Anne Shirley, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox. These were the top-three orphans, with Anne miles ahead of the other two, so Clare wrote their names in inch-high lettering that came as close to calligraphy as she could manage given her number two pencil and limited artistic talent. When she was younger, she would sometimes draw pictures of each next to their names: three pale, big-eyed faces, each almost perfectly triangular, and topped, consecutively, with red hair, black hair, blondish hair. After the Big Three, there were others. Heidi. The Roald Dahl orphans: James and Sophie. Wild, vaguely creepy Pippi Long-stocking, if you believed, as Clare did, that Pippi’s father was drowned and not a cannibal king. Tom and Huck. David, Pip, Estella, Oliver and the rest, struggling through fog, grim streets, and their twisting, thickly populated stories. The Boxcar Children. Unforgiveable Heath-cliff; Hareton, who hanged the puppies from the back of the chair; Jane Eyre. Recent, bestselling orphans: Harry Potter, the sad-faced Baudelaires. There was also a subcategory of half-orphans, usually motherless, and a subsubcategory of half-orphans with kindly housekeepers: Scout and Jem; all four Melendy kids (five after they adopted Mark, a full-fledged orphan); even Nancy Drew, who was almost an adult and barely counted.
Clare grouped and regrouped the orphans, categorizing them by age, sex, hair color, country of origin, economic status. Clare was starting a list of the poor ones who ended up rich when she heard her teacher stop talking. Worksheets notwithstanding, Ms. Packer was nice and was maybe even a good teacher, Clare thought, although she was no Anne Shirley, who—once she’d grown up and become a teacher—loved every student as her own child, who won over the wicked Jen Pringle, and who inspired handsome Paul Irving to become a famous poet. Ms. Packer had a loud voice, was thick-waisted, thin-haired, and her fashion sense ran to Birkenstock sandals with socks, thumb rings, and what was whispered to be bralessness. But she seemed to care about books, and she sometimes talked about the characters as though they were real people, with tears in her eyes and a choke in her throat. She wasn’t married, and Clare understood that it was because she was madly in love with Charles Darnay and no other man measured up.
The night before, upon Ms. Packer’s suggestion, Clare had stuffed cotton in her ears and worn a blindfold for two straight hours. After she caught her finger in a drawer, busted her shin against the Biedermeir table, and spilled an entire glass of iced tea, she’d sat in a chair for a long time and afterward understood that being blind and deaf meant being alone with your thoughts and feeling a tide of worry rise around you.
Ms. Packer stood, arrested midsentence, pencil in the air, looking at the back of the room, and when Clare twisted around with the rest of the class to look, she saw her mother standing in the doorway. She wore a wrap dress, heels, sunglasses, lipstick. She was lithe and elegant, and her hair fell like a sheet of silk to her shoulders. When she looked at Clare and smiled, Clare felt a knot she hadn’t realized was under her ribcage loosen. My mother, she thought. Look at her. Who would worry about a woman like that?
But then she saw Mrs. Jordan, the assistant to the Head of the Lower School, hovering behind her mother, looking put out, and Clare remembered that parents never came to the classrooms. They waited in the reception area, and Mrs. Jordan sent a helper down to retrieve their children. Clare imagined her mother striding like a runway model down the school hallways while Mrs. Jordan pattered after her, apprising her of the rules in a tense but polite voice. The knot tightened.
“Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Packer, but I need Clare,” said Clare’s mother, turning her smile on Ms. Packer.
Then, Clare’s mother dropped like a dancer or a panther into a crouch and shook back her hair. She held her arms out to Clare, as though Clare were a toddler. “I need you, Clare,” she said.
As Ms. Packer and Mrs. Jordan exchanged bemused, disapproving looks over her mother’s shining head, Clare chose the side she was on. She looked from teacher to administrator, then grinned at her mother, a grin she made sure wasn’t just the fashioning of her mouth into a shape but that went all the way to her eyes. Then, she shoved books and notebooks into her backpack and stood up.
