Little Black Lies (12 page)

“Black.”

She thinks for a moment, going through her mental Rolodex of families in her social circle. “The Back Bay Blacks? Or the Charleston Blacks?”

“Mom, you're sounding embarrassingly old lady,” says Carling.

“Carling tells me you had the highest grade in your math class yesterday.”

I smile. “I'm kind of math obsessed. Birth defect, I guess.”

“Really? Carling's older brother is gifted in math and science. He's at Harvard Medical School. Where Carling is meant to go.” She glances at her daughter. “
If
she can pull off grades like yours.”

“I will, Mom,” says Carling. “London's my new study partner.”

Gracie smiles. Her eyebrows drift skyward and she sizes me up anew. “Well. I hope you have better luck with her than her last tutor did.”

The room goes silent and I struggle to break the tension with a cute remark. All I come up with is, “That's cool you're going to be a doctor, Carling.”

Carling mutters, “I don't have a freaking choice, do I?” Then she raises her voice and winks at Gracie. “My mother didn't get into med school, did you, Mom? Things didn't go so well at Ant. So now every one of her offspring has to pay for it.”

“Carling,” says Gracie with a frown. “We've had this discussion. Lawyers only bide their time until something better comes along. You become a doctor and you're set up for life.”

Molly comes in with a tall pitcher and fills our water glasses, and, at Gracie's insistence, our wineglasses. Carling's imposing father, with hair that rises toward the ceiling like angry black flames, at least six feet tall and as broad as the doorframe he passes through, walks in wearing nothing but a faded-to-pink Harvard sweatshirt and baggy paisley boxers.

There's something arresting about seeing an award-winning composer in his underwear, even if his career is teetering on the brink. It makes him seem far crazier and far more dangerous than the drunken vagrant that might flash you in the park. The guy in the park is underfed, weak, probably psychologically unsound. Right off the bat, he's at a disadvantage. The composer with his bad reviews and hairy knees parked under the glass table is different. He's well fed, pampered, and annoyed. His exposure is part of his power. Like a 450-pound Bengal tiger, he cannot be forced into a pair of corduroys or jeans in the name of social acceptance. Like the tiger, he'd like to see you try.

Gracie sighs and drops her forehead into one hand, rubbing her temples. “Honestly, Brice, we have company. Put on a pair of pants.”

“My house. My rules.” He narrows his eyes and looks at me. “Who are you?”

“Sara.”

“You drink, Sara?”

Does he know about the Slush Snooker? My spill on the carpet? I have no idea what to say. He's the scariest-looking man I've ever met. Under the table, Carling gives me a kick, which, of course, everyone can see. “Not really,” I say.

He nods toward my glass. “That wine costs about seven hundred and fifty bucks a glass.”

“Brice,”
says Gracie.

He looks surprised. “What? I'm just saying she should enjoy it, that's all.”

“We were saving that bottle. It was the last—”

“There'll be more bottles like it. Young girls should grow up enjoying the finer things in life. Wine and”—he waves toward his hairy legs—“absolute comfort.” He looks at Carling. “Right, Ladybug?”

Carling picks at her bamboo placemat.

“I hear from Griff Hogan's father that you got your math tests back,” Brice says.

Gracie sets her wineglass down too hard and, barely perceptibly, nods toward me. “Don't start up, Brice. You and I have already discussed Carling's mark.”

“But I haven't discussed it with
her
.” He stares at Carling. “Sweetheart, how did you do?”

“Seventy-nine.”

He's silent for a moment, and from the way he sits back and half smiles, I can tell he's enjoying this moment like the tiger enjoys watching a wounded deer bleed to death. “Seventy-nine … seventy-nine. Not quite up to Harvard standards now, is it?”

“But London, I mean Sara, is my new study partner and she got the highest mark in the class. We'll be
so
ready for the next test.”

“Still means you're going to do without your cell phone for a week.” He holds out his hand and waits while Carling blinks back tears of humiliation, then yanks it out of her pocket and slaps it into his palm.

He sets it beside his plate and looks at me. “So Sara has a talent for math, does she?”

“Yeah,” says Carling. A sly grin spreads across her face. “Sara's dad is a neurosurgeon. So she must have grown up surrounded by the right sort of brilliance. And
education
.”

The ultimate slur against a man whose claim to fame, I've heard in the halls, is that he learned to compose music by ear, with no formal training whatsoever. He graduated from a small Boston public school and scrabbled to songwriting success without the benefit of the prestigious musical training of his peers. Brice's hair seems to blacken and smolder under his daughter's implication, and the air around us grows pungent and charred. Hard to breathe. He raps his clenched fist against the table softly, saying nothing.

