The Promised World (32 page)

He was lying on his bed, chewing up little balls of paper because his throat hurt, and thinking about his mom. Every time the social worker came to check up on them, she said Pearl and William could call their mom anytime. But Pearl told him he couldn’t ‘cause it would mess up her plan and she made him swear he wouldn’t without checking with her first. He was worried about Mommy, but he knew she’d still be sad even if he did call, ‘cause she couldn’t be with him and Pearl. Daddy had killed himself ‘cause he couldn’t see them, even though Daddy got to talk to them on the phone all the time.

William had swallowed dozens of spitballs, but he didn’t feel any better. He couldn’t think about Mommy without being scared she’d kill herself. He couldn’t think about Daddy without crying like a stupid baby. He didn’t want to think at all ‘cause it made him nervous, but there was nothing else to do. This place didn’t have any TV or Nintendo or even any toys other than the ones he’d packed, and he’d played with them a zillion times. He could have listened to his boom box, but he felt too embarrassed after what New Grandma had said yesterday. “Your musical selection suits you. It’s from the romantic period, very emotional. And you’re certainly not a normal boy.”

He knew “romantic” was some kind of love thing. That was bad enough, but the part about him not being a normal boy made him feel like a stupid sissy. He could never run as fast or hit the ball as good as the other boys. Everyone made fun of him ‘cause he was so short for his age and he had to wear those glasses all the time.
But he’d always thought music like S-H-O-S-T-A-K-O-V-I-C-H was not just for girls. Why hadn’t Daddy ever told him it was this dumb romantic thing?

He was looking out the window, watching a squirrel darting up and around a tree, when he was finally so bored he closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, someone was knocking on his door, hard, and then Pearl was in the room. He was confused at first. He thought she was waking him up to go to school. But the clock by the bed said 5:17, and he remembered he hadn’t even eaten dinner yet. Plus, she was yelling at him to pay attention because she was only going to say this once.

“Shhh,” he said and pointed at the hall.

“She’s at the store,” Pearl said loudly. “And who cares anyway, when you’ve already done the stupidest fucking thing you could possibly do!”

His sister was pacing back and forth from the bed to the window. She was as mad as he’d ever seen her, way madder than when he spilled water on her cell phone.

“What?” he said, sitting up. He felt kind of guilty, but he didn’t remember why. He’d been dreaming about Daddy being in a bike race with some stranger man. In the dream, William was down at the finish line, holding a flag, hoping Daddy won.

“You told her I didn’t like her! And don’t give me that bull about her reading your mind!”

“But she did. She even said so.”

“She told me it was only a joke. A JOKE, just like I told you it had to be. And how could you believe something like that? Don’t you remember the millions of times Dad told us to use our reason, not superstition? What do you think he meant, huh?”

William had never been sure what his father meant by that. Daddy told him it was like the difference between really understanding numbers and just believing some numbers were lucky and
could win you the lottery. “But you can still like six best,” Daddy said, and smiled. Six had always been William’s favorite number.

He was swallowing hard, hoping he could stop himself from saying something dumb and making Pearl even madder. He was so thirsty. He wished he hadn’t chewed up that paper. Mommy had told him over and over that it was bad for him.

“And then you just came up here and fell asleep like nothing happened.” Pearl leaned against the big dresser with the giant mirror. Her face looked like she hated him, but in the mirror, he could see the back of her head and the yellow ropes of her hair that smelled like flowers. “Why didn’t you at least tell me about this?”

“I’m sorry.” He looked down at the dead animal blanket. “Grandma said it was a secret and—”

“Perfect. Just fucking perfect.” Pearl stomped to the door. She sounded like she was spitting. “I never thought my own brother would keep secrets about
me
!”

