today, Mrs. Corbis?” She never sounded sincerely happy to see me.

“Just fine. And yourself?”

“Good. Thank you. Here you go,” she said, handing me a single letter.

No. Please, No.

I made no move to accept it, so she pushed it at me, her bony fingers forcibly sliding it across the counter. “This is all I have for you today. You’re going to have to get a P.O. box if you don’t install your mailbox somewhere we can reach it.”

I ignored her and carried the letter to the car so I could have some privacy.

I got in and locked my door. I reached in my handbag and put on my sunglasses. They always make me feel a little invisible and safe.

I looked at the letter for a long time, holding it by the edges, not wanted to touch it. The same handwriting. A generic stamp. A Minneapolis postmark. It seemed obvious that this letter was evil. I felt like the woman at the post office should have followed me, knocked on my car window, had some police officers with her and a finger pointing at me accusingly. But she was still inside, having an average, forgettable day, and here I was, seemingly also having an average, forgettable day. And until I opened it, it was just some letter.

I did the math in my head. This letter was postmarked on Friday. I had gone to the psychic on Saturday. Today was Monday. Could the person who sent this letter have been here in Savannah on Saturday? Well, yes. Or no.

I was going to tear it open with my fingernail, but I hesitated and instead pulled the keys from the ignition. I stuck the tip of one into the edge of the letter and carefully tore an opening across the top seam of the envelope. Nice and tidy. Still I could not bring myself to look inside. I just knew there was going to be something really bad inside. I set the letter on the passenger seat and started the car; I realized it must be well over a hundred degrees in there, considering I had the windows up.

I pointed the vents at my face, lifted up my sunglasses, closed my eyes. I breathed in the cool air, and when I began to feel a little better my right hand, a free agent, a crawling thing with a mind of its own, reached over to the seat beside me and retrieved the letter.

Yes. Yes. You can do this. Because you have to.

And I looked inside. My stomach twisted and turned. While I had feared I would find out something horrible about Jeb’s whereabouts, what I did not expect to find was a picture of just Jeb’s head, swollen and unreal, resting on a picnic table. It was so surreal that at first I thought it was a trick. I looked at it, momentarily puzzled at what I was seeing, not quite getting it. The reality of it then clicked, registered, and I grabbed my stomach. I turned the picture over, as shocked and disturbed by the strange sunny setting as I was by the macabre image.

I guess this guy must not have many neighbors, I thought, holding my stomach. I feared my baby was being ruined.

Obviously taking matters into my own hands had gone too far. I called Adrian, barely able to speak.

“Honey,” I choked on my words.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“Come to the post office.”

“I’m working on a painting.”

“Come right now.”

“Are you serious? I’m busy.”

“Come right now. Come right now.”

He changed. His voice changed and his demeanor changed. Somehow, he understood everything now. “Stay there. Wait for me. Don’t do anything. I’ll be right there. Just stay where you are.”

I put the picture back in the envelope and put the envelope facedown on my lap. I didn’t want it near me but also did not want it out of my reach. I tried to make my breathing come out evenly, brushed my tears away, afraid someone would see me crying hysterically and try to help me.

Moments later Adrian’s Audi came flying into the parking lot. He jumped out and ran to my passenger door. I forgot I had locked it.

“Let me in!” he said pounding on the window. I opened the door. He was sweating and panting, agitated nearly beyond recognition. His uproarious, disheveled state made me almost calm.

“I hired this guy,” I began. “A private investigator. And he went to Minneapolis a week ago…” And there I stopped, not sure how to proceed. I felt that nothing I was saying could make any sense to Adrian. I looked up at him, afraid to show him the picture, afraid he would hate me forever, never love me again, think this was all my fault.

“Adrian, get in. I don’t want to say all this with the door open.”

He got in and shut the door, and with shaking hands he reached into my lap for the envelope. Obviously the first thing he saw was that the envelope was addressed to him. He looked at me but did not comment on my opening his mail. Then he reached inside and pulled out the picture. He squinted at it and then, without warning, vomited all over the dashboard. It went into the vents and he shook his head, having the presence of mind to be annoyed with himself. He quickly opened his door and continued in the parking lot. I sat there watching the thick orange liquid roll down over the word AIRBAG and plop onto his leg. I looked around us, fearing someone would park nearby us at any moment.

“Do you want me to get out of here?” I asked him.

He ignored me, wretching out the door.

My impatience and paranoia were almost bubbling over. “Adrian, we need to get out of here.”

“Relax,” he whispered. He wiped at his mouth with his sleeve and opened the glove box.

“Should I call the police?” I asked him, after he’d cleaned the interior of the car and himself with a stack of Starbucks napkins I kept in the glove box. The hot car smelled terrible. He began to gag again.

“Adrian, let’s get out of here,” I said. “Let’s take your car. I’ll drive.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. He picked up the envelope and photograph and followed me to his car.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said, turning down a side street, driving aimlessly. “Where do you want me to drive? You probably need to go home and change your clothes? Adrian, say something.”

He shook his head then turned to me, his green eyes locked into mine and now assured and cold. “Don’t call the police. Let me handle this.”

Chapter 48

By the start of my sophomore year in high school, I had stopped mourning the loss of my brother and sister. I still missed them, I still thought of them, of course, but I was adjusting to my identity without them. I can look back before that time and see difficult times when I felt isolated or overwhelmed, when I had thought about how much easier it would be if they were there. I may have even believed that being without them was the cause of all my misery. After all, wasn’t there a time several years earlier when my family played Yahtzee and my mother made cupcakes for us? Weren’t there times when we were truly happy? Times when we lived up to the cheery sign hanging on our front door proclaiming us The Loden Gang.

Sure I got left at the grocery store when I was four and no one noticed I was missing until the deli supervisor dropped me off at home an hour later, but we also took those family trips I mentioned. There were bigger indications of authentic happiness too, like the treehouse my father built for Valencia and Van on their seventh birthdays. Throughout the years, warping in my parent’s backyard, it has stood like a giant, beckoning trophy of hand-forged Gemütlichkeit, advertising to all the world that Love Lives Here.

Growing up, I heard the story of the treehouse many, many times. As if just seeing its heaving dormers looming high above, casting black shadows on my sandbox, was not enough. Back in the day, back before stories involving the twins ground to a rusty halt, the treehouse story was a fixture of all get-togethers on our property. How could such a monstrosity not prompt some kind of explanation?

My father, or actually, the man he used to be, worked on that treehouse for months and months at night while the twins were sleeping, building it in the garage and telling them he was working on something boring like a garden shed. He then got all the pieces hauled up into the tree with pulleys and put them together while it was storming so no one could hear the nails being pounded in. That part, I think, was a lie.

Then my mom would step in and take over, telling of how she’d had to keep the twins out of the backyard for days so they wouldn’t see what was happening back there. (It wasn’t easy!) She would go on to describe how my dad set up the electricity by following the instructions in a twelve-page book he bought at a garage sale and wasn’t it a surprise that he didn’t cause the whole neighborhood to have a power outage. This story delighted everyone who heard it.

On the morning of their seventh birthdays (Van’s actually, since Valencia’s wasn’t technically until the next day) he woke them up early and said, “Do you want to see your new treehouse?” Well they didn’t believe him. But there it was. There were even geraniums in the window boxes! He had thought of everything. It had two rooms and was outfitted with carpeting, lights, and electrical outlets. They even had their own radio. And inside on a child sized table there were birthday cakes. Not one birthday cake, but two. One for each of them. Twin birthday cakes.  For the beautiful, the fortunate, the blessed Van and Valencia.

After they were gone, and I was trying to make sense of their loss, I wondered at times whether too much good fortune may have caused them to have some kind of cosmic implosion. I told myself when things were particularly grueling and difficult that my misfortune was my insurance policy and that I was saving my luck for later on in my life.

There are dozens and dozens of photos of that glorious birthday treehouse day. In one of them, if you look closely, you will see, parked against a withering lilac bush, a rusty little pram that looks like it was left over from the 1960’s. A burgundy buggy designed to hold twins. And in it you may notice a homely little bundle wrapped up in a poop-stained bed sheet. That’s me.

I was a month old. Which tells me, in a comforting sort of way, that, considering the building of the treehouse bookended my arrival by months, my father’s lack of interest in me started before he even met me. It was not necessarily because of something I did wrong. My mother on the other hand, grew to hate me. But wait, I am stumbling off course. My point is that, if I went back far enough, I could find evidence of normalcy and love. Evidence of parents who could be generous and kind. If not to me specifically, at least to our family as a whole. And for years I was caught between obsessing over the possibility of bringing it back and mourning its loss.

It had been easy to try to hold on to those memories, or rather, hard to let them go. They made me believe we could be happy. What is there besides happiness?

I used to do a lot of that believing-in-luck thing that children do: If the phone rings in exactly one minute, this last few years will be a bad dream that only I know about and everything will be okay. Valencia and Van won’t go to college. They’ll stay here.

A minute would pass and the phone would not ring, so I would revise it to five minutes instead.

I let it all go my sophomore year. I stopped missing everything I had lost and stopped thinking about how differently things could have gone. I was still aware of my parents’ disappointment and annoyance towards me, but I officially stopped expecting them to change their ways.

In letting go of all that bitterness and expectation, I was left with an empty hole that made me feel light enough to blow away.

One person in particular noticed the new me. It was my Algebra teacher, Mrs. Hoeney. Shortly into the school year, she called me after class and harshly demanded, “What’s the matter with you?”

I did not know her well and was stunned. “I don’t know,” I said.

“I told Dave Douglas that you are coming to see him. Do you know who Dave is?”

Of course I did. He was the guidance counselor. Not the one who told you whether you should be a veterinarian or a pastry chef, the one who helped you with your problems. Dave Douglas lived and breathed guidance counseling. We were to address him by his first name. He had plants in his office, hanging from macramé holders. He walked the halls a little too slowly, sipping tea from a mug that said Fort Worth Stockyards. There were rumors that he and a former teacher’s aide had gotten into trouble at a hot tub party once. He wore jeans and sandals with socks all year round, and he had a Rollie Fingers mustache. Until now I had avoided him, but I had not been oblivious to his strange syrup and cigarette smoke scented presence. I had literally had nightmares about him. And now I was going to be one the members of his club?

“I’m not interested in seeing Dave Douglas,” I told her.

“He’s interested in seeing you.”

I cringed. “How is this your place to get involved?”

“Watching out for my students is part of my job,” she said.

I wanted to argue that sitting in her class for a few hours a week didn’t make me hers. Instead I simply said, “No thank you. I’m going to pass on this opportunity.”

“Are you on drugs?” she asked me.

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. Drugs? It seemed that to adults, “drugs” looked like Good & Plenty candies. “Drugs” was a self-conscious, fuzzy idea balled up in their heads, put there by Good Housekeeping magazine. It was all-encompassing, with crack and marijuana being equally foreign and doomful. What they were sure of, though, was that we kids were taking them and they were the reason we were bad.

I had never used drugs in my life or even been to a party with them. Well, I had never been to a party, period. But still. In truth, the majority of the sophomores using drugs were in parents’ and teachers’ heads.

“Aren’t drugs scary and dangerous?” I asked. “I have heard that they turn good kids into monsters. What drug would you say I am behaving like I am on?”

“Very funny.”

I smiled. She responded with a smug, sneering smile meant to tell me she was tougher than I thought she was.

“I have to go to my next class,” I told her and walked out of there.

The next day I was called over the loudspeaker to the principal’s office. I was not surprised when I reached his office and saw Dave Douglas and Mrs. Hoeney seated in the cushy leather chairs beside his desk.

Being fifteen is a lot like having everyone you know drop you off at a psychiatric ward and tell the keepers that you are crazy. You are a defenseless victim and anything you say just makes them think you’re crazier. Resigning myself to my fate, I tried to clear my mind and soul of all traces of my essence, the way I heard prostitutes have to do. I began to feel like I was watching myself on television and I thought it must be working.

“Well, hello there! We’re going to get on fine,” said Dave, reaching out his hand to me and pulling me in for a pat-on-the-back-style hug. I held my breath, feeling completely violated. Apparently it was harder to remove yourself from the physical world than I had thought. The principal and Mrs. Hoeney smiled and nodded, and Dave escorted me down the hall to his office, a place I had previously only glimpsed.

It was a tiny interior office loaded down with coffee-ringed papers and crocheted pillows. There were Far Side clippings taped everywhere, and heavily piled shelves: Miniature motorcycles, a row of jade Buddhas, and tons of books about child psychiatry that any thinking person would have hidden out of our site. I began fantasizing about the garage sale I could have. An ashtray piled high with cigarette butts sat between us, for back in those days faculty could still smoke in their offices, and despite its filthy contents, the ashtray had a funky, old-fashioned look to it that I admired. Two dollars, I thought.

Dave Douglas waited for me to get settled in, then he leaned back and stretched, and either accidentally or on purpose to ease the tension, let go a small, stinky fart.

“Whoopsie,” he said, giggling like a ninny and popping his hand over his mouth as if he had just belched. It may be unladylike to say this, being that I hold a coveted position within the Savannah Junior League, but he was a total douche.

Right away, and again at the beginning of every subsequent session, he made a point to say, “You can tell me anything and it’s just between us.”

Right. None of this was between us. Every Tuesday and Thursday I was assigned to visit him. My classmates saw me get up, hand one of his passes (a big, bright orange slip of paper) to the study hall monitor, and go, obviously, to his office. If I didn’t show up, which happened one day when I was reading and forgot, he would buzz the study hall monitor and ask over the intercom where I was. And when I was in his office, any and all other students were free to watch me through the window in his door that he had ineffectively covered with a torn scrap of paper.

The second problem was that he had some very confusing techniques. After a couple of times without much to say, I tried helping the sessions move along by telling him about book reports I was working on. He kept interrupting with the most asinine questions: “Are you Boo Radley?”

“What? No, I’m a girl.”

“So you see yourself more in Scout?”

“Not really.”

“So maybe a little?”

“No.”

“Okay, alrighty. How did you feel about Atticus?”

“He was nice?”

“Yes, yes he was,” Dave Douglas agreed, scribbling on his yellow tablet, then returning to stare at me in anticipatory silence.

“So do you want to hear more about my book report?”

“No, that’s enough. You know I’m your friend, right?”

“Sure.”

“Are you feeling scared, or nervous?”

“No.”

“You know that your sister and brother did not go away because of something you did wrong, right?”

“Wrong right? That sounds funny.”

“You think it’s funny?”

“I meant the way that sounded. I didn’t mean what happened to them. Forget it.”

“You know, death is a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call it funny… I notice you’re wearing your sister’s class ring.”

I nodded. The garage sale never ended. I had discovered a box of bowling trophies in the corner, awaiting a shelf, and I mentally priced them at fifty cents apiece.

“Did they give that to you after your sister passed?”

“Passed?” I asked, pretending I did not understand what he meant.

“Um… After your sister died.”

“She’s not dead. She’s just missing.”

His eyes lit up. Finally, he was thinking, she has exposed herself as delusional. The break in the case every counselor dreams of. “What do you mean?” he asked, feigning concern.

“You do know that they never found her body, right Dave?”

“Oh. Really?” He scribbled on his notepad, clearly not familiar with the details of the case. He looked up at me, testing the situation, and asked, “What about your brother?”

I yawned. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think he’s ‘missing’ also?”

“He’s dead.”

Dave scribbled on his pad some more, aware that he had better find out what happened or he was not going to be able to evaluate how messed up I was.

“I have so much homework to do. Do you think I could leave a little early today?”

“No can do, Kiddo,” he said, tapping his watch.

“No problem,” I said, flexing my foot to keep it from falling asleep.

“So what’s on your mind?”

“Do you want to hear how my book report ends? Because there is kind of a twist to it.”

“I’m talking in the grander scheme of things. Do you think you’re responsible for what happened to your siblings? I mean, do you think you are responsible for what happened to your brother and sister?”

“I know what siblings means.”

“Okay. I know that. Sorry about that, Kiddo. Of course you know what siblings means.”

“Anyone over the age of seven knows what it means. Not to mention, it’s an expression I’ve heard a lot.”

“As I was trying to say, do you think you’re responsible somehow?”

“Well, I did put banana peels on that bridge…”

“Now we’re getting somewhere! I’m giving you permission to let go of that guilt. It wasn’t your fault. It was not your fault! I’m your friend and you can believe me.”

Never joke with these people.

Sessions with Dave lasted my entire sophomore year, and I feared they would be a part of the rest of my high school curriculum. Along with being ridiculous and gross, they marked me as a loser. Whenever I slid that orange hall pass across the desk, someone always snickered. It never got old. Then to my surprise on the last Thursday of the school year, Dave announced that I was “fine” and wouldn’t need to see him the next year.

“Unless you feel you’d like to keep up with our sessions,” he said.

“Dave, I’m going to get my driver’s license soon.”

He looked at me blankly, not getting it. What I was trying to say is that I had bigger fish to fry.

“Well, the school’s closed during summer months. Of course,” he said. “So if you do need me, just try to hold on until fall.”

I handed him my stack of leftover orange slips of paper.

“Thanks,” he said. “Save a tree!”

“Bye, Dave. Thanks for your help.”

He saluted me with his Fort Worth Stockyards mug and took a lukewarm sip.

Chapter 49

“So this is what we’re going to do,” said Adrian, who had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in four hours.

“I’m listening,” I said, trying to appear calm. There is so much I don’t know about you, I was thinking, as I watched my non-smoking husband light one off the tip of another, over and over.

“You are taking my car to Atlanta. You are going to stay there for three nights. I already booked the room. You stay in the room and everything you order, you order in twos. In the morning you can go out and pick up some coffee and a paper or whatever, but you buy two coffees and you use your credit card so there is a nice, traceable record of it.”

“But you don’t usually have coffee. You have juice,” I pointed out.

“Right,” he said. He sucked in on his cigarette, shaking his head at his carelessness.

“And I’m not supposed to be drinking all this coffee since I’m pregnant.”

“Good point. Get juice for me. Get whatever you want for yourself. Now remember, when you order room service you need to at least pick at it all, right Honey? Don’t just push the cart back in the hall with my meal on it. You’re eating for two though, so it shouldn’t be hard to have a little extra. Okay, all you have to do is lay low. Don’t walk around the hotel much because there are cameras. And don’t go in the pool, whatever you do, because there are always cameras in there! Just stay in the room as much as possible. And use the peephole! Don’t answer the door unless you absolutely have to. I think actually you should order just dinner, no lunch, so there’s less coming and going. Could you do that? You’ll be eating two meals, is it okay with you if they are both dinner?”

“Yes. What are you going to do, Adrian? How are you going to find him?”

His eyes met mine for the first time in what felt like hours. For a brief moment they softened and once again became Adrian’s eyes. They seemed almost pleading. I felt my heart break. Then he looked away, inhaled, shrugged it off, and continued, “I’m taking your car since you never get the oil changed and there aren’t any current records of the mileage. Once I get there I will park it at the Mall of America, I think, and from there I am going to take a bus since a car with Georgia plates is going to stick out up there. At least it’s just an old Volkswagen. What if we had bought you a new car already? But we didn’t yet so we’re okay. And we cannot, do you understand me, cannot, call each other. People on vacation together don’t call each other. Plus, they can tell where cell phone calls are happening. Just don’t call me, okay? What else am I forgetting? Have you used our computer to search for John Spade or anything like that?”

“No. Adrian, what are you going to do?”

“The important thing is that I want you to relax and take care of the baby and yourself. On second thought, be sure not to watch those Lifetime movies all day. You should rent some pay-per-views. Some action movies, but mainly porn. Soft-core. Nothing too over-the-top or violent. Stay away from anything weird. It needs to look like I am there and we’re having a little getaway. I’m sure they can track that too. Yeah, keep the pay-per-views coming in case they check. Bring some books so you don’t get bored. Honey, you better start packing. Pack a bag for me too so you can leave it open by the door. You know what? Spray the room with my cologne too. I’m going to drop Frisky off at the kennel right now while you pack. I will be back in a half hour.” He set a baseball bat that appeared from out of nowhere in my hands. “Keep this with you. I’ll see you soon.”

“Adrian, wait! It’s not too late for us to find a way to fix all of this.”

“I know, that’s what I’m doing.”

“What does that mean? Are you really going to drive there? It’s twenty hours away! And what if he’s not there? I told you, I think he was at the psychic’s house right here in Savannah! If he could be here, he could be anywhere.”

“Enough about that stupid psychic,” said Adrian, shaking his head in exasperation.

“And what are you going to do when you get there? How are you going to find him? And what if this John Spade guy isn’t even the right guy?”

“Don’t worry. I have it all worked out, and anything I didn’t figure out, I can sort out while I’m driving.”

“Wait,” I said. “What if we hired someone to do this?”

“That’s how we got into this situation.”

“Is it?” I asked.

Adrian inhaled and looked at me, his eyes cool and dull. Then he blinked and smooshed out his cigarette on the dinner plate he was using as an ashtray. “I need you to trust me,” he said, kissing me on the top of my head. He turned away and yelled, “Frisky, come on boy!”

I did not know what else to do, so I started packing.

Thirty minutes later, Adrian was back. He threw a couple things in a backpack and handed me a piece of paper. It said sexxylady9348 and shoesalesmendoitbest3. “You’re Shoe Salesman Do It Best Three, okay?” he said. “And I’m Sexxy Lady.”

“What?”

“Listen, Baby, I realized we really do need a way to be in touch, so once you get there, go to some coffee shop and set up a hotmail account with this ID. There’s no way these names are already being used. Well… On second thought, add the number five to the beginning of each, just to be safe.”

I watched as he penciled a number five in front of each name. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Now remember,” he continued, “mine won’t be set up until probably a whole day from now. But this way we can be in contact. Don’t write anything incriminating! We’ll have to talk in code! And the first email should ask about something really benign, like a question about how to get over the flu, so we know for sure we’re really talking to each other.”

“What?”

“What part are you needing me to explain?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” I stuffed the sheet of paper in my pocket.

“So you understand the plan?”

“Yes Adrian. God! Are you enjoying this?”

“No. Not at all. We need to go,” he said. “Are you packed?”

I pointed to two small pieces of luggage on the bed.

He picked them up and handed me another piece of paper. “Here’s the name and the address of the hotel. I got you a room right by one of the side doors; it’s reserved in both our names. It’s downtown. It’s really old so hopefully they don’t have many cameras. We’re just going to have to hope. Maybe we can stay there for real sometime. Don’t lose that piece of paper with the email addresses on it. Memorize them if you can. Swallow it if you have to. Okay… I think I thought of everything.”

He put the bags in the car and hugged me. “I’ll see you in a few days. Don’t speed! Don’t get pulled over. Did you pack your vitamins?”

“Yes,” I lied. Who could think of vitamins at a time like this?

We kissed goodbye. Then he got in my car and I got in his and we both pulled out, heading toward the freeway.

Chapter 50

To my surprise, my dad wanted to help me shop for my first car. I had not expected my parents to allow me to have a car, but they actually seemed enthusiastic about it. I told them I had four hundred dollars saved, instead of four thousand, and this was to be the down payment. I just couldn’t own up to having all that money; they could be so unpredictable. I would have to get a job during the school year to pay for insurance and my monthly payment. After three or four long hot Saturdays of shopping, we found a 1986 Toyota Camry. It was black with a tan interior. I loved it. There was even a tape deck in it.

“You’re going to have to work a lot to pay for this,” said my dad, preparing to co-sign the loan with me. “If you miss a payment they’re going to come looking for me, and I’m going to tell them to load it up on their trailer and take it away. If that happens, don’t come crying to me.”

