Light from a Distant Star (39 page)

Henry was eating his peas, gulping each one whole, no chewing. Ruth sulked through her father’s often told story of his maternal great-grandmother coming alone as a sixteen-year-old from Galway to Boston. Peg O’Riordan had been hired right off the boat as a housemaid for a wealthy family. She’d only been working a few days when she was accused of breaking the hand off a prized porcelain statue. More benevolently, instead of firing her, the lady of the house withheld the pittance that would have been Peg’s first month’s wages. To Jesus, Joseph, and the chaste Virgin Mary, she swore her innocence, but had no defenders. The statue had actually been knocked over by the oldest son’s climb through a window after a late night of drinking. Rather than betray their dissolute brother, his teenage sisters let poor Peg slave for weeks, unpaid.

“Imagine,” Mr. Cooper sighed, clasping his hands while Nellie glared at the slender fingers, imagining their lethal squeeze around Dolly’s thin neck. “All that our ancestors had to put up with. The indignities, the injustice. But look at this fine family,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “I’d say you’ve done old Peg proud.”

Old Peg?
Nellie could see father bristling.

“Same thing in Australia,” Ruth was saying. “Only most of them were criminals. Not my relatives, though. They immigrated from here.”

“Emigrated,” her father corrected, jaw still tight.

“My grandfather’s company, he got, like, transferred,” she continued.

“That’s right,” Mr. Cooper said. “Arnie Brigham. Salvo Systems. Actually, they moved the whole company there, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, Danny, my father, he was, like, in high school and he couldn’t even finish the year,” Ruth said, grinning, with the joy of being able to have this conversation. Her mother was looking her way, but with a kind of desolation.

Mr. Cooper remembered Danny. “Pretty good football player. I think he made varsity his freshman year. And all-state his sophomore … no, maybe junior year. He looked at her mother. “Is that right?”

She nodded. “Both years. Danny was a good athlete.”

“Not much of a student, though, right, Mom?” Ruth said so happily and easily that Nellie flared with jealousy. Ruth and her mother shared another existence, a connection beyond this family.

“He was very intelligent,” her mother said. “Just not too interested in school, that’s all.”

“Tell me about it, I got a few of those at home,” Mr. Cooper laughed and stood up.

Nellie’s eyes smoldered. So that was it? And now he would leave? Not a remorseful bone in his body?

“Which reminds me, we never see you anymore, Nellie. How come?” he said.

“I’ve been busy. Getting ready for the trial. The murder trial.”

“Shame you have to go through all that. You and your family,” Mr. Cooper sighed, shaking his head.

“Nellie’ll be fine,” her father said. “She’ll be okay.”

“All I have to do is tell the truth,” she said, her gaze hard on Mr. Cooper, but he was looking at her father not at her. “Everything that happened that day. Everything I saw.”

“Andy,” her mother said quickly. “We can’t wait much longer. We really can’t.”

He held the door open. “I know that. And, believe me, I’m trying. I’m doing my best,” he said, a sting in his voice.

“Maybe you should try another bank,” she said, but the door had already closed.

The kitchen seemed smaller, the light bleaker. Her father began clearing the table. “At least he’s trying—gotta hand him that,” he called over the rinse water, but her mother had gone upstairs with Henry. Claiming “a ton” of homework, Ruth followed, leaving Nellie to load the dishwasher.

A little while later Lazlo came over. Grateful for the company, her father poured them both red wine. They sat at the table while her father did most of the talking. Lazlo kept glancing toward the hallway. Would Sandy be coming down soon, he asked. With her father’s worried look Nellie knew they were fearing the same thing: Lazlo’s moving out again. She might have dozed off, her father said. She did that sometimes: lie down on Henry’s bed and just fall asleep. A few more minutes passed. No, he said, when her father went to pour more into his glass. He must have nodded then or made some gesture, because her father told her to go finish her homework. He’d wash the pans. Instead, he went upstairs and got her mother.

Lazlo told them that he had seen Ruth coming into the house this morning at nine. Soon after that her girlfriend had arrived. At two o’clock, he’d been in the yard working on another sketch of the tree house when they came outside. Seeing him there, Ruth was quick to say they’d had early dismissal and had just gotten home, which he knew wasn’t true. Lazlo felt terrible. The last thing he wanted was to get Ruth in trouble, but he’d seen her slip into the house midmorning more than once in the last few weeks. Later, when confronted by her parents, Ruth swore that was the only day she’d skipped; Lazlo didn’t know what he was talking about.

