Skylight Confessions (26 page)

"I'm an idiot," Amy said, wiping at her eyes, laughing. All of the wildness she'd had as a kid had been drained out of her. Now when she thought of the person she'd been, the things she'd done

— hitchhiking across the country, living in strangers' apartments, all those drugs, pills she took to make her smaller or larger, anywhere but where she was — it was like remembering a long-lost sister, one she hardly knew. A crazy kid. That wild girl.

Whoever she might have gone on being if she hadn't gotten pregnant with Will.

"You're just overprotective," Will said. He knew his mother was a good-hearted, well-meaning person. Maybe she wasn't always right about things. She wasn't an idiot, that much was obvious. It was just that sometimes there were certain things she didn't want to know. About his father, for instance. Falling off the roof. That's what she wanted to believe. That day when Sam had taken Will to the run-down building, the one with no doors and a staircase to nowhere, the one where he lived when he wasn't with them, when all he could think about was drugs; they'd sat there knee to knee in the hallway, on the dirty floor. Sam had leaned very close to his son. For someone who wasn't very clean, he smelled good. He smelled like fresh air and green grass.

You can't go with me,
he'd said to Will.
You know that, right? Nobody
can.

Maybe it was an instant, maybe it was well planned out, maybe it was his dream come true.

I've got to get there by myself,
Will's father had told him that day in the hallway.

Someone downstairs was drunk or stoned and screaming but Will and Sam had both ignored the ruckus. Will had nodded; he understood. Some people had choices and some people didn't. He knew that then and he knew it now, as he led his group of friends down the stairs, all of them whooping, stomachs filled with pizza, happily on their way to Will's birthday celebration. Another year most gratefully spent in this world.

* * *

BLANCA HAD GONE TO THE HOUSE FOR THE FUNERAL luncheon, but Meredith had been driving then. Now Meredith had left, back to her own family, and navigating alone the next day was a trial.

Blanca was lost in no time. She tried to follow the route she'd once known so well she could find her way in the dark, flying along on her bicycle. But everything seemed changed. Trees had been cut down, new houses built, roads had been extended to sweep through developments that had once been nothing more than meadows; everything seemed to be on the wrong side of the road.

Blanca was to meet with her stepmother and half sister and her father's attorney, David Hill. It was still hot and she had bought an outfit for the occasion in the Dress Shack in town, along with a pair of white flip-flops and some summer clothes. Her hair was loose and she wore her mother's pearls, cool drops of salt and stone. James had phoned the inn twice, but both times Blanca had been out when he called. She felt isolated and abandoned; all the same, she hadn't phoned back. She was in a bubble. All alone. She drove to her childhood home with the windows down so she could spy the street signs; still she was over an hour late. Blanca dreaded the meeting. It was one thing to avoid her father all these years, another thing altogether to go home and not have him there.

The Glass Slipper, when Blanca came to it, was bright, blindingly so on this summer afternoon. Blanca parked her rental car and walked up to the door. The drive was still made of little white pebbles, round stones that crunched under Blanca's flip-flops and threw her off balance. Today, John Moody's will would be divulged. Funny, Blanca had never thought of the second meaning of the word: what he wanted, desired, yearned for.

When she opened the door, Cynthia hugged Blanca and drew her into the hall. It was the only dark, windowless place in the house.

"This is not a happy day," Cynthia said.

"No."

Had the house always had an echo? As they walked down the hallway, there was the
slap slap
of Blanca's flip-flops against the wood and the brisk clip of her stepmother's heels.

Lisa and the attorney were waiting in the living room. It all felt very formal. Too formal for a loose dress and white flip-flops. They all said good morning, except for Lisa. She was still tall and awkward, washed out with grief. She looked at Blanca, then quickly looked away.

"Let's get to it, shall we?" the lawyer said. "As you can imagine, John left the house and half of his estate to Cynthia. The other half of the estate has been divided equally. It's quite a good amount. A third to Lisa and a third to Blanca."

"There are only two of us," Lisa said. "Who is the third person?"

Cynthia asked. David Hill handed Blanca a manila envelope.