His words did not bother me; they seemed gruff and dad-like, and appropriate. I took the keys, beaming, and I even gave him a hug.

So I had a car, which is of vital importance in high school, and I had a crush on a new boy who had just moved to our school. I felt that I was primed for victory. I had always had the most luck with new kids because they didn’t know they were supposed to hate me. This boy’s name was Alex Wescott and he pursued me. From the first day of geometry class, he couldn’t stop staring at me. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. And he was cute! Medium height with a muscular build and droopy brown eyes like a Bassett hound, but in an adorable, sexy way. It was obvious enough to aggravate the popular girls, who just that summer had all gone through name-puberty, maturing from Jenni, Kari, Jessi, and Keeli to Jennifer, Caroline, Jessica, and Keely.

Alex was from Chicago and he was so smooth. “Is this seat taken?” were the first words he ever spoke to me.

“We have assigned seats,” I plainly told him, because I was not so smooth. “It’s reserved for Paul Dunkel. I guess he’s running late.”

“Oh,” said Alex, nodding. He sat down in Paul’s seat and looked me up and down. I did not realize he had mistaken my obliviousness for cool detachment. Intrigued, he raised an eyebrow at me and said, “So are we going out tonight or what?”

The popular kids heard him say this. I felt myself growing hot, my nerdiness spreading from my neck up to my hairline in an itchy, scarlet wave. I waited for someone around us to set the record straight, let this guy know he was barking up the wrong tree, but they watched us in silence.

I had never done anything with a boy! Alex Wescott, with his worn leather jacket and stubble (stubble!) looked like he ate out prostitutes for breakfast. In that frantic moment I got the clear, sure conviction that I must have sex with someone uncool for practice before accepting his offer. The question was, who? Of course, it had to happen soon, before someone else stole away Alex’s attention.

“I already have plans tonight,” I told him.

“Oh. Okay, that’s cool,” he said. Then he added disinterestedly, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing special. Just going into the Cities for a concert with some friends who are in college.”

“What concert?”

“Hmm. Some band they’re friends with. I think they’re called the Middleweights. I’m just going along for the free drinks.” I don’t know where that came from but Alex believed me, I could tell. Feeling bold I said, “Why don’t we go out Friday night instead?”

“Sure,” he said.

I shrugged nonchalantly and went back to reading a diagram in my geometry book, my pulse loudly thumping in my windpipe. From the corner of my eye I saw Alex turn away from me to pick at his fraying hem, and I tried to steady my breathing. This gave me four days to get rid of my virginity.

The logical victim, the only candidate I could think of, in fact, was Dougie the Lawn Boy. Twenty-four and still living at his parents’ house, cutting people’s lawns in the summer and spending the off-season high in the basement. I figured his reputation as a helpful guy around the neighborhood who kept to himself made him a solid choice, so I gave him a call.

“Hi, Dougie,” I said. “This is your neighbor calling and I need a little favor.”

“Who is this?”

“Remember Valencia?”

“Sure!”

“This is her sister.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sixteen now. I was wondering if I could come over.”

“Okay.”

I went over there and he answered the door in boxers and a t-shirt. He had a body like a fifty year old man: skinny, skinny everything, with a huge gut.

“Do you have protection?” I asked him.

He did. We kissed for a while because I needed the practice at that too, and then we tried to have sex. I hadn’t seen any real-life penises before that day, so how was I to know that he was hung like an elephant? We tried and tried but it wouldn’t fit.

“Are you bigger than normal guys?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so. Quite a bit bigger, I’ve been told.”

“Good, cause this feels awful!”

When I said that he got off me.

“No, no. Don’t stop. Just shove it in there! I don’t care if it hurts!” I told him.

“Shhh… My parents are right upstairs!” he told me.

Finally I told him to just forget it. I had light years of experience compared to the day before, and I was ready for Alex.

“Thanks, Dougie. Now remember: You can’t tell anyone this happened!”

“I won’t!” he said, sitting down on the edge of his bed to play Street Fighter.

Alex offered to pick me up Friday night but I told him that I would meet him. There was no way he was coming to my house! I was working at a coffee shop a few nights after school and on weekends, and I told him to meet me there.

“You work at a coffee shop? Cool. Can you make me a cappuccino?”

“Sure.”

I got behind the counter when he arrived and made us both cappuccinos, whipping the foamy froth expertly while he watched.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he said. My coworkers Lyle and Sherry looked at us in disbelief.

“Hot?” I saw Lyle mouth to Sherry.

“Fucking hot?” she mouthed back.

It didn’t matter to me if they thought I was hot; Alex Wescott was crazy about me! Suddenly I was catapulting to coolness. Skipping all the gooshy prom dates and dinners at the Olive Garden, landing in the funky Bohemia of twenty-something-ness. I was leaving the Jennis and Karis in a cloud of my dust!

Alex and I drove around in my car, smoking cigarettes and listening to Tom Petty. We stopped at a Greek place for dinner and Alex casually ordered a beer. The waitress didn’t even flinch, so I ordered one too. Moments later she brought them to us on a round tray, a paper doily attached to the bottom of each sweating glass. I felt like we were, like, twenty-four. I drew on my vast history of movie watching to come up with bored, clever comments. We were Heathers and Pump Up the Volume and The Breakfast Club all rolled into one.

“Is there a park around here we could go to?” Alex asked after dinner.

I knew what that meant! “Sure,” I said, eager to put my experience to the test.

I took him to Willow River State Park, just a mile or two away. When we parked he said softly, in a voice that frightened me with its sincerity, “This is really nice.”

Instead of attacking me or at least reaching for my hand, he closed his eyes and leaned his seat back until it was almost horizontal. “My parents are divorced. That’s why I moved here. You were probably wondering what made me come here, right? Yeah, they split up. I’m with my mom and she wanted to come here because her sister lives here,” he started in.

What? Was I his psychiatrist all of a sudden? We couldn’t be characters in a John Hughes movie anymore if he was going to act all needy and nice.

He poured his whole life story out for me and by the end I was pretty sure he was gay, but that didn’t stop us from going out for the rest of high school. We didn’t have sex for almost a year, and then we only did it about five times before the subject just stopped coming up. And that made the whole Dougie thing so much more pointless and regrettable.

Chapter 51

Three days undercover in a hotel with morning sickness that lasts all day is not an experience I would wish on anyone. I kept a steady stream of porn coming my way, the volume muted and a towel draped over the screen when I’d reached my limit of smut. I tried to read some books I’d brought along, but I could not concentrate enough to even follow along with the room service menu. When I woke up the first morning there, I walked to a coffee shop and set up an email account, just buying a cookie with cash. I sent Sexxy Lady a message that said, “Hi. I think I’m coming down with the flu. What should I do?” but the message bounced right back to me. Well, at least I had it set up. Then I went to a different coffee shop and bought a coffee and orange juice with our credit card. I felt completely paranoid, like I was going to goof up somehow without realizing it. I took the coffee and juice back to the room and sat there, waiting for time to pass. It took all my willpower not to stay planted at the coffee shop with the computers.

I cried every time I thought of the picture of Jeb, afraid I was going to get a letter like that with a picture of Adrian. And then I thought about how my baby had bad, bad parents and I cried some more. If anyone had knocked on the door they instantly would have known I wasn’t half of a happy couple on a dirty rendezvous.

By three o’clock I was starving so I ordered some pasta primavera for myself, and a porterhouse steak for my invisible husband. I put on a slinky little nightie with a robe tied loosely over it and turned on the shower. The food arrived with those big metal domes over the plates, reminding me of decapitations on platters. The man started to push the cart into the room, but I grabbed it instead.

“Thanks, I’ve got it,” I said. I handed him a five-dollar bill. I have no idea about tipping. That’s Adrian’s territory. I set the domes inside the closet.

I worked my way through the pasta primavera, then cut the steak into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. The baked potato wasn’t too bad though. I decided I had earned the right to watch some non-porn, so I turned on the Gardening Channel and learned how to install a fishpond.

I waited all evening for something to happen, some phone call or something, but Adrian stayed true to his word and the night passed without any contact.

The next morning I went to the coffee shop to check my email. There was a message from my husband that simply said, “I have the flu but everything else is o.k. I am going home.”

So I endured one more day and checked out at nine the next morning. When I got home my car was in the garage. Adrian greeted me at the door with a kiss.

“Did you have a good time in Atlanta?”

“No,” I said.

“I know. I’m just trying to be nice. Why don’t you come with me to pick up Frisky?”

“Why don’t we just leave him there.”

“Right. Come on.”

“Seriously,” I said, “do we need him anymore?”

“No,” he said.

The heaviness of that one word settled over us. I began to cry.

“But,” he continued, softly, “we’re going to get him because he’s our dog. Our pet. Come on.”

“Can we talk about what happened? What did you do?” I whispered.

“I’m going on my own then. I’ll be home soon.”

“No, I want to come with you.”

We rode along without saying anything for a few minutes and then Adrian said, “You need to trust that I would never intentionally hurt anyone unless I had to. He would have killed us.”

“Why couldn’t you have gone to the police? What kind of people are we? I feel like I‘m living someone else’s life. I don’t even know you!”

“That’s not fair! I just put my life on the line for us! You have no idea what I went through these last few days! I have had two hours of sleep in three days! And that’s just the beginning of it. Do you think I ever saw my life going this way? Hell no! But sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to do until you do it. Now I need to be able to trust you. Can I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“The police aren’t God. There’s no reason to get them involved. It’s too late for that.”

He looked at me hard. And we were both afraid of what the other could be capable of.

Chapter 52

My high school graduation was a no-frills affair. My parents came to it and then took me out for dinner afterwards at an Italian restaurant called Francesca’s. There was no party. Who besides relatives would we invite? Alex Wescott had broken up with me so he could go off to college and become gay for real. So it was fine with me to bypass having a party. My parents gave me a gift, though: A brand new computer for college. That was a pretty big deal. They were also paying for me to go to the UW. Honestly, both were more than I ever expected. I don’t think I even would have gotten into Madison, but to my surprise, Dave Douglas wrote a really nice letter of recommendation for me.

I drove myself there and moved myself in, which turned out to be a weird thing to do. All the other students had their parents and families with them. I thought back to my parents helping Valencia and Van move into their dorms. “Your parents aged thirty years when Valencia and Van died,” my Grandmother told me once. Which made them older than her. So when I looked at it like that, it made sense that they couldn’t be there with me. They were practically eighty!

For the first time I thought about all the things Valencia and Van left in their dorms. Why couldn’t I remember how we got their possessions back? Did other students ransack their dressers and closets? I considered asking my mom about it, but what was the point?

It was 1993, and I was as old as they were when they died. I envied them for starting college with all their dreams planted in the future, believing in the power of their four years of work to sow a life of plenty. I envied them for their hope. They had been clean, vast expanses of promise, looking forever forward instead of dwelling in the past.

I, on the other hand, felt like a person with an infected, stinking wound. I resigned myself to a life of bloodstained bandages and flies swarming around me. I’d given up on being somebody. Being average, having a few friends, would have been good enough. But I was continually reminded of how damaged I was by the way nearly everyone avoided me.

My mother would have slapped me if she’d heard me say how I envied them. Then I remembered that, finally, I didn’t live under my parents’ control anymore.

I was nervous to have a roommate. When I got to my room she was nowhere to be seen, but I saw that she had already begun to move in. The bed closer to the door had luggage and boxes on it. I took the other bed but felt like this mystery girl might get mad at me. What if she had just set her stuff on the first bed because it was closer, but wanted the far bed? I paced the tiny room, hoping she would come back so I could avoid making an important decision like where we would each sleep for the entire year. The minutes ticked by.

I paced around some more. “Please don’t let her be a J or a K girl,” I whispered to God. A toilet flushed in the distance, as if in response, and I frowned.

My roommate and I had exchanged one letter apiece over the summer but hers had been, literally, five sentences long without a photo (that gave me hope; A Jenni or a Keeli would probably send about ten pictures, half in swimwear). I knew her name was Sara Murdock and she was from Boise, Idaho. That was all. The boxes on her side of the room were just cardboard boxes and I wasn’t about to poke inside to get a better idea, so I fidgeted with my purse, waiting for her to return. After nearly an hour of thumbing through a magazine, waiting for the door to open, I gave up.

I hauled my boxes in and started to unpack them. Besides my computer, I had only four boxes and a big duffel bag, compared to the crammed-full U-Hauls and pickup trucks I saw all around me. There were student helpers in red shorts and white Bucky Badger t-shirts to help me move my computer. I didn’t have the mini fridge, television, stereo, or other necessities of college life. I wondered what Mystery Girl was bringing into this. I knew she would hate me and be disappointed to be stuck with me. I felt sorry for her already.

It didn’t take long to unpack. I sat on my new bed excited, but a little surprised that I felt lonely. I missed my parents, which was a new feeling for me, and I considered calling them. Just to let them know I was settled in. Then I remembered the elaborate care packages my mom packed for my brother and sister and I started to cry. This is ridiculous, I decided. Here I was, away from them. Hadn’t I wanted this for my whole life? I decided to take a walk.

There was a lot to be happy about. I was in a dorm called Liz Waters and it was right by Lake Mendota. Was I really going to live in downtown Madison, by the lake, on my own? This, I realized, was my chance to reinvent myself. I could become anyone. Just like the dream I’d had at the start of junior high school, I had it again, only this time I was older, wiser, and more disciplined.

I am going to be normal. Hell, I’m going to be Better than Normal!

People will like me. People Really Will!

I am going to make it happen. Did you hear that? Yes! I heard that! I am Going To Make It Happen!

I got so excited that I was practically marching. I looked around me and turned it down a notch. I didn’t know that every single freshman on the entire campus had the same dream. Truly, anything felt possible as I walked along the path by the lake, watching sailboats and feeling the warm late-summer wind against my face.

There were only a few things I had to do to fit in, I decided. First, I could not flunk out of school or the whole plan would have been for nothing. My mother had warned me so many times about flunking out that it was starting to seem like circumstances beyond my control, before classes had even started. Step two was to find a boyfriend. No one gross, because he would represent to others who I was. Someone like Alex Wescott would be good. Part three was that I needed to look like I had been popular in my old life. This was, perhaps, the most important step of all, and I already had it covered.

I had spent a fair amount of time my senior year collecting pictures of the popular students. The girls in particular were happy to throw their senior pictures to any stray dog. They carried little plastic boxes with clear plastic lids that they all had the habit of snapping open and closed. If you asked for a picture they would cheerfully spread out four, five, six poses on the table in front of them. There was always one close-up with a class ring adorned hand pressed to a thoughtful, poreless face, and another close-up with a beautiful gleaming smile. Next were the full body pictures, as evidence of being beautiful from a distance as well as from inches away. One would show her standing by a tree, or on a flowery hill. Finally there were the ones taken with a best friend or boyfriend, and the occasional wildcard picture. Different outfits for each was a MUST. They would steer the losers like me toward their least favorite pose, but it was still a vast improvement from four years earlier when they wouldn’t talk to anyone but the most worthy few.

So because of my patience and endurance, I had a thick stack of pictures that I had already plastered to my bulletin board. Hopefully my roommate was back in our room, noticing them all and realizing what a formidable opponent I was.

When I got back to the room she was there, lying on her bed. I gasped when I saw her and then tried to disguise it as a cough. She had to weigh at least four hundred pounds.

“Hi Sara. Nice to meet you,” I said, sticking out my hand, trying to redeem myself.

“Nice to meet you too. My parents just left…” She began to cry. I looked around the room a little and saw she had started to unpack. On her bulletin board were two 8 x 10 portraits. One of a white sheepdog and the other of the world’s cutest, happiest, biggest couple.

“Are these your parents?” I asked, pointing to the picture. She nodded. I felt terrible that she was crying.

“Want to take a walk?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked.

She reached into a purse on her bed and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Will you get me some ice cream?”

“Okay. What flavor?”

“Butter pecan.”

I had never met anyone younger than my parents who liked butter pecan ice cream. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” I told her.

I didn’t have any idea where I was going to buy ice cream. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was already being taken advantage of. Here I was on an ice cream run for someone I had just met five minutes ago. Why did this kind of thing always happen to me?

“Can I get you anything?” chirped the recording of myself in my head. That was my problem, I realized. “Stop asking questions you don’t want answered,” I told myself. It’s a lesson no one ever learns.

It didn’t take me long to stumble upon a small grocery store on State Street. I bought a family sized tub of what Valencia and Van used to refer to as “Nursing Home Special” and carried it back to our room. By the time I got there, the bucket was slippery and the ice cream was slopping around inside. I handed it to Sara, who was already waiting with a serving spoon in her hand. I was prepared to have to share a bowl with her, to be social, but the opportunity didn’t present itself. She peeled back the lid and stuck the spoon in, starting with the soft, runny edges. She didn’t say a word to me, just ate. I started to feel embarrassed, so I turned on my computer and played solitaire. Minutes turned into an hour before I heard the bucket’s lid snap back into place. She set the empty container by her bed and lay down to take a nap.

I took to hanging out in common areas most of the time. Our room smelled like popcorn, salsa, angel food cake, and chicken McNuggets, all rolled into one stench. Sara was in there constantly eating and studying. I was still invisible, never able to grasp the art of being important. I tried jumping into other people’s conversations, tried just sitting around reading, hoping I looked approachable. I struck up conversations with other people who looked lonely. No one wanted anything to do with me. I stopped wearing Valencia’s ring for a while, after some people made fun of me, thinking it was my high school class ring. But then I missed the way it felt and put it back on, even if it meant I looked uncool. I watched life happen around me, as I always had.

People walked past with peace signs drawn on their notebooks and love beads around their necks, but this was just a fashion statement.  Their goodwill and acceptance were theoretical, at best. I kept my grades at about a C average since even this was better than going back to Hudson.

Chapter 53

Frisky was so happy to see us that it almost made me like him. He lounged around with either Adrian or me for the next couple days, as we avoided each other.

Three days after the fake romantic getaway, Adrian was in his studio working and I was in the backyard reading a book when I heard Frisky going crazy, barking and growling in the front yard. Adrian and I met each other at the front door, both of us checking to see what was the matter. Standing at our front gate were two men, both wearing plain black suits. They showed us their badges.

“I’m Detective Stoller and this is Detective Heinz. May we have a word with you?”

Frisky lunged at them through the gate.

“Yes,” said Adrian, “but you’ll have to let us put our dog in the house.”

“Do you both need to do that?” asked Detective Heinz.

“Well, sometimes it takes both of us, but no, I can do it on my own today,” joked Adrian.

I waited until they were inside and let the men in the gate.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Mind if we sit down?” asked Detective Heinz, settling onto a wicker chair on our front porch.

“May I offer y’all some tea?” I asked, trying to distract them with some Southern hospitality.

“No thank you, Mrs. Corbis,” said Detective Stoller. “This is not a social call.”

I primly sat down, breathing as evenly as possible. I felt a tickling trickle of sweat moving down my temple along my hairline, and I couldn’t stop myself from brushing at it.

Detective Stoller sat down and then Adrian took the final place on the loveseat beside me.

Detective Heinz started right in. “Are you familiar with anyone by the name of Jeb Wilde?” he asked.

“I am,” I said immediately, afraid that Adrian would spin some elaborate tale if I didn’t take over.

“How do you know Jeb Wilde?” asked Detective Stoller.

“I hired him. To look into some questions I had about my family. Is there something wrong with Jeb?”

“Well, he went missing,” said Detective Heinz, “and it seems that he was looking into an assignment for you.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was doing this,” I said to Adrian. “It’s just, I thought that you would stop me.” Then I turned back to the detectives, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Jeb, but he stopped answering my calls. I think he might have skipped town. I paid him a lot of money and he’s just some guy I found on the Internet. Maybe he’s not even a real private investigator.”

“How much did you pay him?” asked Adrian.

“Honey…”

“Do your wives spend like mine does?” he asked the detectives. “She spends it faster than I can make it!”

“I hear you,” chuckled Detective Heinz.

“Well, he’s not licensed,” said Detective Stoller, “but he was working on your case. He told his ladyfriend he was going to Minneapolis and when she didn’t hear from him, she found this note where he wrote down some names. Your name was first on the list. Do you mind if I ask what you were having him try to figure out for you?”

“I had some questions about my sister and brother who were in a car accident when I was a little girl.” I began crying. “I’d rather not go into that, please.”

“Okay, sorry to have upset you, ma’am,” said Detective Heinz.

“Do any of these names mean anything to you?” asked Detective Stoller, reading my mother’s maiden name, the name of the man who turned out to be Valencia and Van’s real father, and then the name John Spade.

“Patricia is my mother,” I said, jumping on that and not letting go. “Please don’t involve her in this! She’ll be so upset. It’s taken her years to get over it. I mean, really, she still isn’t over it.”

“Please,” said Adrian, “I hate to have you upsetting my wife in the condition she’s in.”

“I am… with child,” I whispered through my tears.

“We’re sorry to upset you,” said Detective Heinz, his voice softening.

“Please don’t involve my mother in this,” I repeated. “I only got in touch with Jeb because I’ve been thinking so much about family now that we’re expecting. You gentlemen must understand.”

The detectives nodded appreciatively.

“I don’t know what’s become of Jeb, but Adrian and I will let you know anything we find out,” I promised. “Just please don’t go upsetting my mother over any of this.”

“No, no. There’s no need to get her involved,” said Detective Stoller. “Well, you’ve been helpful. Let us know if you hear from Mr. Wilde,” he said, handing Adrian a card. Then he scratched his head and said, “Hey, you’re that artist I read about in the paper, aren’t you?”

“That’s me,” said Adrian.

“Love your work. I hear Salma Hayek has your paintings in her living room. Did you ever meet her?”

“Just a couple times. She’s really down-to-earth.”

“I could drink that woman’s bathwater.”

Adrian nodded and winked, man-to-man, while I dabbed at my face with the back of my hand.

“We’ll let you folks get back to your day off now. Thanks, y’all,” said Detective Heinz.

We waved goodbye.

“Why, if you work at home, does everyone always assume you have the day off?” asked Adrian, as they drove away.

“That’s great that you’re finding this so amusing,” I said, straightening the porch furniture.

“You handled it all quite calmly yourself. It was a great performance. I’m… with… child…” he mocked.

“You’re the one who told them about my condition.”

“I was going for the sympathy vote.”

“You think you can charm your way out of anything, but sometimes, Adrian, charm isn’t enough. That’s really fabulous that this little encounter has left you feeling so confident, but I’m not. Not at all. I’m… rattled.”

“Relax,” he said, reaching out to embrace me.

I marched inside, slamming the door behind me. He followed behind me, reaching for me, but I jerked my shoulder out of his reach. I stomped over to Shabby Chic for Modern Homes and shook it out on the kitchen table. I grabbed the contents and edged them up into a reasonably tidy pile, holding the letters and photos to my chest. I felt a little crazy.

“What do you have there?” asked Adrian.

“Uh uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Stay away from me.” I lit a candle and began by burning the photo of Jeb. Next I took the envelopes, first removing the photos, and lit them all on fire. They made an enormous flame which I held as long as possible before tossing them in the kitchen sink and dousing them with water.

I threw down the pictures of Adrian with the mystery woman. “Who is this?” I asked. “Not that it really matters. Not that something like a minor infidelity even matters anymore, but tell me, who is she?”

He picked up one of the photos and squinted a little. “A woman named Jane Gilligan. She owns a gallery in Charleston and I met with her last winter. It’s just a picture meant as a… threat, I suppose. I already told you I got mail like this. So you’ve been opening everything and hiding it from me? Why would you do this when I already told you I was getting things like this?”