And then she was gone. William jumped off the bed to follow her. He ran to the opposite end of the staircase, to the blue guest room where Pearl was staying, but she wasn’t there. He rushed all over the top floor and ran downstairs; he checked the kitchen and the dining room and the giant book room and the exercise room and the special chess room and even New Grandma’s bedroom, but just to peek in, because he was afraid to walk all the way inside. He was yelling his sister’s name at the top of his lungs and starting to cry, too, as he went from the front yard to the backyard, and then up the big hill where Pearl liked to walk. At the top of the hill he still couldn’t see Pearl anyplace so he kept going into the forest, even though it scared him. He yelled his sister’s name over and over until his throat was on fire. The sun was shining orange on the trees and he was about to go back when he looked up and saw something that was so surprising, he forgot about crying. It was a beautiful tree house, just sitting in the sky.

He’d always wanted a tree house, but his daddy had said no, it was too dangerous, and Kyle was too busy watching TV to build one, even though he kept saying he would. And now one had just appeared, like it was a gift for him. He might have been too scared to climb up if the tree hadn’t had all these wooden steps nailed in the bark, like a built-in ladder. It only took him a few minutes and then he was sitting in that tree house all by himself, on top of the world.

It had the coolest window, just big enough for his face to squeeze through, like he was the lookout on a pirate ship. He didn’t see Pearl anywhere, but he did notice the big white car heading toward their house, meaning New Grandma was coming back.

He stayed in the tree house for a long time, pretending he was a robot on a spaceship, and then Batman in the bat cave, and then a spy who was hiding out from all the evil government bad guys like Daddy used to talk about. He pretended New Grandma was one of those bad guys as he watched her cooking in the bright white kitchen. He took a crumbling branch from the tree house floor and stuck it out the window, like it was a telescope to see her better, but then it turned into a gun and he shot her,
bang, bang, bang,
so Pearl would like him again.

He felt sort of guilty for shooting New Grandma, but even worse when he realized it was getting too dark and he had to climb down for dinner.

After Grandma told him Pearl was going to be eating in her room, he rushed upstairs to make sure his sister was really there and hadn’t run away or disappeared. He opened her door without knocking and saw her sitting on her bed, reading and eating from a tray made of wood. He felt better, until she yelled at him to go away.

Then he was all alone, and he walked back down to the dining room as slow as a turtle. He sat down to a plate of stinky fish he’d never seen before and eggplant, which he hated. He asked
Grandma if Pearl was being punished and she said no. “But I do expect a certain level of civility.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he was glad Pearl wasn’t in trouble. And he liked the idea of eating in his own room, but when he asked if he could, too, Grandma laughed. “You’re very civil, William. I can’t imagine you ever saying the cruel things your sister said to me this afternoon. I can’t imagine you screaming at her the way she just screamed at you.”

“She was mad ‘cause—”

“Please don’t make excuses for her. She needs to understand that in this house, everyone is expected to be rational. Healthy disagreement is wonderful, unreasonableness is not.”

He listened to a lot more talk like this while he moved the eggplant around his plate and cut the fish into little tiny pieces that didn’t smell as bad. Then he remembered to ask New Grandma why she told Pearl the secret.

“It wasn’t your fault. Please remember that, no matter what your sister accuses you of.”

“But why’d you tell her?”

“Because I care about my son’s children.” She smiled. “Why else?”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept swallowing the fish and wishing Pearl would come downstairs. But she didn’t, and when dinner was over, New Grandma told him she was going to teach him more about chess. He said he didn’t really want to learn, but Grandma said, “Of course you do. You’re a smart boy. What would your father say if you didn’t try?”

Daddy always said trying was super important, so he was trapped. New Grandma even made him clean his glasses. It was an awful night, except when Grandma said he had a “talent with bishops.” The bishop was his favorite of all the chess pieces ‘cause he liked diagonal lines.

The next morning started out bad, too. As soon as he came downstairs, New Grandma reminded him that the housekeeper was coming on Monday, so he had to make sure his things were put away. “She’s going to clean your room from top to bottom,” Grandma said, “including your closet.” Then she gave him that weird wink-smile, like she was saying, “You can’t hide anything from me.”

He’d woken up determined to remember that New Grandma couldn’t read his mind. Pearl said it was impossible and Pearl was really, really smart. Somehow New Grandma was tricking him, but he couldn’t think about that now; he was too worried she’d find the gun. Daddy had told him not to let anybody know about it, and even though it was in the toolbox, the housekeeper person might wonder what was in there and then she and Grandma might break open the lock.

