Little Black Lies (11 page)

Carling Burnack's house is like no other house I've seen. Perched on the edge of a hill, tangled up in zillions of tree branches, it's a big white brick box that is seriously confused with itself. It's all at once ancient and modern, obnoxious and impressive, beautiful and repulsive. The three-car garage tucked beneath the house appears to be dug straight into the hillside, the open doors revealing wide-eyed cars peeking out like worried moles, watching as I park my rusted ten-speed against dead cedar hedge and walk around the property in search of the front door.

Following a leaf-strewn path down one side of the house, I eventually find a door toward the back. Windows on either side of the door flaunt hanging mobiles made of glass discs in reds, purples, golds, and blues. They look like kindergarten art projects of Carling's that nobody ever thought to take down. Slinging my book bag over one shoulder, I suck in a big breath and ring the bell.

The air is filled with the smell of Sunday-night dinner. Like beef and gravy and mothers who wear aprons. Looking around, I notice a brown paper bag by my feet, folded neatly at the top, and a large aluminum tray. There's a note taped to the foil lid of the tray, and I bend down to read it.

Just as I stand up, the door swings open. A tiny woman in a gray dress and running shoes steps out from behind it. “You come for Miss Carling?” she says in a troubled whisper.

I nod.

She steps to one side and motions for me to enter. Before she closes the door, I say, “There's some kind of food out there.”

“No,” she says, refusing to look. “No food.”

“There is, see?” I point.

The door thumps shut. She says nothing, just waits while I take off my boots, then motions for me to follow, leaving Barbara's roast and Ted's love to rot on the porch with the autumn leaves.

The hallway is wide enough to allow for busloads of tourists, and the walls are smothered in art of all sizes. Tiny architectural drawings in plain black frames are squashed between massive canvases splashed with hallucinogenic blotches of what looks like dried vomit. And speckled between these are African masks and photos of a big, hairy man, probably Carling's dad, shaking hands with Tom Hanks, Matthew Broderick, and a blonde woman with cropped bangs and huge black glasses.

I slow in front of a drawing framed in copper. The frame and the surrounding white mat are enormous, but the pencil drawing in the center is no bigger than my palm. It's a badly done sketch, scribble, really, of a bus and a couple of stick people holding guitars. I peer at the signature—Elton John. Wow. The guy's clearly no artist, but I'm guessing this little doodle is worth a fortune.

The old wooden floorboards are so warped it feels like we're walking over hills. The housekeeper's spongy shoes are completely silent—between her soundless footsteps and the way she refuses to look me in the eye, it's as if she barely exists.

We pass dark, cavernous rooms full of building-block furniture that seems uncomfortable as hell. Everywhere are messy stacks of magazines, journals, and humungous books—piled high on coffee tables, pushed under spare chairs and deep into corners. I slow at the door of what must be Mr. Burnack's recording studio. Double glass doors etched with sunburst patterns lead into a black room covered floor to ceiling on one side with buttons, dials, flashing red lights, and knobs. Other than the enormous keyboard at the base, the whole right side of the room looks like the cockpit of a plane. The desk is nearly empty but for a row of silver disc trophies—Tony awards, I assume—the ultimate prize for anyone working in theater.

The dining room has three walls lined floor to ceiling in books stacked as haphazardly as the others, most threatening to tumble over the edge and onto the floor. The fourth wall is a floor-to-ceiling window looking out on the patchwork of autumn leaves outside, as if to remind the owners that there's a world beyond these walls. The table is made entirely of glass, with cone-shaped stools of every color tucked underneath.

The maid stops and presses a button on a panel, and I realize we're standing in front of an elevator. Our four-story apartment building doesn't even have an elevator, and Carling has one in her house. I must appear shocked because the woman smiles to herself. Stainless-steel doors slide open, and it takes every ounce of control I can muster to pretend this is all normal.

Inside, she presses a button marked
B
, the elevator lurches, and we begin to descend. Then she looks at me. “You are from Ant School?”

I nod. “I'm new.”

“Too nice friend for Miss Carling.”