“Because by the time you told me that, I knew it wasn’t just some stupid stalker. How could you have gone to the police? What happened to ‘the police aren’t God, don’t get the police involved.’ Huh? What happened to that?”

“I thought this was something else back then,” he said.

“We need to tell each other what we know, Adrian. Because it’s obvious you knew who John Spade was, and I want to know how.”

“I didn’t know him.”

“How is the handwriting and postmark on the letter with you and this woman the same as the letter with Jeb’s picture?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Adrian, please! We are in serious trouble.”

“Everything is going to be fine.”

“This handwriting is totally recognizable, and the police have it on letters you gave them. You don’t think they’re going to see the same writing in John Spade’s apartment and put two and two together? You don’t think they’re going to come back?”

“So what does it prove? That he was harassing us?”

“Adrian, there’s just too many loose ends! How can you be so calm?”

“Just relax. You’re pregnant, remember? You have to relax.”

Next I showed him the pictures of Valencia. “Explain these. How are you involved? Where is she?”

When he saw those, all color drained from his face.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, pulling it from my fingers.

“It came in the mail. From John Spade.”

He looked at it, and then leaned his head back, defeated. Then he picked up the piece of paper that had been wrapped around them.

ADRIAN CORBIS, The past ALWAYS catches up with you. It’s only fair…

“Tell me how you’re connected to this,” I said.

He didn’t speak.

“Talk to me!”

“How could you have kept this from me?” he asked, setting the photos down on the table. His green eyes were nearly black with anger.

“You’re mad at me? You’ve got to be joking.”

“So these came in the mail and you didn’t even think to tell me? We’re lucky to be alive. Do you realize that? You saw these, yet you said nothing? You don’t make any sense sometimes.” He looked at the postmark on the envelope. “These pictures came all the way back in June! And there we were, asleep with the windows open, no fence, no dog. Jesus Christ!”

“Adrian, how dare you turn this around on me! I almost turned you in to the police. What was I supposed to think? Tell me why this letter came for you.”

He walked out of the kitchen, into the hallway, into the living room. I followed him, waiting for him to say something. He sat down on the chair in the living room and put his head in his hands.

“How are you involved in this, Adrian?”

“I didn’t hurt her,” he said weakly, looking at me with tears in his eyes.

“Were you there?”

Again, he was silent.

“I mean, you weren’t seriously involved in this. Right?”

He exhaled and it sounded like something deflating.

“I need to know what happened,” I said.

“I got involved in something I shouldn’t have. I would never have hurt your sister. You know that. Tell me you know that.”

“I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Baby,” he said, reaching for me, but I took a step backward.

“She’s dead, of course. Right?” I whispered.

“Listen,” he said. “Please listen…” But he trailed off.

“Did you rape her?”

“God no!”

“She’s all taped up. Why did you do that?” My voice was small and faraway.

“I didn’t do that. Let me explain.”

“Okay. Explain.”

“My family was staying at my aunt’s in Red Wing, and I decided to go out for a drink to get a little space. I ran into John Spade at the bar. I knew him because we both worked at the same landscaping company the summer before I went to college. He was my supervisor. It was just bad luck that I ran into him. He was nuts, just kind of a freak, and I knew that. I didn’t know he was… you know, crazy.

“We started drinking and then we started driving around in his truck. It was late, probably close to midnight, and he saw a little car with a guy and a pretty girl in it.

“John started to drive really close behind them. It was raining, well, sleeting really, and it was really slippery out. His truck had one of those row bars on it and he turned the lights on. It lit up the whole road. I think he was just trying to mess with them, but they lost control. They started fishtailing and everything was really bright, and we were up in that truck, just watching it happening.

“The guy got thrown from the car, but when we pulled over and looked, he was still alive. I wanted to go get help, but John hit him on the head with a rock. I don’t know why he did it. The girl had her seatbelt on and she was fine. Not even a mark on her. Then John grabbed her and started tying her up with a roll of tape he had in his truck. I told him to stop. I was so drunk it all seemed like a bad dream. He put her in his truck and then he pushed their car into the river.”

“He pushed their car into the river?” I interrupted. “With his hands?”

“I helped him do that,” said Adrian. “I had to. I didn’t know what he would do to me if I didn’t help him. The car was on a hill and it just rolled right down in. The sleet had turned to snow and it was like a blizzard. It was all such a bad dream.

“I told him to leave me there and I would walk back to the bar, so he left me. It was snowing like crazy, the whole way back. It probably took me two hours to walk back. I was afraid someone would see me but it was late and there weren’t any cars. I almost froze to death. Finally I made it back to my car and went back to my aunt’s. Everyone was asleep so I went to bed. It was the worst night of my life. I just put it behind me.”

“You didn’t tell anyone? My sister was still alive! You could have saved her!”

“I watched him kill your brother. I knew she was dead too. And I was drunk and scared. I was only twenty-one. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted it to be a bad dream.”

“You wanted it to be a bad dream.”

He nodded.

“I can’t be with you anymore,” I said.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do too.”

“We’re talking about the worst night of my life. No actually, what happened in Minneapolis a few days ago may have been the worst night of my life. But I am not a bad person. You know that.”

“So how did you and I happen to end up married?” I asked him.

“Fate.”

“Stop telling lies.”

“I’m not.”

“You came to Border’s to see me. Was it just some kind of sick curiosity?”

“No. I started there because I needed money. When I found out who you were I thought it was the most bizarre thing in the world, but I fell in love with you and it felt like the right thing. It even made me believe we were supposed to be together. A coincidence like that is too much to not be fate.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious.”

“Was it fate that you were in that bar that night with John Spade?”

“No. That was a terrible thing. Terrible bad luck.”

“How did he let you walk away from all this, knowing what you know? I don’t believe your story.”

“He told me he would kill me if I said anything. So for about a year I was afraid he’d kill me anyway, but then he went to prison and my life started to go on.”

“Did you know he was out of prison?”

“No. I didn’t think he was getting out for a long time still.”

“How could you have never told me this? If all this is true, and you aren’t responsible for what happened to them, and you really love me, why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I thought it would hurt you too much.”

“But if you really loved me, the truth would be important than protecting my feelings.”

“You’ve got it backwards,” he said, taking my hands in his. “You must know I am not responsible for what happened, or you would have gone to the police when you got that letter. Right?”

“You’ve got it backwards. I didn’t go to the police because I was afraid you were involved. I need to think. I need to take a walk.” I put on my sunglasses to hide my face and I left.

Chapter 54

My twenty-first birthday was actually fun. That’s the great thing about turning twenty-one: Boys know you’re going to get really drunk, so they pay attention to you. I am ashamed to admit I was still living in the dorms at that point. I went to Paul’s Club on State Street in downtown Madison with two other girls who were nineteen but had fake ID’s. Their names were Luna and Dannon, like the yogurt. Luna was just four feet ten inches tall and her left arm was kind of mangled. I didn’t ask why. Dannon was six foot three and would have been a supermodel if not for her tiny, rotten stubs of teeth. Again, I just didn’t ask. The three of us had all been in a yoga class together, and as a result, we were sort of friends.

We spent a long time getting ready. We wore wrap skirts that actually were shorts with a panel over the front, but looked like shorts in the back, and chunky heeled summer sandals. We each had tiny purses on long strings that fell all the way to our hips. Dannon liked girls, and wore a shirt that said so. Luna and Dannon were single too, and each of us was silently hoping for some kind of miracle.

We got to Paul’s Club (Dannon insisted on Paul’s Club, because she had a crush on a bartender there) and all three of us ordered screwdrivers. We sat down beneath the famous tree inside and tried to hold what looked like a normal conversation, waiting for some boys (or a girl) to sit by us. Luna tucked her left arm casually beneath her purse and the sweater she had brought along as a shield. Dannon wisely kept her mouth closed. I sat just so, innocently smooshing my breasts together to create a meager line of cleavage. We sipped our drinks and waited. It didn’t take long for some frat boys to notice Dannon.

“Hi there,” said one. “Mind if we join you?”

“We’d love it!” said Luna. All three of us knew what this meant: Free drinks.

The guy and his two friends squeezed in all around us. One between Luna and Dannon, one on either side of me.

“I’m Jake, this is Josh, and this is Jarid.”

“Nice to meet you,” we said, and introduced ourselves.

“What are you ladies drinking?” asked Josh.

“Screwdrivers,” we giggled. Three more drinks appeared before us.

“Your name is Dannon?” asked Jake. Dannon nodded.

“That’s a really, really unique name,” said Jarid.

“Are you named after someone?” asked Josh. He was sitting to my right, farthest away from her. “Mind if I switch with you?” he asked, standing up and giving me a little shove without looking at me. I took my drinks and scooted over. Now Luna and I were across from each other while the three boys focused their attention on Dannon, who couldn’t stop looking for her crush behind the bar and who had yet to open her mouth more than what was required to sip her drink.

Luna rolled her eyes at me. She held up her drink to toast me. “To free drinks,” she said, clinking my glass. Then she began picking maraschino cherries off their swizzle stick with her bad hand and topping the fingers on her good hand with them, black olive style.

“Are you a model?” Jake asked Dannon. She shook her head.

“You sure as hell could be!” said Jarid.

Dannon smiled weakly, keeping her lips pressed firmly together. Then she held up one finger. “Be right back,” she said, expertly hiding her teeth, and made her way to the ladies’ room.

The boys looked at Luna and me. There was a brief, awkward silence.

“Your friend is tall,” said Josh.

“She’s probably taller than any of us,” Jake agreed.

“I don’t have a problem with a tall woman,” declared Jarid.

I held up my empty drink glass. “It’s my birthday. I’m twenty-one,” I reminded them.

Our new friends wished me a happy birthday, and Jake went up to the bar to buy us another round. I noticed Dannon down at the other end of the bar trying to talk to the bartender. She was a skinny woman who looked like she was in her late twenties. I couldn’t imagine what Dannon found attractive about her.

“Is that a friend of yours?” asked Jarid, motioning to the bartender.

“No, that’s the girl Dannon likes,” said Luna.

“Likes?” asked Jake.

“Dannon likes girls,” said Luna. “You didn’t notice her shirt? It says I like girls who like girls.”

I cringed, afraid our free drink suppliers were going to abandon us. The exact opposite happened.

“No way,” squealed Josh. He and Jake high-fived each other.

“That is so awesome,” said Jarid.

“She is hot,” said Jake.

“Keep the drinks coming and we’re going to see some girl on girl action,” said Josh.

“Just look at her! I only come up to her tits, man!” said Jake.

“She is the hottest girl I have ever seen.”

“Look at her legs. She’s got to, like, run marathons.”

I noticed that Luna was crying. She wasn’t as familiar with being ignored as I was, and here she was, falling apart. To make matters even worse, she and I were down to just the ice cubes again.

“Let’s go,” I whispered.

“Okay,” said Luna, sniffling. She ate her maraschino fingertips and gathered up her sweater and purse. We stood up.

“Thank you for the drinks,” I said.

“Where are you going?” asked one of the guys.

“We’ll be back in a minute,” Luna promised.

“Meet us at the Dane,” I whispered to Dannon on our way past her.

“Sure, sure. I’ll be right there.”

“Listen, yogurt girl, I’m supposed to be working,” we heard the bartender telling Dannon as we left.

So the night did not start out that great, but we did get quite a few free drinks. Neither Luna nor I had harbored very high expectations, so we easily snapped back from the letdown of Paul’s Club.

We got to the Great Dane and sat at a table near some guys playing pool. Luna was smiling again. It was getting late and since it was May, a lot of students were studying for finals and we had the place mainly to ourselves. We ordered wheat beers with orange slices and waited for Dannon to show up. Neither Luna nor I typically drank much so we were very drunk, and giggling like crazy about every little thing.

“Ughh, she must run marathons,” said Luna in a deep, dumb voice.

“There’s going to be girl on girl action!” I said, imitating the voice. We kept drinking and laughing.

“She’s going to suck my tiny little dick,” said Luna, laughing so hard that I could barely understand her.

“Let’s get two more,” she said. She went up to the bar and I turned to better check out the pool players. One in particular caught my eye. He had dark curly hair and an angular jaw. When he looked up at me I looked down, embarrassed. I opened my purse and fished around for some lip-gloss.

“Let’s try these this time,” said Luna, setting three dark beers on the table. “One’s for Dannon,” she said about the extra one.

They were awful, but we drank them down anyhow, and then, when Dannon still had not shown up, we poured hers into our own glasses and finished it, too.

“Okay, enough buying me drinks. I’ll buy you a drink now,” I said. My voice sounded like it was happening miles away from me. I laughed at how far away and cloudy I sounded. When I stood up to go to the bar I stumbled and fell. I reached for the table, but instead of steadying myself, I knocked over my empty glass and it rolled onto the floor, breaking into several sharp chunks. I was too wasted to be embarrassed. I sat there on the floor, laughing.

“Okay, you’ve had enough. Time to go,” said the bartender, coming out from behind the bar. He didn’t sound mad, at least not to me in the state I was in. Just concerned. And tired. I’m sure he dealt with this kind of thing all the time.

“I’m good,” I told him. “It’s my birthday. I think you need to give me a free drink because I am twenty-one years old today.” I could barely speak. My words sounded over-annunciated, yet slurred at the same time. It just made me laugh more.

“You’ve already had enough.” He leaned down and picked up the chunks of glass. “Watch out for that. Don’t touch that.” He grabbed a broom and dustpan and swept up the glass. I was still sitting on the floor. I let out a rumbly sigh like Mr. Ed. “Sweeping is boring,” I said.

“That glass could be sharp,” said Luna to no one in particular.

“I guess you’re really mad at me?” I asked the bartender.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said.

“Help me up,” I told him, holding up my hands. He pulled me up and I wrapped my arms around his neck. I kissed him. “Do you want to take me home?” I asked him. He put his hands on my back. I kissed him again.

I felt a big hand on my wrist and the guy with the dark curly hair was standing behind the bartender. “I called you and your friend a cab,” he said to me. He was so cute. I let go of the bartender and wrapped my arms around his neck instead.

“What? Why?”

“Is this a friend of yours?” the bartender asked me. Or maybe he was asking the dark haired guy. I was so drunk that I wasn’t sure what was going on.

“The cab is outside already. It’s waiting for you,” said the dark haired guy, removing my arms from around his neck. His green eyes seemed to look straight into my soul. I felt like his eyes were telling me he wanted me, yet he was pushing me away. My lips sought his with a primal, magnetic pull that momentarily sobered me up and for one perfect fraction of a second our lips touched. He broke away from me, but our eyes remained locked. I tried to kiss him again but he pulled back from me.

“Do you know him?” asked the bartender protectively.

“I’m helping her. I’m putting her in a cab,” said the curly haired guy to the bartender, irritated at being questioned. He escorted me outside, his arm around my waist.

“But I’m not ready to go,” I told him.

The next thing I knew, Luna and I were in the cab, heading back to our dorm.

“Don’t throw up in here!” the cab driver told us over and over.

“I’m going to puke if you say that one more time,” I warned him.

“Did you know that guy?” asked Luna when we got dropped off.

“The cab driver?” I asked.

“No, the guy at the bar.”

“The bartender?” I asked.

“No,” she said, getting annoyed. “The guy who got us the cab.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I wish I knew him!”

“Well he seemed like he knew you.”

“Guys like that never know me.”

To this day, I am convinced it was Adrian.

He says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Chapter 55

The nursery became the only place I felt at ease. I started to read in there, sitting on the rocking chair with my feet up on the little ottoman. I had all the books associated with pregnancy: What to Expect When You’re Expecting, five different baby name books, Your Child’s First Year. Adrian left me alone when I was in there. I just closed the door and hours would go by with our house big and silent.

When I tired of the baby books, I moved the television from the kitchen into the nursery, and sat there alone in the dim blue light, watching past episodes of Cut-Throat Couture. I fantasized that I was a designer on the show, and I was host Philip Widget’s favorite contestant. In my vivid imaginings, no judge or home viewer could resist my swingy frocks. When I checked out from reality and entered my fantasy design world, I was distracted to the point of feeling almost safe. But then eventually the Cut-Throat Couture blocks would give way to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy repeats, and bored and hungry, I would come crawling back into the light. Adrian was in his studio nearly all the time, so I was still alone out there.

The truth was, there were times I thought about not going through with it. Not having the baby, I mean. Times I worried that Adrian and I were not good enough people to raise a baby, or that we were not strong enough to create a real family. I was afraid the best we could hope to be after all that had happened were three isolated, damaged individuals.

This pregnancy often seemed like a part I was playing in a play or a movie; I woke up doubting whether it was even real. But it was. I could feel it. And when I looked at myself in the mirror, I was starting to see how real it was.

If I could magically undo this baby I would, but it was not that easy. The baby was coming, counting down the days until he was in my arms. How could I deny it, this nursery and my twice-canceled abortion appointments imminent proof of his arrival. And despite how I tried to distract myself, the baby stayed as focused as an arrow.

Chapter 56

I graduated from Madison in the spring of ’98 with a degree in Political Science. It took me five years because I kept changing my major. I was living in a dumpy, rodent-infested house on East Mifflin Street with six roommates. Since it cost so little to live there with rent being divided seven ways, no one was in a hurry to find a real job. Our roommate Bob was thirty-nine and working on his third doctorate. He fixed people’s inner tubes on their bicycles and sold pot out of the little shed in our backyard. Our roommates Steph, Michelle, and Bernadette had a unique three-way open relationship going for them that made Bernadette cry a lot and Michelle break a lot of dishes. Steph seemed to be the only one truly benefiting from it. Nora was quiet and nearly invisible, a blonde, ghostly girl from some place we all assumed to be Scandinavian. She sneaked around at night emptying our overflowing ashtrays and washing the dishes. The rest of us rarely saw her, but she always paid her rent on time and kept things clean and tidy, so she was a major asset. Sam was the seventh roommate.

“Sam is such a turd,” Steph warned me.

“Hmm. You’re probably right,” I said.

Nearly seven feet tall and covered in thick, matted body hair, Sam wore his microscopic granny glasses perched on the tip of his tiny button nose. He had a peculiar, plastic smell about him, not unlike the aroma of a new Barbie doll. I convinced myself that he, like everyone, had some redeeming qualities that just needed uncovering. Perhaps he was musical. Or kind to animals. Perhaps he was cool. I turned his flaws into quirky assets. His digestive issues became an endearing sign of his humanness. The enormous bags that looked like change purses under his eyes seemed, at the time, a little edgy. Like Billy Joel.

My first introduction to him came a week after I moved in, via a scrap of paper taped to the mirror of the second floor bathroom. Love Is An Idea, Not An Actual Thing. Therefore, It Does Not Exist. was scribbled in a delightfully curly script. I mistook it for girl handwriting and worried about the love triangle. “Is everything okay with Steph and Bernadette and Michelle?” I asked Bob, who was flossing his teeth at the sink next to mine.

He shook his head. “It’s Sam.”

“Sam,” I repeated. The mystery roommate I had then only heard of. As it turned out, Sam taped his feelings to the bathroom mirrors throughout the house on a regular basis. Not realizing then that he did this all the time, this particular message stuck in my head as meaningful.

“Is Sam going through a breakup?” I asked Steph the next morning at breakfast.

“No, he’s just moronic,” she said.

“Is he ever home?”

“He’s probably in his room, moping.”

“Should we invite him to share some of this oatmeal?”

“Let’s not.”

A few days later I learned a little more about him: I Accidentally Ate Half A Napkin With My Sandwich Today When I Was Having Lunch. Now I Am In A Lot of Pain. I had still not laid eyes on him but I pictured him to be handsome, noble, tortured… Like a blue eyed dog.

The following week, yet another peek into his secret mind: I Found A Coupon Book Filled With Half Offs And Buy One Get Ones In A Walgreen’s Parking Lot. Now I Am Going To Have To Spend A Lot Of Money On Things I Do Not Want.

In those first weeks, when all I knew of him was based upon scribblings on pocket-sized sheets of notebook paper, an imperfect but loveable Sam sprouted and grew in my brain. Then one day while lounging in the living room and crocheting a scarf, I heard him speak.

“Did you eat the rest of my Golden Grahams? Did you? I am positive there was half a box yesterday!” came the searing, whiny voice of a demon troll. The sound curdled and died in the big, high-ceilinged kitchen, awkwardly met with no response.

“Who is that?” I whispered to Bernadette who was lying on the floor, circling toys in an old Sears Christmas catalog.

“It’s Sam,” she said without looking up. She hesitated, her Sharpie hovering over a My Little Pony from 1986, and then she circled it and wrote maybe beside it. “You’ve never heard him before?”

“I guess not. I mean, I’m pretty sure I would remember.”

Michelle, half dozing on the couch, buried the box of cereal she’d just had her hand in beneath a couch cushion and we all laughed at what a loser he was.

It was inevitable that I would end up sleeping with him.

One day men with big metal cranes showed up to tear down our house. Boy were we surprised! It was a Wednesday morning, but as luck would have it, we were all home. Steph tried calling our landlord, but none of us could remember who it was. We just gave our money to Nora every month and she took care of things. We asked her who to call, but her English was mysteriously failing her in this time of crisis. She kept saying she couldn’t understand, couldn’t understand.

“Write it down?” she said, gesturing like she was wiggling a pen.

“Let’s band together,” said Bob. “This is our home and we aren’t leaving without a fight!”

I curled up on the couch and decided I would just do whatever everyone else decided to do.

Outside, the big ball on the crane was swinging ominously overhead.

“Pick your battles,” said Sam, pushing his granny glasses up his nose.

“Yeah, screw it,” said Steph. She grabbed her backpack and her weed and she was gone. This made the rest of us panic.

None of us had time to do much besides throw together what we could in some duffel bags and laundry baskets. Sam and I were driving around together, wearing pajamas, homeless, with everything we had been able to grab in the back of my car. As the afternoon turned to evening and our worry grew, we passed a rickety four unit over by Camp Randall. A ‘For Rent’ sign was nailed to the front porch, which the landlord happened to be repairing. We stopped the car, talked to him for a few minutes, and looked at the apartment. Next we were signing a lease he retrieved from his car, and just like that, our problems were solved and we were living together. It seemed like an obvious decision. I would even say we both felt pretty lucky.

As the months in our lice nest ticked past, we came to realize that we needed to get better jobs. My part-time job at the yarn store and Sam’s reliance on finding garbage and selling it on eBay were making it hard to scrape by. He was still posting his thoughts on the bathroom mirror as his only means of real communication, and I was beginning to notice a theme: I Want Groceries. was Monday’s message. Starving. How About You? on Tuesday. Ramen Again? No Thanks. was on Wednesday. Finally he got a job at Merry Maids and I started working at Border’s.

It was the fall of 1999 and everywhere you looked, The Millennium was the theme. The. Millennium. A looming, ominous abyss, just a few steps away. There was fear and excitement about what a new millennium might bring. Would computers still work? Would our bank accounts freeze? Would we say the year was two thousand, or would we say twenty oh oh?

Border’s was filled with Millennium-themed calendars and coffee mugs and books about Nostradamus’s predictions. My supervisor Krystle was putting together a newsletter about all of us employees she called her Y Not Get 2 Know Your Border’s Team Gazette. Her boss was totally impressed that she had taken it upon herself to go above and beyond the call of duty. In actuality, she was one of those lazy, creative types who found ways to tie up all her time with little diversionary projects. She interviewed every last one of us over the course of that fall. By December she had stacks of the newsletters ready for customers to take. “They’re free! Learn about Your Border’s Team!” We stuck them in people’s shopping bags until Corporate found out and told us that was taking it too far. Stacks by the door were allowed though.

