Seven Stories Up (16 page)

“Annie, look!” she called in an excited whisper, waving her key in the air. Her voice echoed across the cavernous lobby. She started back toward me.

I began to push open the swinging kitchen door for
her, but a voice broke the calm, a cold voice, an angry voice. “Mary!” It was the sound of a whip cracking. I let the door fall back again and peered through the crack.

Molly’s father strode into view. “Mary!” he said again. “Mary Moran! Just
what
do you think you are doing downstairs? Dressed in your nightclothes?”

Molly spun around near the bottom of the staircase. Her face was white. Her eyes were huge. “Papa,” she bleated. “I—”

I could see the confusion on her face. It was like she was grasping for a story. Her eyes darted in my direction, but there was nothing I could do.

“I just—was hungry,” she said. “So I—I thought—”

“You
thought
? Your job is not to think, but to do as you are
told
!”

A moment later another man in a tuxedo entered the room. “Everything all right in here, James?” he asked.

Mr. Moran’s thunder died. He waved to the man and cleared his throat. “Just a second, Robert,” he said. “I’ll be right there! Have a drink on the house. I need to take care of a small matter. Nothing of import. No need for concern.”

The other man walked back the way he’d come, and Molly’s father’s spoke again, in the same tone I’d heard from under the bed that morning. Stern, cold. He reached
out and grabbed Molly’s arm. “I have
no
patience for this,” he said. “I do not know how you got down here, and I’m
not
pleased. I have work to do, and no time for personal matters. We have guests, and I cannot have you complicating things. McGhee!”

I watched from afar as Molly’s face crumpled. It was like she shrank, faded.

From the staircase above, another man scurried down, a thin, nervous man in glasses. “Yes, sir? Did you need something, Mr. Moran?” When he saw Molly, his eyes went wide.

Molly’s father looked up. “Yes, McGhee. You are to take my daughter back to her room immediately.” He turned his back on Molly and started walking away. “I’ll deal with her tomorrow. Also, please tell Nora I’ll need to speak with her in the morning, first thing.”

“Yes, sir,” said McGhee, looking concerned as he continued swiftly down the stairs, his eyes on Molly.

Mr. Moran disappeared, and I heard the sound of a door shutting as McGhee reached out to Molly. Molly hung her head and turned to face him.

But suddenly—Molly changed. Her back straightened, her chin lifted, her arms rose, and she ran. Molly burst forward. At first I thought she was running at McGhee,
charging him, but then I realized—no! Molly ran at the angel, the lovely marble angel on the pedestal at the foot of the stairs.

“It isn’t
fair
!” she shouted, throwing up her hands, pushing at the base with all her might. “I
won’t
go back!” The pedestal rocked, tipped slightly. “Why do you
hate
me so?” Molly called, pushing again. “Is it because I’m sick?
Why?
”

Slowly the pedestal tilted, and then the angel fell, crashing to the floor. Molly sank to her knees, surrounded by chunks of marble. She was wheezing hard, panting for air. Crying.

Through the crack in the door, I searched for Molly’s father. I wanted him to run to her, to scoop her up like a baby and make everything okay. But he was nowhere to be seen. He’d left the room. He was already gone.

Molly began to cry quietly into her hands.

It hurt me to see her like that. She looked so alone, a pale tiny thing in that huge rich room. I had to keep myself from running to her, but what could I do? What would it help for me to get caught? Where would they take me? The Baltimore Home for Girls? I couldn’t afford to find out.

McGhee knelt slowly and pulled Molly to her feet. He
looked upset. “Miss Moran,” he said gently. “Molly, come along. You’ll feel better in the morning.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her to the elevator.

I don’t remember backing away from the door or climbing up into the dumbwaiter. I don’t know how I pulled myself back up to the seventh story on my own. But I must have done it slowly, because by the time I tumbled out and into bed, Molly was already asleep, drugged, breathing slow.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I just crawled in beside her. I stared at Molly’s flushed cheeks and watched the rise and fall of the covers as she snored. I pushed her hair out of her face. I felt so sad. I couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble she’d be in tomorrow. What else could they possibly do to her? What was left for them to take away?

I turned over in the bed, thinking about what I’d witnessed, and my mind replayed the scene in the lobby. All that shouting. The angel falling. The crash! So loud. It was a shame. I’d liked the angel.

Then something clicked in my brain, and I sat back up. The angel. She wasn’t
supposed
to smash. She was supposed to
be
there, waiting for me, dusty in the darkness. I’d touched her, or I
would
touch her, unbroken, in the future. Only now I couldn’t. Now she couldn’t greet
me when I arrived. What did that mean? That things
could
be shattered! Things
could
be changed.
I
could change things.

I lay back, stared up at the canopy, and tried to think of what I might have already changed. Out of nowhere, a word hit me:
TEEVEESET!
I groaned, thinking of all the girls singing “Miss Lucy,” even though there were no
teeveesets
in the world to sing about yet. The things happening all around me were not only in the past. This wasn’t a vacation in the frozen land of long ago, a distant memory. These things were happening for real. What did that mean? Could they really change the future? Could they ruin it?

I
had
to go home,
now
! It
had
to work this time. I couldn’t stay any longer. This was too much. If only it would work this time … I reached under the bed for the mask.

But the mask wasn’t there! So I climbed down from the bed and crawled under to look. Over by the wall, I saw something crumpled … the mask! I reached out to grab it and breathed a sigh of relief when my fingers fell on heavy silk. But as I was backing out from under the bed, I saw something else crumpled in the darkness and reached for that too. I recognized the feel of it, the stretched elastic, the loose beads.

