Light from a Distant Star (13 page)

“Real father!” her mother snapped. “Your real father is that poor man downstairs trying to fix the hot water heater! Your real father is the wonderful man who’s raised you for the last fifteen years and has never considered you anything but his real daughter!”

Only an hour later, her “real” father, that poor and wonderful man with the worst possible timing, would eagerly tell his wife, in an effort to boost her spirits, that Luminosity Press had been so impressed by his query letter, outline, and sample chapter that they wanted to publish his book.

“You’re kidding!” she’d gasped.

“No, it’s the truth.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Neither could I.”

“So what happens next?”

“Well, now they want the rest of the manuscript.”

“So send it!”

“Well, I’m going to. I just need to finish. That last chapter. And some edits, here and there. And then, um …”—he coughed—“the sixty-five hundred.”

“Sixty-five hundred what?”

“Dollars.”

“Why? For what?”

“That’s what it costs.”

“You mean you have to pay
them?
What kind of publisher’s that?”

“Vanity press, it’s called. That’s how it works. So I was thinking, maybe I’ll ask Charlie—”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Just a thought, that’s all.”

J
ESSICA WAS FINALLY HOME FROM CAMP
. S
HE SEEMED MUCH
happier. She’d gone out with two different boys and they were both going to write to her. Nellie asked exactly what “gone out” means at camp. It’s just the way it works, Jessica said. What? The way what works? Nellie persisted. Dating, she said. Dating! Nellie couldn’t help squealing. What kind of dates can you go on in a camp?

“Oh, my God,” Jessica groaned. “See! That’s because you’ve never been. But lots of stuff happens.” She fixed her peevish, squinty-eyed look of superiority on Nellie. “Believe me.”

“Okay. Like what?”

In the end, Nellie came to understand that at the camp social a boy named Carver had danced with her. Slow-danced. Close, she said, gesturing with a bump and grind. Like, really, really close. And then there’d been Seth in her therapy group, who’d always sit next to her. One day, during the group hike in the woods, she and Seth wandered off the trail. With everyone out of sight, they crawled under a huge fallen tree. Seth tongue-kissed her and then he asked her to do it to him. Tongue-kiss
him?
Nellie asked. No! Jessica scoffed.
Do it!
To him. Oh! Nellie said. As if she knew exactly what she meant. Jessica’s experiences had made her more confident and critical of Nellie. She treated her like a jerk. As if she didn’t know anything.

But at least Dolly Bedelia liked her, one day declaring that Nellie was very mature for her age and a really good listener, which most people weren’t. Oh, they’d act like they were interested in everything, when they were really just waiting for an opening so they could start talking about themselves. Like Tessa from the club, for instance. She’d been the worst of all, because of the way she took every
single thing Dolly’d told her in “privacy”—in
Private
, but Nellie chewed her lip rather than correct her—and used it against her. Apparently, Tessa had spilled Dolly’s secrets to Tray, the guy Dolly used to date, and now he was jealous out of his mind. Instead of attracting the guy to Tessa, though, it had turned him even more crazy jealous over Dolly.

Dolly’s breathy confidences always had a soothing effect. Her voice was like background music. Unintrusive melodies that made no demands on Nellie’s own reveries while she moved around the apartment, pretending it was hers as she picked things up. She’d just started washing the sink full of dishes when Dolly came up behind and began fiddling around with her hair.

“I got an idea,” she said, then hurried into her dark bedroom. She returned with a purple spray bottle and a set of electric rollers. She unplugged the clock above the table so she could plug in the rollers. What Nellie needed was a new look, she said, chattering excitedly as she set her hair on the hot rollers. Then she slipped off Nellie’s glasses so she could pluck her eyebrows and curl her eyelashes. The price of beauty, she said when Nellie’s nose began to run and her eyes teared up. The tweezing really hurt. Nellie declared she’d never do that again, and Dolly laughed.

“Yes, you will,” she said. “Someday. That, and a lot more.”

Nellie panicked, seeing the mass of crimped tubes and bottles, brushes and tools Dolly was dumping out of her soiled makeup bag. She couldn’t, she told Dolly, she’d get in trouble. Ruth hadn’t been allowed to wear makeup until ninth grade, though she’d secretly put it on in sixth grade on her way to school, but Nellie didn’t tell Dolly that. Oh, just for now, in here, Dolly assured her, lifting off Nellie’s glasses. And much better to learn from a professional. She’d had training. At the club she always made up the other dancers. They’d wait for her, she was that good. “It’s all about lighting,” she murmured. “And shadows. Some people just reflect different; it’s this thing they have, this special kind of glowy thing. It, like, comes from the gut, works its way out.”

Nellie held her breath, wanting to be told she had it, the glowy
thing. “Plus, this way,” Dolly continued, “you can see how you look—in privacy. Then after, I’ll show you how to get it off. Baby oil and witch hazel, that’s the trick. Mine, anyway.”

Sounded reasonable enough to Nellie as she sat, heavy eyed, with Dolly’s whispery breath feather-tickling her skin while she stroked her face and neck with soft, damp cotton balls and swirled fruity cream concoctions onto her cheeks and lips, talking all the while. She was being lulled into a dream, a haze of sleep and drifting wakefulness. Near blindness only heightened the spell. She had really good bones, Dolly told her, which Nellie took as pity praise, like when people admired Jessica’s tiny, little feet.

“And your mouth,” Dolly said, patting her lips with a gauze pad before outlining them, “it’s just perfect. I’ll betcha guys are always tryna steal a kiss, huh?”

“No!” she said, and Dolly laughed.

“Oh, all right, one guy then. What’s his name?”