In February we all got to divide up the leftovers. I still have a few. It’s not very often I’ve had half a page devoted to me. I must admit, it was kind of flattering. I showed a copy to Sam. “What’s so special about that,” he said, still in his Merry Maids outfit. “Everyone is in here. It’s not like you won some kind of contest.”

By the summer of 2000 Sam was getting really depressed. Despite his cynical outlook, I believe he had expected the new millennium to bring some kind of positive, sweeping change to the world, and it had not. His messages were getting longer and ramblier, and less subtle.

There was this one in June: I Can’t Even Tie My Shoes Anymore Without Spending Ten Minutes Trying To Psych Myself Up For It. Everything Hurts. Especially My Teeth. I Wish I Was Dead. And then in July, this: I Try Overdosing On Tylenol Almost Every Day Now But I Am Too Big To Die. I Think I Will Buy A Gun.

He and I never had sex anymore, which was fine considering how unattractive I found him. He was starting to not even shower. Plus, there was someone new at work who made Sam seem even worse than he actually was, if that was possible. It was Adrian.

Adrian had started in the early spring, but our schedules hadn’t crossed until summer. When I first saw him I looked twice, then a third time. Inexplicably, I seemed to have captured his attention too. It was impossible. He must be gay, I decided, remembering Alex Wescott, the only other cute boy who had ever liked me. The last I heard, Alex was tap dancing off Broadway and living with some ancient, emerald-encrusted sugar daddy named The Captain. Adorable, sexy, straight men might be my type, but I was not theirs.

In August Krystle bought her first home and invited everyone over for a housewarming party. I invited Sam to come along, but he said he would rather eat glass shards.

I had the closing shift on the night of the party, and so did Adrian. We had never worked together before. When I saw both our names on the schedule, I got butterflies.

“Are you going to Krystle’s?” Adrian asked me, while we were straightening one of the front tables that some little kids had demolished two minutes before we closed.

“Yeah, I guess so. Are you?” I tried to act cool.

“Yeah…” he said. I waited for him to say something more.

The thing is, I had no idea Adrian was married. I knew practically nothing about him and I was not “in” with the Border’s gossip. He never wore a ring. I felt like he wanted to ask me to go with him, yet now he was silent, straightening the books and not looking at me. What if this had been The Opportunity, the only one I got? I struggled against it slipping away, trying to come up with the right thing to say. “I hate finding new places at night. Do you know where Krystle lives?” I asked. “So I can follow you, in my car,” I added.

He turned back to me and said, “Why don’t you come with me? We can ride together. It just makes sense to not take two cars.”

“Okay. If you’re sure,” I said.

“I’m sure,” he said. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Hey, do you mind finishing this? I’ll be back in a minute.” He disappeared in the direction of the break room and I kept straightening.

He’s calling someone, I thought. He’s making an excuse why he will be late.

“Can you help me with this?” a new girl called to me, standing by her cash register, so I went over to help her.

A few moments later, Adrian came up behind me and pulled me aside, literally, touching my arm and pulling me gently toward him. “Hey,” he said. I melted, heart-stoppingly aware of his entire aura, tingly from being within its parameters.

“Hi. What’s up?” I asked.

He pulled us a little farther away from the new girl. She was in her own world anyway, counting the pennies for the second time.

“My wife is coming with us, I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Oh, sure. That’s great,” I said.

“Okay.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I just wanted to, you know, mention it.”

“We’re just driving together, right?” I said, raising my eyebrow at him like he was crazy.

“Right. Sorry.” Then he blushed and nodded, taking off to finish whatever it was he had left to do.

Four or five of us left at the same time that night, and everyone except for the new girl was headed to Krystle’s. Adrian’s wife was in the parking lot waiting for us. She stood beside her car, a green, rusty 1970’s car. She was cool enough to make it seem like the most desirable car in the world. I would have looked like a fool behind the wheel of a car like that. Anyone would have. She was smoking a cigarette and playing with her long red hair. When she saw Adrian she waved and came walking over. She wore funky, cat-eye glasses. She was taller than me, and super thin. Without hesitating, she kissed him on the mouth.

“Everyone, this is Belinda, my wife,” he said.

“Hi Belinda,” we said.

“Do you want to drive, Honey?” she asked Adrian.

“Sure,” he said, taking her keys. They were on a simple, steel ring with a small, artsy metal ornament hanging from it. Of course I noticed everything. I think it is a female problem, to notice and evaluate and compare.

Without a word I got in my car and followed along. There was no way I was riding along with them. I had become invisible to Adrian and he seemed to have forgotten our earlier plan.

I felt like a stalker, a loser, driving behind them. I watched the burnt out taillight, the Strong Women like Strong Beer bumper sticker, the backs of their heads. You’re a creep, I told myself, feeling dirty as I trailed after them, wishing them ill. I could not get Belinda’s face out of my mind. She was to me, at this time, the answer key to the book of code of Adrian. An explanation of what his soul must desire. I wanted to have what she had. I wanted to be skinnier, cooler, smarter. I barely knew him, but I felt as strongly as I had ever felt about anything that I wanted him to be mine. And I wanted to be his.

My desperation and insecurity began to slip away as I drove behind them. The night air gave me confidence. I suppose that’s normal. It’s why motorcycle gangs beat people up. Still, it made me feel special. A mean, delicious feeling of purpose and determination found me that night in the car, batting at my self-doubt. For a brief moment it swept my nervousness right out the open window. I felt ethereal, wise, a little smug. I became more than myself. Stronger. My desires were pushing ahead of everyone else’s feelings. I became powerful and free, sociopathic, invincible.

They parked at the top of the hill in front of Krystle’s little cottage, and I parked farther down so I could touch up my makeup without being noticed. Without the cool night wind in my face, I was becoming myself again. Fading. Shrinking. I put on extra makeup, trying to combat the ordinariness.

The front yard was packed with our co-workers and Adrian and Belinda had already joined the party by the time I walked up the steep, quaint path to the little bungalow. They were standing side by side and they both had beers in their hands, but when Adrian saw me he casually dropped his arm from around his wife’s waist. I got a beer and started talking to some girls who worked mainly on weekends. We were chatting and laughing, as they filled me in on all the Border’s drama I was usually oblivious to, and I forgot to notice Adrian for a little while. When I went to get another beer I saw Belinda leaving, alone.

I scanned the party, looking for him, and just like that he was behind me.

“Are you looking for someone?” he asked.

“I found him,” I said and blushed, realizing how forward that sounded.

“Do you need another drink?” he asked.

“Not quite yet. Have you been left unattended?”

“I have.”

“Everything okay?” I immediately wished I hadn’t asked. Why ruin this by talking about her?

“She has a headache.”

“Oh.” We each took sips of our beer.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked me. There was one of those old-fashioned glider lawn benches in Krystle’s back yard. It was a little bit removed from where everyone was standing.

“Sure.”

We sat close enough that our legs were touching. It could have been anyone else and it all would have meant so little. We talked for an hour and for the first time in my life, it felt easy to be funny. I felt attractive and clever.

“People are going to start talking about us if we aren’t careful,” Adrian said at one point.

“They talk about everyone. It doesn’t matter,” I said back. Easy for me to say; I wasn’t married.

He got up to get another beer. “Can I get you one?” he asked. I nodded even though I didn’t like it. Anything to keep this going.

People had been leaving for the last half hour or so and the party was fizzling down.

“I better go,” Adrian said, looking at his watch.

“How are you getting home?” I asked him.

“You’re going to take me?” he asked.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, unable to hide my smile.

He and Belinda lived on the Near-East side, only a few blocks from my old Mifflin Street dump. I realized as we turned towards downtown that it would have been so much quicker to take him back to his car, which was still at Border’s. It’s what would have made sense. It was five minutes from Krystal’s, and now Belinda would have to take him to work in the morning.

“Do you want me to take you to your car, instead?” I asked.

“No, I wanted to spend some more time talking to you,” he said.

“Oh.” I smiled. “I guess you aren’t afraid to just say what’s on your mind.”

“I guess I’m not,” he said, laughing a little.

“Will your wife think it’s strange that you got a ride home instead of to your car?”

“I’ll tell her I drank too much to drive.”

“Good idea.”

When I was getting close, but we were still talking and laughing about one of our co-workers, I turned onto the wrong street and drove past the place where the house I had once lived in had stood. Now there were condos in its place.

“I used to live there,” I said.

“Those are nice,” said Adrian.

“I mean, I lived there before the condos were there. It was a big, old house with mice.” We both laughed. Everything is funny when you’re falling in love.

“Turn here,” said Adrian. He pointed out a laundromat and said that he had once found a fifty-dollar bill in a washing machine there.

Then I took him down the street to where I had once found a five-dollar bill frozen into a snow bank.

“Five dollars? That’s kind of pathetic,” he said.

“But at least I’m telling the truth,” I said.

“You don’t believe I found fifty dollars?”

“Whatever you say…” We smiled at each other.

We drove around for two hours. Finally Adrian said he’d better get home.

I turned onto Livingston Street and found the house number. It was a tiny blue house with white shutters, cute as a button.

“Is this your house?” I asked, picturing his wife, unconscious and safe, resting inside with her cat-eye glasses folded on a table beside the bed.

“It’s not ours, we rent it. But yeah, it’s ours.”

I almost pointed out how cute it was, but thought better of it. Then I almost made some stupid comment about his wife seeming nice, but had the sense to keep my mouth shut about that, too. There was no reason to point out how much he had to lose.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll see you at work.”

“Bye,” I said, careful not to accidentally add, I love you, Adrian. But I did. I already did.

“Bye.” He shut the door and walked to his front door, waving to me as I drove away.

That’s how the whole thing started.

Chapter 57

There was no getting past Adrian’s trip to Minnesota. When I was not hiding in the nursery and Adrian was not hiding in his studio, we made sporadic efforts to act like our old selves. We did so while holding our collective breath that no more detectives would show up, and so far none had.

In the evenings, like everyone else in our neighborhood, we walked our dog and cooked on the grill, trying to give the impression of two innocent, average folks. Days passed without either of us mentioning word of John Spade and the events surrounding him. When I occasionally tried to talk to Adrian about it, he would cut me off. “Now we’re safe,” he would tell me. “Let’s just try to get back to our normal lives.”

“I feel like I’m faking it,” I told him.

“If you fake something long enough, it starts to be true,” he reassured me.

It was not just the toppling of my ideals about who Adrian was that gnawed at me. I realized I had preferred being harassed and potentially hunted by one man to feeling like every policeman in the world was after us.

I began to make secret lists to calm myself. Pros and cons, my old trick. On paper, it did not look good:

Pro: I have a lot of clothes.

Con: I’m married to a murderer.

Pro: No one knows I am married to a murderer.

Con: I know.

Pro: People think I am married to a desirable man and have an enviable life.

Con: I am not someone who cares what people think. Wait. I guess that is not true.

Pro: Because of Adrian, I am not alone in the world.

Con: I was married out of pity. There’s no way that Adrian finding me was a coincidence.

Pro: Everyone thinks we are in love.

Con: Are we?

Pro: We are going to have a baby.

Con: I don’t want to have this baby.

Pro: Everyone loves a baby. Maybe I will love the baby. Maybe people will love me if I have a baby.

Con: Adrian is a very bad man. This baby’s father is a murderer. MURDERER.

Pro: We’re going to look at new cars on Tuesday.

Con: I feel like he is trying to distract me with material items.

Pro: At least we will have a new car.

Con: Adrian was involved in Van and Valencia’s deaths.

Pro: At least now I know what happened. Plus, we never would have met otherwise.

Con: He only married me because I was the next best thing to Valencia.

Pro: Valencia is dead, so I am the next best thing.

I locked myself in the bathroom and sat in the corner to make my lists. I wrote them on tiny scraps of paper that I dropped into the toilet bowl as I went. It was the only safe way I could write the truth. Anywhere else would be dangerous. Just writing them down was more confession than I could handle.

“I’m losing it, little baby,” I whispered, rolling my pen over my swollen belly. The pen was a gift from Adrian, a beautiful silver pen with flowing velvet blue ink. It was engraved with my initials. It was funny to me that now I needed things that should only be wants. It was funny to me that a pen could become part of an equation that could add up to me wanting to stay with Adrian.

I had once heard it said that a person’s deepest fear is his greatest desire. My deepest fear and unshakeable expectation had always been to find that Adrian did not love me. I had sensed that this was all too good to be true, that I was living a life meant for some other woman. And now as I watched my life unraveling, and saw my deepest fears becoming reality, I wondered if somehow I had willed this to happen. Or was I simply a peculiarly unlucky person? Or, worst of all, did none of this, as usual, really have anything to do with me?

I felt like the neurons in my brain weren’t properly clicking together. It was all too tricky for me to get hold of. I couldn’t be sure of anything. I flushed the scraps of paper that had contained my list, wondering what my next move was. Probably nothing, scrawled the deep blue ink onto a fresh scrap of paper, the fancy pen taking off with its own free will. Probably just wait and see what happens it taunted, and then it added a smiley face out of spite. I threw these scraps in the toilet bowl and snapped the pen cap back into place.

But the longer I sat there, looking at the grooves on the back of the toilet that had never once been cleaned, the more obvious it became.

That’s it, I wrote on another scrap of paper. None of this, as usual, really has anything to do with you.

Unexpectedly, a tear fell from my eye and the blue ink fanned out into a watery blur. It reminded me of dying Easter eggs, many, many years ago. For a moment the constant art studio smell of our house was replaced by a poignant, acute memory of the smell of boiled eggs, the sound of Van and Valencia’s laughter, the feel of the metal wire ladle used to hold and dip the eggs.

“Let her do it herself,” Valencia was telling Van and our parents. She was wearing her red Coke Is It t-shirt and her arms were out as a protective barricade against my irritable family who did not so much believe I could not dye some eggs, but who simply did not have the patience to let me.

“She can do it. Look, she’s doing a good job. That’s the best one yet! I like the way the colors swirled.”

The memory, momentarily so clear, was slipping away like a dream. I replayed the bit I could remember again, letting the tears flow down my cheeks. Sometimes no memory could move me. Years of untouchable immunity rolled by, while I stood back, jaded and detached. Bored by all that had happened in the past. Over it. Then some sweet, forgotten moment would spring with the delicate vibrancy of a crocus through snow and break my heart.

“None of this. Has anything. To do with you,” I whispered, looking around me at the Turkish towels, the cool white tiles, the Italian towel drying rack. Then I uncapped the pen and wrote the words, and watched my tears distort them.

The toilet bowl came in handy for the times when the words on the little scraps made me sick.

We sat there one evening, a month and a half after Adrian’s trip to the Cities, trying to watch a movie when I brought it up again.

“Honey, please talk to me,” I said.

He paused the movie.

“I always talk to you,” he said.

“About Minnesota. About John Spade.”

He stopped the movie and turned to face me.

“I’m having a really hard time dealing with this,” I said.

“I know, but it will get easier.”

“Adrian, you killed someone.”

“Shh,” he interrupted. “The windows are open!” He stood up and went to close them, lock them, lower the blinds, turn on the air. I waited, trying to contain my annoyance, afraid that the conversation would once again be put on hold.

“As I was saying,” I whispered as he sat back down. “I am having a really hard time getting past this.”

“You don’t have to whisper. We’re all good now. You need to relax. It’s not healthy for the baby or you to get all worked up.”

“It’s just… It’s too much for me. I feel so alone.”

“I’m the same person I was before this happened. Don’t treat me like this. Everything I have ever done, I have done for you. You know that. Right?”

“I know, Adrian. I totally know. That’s the problem. I was nothing before you. I was a total loser. But now what?”

“I’m not following where you’re going with this.”

“Adrian, having you love me made me normal. Better than normal. I felt like a success. Now what am I? The wife of a murderer?”

“Would you listen to yourself? Would you listen to how selfish you sound?”

“So I sound selfish. Don’t turn this back around on me. You always do that when we fight.”

“I understand this is a lot to absorb but could you quit calling me a murderer?”

“But you are.”

“I am not.”

“Is John Spade dead?”

“He is.”

“Alright.”

“But I’m not a murderer.” He ran his hands through his hair in aggravation. “What happened twenty years ago was a terrible mistake that I never should have been involved with. As for John Spade, would it have been better if I had waited at home with a loaded gun until he broke in? Would that make you feel better? Self-defense is self-defense. Our lives and our baby’s life are worth more than his life and he is the one who made me have to decide that. The past could have stayed in the past, but he didn’t want to let it. I can forgive myself. I did what I had to do for us. For me and for you. For you. Got that? I did this partly for me, and partly for the baby, and mainly for you. Could you have done that much for me?”

“I wouldn’t have had to! I never would have gotten us into something like this!”

“You never get yourself into anything. You just ride along with the crowd and borrow everyone else’s life. Don’t you get tired of living vicariously through other people?”

“That’s mean,” I said, numbed and surprised by his cruelty.

“It’s true. You let everyone else make the decisions and you just go along for the ride. Then you sit back and judge. Well, you can’t have it both ways.”

“If it had been up to me, you would have stayed here and we would have gone to the police. You would have just told them what happened twenty years ago and we would have dealt with it. But I guess that’s not enough action for you, so here we are. We were happy and now we’re murderers! We have police visiting us! We’re going to be afraid as long as we live. I’d rather just go away by myself and live my own honest, boring life.”

Adrian stood up and the remote control fell on the floor. Frisky had been lying nearby and he sensed the change in the room, and began to yawn nervously. “Be sure to bring your wardrobe of designer fucking clothes with you on your little trip,” said Adrian. “Oh, by the way, how do you plan to pay for it?”

“I will find a way. And why don’t you quit buying me things if you secretly have a problem with me having them.”

“I don’t buy you all those clothes, you do. With my money.”

“Actually, most of my clothing I sewed myself for practically nothing, but you wouldn’t notice that anyone else in this house has any creativity or talent, because you’re so busy being wrapped up in your own artistic life.” Then I took it a step further, “Do you think you’re really that talented, or is it more likely that one movie star liked your work and everyone else has followed along like sheep?”

He laughed. “Unreal. I am very, very talented. Not that you are any kind of a judge of talent.”

“Of course not. No one is remotely intelligent compared to you, Adrian.”

He nodded and seemed like he was going to add to that, but instead came back with, “You didn’t answer me: How are you going to pay for yourself, now that you’ve gotten accustomed to living off me?”

“By selling oranges.”

“What?”

“By selling oranges,” I said again. And right before my eyes he became a tiny little man. Small enough to fit in my pocket or crush between my fingertips. I walked out of the room. He followed me.

“Don’t you understand this is the perfect crime?” he said, switching from angry and condescending to the equally unsettlingly slippery tone of a salesman. “Do you think anyone cares what happened to some rapist? Even if they think someone killed him, they’re going to figure the bastard deserved it.”

“We aren’t just talking about some rapist. What about Jeb?”

“We didn’t do anything to Jeb.”

“He’s dead because I got him involved.”

“Jeb is not our fault. You need to let that go,” he said, heading into the kitchen.

“Are you worried about where he is? There’s a body out there. Where are you going?”

“I’m sure John Spade took care of it. I’m going to make us some tea.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, following behind him.

“But as for John Spade, I did the world a favor. And you know what? If they do start looking for who did it, they have about four or five women’s families filled with possible suspects. Think about that! They’re going to look at those cases and say, ‘Who here wanted to kill John Spade?’ They don’t even know you and your family are connected!”

“What’s with this You and your family? Don’t you mean Us? ”

“Fine. You knew what I meant. But I’m saying that We aren’t going to be the first place they look. They don’t even know about us.”

“In Minneapolis they don’t, but here in Savannah they do! And what do you mean by if they think someone killed him? Isn’t it obvious he was killed?”

“Oh man, I forgot one,” he said, closing the kitchen window.

“Adrian, what happened?” I had been assuming all along that John Spade had been shot.

“Do you really want to know what happened?” Adrian asked, as he arranged two mugs with bags of chamomile tea on a tray. The tea kettle’s clunking turned to a whistle. He set it on the back burner where it immediately quieted itself. We stood there in a ridiculous silence, mine tense and his determinedly ordinary. Cheerful, almost. He tidied up the countertop, sliding things into place, disposing of a bit of cellophane, sweeping crumbs into the sink with his hand. I half-expected him to begin humming or singing.

“Yes. I need to know,” I said.

“It wasn’t actually that bad,” he said, pouring the tea. “Do you want honey in yours?”

“No. How can you say that it wasn’t that bad?” I rubbed my stomach, shielding the baby from whatever Adrian was about to tell me.

“I knew where he lived. Same old house he lived in with his mother, back in the day. Once he got out of prison, he moved back in. She died six months ago. I found her obituary online so I knew he would be there alone.” He passed me my cup of tea but I shook my head so he set it back on the tray.

“That seems like a careless move, looking her up, I mean,” I said.

“I wasn’t here when I did it,” he said, shrugging.

“You’d be mad if I did it.”

“You wouldn’t know how to cover your tracks. Anyway, I got there and the door was unlocked. I just walked right in. I saw a car in the driveway so I knew he was home. It was a different vehicle than he had back then, but I knew it was his car by the bumper stickers. A bunch of loony conspiracy theory shit. I thought ‘this guy hasn’t changed one bit.’ I walked in and it was dark in there. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had a gun, a knife… I was afraid I was not going to be able to do it. Then I heard water running in the bathroom. He was in there, taking a bath. The bathroom door was open and it was bright in there, but the rest of the house was dark, and I saw him before he noticed me. I just went for it. He was starting to stand up and reach for his towel and I gave him a shove. He split his head right open on the faucet. Then he drowned. I walked in, did it, and was back on the road ten minutes later. I really don’t think we have a thing to worry about.”

“Wow.” To my surprise, a huge wave of relief washed over me. Our odds of getting caught seemed to have diminished considerably. And just as compelling was the discovery that Adrian kind of wasn’t a murderer. It was more like John Spade slipped and fell.

“Did you leave footprints? Did anyone see you? Did you get blood on you?”

“No.”

“There’s no evidence?”

“None. And we have a great alibi. The little vacation? Everything is fine. It’s better than fine because he got what he deserved for what he did to your brother and sister. And to that private investigator, and all those women. And for what he was going to do to us when he got tired of playing games. Think about it.”

“Why do you think he got interested in you again after so many years?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Do you think he knew that I’m the twins’ sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you feel like you can live with this?” I asked him.

He rubbed his neck and nodded.

“You know, now we’ll never know where she is,” I realized.

“Did you ever think you’d know?”

“I guess not.”

He passed me my tea and I sipped it, and we stood there in silence. What he had done would either cement us together for eternity, or divide us in a way that could never be healed. I was not sure which.

Chapter 58

“Hel-lo! How’s the mommy to be?” asked Alexa.

I looked at the clock. It was six o’clock in the morning, which meant it was five in Madison. I sat up in bed and moved the phone to my other ear while Adrian continued to doze beside me.

“Hi Alexa. Is everything okay?”

“Sure.” There was a crunching sound like an apple being bitten into, followed by muffled chewing. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Umm, a little bit. What’s going on?”

“I need to come to Savannah. It’s getting cold here. I need a break so I can focus on my book. I was thinking November. That would be perfect for you two because then you can celebrate Thanksgiving with everyone, and I won’t have to.” She laughed and took another bite.

“You need a break to read?”

