The Precious One (8 page)

“Yeah. Well. Something like that.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

“You think you’ll see him? Does he still live in the area?”

I shrugged and looked away. “How would I know?”

“Pfft! Yeah, right. You googled. Don’t try to tell me different, lady. Does he still live there?”

I grinned. “Not still. Again. He went away to college and then grad school in Wisconsin and seems to have lived out there for a while. Anyway, he’s back. He has an address.”

“So you’ll see him!”

“Trill. He’s probably married with ten kids.”

She stuck out her hand. “Bet he’s not. Bet you a refrigerator clean-out that he’s not.”

I considered. “Since you don’t even keep food in your refrigerator and since your rock-and-roll cleaning guy cleans it for you every month, it’s a deal.”

We shook.

“I hope you see him,” said Trillium. “I hope, I hope, I hope.”

“Oh, I’ve seen him. He has all those tattoos and smells like Pine-Sol, but he’s still kind of cute.”

“Hardy har har.”

“You know what Ben did, about three weeks after we started dating? He took a couple of ballet classes, just because ballet was so important to me, and he wanted to see what it was like.”

“Wow.”

I sighed, chased a pea around my plate with a fork. “What if he’s different?”

“He will be,” said Trillium.

“Oh, God, what if he’s the
same
?”

“He’ll be that, too, honey,” she said. “Just like you. Just like everyone.”

TWO DAYS LATER
,
I
drove the seven hours from my house to my father’s with an iPod full of fortifying songs, a suitcase full of a week’s worth of clothes, and a head full of Ben. Oh, Ben. His laugh; his Yorkies Busby and Jed; the way he and I would study for hours together without speaking; the things he taught me to like (Ovaltine, basketball, chess); the things I taught him to like (sushi, U2, Barbara Kingsolver); the way his eyes were so dark you could only see his pupils in the brightest sunlight; the way he read books, literally, to pieces; the night he called me in tears (the only time I ever heard or saw him cry) and told me that his mother, who had MS but refused
to use a walker, had fallen down the garage steps and broken her hip, how she’d had to lie there for two hours on the cement floor until his stepfather got home.

It was complete indulgence, a memory binge, a Ben bender. After so many years of studied denial, of trying to downplay, shrug off, forget, I didn’t so much fall off the wagon as plunge off a cliff. I was so lost in Ben, Ben, Ben that I almost forgot that I was headed Wilson-ward. It wasn’t until I saw the exit for what I still thought of as my hometown (even though I’d tried to stop) that I remembered to worry about what waited at the end of my journey, and even then, the worry was only an annoyance, like a mosquito buzzing in the car or a bad smell. I didn’t panic. I didn’t feel like throwing up or turning the car around. Instead, I squared my shoulders, turned up the Decemberists, thought about the first present Ben gave me (a hand-cranked ice cream maker and a bag of rock salt), and exited.

Wilson’s house was on a road that had once been quiet and countrified, bordered by farms and fields but which was now pretty well trafficked. Still, the house—a long, white stucco number with a red tile roof—was set so far back from the road that it seemed to be in its own little world, bucolic and meadowy, with trees so old they were probably historic landmarks rising majestically from their pools of shadow. Mixed up among the old trees were newer ones, small and delicate. It wasn’t until I was driving down the long, gently curving driveway that I realized that all the young trees were willows.

I stopped the car, midway up the drive, shut my eyes, and took some deep breaths. With a shaky imaginary hand, I drew a magic circle in the sand, stepped into it, one foot, the other foot, and waited for the peace to soak in.

You are an adult
, I told myself.
You have a life that you love. You are happy and secure and rich in friends and family. Your mother is a jewel. Your brother thinks you’re funny. All of your ex-boyfriends still like you, except Peter, but he never liked you much to begin with. You’re a homeowner. You have ghostwritten two international bestsellers. You have long
eyelashes and good feet and a famous best friend. Jealousy can’t touch you because you exist on a plane above jealousy. High above. Miles. Miles and miles and miles
.

“Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I put the car in drive.

“Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I put the car in park in front of the house.

“Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I rang the doorbell.

I heard footsteps inside the house and stopped whispering.

Caro answered the door. Her eyes and hair looked startled, but her smile was unmistakably real.

“Taisy!” she said. “How wonderful that you’re here!”

Then, my stepmother and I were hugging, and I’m not sure, but I can’t swear that I wasn’t the one who started it.

Maybe it will be okay
, I thought,
Maybe it will even be good
.

“Hello, Eustacia,” said a voice.