I stood up and stared at the two objects in my hands, puzzling.
Two
masks? Both of them lost beneath the bed. One mask was Molly’s—new and shiny and forgotten before I’d even arrived. One mask was mine—faded and falling to pieces, stolen from the future. The masks were the same, and yet they were different. I tried to understand.…

Did this mean anything?

Maybe it did! Maybe it meant I’d been using the wrong mask.

Hope fluttered inside me. Maybe
this
was the answer! Maybe this was why the mask hadn’t worked for me. Because it hadn’t been my mask! It had been Molly’s. Maybe now that I had my mask back, everything would be fine.

It
had
to. I willed it to. Because if things were changing in the past, I had no way of knowing what they’d do to my future. Maybe I was losing my memories each morning because those moments were actually disappearing. My stomach lurched just thinking about it, and I lay back down in the bed. I needed to get home
now
, while it was still there. I slipped on the mask,
my
mask, the right one this time. I hoped.

I held my breath as I pulled the mask down and waited. For something, anything, to happen. For a moment, with
my eyes squeezed shut beneath the silk and my mind focused on Mom, with my fingers crossed and my heart hopeful, I felt a twinge, a lifting, a half beat.

But it faded.

No.

No!

The magic didn’t come. No static. No strange silence. Just the sound of Molly snoring. Just my thoughts, still there, licking like flames at the edges of my sleep. I held my breath and counted to ten. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to run away from everything. Even Molly.

But it did no good.

I reached up and touched the sleeping mask on my eyes lightly.

I wanted to cry.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt sad. At first I didn’t know why. Then I pulled off my mask, looked at Molly, and remembered.

Her father. The angel. There was no fog around those memories. I didn’t have to work to know where I was. I remembered the shattering, the fight.

But when I tried to push further, the fog was back. It took many seconds before the rest came, dragging itself like a broken leg. Some part of me recalled this feeling of being lost, of waking in a cloud, and I just lay there, waiting for things to get better.

I struggled, casting about for the pictures, the words, until like a cloud taking shape, it arrived—a picture of a woman with short brown hair and a smear of lipstick. With that memory came more sadness.

Bit by bit I brought it all back to me. But there was no joy in the remembering. It was painful, to think I had to work at remembering Mom.
Chicken pox. SpaghettiOs
. I pulled out stories.
Brown bag lunches with cartons of chocolate milk. Smurfs
. All of it like a story I’d read, all of it distant and sad.

Eventually Molly woke and rolled over too. She stretched. She stared at me. She rubbed her eyes. “McGhee took my key,” she said.

I reached out a hand to touch her arm. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“I think so,” she replied. She picked at the bedspread for a minute, and then she shot me a strange look.

“I lied to you,” she said.

“About what?”

“My father. He
is
mean.”

“Oh, that. Well, all parents suck sometimes,” I said.

“Is
suck
a bad thing?” Molly asked.

I nodded.

“Then yes. They do
suck
. I didn’t want to say it before. Perhaps I thought that would make it more real, saying
it out loud. He’s always been cold to me, but this summer … I’ve just been up here alone, waiting for things to be better. Instead they got worse. Papa
sucks
terribly, and if he’s going to hate me, then maybe I can just hate him back. That might be easier.”

“Hold the phone,” I said. “What are you talking about?
Hate?
He doesn’t
hate
you.”

“How can you say that?” asked Molly. “He locks me away in here.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s a jerk, sure, but he doesn’t
hate
you. He’s your dad. He put you up here because some doctor told him it was what you needed. And he’s ignoring you because he’s a dumb grown-up. That’s what they do half the time, ignore us.”

“But
your
mother doesn’t. You said she was
plenty
. Remember? You said she was
there
.”

“Well, she is, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a screwup! I also told you she forgets to pick me up from dance class, remember? One year she forgot my birthday, and she’s the worst tooth fairy on the planet. Also, she’s kept secrets from me all my life, about some pretty important stuff.”

“What sort of secrets?”

“Oh—umm, stuff about my grandma. But never mind about her. You wouldn’t be interested. The point
is—parents can be stupid and mean, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love us.”

“He’s always busy.” Molly shook her head.
“Always.”

“I don’t know, Molly. Maybe your parents are fighting. Maybe that’s why your mom is gone right now. Hey, if this were a movie, he’d have a mortal illness or a drinking problem. But he does love you. Even when they’re being mad or dumb, your parents
have
to love you. It’s in their DNA or something.”

Molly stared at me. “What’s DNA?”

“Never mind. Just be glad you’ve
got
parents.”

Molly rubbed her wet eyes on her sleeve. When her face came away from the fabric, she looked slightly less miserable. “You know—I don’t exactly believe what you said, but I’d like to. I want to. Perhaps—I
need
to.”

Nora didn’t show up that morning with breakfast. Nobody did. Molly and I sat and waited. We got hungry. We played a game of checkers and tried not to think about muffins. Friend roamed around mewing. He’d gotten used to his sardines.

At last Molly’s belly growled so loud I could hear it. “Oh my!” she said. Her cheeks turned pink. “Excuse me.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’m starving too. My stomach feels like it’s been scraped out like a jack-o’-lantern.”

“Mine feels like a cave,” said Molly miserably. She pushed away the checkerboard. “Come on!” She headed for the bathroom.

We made our way down the fire escape, carefully because we were feeling so faint. But at the bottom, instead of heading to the alley or the basement, Molly turned sharply and walked up the path to the front of the hotel, right around the side of the building to the main drive. I followed her as she marched in through the double doors.

I hung back by the piano as Molly went up to the reception desk and rang the brass bell. I had no idea what to expect. “Papa!” she called. “Is my father here? McGhee!”