“No,” she said, exasperated. “I’m writing a book. Two books, actually. The coffee table book I told you about last time I saw you, and a new book. But neither is going as well as I had hoped. So we need to switch. Okay? Is Adrian there? Put Adrian on.”

I looked over at him. He was still breathing deeply, but looked like he was faking it. I poked his shoulder and set the phone against his face.

“Hmmm?” he asked.

“It’s your sister.”

I got up and went into the bathroom, but I could still hear Adrian’s side of the conversation. His voice was slurred and sleepy: “Why are you calling this early? …November is three days away. …Are you coked up or why are you talking like a maniac? …I am going back to sleep, call me when it’s daytime. …In March. Mid-March. Saint Patrick’s Day, I think. … No we don’t know its name. …I don’t know if pregnant women can fly or not. …Okay, I am going back to sleep now. …Goodbye. …Alexa, call me later. …Bye.”

I came out of the bathroom and put the phone back where it belonged. Then I got back in bed beside Adrian, but without touching him. He did not reach for me. It had turned out that if I pushed him away enough times, he eventually stopped trying.

“Are we going to Madison?” I asked.

He just grunted.

“Adrian, are we going to Madison?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“I don’t want to.”

He grunted again.

“Tell her we need more notice.”

“Shhh, go back to sleep,” he said.

I pulled the covers up around me, so just my nose and eyes were uncovered.

“Remember how we used to decorate for holidays?” I asked him. My mouth was beneath the blankets and the words were muffled.

He didn’t answer. I listened to him breathing, listened to the rhythm become steadier and eventually turn to quiet snoring.

I lay there listening to him for the longest time, and at some point I fell back asleep. When I awoke it was almost noon and he was gone, down in his studio, as usual.

Chapter 59

After the night of Krystle’s party, Adrian and I found more and more excuses to be together. It began with us taking our breaks at the same time.

“I’m going to grab a sub. You hungry? Want to come with?” he would ask me.

Of course I did.

For months it was like this. Flirtatious yet out of reach. Inappropriate, but without any real lines being crossed. I was still living with Sam, but we had deteriorated to being just roommates. I mean, mainly. Okay, to Sam, we were still together. But to me we mostly weren’t.

Then one night after work it finally happened. It was November of 2000 and the store had been terribly busy with nasty, stressed out holiday shoppers. It was late and Adrian and I were out together, brazenly having a drink. We’d had lunch together, but never a drink. Belinda thought he was working late but he had taken off when I did, telling one of the managers that he was coming down with a cold.

We started talking about a woman we had seen who was shopping with her children. Her little boy, who looked like he was about four, had pulled down his pants and started peeing right into the stroller on his little sister. It was hilarious. Half the store saw it happen. His mother, who had been ignoring her kids and reading one of her unpaid-for books, looked up to see her baby covered in pee, and flipped out. Her target was Wilfred, an old man who had just started working at Border’s and had unfortunately been standing nearby.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said to Wilfred. “How am I supposed to take them back outside? She’s soaking wet! She’ll freeze to death! Get me the manager!”

“I didn’t do it,” said Wilfred.

“I didn’t do it either,” said her little boy.

“I know you didn’t do it,” the woman said back to Wilfred in a shrill, mocking voice, “but you could have said something when it was happening.”

Wilfred didn’t know what to do. He was holding some books so he set them down on a table and went to find a manager. All around customers and workers had stopped what they were doing and were focused on this woman and her children. The attention made her even angrier, so she decided to leave. However, she had an armful of books she hadn’t purchased, which started off the alarm. By the time Wilfred came back with a manager, the woman was hysterical and both her kids were screaming.

“What’s the matter?” asked the manager.

In what I could only assume was one of those irrational, heat of the moment decisions, the woman pointed at Wilfred and yelled, “That old man peed on my baby! You need to fire him right now! He’s not right.”

We’d all seen what really happened, but she had to blame someone, had to divert the attention away from herself and her children.

Adrian and I had left in the midst of all the commotion. It had provided plenty of fuel for flirty, silly scandalmongering all the way from Border’s to the pub where we sat drinking pints of Smithwick’s.

“That woman’s going to win a lawsuit over this, and Wilfred’s going to end up in jail,” said Adrian.

“She’ll visit him there, out of guilt, and they’ll fall in love,” I said.

“They’ll have a conjugal visit, and conceive a baby who pees on everything,” said Adrian.

Were we talking about love, sex, and babies? I would take such a conversation in whatever form it presented itself. Ridiculousness with Adrian made my heart race more than the most serious talk I could have with Sam.

“Did you see that little boy’s reindeer sweater? No wonder he peed on his sister! He needed to rebel!” I said.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?” asked Adrian.

“No. Do you?” I took another drink. I had recently found myself learning to thoroughly love beer.

“I have a younger sister. She’s twenty-seven. Or twenty-eight. I’m not sure. I should know this. Um, she must be twenty-seven. So you’re an only child?”

“Yep. Just one sister?” I asked, passing it back to him.

“Yeah. Her name is Alexa.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“You’re pretty,” he said. I started laughing because it was such a quaint, simplistic thing to be told. It felt like something a kid would say to another kid. But I was totally pleased, too. We had flirted like crazy, but always with a faint protective edge in place. He had never left himself vulnerable like that. I was not used to communicating with him without the enigmatic veil of coolness that had become our language, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Then I stopped laughing, and I said the stupidest thing ever: “If you think I’m pretty, you should have seen my sister.”

He looked at me for the longest time and touched my face. He did not ask me what I meant, or point out that this contradicted my statement that I was an only child. Then he kissed me. I kissed him back, touching his hair and the back of his neck, memorizing his smell and warmth in case I never got this close to him again. My body filled with love and yearning and need. Everything that had been locked became open and I pulled him closer to me, wanting more. I was afraid he’d pull away from me at any moment. It didn’t seem possible that something so good could be happening to me. I kissed him, tasted him, overwhelmed with the desire to cry, because I already missed him. Even while it was happening, that was what I was thinking: Don’t ever forget what this feels like.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he whispered in my ear, so softly I later doubted whether I had really heard it at all.

Chapter 60

I did get close to Adrian again. All the time, every chance I got, and miraculously, he seemed just as drawn to me as I was to him. In early 2002, a week after Adrian filed for divorce from Belinda, he proposed to me, and in July of 2003 we got married.

Belinda did not deal very well with any of this. She showed up at Border’s, screaming and making threats. She grabbed a pair of scissors from a cup by one of the cash registers. I thought she was going to stab me. Instead, she cut off her long red hair and threw it at me. It seemed metaphoric, but I never did completely understand what she was trying to say. She did leave her mark on Border’s however; they can’t keep scissors in those cups anymore because of her.

Sam had moved on and was living with, of all people, Luna-with-the-floppy-arm. They had met through me and I had always suspected they were interested in each other. I learned about the two of them one day, shortly after Adrian asked me to marry him, when I ran into our old friend Dannon. Now that she had porcelain veneers on her teeth, she was living in New York and doing some modeling, along with working at some fancy advertising agency. She was back in town, looking gorgeous, sharing fried milk balls with her equally gorgeous girlfriend at an Indian restaurant on the east side of town. I was there to pick up some carryout food Adrian and I had ordered.

“Dannon!” I said. She looked great. Her hair was long and platinum blonde. Her skin was flawless. Her eyes were made up with smoky makeup, and she had an aura of sophistication about her.

“Hi,” she said, barely looking at me. Her exotic, olive-skinned girlfriend was unabashedly tonguing her ear. They thought they were in L.A. or something.

“How have you been?” I asked her. “What are you doing back in Madison?”

“Jacinda’s brother is getting married,” she said, tilting her head closer to her companion.

Jacinda held out her hand to me. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“I saw our old friend Luna. That’s too bad she stole your boyfriend,” said Dannon. When she said boyfriend, I immediately thought of Adrian.

“Stole my boyfriend?” I looked at my diamond ring, imagining it sparkling on Luna’s shriveled, limp hand. “What are you talking about?”

“Luna said she and your boyfriend Sam are together now. That’s too bad for you,” she said. “Too bad. So sad. All of that.” Jacinda giggled.

I had no idea why Dannon was being mean, but sometimes when people suddenly turn pretty, they don’t quite know how to handle it. I decided she must still be learning the ropes. “It must really sting to lose him to Luna,” Dannon continued.

I waved my sparkling left hand in Dannon and Jacinda’s faces. “I couldn’t care less about those morons,” I told them. “I’m engaged to someone way more amazing than Sam.”

Jacinda yawned loudly.

“I like your veneers,” I told Dannon. I hoped it would come across as cutting, scathing, and might make Jacinda realize that Dannon had not always been such a catch.

“Thanks,” said Dannon. “Well, nice catching up with you. I think your little baggy of food is ready.” She pointed to the cash register where the clerk stood by a brown paper sack of food, arms crossed, waiting for me to pay.

“Oh. Thanks. Bye.” I walked away.

“Nice meeting you,” called Jacinda, sarcastically.

So, I thought, carrying my food to the car, there was proof that even being engaged to Adrian couldn’t make everyone like me. Maybe it couldn’t make anyone like me. But before him I would have been in tears over a conversation like that. Now I was able to turn on the radio and, by the time I pulled out of the parking lot, nearly forget it even happened.

Pathetically, I invited Dannon and Jacinda to my wedding. Sam and Luna, too, so I could show them how much I had moved on. I even sent an invitation to Marnie Hopkins, from high school. None of them came. They didn’t even send back the RSVP cards.

Adrian’s guest list was so long and mine was so short. I guess I got a little desperate.

Chapter 61

On November first, Adrian got up early to drive down to Jacksonville to meet with a client. I decided this was my opportunity to get some answers to the questions I hadn’t wanted to face.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat on the porch sipping it, wrapped in a thin blanket with the bright sun warming my face. Wrappers from the previous night’s trick-or-treaters blew across our front yard, but I was not motivated to clean them up. Aside from the steady drumming of my fingers on the armrest of the wicker chair I was sitting on, all was calm and quiet. I finished my tea and went inside, calling Adrian to assure myself that he was far from home.

“I’m about a half hour from Jacksonville,” he told me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine here.”

“I should be home by eight or nine. Want to watch a movie tonight?” he asked me.

“Sure, that sounds nice.”

I told him I was going to do some sewing and we said our goodbyes. I set down the phone, took a deep breath, and prepared to get down to business.

I went into his studio, poking around in the closet, coming up with nothing out of the ordinary. Then I moved on to a tall file cabinet. It was filled with folders labeled with the names of clients in the top three drawers and other artists who inspired him in the bottom two drawers. I got a stepstool and pulled open the top drawer, slowly leafing through each file. There were snapshots and slides of the work he had done for them, invoices, notes on things like the client’s spouse or kid’s names so he could look like a personable guy who remembered details. I made my way through each file folder, examining each slip of paper, not sure what I was looking for. As I went along, I came to the woman in the photos John Spade had sent, the early photos that had implied Adrian was having an affair, and the reminder of her made my stomach do a little flip. There was nothing unusual in her file, no telling notes or extra attention paid to her. It seemed she really had been nothing more than any average client.

I finished up with clients and kneeled on the floor, pulling open the fourth drawer down, the one that housed the first section of artists. I was getting a little bored, starting to think I was wasting my time, and was being less careful now. My stomach growled and I considered scrapping this whole project and going out for a really good lunch. There was nothing of importance in the top drawer to I sat on the floor and pulled open the bottom file drawer, thumbing through the folders. As I neared the final few, an out-of-place folder slowed my pace. It was labeled as Kandinksy Samples.

I looked inside and instead of loose magazine articles or photocopies I found a single manila envelope. I pulled it out and held it in my hands for a moment, biting my lip like Valencia used to do. It was a habit of hers I had copied to the point of catching it, and now and then it came back when I least expected it.

I carefully bent back the metal closure and opened the flap. The envelope smelled like cigarettes and mustiness. I hesitated, listening, and then convinced I truly was alone in the silent, sunny studio, I carefully tilted the envelope and let its contents slide out onto the floor. Postcards featuring the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky spilled out upon the floor.

I sighed, defeated. I gathered up the colorful squares and shoved them back into the envelope. I replaced it, skimmed through the remaining folders, and closed the file cabinet. I had really thought that envelope was going to be the answer to all my questions. I should have known Adrian would not be careless enough to leave any traces of his thoughts or his past.

The floor felt cool, and since this was one room where Frisky was not usually allowed, it felt clean. I was never in here by myself and it reminded me a little of being in Van’s room after he was gone. I stretched out on my back with my fingers woven beneath my head, like a kid lolling in a summer field. I breathed in the smells of the studio, torn between liking the intensity and finding it nauseating.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I noticed the middle drawer of the file cabinet was still open an inch or two, and a yellow line on the underside of it was catching my eye. I sat up and I pulled the drawer open a little farther, and discovered that there was a manila folder taped to the underside of the drawer. Time seemed to grind to a halt. I sat up and checked the other drawers, one at a time since the file cabinet did not allow for more than one drawer to be open more than a couple of inches without locking the others out of commission, to keep it from toppling forward. I could not see under the bottom drawer, but I ran my hand carefully over its surface and it was smooth. There was nothing else.

Then I did something awful, considering I was pregnant: I went into the kitchen, found my cigarettes, and smoked one. So what I reasoned. My mom smoked when she was pregnant with all of us. So I had another. Then I washed my hands and calmly went back to the studio, reopened the middle drawer, and peeled away the tape, freeing the envelope.

This is probably going to be porn, I told myself. But I did not believe that. And it was not porn.

The envelope was sealed shut so I tore it open. There was no way to preserve it.

Inside there were newspaper clippings about Van and Valencia. Stacks of articles. Headlines from papers in the Cities and the Hudson Star-Observer, their senior pictures filling up the whole front pages.

Local Twins Perish in Icy Automobile Accident

Prom Queen Still Missing

Car from Loden Deaths Found in Mississippi River

Valencia Loden Presumed Dead

Loden Twins’ Funeral Today

Local Students Speak about Loden Twins

And then their obituaries, neatly clipped out and placed inside a separate, unsealed envelope for safekeeping.

I’d had no idea this had been news in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I looked at Valencia’s senior picture. She looked like a model. She was why this was news. I took my find to the kitchen and lit another cigarette. I was shaking and it calmed me down.

I removed the obituaries from the envelope and placed them on the table in front of me.

As far as I knew, my parents had not saved any clippings from the accident. They would have hidden them from me if they had, anyhow. I’d had some of my own, cut from our local paper and saved through the years, but nearly everything I was seeing here was brand-new to me, and fascinating.

Valencia loved animals and donated over $2000 to the Humane Society in her short lifetime, it said in her obituary. Really? Valencia, my Valencia, did that? I thought of all the money I made working for Grandma Betty, and how I had hoarded it away to buy a car.

No wonder Valencia could inspire Adrian to change his entire life path, I thought, lighting my fourth cigarette.

How had he explained these to Belinda, I wondered. An entire folder filled with clippings about two dead people.

Apparently she hadn’t been as snoopy as me.

I balanced my cigarette on the edge of a plate and continued sorting through the pile. Beneath the yellowing newspaper pages was a copy of the Border’s newsletter with the article about me. I hadn’t been expecting that there would be anything about me. There were other things in there I didn’t even remember, like an article I wrote in college about ways for students to save money around campus, and a picture of me in high school, winning an award for one of my clay pots.

Finding that there had been a focus, however minor, on me too, softened me a little.

Had it been interest in me, though? Or interest in Valencia’s sister?

They weren’t the same thing.

When there was nothing left to discover, when I had read and reread everything for the tenth time, I flushed the ashes and cigarette butts down the toilet, washed the plate, scrubbed my hands, coated them in flowery hand lotion, and brushed my teeth. I got a new manila envelope and shipping tape from the craft closet in the laundry room and after carefully replacing the contents of the envelope, I taped the new one neatly in place on the underside of the file drawer. Finally, I burned the one I had ripped open, carefully, over the kitchen sink, in little pieces as to not set off the smoke detector. I opened the windows and lit some candles to make up for the stench of cigarettes and melted tape. Frisky watched me and whined.

“Quiet, Frisky,” I hissed, nervous enough without his judgment weighing on me. He sank down on the floor and sighed.

That Adrian kept such a file right there, unlocked, in his studio, showed what a trusting fool he took me for.

I went back into the studio and took one more look around, making sure nothing was out of place. It was dark outside and Adrian would be back any time. I did not know when I might get another chance to be alone in there.

I went back to the file cabinet, opened the middle drawer, reassured myself that the folder looked exactly the same as when I had found it.

There is still hope, I told myself. You were in the envelope also.

Something was lingering in my mind, and I reopened the bottom drawer, the second drawer of inspirational artists. I thumbed my way to the back, to a blank, empty folder very near the end. It was the only empty folder I had come across in the whole cabinet.

Perhaps I could have convinced myself that Adrian had started out following the story of the twins, as anyone in his situation might have, and had gone on to stalk me in particular. Perhaps he had obsessed over me, seen something special, amazing, compelling in me. That would be thrilling. That would prove what we had was real, and I could forgive him. If he really loved me, it would raise us above these mistakes and sins.

But the thrill was marred by the placement of this empty file, a file I suspected had once housed the hidden manila envelope. It was carefully arranged between VAA (Visual Arts Alliance) and Siobhan Vam, precisely in the spot where one would file something he referred to, in his mind, as Valencia.

Chapter 62

A few days after Adrian’s trip to Jacksonville, Alexa called again. I had been hoping she would forget all about switching houses, and I’d thought we were safe when we hadn’t heard back from her. But as previous winters has proven, she would be unstoppable in her quest to escape the Midwest.

“Wouldn’t you like to come to Madison and see your old friends? You could eat some brats and drink some good beer. You could bike around the lake, or whatever you two do. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Adrian, wide awake and ready for a change of scenery.

It was easier to stay put. And as far as I could tell, a change of scenery was only a change of scenery. How was it going to fix anything?

“What do you think?” Adrian asked me.

“I don’t eat meat and I can’t drink beer. And it’s far too cold in Madison now to bike around the lake. Would she bike around the lake in November? Of course not.”

“There are other things to do there.”

“I don’t care.”

“We’re in,” Adrian told Alexa.

“Mind if I bring my new boyfriend? His name’s Glen,” Alexa asked.

“I don’t care,” Adrian said, moving away from me, hoping I hadn’t heard this.

I made a mental note to myself to lock my jewelry in the safe, but I continued looking blankly through the magazine in my lap, revealing nothing.

“Good, because I was going to bring him anyway,” she laughed. “What about your dog? Will we have to take care of him?”

“We’ll take Frisky to the kennel,” said Adrian. Frisky cocked his head to the side at the sound of his own name.

Adrian and Alexa decided we would make the switch the last two weeks of November.

Back in Wisconsin for the anniversary of the twins’ deaths, I noted to myself, benignly rubbing a perfume sample on my wrist.

When we arrived at Alexa’s there was a long note for us. I began reading it while Adrian brought in our luggage. First on her list: She had taken her cat with her; two weeks was too long to be away from him. I felt a small pang of sadness after reading this.

Second thing: Could we please not eat the organic pasta. The non-organic was fine, but if we ate the organic it would be really nice if we replaced it. I looked blankly at the stainless steel canisters on the countertop, unsure how to tell one kind of pasta from another.

Number three: New neighbors Benton and Sylvie next door are très cool! Please try to behave around them.

I crumpled up the list and threw it against the wall. I didn’t want to be here.

Adrian came in with the last bag and shut the door. “It’s nice to be back here, isn’t it?” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I like seasons.”

“I want a divorce.”

“Oh no. Not this again. Can’t you get some pregnancy drugs to cheer you up?”

“Adrian, you are way too rude.”

“So Alexa annoys you,” he said, picking up the crumpled list and disposing of it in the garbage. “She’s not here. Let’s just have a good time.”

“This is not about Alexa. Although I would love to never see her again. This is about you. About us. You married me out of guilt. Go find Belinda. In fact, I did you a favor: I already looked her up for you. She lives on East Wilson Street. She’s not remarried. Well, if she is, she didn’t take his name. Go find her. She’s the one you really wanted.”

It was true that I had looked up his ex-wife, but she was more of a curiosity to me than to Adrian. I had never feared that he cared for her anymore. Valencia was the one he really wanted, but that was too true for me to utter aloud. It was easier to focus on Belinda.

“I want you.”

“Right.”

“Is this how things are going to be for the rest of our lives?”

“Just the rest of our marriage,” I told him.

“You didn’t just say that.”

“Yes I did.”

“I’m going to do us both a favor before this gets even more out of control. I’m going for a walk.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I turned on the television, flipping through home renovation shows and sitcom reruns. Outside, through the slats of Alexa’s new wooden blinds, a gray sky hung over the city. It was a steely day, poised for snow to begin falling at any moment, and I did not envy Adrian being out in it. Snapped came on the television, and despite my aversion to it, I found myself mesmerized. I rubbed my belly and popped an M&M from a bowl on Alexa’s coffee table into my mouth. Since when did young, hip people start leaving bowls of candy around their homes? I reached for some more but stopped when I noticed a sprinkling of cat hair in the bowl.

I stood up and looked in the mirror, not examining my pores or searching for gray hairs, but just looking at myself. My face was puffy and bloated. Pregnancy did not make me glow like the books had promised it would. In the corner of my reflection, the commercial break ended and Snapped came back on. I sat back down, finding myself nodding along to the story of Barbara, a woman pushed to the brink, who had felt she was without options.

“I can relate,” I told the television, while I picked past the hairy M&Ms, down to the clean ones beneath.

Barbara had been a good girl. A cheerleader, a bank teller, a young mother. No one saw it coming.

The remote control was beside the candy bowl, and I fluctuated between the two, thinking that any moment I would change the channel and stop picking at the dusty candy, but I stayed on the low road, continuing to munch and watch Barbara’s unfolding demise.

“Stay pure,” I said aloud, munching. I was not sure if I was talking to Barbara or myself. I rubbed my belly again and popped another M&M into my mouth. “No matter how the world pushes at you, stay pure.”

“This must be the hormones talking,” said Adrian. I jumped and screamed, spilling the candy all over the floor.

“Adrian! God. You scared me.” I began picking up the M&M’s but he waved his hand at me.

“Sit down. I’ve got it.” He went to the closet by the door and came back with a vacuum cleaner. I sat perched on the couch while he noisily cleaned up the candy. When he was done he put the vacuum cleaner away and came back into the room, raising an eyebrow at the television and handing me the remote.

I changed the channel, settling on Fresh Start, a reality makeover show. It was one of those extreme package deals: new face, new boobs, new butt, new wardrobe, plus they would teach the contestant a skill she hadn’t had before.

“This is Mandy, and she is ready to Get a Fresh Start,” said the host. Mandy appeared, looking a little overweight, a little nervous, and very excited. I felt hopeful for her.

“That’s better,” said Adrian, sinking down beside me. He put his arm around me. “You feeling better?”

I closed my eyes.

“So, what do you want to do while we’re here?” he asked.

“Hmm. I’m not sure.”

“Have you thought about Thanksgiving?”

“No.”

“Have you called your parents to let them know we’re here?”

“Not yet.”

“I think she looked better before,” said Adrian, changing the channel to a program about volcanoes.

“I liked her new look,” I said, annoyed that I was not going to see whether she learned to cook, lasso, or be a court reporter. I ignored the volcano program, considering who I would like to be, if I were free to create a new life for myself. An extreme makeover of my own. The question was, Could I be that strong? I looked down at the M&Ms caught in the hem of my shirt, and I pulled a piece of cat hair from my lips. It was doubtful.

