Dead to Me (16 page)

“Alice, honey.” My mother looked up from her drink, startled. She floated over to the door without a sound, without so much as scuffing the feet of the chair on the kitchen tile.
Even half-lit, my mother was always a graceful woman. She smoothed my hair back from my forehead and tucked it behind my ears, a gesture so warm, so familiar, I longed to believe in it.

“I was starting to worry,” she said. “Where have you been all day? Where were you yesterday?”

“With Cassie,” I said.

She eyed me suspiciously. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m tired, I guess.”

“Well, you look terrible. Go upstairs and draw yourself a bath. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

While I could have lived without the dig at my looks, it still sounded like the best idea I had ever heard. I dragged myself up the stairs to my room, where I stripped off my now-rumpled skirt
and blouse and hung the strap of my purse over the bedpost. It was tempting to skip the bath and the food and climb straight into bed, where I could burrow underneath the sheets, cover my head with
a pillow, and sleep through the night. But it had been more than a day since I’d last been home, longer since I’d bathed, and truth be told, I was starting to get a little ripe.

Sliding into the warm, soapy water was almost as good as bed, though. I closed my eyes for what seemed like seconds but must have been longer, because when I jerked awake, my mother was standing
in the doorway with a plate.

She set it down on the rim of the tub—bacon, lettuce, and tomato on toast.

“You shouldn’t fall asleep in the tub, Alice,” she scolded. “It’s dangerous.”

But I was too busy devouring the sandwich and licking mayonnaise off my fingers to pay much attention. If you’ve never eaten a bacon sandwich in a hot bath before, believe me, you’re
missing out.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” I said.

“Well, you’re welcome, then.”

She laid some fresh towels out on the hamper for me and left, shutting the door behind her.

“Thank you, Mother,” I called out after her.

After I finished my sandwich, I set the plate down on the tile next to the tub and ducked under the warm water. As I held my breath, closed my eyes, and let the waves of underwater noises pulse
in my eardrums, I thought it might be nice to stay here forever. Jerry could find Gabrielle and hunt down Irma’s killer by himself. Annie could wake up when she was good and ready. The
letters in my purse could gather dust or read themselves for all I cared.

Suddenly I sat straight up in the tub, rubbing the water from my eyes and reaching for a towel. I shouldn’t have let the letters out of my sight, not even for a second, not even in my own
room.

I dried off and threw on my bathrobe, and without even combing my hair, I ran down the hall to my bedroom. The purse was gone.

When I came crashing down the stairs, leaving a trail of bathwater footprints behind me, Mother had once again taken her spot at the kitchen table, a fresh martini in one hand, one of
Irma’s letters in the other. I snatched the page from her fingers.

“What are you doing, going through my things?” I shouted, my hair flinging droplets of water onto the table and the letters as I spoke.

My mother picked up the thick cream envelope and read the inscription aloud. “‘Open If I Am Dead or Missing.’”

“Mother—” I started to speak, but she held up her hand.

“What are you fooling around with, Alice? Where did you get these? And don’t you dare lie to me.”

Her neck strained forward as she spoke, her eyes so wide they bulged. The broken capillaries in her cheeks flushed red, and her voice sounded hysterical, halfway between a scream and a sob.

“They aren’t hers, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Then why is her handwriting all over them? Why is her
picture
here?” She dropped the letter to the tabletop and picked up the framed photograph I’d taken from
Irma’s apartment.

I knew I’d been an idiot to take it. Any other picture might have been all right, might have been explained away somehow, but not the one with the dead girl and my sister in it.

“Do you know where she is?” my mother asked.

I tightened the belt on my bathrobe and folded my arms across my chest, trying to ignore the slippery, cold puddle of bathwater gathering at my feet. I felt defensive, on edge. I’d let
down my guard for a lousy bacon sandwich, and my mother had pounced on the opportunity to steal my purse and dig through my things.

Still, I wished what I’d said to her next had been less cruel.

“You haven’t cared where she was for the past four years. Why would you care now?”

She shot back a reply like it had been sitting on the tip of her tongue, waiting for a chance to get out.

“I care every day. It tears my heart out every goddamn day, Alice.”

Her jaw tightened and her chin began to tremble. With her thumb, she traced the outline of Annie’s face, smudging the glass. All the while, I heard her murmuring in a choked, small voice,
“My pretty girl, my pretty, pretty little girl.”

“Mom, please.”

It just slipped out.

I never called her that. In fact, I don’t think I ever had. “Mother” was formally, clinically, legally accurate, and I’d always felt it served our purposes well
enough.

“Mom, please,” I whispered again. “I’m sorry.”

“Your father hasn’t been home since the detective was here. I’ve been alone since then, Alice.” She put the picture down and put her head in her hands. “Alice,
I’ve been thinking such terrible thoughts.”

She let out a fresh sob. Not quite sure what to do, I sat with her, squeezing her hands and saying nothing while the tears cascaded down her cheeks and pooled on the table. Eventually, the jag
slowed, and she inhaled deeply and reached for a tissue.

“Please make me some coffee, Alice,” she said, blowing her nose, then frowning at the sight of me sitting at the kitchen table in my bathrobe. “And put some clothes on. This
isn’t a spa.”

She got up and disappeared down the hall into the powder room. By the time she came out, I’d changed into a clean skirt and blouse, and the coffee had finished brewing. Her skin was
scrubbed clean of makeup, and though her eyes were still red-rimmed, they were clear and alert. She poured herself a cup of coffee and one for me, too, then sat down at the table.

“Did I ever tell you about my first day in Los Angeles, Alice? I marched right up to the gates of Warner Brothers and didn’t leave until they gave me a job.”

