“What do you think?” she asked when she was finished unwrapping and showing it all.
“It’s all beautiful,” I said. I wanted to sound grateful, but she was flooding me with so much I didn’t have a chance to appreciate any of it.
“I thought so, too. Now, more news. I had the guidance counselor at the school Kiera attends contact the tutor he had recommended for us. Her name is Mrs. Kepler. She retired two years ago but is bored to death. Her husband does nothing but play golf. She’ll be perfect, I’m sure. I’ve arranged for her to stop in tomorrow to meet you. Is that all right? We want you to be up to speed when the new school year begins.”
“Where do I go to school?”
“You’ll go to the private school Kiera attends, of course. It’s just outside Pacific Palisades. Grover will take you and pick you up every day when that starts. I’m going to speak with Dr. Milan in a little while,” she continued, barely taking a breath. “Do you have any complaints, pain, headaches, anything I need to report to him?”
“No.”
“That’s wonderful. It’s so important not to linger in the hospital around all those other sick and injured people. It keeps it on your mind. There’s plenty to distract you from that here.”
She stood smiling down at me so long it made me feel a little uncomfortable. I deliberately turned away to look at the new iPod.
“Well,” she said, “let’s get your new clothes put away.”
She gathered it all in her arms. I wheeled behind her to the walk-in closet. I had not yet looked into it, but now, when I did, I laughed to myself. I had imagined the hotel room that Mama and I had lived in not being much larger than a walk-in closet in this house. I was greatly underestimating. The closet was at least twice as large as that hotel room. It had a mirror and a vanity table in it and rows of clothing that probably rivaled the stock in most stores. How could any girl have been able to wear so much?
She paused as she hung up my new skirts and blouses and suddenly grew teary-eyed. She lifted one skirt, and I saw that it was hanging there with its label still attached. For a moment, it was as if she had forgotten I was there. Then she turned to me, still holding the skirt. After a deep breath, she nodded and said, “I’m being stupid again, I know.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Alena was very sick, I went on a buying spree as I just did for you. Most of this,” she said, pointing down the row of clothes, “she never had the chance to wear. I guess buying her new clothes, new shoes, anything, was my way of trying to deny what was happening to her. Here I am doing the same thing to you. I’m sorry. There is so much here that’s still brand-new that will fit you. But I can’t help it when I see something darling. When Alena was gone and I’d go into stores and see things she could wear and that would make her happy, I’d be tempted to buy them. In fact, I did buy some of this after she was gone. I know that sounds crazy to you, but … it helped me get by.”
“I understand,” I said. I really thought I did.
She looked at me and smiled. “I know you do. You’re an exceptional young girl and will be an exceptional woman someday. I am determined to make you happy, healthy, and safe again,” she said with such firm determination in her eyes that I couldn’t help but believe her.
She hung up the rest, and we left the closet.
“Will I meet your husband tonight?” I asked.
“No. He’s at a conference in Texas, something about new home-building materials. I’m not sure when he returns. I don’t pay much attention to his work. It will just be you and me for dinner.”
“But what about …”
“Kiera is at a friend’s tonight,” she said, almost before the words were out of my mouth. “I wasn’t going to let her go, but I thought it would be nicer if you and I had your first night here alone. Okay?”
I nodded. Did she know that Kiera and her friends had spent the afternoon at the pool? Should I mention it? I felt funny about spying on them. What if she asked me what I had seen?
“Did you take a nap, at least?”
“I dozed off for a while. I don’t feel tired.”
“That’s amazing. I know the excitement of going somewhere new can wear you out, but I forget how much energy you young girls have. I’ll come up later and help you decide what you’d like to wear to dinner.” She moved toward the door.
Why was it important what I would wear to dinner if it was going to be just the two of us?
“Enjoy your new iPod,” she said, and left.
I simply sat there staring after her. My head was spinning. I looked at the closet, the sitting room, the magnificent bed, the television on the wall, everything I could have ever dreamed of having up until now was there. We hadn’t had very much before my father deserted us, but it still had been sad to leave it. How much more difficult had it been for a little girl to lie here and know she was dying and would leave everything, especially parents who adored her?
I embraced myself as if I could feel the cold sorrow closing in around me, even in the wonderful suite full of color and warm things. Then I looked at the bed. Could I sleep in that bed, and when I did, would I hear Alena March’s voice, maybe her sobs and cries? Would I dream her dreams?
I could feel what Jordan March was hoping for when she brought me there, and it intrigued me and yet at the same time made me feel sick and afraid. She wanted to look at me, blink her eyes, and see her daughter returned.
I wasn’t all that different from her.
I’d want to look at her, blink my eyes, and see my mother returned.
Either we’d both be happy or, in the end, both of us would end up blind.
8
Dinner
I fell asleep again in my chair. I had wheeled myself to the window in the sitting room and sat gazing at the pool, the tennis courts, and the beautiful grounds. I opened the window slightly and could hear the drone of the lawn mowers. Because the house was so high up on the hill, I could see the ocean just behind the tops of the trees. At this time of the day, it looked like blue ice but gradually reddened with the sinking sun.