Chapter 63

I left the living room and lay down on Alexa’s bed. Before I knew it, I was dreaming.

I was driving down a red clay highway, and all around me peacocks flew, swooping down in front of me. I had my windshield wipers flapping on high speed to scare them away; it was impossible to see where I was going. I decided to look out the side window instead.

I leaned out the window like a dog, feeling the wind gushing against my face as the car propelled itself along. The mountains in the distance were made of tidy pyramids of stacked oranges, and from slices in the skin of the oranges blood oozed. The sky was brilliant blue. Far, far in the distance, where the orange mountains’ peaks met that brilliant sky, was heaven.

The next thing I knew, I was up in the mountains, standing on the oranges. They were so large, or I was so small, that each pebbly bit of texture on the orange was like a bump the size of a fist.

Valencia was there: Living, breathing, real. I was younger than her, as I will always be. Despite that she was acting like her usual self, I sensed that her presence was a rare, special gift. I ached to touch her and be again, in a world with her in it. The jaded, weary version of myself from real life was leaking into the dream, semi-aware this was a fleeting, temporary encounter. I kept trying to hug her and she kept moving away from me. Longing and desperate, I was ruining it for my innocent self.

“Let’s play tennis,” she said. I noticed she was holding a tennis racquet.

“Sure. Do you have another racquet?”

“Didn’t you bring yours?”

“I forgot.”

“You can use mine.”

“But then you won’t have one.”

“I can find another.”

“Valencia, I miss you,” I told her, but she didn’t understand; she didn’t know she was dead. “Adrian could have saved you,” I told her, weeping now, out of control. She didn’t understand why I was crying.

“Saved me? Trust me, I’m fine.”

“Where’s Van?” I asked her.

“He’s in school.”

“If you keep sleeping now, you’ll be up all night,” said a voice. And before I completely came out of the dream I was caught in that space of still being in the dream, but knowing it’s a dream. Immediately followed by familiar, crushing disappointment. Dreams are the only portal to connect the living with the dead, and it is increasingly rare that they take me there. When they do it’s better than traveling anywhere on Earth.

Chapter 64

I opened my eyes to Adrian leaning over me.

“Mind if I sit down?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He sat down beside me and ran his hand through my hair. His fingers smelled of cigarettes. I buried my face in the pillow, trying to recapture the feeling of the dream, unable to do so.

He didn’t say anything; he just ran his fingers through my hair, over and over.

“I don’t think I will have any trouble sleeping tonight,” I said finally.

“How is the baby?” he asked, placing his hand on my stomach. At that, I felt my walls crumbling. I held my breath, trying to keep it back, but I couldn’t do it; I began to cry. Adrian leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me tightly, his lips at my ear. He was crying too. He rarely cried and when he did it broke my heart. I couldn’t help it: I turned and put my arms around him, and the two of us lay holding each other in the dark.

“I know you love me,” he said. “I don’t know why you can’t just let things be.”

I did not respond. He pushed my wet hair out of my face and forced me to look into his eyes. The darkness, the hot tears, the foreignness of Alexa’s bedroom, all felt like earlier times we’d had. I was transported back to my twenties again, to the passion and drama that I had once embraced instead of shunned. I felt his power over me.

“I love you so much,” he said. “I need you.”

Which way are you going to go? I asked myself.

I closed my eyes because I never could think when he was looking at me.

I love you too. I need you too, I thought.

But I was as strong as I could be. I didn’t say a word.

Chapter 65

The next day Adrian got up early and drove to Chicago to meet with a client, and I came up with a plan: I was going away. I was really going to do it.

I decided that January 1, 2008 would be the day I started over. That gave me a month and a half to get everything in order. Not much time. As soon as he left I sat down at the computer and started looking at motorhomes. I needed to find one near Savannah, so it would be ready when I got back.

After just an hour I stumbled upon the perfect one. Big enough to live in, but not so large that it would be scary to drive. I called the telephone number and told the owners I would buy it. I knew I needed to act fast: Adrian would be home by late afternoon and I had a lot of work to do.

“Leave it unlocked. I have a friend who will be coming to do some work to it,” I said.

“It don’t need no work, Sugar,” said the lady on the end of the line.

“Oh, I just have a couple little changes in mind,” I told her.

Then I phoned Bruce Dash Design. They are miracle workers. Every year they win the Best of Savannah Award.

“I want Bruce. Not some assistant,” I told the girl who answered. For what would likely be the last time in my life, I said, “Money is no object.”

Bruce suggested Provincial blue walls and cream-colored Irish linen on the little bed.

“When can we meet to look at fabric swatches?” he asked me.

“I’m out of town, so you will have to go crazy without me. The sky’s the limit, Bruce! I want it to feel like a tiny palace on wheels. Just be sure there is room for a baby and plenty of oranges.” To emphasize my point, I sent him ten thousand dollars via Paypal as we spoke. I felt very, very out of control. How would I explain this missing chunk of money to Adrian? A Christmas present he would have to just trust me and wait for? My heart was racing so badly I was afraid I would have a heart attack.

“Oranges?”

“Yes, we will be going on a little road trip, and we will be selling oranges to finance the trip. Please do keep this all to yourself,” I warned him, feeling as crazy as I sounded.

He suggested I get a refrigerated trailer for the oranges, to preserve the precious, limited room in the motorhome. I agreed that was an excellent idea and asked him to arrange it.

“Of course,” he said, expertly hiding his miffed feelings, treating me like the royalty that sharing Adrian’s name still afforded me. Every suggestion he presented, I agreed to. Before ending the call, I again swore him to secrecy, telling him the palace on wheels was an anniversary present for Adrian.

As he described the drawer pulls he had in mind, when I thought our conversation should have already wrapped up at least five times, I removed my wedding band and placed it on one of Alexa’s modern, crystal trays. My story when Adrian asked why I was not wearing it would be that my fingers were becoming too swollen to comfortably keep it on any longer. I felt a bit hollow, realizing I would never again feel its platinum weight on my finger.

When we returned to Savannah in a couple of weeks, everything would be all set for me. The glossy, weatherproof stickers that said GEORGIA’S BEST CITRUS FRUIT would be ready to be picked up from the printers and all the baby clothes I ordered from France would be waiting for me.

Now I just needed to carry on as if everything was the same as usual.

Chapter 66

The trouble with being back in Wisconsin was that it reminded me of when Adrian and I started seeing each other. All it took was one little stroll down Willy Street and a latte at Mother Fool’s to make me doubt my plan. I realized I had to get out of Madison, because it was making me want to stay with Adrian far too much.

“Let’s go to your family get-together a day early, if your Aunt and Uncle won’t mind us spending an extra day with them,” I told him.

“Seriously?”

“Yes!” I figured that if there was anything that would make me glad I was leaving, it would be spending time with my in-laws.

On the Friday morning following Thanksgiving, having successfully navigated the previous days’ Royal Tennenbaumness of Adrian’s family, made easier by Alexa’s absence, we were driving from Iowa up to my parents’ house. Adrian was under the impression that everything between us was fine. He had his entire collection of John Denver CDs spread out on his lap, and he was singing along to his favorites. He kept looking at me and smiling for no reason. My phone was turned off because Bruce Dash and company kept calling with design emergencies.

“Are you ready for some more green bean casserole, Mountain Momma?” he asked, giving my knee a squeeze.

“Sure.”

“Do you like the kind with crispy onions on top or slivered almonds?”

“Both are great.”

“That’s what I think,” he said, nodding and beaming.

Today marked the twenty-first anniversary of Van and Valencia’s deaths. Twenty-one years. The time it took to go from being born to sitting in Paul’s Club with Dannon and Luna all those years ago, toasting to adulthood. I’d lived two thirds of my life without Van and Valencia. Yet a day had never passed without me thinking of them.

“Your dress looks nice,” said Adrian.

“Thanks.” I had sewn it by hand. It was pearl grey with rich gold trim in a four inch band along the bottom. It came just above my knees. I wore deep grey tights and boots with it. The combination of Alexa’s fashion magazines and my addiction to Cut-Throat Couture reruns was turning me into a mad designer. I had cut my hair into a short, swingy bob with choppy layers. Adrian was oblivious to the cliché of a new haircut meaning a woman is starting over.

“What have Roger and Patricia got to say about becoming grandparents?” asked Adrian.

“They haven’t said much. Not many things interest them.”

At Adrian’s aunt and uncle’s house in Cedar Rapids the night before, his family had bombarded us with presents. New clothes, old clothes that had been Adrian’s and Alexa’s, an antique christening gown, passed down over several generations. The backseat was filled with boxes of heirlooms that Adrian was eager to sift through with me. Most women would love to have a man who was so excited to become a father. It was all right here, in front of me, for the taking. I began to suspect that I would never be selling oranges from a trailer.

“Would you mind if I drove awhile?” I asked. Our policy had always been that the driver chooses the music, and John Denver had to go.

“That would be good. I could use a little nap. We can switch at the next exit,” said Adrian.

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I have always meant to ask you, what’s the story with that treehouse in your parents’ backyard?” Adrian asked.

“Story? There is no story. What made you think of that?”

He pointed to a farm up ahead with a big treehouse high in the wide branches of an old oak tree. I looked at it, and craned my neck to continue looking as we went past. The treehouse was old and droopy. Nowadays everyone has sturdy, easy-to-assemble play structures instead.

“There is a story,” I admitted. “It was for my brother and sister. I wasn’t allowed up there much. Even when they got sick of it, it was still their territory. After they went to college I went up there a little, but I felt like I had to be sneaky. It was the kind of thing that would have made my parents mad. When they died my dad cut down the rope ladder so I couldn’t get in. What an asshole. Now I think it’s starting to rot. There was a hole in the roof where the water was getting in and wrecking it.”

“Oh,” said Adrian. “What a rotten treehouse.”

“Yes,” I said. “Rotten in every way.”

“Rotten as the day is long.”

“Rotten, rotten, rotten!”

We both began to laugh. Adrian kept going until he had tears in his eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time we had laughed like that together.

He reached over and took my hand, and kissed it, then held it to his face. His thumb rubbed my knuckle and the spot where my wedding ring had been for the last many years. He drew in a breath, and I thought for a second that he was going to pass judgment on my naked, non-puffy fingers, but he exhaled and kissed my hand again. I bit my lip and looked away, out to the Midwest cornfields and farms, cold and serious, so different from Savannah.

“An exit is coming up,” I reminded him.

He set my hand back in my lap and nodded. “I could use a break,” he said, his eyes weary, his face, a moment earlier laughing, now the face of a tired, middle-aged man.

Chapter 67

Welcome to Stewartville. The Future is Bright! promised the sign by the highway. It was a peeling, weathered statement against the bleak, slategray sky.

Adrian pulled into a gas station and got out to stretch his legs while I went inside to use the restroom. There was a line outside the ladies’ room, so I went over to the magazines, hoping to find something I hadn’t already seen at Alexa’s, something I could take along to my parents’ house. Of course there was nothing but tabloids and the local paper. I glanced over at the line by the restroom door, but it hadn’t budged.

Something propelled me to I pick up the Stewartville Star and flip through it. I stood there, tired and devoting only a small bit of my attention to the smalltown stories: A local hairdresser was retiring. A new restaurant was opening in town. Two couples, lifelong friends, had taken an Alaskan cruise to celebrate their fiftieth anniversaries. Pages four and five were devoted to school events and sports. 2007 Winter Formal Court Chosen read the headline on page five. December 1 to be One Enchanted Evening the subhead added, an unprofessionally curly typestyle emphasizing the specialness, the youthfulness, of such an evening.

I examined the students’ faces, momentarily transported back to my own unpopular high school years, that jealous, lonely time. There were ten or twelve couples, some sitting on bleachers, some standing, all with healthy, wholesome smiles. One girl in particular caught my eye, made me catch my breath. She was tall and beautiful with that particular grace I had only ever known one other person to hold: Valencia.

I squinted at the smeary black and white photo, then looked over at the bathroom line again. Finally no one was waiting. My bladder was ready to burst so I shoved the paper back where it had been and hurried over. The door was locked.

“Just a minute,” yelled the old woman inside.

From where I stood I could see the car. Adrian was in the passenger seat, asleep, his head pressed against the steamy window.

Just use the men’s room, I told myself. I peered inside and saw the seat was covered with urine. So I continued to wait outside the ladies’ room. Minutes ticked by. Finally I couldn’t help myself.

“Are you okay in there, ma’am?”

No answer.

“Ma’am?” I knocked on the door.

“Just a minute, dammit!” she yelled again.

I went back to the magazine rack and picked up the paper again. I flipped to page five to reexamine the photo, to decipher that mystique I thought I’d seen. There she was; I hadn’t been imagining it.

I looked beneath the photo to see her name. What if her name is Valencia? I mused. What if, somehow, I have gone back in time? But it was definitely 2007. The headline said so.

I skimmed through the names of students on court, keeping one eye on the bathroom door. Then I found her, and I nearly, literally, wet my pants. Elliott Johnson to escort Coral McCray.

I looked up at the photo of the students, making sure I was matching the correct name to Valencia’s doppelganger. Yes, this name went with this face.

I closed my eyes, thinking I might be dreaming, but when I reopened them I was still me, still standing in a gas station, the smell of hotdogs all around me. I shoved the paper back in its slot and grabbed the one beneath it, irrationally thinking the photo might be clearer. It was the same. This girl still had Valencia’s face, and more than that, she had Valencia’s presence. I could feel it. And her name was still Coral McCray.

Coral. McCray. Straight from the pages of one of Valencia’s high school notebooks.

Chapter 68

“What took you so long?” asked Adrian, when I got back in the car.

“Sorry, there was a line. Shh, you just go to sleep while I drive.”

I put in an old Tori Amos CD to keep him from initiating a conversation and pulled back out onto the highway. Soon the sound of his quiet snoring drowned out the music and I felt like I could try to think. The newspaper was in my bag. My heart was racing, my head was spinning. I shook my head, laughing silently, shaking all over. I felt tingly with adrenaline. I was thrilled, giddy even, from the rare, elusive shock of a positive surprise. How often in life are we shocked in a good way? Once a year? Once a decade? At a certain point, maybe age forty or fifty, it may never happen again.

“What’s the matter with you? Are you alright?” Adrian asked suddenly.

“What? Sorry, I just…” I looked at him. He was squinting at me, looking a little scared, a little irritated. I wanted to tell him so badly, yet I wanted him to never find out. “I was just remembering something funny,” I said. It was the kind of answer that should have been completely dissatisfying, considering how I was behaving.

“Oh.” He relaxed and closed his eyes again.

I was glad he didn’t care. A moment passed and he was snoring again, fogging up his window, leaving me alone.

I drew in a deep breath.

Back to the paper. Back to the photo. Back to Coral McCray.

Proof of life after death.

Proof of life.

I should have felt nothing but betrayal and disgust. What kind of person disappears, leaving us all to assume she is dead? Even if she was able to abandon our parents, how could she have abandoned me? I loved her more than anyone in the world. How could she have let me ache for over twenty years? She knew I had nothing. I was just a child when she left me. I was so terribly alone.

I should have hated her. I should have been sick with anger. Or numb, empty of any emotion for her.

But I was none of those things. Instead I was elated. Ecstatic. Thrilled.

The world, flat and barren for so long, filled with color and sprang into the shape of a perfect sphere. Dead ends to questions that had been hanging like webs for my whole life connected to obvious, clear meanings. New questions flooded my brain, but in a pink lemonade rush of excitement. No longer the slow trudge sludge of problems that can never be solved.

Then I did something completely foreign to me. I didn’t even see it coming.

“Thank you, God,” I whispered.

Adrian kept snoring beside me.

Chapter 69

“Wake up, Adrian. We’re here,” I said.

People were standing at my parents’ front window, watching us drive in. The driveway was filled with cars. My long-lost cousin BobbieMae had also just arrived. I hadn’t seen her for years. The man who must be her husband lifted a crying baby from its car seat. They pretended not to notice us parking, getting out, removing bottles of wine from the trunk, walking towards them. They hurried up the front steps and rang the doorbell.

Some small child I did not recognize answered the door and then dashed away, leaving it wide open. BobbieMae and her family disappeared inside, closing the door behind them, even though we were just a few steps behind. All the reasons I hated being here were quickly coming back to me, not that I had ever forgotten. Adrian’s hands were full since he was carrying the wine, so I reached out to open the door. It was locked.

“Jesus Christ,” said Adrian.

I rang the doorbell and waited. Adrian shifted the weight of wine from one hip to the other.  No one came.

“Ring it again,” he said, so I did.

Finally my mother appeared, looking about a hundred years old, wiping her hands on one of those old house aprons that is so old it’s back in style. They sell them for fifty dollars at places like Anthropologie.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, stepping forward to give her a hug. She stepped back.

“I don’t want to get your fancy dress covered in gravy,” she whined. “What are you doing ringing the doorbell? I had my hands full in the kitchen. Nice to see you, Adrian.”

“Hello Patricia. Nice to see you, too.”

“The door was locked,” I told her.

“Why would the door be locked?” She shook her head at the silliness of it.

“Here,” Adrian said, showing her the crate of wine. “We brought a nice mix of some of our favorites for you.”

“Well, I don’t know a chardonnay from a cabernet, so it’s all the same to me. You’ll have to teach me what’s good.” Wink, wink. It was nice to see she had not lost her flirty spark.

I waited for her to make some comment, good or evil, about how pregnant I was. Instead she turned around and bustled back to the kitchen, singing, “I better take a look at how Mr. Turkey is doing!”

I turned to Adrian. “May I take your coat?”

“Sure.” He set down the wine and took off his coat and scarf. I went to my old bedroom, now an office, and set our coats on the chair. It was freezing in there. I closed the door and exhaled, surprised I didn’t see my breath. There was new carpet, new beige walls, new drapes. Nothing about it was anything like it used to be. It looked so small and tidy. I opened the closet door and looked inside. It was filled with my parents’ summer clothes.

Someone was knocking at the door, so I answered it.

“What are you doing in here?” asked Adrian. “Don’t leave me out there with those people.”

“Come in and shut the door,” I said.

“We can’t hide in here the whole time.”

“I know that. I only want to hide in here for a few minutes. This used to be my room, you know.”

“Uh-huh. It’s nice. Twenty degrees below zero in here, but really nice.”

“There is nothing in here to show it used to be mine. It’s like I’ve been completely erased.”

“Parents do that when their kids grow up.”

“I know. Well some don’t. Some leave a reminder here or there.”

“True.” He picked up his scarf and wrapped it around his neck.

“So what was it like,” I asked him, “the first time you ever came here? The first time you saw pictures of Van and Valencia hanging on our walls, and thought ‘I’m in their house’? How did it feel?”

He shook his head at my crassness.

“Remember when I showed you the juice glass that Valencia always used, and I was sad. That had so much more meaning to you than I knew.”

He removed his scarf and set it back on his coat, making a move for the door.

“Tell me,” I said. “I want to hear it in your words.”

The door swung open.

“Oh, hi,” said BobbieMae. “Farnie is going to play in here.” The little boy I’d seen when we arrived came in and dumped a bucket of Legos on the floor.

“Come on,” said Adrian, reaching for my hand, always able to snap right back to normalcy. “Let’s get out of here and go mingle.”

“My room,” said Farnie, slamming the door after us.

We stood in the kitchen, awkwardly, munching on pickle spears. My mother and grandmother insisted there was nothing we could do to help. I felt big and very much in the way.

“Whose little boy is that?” I asked.

“That’s Farnsworth. He’s Beatrice’s grandson,” said my aunt Louise.

I had no idea who Beatrice was. I nodded my head, desperate for the time when I could get smashingly drunk again. I noticed Adrian pouring himself a Gatorade-sized serving of thirty-dollar merlot and I gave him a dirty look. He ignored me, throwing back his head and downing it as if it were a shot of tequila.

I took a ginger ale from the cooler on the floor and sat down on one of the old, tippy stools at the breakfast bar.

“No fancy wine for you?” asked Aunt Louise.

“She’s drinking for two,” my mother quipped. So she hadn’t forgotten.

“Oh, that’s what I heard. In my day you could drink wine. I don’t know why they changed that. When are you due?”

“March,” I said.

“You’re big already!”

“I guess,” I said.

“Boy or girl?”

“We want to be surprised,” I said.

I watched Adrian refill his glass. He was drinking for two as well.

“Now why would you want to be surprised? How can you buy what you need if you don’t know what you’re going to have?” said BobbieMae. Her baby was decked out in Green Bay Packer gear. I could not have said whether it was a boy or a girl.

“Sometimes it’s fun to be surprised,” I said. “Oh, look at that,” I added, feigning interest in some squirrels playing in the yard.

Then Adrian made things much worse. “What we are doing,” he said, “is buying clothes for boys and clothes for girls. So no matter which one we have, we’ve got it covered.” This made sense to him, and it had made sense to his family. But mine would see it as worse than wastefulness. They would see it as rampant indulgence.

Quickly I added, “And we will save what we don’t use for next time.”

It was too late.

“You have gotten very spoiled,” sniffed my mother.

“I heard you couldn’t even have babies. No offense,” said BobbieMae.

“I heard that too,” said Aunt Louise. “Did you do in vitro?”

“What ever happened to that car you had with that pro-choice bumper sticker on the back?” asked my dad. “Little foreign car. Was that a Renault?”

“In vitro costs a fortune!” said my mother, checking the turkey and letting the oven door slam shut for the hundredth time.

“Who said we couldn’t have babies?” I asked.

“You’ve been married for years,” said my mother.

“What if your next baby is the same sex?” asked my Uncle Dave. We all blushed when he said “sex.” He was an uncle by marriage and had never quite gotten the rules.

“This really isn’t something for everyone to get all worked up about, please,” I said.

“Who’s getting worked up?” asked my mother.

“Did we mention we have to drive back tonight? Ugh, that cat of Alexa’s needs its diabetes shot,” blabbed Adrian. His story came out of nowhere and everyone knew it was a lie. “Without its shot, it’s toast.”

“Who is this Alexis he’s always talking about?” asked my grandmother in a stage whisper.

I went into the living room and sat down beside my grandfather who was asleep on the couch. It’s a Wonderful Life was playing. Adrian stayed in the kitchen next to the alcohol, telling stories and lies.

Half an hour later my mother yelled, “Dinner is served,” so I pushed myself up and went into the dining room. Adrian was already sitting at the table.

“I saved you a place,” he said, rubbing the pheasant print chair pad beside him.

“Everyone tell what you’re thankful for,” said Aunt Louise. Oh no. The worst part of Thanksgiving. “Patricia, we’re at your house, so you start.”

My mother smiled. She had a remnant of a pickle covering one of her front teeth. I took a sip of ginger ale and looked away.

“I’m thankful that we’re all here today. I’m thankful for this big old bird… I’m thankful I got a two thirty-seven the other night, which put the Lucky Lady Strikes into the statewide bowling tournament in March…” Everyone clapped and cheered when she said that. “And last but not least, I’m thankful that I’m going to be a grandmother. I just hope that baby doesn’t show up when I’m at my tournament,” she added, pretending she was kidding, but clearly serious. Followed by lesser claps and a few chuckles.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said softly.

She ignored me. “Your turn, Dave,” she said to my uncle who was seated beside her. I couldn’t bear a whole table of this. Perhaps God would come through twice in one day, to make up for lost time. Please, God, intervene, I silently begged.

“I smell smoke,” yelled Farnie, alone in the kitchen, sitting at my old Playskool desk with a plate of corn in front of him.

Sure enough, above our heads, ribbons of faint white smoke were streaming through the air.

