Look Both Ways (25 page)

Campbell spoke up, “I sure wouldn’t mind not being the oldest mom at the preschool. You’re three years younger than I am. And if I’d adopted him, I wouldn’t have all this baggy, saggy . . .”

“That’s enough information, Mom,” Merry told Campbell. “It may just be biology but don’t go into it.”

“Hmmmm,” Bonnie said. “I could just eat him up.”

“His name’s Owen,” Tim put in. “His godmothers here named him.”

“I think he named himself,” Mallory said. They all shared a grin. And then Mallory asked, “Mom, do you care if I ride home with Kim and Bonnie? I think I’m coming down with something. I’ll come back after school tomorrow.”

“I’m going to raise him to play three sports,” Adam said. “You don’t have to help.”

“And you’ll love the nice green diapers,” Merry put in. To Mallory she said softly their word that meant love and understanding, “Giggy. Text me if you need me. Grandma’s going to stay with us—like we were two years old.”

“Everyday I wish we were two years old,” Mallory said. She smiled at Kim, who looked a little more like the gentle girl they’d known long ago.

Before.

There were so many times Mally now had to think of a “before.”

She wondered about after . . . and all the afters to come.

“Well, I was the only one here when he came,” Adam was telling Aunt Karin. “Dad was in Deptford taking a delivery. He didn’t even get here until he was out! I guess I’ll be special to him.” Aunt Karin agreed. Mallory knuckled Adam’s head. Her own head weighed a hundred pounds. All she could think of was sleep. She kissed her parents and Grandma and told Merry they’d talk later.

When Bonnie and Kim dropped her off, she saw the envelope between the door and the screen.

She knew it would be there.

She’d had enough of sad messages.

Still in her long johns, Mallory fell asleep with the card under her cheek and the necklace in her hand. Down she went into the well of sleep, and when the alarm rang, she couldn’t get up. Every part of her ached—her arms, her head, her legs. When she thought of the buzz at school, everyone asking about Eden Cardinal dropping out so close to the end of the year, she wanted to sleep forever. For only the second time in two years, she wanted to be called in and asked Grandma Gwenny to do it. She slept for nine more hours.

When she woke up, the imprint of the silver dream catcher on its chain was etched in her palm like her sister’s scar.

O
n Saturday, although she still ached, Mallory felt like a smaller, paper-doll version of herself.

She was careful, washing her face in slow, circular strokes and examining her skin texture. It was good, she decided—no visible pore structure. She patted Vaseline on her lashes. And then she didn’t know what else to do. A day in the cold had tightened her skin to the point that she felt she might split if she smiled . . . that or explode in a thousand quarter-inch squares of freeze-dried freckles. She rummaged among Meredith’s two solid-packed drawers of entirely identical jars. SPF15 sunscreen. She’d heard of its virtues. And she didn’t need a map on her face of all her sins, all her hopes, all her failures—not even of all her days spent lying on her back in an inch of water at noon up at the camp.

Mallory pulled on leggings and, for some reason, her short black skirt and the red-and-gray sweater and shirt she’d bought with Eden. She pulled her hair back in a clip and touched her lips with gloss.

Now she really was all dressed up with nowhere to go.

And though it was cloudy, she even had on sunscreen.

She fastened the dream catcher around her neck on its long braided silver chain. The garnet was as red as a drop of blood.

When she stepped out to get the mail, Drew was shoveling the walk.

“What’s the occasion, Brynn? You trying out to be your sister?”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I think I changed overnight from a pumpkin into . . . into a gourd,” Mally said. “I’ve got a new little brother, though. Came early but he’s okay.”

“I heard. Tim told me when you were sick.”

“I wasn’t sick. Just beat.”

“I heard Eden moved, out to live with some aunt someplace,” Drew said.

“Yeah. Guess Ridgeline’s too small for almost everybody.”

“Too small for Pam. She met a guy at Ohio State when she went for orientation.”