The person was so impossibly tall, lithe, cool-eyed, and collected that it took a moment for me to realize three things, in this order: that she wasn’t a grown woman but a girl; that she was Wilson’s daughter, the precious one, the one deserving of honorary trees; and that we were dressed in almost identical outfits. Cashmere sweater, tall boots, and what I swear were the same wool pants, except that hers were black.

Charcoal gray is much wittier
, I thought, triumphantly, and instantly felt like a heel. She who is driven to comparing shades of stretch wool lives not on a plane above jealousy. It was so petty, I had to smile. Maybe because she thought I was smiling at her, Willow took a step backward, bumped into the stair rail, and flushed, poor child, to the roots of her hair.

“Hey there, Willow,” I said, and this time my smile was really for her. “It’s been a long time.”

Instead of smiling back, Willow lifted her chin an inch and said, “Welcome to our home. My father is sleeping just now, and I think it’s best if I don’t wake him.”

Her chin was trembling, but the rest of her was frozen in place. It’s what saved me in the end, the sudden understanding that she was so much more afraid than I was.

“It’s okay,” I told her, but what I really meant was, “It’ll be okay, really it will.”

For a split second, and I don’t think I imagined it, her eyes flashed like a stricken deer’s. Then, Willow pressed her lips together, gave a sharp shrug, and said, “Fine, then.”

“Willow,” said her mother.

But in a swirl of perfect posture and auburn hair, Willow was gone.

D
URING THAT WHOLE FIRST
conversation, he didn’t call her “daughter.” And I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a huge relief to me, a relief that later, once I’d stopped clinging to it like a life raft, transformed itself into a victory, the kind that gives you a little, gloating lift for days afterward, every time you think about it. I was not proud of this reaction. I knew it to be childish, and ignoble, and even, possibly, pathetic. For one thing, let’s face it, the chances of his calling her “daughter” when he was actually in conversation with her were pretty slim. Not many people, at least in this century, address their offspring as “daughter” even if they’re bursting with paternal feeling. Still, he might’ve used it obliquely, as in “your duty as my daughter” or in an ironic, quote-y way like “Ah, the prodigal daughter returneth!” (this second possibility had popped into my head right before bed the night before and seemed so plausible that it kept me up for hours).

But, all this aside, it simply shouldn’t have meant so much to me, that one little word. It shouldn’t have meant
anything
. After all,
I
was the true daughter.
I
was not the one my father had tossed aside in disgust and studiously ignored for going on two decades. It’s not overstating
things to say I resided firmly on the mountaintop of my father’s love, while Eustacia had spent her life at its foot, gazing upward, powerless to get so much as a toehold. I knew this, with both my brain and my metaphorical heart, but not, somehow, with my physical heart, which pounded like thunder for the full ten-minute conversation. Nor with my lungs, which seemed to freeze with dread, waiting, waiting for him to call her the word, my word, mine.

And he didn’t. But if I am perfectly honest, I will say that the conversation did not go the way I had wanted it to, even though, up until the last two minutes or so, my father was splendid, was just exactly as I would’ve hoped. Once I’d made sure he was awake and ready—so handsome in his striped pajamas and crimson dressing gown—and he had granted permission for Eustacia to enter, he’d spotted her hovering in the doorway and waved her in.

“Enter and welcome, Eustacia!” he called out. “I trust you had no trouble finding us and that you have had a little time to shake the road dust from your shoes! Please, please, do not loiter in the doorway! Enter and sit! Be at ease!”

He gestured toward the chair near the foot of his bed, a Victorian chair with a carved wooden back, no armrests, and a velvet-covered seat that was hard as a pincushion. It was the right chair for her, just as all his choices were right, his commanding tone of voice, the raja-like sweep of his hand. Oh, he was grand. He was
majestic
.

It was Eustacia who was all wrong. After what she’d done, she should have been humble, grateful, awed. She should’ve crept into my father’s room like a mouse and perched on the edge of that wretched chair as though she didn’t fully deserve to sit in it, and she should’ve begged with her eyes for any small scrap of approval my father might deign to bestow. Truth be told, I didn’t know precisely what it was she or her dastardly brother had done, although I’d come to understand that his transgressions had to do with drinking and maybe also drugs. Common degenerate stuff. Hers were kept more shadowy and vague, which is how I knew they had to do with sex. Probably pregnancy. Teen
pregnancy! Like some sad-eyed, droopy failure of a girl on a billboard with a 1-800 number printed under her tremulous chin. What could be stupider? More clichéd?