When I was eight, my father brought home a doll he had found on a job site. It was in a basement next to a washing machine he was repairing, and he just put it into his tool kit. Although it was old, faded, and dusty, I cherished it, because it was one of the only times I could remember that he thought of me while he was working and brought me something. Mama bawled him out for giving me something so dirty-looking and seized it to put into our washing machine. I never saw another doll like it.
The doll was a sailor girl. Daddy didn’t know what it really was, but Mama did. She admitted it was something of a collector’s item, because it was a doll depicting a member of the WAVES. She said she had a great-aunt on her father’s side who had been a member of the Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service, which was a U.S. Navy organization during World War II.
Once it was washed, the blue uniform had faded even more, but I thought it was the most beautiful doll in the world, and when I understood more about the WAVES, I began to fantasize about myself on boats and ships. Even during the struggle, when Mama and I were on the beach selling her calligraphy and my lanyards, I would look out at the sailboats and the bigger ships, and I would recall my fantasies.
Sailing off toward the horizon always seemed to be an escape from sadness and hardship. Nothing was as promising as the distant horizon. I envisioned myself standing at the bow and looking ahead toward a new life full of brightness and happiness. Mama was always on the boat with me, standing beside me or right behind me, with just as big a smile on her face, just as much hope in her eyes. We would never look back at the dark clouds.
I thought about my doll now as I looked out at the Pacific Ocean. I had played with it so much and kept it with me so much that the uniform thinned and the doll began to come apart. Mama tried sewing it a few times, but the threads would break. When I was older, I put it aside. Somewhere along the way, with our packing quickly, d
ragging our belongings along, it got lost. I told myself the doll had gone back to sea, back to that boat, to seek a better place than the places I could take her.
Now, I imagined her out there, sailing toward the horizon. I could vaguely make out a boat and watched it until I could see it no longer. At least she’s safe, I thought. I smiled to myself and relived some of my childhood moments talking to my doll.
Mrs. March’s return to help me decide what to wear for dinner broke the spell and ripped me out of the happier moments in my past and pulled me back to cold reality. It was as though I had lost my doll again.
“Let’s look for something comfortable for you,” she began, and headed back to that enormous closet. I wheeled myself to the doorway and watched her rake through the garments, pausing at some, shaking her head at others. What was she looking for? How could this be so important? I almost came right out and asked, but she plucked a blouse and a skirt off the rack as if she had found something she had tried and failed to locate many times. I saw the look of delight spread over her face.
“Yes,” she said, talking more to herself than to me, “this was it.”
When she turned and held it up to show me, I nearly fell out of my wheelchair. It was a sailor girl’s outfit. I felt a hot flow move up from my chest and into my neck and face. The words crackled when I spoke. “Why that?”
“Alena was so excited when Donald bought our boat that I went right out and bought this outfit for her. When she tried it on, she didn’t want to take it off. Donald and Kiera were away that evening, so it was just Alena and me for dinner. Even though we were alone, it was a very special night. I remember how talkative she was, how happy, and this was shortly after she had been diagnosed. Just like you, she refused to be depressed.”
Just like me? What had I done to lead her to believe I wasn’t depressed and unhappy? Did she think that just because I was overwhelmed with the house and the gifts, all of my sadness was dead and buried? Could she possibly believe that I had already forgotten what had happened to my mother?
I think she saw the look on my face and understood. Her smile flew off, and she grew serious as she approached me with the outfit.
“Oh, I know how unhappy and terrible you must feel,” she began. “I don’t want you to think for one moment that I don’t know or don’t care. I want you to remember and love your mother forever. I promised I would have whatever you wanted written on her tombstone, remember? As soon as you think of it, you tell me, and we’ll have it done, and then you and I will go there to see it. But in the meantime, you’ve got to survive and grow and be healthy again. Don’t blame me for trying to help you do that. I know you must hate me always talking about my Alena, but …”
“No, I don’t hate you for that,” I said quickly. I glanced at the framed photograph of her. “She was a very pretty girl, and I’m sure she was very nice.”
“Thank you, dear. If you don’t want to wear this,” she added, holding up the skirt and blouse, “you don’t have to. You can pick out something else.”
“No, it’s all right,” I said. I almost told her about my doll but somehow felt that there were things so private that they still belonged only with Mama and me. Despite what Jackie called her charity, Mrs. March had not earned that trust. She was not my mother; she was not even a friend yet. She was simply someone who felt sorry for me and felt guilty because of what her daughter had done. It was I who was being the charitable one. I was letting her live with the guilt. That’s what Jackie had told me, and it made sense to me now more than ever.
I reached for the outfit.
“Can I help you get dressed?” she asked.
I nodded, and she began by helping me take off the blouse I wore. She moaned at the sight of the fading black-and-blue marks and mumbled, “Poor child. What a horror you’ve gone through.” She looked as if she was going to burst into tears, so I made sure to tell her that none of it hurt as much as it had.
After I was dressed in the sailor outfit, she wheeled me in front of the vanity table. I was amazed at how well it fit.