It was a story I’d heard a hundred times. She told it to everyone and never failed to brighten when she did. Even now, she smiled at the mention of those stupid Warner Bros. gates.

Like a thousand other girls, my mother had gotten on a bus for Hollywood the day she turned eighteen, the prettiest girl in some godforsaken southern town she’d never once suggested we
visit. But once she got to Los Angeles, she quickly realized that the city was full of pretty girls just like her, and that she didn’t know the first thing about how to be a movie star.

But my mother had something those other girls didn’t: a skilled trade.

All through high school, she’d worked at the local beauty parlor, setting the curls and rinsing away the gray of rich women who acted like a sharecropper’s daughter should be so
lucky as to lay her hands on their heads. If she could handle women like that, she thought, she could handle anyone.

The next day, my mother marched up to the gates of Warner Bros. Studios and asked directions to hair and makeup, and the guard had waved her on through. And luckily, there were fifty chorus
girls in need of identical chignons, and one of the regular girls had called in with the flu. Not one of the hairstyles she arranged shook loose during the dance numbers that day, and she was asked
to come back.

She started with chorus girls, then worked her way up to styling the hair of leading ladies. After a few months of that, my mother felt like she finally knew how to be a movie star. She took
modeling jobs and went on cattle calls until she landed her first chorus girl role.

“And the rest,” she always said, “is history.”

I’d heard her tell the story so often I swear I knew every beat. She loved the way it made her look—scrappy, bold, full of pluck and gumption. The exact opposite of anything
I’d ever known her to be.

“I hate that story,” I said.

“I know you do, but Annie loved it,” my mother said, a faraway look in her eyes. “I thought it was what she wanted. It was so hard for me when I was trying to break in, and all
I could see was how easy it was going to be for her with her looks, her talent, your father’s connections. If I’d known, I never would have pushed her.”

“Known what?”

My mother poured another cup of coffee for herself and acted like she hadn’t heard me.

“I want you to be happy, too,” she said when she sat down again. “I guess I haven’t done a very good job at that, either.”

I started to say that I was fine, that I
was
happy, but decided I’d already told my mother enough lies for one night.

“If you’d known
what
you wouldn’t have pushed her?” I asked again.

My mother had never spoken so freely with me about my sister. I wondered if seeing my sister’s handwriting, her picture after all these years, had cracked something open inside her. Yes, I
wanted information. Yes, I wanted to know the truth, but even more than that, I wanted her to keep talking about Annie like she was a person we knew and loved and hadn’t tried to erase from
our lives.

My mother pressed her lips together, and she shook her head.

“If I’d known she could get hurt,” she said.

She stared at the table, twisting her rings and kneading her fingers, first one hand, then the other, faster and faster until finally I reached out and covered them with the palm of my hand.

She stopped fidgeting and looked up at me.

“Alice, if I’d been there, if I’d been the one who picked her up at the police station, things would have been different. I wouldn’t have said she made the whole thing
up. I wouldn’t have cared how it made the studio look.”

It was the thing I’d always wanted to know, but as I realized what my mother was telling me, I felt myself pulling away from her.

I wanted to talk about Annie, but not like this.

“I never thought she was lying,” my mother said. “I always believed her, but she hated me anyway, right along with your father. You hate me, too, don’t you? You think I
let her go. You think I took her away from you.”

There was a time when I would have told her that was exactly what she’d done. But sitting across from her at the kitchen table, I saw the suffering in her eyes, and I wondered if I’d
been wrong.

“I would have given anything in the world to be able to fix it,” she said.

My mother folded her arms across the table and buried her head in them. Stark, animal sobs wracked her body. I put one of my hands on her shoulder until they slowed, then gave her a tissue. She
took it without lifting her head from the table.

“I don’t hate you,” I said.

I wanted her to tell me exactly what had happened to Annie, to confirm the big, ugly thoughts that bubbled in my head like hot tar: Annie had gone to the police. She’d told them a story.
Someone had hurt her. My father said she’d made the whole thing up, so he could protect the people at his studio.

This wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to people in my world. Or maybe it was the kind of thing that happened all the time—how would I know? No one ever talked about it. No one
ever called it what it was. No one said its name.

We agreed to talk around it and fill in the blanks with whatever thoughts let us sleep at night.

I would have stopped it.

It would have been different if I’d been there.

I knew why, too. It was the same reason that I couldn’t ask my mother the question I already knew the answer to.

At last, my mother lifted her head and looked me in the eye.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, Alice, but promise me you’ll be careful. Promise me you’ll come back.”

I didn’t know whether she was talking about tonight, or always, but either way, the promise stuck in my throat. In a few hours, I’d be sneaking out of the house to call Millie. After
that, I’d be back at the hospital with Annie. I already had so many promises to keep.

And I was so tired. It had been three nights since my life was turned upside down. Three nights since I’d slept properly. Even though I was sitting up, my eyes began to droop shut.

My mother sighed and said, “Never mind,” before I’d managed to promise her anything. She pinched her eyes shut and then brushed her hair out of her eyes with her fingertips and
straightened her blouse, and she was herself again. It was almost as if our conversation had never happened.

“You should go to bed, Alice,” she said. “I’m going to sit up a bit longer.”

I took Irma’s letters with me when I went up to my room, and my mother didn’t try to stop me. I left her there at the table, cradling the photograph of Annie in her hands.

Up in my room, I had to read Millie’s letter twice before it could sink in. She’d seen me take it, so she must have meant for me to have it. Unfortunately, I had no
idea what she expected me to do with it. Take it to the police? She could have done that herself, and it would have meant a lot more coming from her lips than mine. Give it to Jerry? I knew what
Millie would have to say about that.