In Memoriam (16 page)

Heart pounding, she got back into bed with the diary. Opening the cover, she came to an inscription in childish cursive.
Stay out! If you’ve gotten this far, do not venture beyond. You’ll be sorry!
Grinning, Sandra remembered being a preteen and how trusting an age it was. She wondered if Marie had still trusted when she was able to write those words with such confidence. Exactly how old
was
Marie when she wrote it? Sandra thumbed through the diary, but couldn’t find a number until this…
My sisters gave this to me for my fourteenth birthday. Nothing much happens to me during the week. I get up every morning and have Frosted Flakes with cream. My mother believes plain milk on cereal is just wrong. Don’t ever have cream on your cereal. You’ll never be able to have it any other way.

Marie seemed immature for a fourteen-year-old, as if she were ten or eleven. Sandra smiled, imagining the young girl just entering puberty. And then she remembered that Marie struggled with anorexia all her life, but not yet.

Anyway, every day I go to Saint Anselm Girl’s School, three blocks away from our house. My mother says my noni and grandpa bought the house because it was close to our parish. She went to Saint Anselm, too. My sisters went before me. They were good students, so it is hard to follow after. The teachers expect me to do as well as my sisters did.

It’s a Catholic school, and the uniform is a white blouse with a blue tie at the collar and a navy blue pleated skirt. I need to wear a bra, but my mother makes me wear an undershirt. She said I can get a bra when I’m fifteen. Pam tried to talk to my mom, but she wouldn’t listen. Pam cut pieces of grey tape, and we put the tape over my nipples before I put on my undershirt. I never see boys during the day, but my math teacher is a man, a creepy one, too. He looks at all the girls’ breasts.

Sandra sat quietly while the first flood of heat went through her body. She considered what she just read as a form of child abuse. She remembered a female gym teacher who stared at the naked girls showering and how angry it made her; her mother had her dismissed from gym class after that, going to the trouble of getting a doctor’s note. Why didn’t they address the real problem? The leering, creepy teacher? She’d make sure to do so if Miranda or Brent ever had a problem in school.

I get through the week by thinking about the wonderful weekend ahead. Every Friday, my sister’s husband, Jack, comes into Brooklyn from Manhattan and picks me up from school. I wait in the front yard by the bus stop, and all of my classmates watch and drool when he pulls up in his car and leans over to open the door for me. He says the same thing every time. Hop in, gorgeous! He holds my hand the whole way back to the city while he talks nonstop about his day. I could listen to him talk about what he does for the rest of my life. He asks about my day, too. He gets me to talk about everything, but I avoid telling him anything that might be unpleasant.

This is top secret. That math teacher I mentioned before? He touches the girls. He might just put his hand on their shoulders, but his fingers brush the tops of their bras. Not me, because I don’t wear one. But he pretends to drop things on the floor and bends over. We know he tries to look up our skirts. I told Jack, and all he said was to stay away from the man. I really thought he’d go back to school and get in a fight with the math teacher. I know he won’t do anything about it, so I don’t tell him secrets.

Sandra decided this new information about Jack shouldn’t be surprising. He didn’t protect Marie. Had he been planning all along on abusing her? She read the rest of the first diary, and it was stories about her field hockey games and family dinners, nothing more about Jack.

Leafing through several journals, Sandra found what could have been the next one written.
I’ve been watching Pam and Jack having sex.
It came out of nowhere, Marie’s confession startling. She kept reading.
I heard noises, moaning and bed squeaking, so I got up and crept to their door. The doors are tall, old doors with big keyholes, and I crouched down and looked in. The first time I had to figure out Jack was doing something to my sister’s privates with his mouth. It was disgusting. Then I saw him get on top of her, grab his thing and put it into her. I had the full view.

At first, I thought it was funny. But the more I watch, I want to do it, too.

Sandra was appalled. Pam
knew
her sister was in the house; it sounded like she was in the next room. Yet they had loud sex. Why didn’t she protect her teenaged sister from that knowledge? Her own parents had a loving relationship yet never exposed her and her sister to their private lives.

