Missing Pieces (35 page)

Not that Colin’s history was ignored. Gruesome and lurid details of his killing spree filled page after page. Under a profile of Jo Lynn, Colin’s penchant for breaking the noses of his victims was duly noted, something the psychologists who’d testified at his trial had traced back to his boyhood, when his mother had held his nose in his own waste. These same psychologists now speculated on Colin’s motives for marrying my sister, and hers for marrying him. Stability, image, friendship, they postulated on Colin’s behalf. Publicity, loneliness, a martyr complex, they proffered with regard to Jo Lynn. They gave conflicting opinions as to whether or not they thought the marriage would last. “It stands as good a chance as any,” one proclaimed.

The Saturday afternoon I found out that Sara wasn’t at the Sperlings’, I called the prison, hoping to prevent the marriage from taking place. But the wedding was already over. My sister had left the premises. Colin was back in his cell.

I sat up all night waiting for Sara to come home, even though I knew she wouldn’t be back till the following day. She was at the Sperlings’, after all, studying hard for a test. She wasn’t due back till Sunday evening.

“Come to bed,” Larry urged on several occasions. “You were up all night last night. You need your sleep.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“You could try.”

“She might come home.”

“She won’t.”

“She might.”

“What are you going to say to her when she does?”

“I don’t know.”

That much, at least, was the truth. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to say to my older daughter. Was there any point in reminding her, yet again, that lies destroy trust, and that, despite the fact I would always love her, with every lie I liked her less? Would she care that she was making it harder and harder for us to believe anything she said, that she was wiping out whatever goodwill she’d managed to acquire?

Was there any point in asking her why she did these things, why she would deliberately go against our explicit instructions that she have nothing further to do with my sister and Colin Friendly? Had she learned nothing from the last episode except to make her lies more elaborate?

I shuddered with the knowledge that she’d been setting me up for weeks: cleaning her room, helping around the house, doing her homework, actually being pleasant to be around. I remembered the feel of her body in my arms when she’d comforted me about my mother, the overwhelming tenderness I’d felt toward her. I’d feasted for days on that feeling. I have my little girl back, I told myself.

But it was all a ruse. A way to soften me up, get me to drop my defenses, leave my suspicions at the door. Of course, you can stay the weekend with your friend. I know how hard you’ve been working for this test. I know how much you want to do well. Take care of yourself, darling. Don’t study too hard.

I heard the rustle of pajamas, turned to see Michelle walking toward me, eyes half closed in sleep. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Fine, sweetie,” I told her. “I just can’t sleep.”

“Are you worried about Grandma?”

“A little.”

“I just looked in on her. She’s sound asleep.”

“Thank you, doll.”

“Her blanket was on the floor, so I picked it up.”

“You’re a good thing.”

She sat down on the sofa beside me, burrowed deep into my side. “I think I’ve decided what I want to be when I grow up,” she said, as if this were the most logical thing to be discussing at almost three o’clock in the morning.

“Really? What’s that?”

“A writer,” she said.

“A writer? Really? What kind of writer?”

“A novelist, I think. Maybe a playwright.”

“That’s a great idea,” I told her. “I think you’d make a wonderful writer.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because you’re sensitive, and observant, and beautiful.”

She groaned. “You don’t have to be beautiful to be a writer.”

“You have a beautiful soul,” I told her.

“Of course, I’d finish my education first,” she reassured me.

“I think that’s a smart move.”

“I was thinking of Brown, or even Yale. Do you think I’m smart enough to get into an Ivy League college?”

“I think they’d be lucky to have you.”

I brushed some soft hairs away from her face, planted a gentle kiss on her forehead, stared toward the front door. How could I have two children so completely unalike? How could two children raised in the same household by the same two parents, in essentially the same way, be so totally different?

It had been that way right from the beginning, I realized, thinking back. Sara had been a difficult baby, demanding of my total attention. Michelle had been the easiest baby in the world, happy just to be included. Sara demanded to be fed every few hours; Michelle waited patiently until I was ready. Sara refused all efforts at toilet training, peeing in her pants until she was almost seven years old; Michelle trained herself at thirteen months. So, what else was new? Had anything really changed?

“You’re thinking about Sara, aren’t you?” Michelle said.

I closed my eyes, shook my head. Even in the dark, I was transparent. “Sorry, sweetie.”

“Don’t worry about her, Mom. She’s all right.”

I patted her hand. “I guess so.”

“She’s not at Robin’s house, is she?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Why? Did she say anything to you about where she was going?”

Michelle’s head shook from side to side. “No, she just asked if she could borrow my black-and-white top—you know, the one with the matching sweater.”

“How could she borrow your top? It would be way too small.”

“She likes them that way.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her no. I said, why would she need to borrow my top just to go study?”

“What did she say?”

“She said I was a stupid bitch.”

“What?”

“It’s all right. I’m used to it.”

“Used to what?”

“She always calls me a stupid bitch. Sometimes worse.”

I was horrified. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

“Because I have to learn to deal with these things myself. Isn’t that what you would have told me? That deep down, my sister loves me very much, and that I’m a smart girl, I’d figure out how to deal with her?”

I smiled sadly. That was exactly what I would have told her. But that was before my daughter had run off to serve as maid of honor for my sister’s marriage to a serial killer. Now I wasn’t sure what I knew about anything. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. You don’t deserve that. She has no right to call you names.”

“She had no right to take my top and matching sweater, but she did anyway.”

“She took your top after you said no?”

“I looked everywhere. They’re gone. So are three of my tapes.”

“Your tapes?”

“Nine Inch Nails, Alanis Morissette, Mariah Carey.”

“Oh God.”

“She’ll bring them back. Of course, the tapes’ll be ruined, and my clothes will be all stretched out and reek of cigarettes.”