“She dumped you? Drewsky! A pre-prom dump is harsh. Did you rent a tux already?”

“In fact I did. Gray cutaway.”

“That must have been eighty bucks. Will they give you a refund? Oh, but they altered it, right? I’m sorry.”

“What are you gonna do, Brynn? She was going to the great wild west out there anyhow. It never would have lasted. She sure was a babe, though.”

“And nice. She’s a nice girl,” Mally said. “I gotta go in. I’m freezing. Want to watch some soaps?”

“I live for it,” Drew said. “I’d rather shovel every walk on the street. Want to play laser chess?”

“I’d rather have a new nostril,” Mallory said affably.

“What about pizza tonight? I can bring a bunch home. I’ll even buy,” Drew said. “That’s how decent a guy I am, if I do say. A truly decent guy.”

“You get it free, so we’ll be the judge of that,” Mally said.

Then Drew asked, “So, did you ever feel really curious about junior prom? From a sociological standpoint?”

“Not in my wildest, well, dreams. I’m sorry, though. I did trick you, but one thing you have to know is, I didn’t. I really didn’t.”

Drew leaned on the shovel. “After a while, I figured it was some nuts Brynn thing that had to do with saving Kim Jellico or whatever. Some evil-eye thing I didn’t want to know about.”

“Trust me. You don’t want to know about this.” Mallory pressed the heel of her hand against one eye. “Are you asking me to go with you to the prom? Because if you are . . . love to. Thanks. I’m not allowed to date. But I’m making an exception on my own.”

“You sure you want to get that dressed up?”

“Hey! It will make my sister crazy. I can borrow something from Neely Chaplin. She probably has nine or twenty designer gowns. We’ll show ’em how it’s done, okay?”

“I even took ballroom dancing lessons at the mall,” Drew said.

“Well, my dad taught me when I was eleven. We’ll cut a rug, like my grandpa Art says when he dances with Grandma. I know my mom is going to say I have to be home by midnight, though.”

“That’s fine.” Drew smiled. “I have dinner reservations at Appetito! Don’t borrow a
white
dress. I’ve seen you eat.”

“Why, Drew, don’t you know women don’t really eat?”

“I forgot that. I forget it every time you eat your pizza and mine too. Say, is
Cooper
going to mind?”

“Actually, Cooper’s back in Boston. He’s not really in the picture.”

“Well, I’m sorry. Sort of,” said Drew.

“I am too. Sort of. But in another way, I’m relieved. Is that possible? Can you feel relieved at the end of something you didn’t want to end?”

“I don’t know,” Drew said honestly. “I felt that way about Pam. Really, really lousy. But also free. Maybe it’s a thing about being young. You can still start over. Not like if you were our parents’ age. Maybe it’s like payback for zits and constant nagging and having to go to school all the best years of your life.”

“True. If you were old, you’d probably crack up over Pam.”

“Over a cheerleader? Not so much, Brynn.”

“Well, her loss is my gain, or something like that. Right? I’ll be your rebound date.”

“Well, I promise not to break your heart.”

“Can’t. Been done,” Mallory said.

“Cooper?” Drew set his jaw.

“No, when my cat ran away,” Mallory said. “Seems like a long time ago.”

“Must have been. I don’t even remember you had a cat.”

Mallory sighed in a gust. “I’ll never forget her. But she was just passing through.”

P
redictably, Tim picked the day of the prom for the first formal family portrait of Owen at home.

“Please say it’s casual,” Mallory begged. “Please say I don’t have to get formally dressed twice in one day.”

“It’s casual,” said Uncle Kevin, whose friend, Leo, was the photographer. Everyone wore jeans and bright sweaters. Campbell asked them to group around her—on top of her if possible.

“Only my eyes look okay,” said Campbell. “The rest of me is like Moby Pickle in this green sweater.”

Aunt Kate styled them like a still life.