I'm confused. Did she mean I'm
too
nice to be friends with Carling or that it's nice that I'm friends with Carling? Her tone was so flat I can't tell. Then the doors slide open and we're in the basement, in a caramel-colored rec room with a pool table, a roaring fire in a double-sided stone fireplace, retro-looking pinball machines, and music thumping from floor speakers. Isabella and Carling have pool cues in their hands, and Sloane fiddles with an enormous machine on a bar counter. Willa, perched on the edge of a cushy chair, pecks away on a laptop. Everywhere, spread across the butterscotch carpeting, are calculus textbooks, binders, calculators, pencils.

They look up.

“Hey, London,” Carling says. Then she waits. Maybe for my reaction to the room, which is the most incredible basement I've ever seen. Back home, our cellar had a cement floor, cheap paneling, and a TV with an antenna made from a coat hanger. Stained acoustic tiles lined the ceiling, and the only entertainment was a couple of puzzles with missing pieces and a Twister game with a spinner held together by gum.

“Hey,” I say, as if bored.

“We're taking a study break to cheer up Carling,” says Sloane. “She's bummed that Leo won't do her.”

“I didn't say that,” squeaks Carling. “I said he gets all weird about things. It's fine for me to take off my shirt, but when it comes to him, he gets all hostile. How are we ever going to have sex?”

Sloane sips from a paper cup and squints in disgust. “How long have you been dating now? A year?”

“Eight months.”

Sloane considers this. “That's a long time. I bet he has extra nipples.”

“Maybe he's a virgin. Or a dieting Mormon who has no energy,” says Willa, grinning at Izz, “but really clean veins.”

“Oh, that's hilarious,” snaps Isabella.

“Can we get back to me?” Carling says. “It's not like Leo's pure. Believe me, the guy's no Mormon. It's more like, I don't know, he's not into me or something.”

I cross the room and drop my backpack, fully aware I should keep my mouth shut. “Not everyone's right for each other,” I say. “Maybe Leo's just being realistic. I mean, it's not as if he's going to marry some girl he started seeing when he was in eleventh grade, right? That would be right up there with dating your cousin.”

“Maybe that's where he got the extra nipples,” Sloane says from behind the sink. “His parents are first cousins.”

“Supernumerary nipples are not a joke,” Isabella says hotly. “Lots of people have them. They usually occur along the abdominal part of the milk line, like with animals. Though sometimes they present as high as the neck or face. One woman even had one on the sole of her foot.”

Carling bends over in disgust and groans. “Stop! Now when I
do
get him naked, I'm going to be thinking of nipple feet.”

Sloane just stares at Izzy, shaking her head. “Just when I think you can't possibly come up with anything more disgusting, you always manage to top yourself. That's it, ladies. We cleanse our minds by playing Slush Snooker.” She starts setting out small paper cups. “You miss your shot, you drink.”

“Drink what?” I ask.

Carling leans over the table and lines up her shot. The ball bullets into a corner pocket. “Who knows?” she says. “Sloane's slushie shots are one of life's great unsolved mysteries.” An ice machine whirs.

“Carling's right,” says Isabella, placing a pool cue in my hand. “It could contain soy milk, yogurt, extract of pumpkin seed, chocolate sauce, whatever.”

“Maybe we'll do mashed Doritos today, in honor of Izzy's film debut this week in math class,” says Sloane with a sly grin.

“Don't be cruel, Sloane,” says Isabella. “It's unbecoming.”

“Now, now, children,” says Carling. “I say we let Sloane spike her slushies with the contents of whatever liquid she doesn't have to get up for.” She waves toward the huge mirrored bar, which is groaning with liquor bottles of every size, shape, and color.

“Hmm,” Sloane says. “I just got back from yoga class, so I'm feeling a little Zen. We'll only drink pure, uncolored spirits.” She points to various bottles. “White rum, vodka, gin, and, if you sink the white ball, anise.”

“What's anise?” I ask.

“Liquid licorice,” says Willa, leaning closer to her screen and squinting. “But don't get excited. By the time she mixes it with her health food, it'll taste about as yummy as Isabella's foot nipples.”

Carling shrieks. “No more nipple talk.”