He went back in his room to think about where to hide it, and then he thought of the perfect place. His new tree house. New Grandma was way too old to climb up there, even if she did figure out where it was, which she couldn’t anyway, ‘cause she really couldn’t read his mind. He moved it while Grandma was on her exercise machine and Pearl was still asleep. Nobody saw him take it out of the toolbox, he was sure. He wrapped it in the extra pillowcase with the dead animal pattern, stuck it under his shirt, and crept up the hill and into the woods. He didn’t stay in the tree house very long, ‘cause it was so cloudy, like it could burst out raining any second. He just left it in the corner, under a bunch of old boards with rusty nails sticking out, and on the top board, he wrote in magic marker: Stay Away Or Else.

By the time he got back, Pearl was downstairs making waffles with New Grandma and talking like nothing was wrong. And they were talking about Lila, which Pearl had told him never to do. Pearl was smiling but not that fakey-friendly smile, her real smile.
She even smiled at William when she said, “Grandma has decided to give me Aunt Lila’s clothes. Isn’t that cool?”

It seemed like a weird thing to care about, some old clothes, but Pearl was excited when they all went down to the basement to get the things. There were only three boxes, which William was glad about ‘cause it meant they didn’t have to go back and forth, lugging up stuff. He wanted to get out of this spooky basement as fast as possible. Even Daddy had said the basement was creepy. Grandma kept all the boxes up on wood squares; she said the basement got wet when it rained. William saw little trickles of water coming down on the wall in back, which seemed so sad, like the stones were crying.

Grandma and Pearl went up to Pearl’s room to go through everything, and William sat on a chair by the giant bookshelf, counting the rows of books. For a while, everything was calm and sort of boring, but then New Grandma showed up, right when he was ready to count the sixth row (his favorite), and told him he had to do something for his sister. “Go upstairs and tell her she doesn’t look too skinny in that dress.”

He wasn’t sure why he had to do this instead of Grandma, but he stood up and headed upstairs. He could hear Pearl crying before he got halfway up. He felt so bad for his sister that he ran the rest of the way. She was standing in the middle of the room in a violet dress that looked softer than anything he’d ever seen. “You look nice,” he said, ‘cause she did and ‘cause he wanted her to stop crying.

She peered into his face and sniffed. “You really think so?”

He nodded and she sniffed a few more times, looking at herself in a mirror on the closet door. She turned to the right and the left, and the soft dress sort of whirled around like a spinning top. Then he remembered what he was supposed to say.

“You don’t look too skinny.”

She let out a wail so loud it hurt his ears. He told her he’d only
said that ‘cause Grandma had asked him to, but that didn’t make her stop crying. He could barely make out what she was saying. “How could you do this to me?”

He didn’t know what he’d done, but he tried to make her feel better. He went over and threw his arms around her waist and said, “It’s okay,” the way he always did when Mommy was sad. The dress was just as soft as it looked, but a shiny kind of soft. He wished he had a blanket like this.

She pulled his hands off and jumped back like he was dirty, even though he’d washed off all the syrup on his fingers right after breakfast. “If Grandma told you to hit me,” she sobbed, “would you do that, too?”

He was confused and horrified. He never hit anybody, not even mean kids at school. “No.” He shook his head. “No.”

“But it’s perfectly fucking fine to tell me I look fat? Because
she
told you to?”

“Language, Pearl.” Grandma was standing in the doorway. “Please calm down. It’s hardly a tragedy that one dress doesn’t flatter you. Try some of the others. Several of Lila’s things were loose on her. Perhaps those would—”

“Just stop it!” Pearl was still crying and her voice came out all squeaky, like one of Maisie’s baby toys. “Leave me alone!”

Grandma turned to him. “William, will you wait in your room?”

“No.” He stomped his heel and stared right at Grandma. “I wanna stay with Pearl.”

“I don’t think that’s appropriate.” She nodded in Pearl’s direction. “Your sister is going to be changing clothes.”

Pearl already had the dress unzipped and halfway over her head. He saw his sister’s pink underpants and he was so embarrassed that he turned away and headed for his own room.