Precious (16 page)

Natalia eyes her in a questioning way. “Do you think I should go upstairs and talk to your sister?”

“I wouldn’t,” Sissy says quietly. She slips her arm around her mother’s waist, the feel of her at once familiar and strange. “If I were you,” Sissy says, “I’d stay right here instead.”

When Natalia feels out of sorts, when she feels nervous, she tends to want to order things, to cull satisfaction and comfort from the knowledge that everything is in its proper place, that a cosmic sense of order pervades not only the universe but the immensely complicated world of one kitchen. There is a benign satisfaction that comes from scrubbing
the stove, from performing a task that requires only her hands. Later, when she finishes the stove, she washes out the Brillo pad and wipes her hands on her jeans and work shirt. She moves to the refrigerator next, throwing out an old container of sour cream layered with mold, wiping away milk rings. She throws out a wilted head of cabbage. She would give anything to make
tóltótt káposzta
now, to bury her hands in meat and rice and garlic, to press the meat into balls, roll them in the steamed cabbage leaves, and submerge them in tomato broth and vinegar.

“You’re burning that hole through me,” Natalia says, feeling rattled again. She can sense Sissy behind her but focuses her attention on the empty lunch-meat tray instead.

“Eva says she won’t come down as long as you’re here.”

“She seems different,” Natalia says. “Does she seem that way to you?”

“I don’t know,” Sissy says.

Natalia hears the hesitation in her voice, the obvious lie. If she turns now, she will likely find Sissy’s lip slightly raised, an involuntary action she performs whenever she engages in untruths. “Are you hungry?”

“No.” Another lie. Sissy shuffles into a chair, draws her knees up to her chin, thinking.

“Good,” Natalia tells her. “Because there’s nothing to eat anyway. We’ll have to go shopping.” She removes all the jarred items: the pickles and relish and marmalade, as well as the cans of Coca-Cola, and places them on the countertop in a neat row.

“I have a question,” Sissy says.

Natalia turns her head slightly, just enough to see Sissy’s stern, unhappy look. “Yes?”

“I want to know why you left.”

Natalia searches for an explanation that will soothe her daughter, but she knows of none. Her heart stills for a moment as she thinks. She pulls out the vegetable drawer and submerges it in sudsy water. She takes a dishcloth and wipes the surface, her free hand gripping the metal lip too tightly. She rinses it with scalding water that reddens and burns
her skin. When she turns again, Sissy is still watching her intently, rolling the plastic place mat, and then unrolling it.

“It was a mistake to leave,” Natalia says.

“But then
why
did you leave? You didn’t say goodbye. I spent all day with Mrs. Morris and her dumb stuffed cat.”

Natalia shakes her head slightly.

She takes a towel embroidered with a pineapple the size of her thumb and dries the drawer. Upstairs, her daughter has locked herself away in her room in an angry, silent protest at her presence and at having left, having—Natalia shapes the word for the first time— abandoned her. She knows of no mother who would do such a thing—certainly not her real mother, who, although once threatening to sell her, later clawed at a soldier’s face to keep Natalia from being taken away. Even Clara wouldn’t have left Natalia alone as a child. And now here, in her kitchen, her younger daughter burns holes through her for such carelessness, her daughter gifted with an evil eye. Outside, the day is crisp and bright and birds sing. She thinks of that day in December when she snuck out of the house like a negligent thief, her body slumped over her suitcase. “I was self-centered,” she says, finally.

Sissy says nothing. She lowers her legs and kicks at the chair adjacent to her until it moves.

“Sometimes you just don’t know why you do the things you do. You just aren’t thinking at all, I suppose.”

“That’s not a good answer,” Sissy says, her tone suddenly brooding.

“There aren’t good answers for things like this.”

“Why weren’t you thinking of us?”

“I was thinking of myself. I was thinking of what I wanted.”

“Well that’s just great,” Sissy says smugly. She folds her arms and kicks the chair again.