Other than the odd sip from Mom's wineglass, I've never had a real drink. To be honest, I hate the flavor and I hate the way it makes me feel all floaty and flu-ish. “I thought we were going to study.”

“So bookish is our London.” Carling positions her cue in front of the white ball and takes her shot, sending the solid blue ball ricocheting around the table, eventually smacking back into the white ball, which narrowly misses the side pocket.

Sloane does a little pouring and mixing, then sets a squishy cuplet on the edge of the table, where Carling picks it up and inspects it. “This isn't white, it's pus green.”

Sloane holds up a narrow bottle. “Spirulina. The Russians say it cures radiation poisoning. You'll thank me if you ever have to eat rice grown at the ruins of Chernobyl. Hey, that's an Izzy-type fact.” She sticks out her tongue at Isabella.

Carling downs it and grimaces. “Tastes like you scooped it out of a dirty fish tank.” She crumples the cup, tosses it behind the bar and looks at me. “Your turn, London. Pray like hell you're a good shot.”

I've never played snooker in my life. I set myself up behind the white ball and shoot, missing the striped ball and grazing the red felt of the tabletop instead. I lean over and inspect the damage. “I scratched it. Sorry.”

The little cuplet of green icy slop is passed by Sloane to Isabella (who sniffs it and feigns gagging), then to Carling and finally to me. With no other choice, I tilt back my head and let the rancid slush slide down my throat, nearly retching it back up onto the table.

After a few more rounds of Slush Snooker, Willa has gone back to her laptop, Carling and Isabella are giggling drunk, and I feel like I have the plague. My head hurts, I'm shaky and nauseated, and I want to go to bed. The last snooker shot is mine, and it surprises no one—least of all me—that I sink the white ball. So this time Sloane passes me the licorice-spirulina mixture. I sip, but the slop is so vile I choke, sputtering the terrible green slush all over the carpet.

“No worries,” says Carling before I can speak. “It's why we have a Molly.” She presses a button on the wall and calls into the speaker, “Molly, cleanup on aisle four.”

Molly's voice answers, “Coming, Miss Carling.”

“Don't bother her. I'll clean it up.” I head behind the bar and find a rag and some seltzer water, then return to dab at the spot.

Molly arrives with a cleaning basket full of supplies and looks shocked to find me on my hands and knees. “No, no,” she says, shooing me away.

“It's okay. I'm good at this.”

Sloane peers over my shoulder. “Actually, she is.”

Isabella laughs. “God, London. That's impressive. Scrubbing the floor comes so naturally to you.”

I drop my rag as if it's burning my hand.

Carling giggles, pulling me to my feet so Molly can get down on the floor and finish the job. “I wonder what the Genius Theory would say about our London's future?”

I allow myself to be led away, suddenly more nauseated than ever. I know exactly what the Genius Theory would say and it terrifies me. My mother's a cook and my father's a janitor. It's well documented that I can't cook. So guess what's left?

When Carling's mother, Gracie, insisted I stay for dinner, my first instinct was to dig my bike out of the bushes and pedal home fast. The thought of sitting in a big edgy space between Carling and her parents filled me with dread. So I told Gracie no. Said it was my dad's birthday and I had to get home. Which is true.

Then Carling smiled at me and asked if my new yoga pants can go in the dryer. I turned to Gracie and told her I'd love to stay.

Isabella, Sloane, and Willa were picked up a few minutes later by Isabella's mother. It wasn't until they were heading out the door that Isabella realized I was staying. She actually slithered back into the foyer and offered to stay a bit longer, but her mother wouldn't allow it, complaining she'd given up enough writing time to carpool; she wasn't leaving the house again. As Mrs. Latini headed down the darkened walkway, Isabella muttered, “Leave, bitch.” Whether she was talking to me or her mother, I can't say.

One thing is certain. Isabella's usefulness to Carling is being shaken and she doesn't like it one little bit.

We sit at the see-through table surrounded by teetering books, Carling and I along the sides, Gracie at one end. With Barbra Streisand playing in the background, Gracie hums tunelessly to the music. “What did you say your last name was, Sara?”