Like Family (27 page)

L
YING
IN BED LATER
that night, the house dark and too quiet around me, I wished that Bub had kept most of the story to himself. Over and over,
I swallowed hard, as if the images were floating up at the back of my throat instead of deep in my overactive brain. I saw
Floyd in his chair, like that night at his house, except this time he wasn’t asleep, he was dead, and instead of the sombrero
in his lap he held Goldie, or parts of her: her hands, her sad lunatic face.

In the police investigation it came out that Goldie had a long history of manic depression and had even been institutionalized
years back. Had Floyd known this? Had Goldie known what she was and what she might do, or was her illness like a shadow or
seed that had grown inside her until it was large enough and dark enough to take everything over?

T
HE
FUNERAL TOOK PLACE
in Delano, in a small hillside cemetery. The grown-ups were so quiet they seemed stunned, and the funeral went on for such
a long time that we started to wander off, one kid at a time, and they let us. We stayed inside the cemetery gate for a while,
my sisters and me, Tina, Krista and Uncle Hog’s two kids, Randy and Brenda. As we threaded the rows, I felt more than a little
creeped out by how old it all was, how long they’d been gone, these people who weren’t even
people
now, just names.
Rupert Rawson. Etta-May Aires. Mother.

“Watch where you’re walking,” Tina said. “You’re not supposed to walk on their heads.”

But what about the baby graves? How could you tell where the heads were when the markers were the size of a shoe, no room
for anything but a first name?
Lydia, Thomas, Jean-Ruth.
One had an etching of a lamb held in a pair of robed and disembodied arms.

It was all too much. A low gate hung open between two hedges, and we went through it, heading away from the parking lot and
over a small hill until we couldn’t see cars anymore or parents and the only noise was us, wheezing with the climb. It had
rained that morning but the wet had burned off, and it was growing hotter by the minute, too hot for December. When we stopped
to rest, all the girls shucked their stockings.

“I can see your business,” Cousin Randy said, pointing at his sister’s loosely crossed legs.

“Oh, hush,” Brenda said, and pushed her skirt higher. Her panties were pale green, and along one edge I spied a fringe of
dark-blond hair.

I turned away then and pretended to busy myself in the purse I’d worn for the special occasion. It was navy blue with a long
strap and snap close. Inside, there wasn’t much more than a plastic comb and some Certs and my lip gloss, which I took out
and fussed with because I wanted Brenda to see that I owned makeup. It was bubble-gum flavored and brand-new, purchased the
week before with nearly all of my measly allowance.

“Hey,” said Brenda, “can I have some of that?” She slathered on a thick layer, held the lip gloss for a minute, turning it
over in her hand like money, then said, “You know, I’d think about trading with you for it. If you really want.”

“What do you have?”

“Jewelry. Real turquoise.” She reached into the neck of her blouse and pulled out an owl necklace. Its head was a round stone,
blue-green and flecked, and there were two little stones for its feet. I’d never had a necklace before and so traded without
thinking. Brenda pocketed the lip gloss and unhooked the chain, handing it to me. The owl rested in my hand in the little
pool of its chain. I didn’t even want to put it on yet; I just wanted to look at it, my owl, my jewelry. Its ears were tiny
silver triangles and there were silver arcs for the wings, which lay back, resting. Its body was a silver oval, empty.

Empty.

I could see right through the belly hole to my hand. When the humiliation came, it came slowly, in a flush that built one
realization at a time.

Broken.

Brenda had given me a broken necklace, knowing I was too stupid to notice. Maybe the worst thing about being a sucker was
that the believing part didn’t last. Now that I’d seen it was no good, I couldn’t unsee it, not for a minute, not even long
enough to wear the necklace once. The whole world could see it was missing the main part.

A
HANDFUL OF MIRACLES
in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one: (1) I started my period; (2) a boy actually kissed me. (It was Patrick
Allison at the drive-in, and he tried to stick his hands down my pants first. He was gross for that, and I vowed never to
speak to him again, but the kiss counted.)

That was the summer before my junior year. Teresa was away, working at a mountain lodge Aunt Gloria had recently purchased
on Huntington Lake (that real estate license really
was
paying off), trying to save money for a car. It wasn’t a great job — she cleaned rooms for minimum wage and waited tables
at the small supper club — but she got to be gone. Before she left, she made it clear she would be way too busy to call or
write. Way. She would see us in August.