“Bucky,” she blurted, despising herself, despising him, wanting the word back, but it was too late. She’d just made real every vile ache she’d so far been able to subdue.

“Bucky. That’s cool. Bet he’s cute, huh?”

“No!”

“But you like him.”

Just then a knock came at the door. Dolly froze. Her eyes darted past Nellie, who quickly put on her glasses. The knocking became banging.

“Dolly!” a man called. “It’s me! Open the door! C’mon, I know you’re in there. I just wanna talk, that’s all. I promise. Just open the door. I won’t even come inside. I just wanna ask you something. About him, that guy you been—”

She was already at the door, throwing it open. It was the same man with the shiny shaved head and the spiderweb on his neck. Diamond studs glittered in both ears. He wore faded jeans and a snug black T-shirt that strained over the muscles in his chest and huge arms.

“Hey, Dolly-doll.” His soft voice crept through a scowl. Nellie could tell from Dolly’s tightly crossed arms that she was afraid.

“Not a good time, Tray. My landlady’s kid, she’s here. I’m taking care of her. Like babysitting.” She tried to close the door.

“That’s okay.” He eased past her into the apartment. “We can still—”

“Nellie,” she interrupted. “Whyn’t you go home and come back later.” Holding Nellie’s shoulder, she steered her past the man. Nellie ran next door, straight into the bathroom and pressed her ear to the wall. Upstairs, Ruth was playing music in her room. The dull boom in the walls was more vibration than sound, enough to muddy every other word. First it was the man who got mad. Then it was Dolly. She didn’t care, she said. It was her life and she could do whatever the hell she wanted. She damn well better care, he shouted. Unless she wanted to be a dumb-ass pole dancer the rest of her life.

“You’ll see,” she kept saying. “You’ll see.”

“So why’s it such a big fucking secret then?”

“Cuz it’s none of your fucking business, that’s why!”

“No, cuz he’s probably married and you’re the only one that’ll do him, that’s why.”

“Get out! Just get the hell out!”

“Same as before, right? And you keep falling for it.”

“Just so you’ll know, I’m in a very serious relationship.”

“Jesus, then you’re even stupider’n I thought.”

There was a thudding scuffle and then a door slammed. Nellie ran into the living room. Through the curtain she watched the man storm down the walk. Suddenly he stopped, picked up one of the large rocks bordering her mother’s hostas, and threw it, crashing right through Dolly’s window. He jumped into his red pickup truck and roared off.

Talk about synchronicity. Ruth ran down from her room. Henry charged around the side of the house from the barn, where he’d been sawing down the legs on a wooden table he wanted to put in the tree house. Nellie arrived to find Dolly trembling on her narrow porch. “Bastard! No good bastard!” she sobbed. Daggers of glass glimmered in the window.

“Jesus!” Nellie and Ruth whispered. They’d heard stories about drunken Mr. Teehan shooting out the street lights on Commercial Street, and the time he kicked a hole in the front door when his wife
wouldn’t let him in, but things like that never happened here. Not on Oak Street. Not to them.

“What the hell happened?” Ruth yelled over Dolly’s wails, thrilling Nellie with this chorus of curses, the entire scene more X-rated drama than anything she’d ever in her whole life been part of. The three Peck kids seemed more competent than the adult.

“We better call the police!” Henry shouted. He looked as scared as he was pleased by the excitement.

“No!” Dolly pleaded. “No, don’t! I’ll take care of it. I’ll pay for it. I’ll get it fixed!”

“But what if he comes back?” Nellie asked from the bottom step, shocked by the bruises already showing on Dolly’s arms.

“Who?” Ruth kept asking. “What if who comes back?”

“Tray,” Nellie said, and that’s when Ruth looked at her sister, closely.

“What’d you do? Your face! All that makeup! And your hair! Oh, my God! You’re gonna be in such big trouble!”

E
VEN AFTER COUNTLESS
scrubbings that left her mouth and cheeks raw, there were still traces left, vile stains making her mother wince whenever she looked at her. From that point on, Nellie was forbidden from ever entering Dolly’s apartment again. But with her eavesdropping still a secret, no one could tell her not to listen at the bathroom wall. Dolly’s television seemed to be on night and day. A few times Nellie heard her pleading with someone on the phone. Later, when Nellie would try her best to remember every detail, she couldn’t recall exact words, just sounds—sad, sad sounds of being scared and alone and not knowing what to do about it.

Her father cut the new pane at the store. Saying it was the least she could do, Dolly made Benjamin a cup of instant coffee, then stood on the drizzly porch watching him putty the glass into the window frame, then touch up the trim paint. As he was leaving, she tried to tuck a twenty-dollar bill into his shirt pocket, but he refused, assuring her it was no big deal, not to worry about it. After all, he was in the business. When he came back in and told her mother this, with what even
Nellie recognized as a boyish grin, she was furious. Twenty dollars. The materials, plus his time, easily came to more than that.

“She’s just a kid,” he said. “And plus, she felt so darn bad, I don’t know, I just wanted to make her feel better.”

“Feel better!” her mother said. Kind as her mother was, family had to come first. And with their own finances so thinly stretched, Dolly had become one more risk. A burden.

L
IFE SEEMED QUIET FOR A WHILE, QUIET IN THAT TENSE WAY
adults have of going silent the minute she’d come into the room. But Nellie knew what it was, the same old problem, money and her father’s unconcern about their lack of it. Her mother had looked into Luminosity Press. No one had ever heard of their six published books. None had ever been sold in a bookstore. She begged Benjamin to forget about finishing the history, or at least put it on hold for a while so he could concentrate on selling the store. “You’re probably right,” he’d agree, then continue for hours in the office, typing away, so lost in the work that customers often came in and left without his ever knowing.