Gracie comes to the rescue. “To Carling, our future pediatric surgeon. And to Sara, our future … what is it you want to do with your life, Sara?”

My wineglass shakes in my hand. “Um, I'm not quite sure yet.”

She grins. “And to Sara, who'd better decide soon.”

Everybody drinks, so, despite the fact that my stomach feels like a rusty metal can, I drink too.

Just then, Molly backs through the swinging door from the kitchen. In her hands is the roast beef whose existence she'd denied a few hours earlier. Gracie stands up to clear space on the table for the enormous silver platter.

Brice inhales. “Your roast smells delicious, Gracie.”

She blushes and spoons teensy roasted potatoes onto my plate. “Just something I threw together. Nothing special.” Just like that, Barbara and Ted's generosity is squashed flat. I guess all the x's and o's in the world can't buy a little gratitude.

Carling rolls her eyes and picks a sprig of parsley from the tray, stuffing it into her mouth.

Gracie looks at me. “Is your father at Massachusetts General, Sara?”

Shit.

I drop my fork. I'm the very worst daughter on earth. I forgot all about my father's birthday. This, his thirty-fifth birthday, his first since she moved out. He's home alone … sort of. Just Charlie and his obsessive-compulsive disorder watching TV side by side in the dark.

Pedaling across the bustling city in the cool night air blows the suffocating Burnack-family atmosphere—like a noxious gas—out of my system.

With no reflectors on my bike, I'm not willing to risk death by riding on the road, gliding in and out of the Saturday-evening traffic. Instead, I guide my bike through the unhurried pedestrians on the well-lit sidewalks, making my journey home twice as long as it should be but mathematically doubling my odds of survival.

It's ten thirty by the time I creep through the front door. Just as I thought, other than the flicker of the TV coming from the living room, the apartment is unlit. I follow the eerie glow to find Dad hunched over a TV dinner, watching the History Channel. No sign of his twisted partner. He looks up, smiles. “There you are. How was the studying?”

I rush forward and wrap my arms around his neck, kiss his stubbly cheek. “I'm sorry I'm late. I wanted to make you a special birthday dinner.”

He points down at his microwavable food tray and says, with his mouth full, “Don't terrorize me while I'm swallowing.”

Still has his sense of humor.

I'm a terrible person. While my broken father's been in here ingesting frozen turkey, I've been at Carling's house sipping from a three-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. “What have you been doing all day? Anything fun?”

“Had a superb day. Noah assisted me with the VW's engine in the morning. The guy really knows what he's doing. Then I did a bit of purging.”

“You threw up?”

“I cleaned out my sock drawer. Disposed of my unmatched socks.”

“Oh. Cool. While you finish your Hungry Man special, I'm going to make you horrifically ugly brownies with lumpy icing. So prepare to be astonished by my culinary skill.”

“I'm always astonished by your culinary dexterity, Sarie-bear. Mood-ring chicken, tumbled omelets …”

I walk into the kitchen, pulling off my backpack and dumping it on the floor. “You ain't seen nothin' yet.”

Reaching into the cupboards, I pull out a brownie mix, eggs, canola oil. There's a swimming pool smell in the kitchen and it isn't until I pull a 9” × 9” Pyrex pan from the drawer under the oven that I realize what it means.

Dad's been into the bleach.

I peek into the cupboard and examine the mop Dad bought the day we moved in, exactly two weeks ago. The spongy mop head is worn down to almost nothing.

About half an hour later, I emerge from the kitchen with a plate of brownies in hand. They aren't quite cooked to perfection, being somewhat soggy in the center, but the twelve colored candles look great.

Walking slowly, so as not to blow out the candles, I start to sing “Happy Birthday” and then stop.

Dad is asleep, his unfinished dinner still on his lap. After setting the brownies on the table and blowing out the candles, I remove his tray and cover his legs and chest with a blanket. I watch him breathe for a minute, then notice his hands. They're so dry and cracked they look like they've been slashed by razors. His day wasn't spent doing a bit of straightening up. His day was spent scrubbing out the memory of my mother.

Charlie's problem is spreading too fast. It's a problem way too complicated for a sixteen-year-old math brain to compute. No amount of joking, game playing, or home-cooked meals is going to help. With no one but a dead doctor to help me, I need to take the most drastic step yet. I need to call my mother and ask for help.

Careful not to wake him, I creep into Dad's room and close the door. His black address book is lying open on his desk, so I flip to the section marked
T
and find the last entry on the page. Tina Black. The phone number is weird and long and foreign.