Somehow August came. On Labor Day weekend, we drove up to the lake to pick Teresa up and bring her home. She shared a small
cabin with a girl named Sascha, who was there when we arrived at the resort in the late afternoon. Bub invited Sascha to have
dinner with us at the supper club, and she showed us the edge of her Ace-bandage wrapper, telling us the story of how, the
week before, she’d driven her car over a cliff and only cracked two ribs on the shifter. It was late at night on mountain
roads, and she swerved to avoid a deer. “A baby deer,” she clarified. In truth, she was probably drunk but wasn’t telling.
The car was still drivable, believe it or not. It hit no trees and landed absolutely flat, like some kind of UFO. Sascha said
it all happened so slowly she felt as if she was flying more than falling. She wasn’t even afraid.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Bub said to Teresa while we picked through salads, waiting for the main course. “I found you
a car.”

Teresa’s mouth dropped open to show a wet bit of crouton. If she could have spoken, the word would have been
What
or maybe
What the hell?
It was her money, and she wanted to pick the car herself. Even I knew that. If Bub’s “surprise” find had been a slick little
Fiat, she might have been consolable, but it wasn’t. It was a white Opel Cadet, a chunky, graceless grandmother’s car that
looked a lot like a dumpling.

I tried to meet Teresa’s eyes across the table to give her a
That bites
look, but she was shut down, boarded up for the season. Her eyes were mica. I thought Teresa might throw her fork at Bub,
but she could never do that and live. She settled for slamming her water glass onto the table and storming out, the screen
door clattering behind. I wanted to follow her, but Sascha moved first. She didn’t excuse herself, but then again she didn’t
have to. Bub and Hilde weren’t her parents, and besides, she’d proven she could take a bigger fall than most of us have occasion
to.

We finished our dinner, baked potatoes and leathery filets, while Bub lectured us about ungrateful kids and how he didn’t
even have a
bicycle
at her age, et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blah. In between rants, he stuffed his face with forkfuls of potato quivering
with sour cream. Like Hilde, he’d been growing larger over the years, but for him, the weight was contained solely in his
belly. It butted up against the table now, and as he took a particularly ambitious bite, a glob of sour cream fell bull’s-eye.
No one pointed it out, not even Hilde, who was slurping up au jus.

After dinner, Bub sent me over to Teresa’s cabin to see if she was packed and ready to go. “Knock knock,” I said, through
the screen door. I could see Sascha on one of the twin beds, smoking, her legs crossed Indian style, her shoes kicked to the
floor. I stuck my head into the room. Teresa was on the other bed, lying with one arm behind her head and the other tossed
casually in the lap of Gloria’s stepson, Kenny, who sat beside her. Kenny? I didn’t even know he was up at the lake. Furthermore,
Teresa hated his guts —
didn’t she?

“What do you want?” Teresa said, lifting her head slightly. Her hand didn’t move from Kenny’s lap. Her fingers rested on his
mangy leg as if she was his girlfriend or something. As if they owned each other.

“It’s time to go home. Dad said to get you.”

“Okay, yeah,” she said, but her head fell back on the pillow. Sascha blew a curl of smoke. Kenny reached over and put his
hand on Teresa’s stomach where her halter top had pulled up to show the skin, flat and tanner than I’d ever seen it.

“Okay,” she said again, and I waited for her to turn back into someone I knew.

N
OW WE HAD DONE
it. A ten-dollar bill was missing from Hilde’s purse, and one of us took it. It was the only explanation. Ten dollars doesn’t
just walk off on its own, now does it? First there was a family discussion at the dinner table. Bub stated the case matter-of-factly.
Hilde’s purse was behind the couch, where she always kept it. It was there with the ten dollars when we went to bed on Friday
night; it was there with everything
but
the ten dollars when she checked it in the middle of the day on Saturday. He went around the table, looking closely at us,
looking into each of our faces so intently I thought he was trying to see behind the skin.

“Do any of you girls know what happened? This is the place to confess,” he said, “right now. You’ll be punished, of course,
but not as badly as if you lie about it.”

He leaned back in his chair and waited. Hilde sat beside him, her arms crossed in that way that said she’d double or triple
cross them if she could; she’d latch them like a gate.

I scanned my sisters’ faces, watching to see if one of them was about to cough it up, but they were looking at me the same
way. Penny: “It wasn’t me.”

Tina: “Not me.”

Paula: “Hmm-mm.”

Teresa: “I don’t even know what you’re
talking
about.”

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this one way or another,” said Bub, looking at us and then into his helping of peas as
if the little green heads belonged to members of a jury.