But here was Eustacia, striding with her shoulders back and her eyes amused, not even giving the Victorian chair a glance, but moving without a second thought to stand, her boot soles planted, at my father’s bedside. For a hideous instant, I thought she might lean over and kiss his cheek, but she just stood there, looped a loose strand of hair behind her left ear and smiled.

“Hello, Wilson,” she said. “My trip was fine. I’m fine. The question is, how are you?”

The
insolence
!

“I?” said my father, turning slightly pink and sitting up straighter against his pillows. “I am very well, very much on the mend.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Eustacia, a bit doubtfully. “I guess I expected . . .”

“What?” asked my father.

She gave a slight shrug. “Not that you don’t look great. You do. But, it’s been, what, around a month? I supposed you might be out of bed by now.”

The low-down, dirty
insolence
!

I wanted to shake her until her pretty white teeth rattled, but I needed to show my father I believed he could handle her on his own, which of course, he could. I bit my tongue, literally, and gazed down at my nails then out of the window in as bored a manner as I could muster.

“Ah, well, if it were up to me, I would be out in the fall sunshine raking leaves at this very moment,” said my father, “but my doctors have been quite adamant in advising bed rest and patience, neither of which suits a temperament like mine.”

It was all I could do not to shoot my father a look of surprise at this, since, at his last appointment, his doctor had told him that he could resume moderate physical activity whenever he felt strong enough. This probably did not include raking leaves, of course, but if my father had
ever once raked leaves under the fall sunshine or any other sunshine, I’d never seen it. The yard service did that. But after a second or two, I recognized the true message behind my father’s not quite true statement: his personal health or lack thereof was none of Eustacia’s damn business.
Bully for you, Daddy
, I thought.
Way to shut her up!

Except that she didn’t shut up. Eustacia sat down in the armchair next to my father’s bed and yammered on about the arrangements she’d had to make in order to be there, the book she’d put on hold, the redirection of her mail to her mother’s address, the college student she’d hired to house-sit. As if she were put out! As if she were the one doing the favor! Well, if she expected my father to thank her for going to the trouble of coming, she was very much mistaken.

“If your point is that you have a life, Eustacia,” said my father with twinkly-eyed dryness, “consider it taken.”

The odd thing is that she didn’t get mad at this. She just paused a moment, regarding him, and then
laughed
.

“You know, I suppose that was my point,” she said.

“And you are probably next going to ask how long I would like you to stay.”

“I may have been leading up to that,” she said, smiling.

“I think we should, as the saying goes, play that one by ear,” said my father.

Eustacia’s face lost a bit of its geniality, but her tone stayed light.

“I’ll only play until I’m ready to stop,” she said. “But I can be flexible, for the moment.”

“Good,” said my father. “Now, in terms of your lodgings, there are two options: one of the guest rooms or the pool house.”

“Pool house?”

Ha! My father despised questions like “Pool house?”

“It is by the pool,” he said.

“Clever place for it,” said Eustacia.

Sarcasm. She dared!

“I think you will find that it is rather nicely appointed. There is a
full bath and a small but functional kitchen. A daybed, a sofa, a television, a tile-top table with four chairs.”

Ooh, he was selling it! Telling her, in so many words, that she was an intruder, an interloper, that she did not belong under the same roof as his family. It took everything I had to mask my satisfaction!

Then, this happened.

Eustacia said, “Not the white, tile-top table from the old sunporch?”

My father said, “Yes, but the chairs are new. You will remember how the old ones were rickety even then.”

I could not have been more stunned if he’d hit me.

At this moment, my mother appeared in the doorway. I saw her before the other two did, her startled glance, her lips pressing together in disapproval. She didn’t think I should be there. She thought I should’ve led Eustacia to my father’s room and then gone to my own to do homework as I’d told her I would. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied. But I knew she wouldn’t understand—how could she not understand?—that someone had to stand guard.

“Well, this is nice,” she said, brightly.

“Please join us,” said Eustacia, standing.

As if the room belonged to her.

“No, no,” said my mother. “I was just looking for Willow. Willow, I’d love to have your help with something downstairs.”

At this, I froze, panic rising in my chest. Leave? Oh, but I couldn’t leave! No, no, no, no. I scrambled around for a way to turn my mother down without seeming rude. I couldn’t seem rude to my mother in front of Eustacia. But I would leave her alone with my father over my own dead body.

Eustacia turned her face away from my mother and, even though she gave me no more than a quick glance, I saw something come into her eyes at the sight of me, a softness I didn’t understand. It was there and gone so fast I might have imagined it, as she turned back to Muddy and said, “Actually, would you mind showing me to the pool house first? It sounds like the perfect place for me to stay.”