The next morning her mother canceled her first two appointments so she could meet with the principal. Since September, Ruth had missed school four times. She had signed her mother’s name on every absentee note in her file. Stunned, her mother called the salon and took the rest of the day off. When Nellie and Henry came home from school they found her in the dim front parlor, staring out at the leaf-blown street.

“Did you quit?” Henry asked, delighted to find her there. No one had felt her absence more in this last year than he had.

She didn’t answer.

“No.” Nellie elbowed him. “Mom has to work. We need the money.”

Her mother burst into tears, much of her lament lost in sobs.
Things
didn’t matter, new cars, fancy clothes, new furniture. No. All she’d ever wanted was a happy family and now everything was crazy, just one big mess, and it was all her fault, every bit of it. No, it wasn’t, Nellie insisted, but her mother shrank from her touch and cried even more. Now Henry was crying. Nellie called her father at the store. He hurried home, his usual abstracted air giving way to panic. There was nothing he could say or do. Every assurance made her feel worse. He sent them outside. They climbed into the leaf-filled tree house, their fragile world shakier with every gust of wind through the swaying limbs. “Like Ronnie-Don Rufus!” Nellie hollered to make her brother laugh, as the wall boards rattled and branches creaked. Henry said he was going in before the whole stupid thing came crashing down.

Ruth had come home. Up on the third floor, she sobbed in her mother’s arms. She was sorry, but she hated school, and she hated her life. Dolly had been the one person she could talk to, the one person who knew what she was going through. Nobody else understood or even cared. Her friends were sick of hearing how alone she felt. They’d never been abandoned the way she had. Not once, but eight times, eight letters begging her father to please write back. And nothing, not one letter, not one single word back.

“What’s wrong with me?” Ruth wept.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter,” her mother cried, and something broke in Nellie’s heart.

“But I’m
his
daughter, too. Doesn’t he care what happens to me?”

Nellie crept into her room and closed the door. The house was still. She lifted the floorboard, scattering the shoes to the side of the closet.

S
ATURDAY
. T
ODAY WAS
the day. It’s what she should have done in the first place. She’d barely slept last night. Her mother was down in the kitchen. She’d be going to work soon. Better to tell her right before she left. Less time for the misery Nellie knew she deserved. The smell of
sizzling bacon drifted up the back stairs. She was starving. A tap came at her door.

“Breakfast,” Ruth called. “Mom said to tell you.” She opened the door and looked in. “Are you coming?” Her eyes were red and puffy.

“I don’t feel good,” Nellie said, holding her stomach.

“Nellie? What’s wrong?” Ruth sat on the edge of her bed. “Poor kid, you look awful.” She leaned closer. “Have you been crying? You have, haven’t you.” She tried lifting Nellie’s chin. “What is it? Come on, you can tell me. I won’t say anything. I promise.”

Nothing was wrong, Nellie said, but Ruth wouldn’t believe her. She said she could tell. Basking in the glow of her own redemption, Ruth knew only love and sympathy. Her little sister was hurting, and no one knew better than she did the loneliness of keeping it all pent up inside.

“I mean, you were the first person I told about writing to my father.” She pressed her forehead against Nellie’s.

“No, you told Brenda first.”

“Well, the first person in the family, then.”

“You told Dolly,” Nellie said, guessing.

“That was different. Dolly was like that. You could just tell her things. And that’s how it should be for
us
. You can tell me anything, Nellie. Anything at all. Whatever it is. And believe me, I won’t tell anyone. Not a soul. I swear.” Her clear blue eyes held Nellie’s with such warmth that there was no way she could confess so callously, so easily hurting her. “So tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Nellie couldn’t even shake her head.

“Okay, how’s this then—let’s trade secrets.” Her grin made it worse. Oh, how Nellie hated this game. Ruth was always so much better at it because she had all the secrets and Nellie had to make up hers to get any back.