“I’ll get you new ones,” I told her.

“I don’t want new ones. I just want her to stop taking my things.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“That won’t do any good.”

“Maybe it will.”

“Has it ever?”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I admitted after a pause.

“Can I have a lock put on my closet?”

I stared through the darkness at my younger child, amazed at how innately practical she was. “Yes, we can do that.”

“Good.”

“How’d you get to be so smart?”

Michelle smiled. “Can I tell you something terrible?” she asked.

I held my breath. “How terrible?”

“Pretty terrible.”

“About Sara?”

“About me.”

I felt a strange combination of fear and relief. What could Michelle possibly tell me about herself that could be so terrible? And if there was something truly terrible about her that I didn’t know, did I really want to hear it? Now? “What is it?” I asked.

For a second, she was silent, as if debating with herself whether or not to proceed.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said hopefully.

“Sometimes I hate her,” she confided.

“What?”

“Sara,” Michelle clarified. “Sometimes I hate her.”

That’s it? I thought, with great relief. That’s what’s so terrible? “You hate your sister?”

“Sometimes. Does that make me an awful person?”

“It makes you pretty normal.”

“Is it normal to hate your sister?”

“It’s normal to be angry at somone who steals from you and calls you names,” I said.

“It’s more than that. Sometimes, I really, really hate her.”

“Sometimes I hate her too,” I said.

Michelle’s arms reached around my waist, hugged me tightly. Two wounded comrades-in-arms, I remember thinking, kissing the top of her head.

“Can I tell you something else?” she asked, her voice shaking with the threat of tears.

“You can tell me anything,” I told her.

“You remember when I was in grade five?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“And Mr. Fisher gave me the butterfly’s cocoon to take care of over the Christmas break?”

“I remember.”

Michelle had brought home a glass jar that contained a butterfly’s cocoon that was attached to the side of a small stick. Every day, she watched over that jar, checking the cocoon for signs of growth, fretting over it the way a mother worries about her newborn baby. “I don’t think it’s right,” she announced one day. “I think the cocoon’s supposed to be higher.”

“I think you should leave it alone,” Sara advised.

“I think it should be higher.” Michelle reached inside the jar, adjusted the cocoon with her fingers. “That’s better.”

When Michelle proudly returned the jar to the teacher, he told her that something had dislodged the cocoon and that the butterfly inside had died. “These things happen,” he told her. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“It was my fault,” Michelle said now, crying softly. “I moved the cocoon and so the butterfly died. Sara was right.”

“Oh, my sweet baby.”

“She said to leave it alone. I didn’t listen.”

“You’ve been worrying about this all these years?”

“I never told Mr. Fisher I moved it.”

I rocked her back and forth, as I had when she was small, more for my benefit than for hers, even then. “It would be wonderful if we could go back and change things, correct all our mistakes, make everything right.”

Michelle sniffed loudly. “But we can’t.”

“No, we can’t. If we did, we’d be so busy rewriting the past, we’d have no time left for the present.”

“What things would
you
rewrite?” she asked.

“Oh my. That’s much too big a question for this hour of the night,” I told her. “Besides, you only torture yourself when you start asking questions like that. We all make mistakes. The trick is to do the best you can.”

“I think you’ve done really well,” Michelle offered graciously.

“Thank you, sweetie. Have I ever told you that when I grow up I want to be exactly like you?”

She laughed through her tears, gave another loud sniff, hugged me tighter.

We heard footsteps, turned as one toward the sound, watched as my mother emerged from the shadows, clad in a white flannel nightgown, the dim light of the quarter-moon dancing across her face. “Hello, dear,” she said, coming over and sitting on my other side. “Is it time to get up?”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, Grandma,” Michelle told her.

“Of course it is,” my mother said.

“We should all be in bed.”

“Where’s your father?” my mother asked, looking around.

“He’s asleep,” Michelle answered.

“Where’s your father?” my mother repeated, and I realized it was me she was addressing.

“He’s dead,” I reminded her gently.

“Yes,” she said, her gray head nodding up and down. “I remember that. We were having dinner one night, finishing our dessert, and he stood up to get a glass of milk, and said he felt a hell of a headache coming on. Those were his exact words—a hell of a headache. I remember because he almost never used profanity.”

“Hell isn’t a profanity,” Michelle said.

“It isn’t?”

“No. Not now.”

“Well, it was. It was then,” my mother told her with a certainty that surprised me.

Three generations of women lapsed into silence. Past, present, and future, together in the darkness before dawn. I remember thinking that I’d never felt so helpless.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I found myself praying, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

N
eedless to say, I didn’t sleep at all that night. When Larry woke up at eight o’clock the next morning, he found me still sitting on the living-room sofa, my eyes open and glazed over, staring blankly toward the front door. I was alone. I had a vague recollection of Michelle guiding my mother back to bed at some point during the night, then coming back to kiss my forehead before retreating to her room. I remembered little else. My mind was mercifully blank. One hour had drifted seemlessly into the next. The sky had gone from black to gray to blue without any input from me. I was alive to face another day.

“Have you been up all night, funny face?” Larry asked, sitting down beside me, the pillows of the sofa shifting to accommodate him, his terry-cloth bathrobe grazing my bare arms.

I turned away, trying to escape the sound of his voice, the weight of his concern falling heavy into my lap, like an unwanted child.

“Sara’s fine, you know,” he continued. “You can bet that
she
didn’t lose any sleep.”

“I know that.”

“Why don’t you get back into bed for a few hours. You might surprise yourself and fall asleep.”

“I don’t like surprises,” I told him stubbornly, deliberately missing the point.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

I nodded, but didn’t move.

“How can you even think of confronting Sara when you haven’t slept in two days?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Have you reached any conclusions about how to deal with her?”