"You're supposed to take care of it. Your dad asked if you would."

"There must be some mistake," Blanca suggested. "No mistake."

Cynthia and Lisa were quiet, but they shifted closer together.

Surely they were thinking the same thing. Why Blanca? Did John Moody have a cause they didn't know about? Perhaps he'd paid the expenses for his first wife's aged aunt in a nursing home? Or was it something worse? A mistress or a love child?

"You can open it here or privately," David Hill said. "However you wish to handle it. Once the estate is settled, bank accounts will be set up for all three individuals. Lisa also has a separate college fund, which at this point will be more than enough for any further education."

Blanca slipped the envelope into her purse. He'd stapled it closed, then Scotch-taped it. There was some sort of meaning in all those measures.
Don't let the cat out of the bag. It bites, it scratches,
it eats mice whole, tail and ears and all.

"You're not opening it?" Lisa leaned forward. She was wearing the same black blouse and skirt she'd worn to the funeral. She was tall like John Moody, but she had her mother's delicate bone structure. It was an odd combination; difficult to tell if she was fragile or strong beyond belief.

"Maybe later," Blanca said. "I don't think this is the best time."

"We have a right to know who this other person is," Lisa said to her mother. "Don't we?"

"I thought we'd have lunch." Cynthia stood and suggested they follow her into the kitchen.

"Mom! Blanca wasn't even here to visit Dad. She never came back."

"She was here before you were born," Cynthia said. "I learned everything I knew about babies taking care of her. She was only eight months old when I moved in. So hush."

"Gee, Cynthia, I never knew you had so much concern for me and Sam."

You moved in for convenience' sake,
Blanca stopped herself from saying.
That way our father didn't have to sneak across the lawn in the
middle of the night.
Blanca felt especially cold. Maybe it was the pearls at her neck. Maybe it was the way Lisa was glaring at her.

Cynthia, on the other hand, chose to ignore her comment.

"I made egg-salad sandwiches," Cynthia said. "Dave, are you staying for lunch? I've got Bloody Marys, too."

"Wouldn't miss it," David Hill said.

The attorney was a big, friendly man with whom John Moody had played golf for thirty-five years. A widower who was more than happy to have an egg-salad sandwich and a good Bloody Mary and was already trailing after Cynthia.

"Well, you got what you wanted," Lisa said. "You upset my mother."

"Did I?"

Blanca felt a bit of remorse; Cynthia had been married to her father far longer than her own mother had been. Blanca now remembered a ballet performance that she'd practiced for nonstop.

She was six or seven. After a while Sam knew half her routine and did it with her on the lawn, in the living room. She'd had a horrible brief thought:
I
hope he doesn't come to the performance and ruin it.

Before they left for the performance, Cynthia had pulled her aside.

Don't worry,
she'd said.
Sam's asleep. He won't be there.

"I'm sure you're thrilled that my dad left you more than he left me," Lisa said.

"Actually, he didn't. You'll inherit whatever your mother got and this extra third goes to someone else, not to me. So you're wrong there, Lisa. Get your facts straight."

Lisa came right up to her. For an instant Blanca thought her half sister might haul off and hit her full in the face. She deserved it, really.

"What did I ever do to you?" Lisa said.

"Nothing."

"You never even talked to me! You acted like I wasn't here."

"Actually, I was the one who wasn't here. Or so I prayed."

"It doesn't really matter. I was his favorite," Lisa said.

At that moment, Blanca hated her own sister. She was jealous of this leggy, unhappy girl her father had indeed loved.

"Well, hurray for you," Blanca said coolly. "You should have that written on your own gravestone:
Daddy liked me best."

"Why should he have loved you? He wasn't even your real father."

Lisa had bitten-down cuticles and there was a line of blood under each nail. She was the nervous type. Down the lane someone was mowing the grass; there was the muffled whir of the motor. Blanca felt sick. Everything stopped right then.

"You knew that, right?" Lisa was studying Blanca for a reaction.