Natalia sits down at the table. “Once,” she says, “a long time ago, there was an irresponsible girl who wandered away from her family, all
of them, in the woods. The girl slept on a bed of moss that was as soft as fur but comfortless. At night she climbed the trees and tried to touch the empty moon, not realizing how high it was, how far away. You see? Then one night the woods caught on fire and the fire swept over the trees, burning everything. The girl ran and ran. After a time she wandered out of the forest and through a city where people busied themselves on the streets, selling bread and cursing at one another over pennies. No one spoke her language—they were all strangers to her. And it was then that she realized she missed those known to her—her family.”

“So,” Sissy asks, frowning, “what happened to her?”

“She searched for those she remembered. She decided home was a place you choose, not a place you have to be. She found a home again.”

“We’re not strangers,” Sissy says.

“No,” Natalia responds, feeling something in her throat catch. “You’re my family.”

“I’m not going to Mrs. Morris’s house anymore.”

“Fine. That’s fair.” Natalia brushes crumbs from the table and into her waiting hand. “Who cleans here?”

“Everyone.”

“I see.” She gets up, opens the cabinet, and takes out vinegar and paper towels. She wipes the window above the sink, scrubbing it until it squeaks. She removes the small vase with dried flowers. She brushes the dust from the bachelor’s buttons, wipes down the sill. “When I was young,” she says, “I buried bachelor’s buttons in the ground, to find true love. And then I met your father.”

“You did that for
Dad?
I doubt it.”

“Ah,” Natalia says, eyeing her. “It’s hard to imagine that your father and I were ever that young, right? That we were ever different.”

“How different?”

“We laughed more.”

“Do you still love him?”

“That isn’t the question. The question is, does your father still love me, or will he look at me like a stranger?”

Sissy’s face clouds over. “Mrs. Anderson comes over,” she says, tentatively.

“Oh,” Natalia says. “I see.” She concentrates on the window, which reflects back a face she does not wish to see at all.

“I don’t like her, though. I don’t like her at all. Vicki Anderson,” Sissy says finally. “She got lost in the woods, too, at the park when her mother was
drinking.
Eva says she was probably
sloshed.”

Natalia stops cleaning. “What do you mean?”

“A month ago Vicki Anderson disappeared. I think she ran away. Eva thinks she’s
dead.
”

Natalia listens as Sissy relays what details she knows, mostly things overheard, the events that shaped the month, the abandoned bike, the policemen who for weeks patrolled the neighborhood, the sniffing dogs. She lapses into events, fusing in details as they come to her, in a random sort of order: the unfilled pool, the Desert Rose and investigations, the searches the children conducted and clues they found that went largely unrecognized by uncaring adults. The summer comes out in a flood of stories, each intricately mixed with the next—Eva’s terrible speculations, the signs posted on telephone poles, the found shoe. She prattles on, telling her mother about water holes and carousels, and as she listens, Natalia sorts through what is real and what can only be imagined, sieving the information as one might flour.

“Eva thinks she was
raped.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Natalia says sternly. “Don’t listen to your sister.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?”

Not knowing what to say, Natalia takes to the window again. She can only imagine what Ginny must be going through, what toll this must be taking. She thinks of her mother, how when the soldier clutched Natalia’s neck as though she were a duck ready to be slaughtered, her mother screamed and spat at the ground. Still, even children
can go through horrible events and survive. Anything can change—if for the worse, then also for the better. In a moment, a new story might unfold—the girl found, Ginny’s house restored to harmonious order. “Anything in the entire world is possible,” she says to Sissy. “Forget what Eva says. What story do you tell yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Sissy says. “But the one thing I
do
know is that if Vicki would have had a
dog with
her, on that day, I bet nothing would have happened to her. The other thing I know is that we’re going to need to cut an onion, too, for Dad, so he won’t yell at you so much when he finds out you’re back.”