“Let’s do something with your hair,” she said, and began brushing it. “You do have beautiful hair, and thick, too. I bet your mother’s hair was beautiful.”
“Yes. She used to wear it down to her wing bones.”
“I wish I could have long hair, but Donald says it makes me look older, and if there is one thing Donald hates, it’s my looking older.”
“What about him?”
“Men can always look older and call it distinguished, didn’t you know?” she asked, smiling.
She opened a drawer in the vanity table and chose some hair clips. When I saw how she had shaped my hair, I looked at the framed photo of Alena and realized it was very similar.
“There now,” she said, stepping back. “Don’t you look very pretty?”
“I hope someday I’ll be half as pretty as my mother was,” I said.
She kept her smile, but it lost its excitement and warmth. She nodded and turned me away from the vanity table. “I do hope you like Irish stew. Mrs. Caro makes the best.”
“I don’t remember ever having it,” I said as she pushed me to the doorway.
“Well, you eat just what you want. She’s made a special dessert for us, a surprise, too. Here we go,” she said, and turned me down the corridor toward the elevator.
I had seen only a small part of the house when I arrived. When the elevator door opened, she pushed me to the left and around a corner. The hallway seemed endless, but along the way, she pointed out the game room, the formal dining room, the den and library, the entertainment center, and then a hallway that branched off to the right. She said that was where the indoor pool was located.
Right off the kitchen was what she called their informal dining room. No room in this house was small to me, but she called it one of their smaller rooms. It had a beautiful dark hardwood table with twelve cushioned hardwood chairs. The walls were paneled in a lighter wood, and a large window looked toward the rear of the property.
“Is that a lake?” I asked, looking out.
“Donald’s lake, yes. It’s man-made. He says he’s going to stock it with fish. What fun is that, right? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but once Donald sees something someone else has, he wants it, too. There are two rowboats. That’s fun, at least.”
She pulled a chair away next to the chair at the end of the table and fit me into that place. Two dinner settings, glasses, and silverware were already there. Almost as soon as Mrs. March took her seat, Mrs. Duval came through the door that led from the kitchen. She carried a bowl of rolls and a jug of water.
“Good evening, Mrs. Duval,” Mrs. March said, sounding very formal all of a sudden.
“Good evening, Mrs. March.”
“Doesn’t our little girl look pretty tonight?”
Mrs. Duval paused after she poured Mrs. March’s glass of water and looked at me as if I had just arrived. I caught the slight tic in her eyes, the little moment of surprise. She glanced at Mrs. March and then forced a smile and said, “Sí, muy bonita.”
Mrs. March looked satisfied. She leaned toward me as Mrs. Duval returned to the kitchen. “That means ‘very pretty’ in Spanish,” she whispered. “Do you know any Spanish?”
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, I know some words.”
“Alena spoke fluent Spanish, because Mrs. Duval had been her nanny since birth. I’m sure you’ll learn quite a bit just being around her. It’s the best way to learn a language, better than in a classroom. That’s what Donald says.”
“I know some Chinese words because of my mother,” I told her.
She didn’t look that excited about it. “That’s nice. Educating yourself as much as possible is important. I bet you are a good reader, too, right?”
Mrs. Duval brought in our salads and set them down without looking at me or speaking.
“I haven’t read that much for a while,” I said
“Of course. I understand. But
you’re going to see that Alena had a wonderful library in her sitting room. Unless you’ve already explored those shelves.”
“No, I haven’t yet.”
“Getting Kiera to read anything is like trying to feed her cod-liver oil. She has barely passing grades. Donald’s at his wit’s end with that, and it isn’t because we haven’t paid for tutors. She never liked any, but I’m sure you’re going to like Mrs. Kepler. Doesn’t this salad look good? You like figs in your salad? We all like that. Alena loved it.”
“I never had it before,” I said, but I nodded. It did taste good.
That pleased her, and she became even more talkative, telling me about her own youth, her high school years, and her years at a private college she called “more of a charm school than a real educational institution. But I wasn’t meant to have any sort of career,” she added. “I was born to be who I am.” She laughed. “That’s what Donald says.”
Everything was what Donald said, I thought. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was really like and what he would think of me.
“Is he coming home tomorrow?” I asked.
“No. He’ll be away the rest of the week, but that’s all right. We’ll have plenty of company, with your tutor coming tomorrow, your doctor checkup, lots to do. No worries,” she said. I was waiting for her to add, “as Donald would say,” but she didn’t.
The Irish stew was delicious. I had eaten so much for lunch that I couldn’t eat as much of it as I would have liked, especially with Mrs. March continually warning me to leave room for our special dessert. After the dishes were cleared off the table, I sat in anticipation. Moments later, Mrs. Duval returned, carrying a tray with something on fire. Mrs. Caro was right behind her, smiling. It remained in a flame until Mrs. Duval lowered it to the table.
“It looks beautiful,” Mrs. March said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Banana flambé,” she said.
Mrs. Duval served us each a dish, and Mrs. Caro added scoops of vanilla ice cream. I couldn’t remember anything so delicious.