Before long, Sandra reached the part of the diary in which Marie described the sexual abuse between her and Jack, and she had to stop reading. It was described vividly, in childish terms. It appeared to be constant, nightly, each time Marie visited. Sandra wondered where Pam was when night after night Jack came to Marie’s bed? Unless Marie was lying.

Also during this time, Marie stopped eating. Sandra let out a sob; who were these people that they didn’t put two and two together? If her daughter had a life-threatening condition and was journaling about it, she’d know. She’d search her room to discover what she could about her child’s life. Was Nelda that ignorant? It made Sandra think twice about having her care for the children, even in a supervisory way.

And Pam, too. Did she even want her around? Anxiety crept up in her throat when she realized she was already looking for ways to benefit financially from having Pam in her life, but at what cost? Closing the diary, she got out of bed and put it away with the rest of Marie’s life.

Chapter 15

Monday morning, Tom got off his mother’s couch and gathered his belongings up to go back home. He’d talked to Sandra on Sunday, and they both decided it would be better not to get too cozy until they were sure of what they were dealing with. Virginia was furious, telling him he was wasting his time. But it only made him more determined to do what was right. He believed he loved Sandra, and if the baby was Brent Smith’s, it was the result of rape, not of an affair. He needed to stay by her side and raise both children as his own, if he could.

Tossing and turning all night, so sorry he’d acted the way he had, he’d practically forced Sandra to tell Pam the baby was Brent’s son. Now the whole family knew, and it was yet another secret, this one for a different generation. He thought of the other new grandson, Marcus. If Tom left Sandra, he was certain baby Brent would always be in competition with his cousin.
The prince and the bastard.
It was horrible enough to contemplate that Tom was more determined than ever to protect the little guy from the Smith family.
If he was his son.

Walking home, he keyed in Sandra’s number. “I’m on my way,” he said when she answered. “Shall we drive in together?”

“Okay,” she said, nervous.

“I have so much to say to you, I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, just get here, and we can talk.” They hung up after saying good-bye.

Sandra was leery about anything Tom might say, afraid he couldn’t be trusted. She’d decided she’d be fine if they split up, setting up a fantasy life in her mind that included drivers, nannies and houses at the beach. If baby Brent was Tom’s child, the life of abundance would disappear. But if he was really Brent’s, that life could be reality, but one Tom wouldn’t allow if they were to stay together. She was weighing wealth against a nuclear family life with a father and a mother and two kids in Brooklyn. What did she really want?

~ ~ ~

Across the river in Greenwich Village, Natalie Borg was making breakfast for Ted, who sat at the counter, reading the paper. They’d hardly spoken to each other since leaving Pam Smith’s house. Finally talking about their sexual encounter revealed what Ted had feared: Natalie read more into it than was there. He was nothing but regretful about it. Although sexually, it felt good, being on top of her was like trying to lie across a beach ball, and to make matters worse, she smelled. He felt awful, wanting so much to love her the way she wanted him to, but it was never going to happen. In hindsight, he felt like she used him, forcing herself on him. But because he was a gentleman, he’d allow her to blame him for it.

“Look, I guess I need to move out today,” he said, putting the paper down.

She was flipping over an egg for her own breakfast. Turning the heat off under the pan, she turned to him. “You’re right,” she answered, surprisingly. “We ruined everything by sleeping together. Now I don’t feel like I can go back.”

Ted didn’t think they needed to rehash everything, but didn’t want to be insensitive to her. He folded the paper and stood up. “I’ll go pack up.”

“Where will you go?”

“Ashton’s,” Ted answered. “I need to decide what to do about it anyway, and if I’m going to list it, I should do it now. But I might decide to stay up there. It’s a haul to come to my office, but I got used to the amenities uptown.”

The tiny kitchen was just one step from the hallway, and he turned with one foot out of the room when he heard a crash and felt a few hot drops on the back of his neck.

Jumping up and flattening himself against the wall, he yelled at her. “What the hell was that?”

She was standing rigid in front of the stove, her curly salt-and-pepper hair standing out from her head like a helmet of steel wool, her eyes glistening, skin bright red. “Don’t bother packing,” she said. “I’ll do it for you. You’d better leave now. Get out!”