“You’ll e-mail me with the homework, please, Ms. Packer?” she said briskly, just tipping her voice up ever so slightly at the end of the sentence to turn it from statement to request.
She glanced at her friend Josie, whose desk was next to hers, and noticed that Josie’s expression was familiar, the combination of admiration and friendly envy with which Josie always regarded her when they spent time with Clare’s mother. Josie had once told Clare that she thought of her mother as a cross between a fairytale princess and an exotic animal like a peacock. Josie was a bright girl, but not especially creative, and this was definitely one of the most interesting things she’d ever said to Clare, which showed just how much Clare’s mother fascinated Josie. Even when Clare’s mother did some ordinary mother thing, like give them a plate of cookies, Josie gazed at her in amazement as though she’d just performed magic. Even though Clare’s mother showing up in their classroom was peculiar, it probably didn’t seem particularly so to Josie, who saw everything Clare’s mother did as special and unexpected. Rules that applied to other mothers didn’t apply to her.
Ms. Packer nodded at Clare, her brows still knit. Then, Clare turned on her heel, as pertly as any storybook heroine ever did, walked to the classroom door and, as she hadn’t done for years and not caring what the kids in her class would think, took her mother’s hand.
Clare stayed stride for stride with her mother, head high, ponytail swinging, down the hallways of the school, through the oak-paneled entryway, and out the door. They were coconspirators stepping out together into the sunny afternoon. But, in the parking lot, her mother looked down at Clare’s face and said, with a hint of irritation in her voice, “Nothing to worry about, Clarey. I’m your mother. I’m allowed to take you out of school without jumping through hoops.”
“No, Mom. I’m not worried. I’m really not worried,” said Clare, inserting what was almost a skip into her step. “Ms. Packer and Mrs. Jordan, they’d be okay, if they weren’t so—conventional.” Clare’s mother squeezed Clare’s hand.
“Sometimes, darling, a mother just has to let everything go, and take her daughter to lunch.”
“I agree,” Claire almost sang, and she felt everything was fine—better than fine. She’d used a good word, “conventional” and, in a breezy, laughing voice, her mother had called her “darling,” a luxurious, old-fashioned endearment that Clare had read a thousand times but had never been called.
Inside the rose-colored walls of the restaurant, before her mother said unthinkable things, Clare was happy. At first she was happy because she had decided to be, and then she relaxed into her happiness and just felt it.
The restaurant was cool and high-ceilinged, with waiters in creaseless white shirts, and with tight bunches of purple flowers in tiny vases on the tables. It was the sort of place that is sure enough of itself to be noisy and bustling rather than hushed, and Clare thought it was wonderful. The way the water sat in the glasses; the menus that didn’t open but were a single pale yellow card; the small, brightly colored, evenly spaced paintings that hung across one wall—all of it dazzled Clare.
“If you can tell us which of these two wines you’d recommend and why, you’re our man,” said Clare’s mother to the handsome, black-haired waiter. She handed the wine list to him and pointed to the two selections, her hand lightly touching his, her fingers looking tapered and delicate. She spoke in a low voice, and the waiter smiled. His front tooth was chipped, causing Clare to notice how young he was. This is the way men smile at beautiful women, she thought, and she felt proud that even this guy who was almost a kid, almost a boy, could fall under her mother’s spell.
When he brought the wine, he filled her mother’s glass, and then held the bottle over Clare’s glass. Clare started to tell him no, but he was looking at her mother, not at her and, astonishingly, her mother nodded. Clare watched the dark wine rise in the
glass, watched the waiter’s hand give a slight twist at the end, then sat staring at the wine, unsure of what to do next. Should she remind her mother about her own mother’s sister, Aunt Patsy, who at age nine, after a dinner party, had sneaked downstairs and drunk the dregs of every guest’s drink? “They found her in the front yard, laughing at the moon. From that moment on, she was a hopeless drunk. Hopeless.” Her mother’s words, her mother’s cautionary tale; it seemed impossible that she’d forgotten it.