“Four kids!” Tim kept saying.

“Fortunately, people will always need soccer balls and sweat socks,” Campbell told him.

“And family practice physicians,” Tim added.

Leo took a few hundred shots and then beamed. Campbell began to feed the baby.

“You did a great job, champ!” Tim told her.

“I don’t recall you even witnessing the title bout this time,” Campbell reminded him.

Mallory began pulling on her sweats for her run, but Campbell stopped her.

“So does your going to the prom tonight with Drew mean it’s over between you and Eden’s brother?”

Mallory said, “Yes. I guess.”

Campbell said, “I’m sorry. But when she ran off with that older man . . . ”

“She didn’t do that, Mom. She went to stay somewhere else. She has family everywhere, even in Canada. It’s over between Eden and James.” Mallory figured that she had said the gist and not quite told a lie.

“Well, I’m glad. He was too old for her.”

Mally admitted, “I’m not glad. It’s like she was punished for something she didn’t do.”

“I know you’ll miss her terribly, Mally,” Campbell said.

“I don’t even think I know how much yet,” Mallory said. “I’ll miss them both.” She remembered standing in the snow, her face against Cooper’s wet coat, the smell of the green-heart evergreen. She saw Eden whirling alone in her moonlit dance.

Mallory decided that she would see Eden that way forever.

She went upstairs to get her sneakers.

Merry was finishing her French. She said, “Ster. That necklace. It’s beautiful.”

Mallory held it out and admired its delicate web, the slender hatchwork within the circle, the feather intended to drive beautiful dreams to whirl above her bed. “It’s a memento. A kiss-off gift. Not that Cooper was mean about it. He wasn’t. But I guess he couldn’t really handle what happened to us.” Again, Mallory felt empty, like a skin. If someone shook her, her small, dry heart would rattle against her ribs. “He says he’ll come back maybe. But I know he won’t.”

“Oh, Mallory. I didn’t know Cooper was . . . over.”

“Well. Anyhow. I’m going to the prom, huh? Did you give Neely my note? Thanking her for the dress?”

“She was glad to do it. She just wants a picture.”

“There’ll be no pictures,” Mallory said.

“I don’t think Drew’s mom is going to go along with that. It’s his junior prom,” Merry said.

Mallory snorted and went for her run. Up she went into the hills, alert for a flash of white, listening for the crisp of a broken bush. But she heard nothing, even though she went to the top of the ridge and waited until the sun was too close to the horizon. She had to race for home, race through her shower, and force herself to slow down while she went through the painstaking steps of putting on her eyeliner, smudging it, smudging it too much, daubing it off with baby oil, putting the white primer goo on again.

Merry was able to endure it for only five minutes.

“You’re driving me crazy! Let me put that stuff on!” And so, Merry took over, the brushes magic wands in her artist’s hands. “Now your hair. A messy updo with lots of wispy stuff?”

“Negatori,” said Mallory.

“Okay, a French braid with a clip.” With her dark hair braided tightly against her head and a swirl of silver over it, and with Neely’s mermaid of a Vera Wang sheath dropped down over her head and both twins’ garnets in her ears, Mallory obediently let her sister soldier-walk her over to the mirror. “My creation!” Meredith said.

And Mallory said, “Wow.”

She looked like herself, only less and more. She looked twenty. She looked newborn. She looked white hot. “I didn’t know they made tight dresses this small,” she said to Merry.

“It was Keira Knightley’s,” Merry said, lowering her voice. “Or some English movie star’s. They had it shortened. It cost, like, two thousand dollars in a charity auction.”

“Oh, take it off, fast! I can’t breathe on it! I can’t breathe in it, as a matter of fact! I have bigger boobs than Keira Knightly?” Mally cried. “What if I wreck it? What if I sweat?”

“Only you would say that,” Merry told her. “You put on deodorant twice! Plus, it’s insured. And it doesn’t even touch your pits.”