“I don’t want you going through my belongings,” Ted said.

“Get out!” she screamed. “I’ll call the police if you don’t leave this second. Get your shoes on and get the hell out of my house, you creepy son of a bitch!”

Ted backed along the wall. “Can I get my wallet?”

“You have sixty seconds to grab what you want and get out before I call the police.” Natalie was shaking. She felt her bowels ready to release, but it was just gas. The idea that the bastard would drive her almost to shit her pants struck her as such a tragedy that she started to wail. “Ten, nine, eight,” she counted down, crying.

He was stumbling over his own feet, trying to get his shoes on, juggling his briefcase and his computer bag. The door was tricky to open on its best days, but he finally succeeded in getting out. She must have vaulted over to it because it slammed shut, hitting him in the back. He noticed the door across the hallway open, with an eyeball looking out at him.

“You okay, sahib?” It was Mr. Acar, owner of a Turkish coffee house in the Village.

“Yes, I think so,” Ted answered, wiping hot egg yolk off the back of his neck with his hand.

“Your woman is a wild tiger,” he said, giggling.

“She’s not my woman,” Ted said, indignant. “We just live together.”

“You fuck a woman, she’s
your
woman,” he said.

Ted, embarrassed, saluted him and walked down to the stairwell. “You dummy,” he murmured under his breath. “Why’d you screw up a good thing?” He tried to remember what he’d taken over to Natalie’s, and it was mostly clothes. His books and important things were in the office or in storage. If she decided to throw everything away, he’d be okay with it, the price of freedom.

As he struggled down the steps with his arms full of stuff, he thought of Jeff Babcock. Hopefully, his phone number was in his wallet and not on Natalie’s guest room dresser.

~ ~ ~

Sunday evening, Lisa found the courage to ask Gladys to go home with Ed. “I love having you here, I really do,” she said. “But I want to start up a routine with the children, and I’m afraid if you stay, I’ll push Megan’s care off on you and won’t try to take care of the two of them by myself.”

She’d tell Dan later that Gladys seemed crushed.

“It could’ve had something to do with the altercation she had with me Sunday morning. I’m sorry I made it worse,” he said. “I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.”

“It’s fine,” she replied. “I thought I’d want her help. But I want my own routine. And I want my husband happy.”

After Dan left for work Monday morning, Lisa made sure to feed Megan a substantial breakfast since it appeared Dan felt she was starving her. After she nursed Marcus and put Megan with her toys, she put her feet up and had a cup of coffee. Then she picked up her phone and dialed Cara Ellison’s number. Her voice mail picked up.

“Hi, Cara, this is Lisa Chua. We haven’t met yet, but I wanted to thank you for your well wishes. Dan told me I’d interrupted your meet-up with my text message. We had a house full with my mother and former mother-in-law and two grandmothers. It was a zoo! Anyway, I hope you’ll come by soon to see our little doll. Bye now.” And with a satisfied smile, she ended the call. Now the woman would know Dan wasn’t sneaking around Lisa’s back, that he had a legitimate reason for leaving the house on Saturday afternoon, and that Lisa wasn’t threatened by her.
Not much.

Cara Ellison was in bed, listening to the message Lisa left while Dan showered. She sounded so young on the recording; what was Dan thinking? Not wanting to remind him of what he was leaving at home, she quickly erased it. Not intending to meet Lisa or the
little doll
, Cara wasn’t sure yet what she was doing with Dan.
He has a two-day-old baby. He’d waited until he was forty-six to finally get married. Is ruining someone’s marriage worth having a little ego stroking? Why do I still need the attention of an unavailable man to make me feel better about myself? He wasn’t willing to make a commitment to me years ago, and then I found out he was seeing someone old enough to be my mother, almost.

Pulling the sheets back, she got out of bed. Standing in front of the mirror to examine her body, she was in good shape but no match for a twenty-four-year-old. When he showed up on her doorstep so early that morning, her first thought was,
Could I darken my bedroom enough?
He let it slip in a phone conversation last night after Lisa had gone to sleep that her stomach was already flat.