As soon as I pick up the phone and start to dial, a thick brown envelope slides off the desk and topples onto the seat of Dad's chair. Holding the phone to my ear, I pick up the package and turn it over. It's from, of all places, Mallory, Mallory, and Montauk—Sloane's father's law firm. With buttery fingers, I reach inside and pull out a neat stack of papers bound together with a rubber band. As I scan the top sheet, the real reason behind Dad's knuckle-grazing, birthday-boy cleaning frenzy hits me in the stomach like a dripping mop.

My mother wants a divorce.

Through the phone receiver, I hear a faint, buzzing ring. Then a faraway voice, my mother's voice, says,
“Allo?”

I don't speak. Somehow I never imagined her speaking French.

“Allo? Qui est-il?”

She's changed so much it takes my voice away. As quietly as I can, I lower the receiver and drop it into the cradle.

It's Friday morning and Mandy still hasn't taken my calls or answered my messages. My slip-up was bad, but did it really warrant complete and total exclusion from her life? Seriously. And now I'm stuck with my mom's smoky French accent running through my brain like the clunking pipes in the wall behind my bed. But instead of wanting an extra pillow to put over my head, I want someone to remind me that experimenting with foreign languages is good, nothing at all like a textbook mother who lives on a different page from her unborn baby.

I try Mandy's number one more time on the way to class. When she doesn't pick up, again, I head inside.

Mr. Curtis, we're all quickly discovering, is a huge fan of pop quizzes. He strolls in cradling a stainless-steel Starbucks travel mug and waves a stack of light blue papers up in the air. “I hope you've all been following my advice and spending your spare time studying. Today's quiz differs from our first in three ways.” He sets his things on his desk and removes his blazer. “It's longer. It encompasses everything we've learned in the last two weeks, plus the material you'll all remember fondly from our first quiz.” He rolls up his sleeves. “And it will comprise
ten percent
of your mark in my class.” He sets his hands on his hips and winks. “Enjoy. Saint Sarah, can I call upon you to pass out these tests?”

I make my way to the front of the class, aware I'm one of the few in the room who isn't wrecked with anxiety about the quiz. Carling leans forward like she might throw up, and Little Man Griff is flung back in his seat, looking as if he needs life support. Or maybe the comfort of his teddy. The joke of this being, he'll ace it no matter what. Isabella isn't concerned at all. She continues to pick at a muffin on her desk as if worried she might find a dead mouse inside.

Up goes Sloane's hand. “Mr. Curtis, will all of our quizzes be surprises? Because most of us do much better with a bit of warning.”

“You're meant to be learning as we go along, Miss Montauk. I thought I made that point clear after the last quiz. Life, I can assure you, will not come at you with an appropriate period of warning, so you might want to consider putting a little more effort into it.”

Isabella and Carling burst into peals of laughter, and Mr. Curtis shushes them and turns back to Sloane. “The more time you spend preparing yourself now, the better you'll do on my tests, it's as simple as that. You could learn a thing or two from your friend Sara. I'm willing to bet she's ready for this, am I right?”

I look up from where I'm setting tests in front of Carling, Sloane, and Izzy. “I don't know. I guess.”

He leans on his desk and grins, twisting the lid off his coffee. “Perhaps you were able to see all this coming. There is a theory that Saint Sarah was entirely unrelated to Jesus, but that she was of noble birth and was chief of her tribe on the banks of the Rhone. Some say she had visions that the saints who'd been present at Jesus's death would come to the shore where her tribe went every year to receive benediction. Sure enough, the Three Marys arrived by boat.”

A few people snicker and I force a weak smile.

To my horror, he continues. “Of course some have very opposite beliefs. In other accounts, Saint Sarah is a native of Upper Egypt and only appears in theological history as the Egyptian domestic of one of the Three Marys.”

Griff snorts. “I don't get it. Saint Sarah is an Egyptian domestic … a domestic what?”

Carling rolls her eyes. “A domestic is a maid, you Neanderthal. He's saying Saint Sarah was nothing more than a common maid.”

My nervous system goes gummy, then melts and runs down my legs to where it pools in my feet, seeping out between my toes and into my shoes. Now that my feet are too heavy to move and my Lost and Found oxford shoes have glued themselves to the floor, I stumble. The tests slide out of my hands and flutter around the room, over to the blackboard, under Mr. Curtis's desk, and beneath the feet of the kids in the front row. Mr. Curtis gets up to help, accidentally knocking his lidless travel mug across the floor. He stares at the spreading pool of brown liquid and shakes his head. “Five dollars' worth of caffeine gone to waste.”

“Sorry,” I say.

Sloane pulls her book bag away and squeals. “Ugh! It's headed right for me.”

“Somebody call a Molly,” sings Carling.

Thankful for any reason to delay the quiz, a few of the boys at the back of the class begin pounding their desks and chanting, “Mol-ly. Mol-ly. Mol-ly.”