“Why isn’t the alarm going off?” asked my mother. If there was no alarm, there could be no fire. “When did you last check the batteries in the smoke alarm, Roger?” she yelled at my dad. He didn’t say anything.

“You’re stove is burning,” called Farnie.

“Everybody outside!” yelled my mother.

“I‘ll grab the wine. You get our coats,” said Adrian.

“Forget the wine,” I said.

He ignored me, dashing off to find the wine. “Don’t forget my scarf. It’s cashmere,” he called.

“Everyone outside. Now!” yelled my mother.

Adrian and I met outside, where he carefully nestled the wine into a snug spot in the trunk of our car. “There you go,” he said, patting a picnic blanket against it with care. “Leaving it here would be wasting it,” he explained with a shrug, catching my look of disgust.

We stood back at the end of the driveway, watching the chaos unfold.

“Move your car,” my dad yelled at us. “Make way for the fire trucks.”

I got in the driver’s seat and Adrian got in beside me. We meant to just move the car a little farther down the block, but the street was packed with cars. It seemed all the neighbors were hosting Thanksgiving this year. We just kept circling the block, unable to find a place to park. Snow began to fall and we heard the fire trucks on their way.

“Do you think they’d even miss us?” asked Adrian.

“They might notice if we never come back, but I don’t think they will miss us,” I said. So we left Hudson and my family behind us, and headed back to Madison.

Chapter 70

We stopped for the night in Eau Claire. Adrian passed out in the bathroom and I took the newspaper out of my purse. It was imperative that I be at that dance. I had to see Valencia. She undoubtedly would be there to see her daughter on court. Adrian and I were supposed to be arriving back in Savannah on the first of December. I would just have to tell him I needed some more time. Some time to myself.

I folded the newspaper, tucked it inside a magazine, and put it back in my oversized shoulder bag. The drama of the past several hours slipped away and a feeling of hope and purpose filled me. I took some faux cucumber slices from my makeup bag and pressed them to my eyelids as I reclined on the bed. The second I did so my cell phone went off. I removed the slices and looked at the number. It was my mother.

“Hello.”

“Where are you?”

“Umm, on our way home. We’re kind of by Baraboo now,” I lied, putting enough distance between us that she hopefully would not ask us to return.

“I can’t believe the two of you just left us like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.

“Our house has smoke and water damage. We need to stay with you.”

“Okay. Tonight do you mean?”

“Tonight we’re going to stay at the hotel with Aunt Louise and Uncle Dave, but first thing tomorrow we’ll be on our way to Madison. Roger, get directions from them,” she said, and then my father came on the line.

“I don’t know how to find my way around Madison, so you’re going to have to meet us at the Country Kitchen. Let’s say ten o’clock. I’ve got to take care of Patricia. Give me a call in the morning.”

“Dad?” I said, but he was gone.

Adrian had dragged himself out of the bathroom. He collapsed on the bed beside me. “What was that all about?”

“They’re coming to stay with us.”

“No way. Right now? Here, in this hotel?”

“Tomorrow morning. In Madison.”

“Is everyone alright?”

“Yes. But the house has smoke and water damage.”

“How long do they want to stay?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Call them back and find out,” he said.

“No!”

“I guess we’re going to have to get home really early now,” said Adrian.

“Oh no, Adrian!” I gasped.

“What?”

“We need to get a cat!”

“And where are we going to find one on this short notice that is diabetic?” he added.

“I’m going to sleep,” I told him. I got under the covers and stuck the cucumbers back on my eyelids, and before I knew it, morning had arrived.

Chapter 71

When we arrived at the Country Kitchen on the east side of town, my parents were already waiting for us. They were in my mother’s big, tan Buick. It was stuffed full of clothes, pictures, whatever they had been able to grab.

They did not jump out and rush over, as I had feared they would, throwing their arms around us and sobbing. They appeared to have calmed down considerably. They walked over to the door of Country Kitchen and my father held it open for us as my mother went inside.

“Table for four,” she said, holding up four fingers and scowling.

“How are you?” I asked them.

“How do you think,” said my mother.

I decided to cut right to the chase as soon as we were seated. “You’ll only be able to stay with us for a couple of days, I’m afraid,” I glanced at Adrian, “because Alexa will be back soon and then we’ll be returning to Savannah. I hope you understand.”

My mother gave my father an “I told you so” look, but was instantly distracted by a waitress bustling past. “Miss! Hello, you!” She tapped the table with the stacks of Avon rings on her knuckles. Her other hand slapped her thigh. I closed my eyes in dismal embarrassment as she called, “Miss. Miss. Yes, you. Bring a pitcher of water to the table.”

“I hope you aren’t allergic to the kitty,” Adrian said. We had already purchased a cat to back up our story of needing to rush home to care for it.

“Ugh. I hate cats. But I will manage,” said my mother.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked my parents.

“The insurance company will handle it,” said my mother.

“And they’ll put you up in a hotel, right?” I asked.

“I suppose they’ll have to.”

“It will be okay,” said Adrian.

My parents were silent. My mother glared at my father while he looked down at the table. I thought of my tiny home on wheels that Bruce Dash was perfecting, and momentarily considered offering it to my parents. I sipped my water instead to keep my mouth from saying anything it should not say.

“What can I get for you folks?” asked the waitress.

“I will have one of those mocha cappuccino drinks if you’ve got it, two eggs, over easy, uh, white toast, easy on the butter, a couple of pancakes, make them blueberry, two strips of bacon, two sausage links, and some cheesy hash browns,” said my mother.

“Two scrambled eggs, white toast, and orange juice,” said my dad.

“Same for me,” Adrian and I said in unison.

“Oh, thanks. You’re making me feel like a pig,” said my mother.

“How long do you think it will take to get the house fixed up again?” I asked them.

“Months. Months,” said my mother.

“It might not be that bad,” said my dad. “The kitchen has some smoke and water damage, but the rest of the house isn’t too bad. I’ve got to say, though, it smells like smoke.”

“I am too old to go through something like this,” my mom said loudly, impassioned, like someone on stage. People at neighboring tables looked over at her.

The waitress set down the mocha before my mother. It was topped with half a can of whipped cream and plenty of sprinkles.

“Mmm, delish,” said my mom, sucking off the spoon, her mood instantly brightening. “I could get used to this!”

Chapter 72

After a contentious Scrabble-filled night, followed by the discovery the next morning that all the bars of French-milled soap had gone missing from the bathrooms, Adrian and I drove my parents to Timber Oaks Carefree Living for Seniors and rented an apartment for them. We were able to talk the leasing agent into signing them for just a three-month lease. Adrian wrote out the check while my parents thumbed through the health club brochure. My mother quickly forgot that she was in turmoil once she saw their new home.

“Look at this Jacuzzi bathtub!” she squealed during the tour.

My father was no better. “Underground heated parking for both of us? Patricia, we gotta get back up to Hudson and bring my truck down here.”

“This refrigerator has an ice maker,” said my mother, pressing the lever and watching ice spew out onto the floor.

“Careful where you step,” the leasing agent said politely to the rest of us, as if my mother had not just caused it.

“I’ve been wondering, but forgot to ask,” said my father, turning the remote controlled fireplace off and on, “why is it that your cat is black, but everywhere you look around what’s her name’s house, there’s white hair?”

“Alexa. Her name is Alexa,” I said.

“That’s what happens to cat hair when it falls out,” said Adrian. “It turns white.”

The leasing consultant opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again and smiled, wisely making the decision to stay uninvolved.

“Oh yeah, I knew that,” said my dad, nodding thoughtfully.

“Everybody knows that,” said my mother.

Chapter 73

“Are they really gone?” asked Adrian.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, I hope so.”

It was amazing how they had totaled Alexa’s house in just one day. We had just gotten back from returning the cat to the pet store. It had been sadder than I had anticipated and my head was throbbing from crying.

“It’s Saturday night. Do you want to go to a movie?” Adrian asked.

“Sure, we could do that. But first, I have to talk to you now that I finally have the chance.”

“What’s up?” He began rubbing my feet. I moved them out of reach.

“I was wondering if you would mind if I stayed a couple extra days here. Alone. You could have a little time in Savannah with your sister, and I could have a little time to myself. I really, really need it.”

“Sure. I’ll ask Alexa to make sure she doesn’t mind. When do you want me to move your return flight to?”

“How about Monday the third?” I asked, shocked at how easy Adrian was making it for me.

“Consider it done,” he said.

“Thank you.” I got up and gave him a hug. I looked into his eyes.

“Why do you look so sad?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Thank you for helping my parents.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” I said, touching his face, feeling sick and disloyal and ashamed of myself.

“I’m glad that we’re in a position where it’s so easy to help them. It’s just money. Anyway, the insurance company will reimburse us at some point.”

“Everything could have been a lot different for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything. Your whole life. Who knows what you would be like, or where you would have ended up.”

“What are you saying?”

“I mean, that night, Adrian. If that night hadn’t happened, or if you had not been with, your life would be better, too.”

“Play the hand you’re dealt,” he said with a big, mopey shrug. It was a very Sam-my-ex-boyfriend-moment. This sealed my emotions right back closed. The only worse response would have been “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” I pulled my hand away from his face.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” he asked.

“Will you be honest with me about something?” I asked.

“I’m always honest,” he said.

“Adrian! That’s a lie.”

“I will answer your question honestly, I swear.”

I drew in my breath. There was no correct answer. It was the Salem Witch Trials all over again. If he floated, he was guilty; if he drowned he was innocent. They wiser thing would have been to have left it alone. It would have been better for both of us. We should be going out to a movie as he had suggested, and all of this should be left alone. Forever.

If only I could.

“That night is the only reason we’re together. I mean, of course it is. Right, Adrian?”

He looked at me and his face had a strange expression I did not know. He did not answer.

“We would never have gotten together if that hadn’t happened. Right? …Say something.”

His eyes lost their emotion and became very cold. Soulless eyes I did not know or like. I wondered if he was covering his feelings, or finally revealing them to me. I sensed that he was finally going to tell me the truth.

“No. I mean, it’s possible, anything’s possible, but probably not.”

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that,” I said.

“Should I have lied?”

“No. I knew the truth. It’s nice to hear it from you, actually.”

“Do you think it means I don’t love you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think that all the time.”

“I don’t know what else I can do. I am getting really tired of trying to convince you that I love you. You’re my wife, I married you, you’re having my baby.” He left it at that, with the unspoken weight of what he had done to John Spade hanging between us.

“What if Valencia hadn’t been pretty?” I said. “What if she had just been your average, boring, teenage girl? Would you have gone to these lengths to find her little sister and take care of her? What it always comes back to is that you love Valencia’s little sister, and I happen to be her. Forgive me if I wanted a love of my own, about me.”

He just looked at me. He had that glazed over look that meant he really did not understand the importance of our conversation. I’m bored with this. Just be happy again, said the look. If he truly wanted to be with me, he was misjudging the importance of our conversation.

“Didn’t you want a real love, too? Why are you devoting your life to taking care of me? It’s not going to deliver Valencia to you in the afterlife.”

“Play the hand you’re dealt,” he said again, and shrugged, again.

“You weren’t exactly dealt me. You were perfectly happy with Belinda.”

He laughed. “No I wasn’t. What can I say, I felt connected to you. That night was a life-changing event. I didn’t get over it. It gave you and me something in common, something huge. It connected us.”

“What would you do if she was still alive? Would you find her, tell her that you’re sorry, make it up to her?”

“I don’t even remember what she looked like,” he said.

“Right.”

“I don’t! That was twenty some years ago. I’ve gotten over it. You need to get over it too.”

“You just said you got with me because you weren’t over it! And now you’re telling me to get over it? That makes a lot of sense.”

“I wasn’t over it then, but I am over it now.”

“Everything you’re saying is contradicting everything else. I’m asking you a serious question. Don’t you want a life that’s real?”

“What do you mean real? Our life is real. And the accident with your sister is in the past. You and I are about to have a baby. I’ve gotten over all of that and I’m living in the present. The present. You should let it go too, and join me here.”

I nodded, as if I agreed.

“So do you want to go to a movie?” asked Adrian.

“Sure. Why not,” I said. It was at least a way to avoid talking to him any longer.

“Good,” he said, patting me on the shoulder and going off to find the car keys.

“Give me a minute,” I said, and locked myself in the bathroom under the guise of putting on makeup. I glared at myself in the mirror, painting my lips a resentful shade of crimson. I could not stop the angry pep talk going on inside my head: Stop relying on this fake marriage, stay on track, keep focused on shedding your dirty skin and starting over.

“We’d better go now, if we’re going to do this,” Adrian said, knocking on the bathroom door.

I came out, brushing my hair, avoiding looking into his eyes.

“You look very pretty,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder and giving me a squeeze.

“Stop being nice to me, please,” I whispered.

“I like being nice to you,” he said.

If psychics and private investigators had not been able to help me, perhaps a psychiatrist could, I considered. But I could never tell anyone what Adrian had done. So I was on my own. I put on my coat, ready to lose myself in two hours of someone else’s life.

“I’m thinking popcorn. If there’s time,” said Adrian, obliviously smiling, having disregarded our entire conversation.

Chapter 74

I took Adrian to the airport early on the morning of the first. A huge snowstorm was coming in, so I hurried back to Alexa’s to pack an overnight bag and get on the road before it started coming down. Stewartville was three and a half hours from Madison. As long as the roads weren’t too slippery, that gave me ample time to get there, find a hotel, and maybe even find where Valencia lived. Then I would need a few hours to get ready. I wanted to look perfect. I flew around Alexa’s house, my adrenaline pumping, throwing the things I would need onto the bed. This is the biggest day of my life, I sang over and over in my head.

What would she look like? What was I going to say? Should I approach her? Should I just stand in the background and keep myself hidden? Would she recognize me? Did she miss me as much as I missed her? What had John Spade done to her? How had she gotten away from him? Why hadn’t she wanted us in her life? There were so many things I needed to ask her.

By nine thirty I was on my way. I turned out of Alexa’s driveway, onto glare ice and nearly slid into a truck parked along the side of the street. I yanked off my gloves with my teeth so I could get a better grasp of the steering wheel. I was in her car, so I was going to have to be extra careful.

The roads were atrocious. I was actually having second thoughts. When I got onto Interstate 90, it was even worse. Traffic was trudging along at about thirty miles per hour. Every mile or so was another car that had slid off the road.

I had the newspaper on the passenger seat beside me, to help keep me focused. The picture of Coral, my niece, motivated me along.

I arrived in La Crosse a little before two o’clock and stopped at Subway for some chips and a soda. I was over halfway there. Once I got back in the car, I would cross over into Minnesota.

My cell phone rang while I stood in line to buy a cookie. It was Adrian.

“Hi. Are you back home yet?” I asked.

“Yeah, I just got in. I’m at the airport,” he said. “Are you out shopping? I tried calling Alexa’s house a minute ago.”

“I’m at Subway buying a cookie,” I told him.

“Oh. Well, I just wanted to tell you I’m back in Savannah, and tell you I love you.”

“When you get home say Hello to Alexa from me. I’m glad you made it back safely. Is she coming to pick you up?”

“Yeah, she should be here any minute.”

“Oh, Adrian, it’s my turn to order. Talk to you soon.” I snapped the phone shut and ordered my cookie, aware of my conspicuously absent ‘I love you.’

As I went back out through the snow and started again on my way, I thought perhaps he would call back. When I reached Stewartville it occurred to me that he had not.

I checked into a hotel and took a long, hot bath to calm and warm myself after the stressful drive. It was late afternoon. Now that I was safely there, I was able to concentrate on the evening ahead of me. I had the same exhilarated feeling I’d had the morning of my wedding.

After my bath I put on a black and cream dress I had just finished sewing the night before. With another season of Cut-Throat Couture in full force, I was becoming a better, more inspired fashion designer all the time. Lately I had begun fantasizing about going on the show if the orange selling business didn’t work out.

I looked outside at the snow coming down and drew in a deep breath. I was all dressed up with hours to wait. I had decided not to drive around looking for Valencia’s house. I would do that tomorrow. Or maybe she would invite me back there tonight, to meet her family. It was fitting that the dance, with its festive holiday spirit and teenage angst, be the setting in which we were reunited.

I turned on the television and discovered there was a Cut-Throat Couture marathon in progress. I knew I was nervous, because I was starting to talk to myself. “This is a really good sign. This is your show. These are your people!” I tried to control my breathing. I got up and walked around the hotel room, cracking my knuckles. I had printed out directions from the AmericInn to the high school and I couldn’t stop glancing at them to make sure I had not misplaced them.

At nine o’clock the marathon wrapped up and the winner of season three was crowned. I put on my winter coat, picked up my handbag and the directions to the school, and left the hotel. I started Alexa’s car and began clearing off the snow that was covering it, ignoring my cell phone as Adrian called for the second time in an hour. I knew I should answer it before he did something stupid like send my parents over to Alexa’s house to check on me, but I just couldn’t deal with him at a time like this.

On my way to the school, Blondie’s Heart of Glass came on the radio. Another good sign: Valencia had loved Blondie. Loves Blondie, I corrected myself. Valencia loves Blondie. It wasn’t until I felt the plop of the tears falling from my chin to my chest that I realized I was crying. Tears of happiness and fear, tears of love and dread. I pulled over and parked on a side street. The slippery roads and my emotions were getting to me. I wiped the tears away and checked my reflection in the rearview mirror.

My face looked small and white. My eyes held the wet, devastated look of cattle going to slaughter. I felt disgusted and annoyed with myself for being so transparent. But I reassured myself, You’re only transparent if someone is looking. Otherwise, you stay invisible. It wasn’t much of a reassurance.

Cheer up. Cheer up. This is a good night.

Best night ever.

Stop crying!

Why are you crying?

Stop crying! Pull yourself together!

I scanned through the radio stations, trying to find something better than depressing country songs. Billie Jean came on. Another good sign. Another song from back in the day. I turned it up as loud as it would go, trying to drown out my anxiety.

My heart seemed to have moved into my throat.

If you were a perfume, you’d be called Despair, I said to my reflection. Maybe aloud. Maybe in my head. Eau de Despair. You would smell like orchids. And burning tires.

I didn’t know what I was talking about, but this made my reflection smile a little.

I turned the dome light back off and tried to relax so the worry lines across my forehead would disappear. It was times like this that I knew no matter what happened, we go through this life alone and are only truly known by ourselves. I rubbed my belly, knowing even to this baby, I was just its carrier, its incubator. But knowing this is a lot like knowing we will die: We put it away and snap back to the moment. That is called being sane. Denial equals sanity, I whispered to my reflection. My reflection nodded. You aren’t kidding! it said.

I grabbed some lipstick from my purse and did a quick touch-up, then checked my reflection again in my lighted compact, careful to look only at my lips. I put the car back in gear and went a few more blocks, then took a right. There before me was the high school. Parents of the kids on court were parking in front and making their way through the cold snowy evening to see their sons and daughters.

Keep going.

Blend in.

Act normal.

I parked the car, got out, and walked inside. As natural as could be. I had left my gloves in the car, and as I walked in, my left hand instinctively moved to my right ring finger, reaching for Valencia’s class ring, spinning it round and round.

I followed the parents to the gymnasium, which was dimly lit with twinkling holiday lights and a big archway made of balloons. Everyone was trying to find a good place to stand to see the court. I craned my neck, looking around for my sister. Were they going to turn up the lights? I wasn’t sure if I would be able to recognize her if they didn’t.

“Are you ready for the grand march?” a deep voice boomed over the loudspeakers.

“Woo hoo!” cheered the moms and dads. They clapped and whistled, stomping their slushy boots on the heavily shellacked floors. They were moms and dads just like I knew as a child, these Midwestern men and women wearing jackets that bore the name of their brother’s plumbing company or their favorite bar. I wasn’t in Savannah anymore and these people overwhelmed me. These sincere, tough people, looking like the models of hard living. Even the women wore ugly snow boots. I was melancholy and joyous, sorry for them and strangely proud of them. The lights came on suddenly and the announcer started in.

“First we have Emily Buckley, escorted by Joe Lyle!” The boy dragged the girl quickly around the floor while cameras flashed and their parents stepped a little closer to take photographs. The couple found their way back to the balloon arch and stood in their assigned places.

“Next, we have Coral McCray, escorted by Elliott Johnson!” yelled the announcer. My stomach tightened. A small part of me suspected that in person she wouldn’t look anything like my sister. That her name, the similarities I’d thought I’d seen, had all been just a meaningless coincidence. But then she and her date made their way out from behind the curtain and appeared in the balloon arch.

There she was. She could have been Valencia, if only her hair had been a tiny bit lighter. There was no doubt that this was Valencia’s daughter.

I was crying again I realized, and I brushed at my eyes, scanning the crowd for Valencia. Elliott and Coral were walking more slowly than the previous couple. Everyone was cheering. It was obvious they all loved her just as everyone had always loved my sister.

And then I saw her. My sister, my Valencia. She took a step forward from the crowd, bent down on one knee like she was genuflecting, and snapped a picture. She bounced back up, waved a happy little wave to her daughter, and stepped back into the crowd.

I nearly had not recognized her, having thought for a moment I was looking at my mother. Because that was who Valencia had become: A carbon copy of Patricia Loden, but with scars and broken plains across the side of her face. She had the proud, quiet look of a woman who had lived through something awful. Over an old flannel shirt, she wore a frumpy gray coat with stains covering it, and a purple cap on her head. She wasn’t yet forty, but looked fifty. Her hair, once long and thick, was cut into a short, scruffy, reddish-brown style that stuck out beneath the cap like scruffs of a beaver pelt. She was just another woman who had lost her expectations and therefore, was not unsatisfied.

She had a softer, kinder look than my mother, and behind her out-of-date glasses, her eyes had become sad. That didn’t change even when she was smiling, like she was now at my niece. Beside her stood Rob McCray, fifty pounds heavier with a head of thin, gray hair. I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure it was him, until he put his arm around my sister. There was a boy standing with them who looked about thirteen or fourteen. I could tell he was my nephew because he looked so much like Van.

More couples had come out and taken their places beside the balloon arch while I had been watching my sister and her family. Once the last couple found their place, the gymnasium became startlingly quiet. I twisted Valencia’s ring, waiting.

“And now it’s time to announce tonight’s king and queen!” boomed the voice of the announcer. The gymnasium crowd erupted into claps and cheers, and then quickly quieted itself again, until all that could be heard was the tiny cough of a child, followed by his mother whispering, “Shhh.”

“The 2007 Stewartville Winter Formal King and Queen are… Coral McCray and Elliott Johnson!”

The balloons dropped while Coral and Elliott made another round. The crowd cheered and Valencia snapped more pictures. Rob lifted his pinkies to his mouth and whistled. I found myself edging a little closer to them.

“Congratulations, Val! You must be so proud of her,” I heard a woman exclaim, giving my sister a hug. Coral and Elliott were back beneath the balloon arch and last year’s king and queen were placing crowns on their heads. I inched closer still to Valencia, until I was only ten feet away. The right side of her face bore a long, raised scar from the edge of her nose all the way to her ear lobe. Her cute little nose was crooked now. She was damaged goods, in an unremarkable, dismissible way. Like a farmer missing a couple fingers. Did people wonder what had happened to her? Did anyone know? Did she have a story she had told so many times that it was almost now like a second truth?