But her mother was raising her own glass and looking at Clare, eyebrows arched. It was a large glass, long-stemmed, like nothing Clare had ever held or drunk from, and she wrapped her fingers gingerly around the stem, then—glancing at her mother—cupped her hand under the globe and lifted. Her mother nodded approvingly. Maybe it was all right, then; it must be.
“It’s as important to know when to break the rules as it is to know when to obey them. Here’s to playing hooky!” Her mother touched her glass to Clare’s, and Clare drank, tasting the odd, rich harshness, but swallowing anyway. Tears started in her eyes, and she blinked hard. Please don’t let me be a hopeless drunk, she prayed, then snatched the prayer back. It must be that some people can become hopeless drunks and others can’t, Clare thought, and her mother must know this and know Clare to be the kind who can’t. If her mother didn’t know that, she would never allow Clare to drink, not in a million years. She imagined her mother knocking a glass from her hand, just as Clare was raising it to her lips, the glass shattering, the wine purple on the wall.
The food was interesting, little complicated creations resting in the centers of large plates, sauce drizzled in gleaming patterns, meat placed on top of vegetables instead of next to them. Clare would just begin to dismantle or eat around the edges of one creation, when another plate would come. It was too much food—much too much—but that was OK because her mother was eating with gusto, really digging in, and it hit Clare that her mother hadn’t been eating much lately. She would flit around the kitchen at dinnertime, perch—legs crossed, one swinging—on a countertop, but would rarely sit for long. Clare tried to remember seeing her mother actually chew and swallow food. Her mother had always been slim, but recently Clare had noticed how thin she was: hands grown translucent, almost clawlike, skin pulled tight over her cheekbones, hipbones jutting alarmingly under her dresses. She looks like a model, Clare had reassured herself, but it was still a relief to see her mother eat, and Clare was happy.
“Listen, Clarey,” her mother said suddenly, “this Christmas, we leave all the god-awful American yuletide tedium behind and go to Spain. Madrid”—her mother took a deep sip of wine, then shook her head—“no, no, no. Barcelona! Gaudi! You won’t believe your eyes. It’s like fairyland! What do you think?”
And Clare felt so honored, being asked what she thought, so she said, “I think definitely yes!” even though she loved their Christmases in Philadelphia. It was always just the two of them. Clare’s parents were both only children and both orphans, even though they didn’t acquire full-fledged orphanhood until they were already grown up, and Clare never saw her father at Christmas. They had a tradition of eating dinner together on New Year’s Day, but it hardly counted as a tradition because it usually didn’t happen. Clare’s father was away or busy most years, which was all right with Clare.
So every year, Clare and her mother would take the train in and watch every tree lighting in town, then sit on the floor together at Lord & Taylor to watch the light show over and over, shop, and hear as much carol singing as they could. They both loved carols, and Clare’s mother had taught her verses to “Silent Night” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” that almost no one else knew. On Christmas Eve, they would eat dinner at a country inn, where a married couple named Juno and Lars would serve a Christmas-carol dinner that included goose, pears, chestnuts, and real figgy pudding. Clare would feel safe and peaceful, at a table with her mother in a room filled with noisy, laughing, dressed-up strangers, the country sky arching over the roof, and Christmas arriving around them little by little like snow.
But her mother was so uplifted, describing candy-colored spires decorated with knobs and swirls, shaping them in the air with her hands, and planning lessons in Catalan for them to take together, that Clare didn’t mind giving up one holiday season to Spain. If her mother’s voice sounded higher than usual, contained a hectic note, Clare thought, it was just excitement and probably a burst of energy from all the food.
Then, Clare’s mother suddenly stopped this vivid, bubbling chatter, looked around at the pink walls, and said, “My husband used to bring me to this place,” in a new, hard voice that stopped Clare cold. Clare’s parents had divorced when she was two years old. While Clare saw her father occasionally, Clare’s mother never talked about his leaving, never talked about him much at all, and had certainly never called him “my husband.” What shook Clare more than this, though, was the way her mother’s voice and face changed so fast, as though she were a different person interrupting herself.