“Look.” She lifted her nightgown and pulled down the side of her panties. There, just above the tan line on her lower hip was a small blue star, its tails of light ending in even smaller stars. “My first tattoo. I got it last summer. I went with Patrick.”

“Dellastrando?” All Nellie could utter. Her sister had done that? Lowered, maimed herself for Patrick Dellastrando, the hairy thug
around the corner who wouldn’t even speak to her anymore. Viewing her defiled maidenhead would not have been as shocking.

“Like Dolly’s, remember? Okay, your turn,” Ruth said. “Go ahead, just get it out.” She squeezed Nellie’s hand until it hurt.

“I don’t have periods,” Nellie blurted surprising herself. She’d thrown out the first box of sanitary napkins, but her mother had quietly replaced them in her closet.

“Oh, my God. What do you mean? Why not?”

“I just don’t, that’s all.”

“You’re probably just late. Irregular. That happens, especially when you’re just starting.”

“No, I’m not having any. I just don’t, I didn’t, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Are you worried?” She kept taking deep breaths and looking around.

“No! I haven’t started yet. But Mom thinks I did, because you told her, and it’s embarrassing.”

“Oh!” Ruth sighed. “But why did you say you did if you weren’t? I mean, that’s kinda weird, don’t you think?”

S
O THEN IT
was Sunday. Nellie’d been next door interviewing Lazlo for her history paper. She needed to talk to a veteran and he’d served in the Gulf War. He told her a lot of interesting stories, but she was very distracted. Not only was it the first time she’d been in the apartment since Dolly’s murder, but she kept hearing strange thumps from next door. She left, promising Lazlo she’d show him the paper when she got it back from the teacher.

Apparently, there was more trouble in the house. Angry stomping up to the third floor. Ruth’s door slamming. Her mother and father barely speaking to each other. Henry said Ruth had used the new credit card to buy designer jeans at the mall. She’d signed their mother’s name. The bill had sat in the dreadfully growing pile, unopened until this morning. Her mother demanded Ruth hand over the jeans so she could return them. But they’d already been worn, Ruth said. Didn’t
matter, with a forged signature the sale was invalid, her mother said. When a ransacking of Ruth’s room didn’t turn them up, Ruth admitted she’d given them to Ashley Dellastrando. They hadn’t really fit her very well and it was Ashley’s birthday. Henry said her mother trembled all over, like she was trying not to throw up. Ruth was a wonderful girl, her father kept telling her. She was going through a difficult time, that was all. And some day they’d look back and laugh about it all.

“That’s when she got really mad.” Henry had to whisper because her father was in the next room, reading the Sunday papers. “She said, maybe he could laugh, but she was done.”

In Nellie’s estimation, Ruth had gone too far this time. Truancy and thievery, not to mention the secret tattoo. She’d pushed their mother over the edge.

Nellie lifted the letters from their gritty tomb. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to save Ruth or just be rid of her, but somebody had to do something. She knocked on her mother’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer. Calling in, Nellie said she had to show her something. It was very important. Her mother said she’d be down later.

“It’s about Ruth.” Silence.

“I’m through worrying about her. Your father can deal with it.”

Nellie was halfway down the stairs when she stopped. She ran back to her room. All she had to do was destroy the letters, tear them into a thousand pieces, and no one would ever know. But she would.

Her father was in the kitchen. Slouched over the table, he gripped an empty coffee cup in both hands.

“Dad?” she said, and he looked up with a weary smile.

“What are these?” He meant the envelopes she was holding out.

“Letters. From Ruth’s real father.” He nodded as she tried explaining her sincere intentions. “And so then, the last letter was nice, but that meant she’d find out about the first two.” She told him about the newspaper clipping and Brigham’s heroism. “I was afraid she’d think he was this great guy and she’d just leave.”

The worry in his eyes was a relief to see, and then he said, “You did a terrible thing.”

“Just read them, you’ll see.”

“I can’t, they’re Ruth’s.”

“I was afraid she’d choose him over you.” She could barely speak.

“That’s your sister’s decision to make, Nellie, not yours. You can’t control another person’s life. You had no right to do this.” He held up the letters and looked at her with a disappointment she’d never seen before. And would never forget. “Imagine if someone tried to keep us apart. Think how you’d feel.” He reached for her hand, and she grabbed his.