Lisa herself had heard it from a friend's mother; as it turned out, many people in town had figured out Blanca's parentage. When Lisa had come home to ask her own mother if it was true, Cynthia had clammed up; then Lisa had known for certain. Now she dug deeper, looking for a nerve. "I mean, everyone knew."

"I made a good decision not to have anything to do with you,"

Blanca said. "You were a miserable child."

Not at all true. Lisa had been a placid, willing-to-please girl who would have followed Blanca anywhere, had she but been allowed.

Still, she deserved to be slammed if she was going to start telling lies.

"Your real father was a janitor or something in town," Lisa said.

"He sold dogs."

All at once, Blanca felt some sort of truth; she saw it in Lisa's face.
This is bad. Stop talking to her. Walk out the door.

"Ask my mother." Lisa looked pleased with herself. "Ask anyone. It's true."

"Lisa!" Cynthia had come looking for them. She had a tray of celery and olives. Her face was blotchy. Lisa ran to her mother.

"Tell her."

There were cumulus clouds today and they were racing across the sky. Anyone could look up through the atrium in the living room and see them, faster and faster.

"Yes, tell me," Blanca said. "Go ahead."

"Blanca, she's a child."

"Don't make me out to be a liar!" Lisa said. "Tell her!" "Yes, tell me, Cynthia."

Cynthia looked apologetic. Blanca stared at her stepmother, shocked by her hesitation. "Cynthia!"

This might be true,
Blanca found herself thinking.
He wasn't even
my father.
She felt a line of sweat down her back, even in her summer dress, even though the house was air-conditioned.

"Are you going to tell me?"

When Cynthia said nothing, Blanca grabbed her purse and went out. The birds in the hedges were deafening. There was a jet overhead. She couldn't hear anything. Her ears actually hurt.

Cynthia came out after her. Blanca turned to face her.

"It was George Snow. Your mother was in love with him. But your father was John Moody. Make no mistake about that. And he loved you."

Blanca turned her back on her stepmother and went around to the rear of the house, following the stone path. It felt as though there was glass inside her lungs. Had it ever been so difficult to breathe? Her summer dress was too hot. Her skin was on fire.

There was the patio where John Moody had died. There was the lawn where Blanca had danced with Sam one evening. Where she'd watched him shoot up drugs on the night Meredith first brought Daniel to the house and found them sitting at the table in the dark.
It doesn't even hurt,
Sam told her.
One pinch and it's all over.

Fuck it,
Blanca thought. Nothing was what it seemed. Not even her own blood and bones. This was where the red map led, to a place she'd never imagined, to the house where she'd grown up, to the center of who she was. Blanca put her purse on the edge of the patio and walked to the pool. Green and cool. Meredith told her once that she'd found the truth about herself in a pool, floating in the dark water. Blanca slipped off her white flip-flops and sat beside the edge. It was the last day of something. She might never come back here. More than anything, Blanca wished she could remember her mother. She unclasped the pearls from around her neck and held them in the water. If she let them slide into the pool, would they float or fall? Would they spell out the name of her mother's true love, her blood father, or would they simply drift, then fall to the very bottom, like stones?

She opened her hand and let go. The pearls immediately began to sink; in no time they were submerged. Blanca dove in after them, still wearing her new dress. Amazing how quickly you could lose something. Blanca made her way across the very bottom of the pool, forcing herself to go on though she had barely any air left. She groped along the concrete until she had the pearls in hand, the only thing she had left, the one remaining piece of evidence that there was something that was solid and real and worth searching for.

BLANCA WAITED TO OPEN THE ENVELOPE UNTIL SHE WAS IN the yard behind the inn. It was early evening and the sky was hazy and pink. She had taken off her soaked dress, hung it in the bathroom to dry, then put on shorts and a T-shirt. Her hair was wet and smelled like chlorine. She still felt chilled. The shadows in Connecticut were so deep and blue that the temperature could change drastically in a few moments. Blanca placed the envelope her father had left for her on the wrought-iron garden table and watched some bees in the rhododendrons.
Loves me, loves me not.

She was glad to be alone. Everything was so green. Everything smelled like grass.