She had removed her purple cap and it was hanging out of her pocket. I was close enough to see her gray roots, see her pack of cigarettes popping out of her cheap purse. She was chewing gum, a habit I despised, and when she turned, her open winter coat revealed pleat-front jeans that came up to her belly button, the flannel shirt clumsily tucked into them. Our eyes met and for just a moment locked. I opened my mouth and drew in a breath, ready to say something, yet that breath caught there and didn’t produce a word. And then Valencia’s eyes continued past me and back to her daughter who was beaming for the local paper’s photographer. This scene inspired her to pick up her camera and take some more pictures. Next she grabbed a balled up tissue from her purse, and wiped at the tip of her nose. She did not look back at me.

The crowd began to thin. The lights dimmed and the announcer told us that the parents were welcome to stay and dance. The students looked at one another with horrified expressions on their faces. Valencia and Rob were moving away from me, zipping up their coats, preparing to leave. Their son had already gone on ahead of them. I had come too far to let this go. I followed them, finding it difficult to keep up with my strappy heels and pregnant belly. As they prepared to slip out a side door of the gymnasium, I reached them and tapped on Valencia’s back. She looked back at me, blankly.

“You must be so proud,” I said. My voice was shaking. “Of your daughter,” I added, when she did not immediately respond.

The three of us stood there in that open doorway, blocking traffic. I smiled, waiting to see what happened next. My eyes were moist and my heart was pounding. I swallowed dryly.

“Thank you,” said Rob McCray, when his wife still made no effort to answer.

“Rob, Val, why don’t you meet us at the bowling alley,” called a man standing down the hall in a small group of parents near the restrooms.

“We sure are proud of her. Thanks,” Valencia finally said to me, a puzzled but not particularly interested look on her face. She clearly had no idea who I was. Then she turned her back to me and continued through the door, out into the hall, not even making an effort to hold it for me. “Sounds good, Todd. We’ll just run home and drop off Mikey, and we’ll meet you over there.”

Rob went into the men’s room and Valencia joined the group. She fumbled through her purse, then her pocket, found her cigarettes and lighter, apparently ready to use them the second she stepped outside. I hung back watching. I buttoned my coat, trying to blend in with the other people leaving. She paid no attention to me. Indelicately she coughed, stepped back from her friends, and went to the water fountain for a drink. A brief, phantom limb memory revealed itself as her hand reflexively moved to hold back the long hair that had once been such a part of her identity, and then fell uselessly to her side when its grasp met the collar of her jacket. She no longer had beautiful hair to hold back out of the way. Every last detail of her had changed.

I realized then that Valencia really had died that night, long ago. This woman who had resigned herself to having an average, forgettable life bore no resemblance to the Valencia I had once known. I suppose I could have seen her as a fighter, a survivor, but the fighting she had done to become, simply, a survivor, was twenty-one years in the past. And no matter what she had gone through, there was no excuse to aspire only to survive.

Is this good enough for you, Valencia? I wondered. I wanted to shake her. It was not good enough for Valencia, but it was good enough for Val.

Who was there left to believe in? I had never much believed in God. It really was possible, likely even, that we humans were nothing more than very advanced fish. So who could blame us for being such colossal failures? We were all equally meaningless, pointlessly judging one another. Success or failure, what did it matter, anyhow?

As I walked past her, slipped her class ring off my finger (it never had really fit me), and dropped it into her open purse, I knew that if she had recognized me I would have forgiven everything. Even the mom jeans.

Chapter 75

When I arrived back in Savannah, my new home was parked a half block down from our house. I stopped myself from checking it out immediately, and instead went right inside as if everything were normal.

“Hello, Adrian,” I said, surprising him in his studio.

“Hey! You’re home,” he said, getting up to pour me some iced tea. We sat down together in the living room. The naked painting of me was finished and was hanging above our couch. The part of the face not covered with hair looked suspiciously like my sister’s senior picture.

“You finished the painting,” I remarked.

“I did.”

“Well how about that.” I sipped my tea and scratched at a bug bite on my ankle.

“Look at the bright blue camper!” Adrian exclaimed, pulling back the curtain and pointing down the street. I hadn’t realized that Bruce was going to paint the outside too.

“It’s really something,” I said. I got up and looked back at it, a little sliver of doubt momentarily eclipsing the sunshine of the open road in my future. There were a few things I hadn’t thought about. Like, how fun would rambling around in that thing be when I was nine months pregnant? And where would I have the baby? My doctor was, of course, here in Savannah, but if I stuck around until then I might as well just keep living with Adrian. And what if someone tried to break in? The walls were so thin.

Selling oranges from a motorhome kind of required two people, not counting babies.

“You settle in and relax while I put your stuff away, okay Honey?” said Adrian, heading outside to the pile of luggage the taxi driver had dropped off. I could tell he thought that we were happy again. I got up and wandered around to see what kind of damage Alexa had done to our house. Adrian’s house, I corrected myself.

The kennel called and told me to get your mean dog. I did, but then he got away. Sorry! was written on a scrap of paper towel. Otherwise nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I sat down on the couch, not quite ready to do much else.

“I’m so glad you’re home, Sweetie,” said Adrian, setting down my suitcases. He gave me a kiss on the top of my head and then disappeared into the dining room. A moment later he reappeared. “Where do you want me to put this?” he asked, holding a huge box of French baby clothes.

I shrugged.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, setting down the box.

“Nothing. I’ll put those clothes away.”

“No, this box is really heavy. I’ll just put it away for you.”

“You can take it up to the nursery.”

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, picking it back up.

“Sure. I’m alright.”

He came over to me and kissed me again on the top of the head. He turned to walk away, but then he stopped and set the box back down. “Mind if I sit down?” he asked.

I nodded.

He sat beside me and took my hand. “All I want is for us to spend the rest of our lives together, and raise this baby, and make each other happy. Can we still have that?”

“It sounds nice,” I said.

“But not nice for you?” he asked, judging from my tone.

“It sounds like a nice life for someone. I’d like it to be mine.”

“So let it.”

“I don’t want to choose it just because it’s easy.”

“Honey, love should be easy.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“So tell me what you mean. Easier than what?”

“Leaving. Leaving you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

I drew in a deep breath. “That’s my motorhome outside,” I told him. “And in that big, flat envelope over there,” I said, pointing to our stack of mail, “are its decals. I’ve been planning to become a fruit vendor. I guess it’s time I told you the truth: I’m leaving you so I can sell oranges.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That blue motorhome – it’s a home, not a camper – is where I’m going to live. I didn’t think it would be ready so soon. But there it is.”

“Very funny, Sweetie.” But he did not look amused.

“I’m serious. I’ve been trying to tell you for months. You just wouldn’t listen.”

He got up and tore open one of the envelopes. From inside it he pulled out a huge, laminated sign. Delicious Juicy Fruits! We’re Manic about Organic!

“Wow! They did a great job,” I said, taking the sign from his hands and admiring it. “Is there another one in there? Because they were supposed to make one for each side of the cart.”

“Are you kidding me?” yelled Adrian. He tried to tear it in half, but the lamination was so thick and durable that it only twisted.

“Adrian, you’re going to wreck it,” I said, pulling it away from him.

“Who’s we? Why does it say ‘We’re Manic about Organic?’” he demanded.

“Well, ‘we’ means me and the baby. Plus, I thought it sounded safer. You know, so people would know more than one person was inside the motor home at night when I’m sleeping.”

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” he asked, sitting down and putting his head in his hands.

“You don’t need to swear.”

“What is the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I really am sorry. But this is what I have to do. How can we go on like this, after everything that’s happened? I can’t just sweep stuff like that under the rug. Especially when there is about to be a baby involved. I was planning on January first being the day I left, but it looks like there’s nothing stopping me from taking off a little sooner. I think I’m going to drive to California and get started there.”

“You aren’t leaving with my baby,” he said.

“Well, I can’t leave without it.”

“Why don’t we go out for some ice cream, do a little shopping, and wait until this passes,” said Adrian, soothingly, trying a new tactic.

“No.”

His soothing tone snapped back to angry desperation. “You’re going to walk away from our marriage? No. No, it’s not going to happen.”

I stood there, unsure of what to say to that. Adrian began to cry.

“This is what I have to do,” I whispered. A part of my brain was telling me to say I was kidding. Turn it around while you still can, it was warning me.

“I love you, Honey.” He was sobbing.

I began to doubt myself even more. I wanted to hold him.

Stay strong.

You knew this wouldn’t be easy.

Are you sure you want to do this?

I don’t know.

“Adrian, I’m going to leave today, I think.” How could I not? It wasn’t as if I could say all this and then we could go on with our lives for a few more days.

He did not answer me.

I waited for him to say something that would change my mind. I wasn’t sure what it might be. I would know it when I heard it.

He pressed his hands against his face. He did not speak.

I listened to the ticking clock and to the neighbor mowing his lawn. I waited. Neither of us spoke. Finally I stood up and went outside to the motorhome. I opened the little door and went inside. It was tiny inside. Cramped and hot. There was barely room to move, and it was so outrageously decorated that it was like stepping into an overflowing jewelry box. I propped open the door, reality coating me in humid, sticky waves that smelled like new textiles and paint.

Bruce had certainly done his job. It was a virtual paradise on earth, complete with a tiny wine refrigerator with a glass door. Tasseled tie-backs held the velvet curtains in place. A small stretch of marble counter top was laid out with a crusty loaf of peasant bread and some withering grapes.

I stepped back outside, catching my breath, fanning myself with a brochure about taking care of my new upholstery. I looked up and down the street, realizing the blue motorhome and silver trailer were drawing a great deal of attention. Anyone not at work was gardening with sunglasses on, coincidentally facing my way. I wiped some sweat from my temple and stuck my head back inside for another look around. Toward the back there was an adorable, linen-filled crib for the baby and a bigger bed for me.

Needing to escape my watchful neighbors, I climbed back up the steps of my new home and sat down on the bench that doubled as the seat for the dining room table. It was so terribly warm and the scents were so overpowering, that I was becoming nauseous. I looked around, trying to find how to turn on the air conditioning. I didn’t see a thermostat anywhere. Did the engine need to be running for the air conditioning to work? I had no idea. I knew nothing about motorhomes. What was the next step? Where would I buy my oranges? How would I fill my evenings when it was too late to ring strangers’ doorbells? Was there even room for my sewing machine in here?

Adrian appeared in the open doorway and set the box of baby clothes in the opening. It took up the only free space I’d had. He turned around and left without saying a word.

I stood up and opened a window, which created a whisper of breeze. If things got too bad, I could sell all of this on eBay, I reminded myself. The important thing was, I was going to live an honest life. This decked out motor home was a little head start to get me on the right track. It was a little crumb broken off from the cake of the good life.

I avoided looking out the tiny window at our gigantic home. I looked instead at my newly bare hands, both still bearing the faint markings of the rings they’d worn for years. Free and naked now. Gone were the rings that symbolized love and belonging, and being owned.

I could do this. I would do it because I had to.

I went back inside the house to pack up my belongings. Adrian was in his studio with the music turned up. I realized I was halfway packed as it was, since all my bags from the stay at Alexa’s were sitting in the foyer. I took them to the motor home and then went back into the house. I found the old duffel that had held all my money earned a million years ago for watching Grandma Betty, and filled it with my homemade sundresses. I noticed a few of my favorite dresses were missing. Alexa must have taken them. I might never see Alexa again, I realized. Then it occurred to me that I might never again see anyone I didn’t want to see. My parents, my aunts and uncles. It was entirely up to me.

I dumped books, chipped pottery, and shoes in the bag too, and then opened my bathroom drawers and poured my makeup on top. I hauled it all outside and returned for another load. The door to Adrian’s studio was still closed.

I stood outside it, staring at the pattern of the woodgrain, listening to the blaring music. I was half hoping he would come out and stop me. I knocked but he didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t hear me knock. I tried again. I was losing my nerve, doubting myself. My sewing machine and a tote bag of fabric were all that remained. I honestly considered asking him to carry them out for me since I thought they might be heavy and I didn’t want to make two trips. I was that dependent on him. I was still that far from seeing any of this as being real.

I stood outside his door, listening, waiting.

Was he really going to end it like this? With a closed door. No goodbyes. Nothing.

He doesn’t believe it’s over, I realized. He thinks I’m bluffing.

I got a glass of water from the kitchen and drank it, stalling. The music continued to blare.

Well, time to move on out.

But I continued standing there, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, waiting for the door to open. The momentum was changing. The intensity of the sun was waning. If it got any later, I would not do it today. If I did not do it today, I would never do it.

I wondered what had happened to that spontaneous girl I used to be. That girl who kissed bartenders and fell down drunk, who didn’t mind houses with rats and roommates.

I missed her.

She made a lot of bad decisions, I reminded myself.

But she, unlike every other version of myself I’d ever been, had a lot of fun.

I knocked on the door again, wanting to say goodbye. Believing I could say goodbye and mean it. But Adrian would not open the door.

So I did it. I left. I picked up the tote bag and sewing machine, realized they weren’t actually that heavy, and carried them out to the motorhome. I set them on the passenger seat, the only free space left, and found my keys beneath the visor. (They were on a fancy silver keychain. Thank you, Bruce Dash.) And I rolled out of town in a blue, triumphant bullet with a shiny silver cart, hopefully pointed in the direction of California.

Part Two

2012

I’d like a chance to explain.

I always felt there were parallel universes. No one would have believed some cheerleader would think about parallel universes, but I did then. I still do. And I’m right, aren’t I? I’m forty-three years old, nearly forty-four. I’m the mother of three. I weigh a hundred and eight-eight pounds. But just two hundred miles away, I am eighteen years old forever. I am dead and gone, and beautiful. Was that really me? It still is. In Hudson, Wisconsin, it still is.

There are other versions of me out there. Unlimited possibilities. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book with infinite pages. There are versions of us all. There are other versions of Rob, and in each of them he aches for me. I’m not telling you what I merely imagine; this is what I know.

There is the me I would have become if I’d had all the chances I deserved. I always felt that Van and I both died that night. He lost his future, so did I. What they did to me took the forks in the road of my life and turned them into a knife. I was ruined. Worse than ruined, I was humbled. Have you ever been humbled? It is better to be ruined.

Everything had been easy for me. Easy felt normal. I didn’t understand why everyone else made it look so hard. They seemed lazy and clumsy. They seemed like they made excuses. I thought if everyone would just turn it up a notch they would have it, like I did. I didn’t know that I might as well have been a different species. They were never going to catch me.

But after what happened to me, I got it. I became a victim, like I now realize most everyone is. I didn’t go out in public for nearly a year. Everything frightened me. A trip to the grocery store immobilized me. I second guessed myself when measuring the ingredients to make a cake. I would wash my hair over and over, unable to keep track of whether I had washed it at all or had just gotten it wet. I was too insecure to go to restaurants, afraid to order off a menu, afraid I would not leave the correct tip.

Those things that happened that night destroyed me. That’s what I want you to understand. I was no longer the Valencia my friends and teachers and family had admired. That elusive, beautiful part of me, the part I barely understood, but had always taken for granted, was murdered. Even if the rest of me lived on. I was no longer special. I couldn’t show myself. I turned to Rob not with something to give, but with desperate, broken need. He came to me as I knew he would and he learned to love someone else entirely. He did it not for the new version of myself I ashamedly presented to him, but for the girl he remembered, the way someone cares for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.

He mourned the loss of Valencia, despite promising me that I had never left.

He cared for me, he cared for the green eyed child who was not his own and raised him as lovingly as he raised Coral and Mikey. He gave me a better life than Val should have had, though not the life Valencia deserved. But he kept my secrets, and that was worth more than anything.

In my world of parallel universes, there is a version of me, still beautiful, married to someone else. I am living the remarkable life that 1986 assumed was my destiny. Rob is out there too, and we run into each other at high school reunions, and his heart is broken, because of me. And he aches as deeply as he never does now. This is how it should have been. This is the life that would have happened.

It’s funny how this humdrum existence, the one I am spending all my time in, sure feels like the real thing. It’s funny how I think of those parallel universes less and less.

Oh no. Am I disappointing you? Or even worse, perhaps I am boring you. It hurts to be a bore and a disappointment. Valencia didn’t know what it felt like to be either of those.

Despite severing ties with my mother, she still holds me back. I’m like her: A victim of my past perfection. Can’t. Stop. Missing. Myself.

Really, it’s sick.

So where do I start? Actually, that is easy. Obvious, even. I start with Van. I started with Van. Literally, I began when he began. In my heart, he was my only true family. We spoke our own language when we were very young. He was never mesmerized by me, and it was such a relief. No one else was ever completely comfortable around me, and I longed to make someone comfortable. He was, though. How could he not be? It was a relief to be with him, to relax, to be a beautiful mess.

Others tried to overcompensate sometimes, in meanness. They tried to be disinterested and rude, as if that was the bait to tempt me. Look, their actions said, I am different. I am one of the few who has no use for you. They thought it would intrigue me. But I saw right through it.

I was so lonely, wanting to be normal.

Normal, it turns out, is not as great as I’d hoped.

After it happened, I needed to be alone. By alone, I mean with Rob. Only Rob. Going to him was natural, and right. But now I see how it changed us. Of course it changed us. I was still thinking like Valencia, still unable to guess the road that lay ahead of me. Not realizing by the time I called him, all my bridges back to my former self had been burned.

If I could have survived without Rob’s help, I should have tried to do so. Like a wounded animal, crawling off to be alone. Not caring if I healed or died, as long as he didn’t see my ugliness. I could have left him with Valencia forever. The preserved, beautiful version of myself that everybody else got. I didn’t know then that my vulnerability would become a burden, that my very presence would become a shadow on him.

My face and my body were mangled. Beaten. I am nearly blind in my right eye now. I escaped from a basement in the Cities, through a window. I remember finding a drive-up phone at a gas station, something they don’t even make anymore, and standing there while a family in a car waited impatiently, glaring and honking at me. I calling Rob collect. I felt crazy. I was expecting to be captured again. I could not believe I had escaped. I could not believe it was over. I was afraid the car of rude people would leave; I planned to run to it if I had to. Ironically, in the midst of this, I prayed Rob’s mother would not answer. I must have really hated her.

And he answered. His voice sounded like safety and home. I never thought I’d feel safe or whole again. And with just the sound of his voice, I started over.

Sweet Rob.

There is no love like the love a man has for a perfect woman. It’s very rare. You’ve probably never experienced it. It is the predecessor to eternal disappointment. It is impossible to recover from.

He had thought I was dead. He was shocked. Overjoyed. He came for me and wanted to take me to the hospital but I wouldn’t let him. He said we needed to go to the police and tell them what happened, but I told him I could not remember how I got to the gas station. It was not true; I didn’t care about anything but getting out of there.

“Just take me to your house,” I told him.

“Should we go to your parents’ house first? Should I call them?”

“No. Not yet.”

So Rob took me to his house. His mother was in the hospital the whole time, dying. I was there, in his bedroom, hiding, trying to accept my new, destroyed self. Within walking distance of everyone I had ever known. I knew they thought I was dead. I didn’t care. I was pregnant and we knew it was not Rob’s. I told Rob I wished I had died too, and then I did not say it again when I saw how much it hurt him. He took care of me, dividing his time between his mother and me.

I was in Rob’s bed as a suffering shut-in instead of as his lover, waiting to rise again, waiting to once again become the girl who ruled the world. I thought perhaps one day I would find my way back to those I’d left behind, when I was strong and beautiful again. I wasn’t afraid of being forgiven. They would always forgive me.

This was my daydream. My distraction. I was afraid to be alone, and Rob kept leaving me to go to his mother. This fantasy calmed me and gave me something to look forward to. But as time went by, it became harder to picture it working out like I’d planned.

Lying there in bed, agonized and still, I see clearly now that I was cutting and unraveling the ties that connected me to Hudson.  I was not someone who behaved without intention, back then. The first few days became a week. A week became two weeks. At first Rob tried to make me call my parents, or friends. He had this infuriating notion that what had happened to me gave me an obligation to speak up. I felt the opposite: that I would never be obligated again.

I was afraid they’d show up anyway. Standing at the foot of the bed when I awoke, with Rob standing guiltily by, mouthing I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry... They’d bring reporters and turn me into their mangled celebrity. I was afraid he’d betray me. “Please, please don’t call anyone,” I begged him each time he threatened to go to them. He never did. He kept my secret.

So I waited. To be well. To be whole. To rise up from devastation.

Temporary devastation.

But I did not rise.

It wasn’t because I didn’t try. Everything easy was now impossible.

So I faded away instead.

We all learn how to accept being less than we dreamed we would be. We all take the easy way out. And there came a point when Rob and I stopped pretending there was anything left for us in Hudson.

I went into labor the day after Rob’s mother was buried, later than I should have gone, as if the baby had decided to politely wait for the right time. So I knew even before I saw him that he was from the young guy, not from the old man. We were in La Crosse, driving west, planning to find an apartment where we would settle while Rob cleaned out the house. I could not be there anymore. Relatives were coming, offering to help him settle things.

I went into labor and Rob found a hospital. He said I was his wife. I don’t know how any of it worked out, because now I don’t think a person can disappear and reappear like that. But we just took each moment as it came, dealt with everything, the way normal people deal.

A few years ago, back in 2007 actually, a funny thing happened to me. Coral was crowned Prom Queen or Homecoming Queen, and Rob and I went to see her. As we were leaving the school I put my lighter in my purse, and I felt a ring in there. It was mine. My own class ring. From high school. I couldn’t understand how it got there. It really freaked me out. The timing was so strange, being back in a high school, watching my daughter win that dance. Rob thought it was a sign that I should go back to Hudson.

So we returned. Neither of us had been back for years. Rob had no close family, no ties there of his own. I don’t know what we thought we were going to say or do. We went to my parents’ house. Not necessarily to visit, but just to see it. They were gone.

“Do the Lodens still live here?” Rob asked some young neighbors across the street, new people I did not recognize.

“They’re gone. There was a fire and they moved away,” they told us.

So we left Hudson again, for what I think was the last time. It is for the best.

Now the kids are all gone. Grown up and moved away. Rob is down in his workshop most every night after work and I am up here, watching television. I find myself absorbed in the drama on TV more than my real life these days. Rob and I joke that Dancing with the Stars makes me almost want to dance and Iron Chef makes me almost want to cook.

Lately I have been really into a show called Cut-Throat Couture. It’s a reality show about designing clothes. There is a woman on there I recognize. I think she was one of the kids’ teachers. I remember seeing her around their school, I think. She makes dresses mainly and she is just great. I think she is going to win it all.

Not much else to say. I am lucky to be alive, I suppose. I still wonder, sometimes, what could have been if things had gone differently. Who Van might have grown up to become, and opportunities I may have had, if we had taken a different route, or had left a half hour earlier that night. Then I remind myself that in a parallel universe, I am still Valencia, and always will be. And that is good enough for me.

A Note about the Author

Holly Tierney-Bedord lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the author of several books including the novels Bellamy’s Redemption, Right Under Your Nose, and Coached, and the children’s book Bagels for Barkly.

Please take a moment to review Surviving Valencia. Here’s a link to this book’s Amazon page.

For more information or to subscribe to Holly’s newsletter, visit www.hollytierneybedord.com.

About Bellamy’s Redemption

"...I was undeniably hooked just a few pages in..."

- Sara Steven, Chick Lit Central

When Bellamy Timberfrost is jilted while proposing on television to Alanna Rutherford, America's heart breaks just as hard as his own. Designer Emma Van Elson can't imagine a guy who is more of a catch than Bellamy. When he is given a second chance at love on his own reality TV show, she jumps at the chance to become a contestant on the show. Soon she finds herself as one of twenty lucky young women competing for Bellamy's heart (and other great prizes!) on a journey around the world.

See more details or buy Bellamy’s Redemption.

Table of Contents

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Part Two 2012