When the waiter walked up a second later, Clare’s mother’s eyes softened as she turned her attention to him and the corners of her mouth curled. To Clare’s amazement, her mother took the man’s hand between the two of hers, turned it over, examined his palm, turned it back, then lifted his cuff with her fingers to look at his watch.
“I see you have the time,” she said in the same low voice she’d used before. The waiter glanced at Clare, then smiled at her mother.
“Would you like your check?” he said. His hand still rested lightly in hers, and as she nodded, she opened her fingers, releasing it like a bird.
Just after he walked away, Clare’s mother stood, folding her napkin carefully and placing it on the table. Her expression was full of affection for Clare, “Ladies’ room. Wait here, darling,” she said, and now the “darling” sounded all wrong, like she wasn’t talking to Clare at all. Abruptly, she sat back down in her chair and leaned toward Clare. In a loud whisper, almost a hiss, she said, “Never let anyone tell you men want sex more than women. Your father was nothing in bed, but with the right man, sex is exquisite. Exquisite! Listen to your body, Clare.” Then she stood up and walked away.
Clare felt punched, gasping and sick. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, holding on to her own shoulders to stop herself from shaking. What could be happening? She wanted her mother to be drunk, but she knew she wasn’t; her glass of wine was almost full. The mother she knew would never have spoken those words, would never have taken her out of school to go to lunch, wouldn’t have given her wine, wouldn’t have touched a waiter. Should she tell someone? Who? Would her mother get in trouble if she did?
Clare knew what you did when someone you loved died. You pulled yourself tall and straight like a princess, received condolences graciously, dry-eyed, and then later sobbed stormily and cleansingly into your pillow. But all the books she’d read had taught her nothing about what you do when your mother doesn’t die but turns into someone you don’t know, someone who doesn’t take care of you anymore.
3
Cornelia
If you’re not a big believer in signs, then, trust me, we have that in common. If your impatience with people who are forever telling stories containing a fairly ordinary coincidence that they interpret (after a pregnant pause) as a sign borders on nausea, I’m right there with you. And if you’ve noticed that such people almost invariably opt to take as signs only those things that point them in precisely the direction they wanted to go anyway, while ignoring plenty of other seemingly valid sign options, well, my friend, we’re three for three.
For example, this arrogant, slick-haired guy Luka from the café showed up one day fairly gyrating with excitement about a woman he’d just met in New York, whom he called his “soul mate,” letting the phrase hang in the air for a moment as though it were freshly minted rather than so shopworn as to be entirely without meaning to any thinking person. Then he recounted their meeting, unsubtle-innuendo-laden interaction, and su
bsequent minimal-but-promising sexual contact. And the big finish, the shiny tack that was meant to pin his little story to our brains forever, was the fact that they were both wearing entirely brown ensembles. Brown shirts, brown pants, brown socks, brown shoes. Brown belts! Brown watch bands! (It was the small leather goods that really seemed to get him.) After a pause, Luka breathed reverently. “It was a sign we belong together.”
The sad part is that at least five people heard this story, and not one called him an idiot, but instead sat wordlessly smiling and slow-nodding at him. No one liked Luka because he was wholly unlikable, but people were a bit in awe of him, as he was the richest person any of us knew personally. Though Luka was a dog-walker by trade, his grandfather set up the entire family for countless generations by inventing a grommet or wing nut or gasket or some other of those tiny Dr. Seuss–sounding gizmos. Because it had to be done, I fought through the money fog that surrounded Luka and said, “What about the fact that she’s married with two small children? What was that a sign of?”
So, you can imagine my embarrassment in telling you how the day after meeting Martin, I set about compiling my own collection of signs. It wasn’t a large collection, I’m happy to report. It contained three items; I’d say three measly items, but while the first two were definitely measly, the third was really quite spectacular—downright cinematic.