If anyone can soothe Eva’s wounded sensibilities, it is Peter, whose voice when he’s comforting turns to velvet, cushioning her. If anyone understands that the tensions of a house are sometimes too much to bear, it is him. She imagines—she has always imagined—that it is the same for him, that they share a mutual desire to shuck off confining rooms, to be away from the demands of the people in them. They’ve been talking a lot lately, him sneaking furtive calls when his wife is away, their conversations sometimes brief and sometimes extended, sustaining her for the day like a pleasant meal.

Now she dials a number she hasn’t yet dared to call, but one that she still knows by heart, having run her finger over “P. Fulton” in the phone book so many times, it borders on absurd obsession. When Peter answers, Eva blubbers out, “She came back. Can you believe my mother came back?” She tries to keep her tears in check, but it’s no use, her emotions always betray her. “Peter?” she asks, sniffling. “Are you there?”

There is an awkward pause on the other end, a muffled, deadened noise, and then Peter calls to someone else—his wife, Eva suddenly realizes—telling her that he’s got the phone, that it’s no one. Hearing this, Eva becomes even more upset. “I’m trying to tell you something,” she begins again, more stridently, “and you say I’m no one?”

“Eva.” His voice sounds put-upon and burdened. He breathes in, waits. “Jesus Christ, don’t call me at home.” Then what follows is a click, a complete silence. She is suddenly as inconsequential as the day her mother left—cast off, adrift. She bites her lip, confused momentarily and, above all else, hurt. It seems she must make a decision then— to stay locked away in her room as she has for so many days, or to take some decisive action. She rummages through her jewelry box and slides on a tigereye ring. She changes into fresh clothes, a long white dress. Resolved, she takes her keys from the dresser, vowing that she, as much as her mother and father and Peter himself, can do as she pleases. Downstairs she finds Sissy in the kitchen, still upset, Eva thinks, but subdued, possibly stunned. Her mother, changed into work clothes, is down on all fours, cutting into the kitchen tiles with a wire brush. She looks up, eyes her daughter, the dress, the sudden need.

“Where are you going?” Natalia asks.

“What does it matter?” She opens up the phone book and writes down the address, just so she makes sure she remembers. “Where were you when anything mattered? Where did you go?” Eva thinks of saying more, but when she sees the look on her mother’s face, the deep crease between her large eyes, she stops.

“Go, then,” Natalia says, scraping harder across the floor, her muscles straining. “Be alone.”

It is a twenty-minute drive to Peter’s house on the other side of town. She gets lost twice and stops for directions at the gas station, the attendant finally drawing her a map before sending her on her way again. The winding streets around Peter’s house daze her slightly, as do the idle park benches and newer houses. On Arbor Place, she turns and drives slowly, studying the numbers etched into brass fixtures on the
mailboxes and front doors. She slows and parallel parks across the street from a blue colonial. The windows are open, the curtains flapping in the breeze. Wind chimes clatter. In the front yard a plastic kiddy pool lies abandoned, the slide shaped like an elephant’s trunk. It all seems so practical, so mundane in a way, that it hurts Eva to witness. She expected Peter’s house to be an altogether different shape, perhaps round with solar panels and Grateful Dead music blaring from smoky rooms—something hip and cool, but not this. Not this at all. She expected the house to have a different temperament altogether. She checks the slip of paper she clenches in her moist hand. Written there is “247 Arbor Place,” a number that matches the one etched on a brass plate next to the windowed door.

She has imagined herself here so many times. She has constructed all the rooms of Peter’s house, imagined herself moving through them, opening his drawers, running her hand over his tweedy smoky clothing, opening his refrigerator, lying down in his bed, the nutty smell of him on the covers. But she has never tempted the fates before in this way. She beeps the horn, waits, but no one pulls back the curtain. No one opens the door and steps outside. An elderly couple strolls along the sidewalk, eating ice cream with a pleasant laziness. A chubby boy jogs down the street, his cheeks pushing out air like small balloons.