“Oh, of course!” said Muddy. She turned to my father and her eyes turned tender, as they always did when she looked at him. “Do you need anything, darling?”

My father smiled and said, “I am content, Caro. Please do show Eustacia to the pool house.”

Eustacia knows
she doesn’t belong
, I thought triumphantly.
She knows that all the stupid tile-table, sunporch memories in the world don’t make her belong under our roof
.

“Nice to see you, Wilson,” said Eustacia, briskly. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Go
, I thought,
be gone!
She almost made it out the door. She was two steps away. But before she was quite gone, my father said, “Eustacia. Once you are settled in, perhaps tomorrow morning after breakfast, I would like to speak with you.”

Good God. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, I would be at school.

“Oh,” said Eustacia.

Her eyes flickered in my direction.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said, shrugging. “Or afternoon. No need to make a formal appointment now that I’m here, right?”

“Morning,” said my father, firmly. “I have something rather important to propose.”

“You do?” I blurted out.

My father despised questions like “You do?” He ignored me.

“Shall we say nine thirty?” he asked Eustacia.

Say no, say no, say no, say no
.

No one ever said no to Wilson Cleary; saying no to him was almost always the wrongheaded thing to do; but I knew that if anyone could, if anyone would, it would be Eustacia.

But Eustacia sighed and—
damn
her—said, “Yes.”

WHAT I MISSED MOST
about my old life was that there had never been dread, not true, blue, ice-in-your-chest dread. There hadn’t even been
much worry. Mostly, my old life was smooth as a silk, each hour, day, week slipping easily into the next.

The flip side of the old life was that there had been also almost no eagerness. Wait, I don’t mean that. Sure, I’d looked forward to things: new books, field trips with my parents, summer tomatoes, running at dusk, snow. But when everything is pleasant, nothing leaps out of the darkness, flashing silver like the moon, and announces itself as extraordinary. Nothing dazzles you so much that you get short of breath wanting more of it. To employ a cliché, what I learned is that in order to have a silver lining, you need clouds, and my new life had plenty of those, clouds upon clouds upon clouds.

What my new life also had—cue the fireworks and the soaring music!—was lunch with Mr. Insley. The silverest silver lining you would ever wish for.

The story of our lunches began where such stories often begin: at rock bottom—except that, since Eustacia had yet to drop into my world like a ticking bomb, I only
thought
it was rock bottom. Still, it was bleak enough and maybe the bleakest part was the setting: the east wing stairwell of the Webley School.

As I may have mentioned, Webley was a private school, although I found that no one called it that. They called it, and schools like it, “independent,” no doubt because “private” sounded too exclusive (which of course Webley was) and also somehow full of secrets (it was that, too), whereas “independent” conjured images of freedom and power. Ha ha ha groan. But despite its independent state, its high-tech, high-ceilinged classrooms, and its noble, oak-paneled, marble-floored foyer, Webley harbored, within its bowels, pockets of pure desolation, and the worst spot of all was the east wing stairwell, stuffed away behind an unmarked door in the darkest corner of the main building. A word to the wise: if you ever want to create a truly grisly, soul-killing place, choose Band-Aid beige with black freckles for its floor, paint its walls smoker’s lung gray, and make it smell like cherry mouth rinse at the dentist’s office. Such a place is no place to be; certainly, it is no place
to sit down and
eat food
, but that is exactly what I was doing when Mr. Insley found me.

Truth: I wasn’t just eating, I was shoveling forkfuls of lamb vindaloo and brown rice into my mouth as fast as I could shovel. I couldn’t help it, I tell you. I was hungry! It was nearly two in the afternoon, and, as had become my habit, I’d spent lunch period in the library where eating was strictly forbidden. Most days, I could wait until after school to eat. Stick-to-your-bones breakfasts were part of our household religion, but that morning, I’d slept through my alarm clock, and my mother, after a bad night, had slept through hers. Consequently, I’d run out of the house without eating a thing. So, after finishing my history test with time to spare, I asked to go to the bathroom, tucked my lunch bag unobtrusively under my arm, and made a break for the east wing stairwell, praying hard that no one would walk in and find me.

I was nearly finished when: footsteps in the hallway, door creaking, a man saying, “Willow?”

Even though I knew, in an instant, his voice, his scuffed brown wingtips, his very pant cuffs, I didn’t raise my head to look at him. How could I ever look at him again? To be caught mid-gobble, hunched like an animal over my sad thermal food container in the ugliest stairwell on the planet? Oh, I wanted to die. Instead, I did something much worse. I swallowed my food, stabbed my fork into my vindaloo, covered my face with my hands, and burst into tears.