I'm hit by a revolting realization. Carling's housekeeper isn't named Molly at all. Carling just considers the woman so beneath her, such a lower form of humanity, that she's tagged her with the generic label—Molly Maid.

Isabella crumbles what's left of her muffin into the mess. I must look shocked because she says, “What? It's getting cleaned up anyway.”

“Now who's the pig?” squeaks Griff.

“A bit disrespectful,” says Mr. Curtis, looking appalled. “Miss Latini, you can head down and request a custodian to come to the class. Walk back to class with him or her and try to imagine yourself in the janitor's shoes, cleaning up after a student's inconsiderate actions.”

“Whatever.” Isabella heads out of the room as I reach under her desk and sort out the pile of fallen papers.

In my haze of humiliation at having gone from the daughter of the most infamous icon in religious history, to a noblewoman who can see into the future, to a “common” maid; in my anxiousness to undo my giant fumble that has caused Mr. Curtis to lose his coffee and us to lose valuable test-taking time; in my disgust at Carling's disrespect for her housekeeper; I didn't anticipate right away what could happen next.

The call for a custodian might bring my father.

I don't have to fret for long. Not five minutes later, Charlie strolls into the room.

Spinning on my heel, I rush along the far row, passing out quizzes with my head lowered. At the back, I step behind the open door of a storage cupboard and tuck my hair behind my ears, hunching over and praying Mr. Curtis won't call for death by social stoning by ordering me to my seat.

I watch as my dad wheels his big red bucket closer to the mess, then pulls out the great, dripping string mop and wrings it out on the strainer attached to the pail. He glances up at the kids watching and laughs. “Feels like being onstage.”

A few sympathetic giggles. Charlie mops up the coffee and muffin crumbs fairly quickly, rinsing the mop in the bucket. But he doesn't stop there. He wrings, scrubs, and rinses two more times, seemingly unaware of the curious looks he's getting from the class. Even Mr. Curtis, defender of the custodian, looks confused. As the class's reaction grows, I, from my hidey-hole behind the cupboard door, die a thousand deaths for my father.

Then it gets much, much worse.

Charlie removes a plastic spray bottle from his belt. Then he lowers himself down on his knees and starts spraying the shit out of the floor, which is already spotless. He sprays and scrubs, sprays and scrubs, and soon the air is heavy with the overpowering smell of bleach.

Kids in the front rows begin to cough, some of them getting up and joining me at the back. Groans and snorts pop up from all over the classroom and I hear murmurings, like, “Guy's messed up!” and “Someone needs to call for help” and “One crazy Molly.”

Willa stands up coughing a tight, high-pitched cough, holding her vest over her mouth. She pulls a puffer from her bag and mumbles through the woolen vest, “Mr. Curtis, I have asthma….”

He guides her from the room, calls another girl over, and tells them to go straight to the infirmary. The girls disappear.

The scrubbing isn't going to end anytime soon, so eventually Mr. Curtis lightens the mood by clapping his hands. “Well, now I understand why the school is so sparkling clean this term.” He pats Charlie's back and pulls him to his feet. “It's the work of our new custodian, Mr…. what is your name, sir?”

No. Please, no. Please, Dad, don't say “Black,” not to Mr. Curtis. He'll haul me out of the cupboard and start making comparisons that will only end with the entire school knowing who I really am. A liar.

But Dad just smiles, nods his head at the class, and points to his name tag. “You can address me as Charlie.”

For a moment, it looks like Dad is going to drop to the floor again to keep scrubbing, but Mr. Curtis leads him to the door. “You've done us a wonderful service, Charlie. I can assure you our floor has never been so hygienic.”

Just before Dad disappears, he waves back to the kids. The moment the door clicks shut, the room explodes into animated whispers and giggles, and I make a run for my seat.

“Okay, that's enough,” says Mr. Curtis as I slip into my chair. “The excitement is over. Thank you for your assistance, Saint Sarah. Remind me never to call on you for help passing out tests again.”

I'm safe. For now.

“Pick up your pencils, people.” He settles himself in his chair, sets his feet on his desk, cracks open a math journal, and reaches for his reading glasses. “You now have only forty-one minutes to impress me.”

I scratch my name at the top of the quiz and start on the first problem. The solution is obvious and after I've written down my calculations, I scrawl
X = 37
and move to the next question. Beside me, a chair shifts. I look up to see Isabella has slid her desk slightly closer to Carling's and moved her paper to the edge of her desktop, giving her friend easy access to her work. But Carling turns away from Isabella and turns to face me. She raises her eyebrows. I know what she wants. And I have no freaking choice but to give it to her.

I slide my paper toward the edge of my desk and watch as she copies
X = 37
onto her quiz.